work_27uah4x2arevxn4qmp4eqcjkqu ---- Crossing Borders | Vol. 1(1) | 2019 Student Reflections on Youth and Risk © The Author 2019 | CC BY-NC | DOI: 10.31542/j.cb.1842 1 | P a g e How Does Hegemonic Society Perpetuate LGBTQ+ Discrimination Through the Institutions and Ideologies of Law, Education, and Religion? Isha Leibel Department of Sociology, MacEwan University Abstract Research has shown that the institutions and ideologies behind hegemonic society’s laws, educational system, and religions, have been integral to the discrimination of LGBTQ+ youth. To better understand the specific aspects of each institution, and how they directly affect LGBTQ+ youth, this paper critically examines these institutions using both the traditional heteronormative lens, as well as the more recent LGBTQ+ friendly lens. Issues such as the role of homophobic political leaders, and the laws they pass, are considered. As the majority of youth spend their formative years in an educational setting, the role of teachers, peers, and parents are all considered when discussions of ‘coming out’ or sexual education is brought to light. Furthermore, in an attempt to understand the coexistence of LGBTQ+ youth and religious education, comparisons between different school settings are taken into consideration. Following the review, different avenues are suggested to further study this topic in order to create a more inclusive, safe, and accepting society for all sexualities and gender identities. Introduction This project critically examines the ways in which institutions, such as the law, education, and religion, perpetuate discriminatory practices and ideologies in our society. Although societal recognition of the necessity of supports for LGBTQ+ youth has been on the rise over the past few decades, societal opinions on LGBTQ+ rights are not holistically acknowledged worldwide and are, in some locations, actively discouraged. Unfortunately, due to these differing societal opinions regarding the rights of LGBTQ+ youth, this minority group can be considered to be an at-risk youth group. For instance, a study done showed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LBG) youth have an increased risk of negative health outcomes and various health-related risk behaviours (Coker, Austin, & Schuster, 2010, p. 472). Although the results from this study do not directly encompass every individual within the LGBTQ+ community, it can be assumed that the negative health effects that LGB youth face can be extended to represent the experiences of transgender, two-spirited, or any other LGBTQ+ youth member. Many identities of the LGBTQ+ community are only just beginning to surface in mainstream society, and therefore it is important to keep in mind that many LGBTQ+ individuals are not represented in research and have yet to have their stories and statistics empirically recognized. These results are representative of the lack of research done on the LGBTQ+ community, rather than a lack of negative health outcomes that LGBTQ+ individuals face. Hegemonic society does not naturally include or make space for LGBTQ+ individuals, and instead revolves around heteronormativity by encouraging ideals such as the nuclear family. As a result, LGBTQ+ individuals become segregated from society, regardless of whether societal views are supportive of LGBTQ+ rights or not; being a member of the LGBTQ+ community is not ‘the norm’ in hegemonic society. Therefore, in order to ensure a truly safe and accepting society for LGBTQ+ youth a greater emphasis must be placed on supporting this at-risk group. When inclusive practices are not actively being encouraged and LGBTQ+ youth are not provided with appropriate supports, the necessity of these resources becomes blatantly clear. Without inclusive practices in place their struggles are not remedied and they continue to experience lives of segregation and exclusion, having nowhere to access specialized help. On the other hand, when these programs are initiated and prioritized, studies have shown that these supports can be, quite literally, lifesaving. These programs can provide LGBTQ+ youth with stronger, more developed internal or interpersonal resources that can aid in their continual development (Lytle, Silenzio, Homan, Schneider, & Caine, 2018, p. 983). Despite these https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Crossing Borders Leibel 2 | P a g e significantly pivotal results, a multitude of locations around the world continue to lack in providing these safe spaces. This lack of resources creates massive gaps in our societal systems that the LGBTQ+ community fall through when living in a location where their personal rights are not respected or acknowledged. Matters are further complicated when intersectional discrimination is considered, as it is not widely recognized that segregation and discrimination can exist between both the LGBTQ+ community and society, as well as between the at-risk individual and the LGBTQ+ community itself. This research aims to uncover the ways in which societal institutions are key sites of the perpetuation of heteronormative, discriminatory practices and policies that lead to the lack of support for LGBTQ+ youth. A better understanding of these institutional processes may lead to the specific alterations that need to be made to our society in order to provide LGBTQ+ youth with the necessary spaces and support they deserve. Theoretical Considerations The LGBTQ+ youth of today are not accepted and supported within society without active efforts of inclusion being made. To thoroughly examine the ways in which LGBTQ+ youth are segregated from society, a feminist theoretical lens can be applied. As outlined by Gedro and Mizzi, the aim of a feminist theoretical lens is to observe gender inequalities that are created as a result of the social construction of gender, beginning with the societal assignment of sex at birth (2014, p. 446). By adopting this theoretical perspective, we can begin to accurately investigate, and then begin to question, the heteronormative practices that are enforced continuously throughout society today. Although the feminist theoretical perspective is an appropriate theory to apply to the examination of LGBTQ+ individuals’ experiences in society, it is important to recognize the specific ways in which the feminist theoretical lens has evolved over the years, and how we apply this theory in the 21st century. Unfortunately, as mentioned by Nourie and Harris, throughout the first and second wave of feminism, not all women who faced discrimination from patriarchal society were recognized sufficiently (2018, p. 179-180). It was unfairly assumed by the white female leaders of the first and second feminist movements that all women, regardless of race, ability, class or any other differentiating feature, faced the same degree of discrimination. Therefore, as first and second wave feminist approaches fail to consider the experiences of women of colour, low income women, and trans women, it is imperative to consider the perspectives of third and fourth wave feminists as well. Third and fourth wave feminist approaches aim to be more inclusive and diverse in their advocacy. The goals of the third and fourth waves are to consider the experiences of women who face intersectional challenges such as sexism, homophobia, ableism, racism, etc. By taking a third or fourth wave feminist approach, the definition of what it means to be ‘a woman’ begins to broaden and consequently address the unique experiences of the diverse LGBTQ+ community. It is for this reason that the more recent third and fourth waves have a more inclusive and holistic understanding of how our society lacks in supports and services available for LGBTQ+ youth. In the current fourth wave of feminism, the discourse of social media is recognized as a major platform for the many movements within the current wave, such as the #MeToo Movement. By recognizing the role social media plays in feminism, a media platform in which individuals of all ages can interact with, the fourth wave feminist approach is even more inclusive and diverse than the waves that precede it. Therefore, although it is important to recognize the massive strides made within each wave, it is also important to acknowledge the people who have gone unnoticed and unheard in order to best acknowledge how each wave contributes to the advocacy for LGBTQ+ youth rights (K. Holland, personal communication in GEND 219, Fall, 2018). By adopting an intersectional approach and applying it in conjunction with a feminist theoretical lens, it can be ensured that a multitude of discriminatory experiences faced by women and sexual minorities in our society will be recognized and addressed. Intersectionality is a concept, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1991, that recognizes the unique experiences of individuals who face multiple oppressions, such as sexism and racism, simultaneously, and how these factors cannot be considered separately, but instead need to be recognized as discriminatory factors that interact with one another. Crenshaw’s intersectional lens is paramount to this critical analysis as it broadens the scope to encompass all individuals that experience gender inequality, including those in the LGBTQ+ community. Thus, those who face intersectional societal discrimination, such a lesbian who uses a wheelchair potentially being subjected to homophobia and ableism, can rest assured knowing that their whole entity will be accounted for when exploring their experience of gender inequality in society. Therefore, to clarify, if it is suggested in this paper that a feminist theoretical perspective is applied it can be assumed that intersectionality is a key factor in the application of this theoretical lens (Crenshaw, 1991). In addition to the feminist theoretical perspective, to more holistically explore the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community, queer theory should also be applied. In similar fashion to feminist theory, queer theorists aim to examine the ways in which gender and sexualities are considered within a society that heavily encouraged heteronormativity (Smith, Crossing Borders Leibel 3 | P a g e 2003, p.346). This theory takes the concept of intersectionality and broadens the scope even further to focus on the diverse list of individuals that face oppression and discrimination due to their sexual minority status, such as those within the LGBTQ+ community. Although society has become much more inclusive since the first wave of feminism, LGBTQ+ youth continue to be a largely oppressed community in our society. Queer theory provides a solid foundation for this paper by questioning the hegemonic norms that are reinforced in our current society, which hopefully leads to understanding how LGBTQ+ youth are coping in a society that promotes heterosexuality above all (Smith, 2003, p. 346). Having established that the LGBTQ+ community is a clearly segregated and discriminated group within society today, it is important to analyze why that has come to be. The overarching answer to this question is that unless initiatives to support LGBTQ+ youth are actively established, the hegemonic society in which we exist does not innately provide these supports or opportunities. So why is the hegemonic society we live in so naturally exclusionary towards LGBTQ+ youth? Through the dissection of the certain institutions and ideologies that make-up our hegemonic society, I believe it is possible to find the root of this intrinsically heteronormative culture we abide by and reproduce in our daily lives. LGBTQ+ Youth and the Law The law is one of the most influential institutions in society. Typically, within a democratic society, the law that a society abides by is representative of the ideologies and values held by the majority of society. The law comes to be one of the largest forces to perpetuate heteronormativity, as in many societies heteronormativity is a widely-shared ideology in society. Heteronormative laws, which derive from patriarchal law, have come to define many societies. As a result, LGBTQ+ individuals struggle to find existing support and encounter anti-discriminatory laws worldwide. Unfortunately, there is an extensive number of heteronormative laws around the world that exemplify how societies have used the law to suppress LGBTQ+ youth. In the United States for instance, the degree to which LGBT-inclusive, non-discrimination laws are introduced varies from state to state (Taylor, Lewis, Jacobsmeier, & DiSarro, 2012). For example, some states have limited insurance protections for the LGBTQ+ community, whereas other states offer far more comprehensive bans on discrimination. In addition to this, many protection policies are not inclusive of the entire LGBTQ+ community, so in some states transgender individuals and gender-variant people remain unprotected. Lastly, it is important to recognize that a state’s adoption of sexual orientation protection policies does not necessarily suggest they also implement gender-identity protection. Unfortunately, this conflation of gay and transgender identities has led to certain LGBTQ+ identities being overlooked and unprotected. Furthermore, as many LGBTQ+ youth are not of legal voting age, not only are they drastically affected by these discriminatory laws, but they also have no legal mechanism to change any laws put in place. In order to examine the true inclusivity of these government laws, Taylor, Lewis, Jacobsmeier, and DiSarro (2012) suggest we must emphasize the importance of paying attention to who is actually being protected, rather than just when a law is implemented. Unfortunately, although a state may seem to suggest their laws are LGBTQ+ friendly, this is not always true, especially among those who are at the mercy of others to fight for their human rights. Despite our relatively liberal reputation in Canada, we too have laws and political figures in power that are working against the LGBTQ+ community. For instance, Alberta’s recently elected UCP Premier, Jason Kenney, has been quoted on multiple occasions stating his disapproval of Bill 24, which was implemented by the previous NDP government (Bellefontaine, 2019). Bill 24 introduced more protective rules for gay-straight-alliances in schools including, but not limited to, the prohibition of school officials notifying GSA member’s parents about their child’s participation in the alliance group. With this bill, LGBTQ+ youth who are participating in GSAs can talk openly with other like-minded and supportive peers, without fear of being ‘outed’ to their families (Alberta School Council, 2019). As noted by many concerned allies and the previous NDP government, by allowing schools to inform parents of their children’s participation in a GSA there is potential risk of familial ostracism and even abuse towards the child if their family does not approve of their decision to be in a GSA. Although it has been noted by Jason Kenney that his intent of informing parents about their children’s participation in GSAs is to provide Alberta with the strongest legal protection for GSAs in Canada, his stance does not consider the significantly probable retaliation children could face from parental disapproval. Regardless of intent, the decision to ‘come out’ must be that of the child. Kris Wells, a representative of the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies, further emphasizes this by recognizing that although it is preferred to have the parents involved in a LGBTQ+ youth’s life in order to increase support systems for the child, many families are not accepting of the LGBTQ+ community, and therefore the decision to disclose a child’s participation in a GSA must be through their own initiative (Bennett, 2017). This is supported by research that has shown the effects of being ‘outed’ as an LGBTQ+ youth can result in potentially severe repercussions for the youth themselves. A 2006 study done by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Crossing Borders Leibel 4 | P a g e Institute and the National Coalition for the Homeless found that on average, half of homosexual teenagers received a negative reaction from their parents and just over a quarter were kicked out of their homes after ‘coming out’ to their parents (Human Rights Campaign, n.d.). A tragic anecdote of the repercussions LGBTQ+ youth face from being ‘outed’ is the 1997 Sterling v. Borough of Minersville case where Wayman Sterling ended up killing himself after a police officer threatened to ‘out’ him as a homosexual to his family and community (Kretz, 2013, p. 398). Unfortunately, this is just one of many LGBTQ+ individuals who have ended their lives in fear of facing actual or threated societal backlash based on their sexuality. These anecdotes provide cause for the critical examination of hegemonic institutions as they reaffirm that without laws to protect LGBTQ+ youth, their safety is at risk. As LGBTQ+ youth, under the age of eighteen, have no legal ability to vote against laws and regulations that suppress their community, it is up to the voting population to keep their safety not only in mind, but a top priority when casting their votes (Bennett, 2017). LGBTQ+ Youth and Education The second social institution worthy of scrutinizing is the education system. As youth typically spend most of their childhood and adolescence within this social institution, it is necessary to explore the effects schools have on the experience of young LGBTQ+ individuals. Does this institution also contribute to the creation and maintenance of exclusionary practices towards LGBTQ+ youth? If so, what specific features, practices, norms, and ideals does the education system hold that perpetuate discrimination against LGBTQ+ youth and how has this contributed to the lack of support and programming for LGBTQ+ youth? Although it is important to reiterate that GSAs, if used safely, respectfully, and confidentially, can be a great source of support for LGBTQ+ youth in school, the damages that result from providing these supports using a heterosexist lens can be incredibly harmful. In similar fashion, Airton (2009) suggests that if anti-homophobic education is applied within the confines of commonly held gender-normative structures, the damage can be just as detrimental as an education that makes no attempt to provide anti-homophobic education at all (p.132). Much like the ideological framework of the law, because our hegemonic society assumes that heterosexuality is the norm, there is no space for true anti-homophobic practices to exist. Therefore, as suggested by Airton, the first consideration that needs to be made in order to genuinely and effectively support LGBTQ+ youth is to loosen the gender- normative structures already in place. Without initially dismantling heteronormative practices, LGBTQ+ youth will continue to be segregated from society and face the repercussions that come alongside that. One of the most discriminative practices within the education system is the heteronormative approach to sexual education. Just as hegemonic society revolves around heteronormativity, sexual education programs tend to adhere to gender binaries and heteronormative perspectives as well. LGBTQ+ inclusive sexual education is not embraced by all and therefore, in turn, LGBTQ+ youth are suffering from health inequalities (Mustanski, Birkett, Greene, Hatzenbuehler, & Newcomb, 2014). It is proposed by Mustanksi and colleagues that although “tackling these issues in schools is complex, and it will be impossible to ensure that mistakes are never made, complexity does not justify inaction” (2014, p. 220). By intentionally ignoring LGBTQ+ sexual education topics, this at-risk group faces a lack of support, knowledge, and acceptance at a point in their lives when they are only just learning about who they are. If LGBTQ+ youth are to be sufficiently supported, as any human should be, the current curriculum needs to be more inclusive and welcome the idea of engaging in topics that don’t fit our socially constructed binaries. Furthermore, it has been empirically determined that school children will not face negative consequences with the implementation of inclusive sexual education, and the overwhelmingly positive impact this education will have on LGBTQ+ youth will be insurmountable (Gegenfurtner & Gebhardt, 2017). If educational institutions begin to recognize the changes that need to be made, LGBTQ+ youth will be more supported, their experiences will become normalized, and they will be headed towards existing in a world that is safer and more supportive of diversity in all forms (Mustanski et al., 2014, p. 220). The debate on whether or not LGBTQ+ sexual education should be included in the sexual education curriculum has no place in a society that hopes to achieve safety, support, and acceptance for all; the necessity for inclusive, comprehensive, and LGBTQ+ friendly sexual education is a given. LGBTQ+ Youth and Religious Education The final, and possibly the most exclusionary, institution that perpetuates hegemonic society’s exclusion of LGBTQ+ youth is the combination of religious and educational institutions. There has been a multitude of anecdotal accounts and empirical research reported over the years regarding the contentious relationship between religion and the LGBTQ+ community. In a study that looked at 85 religious dominations and their stance towards homosexuality, it was found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals who live in countries that supported homosexuality had fewer alcohol-abuse symptoms in comparison to those living in countries that are less accepting of homosexuality (Kenny & Judd, 1986). More recent studies have once again confirmed this relation between alcohol- consumption and acceptance of one’s sexual identity. In a Crossing Borders Leibel 5 | P a g e comparative analysis of sexual minorities who attend religious-affiliated schools and their nonreligious-school- attending counterparts, there was a significant difference in alcohol use. The study found that sexual minority youth who attended religious-affiliated schools had higher levels of alcohol use than their counterparts who attended non- religious schools. Furthermore, sexual minority youth who attended religious-affiliated schools were less likely to be ‘out’ to their peers and teachers than those who attended non- religious schools (Stewart, Heck, & Cochran, 2015). Although there are a multitude of factors that could affect one’s alcohol-use and one’s decision to ‘come out’, due to the historically tumultuous relationship between religion and the LGBTQ+ community it would be naïve to ignore this relationship. As LGBTQ+ youth are only recently receiving more attention in research, the interconnectedness between religion and LGBTQ+ youth has yet to be fully examined and understood. Unfortunately, what research has found so far indicates that the relationship continues to be difficult and LGBTQ+ youth are still struggling to coexist in both communities simultaneously. Contributing to the ongoing lack of support for the LGBTQ+ community in religious educational institutions, and the perpetuation of the tumultuous relationship that exists between religion and the LGBTQ+ community, are the overtly discriminatory religious groups that are making their voices heard in some religious schools today. An example of this are Christian right political organizations that advocate against LGBTQ+ rights found within some religious school settings. Not only have these groups been known to provide detailed instructions on how to publicly object to ‘controversial’ sexual topics such as same-sex marriage or LGBTQ+ individuals and their relationships in school settings, but some groups go as far as suggesting that LGBTQ+ individuals should be removed from being considered a protected group (For Parents, 2013; Weddle & New, 2011). Although these groups’ websites state that their mission is to provide students with the ability to exercise their religious freedoms in educational institutions, it becomes clear that there are additional motives that encourage discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals, which they justify through their perceived religious right to oppose actions or beliefs that are seen as impious (For Parents, 2013). Regardless of religion, when the subjugation of one group is included in another religion’s moral code, it is necessary to re-evaluate these codes of conduct in order to provide our youth with the inclusive educational atmosphere they all have a right to. Discussion and Conclusion The insufficient supports for, and discriminatory practices against, LGBTQ+ youth are a deeply seeded, multi- dimensional, societally constructed phenomena. The immense task to ensure LGBTQ+ youth are safe, supported, and accepted in society is difficult to take on. That being said, the seemingly insurmountable goal of achieving worldwide LGBTQ+ rights is attainable. If heteronormativity is simply a socially constructed concept that we have normalized over the years, achieving a more equitable society amongst the sexes is in-reach. Therefore, I will not discuss LGBTQ+ supports in matters of if they will be implemented, but rather, when they are implemented. When LGBTQ+ supports increase in number and normality, how can we ensure that the three social institutions discussed, law, education, and religion, will not continue to perpetuate the heteronormative ideals hegemonic society has maintained for so long? Three sets of forces may be considered when advocating for a shift in hegemonic society in order to provide adequate support for LGBTQ+ youth. First, macro level forces in society materialize as the norms, ideologies, values, and figureheads of society that are indicative of the type of society one is living in. Through the literature review conducted in this study, it has been determined that in order to provide effective LGBTQ+ youth supports, these macro level societal features must shift drastically. An example of this would be changing those norms that make passive jokes or suggestions of homophobia, racism, sexism, and ableism acceptable. Whilst these social norms continue to exist, discrimination against LGBTQ+ youth will consequently exist as well. This suggestion for change is not meant to disregard the immense challenge of redefining societal norms, but rather to recognize the profoundly detrimental impact these unrecognized norms have on a society hoping to become more inclusive. The second set of forces that must be considered in the fight for LGBTQ+ youth advocacy are at the meso level. It is at this level where the necessary institutional changes are addressed. One paramount change that needs to occur within the institution of education is the implementation of comprehensive and inclusive sexual education that provides for the basic human rights of all individuals, regardless of sexuality or gender identity. If nothing else, a proper education, gender-identity-appropriate bathrooms, and personal privacy need to be unconditional rights rather than topics of debate. Once again, these changes may seem improbable in the current society we live in, but in order to help LGBTQ+ youth they are all necessary steps that need to be taken. The final set of forces worthy of consideration in the fight for equal rights for LGBTQ+ youth are at the micro level. The many pieces of anecdotal evidence provided throughout this paper reflect the micro level. From the unimaginably high Crossing Borders Leibel 6 | P a g e rates of harm faced by LGBTQ+ youth, to the lack of supports, and even some directly discriminatory policies in place, each unique experience within this community is worthy of considering. It is these anecdotal pieces of evidence that provide the answers to the heart of this study. When LGBTQ+ youth supports are put into place in society, how can they be introduced and maintained with the assurance that they will accurately, specifically, and efficiently support this group of youth at risk? An example of a micro level consequence of increased acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in society would be the improved health of LGBTQ+ youth. The specific quality of life of the diverse group of individuals within the LGBTQ+ community need to be considered, otherwise we run the risk of improper, inefficient, and unsuccessful implementation of supports and services that will not provide positive change for LGBTQ+ youth at risk. The main aspects of the law, education, and religion that perpetuate discrimination against LGBTQ+ youth are the heteronormative ideologies that support their foundation. Therefore, because the hegemonic society that exists today does not provide space for LGBTQ+ youth, regardless of how flexible the LGBTQ+ community is, they will never seamlessly be accepted in society. How I would suggest moving forward would be to implement the necessary safeguards to ensure the safety of LGBTQ+ youth. In agreement with Kretz (2013), one avenue that should be explored is a complete re-evaluation of the existing doctrine surrounding minors’ rights over their sexual orientation (p. 383). One’s age should not confine them to an incomplete sexual education or a lack of confidentiality surrounding their sexual orientation. With the current laws in place, LGBTQ+ youth are approaching adulthood unprepared, unsupported, and without the necessary foundations to succeed in life; this is a vital issue that can no longer be dismissed. LGBTQ+ youth face the intersectional accumulation of oppression not only based on their sexuality or gender identity, but also their age. For this reason, special consideration needs to be taken to ensure the rights of this at- risk youth group. Simply put, through the dissection of the many ways that law, education, and religion perpetuate an unsafe society for LGBTQ+ youth, the necessity for improvement of policies, implementation of inclusive atmospheres, and increase in specified supports is abundantly vital. References Airton, L. (2009). From sexuality (gender) to gender (sexuality): The aims of anti-homophobia education. Sex Education 9(2), 129- 139. doi:10.1080/1468181092829505 Alberta School Councils (n.d.) Bill 24 Fact Sheet & Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Retrieved from www.albertaschoolcouncils.ca/public/download/documents/44597 Bellefontaine, M. (2019, March 26). UCP leader Jason Kenney defends allowing parental notification if child joins GSA. Retrieved from www.msn.com/en-gb/news/parliamenthill/ucp-leader-jason- kenney-defends-allowing-parental-notification-if-child-joins-gsa/ar- BBVghBT?li=AA521o Bennett, D. (2017, July 11). United Conservatives oppose Alberta bill on changes to gay-straight alliances. Retrieved from www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/united- conservatives- oppose-alberta-bill-on-changes-to-gay-straight- alliances/article36869285/ Coker, T. R., Austin, S. B., & Schuster M. A. (2010). The health and health care of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents. Annual Review of Public Health, 31(1), 457-477. doi:10.1146/annurev.publhealth.012809.103636 Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299. doi:10.2307/1229039 Ettinghoff, E. (2014). Outed at school: Student privacy rights and preventing unwanted disclosures of sexual orientation. