Verta Ann Taylor (born 1948) [1] is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with focuses on gender, sexuality, social movements, and women's health.
Taylor earned a degree in social work from Indiana State University in 1970, and then went to Ohio State University for graduate study in sociology, earning a master's degree in 1971 and completing her Ph.D. there in 1976. [2]
She continued at Ohio State University as an assistant professor of sociology, affiliated with the Disaster Research Center, which she directed in 1977–1978, and with the Center for Women's Studies, for which she was acting director in 1984–1985. She was promoted to full professor at Ohio State in 1997. In 2002 she moved to the department of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, also affiliated with the Feminist Studies Program there. She chaired the sociology department from 2005 to 2012. In 2012, she added an affiliation as a research associate of the Broom Center for Demography. [2]
Taylor has authored books including:
Her edited volumes include:
Other highly-cited publications of Taylor include:
Taylor's book Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret won the distinguished book award of the Sex and Gender Section of the American Sociological Association in 2005. [8]
She was given the Simon and Gagnon Award for Lifetime of Scholarly Contributions to the Study of Sexuality in 2008, [9] the John D. McCarthy Lifetime Achievement Award in Social Movements in 2008, [10] and the Jessie Bernard Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Study of Women in 2011. [11]
An out lesbian, Taylor's wife is Leila J. Rupp, with whom she coauthored several works. [12]
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, but began in the late 1960s and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, sexism within the gay liberation movement, and homophobia within popular women's movements at the time. Many of the supporters of Lesbianism were actually women involved in gay liberation who were tired of the sexism and centering of gay men within the community and lesbian women in the mainstream women's movement who were tired of the homophobia involved in it.
Cultural feminism, the view that there is a "female nature" or "female essence", attempts to revalue and redefine attributes ascribed to femaleness. It is also used to describe theories that commend innate differences between women and men. Cultural feminism diverged from radical feminism, when some radical feminists rejected the previous feminist and patriarchal notion that feminine traits are undesirable and returned to an essentialist view of gender differences in which they regard female traits as superior.
Feminist sociology is an interdisciplinary exploration of gender and power throughout society. Here, it uses conflict theory and theoretical perspectives to observe gender in its relation to power, both at the level of face-to-face interaction and reflexivity within social structures at large. Focuses include sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality.
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, weight, and physical appearance. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.
Gayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist best known as an activist and theorist of sex and gender politics. She has written on a range of subjects including feminism, sadomasochism, prostitution, pedophilia, pornography and lesbian literature, as well as anthropological studies and histories of sexual subcultures, especially focused in urban contexts. Her 1984 essay "Thinking Sex" is widely regarded as a founding text of gay and lesbian studies, sexuality studies, and queer theory. She is an associate professor of anthropology and women's studies at the University of Michigan.
Black feminism is a philosophy that centers on the idea that "Black women are inherently valuable, that [Black women's] liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's but because of our need as human persons for autonomy."
Leila J. Rupp is a historian, feminist, and professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is an alumna of Bryn Mawr College, a member of the Seven Sisters women's colleges, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1972 as well as Ph.D. in 1976, both in history. Her areas of interest include women's movements, sexuality, and LGBT and women's history.
Carol Christine Smart is a feminist sociologist and academic at the University of Manchester. She has also conducted research about divorce and children of divorced couples.
A variety of movements of feminist ideology have developed over the years. They vary in goals, strategies, and affiliations. They often overlap, and some feminists identify themselves with several branches of feminist thought.
Feminist views on BDSM vary widely from acceptance to rejection. BDSM refers to bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and Sado-Masochism. In order to evaluate its perception, two polarizing frameworks are compared. Some feminists, such as Gayle Rubin and Patrick Califia, perceive BDSM as a valid form of expression of female sexuality, while other feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin and Susan Griffin, have stated that they regard BDSM as a form of woman-hating violence. Some lesbian feminists practice BDSM and regard it as part of their sexual identity.
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America is a non-fiction book by Lillian Faderman chronicling lesbian life in the 20th century. In 1992, it won the Stonewall Book Award for non-fiction and was selected as the "Editor's Choice" at the Lambda Literary Awards. In September 2011, Ms. magazine ranked the book 99th on its list of the top 100 feminist non-fiction books.
Amber L. Hollibaugh is an American writer, filmmaker and political activist, largely concerned with feminist and sexual politics.
Barbara Risman is Professor and Head of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Paula S. England, is an American sociologist and Dean of Social Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research has focused on gender inequality in the labor market, the family, and sexuality. She has also studied class differences in contraception and nonmarital births.
White feminism is a term which is used to describe expressions of feminism which are perceived as focusing on white women but are perceived as failing to address the existence of distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges. The term has been used to label and criticize theories that are perceived as focusing solely on gender-based inequality. Primarily used as a derogatory label, "white feminism" is typically used to reproach a perceived failure to acknowledge and integrate the intersection of other identity attributes into a broader movement which struggles for equality on more than one front. The term has also been used to refer to feminist theories perceived to focus more specifically on the experience of white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied women, and in which the experiences of women without these characteristics are excluded or marginalized. This criticism has predominantly been leveled against the first waves of feminism which were seen as centered around the empowerment of white middle-class women in Western societies.
Mary Susan McIntosh was a British sociologist, feminist, political activist and campaigner for lesbian and gay rights in the UK.
Elizabeth Mary Ettorre is an Anglo-American feminist sociologist.
Jane Sherron De Hart is an American feminist historian and women's studies academic. She is a professor emerita at University of California, Santa Barbara. De Hart has authored and edited several works on the history of women in the United States, the Federal Theatre Project, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. During the 1970s, she founded the women's studies program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Susan Cayleff is an American academic and emeritus professor at San Diego State University, having taught there from 1987 to 2020. She was one the inaugural members of the National Women's Studies Association Lesbian Caucus and served on the organization's Coordinating Council between 1977 and 1979. She founded the Women's History Seminar Series at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, Texas; the Graduate Women's Scholars of Southern California in 1989; and was a co-founder of the SafeZones program at San Diego State University.