Pub Date : 2022-05-03DOI: 10.1177/09593535221094260
Y. Ehrstein
This article considers a culturally marginalised yet consequential gendered discourse that positions women as “wife” alongside their role as mother in working women's talk about divisions of care on Britain's largest parenting site, Mumsnet. Unlike most previous research on Mumsnet that has focused on the construction and partial resistance of normative ideas of motherhood, this paper suggests that the increasingly politicised site is a space where a discourse of wifehood is drawn upon to account to some degree for experiences of domestic inequality. Using a critical discursive psychological approach to data from 14 online discussion threads posted on Mumsnet, the paper identifies two dominant, complementary constructions through which posters frame divisions of care. These are the position of the “facilitating wife”, enabling their male partners’ careers by taking on the bulk of domestic responsibility to the detriment of their own professional achievement and mental wellbeing; and the construction of partners as “feckless manchildren”, as an attempt to manage dissonances with their positioning as “wife” and related overburdening. I conclude that the relationships women form in the Mumsnet space allow them to articulate dissonant views and feelings about their co-existing domestic roles of wife and mother and associated divisions of care.
{"title":"“Facilitating wife” and “feckless manchild”: Working mothers’ talk about divisions of care on Mumsnet","authors":"Y. Ehrstein","doi":"10.1177/09593535221094260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221094260","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers a culturally marginalised yet consequential gendered discourse that positions women as “wife” alongside their role as mother in working women's talk about divisions of care on Britain's largest parenting site, Mumsnet. Unlike most previous research on Mumsnet that has focused on the construction and partial resistance of normative ideas of motherhood, this paper suggests that the increasingly politicised site is a space where a discourse of wifehood is drawn upon to account to some degree for experiences of domestic inequality. Using a critical discursive psychological approach to data from 14 online discussion threads posted on Mumsnet, the paper identifies two dominant, complementary constructions through which posters frame divisions of care. These are the position of the “facilitating wife”, enabling their male partners’ careers by taking on the bulk of domestic responsibility to the detriment of their own professional achievement and mental wellbeing; and the construction of partners as “feckless manchildren”, as an attempt to manage dissonances with their positioning as “wife” and related overburdening. I conclude that the relationships women form in the Mumsnet space allow them to articulate dissonant views and feelings about their co-existing domestic roles of wife and mother and associated divisions of care.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"39 1","pages":"394 - 412"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77820694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social networking sites (SNS) have become important spaces during the early years of parenting. They allow users to access information, share experiences and provide an opportunity to establish support networks. In this article we present the results of our research on a Chilean motherhood account on Instagram. The research, which takes a feminist approach, used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze discourses around “good mothering”, and the role of this communication site in this process. We present the results in three sections: a) “Positioning in debates about motherhood”; b) “Real motherhood and maternal love”; and c) “Interactions as regulatory mechanisms”. The main findings suggest that these SNS, through interactions between the account holder and their followers, reproduce dominant discourses of what is considered to be “good mothering” which both sustain asymmetrical gendered power relationships and challenge such power relations. Furthermore, we conclude that although SNS may appear to be an inclusive relational space, the regulatory mechanisms of the sites circumscribe who, and how one, can participate in this space.
{"title":"Mothering on the web: A feminist analysis of posts and interactions on a Chilean Instagram account on motherhood","authors":"Priscila Astudillo-Mendoza, Francisca Cifuentes-Zunino","doi":"10.1177/09593535221094251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221094251","url":null,"abstract":"Social networking sites (SNS) have become important spaces during the early years of parenting. They allow users to access information, share experiences and provide an opportunity to establish support networks. In this article we present the results of our research on a Chilean motherhood account on Instagram. The research, which takes a feminist approach, used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze discourses around “good mothering”, and the role of this communication site in this process. We present the results in three sections: a) “Positioning in debates about motherhood”; b) “Real motherhood and maternal love”; and c) “Interactions as regulatory mechanisms”. The main findings suggest that these SNS, through interactions between the account holder and their followers, reproduce dominant discourses of what is considered to be “good mothering” which both sustain asymmetrical gendered power relationships and challenge such power relations. Furthermore, we conclude that although SNS may appear to be an inclusive relational space, the regulatory mechanisms of the sites circumscribe who, and how one, can participate in this space.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"6 1","pages":"376 - 393"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88491646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/09593535211032054
M. Nduna
of the relationship between academia and activism. The snippets of narratives from individuals who had taken the Rorschach at different moments in time were intriguing and I would have loved more and longer narratives to complement and inform the history of the test. It is a well-researched and written book that makes an important contribution to the queer history of projective tests, methodology, and psychology. What is critical, and indeed necessary, is for that queerness to be queered more fully, incorporating an analysis of the respectability of sexuality and of race to the centrality of whiteness within psychology and the use of projective tests, and the associated efforts and activism for depathologisation.