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 47(2), 579-617. Retrieved from www.albertaschoolcouncils.ca/public/download/documents/44597 For Parents. (2013). Day of dialogue. Retrieved from http://www.dayofdialogue.com/parent- info/ Gedro, J., & Mizzi, R. C. (2014). Feminist theory and queer theory: Implications for HRD research and practice. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 16(4), 445-456. doi:10.1177/1523422314543820 Human Rights Campaign (n.d.) Growing Up LGBTQ in American: Key Findings. Retrieved from www.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/Growing-Up-LGBT-in- America_Report.pdf. Kenny, D. A., & Judd, C. M. (1986). Consequences of violating the independence assumption in analysis of variance. Psychological Bulletin, 99(3), 422-431. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.99.3.422 Kretz, A. J. (2013). The right to sexual orientation privacy: strengthening protections for minors who are “outed” in schools. Journal of Law and Education, 42(3), 381-416. Lytle, M. C., Silenzio, V. M. B., Homan, C. M., Schneider, P., & Caine, E. D. (2018). Helping young people stay afloat: a qualitative study of community resources and supports for LGBTQ adolescents in the United States and Canada. Journal of Homosexuality, 65(8), p. 969-989. doi:10.1080/00918369.2017.1391552 Mustanski, B., Birkett, M., Greene, G. J., Hatzenbuehler, M. L., & Newcomb, M. E. (2014). Envisioning an America without sexual orientation inequities in adolescent health. American Journal of Public Health, 104(2), 218-225. doi:10.2105/ajph.2013.301625 Nourie, A. E., & Harris, V. W. (2018). An intersectional feminist perspective on LGBTQ youth in foster care: Implications for service providers. World Journal of Education, 8(4), 177-187. doi:10.5430/wje.v8n4p177 Smith, R. R. (2003). Queer theory, gay movements, and political communication. Journal of Homosexuality, 45(2-4), 345-348. doi:10.1300/j082v45n02_18 Stewart, B. T., Heck, N. C., & Cochran, B. N. (2015). A comparison of sexual minority youth who attend religiously Crossing Borders Leibel 7 | P a g e affiliated schools and their nonreligious-school-attending counterparts. Journal of LGBT Youth, 12(2), 170-188. doi:10.1080/19361653.2014.969864 Taylor, J.K., Daniel, C.L., Jacobsmeier, M. L., & DiSarro, B. (2012). Content and complexity in policy reinvention and diffusion: Gay and transgender-inclusive laws against discrimination. State Politics & Policy Quarterly, 12(1), 75-98. Weddle, D. B., & New, K. E. (2011). What did Jesus do? Answering religious conservatives who oppose bullying prevention legislation. New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement, 37, 325-345. work_2bfpo53nmjgnthzxweo4fjoxau ---- Présentation: Écouter les histoires des femmes All Rights Reserved ©, 2019 Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales au Canada Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 20:55 Theatre Research in Canada Recherches théâtrales au Canada Présentation: Écouter les histoires des femmes Kim Solga Volume 39, numéro 2, 2018 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1058042ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1058042ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama, University of Toronto ISSN 1196-1198 (imprimé) 1913-9101 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer ce document Solga, K. (2018). Présentation: Écouter les histoires des femmes. Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales au Canada, 39(2). https://doi.org/10.7202/1058042ar https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/tric/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1058042ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1058042ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/tric/2018-v39-n2-tric04442/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/tric/ PRÉSENTATION 134 Hearing Women / Écouter les femmes • PP 131-137 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC Écouter les histoires des femmes KIM SOLGA Au moment où je m’installe pour vous adresser ces quelques lignes, une pleine année s’est écoulée depuis que le New York Times a révélé que des allégations d’agression sexuelle s’éche- lonnant sur plusieurs décennies avaient été portées contre Harvey Weinstein, grand magnat hollywoodien. Je sais exactement combien de temps s’est écoulé parce que comme bien des femmes en Amérique du Nord et ailleurs dans le monde, je suis collée au site du Times en attendant de savoir si le Sénat donnera le feu vert au candidat républicain Brett Kavanaugh pour rejoindre la Cour suprême. Kavanaugh a livré une interprétation magistrale du « Je suis un homme blanc et tout m’est dû » devant un comité judiciaire du Sénat qui s’était réuni pour l’interroger sur les accusations d’inconduite sexuelle portées contre lui ; sa performance est venue tout juste après le témoignage historique de Christine Blasey Ford lors duquel cette dernière a relaté le souvenir douloureux qu’elle a gardé de son agression aux mains de Kavanaugh pour ensuite expliquer patiemment le fonctionnement de la psychologie humaine et la façon dont le cerveau retient un traumatisme. Si vous avez suivi cette histoire, vous aussi—et je mettrais ma main au feu que c’est le cas—vous savez déjà quelles leçons on peut en tirer. Blasey Ford a été l’image même du calme absolu, et ce, malgré la nature incroyablement périlleuse de ce qu’elle s’était proposé de faire en tant que citoyenne américaine concernée, malgré aussi le risque que lui posait le fait de revivre ce traumatisme. Elle n’avait pas le choix d’agir ainsi : les femmes « hystériques » sont une cible trop facile pour les médias ; elles ne sont jamais crédibles, leurs histoires se perdent dans les effusions féminines maladroites. Kavanaugh, quant à lui, a donné libre cours à ses émotions, à un point tel que l’imitation qu’en a fait Matt Damon dans l’accroche au Saturday Night Live du 29 septembre était à peine exagérée par rapport à la prestation originale. Et pourtant…et pourtant. Au moment où je vous écris, tout indique que le récit de Kavanaugh l’emportera. (Trêve de suspens : ce fut effectivement le cas.) En tant que femme, en tant que féministe et en tant que Nord-Américaine, cette inévi- tabilité apparente m’attriste et m’enrage. Mais en tant que chercheure en théâtre féministe, je ne suis pas du tout étonnée. Étudiante au doctorat, je m’étais interrogée sur la façon dont nous avons cherché pendant des siècles à faire entrer de force dans des structures narra- tives patriarcales ce qu’ont à dire les femmes sur la violence sexuelle et conjugale ; j’en ai fait l’objet de ma thèse et le sujet de mon premier livre, Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance: Invisible Acts. Au deuxième chapitre de cet ouvrage, je présente le scénario de viol que devaient suivre les femmes à l’époque de Shakespeare pour faire croire leur expéri- ence et convaincre les hommes respectables de leur communauté de mener une enquête. Ce scénario a été décrit en détail dans un traité de 1632 intitulé The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights ; l’auteur voulait ainsi aider les femmes victimes de violence à avoir l’impression qu’elles avaient une certaine mesure de pouvoir social. PRÉSENTATION 135TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 131-137 • Hearing Women / Écouter les femmes La leçon à retenir de ce texte daté d’il y a 400 ans est la suivante : trouve un moyen de raconter ton histoire de façon à répondre aux attentes qu’ont les hommes quant aux sensations et aux apparences. (En supposant que vous n’avez pas vraiment donné votre consentement. En supposant que c’était quand même une assez grosse affaire.) Trouve un moyen d’avoir l’air respectable et crédible selon des conditions qui leur importent—parce que ce sont les seules qui comptent. Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire d’écouter—vraiment écouter—les histoires des femmes en 2018? En très peu de temps, le mouvement #metoo a galvanisé tout un pan de la population et a connu un essor incroyable. Pourtant, les événements récents à Washington en disent long non seulement sur les limites très réelles qui subsistent quant à la capacité des femmes d’exercer du pouvoir et de l’influence dans la sphère publique anglo-américaine, mais aussi sur la mesure dans laquelle les histoires des femmes (tant les témoignages de faits vécus que les preuves bien documentées—Blasey Ford offrait les deux à Washington) continuent d’être minées, dénigrées ou tout simplement ignorées. Pensons à la façon dont Jian Ghomeshi a refait surface dernièrement dans le New York Review of Books avec une réflexion personnelle sur l’expérience qu’il a vécue en étant « le premier à se faire haïr par tout le monde ». C’était là un geste calculé qu’il posait pour capitaliser sur la popularité du mouvement #metoo et son inévitable contrecoup ; or, comme l’ont fait valoir de nombreuses commentatrices, l’es- sai n’est pas une apologie. Plutôt, le texte donne à voir Ghomeshi qui raconte longuement, sur un ton de fausse modestie, comment il a vécu l’histoire et ses séquelles. Ses propos ont été publiés sur une plateforme prestigieuse alors même que les histoires déchirantes et hor- rifiantes des femmes qui l’ont accusé restent largement incomprises, leur complexité ayant été mal gérée par la partie plaignante lors du procès de 2016 qui n’a pas su leur donner un sentiment de clôture ou de justice. Alors je repose la question, mais cette fois dans mon rôle de rédactrice en chef de TRIC/ RTAC : qu’est-ce que cela peut bien vouloir dire d’écouter, de manière réfléchie, avec attention et sans préjudice, les histoires des femmes? Ce numéro donne quelques réponses provisoires, je l’espère, à cette question difficile, mais ô combien urgente. Dans les pages qui suivent, vous trouverez six articles par sept chercheuses qui racontent les histoires d’un grand nombre d’au- tres femmes—des femmes d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, des femmes fictives et réelles, des femmes homosexuelles et hétéros, des femmes de couleur et des femmes blanches. Ensuite, deux autres femmes occupent les colonnes du Forum d’automne avec d’importantes nouvelles concernant notre discipline. Dans la première contribution au numéro, Laine Zisman Newman se penche sur ce qu’elle appelle l’« empressement lesbien » dans l’œuvre de Jess Dobkin, une artiste basée à Toronto. Zisman Newman nous invite à prendre conscience de l’« empressement » chez Dobkin et de nous interroger sur ce phénomène, de voir dans l’interruption de cet empressement, dans les lacunes et les silences qui composent The Magic Hour de Dobkins, l’occasion d’écouter un récit qui porte ses propres conditions d’énonciation. La deuxième contribution est signée par Yasmine Kandil et Michelle MacArthur, qui examinent Death Married My Daughter, une pièce clownesque féministe signée par Danya Buonastella et Nina Gilmour sur la mort des personnages shakespeariens Ophélie et Desdémone. Voyant le pouvoir politique « de la séduction et de la provocation » dans l’œuvre PRÉSENTATION 136 Hearing Women / Écouter les femmes • PP 131-137 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC bouffonne de Buonastella et Gilmour, Kandil et MacArthur font valoir que les clowns zombie féministes de la pièce ont bien des choses à transmettre aux praticiens du théâtre de tous les milieux—à condition que nous soyons prêts à tendre l’oreille aux disparues. Deux autres contributions nous proposent d’aller à la découverte d’histoires de femmes canadiennes dans les livres et sur scène : Cathleen McKague plonge dans les archives à la suite des traces laissées par Robertson Davies alors qu’il se préparait à présenter The Taming of the Shrew dans ce que l’on considère aujourd’hui comme le style des pratiques originelles au Little Theatre de Peterborough, tandis que Shelley Scott fait un retour sur Still Stands the House, la pièce emblématique de Gwen Pharis Ringwood. McKague décrit avec soin les leçons que nous transmet la production amateure à succès de Davies sur la façon dont les praticiens canadiens ont dû tenter de concilier les techniques « britanniques » et « canadiennes » avant l’ère du Festival Stratford. Scott, quant à elle, s’intéresse à l’entrelacement d’éléments liés à la géographie, au climat et à la violence dans la représentation par Ringwood des rôles et rapports genrés à l’aune de la colonisation. Nos deux dernières contributions, signées par Kimberley McLeod et Naila Keleta- Mae, nous proposent de nous demander en tant que chercheurs comment les histoires banales que l’on se raconte au sujet de l’art qui constitue notre terrain d’enquête peuvent agir de manière insidieuse lorsqu’il s’agit de légitimer et de faire circuler les points de vue normalisés sur cet art. McLeod s’intéresse à l’humoriste Nathan Fielder et à Nathan for You, sa parodie de la télé-réalité, et fait valoir que le travail de Fielder installe un dialogue riche et complexe entre le théâtre du réel et les tropes de la télé-réalité qui nous permet d’inter- roger comment et pourquoi les critiques culturels ont implicitement hiérarchisé ces genres en tant que « valable » et « rejetable » respectivement. Quant à Keleta-Mae, cette dernière vient boucler notre sélection d’articles en proposant un survol de l’œuvre de Trey Anthony en tant que dramaturge et impresario. Dans son article, elle examine comment Anthony réussit à remplir ses salles de femmes noires en partageant fièrement et exclusivement sur scène les histoires de ces dernières. Faisant fi de reproches qu’on lui fait à l’égard de son travail (ceux-ci étant souvent nés des attentes eurocentriques de critiques blancs sur ce qui constitue du « bon » théâtre), Anthony taille une place pour les corps, les conversations et les émotions des femmes noires dans des auditoriums que la critique choisit de quitter. Ce qui fait le malheur des critiques fait le bonheur des femmes noires. Dans le Forum de ce numéro, Jill Carter fait un retour sur les cinquante ans du Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies de l’Université de Toronto, se penchant plus par- ticulièrement le travail actif du Centre en matière de décolonisation des pratiques savantes et artistiques avant de considérer les progrès qu’il reste à faire dans cette veine. Ensuite, dans ce qui deviendra, nous l’espérons, une tradition de présenter deux fois par année les tendances récentes en recherche sur le théâtre et la performance au Québec, Louise Forsyth nous propose son tout premier compte rendu de nouvelles parutions dans les revues Jeu, L’Annuaire théâtral, alt. théâtre, et aparté/arts vivants—recherche & création. Notre série habi- tuelle de critiques d’ouvrages vient clore le numéro. Neuf femmes, donc, nous offrent neuf contributions marquées par l’exploration et la critique. Inattendues, informatives, toutes différentes les unes des autres, elles vous sont fièrement présentées par l’équipe de rédaction de TRIC/RTAC, laquelle est composée de PRÉSENTATION 137TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 131-137 • Hearing Women / Écouter les femmes sept femmes qui travaillent sans relâche : Selena Couture (responsable des comptes rendus), Allison Leadley (assistante à la rédaction), Sonya Malaborza (traductrice), Nicole Nolette (rédactrice adjointe francophone), Cassandra Silver (directrice administrative), Jessica Watkin (assistante à la rédaction) et Kim Solga (rédactrice en chef). Bonne lecture. Et n’oubliez pas d’être à l’écoute. work_22ikipu56za2fmev3pm4yjmkqq ---- CESifo Working Paper no. 5672 econstor Make Your Publications Visible. A Service of zbw Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre for Economics González, Paula; Macho-Stadler, Ines; Pérez-Castrillo, David Working Paper Private versus Social Incentives for Pharmaceutical Innovation CESifo Working Paper, No. 5672 Provided in Cooperation with: Ifo Institute – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich Suggested Citation: González, Paula; Macho-Stadler, Ines; Pérez-Castrillo, David (2015) : Private versus Social Incentives for Pharmaceutical Innovation, CESifo Working Paper, No. 5672, Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/128373 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Private versus Social Incentives for Pharmaceutical Innovation Paula González Inés Macho-Stadler David Pérez-Castrillo CESIFO WORKING PAPER NO. 5672 CATEGORY 11: INDUSTRIAL ORGANISATION DECEMBER 2015 An electronic version of the paper may be downloaded • from the SSRN website: www.SSRN.com • from the RePEc website: www.RePEc.org • from the CESifo website: Twww.CESifo-group.org/wp T ISSN 2364-1428 http://www.ssrn.com/ http://www.repec.org/ http://www.cesifo-group.de/ CESifo Working Paper No. 5672 Private versus Social Incentives for Pharmaceutical Innovation Abstract We provide a theoretical framework to contribute to the current debate regarding the tendency of pharmaceutical companies to direct their R&D toward marketing products that are “follow- on” drugs of already existing drugs, rather than toward the development of breakthrough drugs. We construct a model with a population of patients who can be treated with drugs that are horizontally and vertically differentiated. In addition to a pioneering drug, a new drug can be marketed as the result of an innovative process. We analyze physician prescription choices and the optimal pricing decision of an innovative .rm. We also characterize the incentives of the in- novative firm to conduct R&D activities, disentangling the quest for breakthrough drugs from the firm effort to develop follow-on drugs. Our results offer theoretical support for the conventional wisdom that pharmaceutical firms devote too many resources to conducting R&D activities that lead to incremental innovations. JEL-Codes: I100. Keywords: pharmaceuticals, R&D activities, me-too drugs, breakthrough drugs, incremental innovation, radical innovation. Paula González* Department of Economics Universidad Pablo de Olavide Sevilla / Spain pgonzalez@upo.es Inés Macho-Stadler Department of Economics Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Bellaterra / Spain Ines.Macho@uab.es David Pérez-Castrillo Department of Economics Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Bellaterra / Spain David.Perez@uab.es *corresponding author December 13, 2015 We appreciate valuable comments by Bruno Jullien, Justina Klimaviciute, Jorge Mestre-Ferrándiz and participants at the XXIX Jornadas de Economía Industrial (Barcelona), theWorkshop on Health Economics (UAB), the 16th European Health Economics Workshop (Toulouse), the XXXV AES Conference (Granada) and the 11th iHEA Conference (Milan). Financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and FEDER (ECO2012-31962 and ECO2012-36480), Generalitat de Catalunya (2014SGR-142), Junta de Andalucía (SEJ-04992), ICREA Academia and the Severo Ochoa Programme (SEV-2011-0075) is gratefully acknowledged. Macho-Stadler and Pérez- Castrillo are fellows of MOVE and CESIfo. 1 Introduction It is widely recognized that of all the industrial sectors, the pharmaceutical industry is the sector that traditionally invests most heavily in research and development (R&D). In 2012, for instance, US biopharmaceutical research companies invested an estimated $48.5 billion in R&D (PhRMA, 2013). Regarding R&D intensity, and according to a recent report by the European Commission, spending on R&D in 2012 by the pharmaceutical industry amounted to 15.3% of its GDP in the US, 16.3% in Japan, and to 14.7% in the European Union (European Commission, 2013). However, there is a great deal of debate surrounding pharmaceutical R&D activities. Pharmaceutical companies are often accused of devoting too many resources to the mar- keting of apparent new products that are �follow-on�drugs of already existing drugs, rather than toward the development of breakthrough (�rst-in-class) drugs.1 In fact, a successful new �rst-in-class drug will often face competition from a series of follow-on drugs that are therapeutically similar to the pioneering drug. The angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, a class of drugs used to manage high blood pressure, is illustra- tive of this. The �rst ACE inhibitor, captopril, was introduced in the US in 1981. Since then over 10 ACE inhibitors have been launched (Hernandez and Harrington, 2008).2 The development of follow-on drugs is cheaper and less risky than drugs with a novel mechanism of action, but they supposedly do not bring signi�cant therapeutic progress to patients (see, for instance, the discussions by Angell, 2004; Avorn, 2004; and Goozner, 2004). Defenders of incremental innovations argue, however, that medicines based on incremental improvements often represent advances in safety and e¢ cacy, along with pro- viding new formulations and dosing options that increase patient compliance (see diMasi and Paquette, 2004; Wertheimer and Santella, 2009; and the article by Doctor Henry I. Miller in the Wall Street Journal on January 1, 2014). This paper aims at contributing to this social debate. We build a theoretical model of innovation to investigate whether there exist arguments that allow us to support the conviction that pharmaceutical �rms devote too many resources to marketing me-too drugsandtoo fewto launchingbreakthroughdrugs. Ourmodel emphasizes thedistinction between radical and incremental innovation processes.3 Radical innovation processes may 1Follow-on drugs are sometimes called �me-too�drugs as they are close copies of existing drugs. 2Another example is omeprazole, the �rst proton pump inhibitor launched in 1989 to reduce gastric acid production. Proton pump inhibitors have since become the mainstay of treatment for acid-related gastrointestinal disease in adults, and omeprazole was followed by other proton pump inhibitors, with the most recent launched in 2009. 3The labels �radical�and �incremental�belong mostly to the managerial literature and does not o¤er a unique description of the di¤erence between the two concepts. In fact, the literature reveals that the de�nitions of radical and incremental innovations are still puzzling, both at the theoretical and at the 2 lead to breakthrough drugs, while incremental innovation processes pursue me-too drugs. In our model there is a continuum of patients in need of medical treatment. Patients can be treated with drugs that are horizontally and vertically di¤erentiated. Vertical di¤erentiation refers to the quality of the drug and includes the health gains experienced by patients. Horizontal di¤erentiation re�ects the adequacy of the drug for patients, as di¤erent patients in the population will experience di¤erent e¤ects of a given medication in terms of tolerability, side e¤ects or interaction with other medicines. In the market, there is a pioneering drug. We assume that the price of this drug is �xed, for example, because thepatentprotection that covered ithas alreadyexpiredandthedrug is soldat its marginal cost. Moreover, anewdrugcanbemarketedas theresultofan innovativeprocess by a pharmaceutical �rm that seeks to achieve an improvement over the existing medicine. Finally, there is a physician who makes drug prescription decisions. The physician acts as a perfect agent for the health system (which includes both patients and the health authority) and, hence, he makes prescription choices based on the price-e¤ectiveness of the drugs. In this simple set-up we �rst describe physician prescription choices, given the prices and the characteristics of the two drugs (when the innovation process is successful). Sec- ond, we characterize the optimal pricing decision of the innovative �rm, which anticipates the physician prescription behavior. The optimal price for the new drug depends on the di¤erences in cost-e¤ectiveness and the horizontal distance between the new drug and the pioneer. When the new drug is much more cost-e¤ective than the pioneer, the innovative �rm sets a price that leads the physician to prescribe the new drug to all patients. When the improvements in the cost-e¤ectiveness of the new drug are not substantial, or the two drugs are very horizontally di¤erentiated, then the price set by the innovative �rm leads to a drug replacement treatment only for some patients. In all other situations the new drug is not marketed. Finally, we characterize the incentives of the innovative �rm to conduct R&D activities and compare these private incentives with those that would be optimal from a social point of view. The paper distinguishes between radical innovation processes, seeking breakthrough drugs, and incremental innovation processes that aim at launching a me- too drug. In order to di¤erentiate these two kinds of innovations, we follow the approach of measuring the degree of innovativeness of a drug as the size of the di¤erences (either small or large) between the new drug and the pioneer. These di¤erences can emerge either in the horizontal or the vertical characteristics of the drugs. Innovations in the empirical level (see García and Calantone, 2002, for a critical review of the innovativeness terminology). In particular, the degree of innovativeness of a product is measured using various dimensions including the level of risk implied in the innovation strategy, the type of knowledge to be processed or the level of investment needed to move onto a new trajectory. 3 vertical dimension imply a better quality of treatment (or a lower production cost) for all the patients su¤ering from the disease.4 Horizontal innovations would be advances that bene�t some but not all patients because drugs may have lower side e¤ects for a certain group of patients.5 Moreover, in order to account for the fact that the level of risk (or uncertainty of the �nal outcome) is typically larger in the case of radical innovations, we consider that the outcome of a radical innovation process by the innovative �rm takes values on a large support and has a greater variance. The paper provides some interesting �ndings. We show that for incremental innova- tion processes pursuing me-too drugs, the social value of the innovation coincides with the private bene�ts of the �rm (as the innovative �rm appropriates all the health sys- tem bene�ts derived from the launching of the me-too drug). If we consider, instead, R&D activities searching for breakthrough drugs, then private and social incentives for conducting research are not aligned. In particular, the incentives for conducting research by the �rm are inferior to those socially optimal as there are patients that -despite the larger price of the new drug- bene�t from it. These results allow us to show that if a pharmaceutical company can only adopt one of the two types of innovation processes due, for instance, to budget constraints, it may happen that the �rm has an incentive to seek a me-too drug although R&D activities oriented to search for a radical innovation are socially superior. At the same time, it never happens that the innovative �rm prefers to develop a radical innovation when devoting the resources to incremental innovations is preferable from a social point of view. Our results thus o¤er theoretical support for the conventional wisdom that pharmaceutical �rms devote too many resources to conducting R&D activities that lead to me-too drugs. The theoretical literature on incentives for pharmaceutical innovations is not abun- dant, although there is an increasing number of papers that study the interaction between the pricing policy constrained by various forms of regulation and the e¤ort of innovation 4Examples of innovations that would be classi�ed as vertical in our model would include the afore- mentioned captopril (ACE-inhibitor) and omeprazole (protone pump inhibitor), and also cimetidine (H2-receptor antagonist), propranolol (ß-adrenoceptor antagonist), lovastatin (HMG-CoA-reductase in- hibitor), and sumatriptane (5-HT1B/1D-receptor agonist) among others. All these are drugs that, when marketed, met a given need much more e¤ectively than available treatments and were bene�cial for all patients in the treatment of their disease. Also, innovations in antibiotics that allow administration once a day, giving patients the possibility of being treated at home, or at least the possibility to reduce hospitalization time, are vertical innovations according to our classi�cation. Finally, second-generation antihistamines have some (vertical) improvements over �rst-generation antihistamines like, for instance, less frequent dosing. 5For example, in the market for statins, Lovastatin, pravastatin, and �uvastatin represent the class members with the lowest potency to reduce cholesterol levels but which are attractive candidates for use in treating patients who have proven intolerant of more potent statins such as atorvastatin, simvastatin or rosuvastatin (Kapur and Musunuru, 2008). 