Intersecting identities of elite female boxers: Stories of cultural difference and marginalization in sport

ObjectivesThe project responds to calls for research that attends to issues of cultural diversity within sport and that facilitates expanded understandings of socially constructed identities. The intersecting identities of elite female boxers are explored in terms of how they shape experiences of marginalization and well-being within sport. Focus is on constructions of race and ethnicity, language, and religion.DesignAn intersectional lens grounded in social constructionism was integrated with a cultural sport psychology approach to espouse the complexity, fluidity, and multi-dimensionality of the athletes’ identities as the product of intersecting narratives.MethodsMandala drawings and conversational interviews were employed as open-ended data collection processes that enabled the participants to share their identities. Portrait vignettes were then developed as creative nonfiction to elucidate how identities dynamically intersect and shape sport experiences.ResultsFive portrait vignettes layer together to show issues of identity expression, oppression and White privilege within the boxing context. The stories provide contextual insight into the ways in which athletes continually construct and negotiate identities in relation to dynamics of difference and sameness. They move fluidly between identities that are valued and identities that are marginalized, moments of open expression and moments of concealment.ConclusionsThe research contributes to social justice missions within sport by illuminating how certain identities result in individuals being dis/advantaged, socially excluded, and discriminated against. Possibilities are revealed for challenging social inequalities and facilitating more inclusive sport spaces that resonate with who athletes are as holistic, multifaceted people.     

Enacted Identities of Immigrant-Origin Emerging Adult Women in Online Contexts: Capturing Multiple and Intersecting Identities Using Qualitative Strategies

Using a multiple intersecting identities enactment framework, and a qualitative methodology, this article examined the multiple and intersecting identities immigrant-origin emerging adult women enacted online and explored the meanings they ascribed to these identities (N = 14, M age ≈ 20; 57% = second-generation immigrant). Thematic analyses of 84 narratives revealed that the immigrant-origin emerging adult women enacted a range of identities online including: personal/individual, relational/social, gender, ethnic, civic, student, occupational, and athletic. Personal/individual and relational/social identities were enacted most frequently, and intersected most often. First-generation and second-generation immigrant women were somewhat similar in the rate with which they enacted their identities online. Results showed that second-generation immigrant women enacted their personal/individual, ethnic, and civic identities as well as their intersecting identities online most often. Findings have implications for theory and research about online enactment of multiple and intersecting identities among immigrant-origin youth.     

Intersectional Consciousness in Collective Victim Beliefs: Perceived Intragroup Differences Among Disadvantaged Groups

Although our experiences are shaped by multiple social identities such as race, class, and gender, most research has focused on single‐identity groups (e.g., race). This includes research on collective victimization, which assumes that violence impacts group members uniformly. Conversely, work on intersectional consciousness examines awareness of how multiple social identities intersect and create within‐group differences. Integrating and expanding the research on intersectional consciousness and on collective victimhood, this article investigates perceived intragroup differences in experiences of victimization stemming from intersecting identities of gender and class among two disadvantaged groups in the understudied context of India. We conducted individual interviews (N = 33) and focus groups (K = 12; N = 66) among Muslims and Dalits (lower‐caste Hindus). Thematic analysis revealed that—even though ingroup cohesion (i.e., intragroup similarity) is often enhanced by external threat— people expressed awareness of intragroup differences in experiences of victimization in three distinct ways: highlighting relative privilege, engaging in competitive victimhood, or describing qualitative differences. We discuss the implications for conflict and solidarity within minority groups in the context of political developments in India, where there have been attempts to polarize intragroup divisions.     

Intersecting Identities as a Source of Religious Incongruence

Chaves (2010) argues that much of the work in the sociology of religion is susceptible to the religious congruence fallacy—the tendency to assume consistency between religious beliefs and one's attitudes and behaviors across situations when they are in fact highly variable. We build on and extend this argument by focusing on intersecting group identities as a mechanism for identifying such incongruence, not only within religious contexts, but also at the intersection of categories such as gender and race. To illustrate this argument, the analysis draws on data from the 2006 Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity (PS‐ARE) to assess how race, gender, and religion interact to produce different levels of attitude and behavior incongruencies on key issues of the day, specifically conservative social values and voting behaviors. The results find marked differences and inconsistent relationships between attitudes and behaviors across racial‐gender groups. We use the analysis to highlight the conditions that result in incongruence at the intersections of identity categories and pinpoint where social scientists are most vulnerable to committing the congruence fallacy.     