{"title":"Book Review: Reimagining global abortion politics: A social justice perspective by Fiona Bloomer, Claire Pierson and Sylvia Estrada-Claudio","authors":"M. Nduna","doi":"10.1177/09593535211032054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535211032054","url":null,"abstract":"of the relationship between academia and activism. The snippets of narratives from individuals who had taken the Rorschach at different moments in time were intriguing and I would have loved more and longer narratives to complement and inform the history of the test. It is a well-researched and written book that makes an important contribution to the queer history of projective tests, methodology, and psychology. What is critical, and indeed necessary, is for that queerness to be queered more fully, incorporating an analysis of the respectability of sexuality and of race to the centrality of whiteness within psychology and the use of projective tests, and the associated efforts and activism for depathologisation.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"11 1","pages":"298 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80773832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-30DOI: 10.1177/09593535221083840
L. Lazard
Posting about one’s children and family has become a routine practice for mothers on social media. The task of presenting oneself as a “good” mother is subject to the trouble of competing requirements around motherhood (e.g., neoliberal intensive mothering, feminine relationality) as well as family ideals which are unrealistic for many. These troubles are further complicated by sharenting discourses in which parental posting is seen as digital narcissism. This study examines mothers’ identity work in their talk about posting family photos to social media. Twenty mothers aged between 24 and 50 were interviewed using their family photo posts as interview stimulus. Using a feminist poststructuralist framework, the data were discursively analysed, paying attention to how identity trouble was produced and repaired in three constructions of mothers’ photo sharing which included: emotionally connected mothers; digitally relational mothers; and proud mothers. In these constructions, family photo posts were constituted as a selective process which performed relational work to rhetorically manage the networked audience by deflecting conflict. This included the digital repair of offline troubled identities to present oneself as “good” whilst avoiding class-based othering. How these findings offer a challenge to predominant problematisations of digital mothers is discussed.
{"title":"Digital mothering: Sharenting, family selfies and online affective-discursive practices","authors":"L. Lazard","doi":"10.1177/09593535221083840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221083840","url":null,"abstract":"Posting about one’s children and family has become a routine practice for mothers on social media. The task of presenting oneself as a “good” mother is subject to the trouble of competing requirements around motherhood (e.g., neoliberal intensive mothering, feminine relationality) as well as family ideals which are unrealistic for many. These troubles are further complicated by sharenting discourses in which parental posting is seen as digital narcissism. This study examines mothers’ identity work in their talk about posting family photos to social media. Twenty mothers aged between 24 and 50 were interviewed using their family photo posts as interview stimulus. Using a feminist poststructuralist framework, the data were discursively analysed, paying attention to how identity trouble was produced and repaired in three constructions of mothers’ photo sharing which included: emotionally connected mothers; digitally relational mothers; and proud mothers. In these constructions, family photo posts were constituted as a selective process which performed relational work to rhetorically manage the networked audience by deflecting conflict. This included the digital repair of offline troubled identities to present oneself as “good” whilst avoiding class-based othering. How these findings offer a challenge to predominant problematisations of digital mothers is discussed.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"68 1","pages":"540 - 558"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81316605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-29DOI: 10.1177/09593535221080352
Alexis Fabricius, K. O’Doherty, A. Rutherford
Women with disabilities experience high rates of violence and harassment, yet meaningful violence prevention interventions providing the opportunity to learn how to be active agents in their own self-protection are virtually non-existent. To understand why, we draw on insights from feminist disability studies to explore some of the unexamined assumptions and discourses in gender-based violence prevention research. We then apply a feminist critical discourse analysis to focus groups with blind and partially sighted women to explore their talk about violence and self-defence to understand how they portray self-protective measures, and what practices those portrayals engender. We discerned three portrayals: self-protective measures as necessary against strangers, a delimited responsibility, and an effective means to an end. These portrayals and their subsequent practices demonstrate how the participants navigate violence while living with vision loss. We also consider the implications of our analysis for future directions in gendered violence prevention research.