4 by pharmaceutical �rms. Ganuza, Llobet, and Domínguez (2009) �nd a bias in the phar- maceutical industry toward small innovations. Their result relies on the low sensitivity of a part of the demand (due to the loyalty of some physicians) to changes in prices. This lack of price-sensitivity provides an excessive reward for small innovations and con- sequently downwardly distorts the incentives of pharmaceutical �rms. In our model, the physician acts as a perfect agent for the health system, so that the di¤erence between the social value and the private bene�ts that the �rm obtains from innovation arises from a di¤erent source: the ability of the pharmaceutical �rm to appropriate or not the health system surplus through the price. The existence of physicians that are loyal to innovative drugs also plays an important role in Antoñanzas, Juárez-Castelló, and Rodríguez-Ibeas (2011). They study the incentives of an incumbent pharmaceutical �rm to launch an up- graded drug through innovation before it faces generic competition. The paper shows that the equilibrium level of innovation exhibits an inverted U shape, as innovation increases when the proportion of loyal physicians is low and decreases when it is high. Finally, Bardey, Bommier, and Jullien (2010) focus on the long-run impact of reference pricing on pharmaceutical innovation by �rms. Their model shares some similarities with ours as it makes a clear distinction between incremental and radical innovations in a setting where drugs are horizontally and vertically di¤erentiated. However, the distinction they make between the two types of innovations di¤ers notably from ours. In addition to this, they model a patent race where the innovative process is deterministic and competition in R&D leads to the dissipation of �rms�pro�ts. They show that the short-term and long-term e¤ects of price regulation may be antagonists. In their simulation using French data, they �nd that favoring radical innovation processes at the expense of cost-reducing innovations may generate medium/long-run increases in health expenses, despite potential short-run bene�ts. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The following section presents our model. Section 3 studies prescription decisions by the physician. Section 4 analyzes pricing decisions by the innovative �rm and characterizes the market equilibrium. In section 5 we discuss the bene�t to the health system derived from the launch of the new drug. Section 6 discusses private versus social incentives to innovate. Section 7 proposes a simple model of innovation. Section 8 discusses the robustnesss of the results when the physician acts as a perfect agent for the patient. Finally, the last section o¤ers some concluding remarks. All the proofs are in the Appendix. 5 2 The Model There is a continuum of patients in need of medical treatment. We normalize the size of the population of patients to 1: Patients su¤er from the same illness and are identi�ed by a horizontal characteristic x; with x distributed uniformly on the interval [0;1] : The parameter x represents the type of the patient and measures the heterogeneity regarding the patient genotype or any other characteristic that may induce the disease to have di¤erent e¤ects among patients. Patients can be treated with a drug. We consider that drugs are both horizontally and vertically di¤erentiated. Thus, a drug is de�ned by a pair of characteristics: (x̂; ĥ): The �rst characteristic x̂ 2 [0;1] captures the horizontal di¤erentiation and re�ects the adequacyof thedrug fordi¤erentpatients. It iswidely recognizedthatdi¤erentpatients in a population experience di¤erent e¤ects of a given medication in terms of tolerability, side e¤ects or interaction with other medicines.6 In our model, where patients are distributed along the interval [0;1], a particular location (type) of a patient re�ects the patient�s ideal drug. That is, a drug with characteristic x̂ has the ideal type for a patient located at x̂. Those patients who fail to obtain a drug of their ideal type face a cost, and the farther patient type x from x̂ is, the lower the bene�ts he enjoys (or the larger the side e¤ects he su¤ers) when he is exposed to the drug.7 The second characteristic of the drug incorporates the vertical di¤erentiation and it refers to the gross e¤ectiveness ĥ of the drug. This is a quality dimension that a¤ects the whole population and it includes the health gains experienced by patients (which may comprise either one or both quality and quantity of life). We assume ĥ > 0; where ĥ = 0 would mean that the drug has the same e¤ect as no treatment, and the higher the ĥ the better the drug for all the patients.8 In order to determine the health gain of a type-x patient treated with drug (x̂; ĥ); we need to consider both dimensions together. The health gain of a patient of type x when drug (x̂; ĥ) is prescribed is b � ĥ� l jx̂�xj � , where jx̂�xj is the distance between the 6For example, in the pharmaceutical market for blood pressure control, the drugs available to treat hypertension may act via the central nervous system, the heart (beta blockers), the kidney (diuretics, saluretics) or the vessels (alpha blockers, ACE inhibitors, AT1 and calcium antagonists). The e¢ cacy and side e¤ects of these medicines di¤er across patients and, hence, a¤ect physician prescription patterns. 7There is no drug that unambiguously dominates another on the horizontal dimension, as patients with a di¤erent x react di¤erently to a drug x̂: If two drugs with a di¤erent x̂ are available, there are patients that bene�t more from one of the drugs, while others would be better o¤when treated with the other. 8In Bardey et al. (2010) drugs are also vertically and horizontally di¤erentiated, although their vertical characteristic is binary while ours is a continuous variable (which allows us to consider small and large di¤erences in the vertical dimension). 6 horizontal characteristic of the drug and the type of the patient, l > 0 scales the loss of e¤ectiveness or the extent of side e¤ects and b is the marginal utility of being healthy. If we denote by p̂ the price of drug (x̂; ĥ), the bene�t to the health system of treating patient x with drug (x̂; ĥ) and paying price p̂ for this drug is H(x; x̂; ĥ; p̂) = b � ĥ� l jx̂�xj � � p̂: We assume that there is a pre-existing drug (x0;h0), x0 2 (0;1), on the market. The price p0 of this pioneering drug is exogenously �xed and does not react to the launch of a new medicine. In markets where drug (x0;h0) is produced by a number of �rms, this assumption can be easily justi�ed on the grounds that the exclusivity of the pioneering drug has already expired and a generic drug has entered the market.9 Without loss of generality, we assume that p0 = c0, being c0 the marginal cost of providing the drug. For simplicity, we assume that all patients bene�t from the pioneering drug, that is, the whole market is initially covered by that drug.10 There is a pharmaceutical �rm (that we call �rm 1), di¤erent from the one selling (x0;h0) ; that can undertake an innovation process.11 This process is uncertain both be- cause it may or may not lead to a new drug and because the characteristics of the potential new drug are ex-ante random. If �rm 1 adopts an innovation process and the process is successful then a new drug is discovered. We denote by (x1;h1) the characteristics of the new drug that will be marketed and by c1 its marginal cost. This drug may use the same active principle as the pioneering drug or it may use a di¤erent one. What is relevant in our model is the location of the drug in the space of horizontal and vertical characteristics. We assume that the �rm producing the new drug freely chooses the price p1: To identify the di¤erences between the new drug and the pioneer, we de�ne �x � ��x1 �x0�� ; �h � h1 �h0; �c � c1 � c0: That is, �x 2 R+ is the distance between the �types�of the drugs. Similarly, �h 2 R indicates the di¤erence in quality between the two drugs, and �c 2 R denotes the 9In the US, the generic share of prescriptions rose from 19% in 1984 to 78% in 2010 (Berndt and Aitken, 2011). There is evidence that once generic drugs enter the market, both the price and sales revenue of pioneering drugs tend to drop by about 80% over the next year (Yin, 2012). 10This hypothesis requires that b � h0 � l ��x0 �x��� � c0 � 0 for all x 2 [0;1], that is, c0 � Min � b � h0 � l � 1�x0 �� ;b � h0 � lx0 � . 11For simplicity in the exposition, we have adopted the view of an entrant in the pharmaceutical market launching a new drug. All our analysis would remain valid if, alternatively, we had assumed that there were several �rms producing the pioneering drug and that one of them could undertake the innovation process, as in Ganuza et al. (2009). 7 di¤erence in marginal costs (the new drug may be more expensive or cheaper to produce than the pioneer). Finally, there is a physician who makes drug prescription decisions. We assume that the physician acts as a perfect agent for the health system, which includes both the patients�utility and the cost incurred by the health authority. Hence, the physician assigns the medication to patients based on the price-e¤ectiveness of the two drugs.12 Notice that, given the physician behavior, whether the patients bear a copayment or the drug is fully reimbursed by the health authority, there is no di¤erence implied in the results since the physician takes into account the true cost of the drugs (paid either by the patients or the health authority).13 The timing of our game is as follows. In the �rst stage, �rm 1 decides its innovation strategy. In case the innovation process succeeds, the characteristics (x1;h1) as well as the marginal cost c1 of the new drug are known. In the second stage, the innovative �rm sets the price p1 it charges. Finally, in the third stage, provided the new drug is marketed, the physician allocates the drugs to patients (if only the pioneering drug is available, the physician will prescribe it to all the patients). As usual, we solve the game by backward induction. 3 Prescription of Drugs We now analyze the last stage of the game if a new drug with characteristics (x1;h1) has been marketed at a price p1. At this stage of the game, the physician decides which patients are prescribed the pioneering drug (x0;h0) and which ones the new one (x1;h1). The physician takes into account both the expected e¤ectiveness of the drugs and their price. Ifbothdrugsprovide identicalbene�ts to thehealthsystemwhentreatingapatient, we adopt the convention that the physician prescribes the new drug. Following the physician�s decision, the market will be split between the new drug and the pioneer. Depending on both drugs�characteristics, as well as the price p1 decided by the innovative �rm, three di¤erent scenarios may arise. We illustrate them in Figure 1. First, the physician prescribes the pioneering drug to all patients if the price p1 of the new drug is very high when compared to its health bene�ts . We denote pmax the price above which no patient is prescribed the new drug (that happens even when pa- 12This assumption allows us to focus on �rm incentives to pharmaceutical innovation, leaving aside any distortion caused by the potential strategic behavior of agents as a consequence of the di¤erent views they share. 13In section 8 we discuss the robustness of the analysis in a model where the physician only takes into account the patients�utility. In that model, the reimbursement policy has an in�uence not only on physician prescription choices but also on the pricing and innovation decisions by the �rm. 8 H b(h0 − lx − x0) − c0 0 0 1 x x0 x1 if p1 > pmax if p1 ∈ (pall, pmax) if p1 < pall b(h1 − lx − x1) − p1 b(h1 − lx − x1) − p1 b(h1 − lx − x1) − p1 Figure 1: Bene�ts of the health system with the two drugs and split of the market as a function of p1, c0, (x0;h0), and (x1;h1). tient x1 is not treated with (x1;h1) if p1 > pmax). Formally, pmax is characterized by H(x1;x1;h1;pmax) = H(x1;x0;h0;c0); or b(h1 � l jx1 �x1j)�pmax = b(h0 � l jx1 �x0j)� c0; which implies pmax � c0 + b(�h + l�x): If p1 = pmax, the market for the new drug is 1�x1 if x1 > x0; it is x1 if x1 < x0; and it is the whole market if x1 = x0 (the rest of the patients are prescribed the old drug). Note that pmax is increasing in b, l, �x, �h, and c0. Therefore, for a given p1, it is more likely that the old drug will keep all the market if health has a low marginal value (b low), the disparities in the side e¤ects of the drug for di¤erent patients are small (l low), the di¤erence between the two drugs is also small (�h and �x are low), and/or the pioneering drug is very cheap to produce. Second, the physician prescribes the new drug to all patients if the price p1 is low enough. This is the case if p1 is so low that it is optimal to treat patient x0 with the new drug. The cut-o¤ value pall below which all patients are treated with (x1;h1) is characterized by b(h1 � l jx1 �x0j)�pall = b(h0 � l jx0 �x0j)� c0; that is, pall � c0 + b(�h � l�x): Given the expression of pall, a given p1 is more likely to be lower than pall for large values of c0, b, and �h, and for low values of l and �x (i.e., when the di¤erence between 9 the patient who pro�ts more from each drug is low). We note that pall = pmax if x1 = x0: Finally, the physician prescribes each drug to a subset of the patients for p1 2� pall;pmax � . To identify the market for each drug, consider �rst the case where x1 > x0. Thetwodrugsprovidethesamebene�ts toapatientof type ~x 2 (x0;x1) if b(h0 � l(~x�x0))� c0 = b(h1 � l(x1 � ~x))�p1. That is, the type of the indi¤erent patient is ~x � x0 + (l�x ��h) 2l + (p1 � c0) 2bl : The physician prescribes treatment (x0;h0) at a price c0 to those patients whose type lies in the interval [0; ~x); whereas patients with a type in the interval [~x;1] are treated with (x1;h1) at a price p1: Similarly, for p1 2 � pall;pmax � and x1 < x0 the indi¤erent patient is ~x � x0 � (l�x ��h) 2l � (p1 � c0) 2bl and the markets for the new drug and the pioneer are [0; ~x] and (~x;1], respectively. 4 The Optimal Pricing Policy In this section we study the optimal price decision of �rm 1 if, as a result of the innovation process, a new drug with characteristics (x1;h1) has been achieved. Firm 1�s incentive to price high or low depends on the drug di¤erences in terms of vertical characteristics (both in quality, measured by �h; and in marginal cost, measured by�c), andhorizontal characteristics (measuredbythedistance intype�x). Thestrength of the incentivesalsodependsonthe sizeof the submarket (the subsetof patients) inwhich the innovative �rm more directly competes with the pioneering drug. If x1 is on the right of x0 (i.e., x1 > x0), then the competition is �ercer on the right of x0 than on the left of x0. That is, the size of the submarket in which �rm 1 directly challenges the pioneering drug is 1�x0. Similarly, if x1 < x0, the competition is more intense to the left of x0, that is, in a submarket of size x0. We denote by M the size of this submarket: M � 1�x0 if x1 > x0 and M � x0 if x1 < x0. We also denote M � 1 if x1 = x0 (although M does not play any role when �x = 0). Proposition 1 summarizes the price decision of the pharmaceutical �rm. Except for the region of parameters where there is no room for the �rm to make pro�ts, the new drug is always o¤ered at a price in the interval � pall;pmax � : For convenience, we de�ne pint � 1 2 � c0 + c1 � + blM � 1 2 b(l�x ��h); the candidate price for an interior solution. 10 In Proposition 1, we also use the function g(�x), which is de�ned as follows: g(�x) � �x +2 � 2�M �2 p 1�M � if �x > p 1�M � (1�M) � (1+M ��x) (1�M +�x) �x otherwise. The function g(�x) is increasing, continuously di¤erentiable and ful�lls g(�x = 0) = 0. Finally, as �h and �c have similar e¤ects and as they often appear together in the mathematical expressions, we denote the composite e¤ect of these two vertical variables as �y � �h � 1 b �c: The parameter �y can be interpreted as a measure of the di¤erences in cost-e¤ectiveness between the new drug and the pioneering one. The larger the value of �y the more cost-e¤ective the new drug is compared to the pioneer. Proposition 1 The optimal price decision p1� of �rm 1 and its pro�ts �1(p1�) are as follows: Region a: If �y � �l�x then the new drug is not prescribed: p1� = c1 and �1(c1) = 0. Region b: If �y 2 (�l�x; lg (�x)) then the new drug replaces the pioneer for a subset of patients. If in addition Region b.i: M � 1 2l (�y +3l�x) then p1� = pmax and �1(pmax) = b(M ��x)(�y + l�x) : Region b.ii: M < 1 2l (�y +3l�x) then p1� = pint and �1(pint) = b 2l � lM + 1 2 (�y � l�x) �2 : Region c: If �y � lg (�x) then the new drug takes over the entire market: p1� = pall; and �1(pall) = b(�y � l�x): The optimal pro�t function �1 is continuous in �x;�h, and �c: Wenowo¤ersome intuitions forProposition1. Whendi¤erences inthecost-e¤ectiveness between the new drug and the pioneer are very negative, that is, for low values of �y, there is no price above the marginal cost under which �rm 1 can sell its drug. More 11 x h 10 x0 Reg c p1* = pall h0 Reg b.ii p1* = pint b.i pmax Reg b.i p1* = pmax b.ii pint Reg a p1* = c1 Figure 2: Optimal pricing policy by �rm 1 in the drug space (x;h) when c1 = c0: precisely, in Region a, where the �aggregate�di¤erence �y + l�x between the two drugs is not positive, �rm 1 makes zero pro�t. On the contrary, in Region c the cost-e¤ectiveness of the new drug far outperforms that of the pioneer and �rm 1 decides to set a price for which the new drug is prescribed to all patients. In this case, the price that allows the �rm to serve the entire market pall is large enough so that for the �rm it is worth setting pall instead of increasing the price further and losing some patients. Finally, for intermediate values of �y (Region b, which only exists if �x > 0), the optimal price decision by �rm 1 depends on the size of submarket M. If M is su¢ ciently large, then �rm 1 sets the maximum price compatible with selling the drug pmax because the number of patients that are treated with the new drug under this price is fairly large. In contrast, for low values of M; �rm 1 would sell the drug to too few patients at pmax and, therefore, it prefers to cut the price and it sets pint. Figure 2 represents the optimal pricing policy by the innovative �rm for every combi- nation of (x1;h1) ; for a given value of �c; b and l: The �gure is drawn for �c = 0: For a positive (resp. negative) �c, all the �gure would move upwards (resp. downwards) in a proportion 1 b �c. Figure 2 is not symmetric with respect to the vertical x0 because, in this example, x0 6= 1 2 : It isworthnoticingthatalthoughtheoptimalpricedecisionp1� of�rm1 is continuously increasing in the quality of the drug (i.e., in �y) inside each region, it is neither continuous nor increasingwhen�y moves fromRegionbtoRegionc. At theborderof the tworegions, 12 where �y = lg (�x), pmax > pall (in Region b.i) and pint > pall (in Region b.ii). Therefore, the price p1� decreases from either pmax or pint to pall if a marginal increase in �h moves the drug from Region b to Region c. On the other hand, the price p1� is continuous in �y (and in �x) at the border of the Region b.i and Region b.ii. Finally, the optimal price p1� increases with the horizontal di¤erentiation �x in Region b.i, but decreases with �x in Region b.ii and Region c. Corollary 1 provides some comparative statics of �rm 1�s pro�ts with respect to the level of di¤erentiation between the two drugs, �x and �h: We will use these expressions in section 6 and subsection 7.3 where we compare the private and social incentives to develop a new drug. Corollary 1 The comparative statics of �rm 1�s pro�ts are as follows: Region b.i: �1 is increasing and linear in �y. It is a concave function in �x; increasing up to �x = 1 2l (lM ��y) and decreasing afterwards. Region b.ii: �1 is increasing and convex in �y and it is decreasing and convex in �x: Region c: �1 is increasing and linear in �y and it is decreasing and linear in �x: Corollary 1 shows that the pro�ts of the innovative �rm are always larger the more cost-e¤ective the new drug is -that is, the larger the di¤erence h1 �h0 and/or the smaller the di¤erence c1 �c0. Regarding the horizontal characteristic of the drug, �rm 1�s pro�ts are decreasing in �x; except in Region b.i, where they are increasing for low values of �x: 14 5 Bene�t to the Health System The launch of the new drug a¤ects the bene�t of the health system. We now move to discuss the health system surplus in the di¤erent price regions. Recall that in our model the doctor is a perfect agent for the health system. Therefore, he only prescribes the new drug when the surplus of the health system is higher than, or equal to, the surplus obtained using the pioneer drug. We denote by �CS the gain 14An increase in the horizontal di¤erentiation between the two drugs has two opposite e¤ects on the pro�ts of �rm 1. On the one hand, for a given price, the market share of �rm 1 decreases because more patients prefer the pioneering drug, which has a negative impact on the pro�ts of the �rm. On the other hand, a larger di¤erentiation allows the �rm to increase the price, which may have a positive impact on its pro�ts. In relative terms, the positive e¤ect of the price is less and less important as the demand for the new drug decreases, that is, as the horizontal di¤erentiation increases. In our model, the positive e¤ect only outweighs the negative one when �x is small. 13 in patient health, net of the price, as a consequence of the launch of the new drug. Proposition 2 provides the expressions for �CS in the regions identi�ed in Proposition 1. Proposition 2 Given the optimal pricing policy p1� of �rm 1; the variation of the health system surplus �CS due to the launch of the new drug is: Region a: �CS(c1) = 0. Region b.i: �CS(pmax) = 0: Region b.ii: �CS(pint) = b 16l (�y +3l�x �2lM)(�y �5l�x +6lM) : Region c: �CS(pall) = bl�x (2M ��x). Some interesting insights can be extracted from Proposition 2. In the scenario where the new drug is sold at pmax (Region b.i), total surplus is the same before and after the launch of the new drug. The reason is that the �rm charges the largest potential price, pmax; and it therefore extracts all the surplus from the patients that in equilibrium are prescribed the new drug. In contrast, in Region b.ii, the �rm decides to charge pint < pmax to attract some new patients and, thus, the health system surplus increases when the new drug is marketed. Finally, in the scenario where drug 1 takes over the market (Region c) the health system also bene�ts from the launch of the new drug when �x > 0. In this case, the health advantages of the new drug outweighs the larger price charged by the innovative �rm, so that the health system ends up strictly better o¤. We also provide some comparative statics of the health system surplus with respect to the level of di¤erentiation of the two drugs, �x and �y: Corollary 2 The comparative statics of the health system surplus are as follows: Regions a and b.i: �CS does not change with �y or �x: Region b.ii: �CS is increasing in �y: It is increasing up to �x = 115l (14lM ��y) and then decreasing in �x. Region c: �CS is independent of �y and it is increasing in �x: Moreover, �CS is continuous at the border between Region b.i and Region b.ii but it discontinuously increases when �y increases (or �x decreases) and the drug moves from Region b to Region c. Corollary 2 shows that the gains derived by the health system from the launch of the new drug depend on the cost-e¤ectiveness of this drug as compared to the pioneering drug (i.e., on �y) only in Region b.ii. In this region, the higher the cost-e¤ectiveness 14 (either due to advantages in quality or costs) of the new drug, the higher the gain in the surplus. In the other regions, a larger cost-e¤ectiveness of the drug is fully translated into a higher price. Notice that health system surplus is certainly more sensitive to the horizontal characteristic �x. In particular, it tends to be increasing in �x; except in the region where the new drug replaces the pioneer for some patients (Region b.ii), where the health system surplus is decreasing for high values of �x. As �x increases, the innovative �rm cannot appropriate all the surplus through a higher price because its market would be too reduced. 6 Private versus Social Incentives Before analyzing the innovation stage (in section 7), we brie�y discuss here the di¤erence in incentives for R&D between the innovative �rm and a social planner who takes into account the sum of the health system surplus and the �rm�s bene�ts. R&D incentives in our model come from the bene�ts that the parties involved derive from the launching of the potential new drug. To discuss the di¤erence between private and social R&D incentives, it is worth noting that the innovative �rm and the health system have di¤erent preferences regarding the characteristics of their best drug, given the pioneering drug on the market. Figure 3 represents the comparative statics of �rm 1�s pro�ts and health system surplus with respect to vertical and horizontal changes in the new drug as compared to the pioneer (corollaries 1 and 2).15 In general, the �rm cares a great deal about increasing the quality of the drug, either through a more e¤ective or a less costly drug, whereas the health system (as it takes the price into account) only bene�ts from the launching of a better-quality drug if such a drug is well-suited to those patients far from x0 (Region b.ii). Additionally, the pro�ts of the innovative �rm decrease with the degree of horizontal di¤erentiation between the two drugs, except when the di¤erentiation is small and the quality of the two drugs is similar (the left-hand part of Region b.i). On the contrary, the health system always bene�ts if new drugs focus on patients for whom the e¤ectiveness of the old drug is low. Figure 3 helps us to better understand the di¤erence between incentives to innovate for the �rm and for a social planner. For example, if the innovative �rm could launch a drug through a deterministic process then it would have an incentive to choose a drug with a higher quality but the same horizontal characteristic as the pioneering drug. In fact, if the new drug were available at no cost (or at a low cost), the optimal drug for �rm 1 would 15Figure 3 only represents the comparative statics for drugs on the right-hand side of x0; for those drugs on the left-hand side of x0 the comparative statics are similar. Moreover, the �gure does not point out the e¤ects that are zero. For example, in Region c, �CS is independent of �y and the �gure does not include information about the behavior of �CS with respect to �y in that region. 15 x h 10 x0 h0 Π1 ∆y & ∆CS ∆y CS Escriviu una equació aquí. Δy Π1 ∆x & ∆CS ∆x CS Escriviu una equació aquí. Δy Π1 ∆y CS Escriviu una equació aquí. Δy Π1 ∆x & ∆CS ∆x CS Escriviu una equació aquí. Δy Π1 ∆y CS Escriviu una equació aquí. Δy Π1 ∆x CS Escriviu una equació aquí. Δy O1 OCS OW ∆CS jumps up htop 1/2 Figure 3: Comparative statics and most preferred drugs in the drug space (x;h): be O1 = (x0;htop) in Figure 3, where htop is the highest possible quality. In contrast, consumers prefer drugs that are horizontally di¤erentiated from the pioneering drug. In terms of consumer surplus, the optimal drug would be OCS, the farthest from x0 in the horizontal dimension and at the border of Region c. Finally, if we de�ne the increase in social welfare as the sum of �rm 1�s pro�ts and the increase in the health system surplus,16 that is, �W � �1 +�CS, then balancing both �rm and consumer interests, the optimal drug from a total welfare point of view would be OW in Figure 3. The drug OW improves upon the pioneering drug as much as possible in the vertical dimension and it is also horizontally di¤erentiated from the pioneering drug, although the optimal di¤erentiation is far from the maximal. In fact, the drug OW would be horizontally located at 1=2 since this is the drug type that minimizes the side-e¤ects of the whole population of patients. 7 A Model of Pharmaceutical Innovation In this section we analyze the �rst stage of our game, the innovation stage, where �rm 1 chooses its R&D investment to maximize its expected pro�t. The innovation strategy of the �rm involves both the type of innovative process that it wants to adopt and the level of the resources invested in that process. We now describe a typology of drugs and 16We have assumed that the pioneering drug is sold at its marginal cost. Thus, the �rm (or any of the �rms) selling drug 0 always has zero pro�ts. 16 innovation processes and then discuss the �rm�s innovation decision. 7.1 Me-Too versus Breakthrough Drugs In the pharmaceutical industry, a crucial distinction is made between me-too and break- through innovations. The traditional distinction between these two types of innovation relies on the mechanism of the action of the drugs. However, several voices in the phar- maceutical industry have called for the adoption of a broader perspective when evaluating innovation in medicines.17 Our interpretation is that the di¤erence between me-too and breakthrough innovations rests on the distance between the new drug and the pioneer at either the horizontal axis and/or the vertical one. A me-too innovation represents a small change for some (or all) patients either in terms of quality of treatment, cost savings or side e¤ects. For example, a me-too innovation may open the possibility of administering smaller or fewer doses, or it might imply a slightly less invasive delivery (which we inter- pret as a small increase in y).18 A me-too innovation may also cause slightly lower side e¤ects for a subpopulation of patients (a small change in x).19 In contrast, a breakthrough innovation ensures a signi�cant increase in the quality of the new drug or a drug whose characteristics make it well-suited to patients who could not be well treated under the existing treatment.20 7.2 Incremental versus Radical Innovation Processes A �rm seeking a me-too or a breakthrough innovation would rely on di¤erent processes. In this sense, we de�ne an incremental innovation process as a process aiming at a me- too innovation with respect to the existing drug.21 Similarly, when the process pursues a signi�cant improvement (for all or a subpopulation of patients), or a substantial cost reduction as compared to the old drug, then we say that the innovation process is radical. 17See the report by Mestre-Ferrandiz, Mordoh, and Sussex (2012) for a thorough discussion of the nature of innovation in medicines. 18Insulin pens, for instance, are minimally invasive and have largely superseded the conventional insulin syringe. 