Multifarious person perception: How social perceivers manage the complexity of intersectional targets

Stereotyping plays an important role in how we perceive the members of social groups. Yet stereotyping is complicated by the fact that every individual simultaneously belongs to multiple social groups. For example, the stereotypes that are called to mind about a Black individual can vary depending on that person's age, gender, and sexual orientation. This phenomenon—termed intersectional stereotyping—has recently inspired a variety of intriguing research findings. But these research findings pose challenges for prevalent theories of stereotyping. These prevalent theories tend to argue either that (a) perceivers inevitably attend to certain social identities (e.g., gender) when stereotyping intersectional targets, or that (b) perceivers inevitably attend to all detectable social identities at once. In contrast to these perspectives, we argue that perceivers generally attend to just one social identity (or one intersection of identities) at a time when stereotyping intersectional targets, as a function of the social context. For example, gay Black men can be alternately stereotyped as gay people, as Black people, as men, or as gay Black men specifically. The approach described here can account for a diverse array of findings emerging from research on intersectional stereotyping. Moreover, by specifying the factors that render particular identities salient in the minds of social perceivers, this approach offers clear and falsifiable predictions regarding the situated stereotyping of multifaceted individuals.     

Children and the Sexualized Construction of Otherness: the Imaginary Perceptions of Russian and Romanian Immigrant Women in Cyprus

This article explores Greek Cypriot children's constructions of Russian and Romanian immigrant women in Cyprus as primarily sexualized "others." Using both qualitative and qualitative data, the article illustrates how children operate within structural and ideological constraints at the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality to construct a sense of "self" and "other" in relation to these women and to ultimately contribute to the reproduction of the nation's moral sense. The presence of these women in Cyprus gives rise to intense anxieties about national identity which is seen as being threatened by the promiscuous and often perceived immoral, sexual encounters between these Eastern European women and Greek Cypriot men. By drawing on the Greek Cypriot cultural ideologies of family, gender, and sexuality within the larger context of interethnic encounters resulting from immigration, children contribute in their own ways to the reproduction of a sense of national identity and moral superiority. The article aims to contribute to the small but emerging literature which considers children to be social actors who are able to reflect on and interpret their own social worlds and construct meaningful identities for themselves.     

Gender and the Ethical Given

G. W. F. Hegel's discussion of the Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit has provoked ongoing debate about his views on gender. This essay offers an interpretation of Hegel as condemning social arrangements that take the authoritativeness of identities and obligations to be natural or merely given. Hegel criticizes the ancient Greeks' understanding of both the human law and the divine law; in so doing, he provides resources for a critique of essentialist approaches to sex and gender. On this interpretation, Hegel views the conflict between Antigone and Creon as tragic because the gendered identities and obligations inherent to Greek Sittlichkeit are naturalized and withheld from scrutiny and revision. In the conclusion, I suggest how Hegel's criticisms pose a challenge to certain approaches to religious ethics.     

Comfortable and safe spaces? Gender,sexuality and ‘race’ in night-time leisure spaces

This article aims to contribute to the fields of emotional geographies and geographies of sexualities by exploring the relationship between emotions and gender, sexuality, and ‘race’ in sexualised night-time leisure spaces. By drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Manchester's Gay Village, the article highlights the importance of taking into account intersections of social identities when exploring how people feel in certain spaces. It explores how relations of ‘othering’ work through emotions, in particular how people are othered through feelings of comfort and safety. Whilst these feelings are triggered by a particular reading of bodies and spaces, they also produce bodies and spaces that are gendered, sexualised, and racialised (and classed). The article offers a rethinking of comfort and safety as not just feelings individuals have but as being constitutive of sexual, gender, and racial subjectivities and spaces.     