{"title":"Navigating violence and risk: A critical discourse analysis of blind women's portrayals of self-protective measures","authors":"Alexis Fabricius, K. O’Doherty, A. Rutherford","doi":"10.1177/09593535221080352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221080352","url":null,"abstract":"Women with disabilities experience high rates of violence and harassment, yet meaningful violence prevention interventions providing the opportunity to learn how to be active agents in their own self-protection are virtually non-existent. To understand why, we draw on insights from feminist disability studies to explore some of the unexamined assumptions and discourses in gender-based violence prevention research. We then apply a feminist critical discourse analysis to focus groups with blind and partially sighted women to explore their talk about violence and self-defence to understand how they portray self-protective measures, and what practices those portrayals engender. We discerned three portrayals: self-protective measures as necessary against strangers, a delimited responsibility, and an effective means to an end. These portrayals and their subsequent practices demonstrate how the participants navigate violence while living with vision loss. We also consider the implications of our analysis for future directions in gendered violence prevention research.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"104 1","pages":"443 - 461"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73022532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-09DOI: 10.1177/09593535221085497
Busra Yalcinoz-Ucan
Women's stay/leave decision-making in violent relationships has become a subject of investigation in psychology over the last few decades. Despite making significant contributions to the understanding of how women's psychological processes shape their responses to violence, much of this research has lacked a contextualized approach. The present study aimed to provide a feminist context-informed examination of women's decision-making and safety-seeking processes. Twelve women who had experiences of violence in their marital relationships were interviewed individually. The study was carried out in Istanbul, Turkey, and all participants were socioeconomically disadvantaged women. A constructivist grounded theory approach was used for the data analysis. The results indicated that women's helplessness, beyond being a psychological construct, was a reality shaped by the conditions of marginalization in their lives. More than being related to the experience of psychological trauma, the women's narratives revealed the disempowering barriers associated with the lack of socioeconomic and institutional resources. Under these circumstances, regardless of their decisions to stay or leave, the women underlined their ongoing strategic efforts to ensure their safety, as mainly strengthened by the relational support available to them.
{"title":"Seeking safety from male partner violence in Turkey: Toward a context-informed perspective on women's decisions and actions","authors":"Busra Yalcinoz-Ucan","doi":"10.1177/09593535221085497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221085497","url":null,"abstract":"Women's stay/leave decision-making in violent relationships has become a subject of investigation in psychology over the last few decades. Despite making significant contributions to the understanding of how women's psychological processes shape their responses to violence, much of this research has lacked a contextualized approach. The present study aimed to provide a feminist context-informed examination of women's decision-making and safety-seeking processes. Twelve women who had experiences of violence in their marital relationships were interviewed individually. The study was carried out in Istanbul, Turkey, and all participants were socioeconomically disadvantaged women. A constructivist grounded theory approach was used for the data analysis. The results indicated that women's helplessness, beyond being a psychological construct, was a reality shaped by the conditions of marginalization in their lives. More than being related to the experience of psychological trauma, the women's narratives revealed the disempowering barriers associated with the lack of socioeconomic and institutional resources. Under these circumstances, regardless of their decisions to stay or leave, the women underlined their ongoing strategic efforts to ensure their safety, as mainly strengthened by the relational support available to them.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"10 1","pages":"501 - 519"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78949704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-08DOI: 10.1177/09593535221083842
Alexandra James
Female genital fashioning practices, a term encompassing a range of temporary and permanent options for cosmetic genital alteration, are becoming an increasingly prominent part of contemporary beauty regimes. Drawing on a series of 11 small focus groups and 10 interviews with 34 Australian women aged 18–30, this paper explores the ways that cisgender young women negotiate a combination of social pressures, pleasures and influences in their decisions to engage with genital fashioning. These pressures are described by women to emanate from broad social norms, sexual partners, family members, and peer groups. The women in this study demonstrate a nuanced and critical awareness of the cultural context which they inhabit but deploy postfeminist narratives of self-care and enjoyment to make sense of genital fashioning practices. The paper contributes to scholarship on postfeminism by demonstrating the ways that women creatively use the discursive tools available to enable critical reflection on notions of choice. At the same time, the findings in this study constitute an empirical contribution to critiques of postfeminism to reveal the limitations of postfeminist reasoning which ultimately works to curtail or impede the identification of structural problems and constraints.
