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Queer theory is a term used in various disciplines including literary analysis, philosophy, politics, and other fields of cultural study. It functions essentially as a perspective that questions cisgender and heterosexual identities being perceived as the standard and provides a thesis that revisits that field with a "queer" approach.
Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society, but can also refer to the behavior of individuals and is a type of dehumanization.
The sex-positive movement is a social and philosophical movement that seeks to change cultural attitudes and norms around sexuality, promoting the recognition of sexuality as a natural and healthy part of the human experience and emphasizing the importance of personal sovereignty, safer sex practices, and consensual sex. It covers every aspect of sexual identity including gender expression, orientation, relationship to the body, relationship-style choice, and reproductive rights. Sex-positivity is "an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, encouraging sexual pleasure and experimentation." It challenges societal taboos and aims to promote healthy and consensual sexual activities. The sex-positive movement also advocates for comprehensive sex education and safe sex as part of its campaign. The movement generally makes no moral distinctions among types of sexual activities, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference.
Pornography addiction is the scientifically controversial application of an addiction model to the use of pornography. Pornography may be part of compulsive sexual behavior with negative consequences to one's physical, mental, social, or financial well-being. While the World Health Organization's ICD-11 (2022) has recognized compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD) as an "impulsive control disorder", CSBD is not an addiction, and the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 (2013) and the DSM-5-TR (2022) do not classify compulsive pornography consumption as a mental disorder or a behavioral addiction.
Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, cultural and feminist studies; the media also often uses the term. Across these disciplines, there is no single consensus definition, but broadly speaking body image consists of the ways people view themselves; their memories, experiences, assumptions, and comparisons about their own appearances; and their overall attitudes towards their own respective heights, shapes, and weights—all of which are shaped by prevalent social and cultural ideals.
A mammy is a U.S. historical stereotype depicting black women who work in a white family and nurse the family's children. The fictionalized mammy character is often visualized as a fat, dark-skinned woman with a motherly personality. The origin of the mammy figure stereotype is rooted in the history of slavery in the United States, as black slave women were often tasked with domestic and childcare work in white American slaveholding households. The mammy caricature was used to create a narrative of black women being happy within slavery or within a role of servitude. The mammy stereotype associates black women with domestic roles and it has been argued that it, combined with segregation and discrimination, limited job opportunities for black women during the Jim Crow era, approximately 1877 to 1966.
Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, methodology or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring and re-making the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general. The foundational catalyst for the formation of cyberfeminist thought is attributed to Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto", third wave feminism, post-structuralist feminism, riot grrrl culture and the feminist critique of the alleged erasure of women within discussions of technology.
A video vixen is a female model who appears in hip hop-oriented music videos. From the 1990s to the early 2010s, the video vixen image was a staple in popular music, particularly within the genre of hip hop. The video vixen first came around in the late 1980s when the hip-hop culture began to emerge into its own lifestyle, although was most popular in American popular culture during the 1990s and 2000s. Many video vixens are aspiring actors, singers, dancers, or professional models. Artists and vixens have been criticized for allegedly contributing to the social degradation of black women.
Sexualization is to make something sexual in character or quality or to become aware of sexuality, especially in relation to men and women. Sexualization is linked to sexual objectification. According to the American Psychological Association, sexualization occurs when "individuals are regarded as sex objects and evaluated in terms of their physical characteristics and sexiness." "In study after study, findings have indicated that women more often than men are portrayed in a sexual manner and are objectified. In addition, a narrow standard of physical beauty is heavily emphasized. These are the models of femininity presented for young girls to study and emulate." According to the Media Education Foundation's, Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image of Women, the sexualization of girls in media and the ways women are portrayed in the dominant culture are detrimental to the development of young girls as they are developing their identities and understanding themselves as sexual beings.
Nudity is one of the physiological characteristics of humans, who alone among primates evolved to be effectively hairless. Human sexuality includes the physiological, psychological, and social aspects of sexual feelings and behaviors. In many societies, a strong link between nudity and sexuality is taken for granted. Other societies maintain their traditional practices of being completely or partially naked in social as well as private situations, such as going to a beach or spa. The meaning of nudity and sexuality remains ambivalent, often leading to cultural misunderstandings and psychological problems.
Adolescent sexuality is a stage of human development in which adolescents experience and explore sexual feelings. Interest in sexuality intensifies during the onset of puberty, and sexuality is often a vital aspect of teenagers' lives. Sexual interest may be expressed in a number of ways, such as flirting, kissing, masturbation, or having sex with a partner. Sexual interest among adolescents, as among adults, can vary greatly, and is influenced by cultural norms and mores, sex education, as well as comprehensive sexuality education provided, sexual orientation, and social controls such as age-of-consent laws.
African Americans, and African American males in particular, have an ethnic stereotype in which they are portrayed as dangerous criminals. This stereotype is associated with the fact that African Americans are proportionally over-represented in the numbers of those that are arrested and convicted for committing crimes. It has appeared frequently in American popular culture, reinforcing the negative consequences of systemic racism.