19The antihistamine Clarinex (desloratidine), for instance, is a small variation of Claritin (loratidine) that has lower side e¤ects for those people with severe allergies and/or accompanying chronic respiratory problems. 20For instance, Prilosep, based on the �rst proton pump inhibitor (omeprazole), was considered a breakthrough. It proved to be more e¤ective than histamine-2 receptor antagonists to the management of peptic ulcer diseases. 21Sometimes, follow-on drugs are simply the natural outcome of simultaneous research programs into the same therapeutic target (diMasi and Paquette, 2004). In other cases, they are the result of an intentionally imitative research program (Garnier, 2008). The approach adopted in this paper is best suited to this second view of the innovation process. 17 Formally, an incremental innovation process (which we will denote by the sub-index in) pursues a drug with a small �x or �y whereas a radical innovation process (denoted by the sub-index ra) aims at a drug with a large �x and/or �y. 7.3 A Simple Model of Innovation In this subsection we propose a highly stylized model of R&Dinvestment with uncertainty. We assume that the result of the innovation process is uncertain and its outcome can only be poorly predicted, if at all. The uncertainty is greater for groundbreaking processes. There are two types of innovation strategies available to the pharmaceutical �rm. An incremental innovation process can lead to a drug that is similar to the pioneering drug, in the sense that it would have the same horizontal (or vertical) characteristic, that is, x1 = x0 (or y1 = y0) and a minor improvement in quality (or small di¤erences in side e¤ects).22 On the other hand, a radical innovation process results, in the case of success, in a drug (x1;y1) where y1 is random but higher than y0 and x1 is also random. This re�ects the idea that the innovative process represents a signi�cant departure from the old drug. Moreover, the side e¤ects may also be very di¤erent from those of the pioneering drug. We depict the two categories of processes in Figure 4.23 The crucial di¤erences between the two categories of processes is that the distribution of the outcome of a radical innovation process takes values on a large support and has a greater variance, which leads to higher chances of getting a breakthrough drug (Girotra, Terwiesch, and Ulrich, 2007; Singh and Fleming, 2010). Let us �rst consider incremental innovation processes. If an investment I is realized then there is a probability qin(I), increasing in I, of obtaining an innovation, while no drug is obtained with probability 1 � qin(I). If it is a vertical innovation process then, in the case of success, the new drug has characteristics (x1;y1), with x1 = x0 and y1 is distributed according to the density function fin(y1) that takes values in the interval [y0 � ver;y0 + �ver] ; where ver and �ver are small (in the sense that the new drug cannot be much more cost-e¤ective than the pioneer). Thus, for all I invested in a vertical 22Sometimes the incremental innovation process is developed by the same �rm that holds the patent for the pioneering drug in order to better compete with those �rms o¤ering generic versions of the drug once the patent has expired. Examples are Prilosec and Nexium, aimed at decreasing the amount of acid produced in the stomach. In 2001 the patent for Prilosec (which has omeprazole as an active ingredient), owned by AstraZeneca, expired and several generic versions of omeprazole entered the market. The same year, Nexium, whose active ingredient is esomeprazole (a version of omeprazole whose molecular orientation is left-handed), was also patented by AstraZeneca (our �rm 1). 23Note that our innovation process in the vertical dimension di¤ers notably from the vertical innovation analyzed by Bardey et al. (2010), where a vertical innovation is always synonymous with a breakthrough innovation. 18 x h 10 x0 h0 Vertical incremental IP Radical IP Horizontal incremental IP Figure 4: Incremental and radical innovation processes. incremental innovation process, expected private pro�ts �in(I) and social welfare Win(I) are �in(I) = qin(I) Z [y0� ver;y0+�ver] �1(x = x0;y)fin(y)dy; Win(I) = qin(I) Z [y0� ver;y0+�ver] � �1(x = x0;y)+�CS(x = x0;y) � fin(y)dy, where �1(x;y) and �CS(x;y) denote the �rm 1�s pro�ts and the increase in consumer surplus when the new drug has characteristics (x;y). The expressions for pro�ts and social welfare are similar for horizontal incremental processes. In this case, the R&D investment leads, in the case of success, to a drug (x1;y1) with y1 = y0 and x1 is distributed according to a density function hin(x) that takes values in the interval [x0 � hor;x0 + �hor] ; where hor and �hor are positive and small (in the sense that the new drug would be suitable for similar types of patient than the pioneer drug). Proposition 3 compares private and social incentives to adopt an incremental innova- tion process. Proposition 3 For an incremental innovation process pursuing a me-too drug, the opti- mal investment decision for �rm 1; I1in; and for the social planner, I � in; coincide: I 1 in = I � in. The intuition for this result derives from the fact that, for drugs close to the pioneering drug, the innovative �rm is always able to extract all the health system surplus. Consider a vertical innovation process. If it is successful and the drug has a characteristic y1 > y0, 19 �rm 1 gets some monopoly power because the new drug lies in Region c. The �rm will impact all the extra quality of the drug into a higher price and it is able to extract all the health system surplus (�CS = 0 in Region c when �x = 0). As the health system never bene�ts from the new drug, social and private incentives to innovate coincide as do their optimal investment levels. The intuition for the horizontal incremental process is similar: when the realization of ~x1 is close to x0; �rm 1 sets the maximum price that the health authority is willing to pay and it extracts all the surplus (�CS = 0). We now consider a radical process. If an investment I is made then there is a prob- ability qra(I), increasing in I, of success at getting a new drug (x1;y1).24 If the process is successful, the new drug has characteristics (x1;y1), where y1 takes values in the inter- val [y0 +�;y0 +�] and x1 takes values in the interval [0;1] ; where � can be positive or negative, � is positive, � < � and (x1;y1) is distributed according to a density function fra(x 1;y1).25 Therefore, expected private and social bene�ts for each level of investment I in a radical innovation process are �ra(I) = qra(I) Z [0;1] Z [y0+�;y0+�] �1(x1;y1)fra(x 1;y1)dy1dx1 and Wra(I) = qra(I) Z [0;1] Z [y0+�;y0+�] � �1(x1;y1)+�CS(x1;y1) � fra(x 1;y1)dy1dx1: Proposition 4 states the di¤erence between private and social incentives to invest in a radical innovation process. Proposition 4 For a radical innovation process pursuing a breakthrough drug the optimal investment decision for �rm 1; I1ra; is smaller than that for the social planner, I � ra: I 1 ra < I�ra. A radical innovation process leads, with a certain probability, to a drug that improves the health system surplus. First, the health system bene�ts when the process is successful if the new drug lies in Region c and x1 6= x0. In this case, the innovative �rm cannot appropriate all the surplus: at the maximum price at which it can serve all the market (pall), some patients are strictly better-o¤ with the new drug than with the pioneer. Similarly, if the successful process leads to a drug in Region b.ii then the interior price pint allows the health system to bene�t. A social planner would also take into account 24Typically, qra(I) would be (much) lower than qin(I) for any I: 25The function fra(x1;y1) may not take values for some intervals of characteristics. Figure 4, for instance, illustrates a process that never leads to very extreme drugs on the horizontal axis. In this �gure, � > 0 but this is not necessary in general. 20 this surplus that the �rm cannot extract from the health system and it would choose a higher investment level than the �rm. As shown in propositions 3 and 4, the �rm fully appropriates all the bene�ts derived from me-too drugs, whereas the health system can appropriate some surplus if a radical innovation process goes successfully. Proposition 5 uses these results to state the main policy implication of our analysis of the innovation incentives. Proposition 5 If �rm 1 can only adopt one category of innovation process (due, for instance, to �nancial or capacity constraints) then: (i) There are cases where �rm 1 prefers to adopt an incremental innovation process whereas the social welfare is larger when adopting a radical innovation process. (ii) There is no case where �rm 1 prefers to adopt a radical innovation process whereas adopting an incremental innovation process would generate a higher welfare. Proposition 5 provides some theoretical support to the social concern that pharma- ceutical �rms devote too many resources to market me-too drugs and too few to launch breakthrough drugs. Our model suggests that this disalignment between private and so- cial incentives is due to the lack of private incentives to pursue radical innovations. While private and social incentives to devote resources to pursue me-too drugs are aligned be- cause the �rm is able to appropriate all the bene�ts through the price, this is not true for �rst-in-class drugs. In the latter case, the �rm sets a price for the new drug which is low enough to serve all (or a good part of) the market and the consumers bene�t from it. 8 The Physician is a Perfect Agent for the Patients In the previous sections we have assumed that the demand for the drugs is decided by a physician who prescribes the drug that provides the highest bene�t to the whole health system. In this section we discuss the robustness of the results when the physician acts as a perfect agent for the patients, prescribing the drug that maximizes the patients�utility. Thus, the physician does not consider the whole cost of the drugs; he only internalizes the cost disbursed by the patient.26 We analyze two di¤erent reimbursement regimes: one in which patients pay a proportion of the price of the drugs not covered by health insurance (that is, there is a copayment), and a second one in which the old drug is fully �nanced by the health authority while the new one is not covered by health insurance. 26If the physician makes choices considering patient utility and health authority costs then we would be in the framework analyzed in the previous sections: the physician internalizes the whole price, regardless of whether they are paid by the health authority or by the patients themselves. 21 8.1 Patient Cost-Sharing of the Drugs Suppose that there is a copayment � 2 (0;1] so that patients are required to pay �p if the price of the drug is p. Then, the bene�t to the health system of treating patient x with drug (x̂; ĥ) and paying price p̂ for this drug is H(x; x̂; ĥ; p̂) while patients�utility, which determines the physician�s prescription of drugs, is U(x; x̂; ĥ; p̂) � b � ĥ� l jx̂�xj � ��p̂ = � � b � � ĥ� l jx̂�xj � � p̂ � : If the physician follows the function U(x; x̂; ĥ; p̂) instead of H(x; x̂; ĥ; p̂) to make his choices, then all the results concerning physician prescription choices and �rm 1�s pricing decisions for the case � = 1 (Proposition 1) would remain valid for any � by replacing, in the expressions of pmax, pall, and pint, the parameter b by b � . That is, the results in a model where patients pay a proportion of the prices are similar to those in a model without copayment where the marginal utility of being healthy is higher. Since sign � @p1 @� � = �sign � @p1 @b � , and pmax, pall, and pint are all increasing in b, the price of the new drug will be higher the lower the copayment �.27 In order to examine the results more deeply we need to distinguish two cases. In the case c1 = c0 (i.e., �c = 0), the regions in the drug space depicted in Figure 2 are independent of the parameter b. Therefore, at the optimal prices, the new and the old drugs are prescribed to the same patients for any value of �, although the price for drug 1 is larger as � decreases. This implies that, for �c = 0, an increase in the copayment (that is, a decrease in �) leads to a lower bene�t to the health system and to a higher pro�t to �rm 1. However, such increase in the copayment has no impact on total welfare because changes in � only induce changes in the monetary transfers between the health system and the innovative �rm. Thus, the optimal drug for �rm 1 would still be O1 (see Figure 3), the drug OW would still be optimal from a total welfare point of view (de�ned as the sum of the bene�ts of the health system and �rm 1�s pro�ts), and the point OCS would correspond to the optimal drug for the patient (that is, the drug that maximizes the function U). In the case c1 > c0 (�c > 0), the borders of the regions in Figure 2 shift vertically down, and the new drug is prescribed to more patients with than without copayment. Here, the increase in the monetary transfer from the health authority to �rm 1 due to the copayment comes combined with a misallocation of drugs from the health system 27This extension also corresponds to the case where there is no copayment but the physician gives di¤erent weights to the patient health (a weight of 1) and to the drugs�price (a weight of a). Equivalently, the model corresponds to a situation where the physician takes into account both the patients�utility and the pro�ts of the health authority and puts less weight on the second term. 22 perspective. The location of the optimal drugs O1, OW , and OCS in the drug space would be the same as in the case �c = 0 when Figure 3 is drawn using the new (shifted-down) borders. Finally, given that equilibrium prices are higher when the physician is a perfect agent for patients subject to copayment than when he is a perfect agent for the health system, the pro�ts of the innovative �rm are higher: the three functions �1(pmax), �1(pint); and �1(pall) are linear in b; hence, they increase as � decreases. Therefore, �rm 1�s incentives to innovate are also higher. This result holds both for incremental and radical innovation processes. When �c = 0, the regions in Figure 2 do not vary with � and, given the linearity of the pro�t functions in b, the trade-o¤ between the two types of processes is una¤ected: the �rm has relatively too many incentives to pursue an incremental rather than a radical innovation process. If �c > 0, low values of � imply that drugs close to the pioneer (in terms of h and x) that would not have been marketed without copayments are now prescribed. Therefore, �rm 1 has a stronger incentive to develop drugs whose additional therapeutic value is low, which suggests that it is yet more inclined to devote resources to incremental rather than to radical innovation processes. 8.2 The New Drug is Not Subsidized Suppose now that the health authority only covers the old drug, so that patients have to pay the full price of the new one, should it be prescribed. Thus, patients�utility when treated with the old drug is U(x;x0;h0;0) = b � h0 � l ��x0 �x��� ; while it takes the form U(x;x1;h1;p1) = b � h1 � l ��x1 �x����p1 when patients are prescribed the new drug. Then, physician prescription choices and pricing decisions by the �rm are obtained by considering the analysis conducted in the previous sections for the particular case c0 = 0: Both the physician and the �rm behave as if the price of the pioneering drug were 0. Since pmax, pall, and pint are all decreasing in c0, �rm 1 is induced to choose lower prices than in our initial model. Moreover, looking at Figure 2, reductions in c0 make the borders of the regions shift vertically up and, at the optimal prices, the new drug is prescribed to fewer patients as compared to the situation in which the cost of the pioneering drug is also taken into account. Thus, in this case, the �rm obtains lower pro�ts and it has lower incentives to innovate. However, its relative incentives to adopt radical innovation processes are now larger because me-too drugs do not provide any pro�ts. 23 9 Conclusion The proliferation of follow-on drugs is nowadays the subject of some debate. Proponents of follow-on drugs highlight that some of them are therapeutically superior to the pioneer. Moreover, patients and physicians bene�t from the access to a larger pool of therapeutic choices. But there are also voices warning that imitative drug development poses a threat, as it could reduce the incentive for �rms to develop �rst-in-class drugs. This paper seeks to contribute to this social debate. We have constructed a simple model where drugs are vertically and horizontally di¤erentiated. After studying the opti- mal price decision of a �rm introducing a new drug, we have analyzed the �rm incentives to invest in R&D when a pioneer drug is already on the market. In particular, we have disentangled the quest for breakthrough drugs from the search of follow-on drugs. In our model, both breakthrough and follow-on drugs are socially valuable. While private and social incentives to invest in R&D processes coincide for incremental innovation ventures, private incentives are lower than social ones when the process is rad- ical. Moreover, we interestingly �nd that pharmaceutical �rms are too prone to devoting resources (if scarce) to pursue incremental innovation processes so as to fully appropriate all the bene�ts derived from me-too drugs. Thus, these results somehow reproduce the social concern that the main problem regarding the rapid increase of me-too drugs is that they diminish the incentives for innovation in pioneering drugs. Our conclusions are obtained under some simplifying assumptions; we now discuss some of them. First, we have assumed that the pioneering drug is sold on the market at its marginal price. This hypothesis �ts well in markets where the patent for the pioneering drug has already expired and several generic drugs have been introduced. However, there are other markets where the pioneering drug is sold by one �rm at a price over its marginal cost. In such cases, the incumbent �rm may react to the launch of a new drug by reducing the price of its drug. Price competition between the two �rms will be �ercer the lower the horizontal distance between the two drugs. This seems to suggest that under price competitionthe incentivesof the innovative�rmtodi¤erentiate itself in thehorizontal axis increase, which may translate into more incentives to adopt radical innovation processes. In addition to this, if the patent covering the pioneering drug has not expired yet, an incremental innovation would be more likely to infringe on the patent than a radical one, which would further increase the �rm�s incentives to invest in radical innovations. Secondly, our innovative �rm freely chooses the price of the new drug. However, reg- ulations worldwide to control excessive market power of pharmaceutical �rms abound. It would be worth investigating whether price regulations (such as price ceilings or reference prices) would be an e¤ective tool to align the incentives of the �rm and the society. Price ceilings in our model, for instance, would undermine private incentives to innovate. Given 24 that the di¤erence in prices between the new and the pioneering drugs is higher for radical than for incremental innovations, the price ceilings should have a larger negative impact on radical than on incremental processes. Our analysis also suggests that price ceilings would have a larger impact on vertical rather than on horizontal innovations. Since verti- cal improvements allow the pharmaceutical �rm to charge higher prices, the �rm will be more constrained by the regulated price if it launches a new drug that is an improvement over the pioneer in the vertical dimension. Regarding reference prices, the restriction on prices might concern only those drugs that are close to the pioneer. In that case, the incentives for radical innovations may be less a¤ected by the regulation than those for incremental innovations as more di¤erentiated new drugs manage to charge a larger price and obtain higher pro�ts. Third, our results have been obtained under the assumption of risk neutrality for all the players involved. However, it is natural to think that pharmaceutical �rms exhibit a certain degree of risk aversion. If we relax the risk neutrality assumption to accommodate more realism, our main result would be reinforced as risk aversion would make �rms even more prone to adopt (safer) incremental innovations. Finally, in our model there is only one innovative �rm so we have not considered com- petition in research (in Bardey et al., 2010, several laboratories compete in the research sector of the pharmaceutical industry). If �rms compete in adopting incremental innova- tion processes, they will overinvest in comparison to the socially e¢ cient level, leading to more me-too drugs than the socially optimal number. At the same time, the innovative �rm will also increase its investment in radical innovation processes under the pressure of competition. And this could lead to investment levels closer to the socially optimal one. Thus, if �rms compete in research, the result that they devote too many resources to conducting R&D activities that lead to incremental innovations still holds. In this paper, we have identi�ed a problem of misalignment between private and so- cial incentives to innovate that results in a bias toward me-too drugs. A more normative analysis, in which di¤erent solutions to the problem can be addressed, is left for further research. Such policies could include direct R&D tax incentives, nonpro�t tax exemp- tions for research institutions, public �nancing of R&D activity, as well as many other instruments that attempt to stimulate various forms of research and innovative activity. Our analysis suggests that the optimal R&D policy should focus on providing incentives for radical innovation ventures. Finally, although there seems to be a great social awareness of the proliferation of me-too drugs, to date, economists have done little theoretical research on this issue. We hope that this study opens the door to further research into that area and that it will also stimulate the ongoing debate over the excessive launching of me-too drugs. 25 References [1] Angell, M., 2004. The truth about the drug companies. New York: Random House. [2] Antoñanzas, F., Juárez-Castelló, C., Rodríguez-Ibeas, R., 2011. 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Pharmaceuticals, Incremental Innovation and Market Exclusivity. Mimeo, Toulouse School of Economics. 10 Appendix Proof of Proposition 1. We distinguish three zones of parameters: c1 � pmax; c1 2 � pall;pmax � , and c1 � pall. We note that c1 � pmax if and only if �c � b(l�x + �h), i.e., �y � �l�x. Similarly, c1 � pall if and only if �c � b(�h � l�x), i.e., �y � l�x. We analyze the optimal �rm�s pricing in the three zones. Zone �y� �l�x: Given that c1 � pmax, there is no price above marginal cost at which the physician prescribes the new drug to some patients. Therefore, the best strategy for �rm 1 is to not sell its drug. Zone �y2(�l�x; l�x) : In this zone, c1 > pall and �rm 1 cannot select a price at which it makes a pro�t by selling to all the patients. If x1 > x0, the �rm chooses the price p1 that maximizes its pro�ts, taking into account that its drug will be prescribed to those patients with characteristic x 2 [~x;1). Hence, p1 2 [c1; pmax] maximizes �1(p1) = (p1 � c1)(1� ~x) = (p1 � c1) � 1�x0 � (l�x ��h) 2l � (p1 � c0) 2bl � : 27 We write the expression for the pro�ts as �1(p1) = (p1 � c1) � M � (l�x ��h) 2l � (p1 � c0) 2bl � , which is also valid for the situation where x1 < x0 (if x1 = x0, this zone is empty).28 The �rst-order and second-order conditions are �1p1(p 1) = M � (l�x ��h) 2l � (2p1 � (c0 + c1)) 2bl ; �1p1p1(p 1) = �1 bl < 0: The interior candidate to solution p1 satis�es �1 p1 (p1) = 0 and is given by p1 = p int = 1 2 � c0 + c1 � + blM � 1 2 b(l�x ��h): The concavity of the function �1(p1;�x;�h) implies that the candidate pint is the optimum if and only if it lies in the interval [c1;pmax]. First, pint > c1 if and only if 1 2 �c + blM � 1 2 b(l�x ��h) > 0, that is, �y > l�x � 2lM. Given that M � �x, the previous inequality is implied by �y > �l�x, which is satis�ed in this zone. Second, pint < pmax = c0 +b(l�x +�h) if and only if 1 2 �c + blM � 1 2 b(l�x ��h) < b(l�x +�h), from which it easily follows that pint < pmax if and only if M < 1 2l (3l�x +�y). Therefore, in this zone, p1� = pint if M < 1 2l (3l�x +�y) and p1� = pmax otherwise (p1 = c cannot be optimal because pro�ts would be zero). Zone �y� l�x: In this zone, �rm 1 can set the price pall that would allow it to attract all patients in [0;1] : It can also choose any price in the interval p1 2 � pall;pmax � , in which case the new drug will be prescribed to a subset of the patients. In this interval, the interior candidate to solution is pint, as in the previous zone. We check the conditions under which pint 2 � pall;pmax � . First, pint > pall if and only if 1 2 (c0 + c1) + blM � 1 2 b(l�x � �h) > c0 + b(�h � l�x); that is, M > 1 2l (�y � l�x): 28If x1 < x0, then ~x = x0 � (l�x ��h) 2l � � p1 � c0 � 2bl = M � (l�x ��h) 2l � � p1 � c0 � 2bl : 28 Note that at p1 = pint, �rm 1 serves a market of size M. However, this cannot be the best pricing strategy for the �rm because it can serve the whole market and obtain larger pro�ts by marginally decreasing the price. Therefore, if M � 1 2l (�y � l�x), setting the price pall and serving the whole market is certainly the optimal decision. Second, as we show in the analysis of Zone �y 2 (�l�x; l�x), pint � pmax if and only if M � 1 2l (3l�x +�y). Thus, for M � 1 2l (3l�x +�y) ; the candidates for solution are pmax and pall; for M 2 � 1 2l (�y � l�x); 12l (3l�x +�y) � the candidates for solution are pint and pall; and for M � 1 2l (�y � l�x), the optimal price is pall. Wenowanalyzetheconditions for�1(pmax) � �1(pall), that is, b(M ��x)(�y + l�x) � b(�y � l�x), or �y � (1+M ��x) (1�M +�x) l�x = lg (�x) : We note that the border �y = lg (�x) always lies in the zone �y � l�x, because b�y � blg (�x) � b(�y � l�x) if and only if g (�x) � �x, which is equivalent to (1+M��x)(1�M+�x) � 1, or M � �x, which holds. Similarly, �1(pint) � �1(pall) if and only if b 2l � lM + 1 2 (�y � l�x) �2 � b(�y � l�x) that, denoting t � (�y � l�x), can be written as � lM + 1 2 t �2 �2lt � 0, that is, f(t) � � t�2l � 2�M +2 p 1�M ��� t�2l � 2�M �2 p 1�M �� � 0: We are interested in the cases where M > 1 2l (�y � l�x) (because pall is certainly optimal otherwise), that is, t < 2lM. The function f(t) satis�es f(0) > 0: Moreover, f(2lM) < 0. Therefore, f(t) � 0 if and only if t is lower than the �rst root, that is, �y � l�x � 2l � 2�M �2 p 1�M � , or �y � l�x +2l � 2�M �2 p 1�M � = lg (�x) : We note that the change in the de�nition of the function g (�x) happens at the point where M = 1 2l (�y + 3l�x) (which separates the regions where either pint or pmax are candidates). Then, the value �x where the change happens is the solution of the following system of equations (in �x and �h): M = 1 2l (�y +3l�x) �y = l�x +2l � 2�M �2 p 1�M � that is, �x = p 1�M � (1�M) ; 29 which is a positive value. The function g (�x), as it is de�ned in the main text just before Proposition 1, is continuous because it is continuous at the point p 1�M�(1�M), and it is also continuously di¤erentiable. Once we have analyzed the optimal price in each of the three zones, it easily follows that the solution is continuous, in the sense that if the optimal price is pall (resp. pmax) in the second zone, then it is also optimal if we decrease �c and enter the third zone. Therefore, the optimal �rm 1�s pricing policy is the one described in the proposition. Finally, it is easy to check that the pro�ts are continuous: (a) over the line �y = 2lM � 3l�x, we have �1(pmax) = �1(pint): (b) If the condition �y = lg (�x) holds we have two cases: (b.1) For g(�x) � (1+M��x)(1�M+�x)�x, � 1(pall) = �1(pmax) and (b.2) for g(�x) � �x +2 � 2�M �2 p 1�M � , then �1(pall) = �1(pint). Proof of Corollary 1. We denote �1(�x;�y) the �rm 1�s pro�ts as a function of �x and �y. In Region b.i, where p1� = pmax: �1�y(�x;�y) = b(M ��x) > 0; � 1 �y�y (�x;�y) = 0: �1�x(�x;�y) = b(lM � (2l�x +�y)), which is positive for �y = �l�x and negative for �y = 2lM �3l�x; �1�x�x(�x;�y) = �2bl < 0: In Region b.ii, where p1� = pint: �1�y(�x;�y) = b 4l (2lM +�y � l�x) > 0; �1�y�y(�x;�y) = bl 4 > 0: �1�x(�x;�y) = � b 4 (2lM +�y � l�x) < 0; �1�x�x(�x;�y) = bl 4 > 0: In Region c, where p1� = pall: �1�y(�x;�y) = b > 0; � 1 �y�y (�x;�y) = 0: �1�x(�x;�y) = �lb < 0; � 1 �x�x (�x;�y) = 0: Proof of Proposition 2. Proofs for Region a and Region b.i are immediate. In Region b.ii the variation in health system surplus, that is, (in case x1 � x0)29 the di¤erence for patients in [~x;1] from being treated with drug (h0;x0) at price c0 and being treated with drug (h1;x1) at price pint; is the sum of the area de�ned by a triangle for [~x;x1] and the area de�ned by a rhomboid for [x1;1]. For the patients in [~x;x1], �CS = 1 2 (x1 � ~x(pint))(bh1 �pint � b(h0 � l(x1 �x0))+ c0) : Substituting ~x(pint) and pint; we have �CS = b 16l (�y +3l�x �2lM) . For the patients in [x1;1], �CS = (1�x1)(bh1 �pint � b(h0 � l(x1 �x0))+ c0) : Substi- tuting pint and using (1�x1) = (M ��x) ; we have �CS = b 2 (M ��x)(�y +3l�x �2lM) . 29The case x1 < x0 is similar. 