{"title":"Genital fashioning: Postfeminist discourse and mediating understandings of choice","authors":"Alexandra James","doi":"10.1177/09593535221083842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221083842","url":null,"abstract":"Female genital fashioning practices, a term encompassing a range of temporary and permanent options for cosmetic genital alteration, are becoming an increasingly prominent part of contemporary beauty regimes. Drawing on a series of 11 small focus groups and 10 interviews with 34 Australian women aged 18–30, this paper explores the ways that cisgender young women negotiate a combination of social pressures, pleasures and influences in their decisions to engage with genital fashioning. These pressures are described by women to emanate from broad social norms, sexual partners, family members, and peer groups. The women in this study demonstrate a nuanced and critical awareness of the cultural context which they inhabit but deploy postfeminist narratives of self-care and enjoyment to make sense of genital fashioning practices. The paper contributes to scholarship on postfeminism by demonstrating the ways that women creatively use the discursive tools available to enable critical reflection on notions of choice. At the same time, the findings in this study constitute an empirical contribution to critiques of postfeminism to reveal the limitations of postfeminist reasoning which ultimately works to curtail or impede the identification of structural problems and constraints.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"24 1","pages":"462 - 481"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82530187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-16DOI: 10.1177/09593535221074802
Sarah Gillborn, B. Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse
Research has highlighted damaging contradictions in the responsibilisation of mothers over children's health, at once held responsible for tackling “childhood obesity” while being cautious not to encourage children to become obsessive with their bodies. While research has highlighted discourses of blame and elucidated mothers’ experiences, less is known about how mothers negotiate discourse in their voiced accounts. Utilising Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis, this study analysed interviews with 12 mothers in England to explore their experiences of a nationally mandated BMI screening programme in schools and how discourses shape their voices and experiences. In negotiating complex and contradictory discourses of motherhood and fatness, participants expressed a “duty to protect” their children from both fatness and fatphobia. Negotiating these responsibilities left mothers feeling guilt at their personal “failure” to protect their children from one or both harms. Mothers did not take up these discourses unproblematically; they resisted them, yet felt constrained by “expert knowledges” of fatness and motherhood that had clear consequences in responsibilising mothers for the “harm” of fatness. This analysis calls attention to how dominant discourses function personally and politically to responsibilise mothers for the harm caused by state-sanctioned fatphobia.
{"title":"A Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis of mothers’ voiced accounts of the “duty to protect” children from fatness and fatphobia","authors":"Sarah Gillborn, B. Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse","doi":"10.1177/09593535221074802","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221074802","url":null,"abstract":"Research has highlighted damaging contradictions in the responsibilisation of mothers over children's health, at once held responsible for tackling “childhood obesity” while being cautious not to encourage children to become obsessive with their bodies. While research has highlighted discourses of blame and elucidated mothers’ experiences, less is known about how mothers negotiate discourse in their voiced accounts. Utilising Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis, this study analysed interviews with 12 mothers in England to explore their experiences of a nationally mandated BMI screening programme in schools and how discourses shape their voices and experiences. In negotiating complex and contradictory discourses of motherhood and fatness, participants expressed a “duty to protect” their children from both fatness and fatphobia. Negotiating these responsibilities left mothers feeling guilt at their personal “failure” to protect their children from one or both harms. Mothers did not take up these discourses unproblematically; they resisted them, yet felt constrained by “expert knowledges” of fatness and motherhood that had clear consequences in responsibilising mothers for the “harm” of fatness. This analysis calls attention to how dominant discourses function personally and politically to responsibilise mothers for the harm caused by state-sanctioned fatphobia.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"41 1","pages":"224 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78532554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-14DOI: 10.1177/09593535211069290
S. Ryan, J. Ussher, A. Hawkey
Women's body shame and body dissatisfaction increase in the premenstrual phase of the cycle, associated with premenstrual distress. However, the meaning and consequences of premenstrual body dissatisfaction remain underexplored. The aim of this study was to explore how women who report premenstrual body dissatisfaction construct and experience their bodies, using qualitative arts-based methods. Four hundred and sixty women completed online open-ended survey questions and 16 women took part in body-mapping and an interview. Thematic analysis identified three major themes: construction of the premenstrual body as abject, manifested by positioning of the body and self as fat, leaking and dirty; self-policing and self-regulation through increased scrutinising and concealment of the premenstrual body; and resistance of cultural constructions of idealised femininity. These findings emphasise the need to acknowledge changes in body dissatisfaction across the menstrual cycle, and the implication for women's feelings about the self. Internalisation of negative constructions of the female body plays a role in women's experience of premenstrual change and distress. There is a need for further research to examine the role of body management behaviours in premenstrual body dissatisfaction and distress.