A Constellation of Stigmas: Intersectional Stigma Management and the Professional Dominatrix

In this article, we explore stigma management among dominatrices, a relatively understudied profession within the literature on sex work. Our analysis is based on in-depth interviews with current and former dominatrices and published memoirs and blogs written by women who have worked in the industry. We argue that the professional dominatrix occupies a unique position within the sex industry, responding to stigma directed toward her both as a sex worker and practitioner of sadomasochism. Our research has implications for understanding the management of intersecting stigmas and the relationship between stigma management and social ideologies of gender, sexuality, and sex work.     

Bodies as open projects: reflections on gender and sexuality

Abstract

This article argues that the social constructivist paradigm falls into the same dualistic trap as biological essentialism when attempting to respond to questions of gender and sexuality. I argue that social constructivism, like biological determinism, presumes a ‘split’ world, where subjective lived experiences are separated from the world of socio-cultural forces. Following a phenomenological approach, grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s ontological view of the body, this article attempts to move beyond the dualistic metadiscourses of social constructivism in maintaining that identity is a fully embodied process. I see gender and sexuality as necessarily embodied and corporeally constituted. In the light of this, I propose an understanding of gender and sexuality that focuses on the centrality of the body as open project. This approach sees gender and sexuality as embodied processes that are enmeshed with the complex fabric of lived everyday experiences and concurrent socio-cultural and historical processes. Drawing on real-life examples, I conclude that gender and sexual embodiment are not one-dimensional according to a binary system of male versus female. Rather, given the documented experience of the indeterminacy and ambiguity of human existence, there are a variety of possible embodiments of humankind.     

“Why Can’t Boys Be #LikeAGirl?”: Sticky Essentialism and Ambivalent (De)gendering in Fathers’ Online Accounts of Children’s Gender and Sexuality

In our media-centric age, stories and commentary about children’s gender socialization are exchanged online. Yet we know quite little about how fathers interpret the gender and sexual identities of their children and share those interpretations with others via social media. In this article, I present findings from a qualitative content analysis of blog posts about children’s gender and sexuality (n?=?122) written by American and Canadian fathers (n?=?36). I apply Kane’s (2012) “gender trap” typology to analyze how dad bloggers support and/or challenge heteronormative gendered identities, behaviors, relationships, and activities for children. Most of these fathers present anxious accounts of experimenting with gender-neutral parenting, imagining their children in future roles and relationships, permitting nonconformity in girls versus boys, and connecting childrearing to broader social inequalities. I develop the concepts of sticky essentialism—to demonstrate how essentialist logics permeate fathers’ explanations for gendered childhoods, and ambivalent (de)gendering—to explain fathers’ mixed feelings toward heteronormative gender socialization and accountability. To conclude, I discuss risks and benefits of fathers blogging publicly about children’s gender and sexuality.

     

Embodied,Situated, and Co-Constructed: Young Sexual Minority Men’s Experiences of Intersectional Identity and Minority Stress

Intersectionality, minority stress, and social ecological theories have all been important frameworks for understanding mechanisms that create and maintain sexual and gender minority health disparities. In this study, we integrated these frameworks to guide a grounded theory examination of identity-related experiences in specific settings among 33 Black, White, and Latino young sexual minority cisgender men who lived in Chicago. Analyses identified four key categories: Racism Manifests in Context- and Sexual Minority-Specific Ways, Sexual Orientation Can Mean Feeling Safe and Seen or Threatened and Alone, Gender is a Matter of Self-Expression, and Bodies Are Not Always Made to Fit In. Participants reported both identity-based privilege and marginalization as well as unique forms of minority stress at the intersection of specific identities. Across these categories, participants’ experiences of their intersecting identities and associated forms of minority stress were embodied in their physical appearance, situated in specific neighborhoods and contexts, and co-constructed through their interpersonal interactions with others. Further, participants’ narratives provide powerful insights about the nuanced ways in which young sexual minority men understand and negotiate their lived experiences. Findings highlight how experiences of identity and minority stress are both intersectional and located within specific social ecological contexts, which has important implications for research, clinical practice, and advocacy.