30 Hence, adding both intervals, we obtain �CS(pint) = b 16l (�y +3l�x �2lM)(�y �5l�x +6lM) : In Region c the variation in the health system surplus is similar to the one previously analyzed, but taking into account that for pall (considering again that x1 > x0) patients in [0;x0] have the same surplus as without the new drug. For the patients in [x0;x1], �CS = 1 2 � x1 �x0 �� bh1 �pall � b � h0 � l � x1 �x0 �� + c0 � : Substituting pall we have �CS = bl�2x. For [x1;1], �CS = (1�x1) � bh1 �pall � b(h0 � l(x1 �x0))+ c0 � : Substituting pall and using (1�x1) = (M ��x) ;we obtain �CS = 2bl�x (M ��x) : Adding the two parts, we have �CS(pall) = bl�x (2M ��x) : Proof of Corollary 2. We denote �CS(�x;�y) the variation in consumer surplus as a function of �x and �y. In Region a and Region b.i all the derivatives are zero. In Region b.ii: �CS�y(�x;�y) = b 8l (�y � l�x +2lM) > b8l (�2l�x +2Ml) > 0: �CS�y�y(�x;�y) = b 8l > 0: �CS�x(�x;�y) = 1 8 (��y �15l�x +14lM) : We note that, at M = 12l (�y +3l�x) ; �CS�x(�x;�y) = 3 4 (�y + l�x) > 0 because �y > �l�x. Moreover, �CS�x(�x;�y) < 1 8 (�14l�x +14lM) : Hence, �CS�x(�x = M;�y) < 0: �CS�x�x(�x;�y) = �158 bl < 0 In Region c: �CS�y(�x;�y) = 0; �CS�y�y(�x;�y) = 0: �CS�x(�x;�y) = 2bl(M ��x) > 0: �CS�x�x(�x;�y) = �2bl < 0: Finally, the behavior of �CS at the borders between regions follows from the behavior of the optimal price p1� that we discussed following Proposition 1. Proof of Proposition 3. In case of a successful project, the new drug (x = x0;y) lies either in Region a (for y � y0) or Region c with x = x0 (for y > y0): In the �rst 31 case (see Proposition 2), �CS(x = x0;y) = �CS(c1) = 0. In the second case, �CS(x = x0;y) = �CS(pall) = bl�x (2M ��x) = 0 because �x = 0: Therefore, �in(I) = Win(I) for all I and the optimal investment levels for the two functions coincide. The argument for a horizontal incremental innovation process is similar because the new drug would lie in Region b.i where �CS(x;y = y0) = �CS(pmax) = 0. Proof of Proposition 4. There is some positive probability that the new drug (x1;y1) lies in Region c with x1 6= x0. Depending on the level of y1, there can also be a positive probability that the new drug lies in Region b.ii). In both regions, �CS(x;y1) > 0: Given that �CS(x;y) � 0 for every new drug, we have d�ra(I) dI < dWra(I) dI for every I, which implies that I1ra < I � ra. Proof of Proposition 5. Denoting by I1Z and I � Z for Z = in, ra the optimal level of investment in a process of type Z for �rm 1 and the social planner, respectively, then �in(I 1 in) = Win(I � in) �ra(I 1 ra) < Wra(I � ra): It may happen that Wra(I � ra) > Win(I � in) = �in(I 1 in) > �ra(I 1 ra) but it can never be the case that Wra(I � ra) < Win(I � in) = �in(I 1 in) < �ra(I 1 ra); which implies the result. 32 CESifo Working Paper No. 5672 Category 11: Industrial Organisation December 2015 Abstract work_2au25gcbsjbyjhlmtdsvefm7ni ---- Sex segregation as policy problem: a gendered policy paradox Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rpgi20 Politics, Groups, and Identities ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpgi20 Sex segregation as policy problem: a gendered policy paradox Elizabeth A. Sharrow To cite this article: Elizabeth A. Sharrow (2021) Sex segregation as policy problem: a gendered policy paradox, Politics, Groups, and Identities, 9:2, 258-279, DOI: 10.1080/21565503.2019.1568883 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2019.1568883 Published online: 21 Jan 2019. 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Sharrow Department of Political Science, Department of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA ABSTRACT 2017 marked the 45th anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a sex non-discrimination policy which remade American education and athletics. Has Title IX fulfilled its promise to end discriminatory and disparate treatment of women in educational institutions? This article places policy in conversation with scholarly debate over how to best tackle persistent sex and gender inequalities, illustrating that the athletic policy sphere both addresses and reproduces sexist practices. It examines the under-appreciated complexity of sex equity politics and suggests the need to question how well public policy addresses inequalities. It argues that we are losing ground in the struggle to end gendered oppression – despite all that it may appear we have gained – because of Title IX’s divergent implementation strategy which integrates women and men in classrooms and segregates them in sports. Rather than vitiating sex discrimination, implementation generated a series of policy ironies, authorizing, rather than challenging the notion that women and men are inherently “different.” In order to continue addressing the ways in which gendered oppression asserts itself – in sex discrimination, in discrimination against trans* people, in gendered harassment and #metoo – we must bring a critical perspective to bear on current equity policy practices. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 27 April 2018 Accepted 5 January 2019 KEYWORDS Title IX; public policy; athletics; sex discrimination; sex segregation; transgender politics Politics of gender inequality: what’s the problem? In June 2012, President Barack Obama offered multiple public statements which cele- brated the 40th anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the sex non-discrimination policy which dramatically altered American educational institutions and their contingent athletic programs.1 President Obama – whose daughters are both young athletes – openly lauded public policy, suggesting that it “helped to make our society more equal in general” (Compton 2012). This positive narrative of policy success was widely promulgated in the media (Whiteside and Roessner 2018) and may, therefore, appear uncontroversial. Scholars from various disciplines demonstrate a plethora of positive impacts of policy implementation, including women’s improved access to higher education (Rose 2018), a nearly 12-fold increase in high school athletic opportunities for girls since the early 1970s (NCAA 2017b), women’s subsequent © 2019 Western Political Science Association CONTACT Elizabeth A. Sharrow sharrow@polsci.umass.edu Department of Political Science, Department of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 200 Hicks Way, Amherst, MA 01003, USA POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 2021, VOL. 9, NO. 2, 258–279 https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2019.1568883 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/21565503.2019.1568883&domain=pdf http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5880-7905 mailto:sharrow@polsci.umass.edu http://www.tandfonline.com increased labor force participation (Stevenson 2010) and improved long-term indepen- dence and health (Clarke and Ayres 2014; Kaestner and Xu 2010). Yet upon deeper reflection, President Obama’s public celebration of Title IX – particu- larly as it is applied to athletic programs in American high schools, colleges, and univer- sities – is peculiar. “Equality,” under Title IX in the realm of sports, exists through segregated boy’s versus girl’s, and men’s versus women’s athletic teams. The paucity of sex integrated athletic teams in interscholastic and intercollegiate athletics is not merely due to custom and tradition. The practice of sex segregation in athletics is “coerced” (McDonagh and Pappano 2007) under Title IX’s policy design. Thus, Obama’s comments were not merely applauding the athletic girls and women who benefit from policy; the first Black American president was openly and proudly celebrating the widespread athletic practice of separate but equal. Separate but ostensibly equal segregated athletic teams for men and boys versus women and girls are pervasive in American high schools and colleges.2 Simultaneously, Title IX remains extremely popular and is commonly framed as a pre-eminent success of modern American feminist movements (Whiteside and Roessner 2018). Political elites as dissimilar as Ralph Nader (2003) and Sarah Palin (2007) join the majority of average Americans who express increasingly high levels of support for the law as applied to ath- letics, in particular (YouGov 2017).3 Our public narrative around Title IX suggests, in short, that while policy remains unevenly implemented across athletic departments such that men and boys persistently enjoy greater athletic participation opportunities (e.g., Yanus and O’Connor 2016), the political battle towards achieving equality should focus on better enforcing the policy as currently designed.4 Neither the public nor our pol- itical leadership openly grapples with the potential impacts of segregation as a non-discri- minatory solution.5 Over 45 years after Congress passed Title IX, what are the consequences of the divergent, yet concurrent approaches of sex segregation in athletics, and sex integration in classrooms for the broader politics of sex and gender?6 How does policy design shape how we think about sex-based inequality? This article begins from the premise that sex segregated athletics in American colleges and high schools must be understood in the broader context of public policy. When sports, under Title IX, are placed in contrast to policy implementation in classroom spaces, policy design for athletics can be rendered curious instead of natural. Core to this analysis is a close read of Title IX’s central non-discrimination clause, “on the basis of sex,” through which policymakers are tasked with crafting equal educational institutions and opportu- nities for women and men. The meaning of “sex,” rather than existing as a given, requires a definition.7 Alongside gender and queer theorists who have long argued that the meanings of “sex” and “gender” are fashioned by our social and medical institutions (e.g., Butler 1993; Fausto-Sterling 2000), this article examines how sex non-discrimination policy design mobilizes that constitutive task through political institutions, and with what consequences. Against the grain of policy success: Title IX’s gendered paradox My analysis illustrates how Title IX’s policy design establishes the meaning of sex built on a gendered paradox. Policy design conceptualizes women and men as (1) distinctive types of people, defined as such through a binary notion of “sex,” who are (2) both “the same” POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 259 (in classrooms, where policy treats them similarly, integrating without regard to sex) and “different” (in sports, where policy segregates them on to separate athletic teams by virtue of sex) under the aegis of non-discrimination policy. On sports teams, but not in classrooms, Title IX’s implementation guidelines divide girls and women from men and boys. Policy design defines sex as a binary category for the purposes of com- petitive athletics, mobilizing this categorical definition to implement the practice of “separate but equal.” Through the extant policy guidelines, sex serves as both the object of focus for policy (i.e., the identity category in classrooms on which differential treatment is prohibited) and the organizational category inherent to implementing it (i.e., the category through which some bodies are differentially treated in sports). Policy design within Title IX thus invokes an embodied, binary definition of sex for athletics, but not classrooms, knitting civil rights policy to binary notions about sexual difference and biology. Several consequences follow from this framework for thinking about Title IX. The paradox suggested in policy design sanctions, rather than challenges, pernicious stereo- types about women’s inferiority. This means that for all that Title IX’s implementation has achieved in increasing opportunity for women, it has simultaneously undermined the goals of full gender equality. Segregation is premised on the perceived “need” for women to be protected from men and their purportedly stronger, faster, larger bodies, in order to achieve their full, competitive athletic potential. As political theorist Iris Marion Young elucidates, this encodes and transmits a confounding message: “Feminine bodily existence is an inhibited intentionality, which simultaneously reaches toward a pro- jected end with an ‘I can’ and withholds its full bodily commitment to that end in a self- imposed ‘I cannot’” (1980, 145). This paradox then produces other “spillover” consequences within, and stretching beyond, Title IX’s policy domain. Chiefly, it reinforces the idea of a sex binary. Dichot- omous understandings of sex are flawed scientifically and injurious both to transgender, intersex, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people (hereafter, “trans*”) as well as – albeit in different ways – to cisgender women.8 The paradox embedded within Title IX fuels a host of intractable and on-going tensions which help to sediment, rather than dis- mantle, many of the unresolved gendered hierarchies at the core of equity policy battles, from gendered equality at work to youth sports.9 Policy suppresses opportunities for direct competition between women and men while reifying the idea that women need to be “protected” from men. In a world grappling with the legacies of male enclaves in a sex integrated world (see Menarndt 2018 with implications for #metoo), and a young generation increasingly apt to challenge the meanings of gender (Meadow 2018), identifying the spillover and interconnections between sports and other venues is increasingly urgent. Although I adopt this critical posture, I do not argue that Title IX’s impacts have been purely negative. A host of studies illustrate how public policy has positively impacted women’s education, athletic opportunities, and long-term life outcomes, on average (e.g., Staurowsky et al. 2015).10 However, my analysis cautions that current policy design contains inherent structural limitations. When we take seriously the gendered hier- archies “baked in” to policy design, there emerge more questions than answers about the role of Title IX in full gendered liberation. I suggest that we need to read against the grain of the progressive narrative of policy success to reorient the conversation about Title IX’s 260 E. A. SHARROW legacy. I aim to diagnose the functional logics of on-going sex and gender oppression oper- ating within the policy we often think is aimed to address them. In doing so, I point toward fresh possibilities for sex equity policy. In order to delineate my critical perspective, this article unfolds in four parts. First, I demarcate the contradictory logic of sex integration versus sex segregation embedded in policy design. Next, I problematize it. This critical perspective enables my analyses of its spillover effects. I conclude by reflecting on how scholars and policymakers might proceed with this conversation going forward. Policy design and separation by sex: classrooms versus athletics One element of the extensive U.S. civil rights policy apparatus, Title IX became law as part of the 1972 Education Amendments (Rose 2018). The gendered paradox at the crux of policy emerged in the early 1970s when feminist activists successfully politicized the differ- ential and exclusionary treatment of women in education as a newly acknowledged form of discrimination “on the basis of sex.” Activists drew on long traditions of feminist cri- tique (Cott 1987), framing educational institutions as a breeding ground for sexist exclu- sions of women from public life (Evans 2010). Their main objective was to end biased treatment of women and girls in education (Rose 2018); sports were absent from the leg- islative language and only emerged as a target of sustained discussion when implemen- tation deliberations began (Sharrow 2017). Policy discussions about environments for classroom learning generally targeted means for integrating girls and women into the androcentric realm of education (Fishel and Pottker 1977). The final guidelines which stipulate policy design explicitly address “access to class and schools” (herein: “classrooms”) independently from athletics. With regard to classroom spaces, guidelines specify, “a recipient shall not provide or otherwise carry out any of its education programs or activities separately on the basis of sex, or require or refuse participation therein by any of its students on the basis of sex” [34 CFR 106.34(a)]. Two exceptions to requisite integration are named, (1) “contact sports” in physical education class which involves bodily contact (including wrestling, boxing, rugby, ice hockey, football, basketball) and (2) courses on human sexuality. Integration is required for education programs pertaining to health, general physical education, indus- trial, business, vocational, or technical education, home economics, and music. In contrast, athletics “may operate or sponsor separate teams for members of each sex where selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill or the activity involved is a contact sport” at both the intercollegiate and interscholastic levels [34 CFR 106.41(b)]. Additionally, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a policy interpretation focused specifically on inter- collegiate athletics (OCR 1979).11 At the core of these divergent approaches to non-discrimination sits the operative definition of “sex.” In classrooms, policy design aims to make sex irrelevant as a category for learning.12 In sports, sex is the only category that matters. To justify these “separate but equal” athletic practices, policy design requires a definition of sex that is rigid and “essen- tial.”13 Sex, as invoked for implementation in athletics, is an immutable attribute of the human body.14 It is central to policy implementation in sports but not in classrooms and thus has – unexpectedly – reduced complex functions of human biology, which are themselves embedded in an inequitable social world, to a gendered binary. POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 261 Policy implementation details for intercollegiate athletics: separation paradigm This gendered binary is encoded in the granular details of policy design. The 1979 guide- lines for intercollegiate athletics instruct schools to comply with an equal opportunity paradigm, under which teams are allowed to be sex “separate”; notably, no such detailed guidelines delineate the practice of classroom integration.15 Schools must demonstrate that their athletic opportunities for men and women are “substantially proportional” to the enrollment of their undergraduate student population.16 If 51% of the overall undergraduate student body is comprised of women, Title IX’s policy guidelines suggest that 51% of the athletic opportunities (measured by the roster count of each sport on the first day of intra-squad competition by each team) also be available to women.17 These guidelines do not strictly prohibit the integration of women and men on the same team. Schools are instructed that the “regulation does not require institutions to integrate their teams nor to provide exactly the same choice of sports to men and women” (OCR 1979). However, in the case of teams requiring some “competitive skill” (ostensibly refer- ring to all institutionally-funded, varsity-level athletic teams), “separate teams for members of each sex” are allowed. Contingently, if an institution offers a sport only to “members of one sex,” it must allow the excluded “sex” to try out for the team in some, but not all circumstances.18 In many sports, where there exists a men’s but not a women’s competitive team, only a tryout is required, and even the tryout can be denied to women in so-called “contact sports.”19 The de facto result of these regulations is that historically dominant “men’s” sports have been unaffected by the policy designed to include women into sporting domains.20 Football, in particular, has been essentially unrestricted under Title IX, and very few women have been allowed access to (presumed “men’s”) football teams (Brake 2010; Hoye 2013). These enduring male-centered practices in sports – examples of what Sandra Bem names “androcentrism” – buttress the idea that sports are naturally men’s domain and that the paradigmatic athlete is male (Bem 1993). The separate domains established by policy design largely serve to retain “men’s” sports for “male” par- ticipants and, because Title IX does not require sex equality in spending practices, they have enabled widespread, nearly $2-to-$1 expenditure disparities which dramatically favor men athletes in the largest athletic programs (NCAA 2017b). This, alongside the tryout exclusions for women’s participation in “men’s” contact sports, illustrates how sex segregation is both premised on, and reproduces a gendered hierarchy. The fear of “contact” suggests (1) a hetero-centric anxiety about physical proxi- mity and intimacy between women and men (but not between same-sex competitors)21 and (2) that women need “protection” from men’s (presumed to be stronger) physicality during training and competition. These practices authorize pernicious ideas about women’s physical inferiority and heterosexist assumptions about the role that sexuality plays in bodily contact between competitors (e.g., that sexualized contact can be prevented by segregated teams and locker rooms). Segregation diminishes the egalitarian potential of integrated practice, suggested by evidence of diminished sexist attitudes among men and boys who train and compete with girls and women (Anderson 2008). It also it co-articu- lates with homophobia to introduce trepidation around the role that homosocial spaces play in the socialization of girls and boys.22 262 E. A. SHARROW Procedurally, sex integration is never required in athletic settings under Title IX, and segregation, although not strictly compulsory, is – as McDonagh and Pappano (2007) argue – a “coercive” policy practice. If a school hosts both a “men’s” and a “women’s” team, women – regardless of skill – are generally not allowed to compete in the “men’s” division (Brake 2010).23 At the high school level, some states even prevent girls who merely train with boys from ever again competing in the “girl’s” division (Weil 2015). In the absence of designated teams for both sexes, women may be allowed to try-out for the “men’s” team using the same metrics as male candidates for the team. There are no particular rules to the content of such a try-out, only that it must be intern- ally consistent among both women and men candidates for the team. For “men’s” teams that are designated under Title IX as “contact sports,” even this try-out can be denied to women.24 From policy to problem: thinking with feminist legacies The implications of this policy design require close attention. Title IX makes meaning of biological sex through segregatory practices, implicitly replicating what Kessler and McKenna (1978) call the “incorrigible proposition” of sex difference (i.e., that sex differ- ence exists outside of our social ideas about it). Policy invokes social ideas about binary sex as the prima facie category of distinction in the establishment of athletic teams, despite mounting evidence from science and biology, and intensifying critique from gender and queer theory, that “sex” is neither a coherent nor a binary category (Fine 2010; Jordan- Young 2010; Karkazis et al. 2012).25 Several generations of social scientists, theorists, and brain scientists scrutinize the operation of such “natural attitudes” (Kessler and McKenna 1978) to suggest that “gender can be reconceptualized as an ‘effect’ rather than a mere fact, something that requires explanation rather than something that explains the social world” (Jordan-Young 2010, 258). Increasingly, scholars argue that our under- standing of “sex,” rather than existing as a pre-gendered, biological binary, is, like gender, constituted by social ideas (Butler 1990; Fausto-Sterling 2000; Karkazis et al. 2012).26 “Sex,” like “gender,” is best understood as a concept used to capture our imagined ideas about an embodied binary (male/female) than the existence of an actual sex binary itself. Yet these ideas about a male/female binary are implicit in our social and political structures and discourse, including Title IX’s policy design itself. Although our under- standing of “gender identity” (i.e., the psychological dimension of sex-based identification) as distinctive from sex-assigned-at-birth (i.e., the categorical designation of male/female on birth certificates) has evolved significantly since the passage of policy (see also Meyer- owitz 2004), policy design in Title IX, particularly with regard to the separation paradigm, has not (Balingit 2018). Public policy plays an important role in naturalizing our (fraught and problematic) understanding of sex-as-a-binary through its use of sex segregated sports.27 Policy design in Title IX suggests that “sex” is an immutable physical characteristic of bodies. By segregating when matters of physicality are most salient (in competitive ath- letics), and integrating when intellectual concerns dominate, policy design suggests that women and men are categorically, biologically different from one another. Policy design operates as a powerful engine for re-naturalizing the idea of sex difference, and stabilizing, rather than contesting, androcentric gender hierarchies. POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 263 Can separate be equal? Extant critiques of Title IX and segregation Several common arguments in favor of sex segregated sports endure including that (1) men and women have different physical capacities which leave women unable to compete with men, (2) segregation ensures that women need not compete with men over one set of shared opportunities (an argument which implies, again, that if/when women did compete with men, they would/will inevitably lose), and (3) that women and men do not desire to compete against each other (see Leong 2018; McDonagh and Pappano 2007; Milner and Braddock 2016). Each of these arguments engages sex essen- tialized logics which assume that “men” and “women” are coherent and mutually exclusive categories and that all women, by virtue of being women, are weaker and slower than all men. Such arguments in support of segregation have their historical roots both in patriar- chal, sexist logics and in feminist debates in the early 1970s when women’s exclusion from competitive athletics was most pronounced (see Cahn 1995 on the history of women in sport). In the absence of evidence about women’s latent athletic potential or competitive desire, the majority of feminist activists in the 1970s authorized the segregationist strategy (e.g., PSEW 1974 for original feminist debate; Sharrow 2017 for historical context). Neither policymakers nor Title IX’s activist proponents have seriously returned to the question of integrated athletics, effectively de-problematizing the approach over time. Many scholars of sport, legal studies, and Title IX delineate their concerns about the impacts of sex segregation. While some legal scholars suggest that sex segregation is “the most promising feminist strategy” (Brake 2010, 38), even those who support it must grapple with its costs. In a book which most recently reinvigorated the debate over sex segregation, McDonagh and Pappano (2007) question whether the physiology of men and women athletes fundamentally justifies the practice of sex segregation within Title IX, delineating many examples where women’s physical performance is equal to, or better than men’s. Their argument critiques the 1979 policy guidelines insofar as the guidelines imply that segregation prevents women from being physically hurt or exposed to “unfair” competition. They convincingly argue that rather than merely reflecting sex difference between “male” and “female” athletes, sex segregation amplifies foundational sexist ideas.28 This socially constructed binary is central to falsely understanding some sports – and segregated teams – as either “men’s” (e.g., football or baseball) or “women’s” (e.g., softball or field hockey) domains, leading to the proble- matic exclusion of women from supposedly “men’s” sports (Hoye 2013; Ring 2009). Such reasoning recalls Judith Lorber’s (1993) argument that “biology is ideology” (i.e., that gender, rather than biology, constructs social bodies to be different and unequal), and helps to situate the problem of segregation in the long-standing feminist critique of gendered binaries and sex essentialism (Bem 1993; Dietz 2003).29 The problematics of athletic segregation are intensely evident in the exclusionary treat- ment of trans* athletes who confront a complicated matrix of standards for athletic par- ticipation at the interscholastic, collegiate, and elite levels in a segregated system (Acklin 2017; Buzuvis 2011, 2013; Davis 2017; Smith 2017). “Sex testing” of elite female athletes, an invasive practice which has taken multiple forms (Pieper 2016), now patrols testoster- one levels of ciswomen who aim to compete in some track events.30 Elite-driven attempts to stabilize sex segregated competition directly engage a biologic notion of “sex” encoded through hormones, and are most restrictive for intersex and gender non-conforming 264 E. A. SHARROW athletes, particularly women of color (Karkazis and Jordan-Young 2018). Interscholastic and intercollegiate athletics governed by Title IX borrow from signals transmitted by inter- national sports governing bodies (e.g., the International Olympic Committee) in maintain- ing policy design, even without “testing” participant sex.31 Instead, NCAA and state high school association policies (not federal law) delineate the specific rules for transgender ath- letes to “jump” categories (see Buzuvis 2011) in order to maintain eligibility in a sex segre- gated system.32 Yet trans* athletes have been more apt to seek annexation under the segregated system of Title IX rather than to challenge the federal law which reifies sex differ- ence itself. This is most impactful for transwomen who seek inclusion in the “women’s” cat- egory but are haunted by androcentric hierarchies that imbue natal hormones with enduring athletic power. Even in a system designed to maximize “opportunity,” these logics harm both ciswomen (whose bodies are pre-supposed as “too weak” for integrated competition with men) and transwomen (whose bodies, even after medical transition(s), are thought to be “too strong” to compete fairly with ciswomen).33 Thus, the practical and ideological harms of segregation for cisgender women are more closely aligned with trans* athletes than it may seem. Gendered binaries policed thru ideas about embodied sex, in addition to forcing a categorical imperative onto fluid genders, also reifies the athletic hierarchy that favors cismen above all other identities. Cismen encoun- ter virtually no surveillance in the tradition of maintaining “men’s” teams and competitive categories, while ciswomen and trans* athletes can endure significant scrutiny in their quest to retain eligibility in “women’s” competition. Transgender