Kathleen Thompson is an American feminist, writer, and activist. She was first known for co-authoring with Andra Medea the feminist classic Against Rape, the book that broke the silence about rape not only in the United States, but around the world. She exposed the American diet industry's exploitation of women in Feeding on Dreams, written with psychologist Diane Pinkert Epstein. She was co-author, with pre-eminent historian Darlene Clark Hine, of A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America., the first narrative history of black women in America. She then collaborated with Hilary Mac Austin on three print documentaries of groups underrepresented in American history: The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present, Children of the Depression, and America's Children: Repicturing Childhood from Exploration to the Present. Thompson also served on the board of senior editors with Hine, Deborah Grey White, Brenda Stephenson, and other major scholars in the field on the second edition of the landmark encyclopedia Black Women in America. In addition to these adult trade books, she has written more than one hundred books for children and young adults and has had eleven plays produced in Chicago, New York City, and other cities.
Slut-shaming is the practice of criticizing people, especially women and girls, who are perceived to violate expectations of behavior and appearance regarding issues related to sexuality. The term is used to reclaim the word slut and empower women and girls to have agency over their own sexuality. Gender-based violence can be a result of slut-shaming primarily affecting women. It may also be used in reference to gay men, who may face disapproval for promiscuous sexual behaviors. Slut-shaming rarely happens to heterosexual men.
The exploitation of women in mass media is the use or portrayal of women in mass media as objects to increase the appeal of media or a product to the detriment of, or without regard to, the interests of the women portrayed, or women in general. This process includes the presentation of women as sexual objects and the setting of feminine beauty ideals that women are expected to reflect. Sexual exploitation of women in the media dates back to 19th century Paris, in which ballerinas were exposed to harassment and objectification. The ballerinas in the Paris Opera Ballet were ogled by their male audience members and often even expected to perform sexual favors for the male subscribers behind the scenes. Feminists and other advocates of women's rights have criticized such exploitation. The most often criticized aspect of the use of women in mass media is sexual objectification, but dismemberment can be a part of the objectification as well.
Darlene Clark Hine is an American author and professor in the field of African-American history. She is a recipient of the 2014 National Humanities Medal.
Laura Aguilar was an American photographer. She was born with auditory dyslexia and attributed her start in photography to her brother, who showed her how to develop in dark rooms. She was mostly self-taught, although she took some photography courses at East Los Angeles College, where her second solo exhibition, Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, was held. Aguilar used visual art to bring forth marginalized identities, especially within the LA Queer scene and Latinx communities. Before the term Intersectionality was used commonly, Aguilar captured the largely invisible identities of large bodied, queer, working-class, brown people in the form of portraits. Often using her naked body as a subject, she used photography to empower herself and her inner struggles to reclaim her own identity as “Laura”- a lesbian, fat, disabled, and brown person. Although work on Chicana/os is limited, Aguilar has become an essential figure in Chicano art history and is often regarded as an early "pioneer of intersectional feminism” for her outright and uncensored work. Some of her most well-known works are Three Eagles Flying, The Plush Pony Series, and Nature Self Portraits. Aguilar has been noted for her collaboration with cultural scholars such as Yvonne Yarbo-Berjano and receiving inspiration from other artists like Judy Dater. She was well-known for her portraits, mostly of herself, and also focused upon people in marginalized communities, including LGBT and Latino subjects, self-love, and social stigma of obesity.
Estelle Freedman is an American historian. She is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History at Stanford University She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College in 1969 and her Master of Arts (1972) and PhD (1976) in history from Columbia University. She has taught at Stanford University since 1976 and is a co-founder of the Program in Feminist Studies. Her research has explored the history of women and social reform, including feminism and women's prison reform, as well as the history of sexuality, including the history of sexual violence.
Respectability politics, or the politics of respectability, is a political strategy wherein members of a marginalized community will consciously abandon controversial aspects of their cultural-political identity as a method of assimilating, achieving social mobility, and gaining the respect of their host culture. As a sociological term, it is typically used in a manner critical of the ideology.
Carolyn Marie West is associate professor of psychology, at the University of Washington Tacoma, and was the first holder of the Bartley Dobb Professorship for the Study and Prevention of Violence (2005-2008).
References
- 1 2 Hine, Darlene Clark (Summer 1989). "Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 14 (4): 915. doi:10.1086/494552. S2CID 143992395.
- 1 2 The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Volume 13, Gender. Bercaw, Nancy; Ownby, Ted; Wilson, Charles Reagan; Thomas, James G., Jr.; Abadie, Ann J.; University of Mississippi. Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill. February 2014. ISBN 978-1469616728. OCLC 864900204. Archived from the original on 2023-07-03. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ↑ Harris, Angelique; Mushtaq, Omar (2016). The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. 273–274. doi:10.4135/9781483371283. ISBN 9781483371306. Archived from the original on 2018-04-22. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
- ↑ "How Beyonce's 'Lemonade' Exposes Inner Lives of Black Women". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2018-04-22. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
- ↑ Harriford, Diane; Thompson, Becky (2008). "'Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud': Organizing Since Katrina". Fast Capitalism. 4 (1): 49–57. doi: 10.32855/fcapital.200801.006 . ISSN 1930-014X. S2CID 190445573. Archived from the original on 2023-02-07. Retrieved 2023-07-03.