     

Positioning Asian Americans in social cognition

Asian Americans are increasingly positioned at the center of current events, yet extant theories and approaches in social psychology (and social cognition specifically) may not adequately capture how Asian Americans are perceived and treated in the current American racial landscape. We propose three directions to propel social cognition research on Asian Americans. First, research emphasizes Asian Americans' perceived high status (e.g., the model minority stereotype) while often overlooking their perceived foreignness. The two-dimensional Racial Position Model elucidates the consequences of being stereotyped as perpetual foreigners for Asian Americans and their relations with other racial and ethnic groups. Second, research and laypeople alike consider East Asian Americans to be the prototypical Asian Americans, thereby excluding subgroups such as South and Southeast Asian Americans. Considering the ethnic diversity of Asian Americans challenges and extends existing social psychological theories. Lastly, much of psychological research approaches race in isolation without considering its intersection with other identities such as gender. An intersectional framework offers insights into how Asian Americans' gender and race overlap in our social cognition. More nuanced research on Asian Americans is needed to fully understand race relations in the 21st century and we hope these three interconnected directions can guide researchers who are interested in the topic.     

The Mystery Revealed—Intersectionality in the Black Box: An Analysis of Female Migrants' Employment Opportunities in Urban China

Female migrant workers are doubly disadvantaged in China's urban labor market because of their doubly marginalized identities as both women and rural residents. This article takes a process‐centered approach to explore how female migrants' two identity categories generate intersectional effects on their job‐search experiences in cities. Data from in‐depth interviews conducted in Xi'an city, China, in 2010 and 2011 reveal that three patterns of relationship explain the processes where the gender–hukou (residence status) intersection affects female migrants. In the first pattern, a splintering relationship, hukou and gender work singly to form employment discrimination against female migrants. The second, a contesting relationship, indicates that hukou and gender alternate as the primary identities that affect their employment opportunities. In the third, a collaborating relationship, hukou and gender work together to either positively or negatively shape female migrants' employment prospects. No matter which of the relationships plays out, female migrants' disadvantages as cheap urban laborers have become deeply entrenched in the urban labor market. This can be explained by two powerful social institutions in contemporary China, the hukou system and patriarchy.     

Why Can’t You Just Pick One? The Stigmatization of Non-binary/Genderqueer People by Cis and Trans Men and Women: An Empirical Test of Norm-Centered Stigma Theory

Non-binary and genderqueer identities often resonate with people whose genders are outside the man-woman dichotomy, fluid, androgynous, and/or variant. Yet the gender binary system remains the unwavering norm, often placing non-binary and genderqueer people on the margins of social acceptability, and surprisingly little research has investigated those who stigmatize non-binary/genderqueer people. The current study utilizes Worthen’s (2020) Norm-Centered Stigma Theory (NCST) and nationally representative data collected from U.S. online panelists (n?=?3009: 1419 cis men, 1461 cis women, 74 trans women, 55 trans men) to investigate how norms (cisnormativity) and gender identity axes of social power (man/woman, cis/trans, and intersecting cis/trans-man/woman identities) relate to the stigmatization of non-binary/genderqueer people. Overall findings indicate that (a) cisnormativity is integral to understanding non-binary/genderqueer stigma, (b) the stigmatizer’s gender identity axes of social power are essential to explore as related to both cisnormativity and non-binary/genderqueer stigma, and (c) cisgender women are significantly different from others when it comes to both cisnormativity and non-binary/genderqueer stigma. Overall, the results underscore the significance of focusing on the unique complexities involved in the stigmatization of non-binary/genderqueer people and work toward dismantling such negativities.