{"title":"Mapping the abject: Women's embodied experiences of premenstrual body dissatisfaction through body-mapping","authors":"S. Ryan, J. Ussher, A. Hawkey","doi":"10.1177/09593535211069290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535211069290","url":null,"abstract":"Women's body shame and body dissatisfaction increase in the premenstrual phase of the cycle, associated with premenstrual distress. However, the meaning and consequences of premenstrual body dissatisfaction remain underexplored. The aim of this study was to explore how women who report premenstrual body dissatisfaction construct and experience their bodies, using qualitative arts-based methods. Four hundred and sixty women completed online open-ended survey questions and 16 women took part in body-mapping and an interview. Thematic analysis identified three major themes: construction of the premenstrual body as abject, manifested by positioning of the body and self as fat, leaking and dirty; self-policing and self-regulation through increased scrutinising and concealment of the premenstrual body; and resistance of cultural constructions of idealised femininity. These findings emphasise the need to acknowledge changes in body dissatisfaction across the menstrual cycle, and the implication for women's feelings about the self. Internalisation of negative constructions of the female body plays a role in women's experience of premenstrual change and distress. There is a need for further research to examine the role of body management behaviours in premenstrual body dissatisfaction and distress.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"2007 1","pages":"199 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86213885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-14DOI: 10.1177/09593535221074806
Isobel Moore, Gareth Morgan, A. Welham, Ginny Russell
Influenced by theories of intersectionality, performativity and gender hegemony, this review sought to explore the intersection of autism and gender in qualitative research into autistic identity. Twelve papers were subjected to a thematic metasynthesis following a systematic search. Study participants were predominantly cisgender female or gender-diverse: perspectives of cisgender autistic males were lacking. The three superordinate themes developed related to: (1) the ways in which autism discourses restricted gender identities, through the influence of the “extreme male brain” and “masking” narratives and the use of autism to explain gender non-conformity and gender diversity; (2) the ways in which gendered autistic identities were positioned within social power hierarchies as “othered”, subordinate and less acceptable ways of being; and (3) possibilities for finding spaces of belonging and resistance. While autism as an identity may offer community and freedom from normative expectations, dominant autism discourses act to restrict and police gender, reinforcing existing power hierarchies. We encourage practitioners to reflect on the clinical, ethical and political implications of their positioning in relation to the constructs of “autism” and “gender”, and to explore alongside people seeking support the personal and political impacts of gendered autism discourses.
{"title":"The intersection of autism and gender in the negotiation of identity: A systematic review and metasynthesis","authors":"Isobel Moore, Gareth Morgan, A. Welham, Ginny Russell","doi":"10.1177/09593535221074806","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221074806","url":null,"abstract":"Influenced by theories of intersectionality, performativity and gender hegemony, this review sought to explore the intersection of autism and gender in qualitative research into autistic identity. Twelve papers were subjected to a thematic metasynthesis following a systematic search. Study participants were predominantly cisgender female or gender-diverse: perspectives of cisgender autistic males were lacking. The three superordinate themes developed related to: (1) the ways in which autism discourses restricted gender identities, through the influence of the “extreme male brain” and “masking” narratives and the use of autism to explain gender non-conformity and gender diversity; (2) the ways in which gendered autistic identities were positioned within social power hierarchies as “othered”, subordinate and less acceptable ways of being; and (3) possibilities for finding spaces of belonging and resistance. While autism as an identity may offer community and freedom from normative expectations, dominant autism discourses act to restrict and police gender, reinforcing existing power hierarchies. We encourage practitioners to reflect on the clinical, ethical and political implications of their positioning in relation to the constructs of “autism” and “gender”, and to explore alongside people seeking support the personal and political impacts of gendered autism discourses.","PeriodicalId":47643,"journal":{"name":"Feminism & Psychology","volume":"87 1","pages":"421 - 442"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84073028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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