athletes (particularly transwomen) may be rendered ineligible to compete in both their pre- and post-transition division; the maintenance of sex categories is the foundation of such harms. Transmen are more readily incorporated into “men’s” teams because of other sexist logics which ascribe being assigned “female” at birth as a marker of inferiority which does not present a com- petitive advantage vis-à-vis cismen competitors. Accordingly, the problem is not merely that trans* athletes may not find inclusion in a segregated system, although this is a problem worthy of concern.34 The problems for trans* inclusion should direct our attention back to purportedly “non-discriminatory” sol- utions “on the basis of sex.” Certainly, the creation and maintenance of sex-based competi- tive categories for ciswomen under Title IX have more positively benefited average cis athletes, but such teams have neither served to up-end male dominance in sports nor pro- vided non-discriminatory opportunities for trans* athletes.35 Policy practices secure teams and competitive opportunities for women assigned “female” at birth, but do such teams provide the best opportunities to upend gendered stereotypes of “women’s” inferiority? And how do practices which value and protect both maleness and male enclaves inform our societal conversations about the gendered order? The next section considers the ramifications of Title IX for these questions. Spillover harms: a call to scholars of gender and policy The gendered paradox – men and women are “the same” while also “different” – within policy design illustrates our persistent ambivalence toward the meanings of sex and gender within institutions targeted by non-discrimination policy. In this final section, I develop the implications of my argument about the tensions in Title IX’s policy design. These “spil- lover effects” of authorizing sex segregation in such a politically popular and normatively POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 265 valued policy suggest reasons to question the operation of segregation both within and beyond Title IX’s domain. Scholars of American politics indicate cause for concern in the on-going project of inte- grating women (and, though lesser discussed, trans* people) into the institutions of Amer- ican government.36 Women of color, women with disabilities, LGBTQIA women, and other intersectionally marginalized subgroups struggle for political recognition (Strolo- vitch 2007). Women and girls now enjoy greater educational attainment and workforce participation than ever before due to the implementation of policies like Title IX, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964.37 However, contrary to women’s purport- edly equal access to education, they face a complicated terrain upon entering the work- force defined by limited access to parental leave and health care, an entrenched wage gap, and a virtually impenetrable glass ceiling (Grossman 2016). Americans remain gripped by an age-old conundrum across multiple venues – grappling with whether women should be treated “the same” or “as different from” men – over how to conceive of and best address “women’s interests” at school, at work, and in politics. Various factors account for the gaps between the promise of policy and the persistent “intersectional” gender inequalities in the status quo.38 Public policy aimed at protecting women and girls from discrimination has arisen from complex movement demands (Costain 1981; Goss 2012). Even after the passage of non-discrimination laws, battles over de jure enforcement are often prolonged (Grossman 2016; Thomas 2016). In general, the courts have provided only a partial pathway to recompense for sex discrimi- natory treatment (Edelman 2016). In short, and as political theorists have contended for decades: gendered hierarchies remain fundamental to the organization of the American political system (Dietz 2003; Ritter 2006). Yet scholarship which draws critical attention to policy designed to address these issues remains strikingly limited. We live in confounding times when the ideology of sexism is under intensive critique, yet misogyny seems resurgent. As philosopher Kate Manne reminds us, “sexism often works by naturalizing sex differences, in order to justify patriarchal arrangements, by making them seem inevitable, or portraying people trying to resist them as fighting a losing battle” (Manne 2017, 79). Misogyny, in contrast, “upholds the social norms of patri- archies by policing and patrolling them” (Manne 2017, 88). Although we rarely look to Title IX as a domain in which misogyny may draw on sexist logics to hinder the liberation of trans* people and ciswomen and girls, my critique as applied to reading recent events suggest that we should. During the summer of 2017, young girls in Madison, WI, and Omaha, NE experienced harassment and exclusion from competition in their youth soccer leagues because their short haircuts made them look “too much” like boys (Koss 2017; Mele 2017). The same summer, a New York Times survey found that Americans indicate substantial levels of dis- comfort with the sex integrated workplace (Miller 2017) only one week after the Women’s Sports Foundation – the preeminent women’s sports advocacy organization in the country – released a national poll indicating overwhelming support for Title IX (YouGov 2017). These seemingly disparate stories each reveal an insidious implication from the problem of sex segregation. The events in Wisconsin and Nebraska within girls’ soccer leagues illustrate how the ideology of gendered hierarchies “baked in” to sport diminishes, rather than expands the liberatory potential of Title IX. Girls on these teams fashioned their hair in short 266 E. A. SHARROW styles as an homage to U.S. National Women’s Soccer Team members Megan Rapinoe and Abby Wambach. The haircuts were read by the parents of competitors as “too masculine,” and the young girls were subjected to accusations that they were masquerading “as boys” in a girl’s league (Koss 2017; Mele 2017). Such accusations echo those lobbed at Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand, elite runners targeted by hyperandrogenism policy (Karkazis and Jordan-Young 2018). What do such anxieties suggest about the conditions of “equality” available under a seg- regated system? For one, they illustrate that when we authorize segregation, we invite gen- dered surveillance of participants on girls and women’s teams. Who are the “real” women and girls? How will we know them as such? This surveillance serves to authorize, rather than challenge, traditional gender expectations about “proper” gender presentation as fused to the physical body, illustrated by the accusations that short-haired athletes are not “really girls.” In Wisconsin, the parents were asked to produce their children’s birth certificates to authenticate the sex of their child. That natal birth was assumed to verify inclusion (or exclusion, had the documents not “revealed” the proper sex) exposes the thorough permeation of athletics by embodied judgments of sex. The logic under which parents sought to invoke segregated athletics to exclude short- haired people also reveals the convenience of segregation for authorizing transphobia and homophobia. Homophobia in segregated women’s athletics is a perennial concern (e.g., Cahn 1995) which is especially evident in such appraisals of young girls who emulate out-lesbians like Rapinoe and Wambach. Homosocial spaces “protect” girls and women from purportedly stronger men and boys, but not from the fear that athleticism shelters lesbianism. The potential exclusion of “masculine” girls hints at a how transphobia, co- articulating with homophobia, can swiftly police the “proper” participants on “girl’s” teams. The policing of masculine gender presentation on a “girl’s” team reveals how nar- rowly defined the category of “girl” (or “woman”) in segregated teams can be. With sexist logics guiding segregatory practice, therein lurks anxiety that gender non-normativity is poised to unravel the binary category of sex. It also suggests that the logics of strict segre- gation easily permeate youth sports.39 Title IX’s authority does not extend to youth ath- letics, but its categorical logics do. Girl and women athletes under a sex segregated system always run the risk of appearing (or developing skills that make them) “too good” for the “female” teams, but without recourse to compete elsewhere.40 Finally, the actual accomplishments of women athletes are both occluded by their lack of opportunity to demonstrably out-perform men in head-to-head competition, and they are interpreted by many as inherently less impressive than the accomplishments of top-performing men.41 In short, the policy legacies of Title IX have both reproduced hierarchies that non-discrimination policy aimed to denounce, and created additional problems which plague both its purported beneficiaries, and girls and women more generally. Although Title IX is not itself responsible for all persistent gendered inequalities, the ideology of sex segregation sanctions significant ambivalence toward the questions of how and where women and men should directly grapple with shared space. This was recently illustrated in a New York Times poll (reported on the front page of the paper under the headline: “When Jobs Put Sexes Together, Worker’s Cringe”) regarding the impact of sex integration in the workplace (Miller 2017). The poll, fielded after a 2002 POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 267 interview with Vice President Mike Pence resurfaced in March 2017 which featured his statement that he “never eats alone with a woman who isn’t his wife,” found that: Many men and women are wary of a range of one-on-one situations … Around a quarter think private work meetings with colleagues of the opposite sex are inappropriate. Nearly two-thirds say people should take extra caution around members of the opposite sex at work. A majority of women, and nearly half of men, say it’s unacceptable to have dinner or drinks alone with someone of the opposite sex other than their spouse. (Miller 2017) In short, American adults remain uncomfortable with the sex integrated environment of the American workforce. On its face, this poll should be interpreted advisedly. For example, the pollsters did not distinguish among the reasons that integration may be considered “inappropriate,” includ- ing among women who fear that sexual harassment may be more likely when left alone with male co-workers – a point underscored by “#metoo” activism. However, it illustrates another pernicious impact of the ideology of sex segregation. The ideology of women’s “difference,” when authorized anywhere is available anywhere to justify exclusion, disparate treatment, and sexual harassment. Over the past half- century, at male-only institutions (Strum 2004) and in the U.S. military (MacKenzie 2015), feminist and civil rights advocates have fought mightily toward women’s full inclusion in historically male enclaves. Similar battles are waged to create an integrated workplace under Title VII (Turk 2016). Thus, the resurgence of ambivalence, and even skepticism towards integration should cause some alarm. Male-enclaves – protected in athletics under Title IX while they have been outmoded elsewhere – are perceived to both profoundly socialize men into proper masculinity, develop their “leadership skills,” and to do so in the absence of women (e.g., Messner 2011). No wonder, then, that Americans continue to express apprehension about the inte- grated workplace. In a society that celebrates the paradox of segregation in a popular public policy, even as the logics of that policy promote the ideology of sex essentialized difference, we are apt to remain perplexed. The scenarios in both youth soccer and the integrated workplace underscore – in different ways – that we remain trapped in an unre- solved dispute over whether girls and boys, or men and women, can share the same social spaces and be treated equally – or safely, as the resurgence of attention to sexual harass- ment and assault reminds us – if and when they do. In the early twenty-first century, Americans remain committed to public policies (fore- most among them, Title IX) that we believe will make sex discrimination a relic of the past, even as we repeatedly encounter evidence which demonstrates that at school, at work, and at play, policy has only partially produced such an outcome. Not only must we reckon with the legacies of policy debate as we confront the possibilities for future alternatives, but we must also consider how the logics embedded in a policy which is often cited as an example of success nevertheless provides problematic models for parallel, unresolved policy areas. Conclusions and future directions Over the past 45 years, there have been two distinct sets of practices and ideologies set in motion by policy implementation. On the one hand, policy has forced institutions to cease unilaterally denying women and girls access to competitive athletics. Increased 268 E. A. SHARROW opportunities mean that now eighty-seven percent of Americans believe that sports are “equally important” for girls and boys (YouGov 2017), and current college athletes over- whelmingly support sex equitable athletics systems (Druckman, Rothschild, and Sharrow 2018). Policy has created the conditions for women and girls to develop physical skills which directly defy the presupposition that they are incapable of sports. With this, policy has shepherded evolutions to the gendered expectations about physicality, allowing women to pursue pathways for achieving their physical potential. But simultaneously, sex segregated sports have suppressed evidence of women’s increased speed, strength, and achievement vis-à-vis men. We rarely see post-adolescent athletes compete or train in integrated settings, and thus we seldom confront the challenge posed by women’s actual capacities to the reigning order of sports. We are slow to acknowledge, for example, that elite women marathon runners, whose fastest times have improved more rapidly than have men’s, are faster than many men also entered into the “elite” categories.42 Because we name a “women’s champion” in such sex inte- grated competitions, for example, the sex segregated logic for all sports allows critics to discount the victory of the fastest women over the preponderance of men. The “women’s champion” can claim victory of all women, while the “men’s champion” is pre- sumed to claim victory over all. Women’s accomplishments are conditioned on being merely “female athletes,” while men’s achievements in racing sports stand for the supre- macy of all men. Unexpectedly, these issues are enabled within the public policy aimed at addressing sex inequity. Title IX exalts these practices that serve to obscure the accomplishments of cis- gender women and police or exclude trans* people, even as public policy remains revered by many political leaders and in popular discourse. Implementation has so normalized the practice of segregation that it simultaneously obscures its own harms and the pernicious spillover logics which inhibit women’s full liberation. Yet policy once made can be rene- gotiated. Evidence suggests that women athletes, rather than existing as a latent activist group, perceive implementation problems in policy and are prepared to politically mobilize around Title IX (Druckman, Rothschild, and Sharrow 2018).43 Among elite ath- letes, the recent announcement of hyperandrogenism policies for some events in track and field were met with athlete protest (Fryer 2018). Such mobilization among policy benefi- ciaries and their allies will likely be necessary to advocate for revisions to the status quo. However, the first step in achieving such a political movement is denaturalizing this paradox in policy design. After four decades of policy implementation, scholars – if not yet interest groups or pol- icymakers – posit the need for revisions to Title IX. Several argue for a new two-tiered system, with open-access to “men’s” teams for women, and closed access to men for “women’s” teams – what McDonagh and Pappano (2007) call “voluntary” segregation.44 Others suggest that sports should be subjected to the same “intermediate” legal scrutiny as occurs in other sex- and gender-based contexts (Leong 2018), and many agree that the ban on sex integration in “contact sports” must end (e.g., Bell 2016; Caggiano 2010; Sangree 2000). Some advocate that athletics should be entirely free of sex-based classifications (George 2002). My suggestions for future directions align most closely with those scholars who center the radical possibilities available when men’s teams become more “open,” even if women’s teams should, at least in the near-term, remain “closed” to cismen (McDonagh and POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 269 Pappano 2007; Milner and Braddock 2016). My critical perspective on the gendered paradox in policy design, and in light of my argument that gendered hierarchies promoted through segregation both harm women and trans* folks while enabling logics of male supremacy, lead to the possibility for several specific changes. Because “men’s” teams con- tinue to be the more highly resourced and valued, I propose that the near-term should be focused on opening men’s programs to more women athletes. Although my long-term hope is that athletic competition can be organized more diversely – e.g., around weight class, body size, or participant skill level – depending on the requirements of the sport rather than the category of sex, the initial target of critique ought to be the arenas were the ideology of male superiority is most naturalized. Namely, the “contact sports” distinc- tion needs to be eliminated. Doing so would end the chief gatekeeping mechanism pre- venting women from the opportunity to “try out” for a “men’s” team. Because the policy language is loaded with biased assumptions about men’s physical superiority, revis- ing it would ensure that girls and women with the skills and desire to challenge such norms are not impeded by the myth that “separate” is always equal. This would also provide the most ambitious “female athletes” the opportunities to train and compete with men, to enjoy the resources more widely available to men’s programs, and to directly challenge on the terms of their sport the notions that sex-difference determines competi- tive outcomes. Allowing women to compete on “men’s” teams even when a similar team exists “for women” would enable competitors and spectators alike to observe and grapple with the significant overlap in athletic performance between women and men, much like required classroom integration has done for ideas about women’s intellectual capacities. Ending strict segregation also lessens the complicated exclusions for trans* athletes, whose opportunities will broaden as we loosen our attachment to the idea that sex inheres in bodies and is largely synonymous with athletic prowess. Finally, ensuring that male enclaves in sport are challenged, rather than protected, also provides pathways for integrated socialization which ensure that neither girls nor boys learn the logics of essentialism as if they are the “natural” order (see also Anderson 2008). This would also revisit lesser-known, historical policy debates. Athletic integration, after a period of investment in righting the historical exclusions from access to sports and athletic training experienced by women before Title IX, was supported by some feminist interest groups in the 1970s (Sharrow 2017). Aggressively pursuing partial integration, currently used to address some intractable male enclaves in the workplace (Stevens 2018), would ensure that the best girls and women have every opportunity for high- level competition and training without abruptly forcing integration on all athletes. Perhaps in time, more widespread integration of teams can seem less preposterous. At present, sex segregation has not produced non-hierarchical outcomes, and without some critical discourse, women and trans* people are inhibited in their abilities to chal- lenge their oppression. Engaging the critique of segregated spaces will be fundamental to any strategy which tackles the most pressing problems in Title IX, and broader gender politics, in the coming years. Notes 1. Signed into law on June 23, 1972, Title IX declares: “No person shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under 270 E. A. SHARROW any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” (20 U.S.C. §1681). It applies to all institutions receiving federal funding, with a few exemptions: single-sex edu- cational institutions, private schools controlled by religious organizations, military acade- mies, fraternities or sororities, and some specific auxiliary programs (i.e., Boys and Girls State programs, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, etc.), and private school admissions decisions (20 U.S.C. §1681-1688). Intercollegiate/interscholastic athletic programs are considered rel- evant under Title IX because they are component programs of the larger university or college. 2. Statistics on sex integrated athletic teams are scarce, although they are much more common in youth sports which fall outside of Title IX’s purview. At the college level, sex integration is so uncommon that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) does not report statistics on sex integrated teams. Likewise, sex segregated competition in elite sport is ubi- quitous and, in contrast to collegiate and high school athletics, maintained through a long history of “sex testing” and “gender verification” of athletes competing in the women’s cat- egory (see Pieper 2016). 3. Title IX has also become a vehicle to address campus sexual climate and assault (see also Doyle 2015; Reynolds 2018). 4. Policy history is also marked by critique from men athletes who participate in sports like gymnastics and wrestling (Suggs 2005). Although men’s opportunities have increased overall and men continue to enjoy greater numbers of participation opportunities, some lower-profile men’s sports have experienced significant cuts to funding and opportunities while men’s football budgets and opportunities have ballooned (NCAA 2017a). 5. This stands in stark contrast with the contentious battles around racial desegregation in American schools (e.g., Hochschild 1984). 6. I follow in the long tradition of feminist scholarship which argues that “gender” is the social expression of ideas around biology and that biologic notions about “sex,” like “gender,” are socially and ideologically constructed (e.g., Fausto-Sterling 2000; Jordan-Young 2010; Lorber 1993; Risman 2004). Kessler and McKenna (1978) note that gender is socially produced through “natural attitudes” about a male/female dichotomy. According to both feminist biol- ogists (Fausto-Sterling 2000; Fine 2010, 2017; Jordan-Young 2010) and gender/queer theor- ists (Butler 1990, 1993), such attitudes are themselves socially constituted as a binary rather than a “fact” of nature. In the realm of politics, the terms sex and gender are increasingly used interchangeably (e.g., Title IX is commonly referred to as a “gender equality” policy despite its specific reference to only “sex”) despite their particular and specific meanings and his- tories (Meyerowitz 2004; Repo 2016). 7. As I explore herein, policy employs a binary definition of “sex” which excludes transgender, intersex, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. Although much debate transpired in the 1970s over interpretation and policy implementation (Edwards 2010; Rose 2018; Sharrow 2017), as I write this, the relationship between sex and gender-based discrimination in policy interpretation remains legally uneven. Whereas the Obama administration announced policy interpretations inclusive of non-discrimination protections for transgen- der students in 2016, the U.S. Department of Education under President Donald Trump rescinded such guidelines (Balingit 2018). 8. The term “trans*” is meant to encompass a host of gender expressions and “signals greater inclusivity of new gender identities and expressions and better represents a broader commu- nity of individuals” (Tompkins 2014, 27). 9. The prevalence of #metoo activism toward sexual harassment in the workplace and beyond illustrates the persistent struggle of women’s treatment by men despite policy successes. 10. This narrative, while dominant, is not universally true. Women of color and girls from econ- omically lower-resourced schools benefit less meaningfully from policy (e.g., Pickett, Dawkins, and Braddock 2012). For other intersectional critiques of policy, see Sharrow (2017). 11. These guidelines were produced through an overtly politicized process (Sharrow 2017), and remain largely unaltered as the contemporary mechanisms for policy implementation and enforcement. The athletics policy guidelines have been contested in litigation and clarified POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 271 by the U.S. Department of Education primarily for reasons other than their treatment of sex segregation (Brake 2010; but see Love and Kelly 2011). 12. This approach reflects what a large literature on feminist legal theory calls “formal equality” which is guided by the idea that “men and women should be treated alike if they are similarly situated for purposes of the policy or practice that is being challenged” (Brake 2001, 25). Brake extensively delineates the formal equality paradigm in sex discrimination doctrine as applied through Title IX. This approach is widely discussed by legal scholars for its complex implications along debates of women and men’s “sameness-versus-difference” (e.g., MacKinnon 1989). The formal equality paradigm is situated across multiple, second- wave, liberal feminist attempts to seek sex equality thru state institutions (see Dietz 2003; Turk 2016 for longer summary of feminist debate). 13. These sex essentialist approaches configure binary sex difference on the body and are thoroughly problematized by feminist theory (see Dietz 2003 for summary of how this “difference” approach diverges from other strands of feminist thought which argue for the importance of “women” as a political category). 14. This proposition applies what sociologist Michael Messner (2011) names “hard essentialism,” which presumes bodily difference between women and men. Trans* inclusion, under Title IX, illustrates the rigidity of “sex” through the strict requirements that athletes jump categories from male to female, or vice versa (Buzuvis 2011). 15. Some feminist groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW) contested athletic segregation during policy development, although they eventually conceded to those who pre- ferred separate teams for girls and women (Sharrow 2017). 16. Schools must also pursue equivalent treatment, benefits (i.e., athletic scholarships), and opportunities in equipment and supplies; games and practice times; travel and per diem; coaching and academic tutoring; assignment and compensation of coaches and tutors; locker rooms, and practice and competitive facilities; medical and training facilities; housing and dining facilities; publicity; recruitment; and support services. (OCR 1979) 17. In practice, strict proportionality is not enforced but is instead evaluated under Title IX’s “three-part test.” The 1996 policy clarification memo clarifies that “part three of the three- part test permits evidence that [when] underrepresentation is caused not by discrimination but by lack of interest … that underrepresentation alone is not the measure of discrimi- nation” (OCR 1996). Schools are required to pursue, but not necessarily achieve, “propor- tionality” in opportunities and scholarships for women and men across their athletic program. If OCR (the U.S. Department of Education’s unit charged with policy oversight) discerns that a school offers “substantially proportionate” athletic opportunities, any federal investigation into compliance with the law will not proceed. If the school fails this test, OCR will examine the institution’s practices, evaluating whether it has a “history and continuing practice of program expansion which is demonstrably responsive to the develop- ing interests and abilities of the members of [the underrepresented] sex” (OCR 1979). If the school is found to pass this “program expansion test” it will meet the participation require- ment even though it failed the proportionality test. The third test of compliance is open to greater interpretation, allowing space for programs that have failed the “expansion” test. Owing its historic roots to the debates over whether women are equally “interested” in pur- suing athletics (a sexist, but pervasive concern), policymakers resolved to allow schools to demonstrate that they had sufficiently met the student demand for athletic teams on their campus. Schools are directed to demonstrate that the athletic interests and abilities of “male and female students” must be “equally effectively accommodated.” The methods for proving this have varied and are contested (Buzuvis 2006). 18. I qualify the term “sex” in order to underscore how policymakers assume without defining the inherent meaning of this category. 272 E. A. SHARROW 19. “Contact sports” are defined in the 1979 guidelines as “boxing, wrestling, rugby, ice hockey, football, basketball and other sports the purpose or major activity of which involves bodily contact” (OCR 1979). 20. I demarcate the terms “men’s” and “women’s” teams in order to underscore and denaturalize the casual ways in which possessive language naturalizes segregated teams as belonging to “men” or “women” at the exclusion of each other. 21. Anxieties around intimacy are at once about privacy and sexual desire. Nominally, privacy concerns are more openly discussed regarding other athletic spaces such as locker rooms (see Sharrow 2017) where policy guidelines instruct schools to provide comparable but “sep- arate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex” (34 CFR 106.33). However, sex segregated restrooms produce other apprehensions, particularly for trans* people (Davis 2018). 22. Single-sex classroom spaces have been thoroughly contested (English 2016). 