I am sure that there are UK Newspapers with equally sexist headlines but I do seem to consistently fall across the Daily Telegraph (Britain’s best-selling broadsheet newspaper) as a persistent offender. I collect these to see how the frequency of these might be a call to arms for the type of research that gets published in the Journal of Gender Studies. A recent headline; Mothers are failing to pass on cooking skills (Roux Jnr; Daily Telegraph 20th October 2015, n.p.) represents a theme to which the organ returns fairly reliably; the fecklessness of mothers in feeding their offspring responsibly. Fathers are seldom mentioned. In this issue, in ‘When convenience is inconvenient’, Parsons demonstrates the persistent intersection of gender and class with ‘foodways’ (the production, preparation, serving and eating of food) as a material and cultural display of capital. The author examines how respondents engaged in ‘healthy’ foodwork as a means of positioning themselves as ‘good’ mothers where ‘feeding the family’ continues to be a highly gendered activity.
In ‘Equality empowerment and choice’, Swirsky and Angelone examine feminism’s project to correct gender imbalances and the decision of women to self-identify as feminist. Current research literature has largely omitted the factors that may influence this decision and the authors seek to fill this gap. Overall, the data indicate that the desires for equality and empowerment, as well as the freedom to make choices are all at work here. Further, exposure to feminism, both through education and personal role models, are strongly correlated with self-identification.
In ‘Understanding the Panty Shanty’, Weinzimmer and Twill examine the naming of off-campus houses at a Midwestern US University through a socio-feminist/social constructionist perspective, exploring how these serve as cultural texts on gender and sexuality norms. The authors find a reproduction of dominant forms of gender ideologies, including hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity; upholding institutionalised patriarchy. Implications for students and their college campuses are discussed. In ‘Troubling the ontological bubble’, Markowitz and Puchner discuss how a selection of teenage students (13 to 14-year-olds) responded when they were asked to publicly challenge the gender binary for a critical media literacy school assignment in the USA. The authors apply the idea of ontological bubble, as well as concepts from post-structural theories, to help make sense of the different methods students used to maintain the gender binary.
In ‘Desublimating monstrous desire’, Coulthard and Birks assert that while sex and violence have been recognised in some scholarly works on European new extremist cinema, their connections to gendered conventions of genre cinema have not been. Standing out for stressing the body in extreme modes of being, new extremism is argued to directly reference gendered tropes of horror in its explorations of desire, sexual difference and violence. Far from being secondary concerns, the authors argue that emphatically gendered characteristics are crucial to the disturbing impact of such films as Philippe Grandrieux’s Sombre (1998), Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) and Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day (2001). These examples draw our attention to the paradoxes inherent in the gender politics of horror. In ‘Gender, risk and the Wall Street Alpha male’, Maclean analyses the 2008 financial crisis, in mainstream as well as feminist discussion. Rampant risk-taking, and its association with masculine characteristics has widely been deemed as a principle cause of the crash. The author explores the representation of this in mainstream cinema (The Other Guys and Margin Call) assessing how understandings of high-risk behaviour are gendered; establishing the construction of a fictional feminine, risk-averse other.
In ‘Gendered discourses of facilitation in a probation learning environment’, Perry focuses on cognitive behavioural rehabilitation programmes run by the probation service in the UK. Drawing on Judith Butler’s assertion that both sex and gender are discursively produced and Becky Francis’ notion of gender monoglossia and heteroglossia, the article seeks to assess the gendered discourses that were mobilised by policy-makers and practitioners. Female facilitators were positioned as bringing a calming and non-threatening atmosphere to the group and as naturally possessing skills of ‘empathy’ and ‘warmth’. Male facilitators were highly valued by managers, but were under pressure to perform masculinity in specific ways linked to notions of intellectual, rational, ‘middle-class’ masculinity.
In ‘Unnecessary bleeding, unnecessary suffering’, Erol explores an endometrial ablation procedure from a feminist science and medical anthropology background. Textual analysis of promotional materials is undertaken and the themes scrutinised in terms of how normalcy is framed. The ideal user for the technology is constructed to reproduce the taboos of menstruation.
Our Forum piece in this issue, ‘Secret hideouts and the adolescent experience’, Ue explores the graphic-novel work of Hubert exploring his thinking about gender and the adolescent experience. The interview between Ue and Hubert culminates in a discussion of homosexuality, Charlie Hebdo, and wider questions about extremism in France.