     

Mismatched Lovers: Exploring the Compatibility Between LGBTQ+ Identity Theories and Gender and Sexual Plurality in Sri Lanka

Sexual and gender identity development theories in psychology and sociology exert considerable influence over discourse on gender and sexuality, shaping key domains such as counseling, education, and social work, as well as public policy and advocacy. While a robust body of literature has developed in critique of such theories and models, they continue to be applied in the Global South without much thought for their relevance to various non-Western cultural contexts. The current study explores the fit of these identity development theories to the experiences of 15 non-heterosexual and transgender individuals in Sri Lanka, gathered through a qualitative study of the question in 2016. These participants articulated gender and sexual self-conceptions that were incongruent with major identity development theories in significant ways. A broad majority failed to endorse central or salient sexual identities, while demonstrating a fluidity in object choice, sex roles, and sex acts, thus rupturing the theoretical notion of stable and coherent identities. Transgender participants did not demonstrate identity synthesis or pride and complicated theoretical understandings of sexual intimacy. These findings highlight the necessity of considering individual differences and cultural contexts when studying gender and sexuality and the dangers of universalizing theories across cultural differences.     

Hijab,visibility and the performance of identity

Theories concerning the relationship between social identification and behaviour are increasingly attentive to how group members emphasise or de‐emphasise identity‐related attributes before particular audiences. Most research on this issue is experimental and explores the expression of identity‐related attitudes as a function of participants' beliefs concerning their visibility to different audiences. We extend and complement such research with an analysis of group members' accounts of their identity performances. Specifically, we consider British Muslim women's (n = 22) accounts of wearing hijab (a scarf covering the hair) and how this visible declaration of religious identity is implicated in the performance of their religious, national and gender identities. Our analysis extends social psychological thinking on identity performance in three ways. First, it extends our understandings of the motivations for making an identity visible to others. Second, it sheds light on the complex relationship between the performance of one (e.g. Muslim) identity and the performance of other (e.g. gender/national) identities. Third, it suggests the experience of making an identity visible can facilitate the subsequent performance of that identity. The implications of these points for social identity research on identity performance are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR ARTICLE Rethinking women's sexual orientation: An interdisciplinary,relationship‐focused approach

What leads some women to form romantic and sexual relationships with men, and other women to form intimate relationships with women? This article presents a new conceptual paradigm for understanding women's sexual orientation that is emerging from research in such diverse fields as social psychology, sex research, evolutionary psychology, attachment theory, and neuroscience. This approach acknowledges the potential plasticity of women's sexuality and the emphasis that women place on close relationships as a context for sexuality. Research also raises the possibility that for women the biological determinants of sexual desire, attraction, and attachment are not inherently linked to a partner's gender. This article begins with a brief survey of research on women's same‐sex romantic and sexual relationships not only in the United States today but also in other cultures and historical periods. These and other findings are used to critique prevailing conceptual models of women's sexual orientation. Finally, key elements in an alternative paradigm are described.     

Uncovering the diverse cultural bases of social identity: Ingroup ties predict self‐stereotyping among individualists but not among collectivists

On what basis do people form their social identities? To investigate this issue, the present research investigates cross‐cultural differences in self‐stereotyping, a key outcome of social identification. In particular, the research tests the hypothesis that ingroup ties are a stronger predictor of self‐stereotyping among people from individualist cultures than among people from collectivist cultures. In Study 1, university students (N = 117) completed measures of ingroup ties and self‐stereotyping with respect to an intimacy group (family and friends). Consistent with predictions, ingroup ties significantly predicted self‐stereotyping among individualists but not among collectivists. Study 2 (N = 104) found a similar pattern of results among members of the global internet community who considered either an intimacy group (their friends), a task group (their work group) or a social category (their gender). These results indicate that people in individualist cultures are more likely than those in collectivist cultures to base their social identities on ingroup ties. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to self‐categorization theory's depersonalization account of social identification.     

Comments on Ofelia Schutte's Work in Feminist Philosophy

This paper on Ofelia Schutte's work discusses five main themes: gender oppression in the context of Latin American theories of social liberation; normative heterosexuality in Beauvoir and Irigaray; Schutte's analysis of women and capitalist globalization processes; her work on cultural identities; and the possibility of feminist transnational identities. 1 conclude with a comment on her postcolonial epistemological method in addressing cultural incommensurability and the possibility of a common agenda for transnational feminism.