23. Sex segregated sports make it difficult to see, for example, that the times posted by decorated American swimmer Katie Ledecky at the 2017 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming Cham- pionships would have allowed her to qualify for competition in the “men’s” championship. 24. The widespread and normative practice of women’s exclusion from “contact sports” also impacts men’s abilities to participate in “women’s” teams, as men’s legal claims to gain access to “women’s” teams have systematically been denied (Love and Kelly 2011). 25. Scientists note that there are six distinct markers of what we call “sex” (including chromo- somes, gonads, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, external and internal genitalia) which confound the idea of a strict binary; many individuals might be categorized as “male” by some markers, and “female” by others, a fact which is acutely problematic for some women athletes (Karkazis et al. 2012). The history of sex testing in elite athletics is illus- trates the central issues, and has been particularly damaging to gender non-conforming women and intersex individuals, virtually all from the Global South (Karkazis and Jordan- Young 2018; Pieper 2016). 26. Policy implementation remains impenetrable to such critiques as neither policymakers nor advocates target athletics as a civil rights domain that requires re-thinking: “women’s sports” are promoted as a “separate but equal” solution and not a problem (see discussion in Brake 2010, chap. 1). 27. Other venues, including sex segregated public restrooms and prisons, also naturalize the idea of sex difference. 28. Other scholars echo this argument, placing segregation in sports in the context of proble- matic sex segregation in society elsewhere (e.g., Cohen 2011). 29. Feminist debates about the meanings of equality have a long history (Cott 1987; Goss 2012). The “sameness/difference” question regarding of sex non-discrimination is considered across many U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Grossman 2016; Thomas 2016; Turk 2016), debates over an Equal Rights Amendment (Mansbridge 1986), scholarly debate regarding feminist legal theory (Brake 2001), and the 1996 U.S. v. Virginia (516 U.S. 515) case regarding single-sex admissions at the Virginia Military Institute (Strum 2004). 30. Activism coheres around attempts to end this focus on hormones, noting that it actively dis- criminates against intersex athletes (many of whom do not self-identify as such but who are, instead, revealed as possessing intersex traits by sporting officials who seek to confirm the eligibility of such athletes to compete in the “women’s” event) in many damaging ways (Kar- kazis et al. 2012). 31. “Sex testing” polices women athletes but never men (Pieper 2016). This underscores my argu- ment that women’s bodies are the most targeted by segregation, even though Title IX does not employ “sex testing” to police the category of sex. 32. This, because “Transgender people create a profound category crisis for social institutions built on the idea that biological sex is both immutable and dichotomous” (Meadow 2010, 814). POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 273 33. Whether that is the case is up to great debate, as endocrinologists and bioethicists are largely critical of the stance that male hormones, namely testosterone, in addition to other secondary sex characteristics, necessarily confer an inherent competitive advantage (Karkazis and Jordan-Young 2018). 34. Scholars delineate the specific harms endured by “trans* people in athletics (Buzuvis 2013; Davis 2017; Sinisi 2012; Skinner-Thompson and Turner 2014). The complex rules around physical transitions that define competitive eligibility for trans* athletes run parallel to issues for trans* inclusion in other policy arenas, including sex segregated restrooms, single-sex educational institutions, and state-issued identification documents (Davis 2014; Spade 2008). The definition of “sex” applied to athletics policy is less useful for gender- based forms of discrimination in education – particularly for trans* people whose identities frequently elide both a binary definition of gender, and/or a biological definition of sex. Rather than benefiting from inclusion through biologic definitions of “sex,” trans* students are more often harmed by them. 35. This intractability of policy design echoes Katherine Franke’s argument that this disaggrega- tion of sex from gender in equality law is “the central mistake of equality jurisprudence” (Franke 1996, 2). Although discussions about transgender non-discrimination as protected under Title IX emerged decades after Franke’s article regarding workplace discrimination, the point remains prescient: Antidiscrimination law is founded upon the idea that sex, conceived as biological difference, is prior to, less normative than, and more real than gender. Yet in every way that matters, sex bears an epiphenomenal relationship to gender; that is, under close examination almost every claim with regard to sexual identity or sex discrimi- nation can be shown to be grounded in normative gender rules and roles. Herein lies the mistake … sexual equality jurisprudence has uncritically accepted the validity of biological sexual differences. By accepting these biological differences, equality jur- isprudence reifies as foundational fact that which is really an effect of normative gender ideology. (Franke 1996, 2) 36. Women remain significantly under-represented in legislative bodies at all levels in the U.S. (CAWP 2017), and are therefore hamstrung in their efforts to achieve representation on in a profoundly partisan environment. 37. Title VII of the CRA prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion. It also applies to private and public colleges and universities, employment agencies, and labor organizations. The language in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is modeled on Title VII and Title VI (which prohibits discrimination by government agencies that receive federal funds) of the CRA (Pub. L. 88- 352). 38. Gendered inequalities are inflected through the intersecting dimensions of race, sexuality, class, and physical ability (Crenshaw 1991; Strolovitch 2007). 39. Ironically, youth sports, alongside recreational athletics, are some of the most fruitful locations for developing sex integrated praxis because they do not generally invoke the con- cerns about either embodied strength or physical intimacy between opposite-sex competitors. 40. Cisgender men athletes who comport with normative masculinity do not commonly con- front this, although they receive similarly confusing signals from policy. Men and boys are taught, by the conditions of policy implementation thru sex segregated sports, that there are two types of athletic competitors: athletes and female athletes, and that “female athletes” require their protection instead of their unmitigated competitive respect. Gender policing also harms men whose gender challenges traditional masculinities (e.g., Messner 2011). 41. Pointedly, John McEnroe denigrated Serena Williams’ prowess as a tennis player in the summer of 2017, suggesting that she would be low ranked “on the men’s circuit” (ESPN 2017). 274 E. A. SHARROW 42. McDonagh and Pappano (2007) explore many such examples, although the newly announced “hyperandrogenism” policy illustrates how such competitive achievements for women, under a segregated system, are subjected to scrutiny and retaliation (Karkazis and Jordan-Young 2018). 43. Nearly thirty-two percent of athletes surveyed in the study believed that “women and men should be permitted to participate on the same teams in non-contact sports.” 44. Milner and Braddock (2016) argue for integration from the “bottom up,” focusing on main- taining the more common practice of sex integrated youth sports into adolescence and relying on generational change. Acknowledgements For assistance in developing this manuscript, I would like to thank Patricia Strach, Julie Novkov, Mara Toone, Dara Strolovitch, Dara Cohen, Susan Moffitt, Barbara Cruikshank, Jesse Rhodes, Tatishe Nteta, Maxime Forest, Daniel Thompson, and the American Politics Workgroup at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I am appreciative of comments from Nadia Brown, and those from anonymous reviewers, which helped me improve the manuscript. I also acknowledge research support from the American Academy of University Women, the Gerald R. Ford Presiden- tial Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Myra Sadker Foundation, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Funding This work was supported by the Gerald R. 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POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 279 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/business/women-corporate-boards-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/business/women-corporate-boards-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/magazine/mary-cain-is-growing-up-fast.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/magazine/mary-cain-is-growing-up-fast.html Abstract Politics of gender inequality: what’s the problem? Against the grain of policy success: Title IX’s gendered paradox Policy design and separation by sex: classrooms versus athletics Policy implementation details for intercollegiate athletics: separation paradigm From policy to problem: thinking with feminist legacies Can separate be equal? Extant critiques of Title IX and segregation Spillover harms: a call to scholars of gender and policy Conclusions and future directions Notes Acknowledgements Disclosure statement ORCID References << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles false /AutoRotatePages /PageByPage /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile () /CalRGBProfile (Adobe RGB \0501998\051) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Error /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages false /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.1000 /ColorConversionStrategy /sRGB /DoThumbnails true /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 524288 /LockDistillerParams true /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments false /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo false /PreserveFlatness true /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings false /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts true /TransferFunctionInfo /Remove /UCRandBGInfo /Remove /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages true /ColorImageMinResolution 150 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages false /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.90 /HSamples [2 1 1 2] /VSamples [2 1 1 2] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.40 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 15 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 15 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages true /GrayImageMinResolution 150 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages false /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.90 /HSamples [2 1 1 2] /VSamples [2 1 1 2] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.40 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 15 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 15 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages true /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average /MonoImageResolution 300 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects true /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (None) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /Description << /ENU () >> >> setdistillerparams << /HWResolution [600 600] /PageSize [595.245 841.846] >> setpagedevice work_2cdjqigbsffipmukkn44cnew2u ---- Communicating Gender-Equality Progress, Reduces Social Identity Threats for Women Considering a Research Career $ € £ ¥ social sciences Article Communicating Gender-Equality Progress, Reduces Social Identity Threats for Women Considering a Research Career Una Tellhed * ID and Anna Jansson Department of Psychology, Lund University, 22101 Lund, Sweden; psy.anna.jansson@gmail.com * Correspondence: una.tellhed@psy.lu.se; Tel.: +46-46-222-8687 Received: 13 December 2017; Accepted: 18 January 2018; Published: 26 January 2018 Abstract: Since the majority of top-level researchers are men, how does this vertical gender-segregation affect students’ perceptions of a research career? In the current study, an experimental manipulation either reminded students of academia’s current dominance of men or of its improving gender-balance. The results showed that women primed with the dominance of men anticipated much higher social identity threats (e.g., fear of discrimination) in a future research career as compared to a control group. In contrast, women primed with the improving gender-balance anticipated much lower threat. Further, the dominance of men prime increased men’s interest in the PhD program, as compared to controls. Women’s interest was unaffected by the prime, but their lower interest as compared to men’s across conditions was mediated by their lower research self-efficacy (i.e., competence beliefs). The results imply that communicating gender-equality progress may allow women to consider a career in research without the barrier of social identity threat. Keywords: gender segregation; social identity threat; career interest; self-efficacy; academia 1. Introduction Every year on 10 December, the Nobel Prize is awarded to the world’s most excellent researchers. Watching the ceremony is a reminder of the vertical gender segregation in academia, defined as an uneven hierarchical gender distribution, since 95% of the Nobel Laureates thus far have been men (Nobel Media AB 2017). Even in countries where women dominate higher education, top-level researchers are predominately men (European Commission 2016; Shen 2013; Sugimoto et al. 2013; Universitetskanslerämbetet (Universitetskanslerämbetet UKÄ)). How does being reminded of the vertical gender segregation in academia affect students’ perceptions of a potential future research career? In this study, we experimentally test how framing its gender balance as currently dominated by men, versus becoming more gender-equal, affects students’ anticipated social identity threats and career control, as well as their level of self-efficacy and interest in a future research career. It is important to understand how the vertical gender-segregation in academia affects students’ perceptions of an academic career in order to identify ways to lift barriers that may keep women from reaching their full career potential in research. The data for the current study is collected in Sweden, the country that awards the Nobel Prize. Although known as one of the most gender equal countries in the world (World Economic Forum 2017), 73% of the full professors in Sweden are men (Universitetskanslerämbetet UKÄ). 1.1. Social Identity Threats and Identity Safety According to social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979), people desire to view their social identities, like their gender, positively. Therefore, if an environmental cue suggests that an individual’s social identity is negatively valued in a domain, it can cause social identity Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18; doi:10.3390/socsci7020018 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci http://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci http://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7283-6021 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/socsci7020018 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18 2 of 11 threat, including stereotype threat, where vigilance is raised and performance may suffer (see (Inzlicht and Schmader 2012; Major and O’Brien 2005; Spencer et al. 2016), for reviews). Social identity threat includes the fear of becoming negatively stereotyped and discriminated in a domain (Cheryan and Plaut 2010; Murphy et al. 2007; Petriglieri 2011; Steele et al. 2002) and may diminish a person’s sense of control (Chithambo et al. 2014; Fischer and Bolton Holz 2010). Previous research has shown that contexts dominated by men can trigger social identity threat in women (Inzlicht and Ben-Zeev 2000; Major and O’Brien 2005; Murphy et al. 2007; Sekaquaptewa et al. 2007; Steele et al. 2002). In the current study, we expand this research by testing the hypothesis that reminding students that most top-level researchers are men increases women’s anticipated social identity threat and reduces their sense of control over an imagined future research career. Previous research has shown that social identity threat can be lifted by creating an identity safe environment, where individuals in numerical minority, or in a stigmatized group, are assured they are welcome, supported and valued (e.g., Davies et al. 2005; Holmes et al. 2016; Petriglieri 2011). In this study we test the novel hypothesis that simply reminding students that academia is becoming more vertically gender-balanced, can function as an identity safety prime. We hypothesize that it reduces the level of social identity threat that women may otherwise anticipate in a future research career. If this simple technique is empirically supported, it may have practical value in helping individuals pursue their occupational goals without the barrier that social identity threat may create. 1.2. Interest and Self-Efficacy Social identity threat tends to be unrelated to interests in a domain (e.g., Cheryan and Plaut 2010). However, repeated exposure to social identity threat can push people to withdraw from a career path, despite interest in it (Thoman et al. 2013; Woodcock et al. 2012). In a study of gender minorities in higher education, Steele et al. (2002) found that women in majors dominated by men experienced higher levels of social identity threats than other students and were more likely to think about changing their major as compared to others. Relatedly, Gibney et al. (2011) found that when employees perceive that their organization obstructs their goal fulfilment, they tend to disidentify with the organization. Although not related to social identity threats, it is well-established that men and women tend to have different career interests and choose different types of careers (e.g., Cejka and Eagly 1999; Su et al. 2009; Tellhed et al. 2017, 2018). These gender differences have multiple antecedents and are shaped in a lengthy socialization process (Eccles 1994). However, in the current study, we aim to test if simply varying the way academia’s gender-skewness is presented, which may affect students’ interest in a future research career. We have only found one previous study with a similar design. In that study, Heilman (1979) found that women’s interest in an occupation increased and men’s interest decreased when it was described as soon becoming horizontally gender-balanced (i.e., with equal numbers of men and women, disregarding hierarchical gender differences). We expand this previous study by priming vertical gender segregation and by the focus on academia. Since people tend to be more interested in careers that are dominated by their gender ingroup than their gender outgroup, we hypothesize that being reminded that most successful researchers are men increases men’s and decreases women’s interest in the PhD program as compared to a control group. It is less clear how an improving gender-balance prime relates to gender differences in career interest. Although Heilman (1979) found that it decreases men’s interest, more recent research in Sweden and in the US has shown that gender-balanced career paths tend to be perceived as highly attractive by both men and women (Diekman et al. 2010; Tellhed et al. 2018). In the current study, we therefore exploratory test the effect of the improving gender-balance prime on men’s and women’s interest in the PhD program. Further, previous research has found that women’s lower interest in occupations that are horizontally dominated by men, which tends to be statistically mediated by women’s lower self-efficacy, defined as doubts that one has the right competence to succeed in a domain (e.g., Bandura 1977; Betz and Hackett 1981; Hackett 1995; Lent et al. 1994; Tellhed et al. 2017, 2018). We will replicate this research by testing if a gender difference in interest in the PhD program is Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18 3 of 11 statistically mediated by a gender difference in the belief that one has what it takes to succeed in research. Lastly, even if women have lower research self-efficacy than men, we predict that Swedish students will reject a stereotype that men have a greater aptitude for research than women. Meta-analyses tend to find only small psychological gender differences (Hyde 2014). Also, Sweden is a country with a strong gender equality ideology (SOU 2014; Wahl 1992), and statements that one sex is better than the other is generally frowned upon. However, previous research has shown that it is sufficient to simply be aware that a negative stereotype exists, for stereotyped group members to subsequently suffer from stereotype threat, which may disrupt their individual performance assessments (Steele 1997; Tellhed and Adolfsson 2017). 1.3. Summary of the Design and Hypotheses To summarize, we will experimentally manipulate information to Swedish university students regarding the vertical gender-segregation in academia, and compare the outcomes of two manipulations with a control group. In the experimental conditions, the students will either be reminded of the current vertical dominance of men in academia or be reminded that the vertical gender-balance in academia is improving. The main hypotheses are Hypothesis 1. (1a) Women who are reminded of the current vertical gender segregation in academia anticipate stronger social identity threats in a future research career as compared to a control group and as compared to (1b) women who are reminded of the improving gender-balance in academia. Hypothesis 2. (2a) Men who are reminded of the current vertical gender segregation in academia have higher interest in the PhD program, while (2b) women exposed to this prime have lower interest in the PhD program as compared to controls. Hypothesis 3. A gender difference in interest in the PhD program is mediated by a gender-difference in research self-efficacy. 2. Method 2.1. Participants One hundred and ninety Social Science students at a large University in Sweden volunteered to participate in the study. Recruitment occurred in class, where a male research assistant asked for volunteers. Coding of the Hypothesis inquiry measure (see below) indicated that four participants guessed the main hypotheses of the experiment and were therefore excluded from further analyses, which left 93 men and 93 women. The mean age was 24.70 (SD = 5.48). 2.2. Materials All materials are here translated from Swedish to English, by the researchers. The experimental manipulation consisted of written facts regarding the vertical gender-segregation in the Swedish academia. For ethical considerations, only well-known facts were chosen. The two experimental groups read that the purpose of the study is to learn more about men’s and women’s interest in a future academic career. The participants in the current vertical gender-segregation condition further read that academia is currently strongly gender-skewed. This initial information was followed by four points of facts illustrating the vertical dominance of men. The facts read, “Over 70% of all full professors in Sweden are men, although women make up the majority of university students,” “The majority of Swedish government funding is still awarded to Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18 4 of 11 researchers who are men,” “Today, men are still more likely than women to become full professors,” and “95% of the Nobel Prize Laureates have been men.” The participants in the improving gender-balance condition read that academia is becoming more vertically gender-balanced, followed by four points of facts illustrating this. The facts read, “The gender-balance is currently equal amongst PhD students,” “The number of university lecturers and full professors who are women is increasing,” “Equal numbers of men and women currently earn a PhD in Sweden,” and “Many of the top-level researchers at this university are currently women.” The control group simply read that “This study’s purpose is to learn more about students’ interest in a future academic career,” and did not read any facts about the gender-skewness in academia. The level of anticipated of social identity threat was measured by two items, similar to the one’s used by Steele et al. (2002). They read, “How likely do you think it is that you will be judged by negative gender stereotypes, if you choose to work as a researcher in the future?” and “How likely do you think it is that you will be discriminated (treated unfairly) because of your gender if you choose to work as a researcher in the future?.” The responses were indicated on a scale ranging from “Not at all” (1) to “Very” (7). α was 0.87. Anticipated career control was measured by the item “A successful research career is largely dependent on factors outside of the researcher’s control.” The scale ranged from “Not correct at all” (1) to “Precisely correct” (7). The participants’ interest in a future research career was measured by the item “How interested are you in applying to the PhD program?” Responses ranged from “Not at all interested” (1) to “Very interested” (7). The measure of research self-efficacy was based on Betz and Hackett’s (1981) career self-efficacy measure, with the adaptation to a Likert scale (Maurer and Pierce 1998). The participants were asked to indicate their level of certainty that they have what it takes to “complete the PhD program (and earn a PhD)” and to “work as a researcher” on a scale ranging from “Not certain at all” (1) to “Completely certain” (7). α was 0.92. The research stereotype accuracy measure read “Do you believe that either men or women are better suited to work as researchers”? Responses were indicated on a scale ranging from 1–7, where 1 indicated the response “Women are better suited,” 4 indicated “There is no gender difference,” and 7 indicated “Men are better suited.” To check the effectiveness of the experimental manipulation, the participants were asked to indicate if they primarily think of men or women, when they hear the word “researcher.” Responses were given on a scale ranging from “Primarily women” (1) to “Primarily men” (7). Last in the survey, the participants were asked to describe what they believed the hypotheses of the study were. 2.3. Procedure The survey was distributed by a male research assistant to the participants in their lecture hall during a break between lectures. Before handing out the survey, he explained that the purpose was to investigate students’ interest in an academic career. To comply with the ethical guidelines for research on humans, he also informed the students that participation is voluntary, that the data is treated anonymously, and that they may withdraw from participation at any time without consequences. They were asked to fill out the questionnaire individually and not look at each other’s answers. The experimental manipulation text was printed on page 2 of the questionnaire, and the three versions of the survey had been randomized prior to the data collection so that the participants were randomly assigned to either one of the two experimental conditions or the control group. The measures that explicitly mentioned gender where placed last in the questionnaire as to not prime the control group with the category gender. When the participants had completed the survey, everyone was fully debriefed regarding the experimental manipulation and the study’s hypotheses and all questions were Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18 5 of 11 answered. No one communicated any discomfort regarding the study’s manipulation or other aspects of the study. 3. Results For the descriptive statistics of means and standard deviations, see Table 1. Assumption testing and outlier screening was conducted on all variables, with no serious violations detected. Table 1. Descriptive statistics for all variables separated by participant gender and the experimental conditions. Men Male-Dominance Prime Women Male-Dominance Prime Men Control Group Women Control Group Men Gender-Equality Prime Women Gender-Equality Prime M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD Social identity threat 2.11 1.17 4.38 1.53 2.02 0.95 3.44 1.54 2.11 1.19 2.90 1.55 Career control 3.87 1.46 4.37 1.47 3.50 1.38 3.28 1.22 3.94 1.22 3.13 1.20 Interest 4.23 2.06 3.13 1.80 2.70 1.62 2.87 1.66 3.75 1.85 2.68 1.74 Self-efficacy 4.63 1.81 4.03 1.62 4.32 1.60 3.72 1.81 4.73 1.37 3.79 1.79 Gender stereotype 4.03 0.32 3.97 0.18 4.03 0.41 4.09 0.39 4.00 0.00 3.97 0.48 Manipulation check 5.39 1.17 5.13 1.14 4.70 1.06 5.12 0.91 4.88 0.87 4.61 1.05 3.1. Manipulation Check A two-way between groups ANOVA found a small significant main effect of the experimental manipulation on the manipulation check, F(2, 180) = 3.98, p = 0.02, ηp2 = 0.04. Post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the participants in the current vertical gender-segregation condition associated researchers significantly stronger with men as compared to the improving gender-balance group, p = 0.02. No other effects were significant. 3.2. Social Identity Threat (Hypothesis 1) A two-way between-groups ANOVA showed a large main effect of participant gender, F(1, 180) = 57.37, p < 0.01, ηp2 = 0.24, a small main effect of the experimental manipulation, F(2, 180) = 4.95, p < 0.01, ηp2 = 0.05, and a small interaction effect, F(2, 180) = 4.69, p < 0.01, ηp2 = 0.05, on social identity threat. One-way ANOVAs, separate for the genders, showed that only the women were affected by the experimental manipulation, and the effect size was large, F(2, 90) = 7.17, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.14. Post-hoc comparisons, using the Tukey HSD test, indicated that the women in the current vertical gender segregation condition anticipated significantly greater social identity threat in a future research career, both as compared to the control group, p = 0.05, and to the improving gender-balance condition, p < 0.01, where the anticipated threat was the lowest. This supported Hypothesis 1a and 1b. Replicating previous research (e.g., Chithambo et al. 2014) a regression analysis further showed that social identity threat predicted perceived career control, B = 0.22, β = 0.26, p < 0.01, F(1, 185) = 12.84, p < 0.01. A two-way between groups ANOVA showed a small effect of the experimental manipulation on perceived career control, F(2, 180) = 5.18, p < 0.01, ηp2 = 0.05, no main effect of participant gender, F < 1, and a small interaction effect, F(2, 180) = 3.74, p = 0.03, ηp2 = 0.04. Follow up analysis showed that only the women’s beliefs were affected by the experimental manipulation, and the effect size was large, F(2, 90) = 8.16, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.15. The women who were primed with the current vertical gender segregation attributed academic success more strongly to factors outside individual control as compared with the women in the control group, p < 0.01 and the women in the improving gender-balance condition, p < 0.01. 3.3. Interest (Hypothesis 2) A two-way between-groups ANOVA showed a main effect of participant gender, F(1, 180) = 6.35, p = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.03, a main effect of the experimental condition, F(2, 180) = 3.80, p = 0.02, ηp2 = 0.04, and a marginally statistically significant interaction effect, F(2, 180) = 2.54, p = 0.08, ηp2 = 0.03, on Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18 6 of 11 interest in the PhD program. One-way ANOVAs showed that men’s interest was dependent on the experimental manipulation, F(2, 90) = 5.39, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.11, and the effect size was moderate. Post-hoc comparisons, using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the men who were reminded of the current vertical gender segregation in academia were significantly more interested in the PhD program as compared to the men in the control group, p < 0.01, which supported Hypothesis 2a. Men’s interest was also marginally significantly higher in the improving gender balance condition as compared to controls, p = 0.07. However, the women’s interest in post graduate school was unaffected by the experimental manipulation, F < 1, which contrasted Hypotheses 2b. 3.4. Mediation Test (Hypothesis 3) We next conducted a mediation analysis to test if the gender difference in interest was mediated by a gender difference in research self-efficacy. A series of multiple regressions first showed that participant gender predicted interest, B = −0.68, β = −0.18, p = 0.01, R2 = 0.03, F(1, 185) = 6.34, p = 0.01, and self-efficacy, B = −0.72, β = −0.21, p < 0.01, R2 = 0.05, F(1, 185) = 8.71, p < 0.01, and that self-efficacy predicted interest, B = 0.50, β = 0.46, p < 0.01, R2 = 0.21, F(1, 185) = 49.22, p < 0.01. When interest was regressed on both participant gender and self-efficacy, self-efficacy was a significant predictor of interest, B = 0.48, β = 0.44, p < 0.01, but participant gender was not, B = −0.33, β = −0.09, p = 0.19, R2 = 0.22, F(1, 185) = 25.59, p < 0.01. Significance testing of the mediation effect (using the modification of Sobel (1982) test by Baron and Kenny (1986)), showed that self-efficacy significantly mediated the gender difference in interest in the PhD program, z = −2.67, p < 0.01, which supported Hypothesis 3. See Figure 1. Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 6 of 11 program as compared to the men in the control group, p < 0.01, which supported Hypothesis 2a. Men’s interest was also marginally significantly higher in the improving gender balance condition as compared to controls, p = 0.07. However, the women’s interest in post graduate school was unaffected by the experimental manipulation, F < 1, which contrasted Hypotheses 2b. 3.4. Mediation Test (Hypothesis 3) We next conducted a mediation analysis to test if the gender difference in interest was mediated by a gender difference in research self-efficacy. A series of multiple regressions first showed that participant gender predicted interest, B = −0.68, β = −0.18, p = 0.01, R2 = 0.03, F(1, 185) = 6.34, p = 0.01, and self-efficacy, B = −0.72, β = −0.21, p < 0.01, R2 = 0.05, F(1, 185) = 8.71, p < 0.01, and that self-efficacy predicted interest, B = 0.50, β = 0.46, p < 0.01, R2 = 0.21, F(1, 185) = 49.22, p < 0.01. When interest was regressed on both participant gender and self-efficacy, self-efficacy was a significant predictor of interest, B = 0.48, β = 0.44, p < 0.01, but participant gender was not, B = −0.33, β = −0.09, p = 0.19, R2 = 0.22, F(1, 185) = 25.59, p < 0.01. Significance testing of the mediation effect (using the modification of Sobel’s (1982) test by Baron and Kenny (1986)), showed that self-efficacy significantly mediated the gender difference in interest in the PhD program, z = −2.67, p < 0.01, which supported Hypothesis 3. See Figure 1. Figure 1. Self-efficacy significantly mediated the overall gender difference in interest in the PhD program, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. Lastly, exploratory ANOVAs showed no effect of the experimental manipulation on research self-efficacy nor an interaction effect (manipulation x gender), F:s < 1. There were no significant main effect or interaction effect on the research stereotype accuracy measure, F:s < 1. A one sample t-test showed that the overall mean for this last measure, M = 4.02, SD = 0.34, did not significantly differ from the scale’s midpoint (4), which was indicative of “No gender difference,” t < 1. Thus, the participants did not appear to believe in a gender difference in research ability. 4. Discussion 4.1. Social Identity Threat and Career Control The results of this study expand previous research by demonstrating that reminding students of the well-known fact that most top-level researchers are men has a large effect on women’s social identity threats. As compared to a control group, the women primed with the current vertical gender- segregation in academia were much more worried about becoming negatively stereotyped and Participant Gender β = −0.18** Interest PhD program β =−0.09 ns Self-efficacy β = −0.21** β = 0.46** Interest PhD program Participant Gender Figure 1. Self-efficacy significantly mediated the overall gender difference in interest in the PhD program, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. Lastly, exploratory ANOVAs showed no effect of the experimental manipulation on research self-efficacy nor an interaction effect (manipulation x gender), F:s < 1. There were no significant main effect or interaction effect on the research stereotype accuracy measure, F:s < 1. A one sample t-test showed that the overall mean for this last measure, M = 4.02, SD = 0.34, did not significantly differ from the scale’s midpoint (4), which was indicative of “No gender difference,” t < 1. Thus, the participants did not appear to believe in a gender difference in research ability. Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18 7 of 11 4. Discussion 4.1. Social Identity Threat and Career Control The results of this study expand previous research by demonstrating that reminding students of the well-known fact that most top-level researchers are men has a large effect on women’s social identity threats. As compared to a control group, the women primed with the current vertical gender-segregation in academia were much more worried about becoming negatively stereotyped and discriminated by gender if they would pursue a career in research. Like others have found, the level of social identity threat was related to reductions in expectations of career control (Chithambo et al. 2014; Fischer and Bolton Holz 2010), and the women primed with the dominance of men were much more likely to believe that a researcher’s career success is out of his/her control as compared to a control group. The men anticipated much lower threats than the women, and their level of threat and perceived career control were unaffected by the experimental priming. It is worrying that academia’s vertical gender segregation appears to threaten women contemplating a career in research. Few students, especially those interested in pursuing a research career, are likely to miss the fact that men dominate top-level research. Social identity threat is a stressor that no students should have to endure, and much previous research has demonstrated its many negative effects on for example performance expectations, motivation, and health (see (Inzlicht and Schmader 2012; Pascoe and Smart Richman 2009; Schmitt et al. 2014; Spencer et al. 2016); and reviews). It is therefore promising that our results demonstrate that women’s anticipated social identity threat was largely reduced and their sense of career control largely increased when they were informed that the gender-balance in academia is improving. It thus appears that simply informing students that increasing number of women now become top-level researchers may largely lower women’s fear of becoming negatively stereotyped and discriminated in a research career. This novel finding shows the power in communicating gender-equality progress and could have important implications for those invested in reducing the vertical gender segregation in academia. Importantly, while teachers and academic leaders may want to clearly communicate any gender-equality progress to their students, they should also pay attention to the actual developments regarding gender-equality. Recently, the EU reported that gender-equality development is halting in some respects and even declining in some European countries (European institute for gender equality (European Institute for Gender Equality EIGE)). Also, many Swedish women have recently reported about widespread sexual harassment and sexism in academia in connection to the hashtag #MeToo (#Akademiupproret Academic Uproar). We cannot assume that the vertical gender segregation and its associated threats for women in academia will dissipate, without further reforms. 4.2. Interest and Self-Efficacy The results further expanded previous research by demonstrating that priming men with facts about the vertical gender segregation in academia, substantially increased their interest in applying to the PhD program, as compared to a control group. This was expected, since men and women tend to be more interested in career-paths which are dominated by their gender ingroup (e.g., Su et al. 2009), although the direct effect of an experimental gender-balance prime has rarely been empirically tested (but see (Heilman 1979)). Also, being reminded of the improving gender-balance in academia marginally increased men’s level of interest as compared to controls. Interestingly, the direction of this effect was opposite to Heilman’s result (1979), who in contrast found that such a prime lowered men’s career interest. This may perhaps indicate a change in young men’s attitude toward working in gender-balanced careers since 1979. This conclusion corresponds with recent research, which indicates that gender-balanced career paths are typically perceived as highly attractive to both men and women (Diekman et al. 2010; Tellhed et al. 2018). Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18 8 of 11 Contrary to our hypothesis, reminding women of the vertical dominance of men in academia did not lower their interest in the PhD program as compared to controls. Instead, their interest was slightly lower than men’s across conditions and was statistically mediated by women’s slightly lower self-efficacy or confidence that they have what it takes to succeed in research, which was also unaffected by the experimental prime. This mediation result replicated much previous research, which has shown that gender differences in self-efficacy explain women’s lower interest in careers that are dominated by men (e.g., Hackett 1995; Tellhed et al. 2018). The result implies that to improve women’s interest in a research career, women’s research self-efficacy needs to be strengthened. In Sweden women generally perform better academically than men and earn the majority of academic degrees (Universitetskanslerämbetet UKÄ), which suggests that many women have an excellent aptitude for research. Future research may want to test if combining an improving gender-balance prime with individual aptitude feedback may work to reduce both women’s social identity threat and increase their self-efficacy. The group average on the research stereotype accuracy measure indicated a strong agreement among the participants that there is no gender difference in research aptitude. But, as stereotype threat research has shown, a belief in stereotype accuracy is not necessary for numerical minorities to be negatively affected by negative ingroup stereotypes (Inzlicht and Schmader 2012; Spencer et al. 2016). Therefore, it is important to also combat negative stereotypes concerning women’s competence. 5. Limitations The research assistant who collected the data was male, which may have strengthened the impact of the vertical gender segregation prime for the participants. A suggestion for future replications is to vary the gender of the experimenter in order to explore if this affects the strength of the prime. Previous studies suggest that it may (Marx and Goff 2005; Stout et al. 2011). Another limitation is the use of convenience sampling and that all participants were Social Science students, a field that is horizontally dominated by women (although vertically dominated by men). Future studies may want to test if the effect of the vertical gender-segregation prime is even stronger in STEM-fields, which are horizontally dominated by men. It could also be relevant to measure the participants’ current experience of gender-related social identity threat. People who have previously experienced social identity threat tend to have increased vigilance for future threat and may therefore be more strongly affected by vertical gender segregation cues (Major and O’Brien 2005). One may also want to replicate the current study in countries that are rated lower on gender equality as compared to Sweden ((European Institute for Gender Equality EIGE); World Economic Forum), since the increasing gender-balance prime may have a different effect in countries where progress toward gender equality has been slower. However, the vertical gender segregation in Sweden’s labor market is strong, even in international comparisons (European Commission 2009, 2014; Sugimoto et al. 2013). It could also be relevant to replicate the design using indirect measures that are less sensitive to social desirability concerns (see Lane et al. 2012). For instance, it is possible that the participants’ would associate research aptitude more with men than with women on an implicit measure though explicitly rejecting such gender stereotypes. We also encourage measuring explicit associations of researchers with men versus with women separately, as opposed to the combined approach in this study, to aid interpretations. Finally, future research may also want to include an organizational identification measure, since it tends to be reduced by perceived organizational obstructions (Gibney et al. 2011). Perhaps women who are reminded of the vertical gender segregation in academia identify less with their university, while a gender-equality prime increases identification. Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 18 9 of 11 6. Conclusions To conclude, the results from this study suggest that the current vertical gender-segregation in academia has different effects for men and women respectively. For students who are men, this insight may raise their interest in pursuing a research career, while it makes students who are women fear discrimination and a loss of control should they pursue an academic career. This gloomy outlook for women is, however, brightened by the result that simply informing students that the gender balance is improving in academia reduces the threat women perceive and strengthen their sense of career control. Further, since women’s lower interest in the PhD program as compared to men’s was mediated by women’s lower research self-efficacy, it implies a need to strengthen women’s competence beliefs and make them see their full potential. By reminding talented women of the improving gender balance in academia, and assuring them that they have what it takes to do research, hopefully, more women will fantasize about their future great scientific discoveries rather than imagining a hostile academia when they hear about the Nobel Prize Laureates. Author Contributions: Una Tellhed (U.T.) conceived and designed the experiment; we thank Puria Farhang for collecting the data; Una Tellhed and Anna Jansson (A.J.) analyzed the data; U.T. and A.J. wrote the paper. 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Introduction Social Identity Threats and Identity Safety Interest and Self-Efficacy Summary of the Design and Hypotheses Method Participants Materials Procedure Results Manipulation Check Social Identity Threat (Hypothesis 1) Interest (Hypothesis 2) Mediation Test (Hypothesis 3) Discussion Social Identity Threat and Career Control Interest and Self-Efficacy Limitations Conclusions References work_2fhwihkdh5c7zeiizvvidqnfxu ---- Refleksi Aktuallitas Fenomenollogi Edmund HusseJrll dallam JFillsafat .Jurnal Edisi '97 paruh pertama abad yang sangat berpengaruh dalam sejarah .. meminati filsafat dan prihatin dengan dewasa ini, yang menurut u..&&...~"'''''''llA.A.a.A.a. rnacarn-rnacarn VA~~VU.A.&~~~~ apa adanya .. Semboyannya zu den sachen selbst' (kembalilah kepada sendiri (Verhaak, 1995: 104) cocok dengan filosofinya .. Edmund Huss~rladalah orang yang telahmeletakkan pengarull paling kuat··· danmendalam atas pemikiran- pemikiran filsafat setelah Bergson. Dia adalah seorang ·.pelopor fenomenologi yang Iahir· di Prossvitz (Moravia) padatahun 1859, dan meninggalpada tahun 1938 .. Diaadalah· seorang filsuf Jerman keturunan Yahudi .. Kebebsaran Edmund Husserl sebagai seorang filsuf, terkenal·dari hasil karyanya yangcukup banyak .. Buku-bukukarya Edmund Husser} yang terkenaldan besar pengaruhnya bagi perkembangan ilmupengeta.huan dewasailli,.·atara· lain: .·.·Philosophie·· cler Arithmetik.·(18-91}; Logische Untersuchungen (1900); Ideen .• zuei~er Phanomenologie undphanomenologischen Philosopie. (1913); Formale und· transzendentale ····Logik (1929); Erfahrung und Urteil (1930) 1974: 131--1 Metode 38 •. Refleksi Aktualitas Fenomenologis Edmund Husserl karakteristik filsafat kontemporer; dan fenomenologi Edmund Husserl. demikian juga pada ma~nUSla memiliki kemampuan 1I':Jl9i.r-J11T+4:lll.9i1lfI:Jl+1l1T Filsafat Kontemporer kapan filsafat kontemporer sangat sulit dipastikan secara eksata. Ada yang menyebut filsafat kontemporer muncul setelah abad XIX; ada yang menyebut filsafat kontemporer adalah filsafat abad XX; dan Beerling menyebut filsafat kontemporer sebagai 'Filsafat Krisis'.Yang dimaksud Filsafat Krisis,bahwaposisi-posisi penting dari filsafat-filsafat jaman dahulu, pokok-pokok dasar yang penting dari .filsafat itu tidak dapat. dipertahankan dan tidak dapat dibenarkan lagi atau disangsikan kebenarannya. Tetapi kita harns berhati-hatiuntuk mengambil kesimpulan. Sebab hal itu bukanlah berarti bahwa posisi-posisi dahulu dari filsafat - seperti dari idealisme, subjektivisme atau rasionalisme -pada waktu itu telah dilenyapkan secara radikaI danuntuk selama-lamanya. Pada waktu ini aliran-aliran tersebut hanya mengalami suatu masa yang kurang baik baginya (Beerling, 1966: 46). lebih lanjut yang dipakai sebagai referellsi dalam penulisan ini sebagai berikut: Filsafat Kontemporer adalah filsafat yang.muncul dalam abad XX (dewasa ii), yang·memiliki kecenderungan sebagaimana yang dikemukakan oleh Bochenskidalam bukunya Contemporary European Philosophy$ Bochenski mencatat beberapa kecenderungan filsafat kontemporer sebagai berikut .. 1 memaharniyang-ada secara langsung. 3.Pluralisme. Filsafat kontemporerpada umumnya menolak idealismeatau materialisme yang monistik dari filsafat abad 39 eJurnal Edisi Khusus Agustus ~97 XIX, kecuali Alexander. dan Crose yang dikenal sebagai idealis monis, tetapi mereka termasuk dalamkelompok minoritas. 4. Aktualisme. Aktualisme adalah filsafat yang meoloak adanya substansi-substansi,dalam filsafat kontemporer Thomisme dan Neorealisme Inggris yang masih menerimanya, tetapi aliran seperti Neokantianisme, fenomelogi, dan aliran metafisika baru menolaknya. 5. Peronalisme. sebagaian besar filsafat abaa aewasa ini kembali menaruh perhatian besar kepada 'human person' terutama niIai-niIai unik yang melekat pada 'human person' itu (Bockenski, 1974: 36-38). Di samping beberapa karakteristik yang sudah disebutkan di atas, filsafatkontemporer memiliki juga semacam 'external feature', seperti teknik, produktivitas dan interdependensi. Di antaranya yang paling meninjol adalah sifat interdependensi. Dalam filsafatkontemporer tercemin adanya saling ketergantungan dan saling relasi antar berbagai gerakan, mazhab dan negara (Bochenski, 1974: 39; Siswanto, 1995: 21). Atas dasar karakteristik di atas, dapat disimpulkan bahwa orientasi dasar yang mewarnai filsafat kontemporer dapat dibedakan ke dalam dua kelompok , yaitu filsafat yang beroientasi pada 'ajaran' dan filsafat yang berorientasi pada 'metode'. Filsafat yang berorientasi pada ajaran dikelompokkan ke dalam tiga kelompok: Pertama, filsafat yang masih membawa semangat filsafat abad XVIII (Empirisme, Materialisme, Positivisme, Kantianisme dan Hegelian). Kedua, filsafat yang masih menerima pengaruh filsafat (Vitalisme) dan Filsafat yang kepada antara dapat disebut: logika matematika, fenomenologi, hermeneutika, strukturalisme, dan yang paling terbaru dekonstruksi .. Khusus mengenai metode fenomenologi yang pertama kali muncul dirintis dan dikembangkan oleh Edmund HusserI, selanjutnya mendapat perhatian khusus dari eksistensialisme dan aliran metafisika baru. 40 • Refleksi Aktualitas Fenomenologis EdmundHusserl Fenomenologi Edmund Husserl Kata 'fenomenologi' berasal dari bahasa Yunani 'phainomeno' dan 'logos'. 'Phainomenon'berarti tampak dan 'phainein' Sedangkan 'logos' kata, ucapan, pertimbangan. Dalam arti luas, fenomenologi gejala-gejala atau yang tampak. Dalam arti sempit, ilmu tentang fenomen- fenomen yang menampakkan diri kepada kesadaran kita (Bagus, 1992: 85). fenomenologi menurut pemahaman Edmeund Husserl merupakan suatu analisis deskripsi serta itropeksi mengenai kedalaman dari semua bentuk kesadaran dan pengalam- pengalam langsung: relegius, moral, estetis,konseptual, selia inderawi. Untuk Edmund Husserl kemudian menegaskan, perhatian filsafat hendaknya difokuskan pada penyelidikan tentang'Lebenwelt' (dunia kehidupan) atau 'Erlebnisse' (kehidu pan su bjektif dan batiniah). Penyelidikan ini hendaknya menekankan watak intensional kesadaran, dan tanpa mengandaikan praduga-praduga konseptual dari ilmu-ilmu empiris (Bagus, 1992: 88). Bagi Husserl, fenomenologi meru paka metode dan filsafat. Fenomenologi sebagai metode membentangkan langkah-Iangkah yang harus diambil sehinga kita sampai pada fenomena yang murni (Titus, 1984: 399). fenomenologi mempelajari dan melukiskan ciri-ciri intrinsik fenomen- fenomen sebagaimana fenomen-fenomen itu sendiri menyingkapkan kepada kesadaran. Setiap orang harus serta hakiki dan intuisi disebut fenomenologi memberi pengetahuan yang perlu dan esensial mengenai apa yang ada (Titus, 1984: 401).Di sini fenomenologi dapat dijelaskan sebagai metode 41 eJumal Edisi Khusus '97 kembali ke benda itu sendiri,oleh karena dalam tahap-tahap penelitiannya menemukan objek-objek yang membentukdunia yang'manusia alami. Menurut Husserl untuk mencapai hakikat murni harus diadakansemacam pemberishan atau penyaringan (Reduksi). Hakikat murni adalah. sampai pada benda itu sendiri (zalihnya): 'zur den sachen selbst' sebagaimana yang menjadi semboyannya. Menurut Husserl terdapat tiga macam reduksi: reduksi fenomenologis, reduksi eidetis, dan reduksi transendental (Delfgaauw, 1988: 106). Pertama, reduksi fenomenologis: menyaring pengalaman sehingga orang sampai pada, fenomen semurni- murninya, setiap orang (subjek) harns melepaskan benda itu dari pandangan-pandangan lain: agama, adat, pandangan ilmu pengetahuan. Jika berhasil maka akan sampai pada fenomen yang sebenarnya. Dengan kata lain, untuk mencapai pada fenomen yang sebenarnya adalah dengan menempatkan tealitas benda-benda di luar kita antara kurung (epoche). Dalam reduksi ini, Husserl meninggalkan sikap alamiah yang biasa pada orang 'biasa' yang tanpa ragu-ragu melihat benda- benda dan tidak sebagai gejala kesadaran saja. Yang muncul dalam kesadaran ialah gejala (fenomenon). Kedua, reduksi eidetis: menghilangkan semua perbedaan-perbedaa dari sejumlah item yang ada dalam khayalan sehingga tinggal saja suatu 'esensi'. Dengan kata lain, semua yang lain yang bukan inti eidos, fenomen perlu diletakkan di dalam tanda kurung. Dengan demikian akan sampai pada hakikat sesuatu. Pengertian inilah dalam arti yang muri. Dalam hal ini hakikat oleh yang ...",,a,lLilVV!U'''l ialah struktur dasariah, yang meliputi: fundamental, hakiki, semua relasi hakiki Y,""jll;Jl."'4.a.1X~,,",,V.""''''''''''''A,U.J.l objek-objek lain yang disadari (Bakker, 1984: 1150. Ketiga, reduksi transendental: reduksi ini merupakan pengarahan ke subjek, dan mengenai tetjadinya penampakan sendiri, dan mengenal akar-akarnya dalam kesadaran (Bakker, 1984: 117); bukan lagi mengenai objek atau fenomen, bukan mengenai hal-hal sejauh menampakkan diri kepada kesadaran. Dalam reduksi ini yang harns ditempatkan dalam 42 • Refleksi Al:tualitas Fenomenologis Edmund Husserl kurung ialah eksistensi dan segala sesuatu yang tiada hubungan timbal-balik dengan kesadaran murni, diterapkan kepada subjeknya dan perbuatannya, kepada kesadaran ketiga Husserl pengakuan dan harus diakui hanyalah 'das Ich'yang dengan 'Bewusstsein'-nya (kesadaran) yang pula" (Drijarkara, 1981: 133).. Artinya satu -satunya realitas yang boleh dan harusdiakui dengan mutlak ialah dari 'das Ich'; "yang di atas semua situasi yang segala pengalaman, sadar akan sendiri" Sadar di sini bukanlah kesadaran sehari-hari berhadapan kejasmanian, melainkan· kesadaran yang supraempiris, yang atas semua pengalaman, yang transendentaL Bila memperhatikan rangkaian· peikiran Husserl di atas, dapat dikatakan bahwa fenomenologi Husserl tidak terdapat kriteria untuk menentukan kesahian suatu kebenaran; ditekankan dalam fenomenologinya adalah 'intersubjektivitas'~ dan basis filosofis Husserl ialah bahwa dunia yang tampak ·ini tidak memberi kepastian, kita harusmencarinya dalam 'Erlebnisse': pengalaman yang sadar, "pertemuan dengan aku" .. Aku ini harus dibedakan dengan 'aku emp[iris'yang tidak murni yangmerupakan dunia benda.. "Aku" ini harus dikurung dan kemudian kita menuju 'aku murni yang mengatasi semua -pengalaman .. prlnslpnya manusia, melalui kebebasan. merupakan sisi realitas kebebasan, satu sebutan bahwa seseorang bebas berarti yang lain juga bebas .. Bebas berarti tak seorangpun dapat 43 .Jurnal Edisi Khusus Agustus '97 IllG.U.:)JlU dalam mengejar dihadapkan pada suatu dilemma, yaitu bebas atau sarna sekali tidak bebas .. dernikianlahgambaran umum tetang fenomenologi kesadaran, tanpamengandaikan praduga-praduga ..l'"",.Jll!lJ''l",... VII..II.It.U..i. dari ilmu -ilmu empiris. Sebagai konsekuesinya kebebesan yang demikian itu tentunya selalu disertai dengan tanggung jawab, dan mengetahui bahwa semua perbuatannyabersumberdari kebebasannya. Pertanggungjawaban itu tidak terbatas'pada diri sendiri tetapi juga tanggung jawab terhadap orang lain bahkan seluruh dunia. Dengan pertangg'ungjawaban yang mengikutsertakan orang lain, berarti menunjukkan solidaritas manusia. Jadidalam rangka mengejar citra diri manusia mau tidakmau seseorang harus memilih perbuatannya yang terbaik bagi semua orang. Manusia dengan kebebasannya. adalah kemampuan permanen untuk menarik dirinya .dari masa lampau, sehingga selalu dapat dimungkinkan suatu permulaan barn sesuai dengan penemuan barunya melalui kesadaran murni yang ditemui kemudian. Di sinilah· optimistik Husserl selalu merangsang, menggugah keberanian,manusia, memberi harapan,membuat segala kemungkinan berubah. Sedangkan aspek 'negatip yang menjadi kelemahan pemikiran husserl justru terletak pada puncak kekuatannya, dengan konsep kesadaran (subjek) murni, manusia pada hams menolak eksistensi mempengaruhi dengan segala atuirannya, pandangan dan nilainya kepada orang lain. Hal ini berarti mendorong. mausia kreatif dan progresifdalam menghadapui dunia. Kebebasan ini mengingatkanpada Sokrates sendiri', sedangkan mengajarkan supaya 44 • Refleksi Aktualitas FenomenologisEdmund Husserl Husserl yang dapat disampaikan dalam bagioan Ii. Selanjutnya, bagian berikut akan dikemukakan 'Aktualitas Fenomenologi Husserl dalam Filsafat Kontemporer' Metode Fenomenologi Husserl dan Pengaruhnya Fenomenologi Husser! tidak diragukanmemberikan sumbangan .. terhadap cara berpikir kefilsafatan maupun perkembanganbeberapa disiplin ilmu sosial/kemanusiaan. Ini tidak berartibahwa filsafat telah menemukan terminal terakhirnya. Maksudnya, sikap kritis yang radikal harus tetap dijadikan sema.ngat seperti dittlntut oleh Husserl. Menu rut pendapat ini, seseorang yang menerima gagasan -gagasan kefilsafatan secara dogmatis adalah sikap anti filsafat dan sekaligusanti fenomenologis. Fenomenologi Husserl· telah menawarkan suatu metode penyelidikan/pemahaman telltang realitas. Sebagai suatu metode, ia berpeluang untuk diadopsi dalammenyelidiki dan memahami problem-problem aktuaI yang dihadapi manusia. Pada filsafat kontemporer, para filsuf eksistensialisme yang banyak terpengaruh dan berusaha mengaktualisasikan metooe fenomenologi itu dalam pemikiran mereka. Para filsuf eksistensilisme memakai metode fenomenologi, pada unlumnya dalam analisis eksistensi.. Filsuf-filsuf eksistensilis yallg memakai metode fenomenologi, antara lain: Satire, Merleau- Ponty, Ricouer, dan ·lain sebagainya. Namun demikian,mereka tidak menerima begitu saja pendapat Husserl tentang sikap objektif, reduksi pokok yang pertama, yang menyisihkan 45 eJumal Edisi Khusus Agustus .'97 intennsional. Fenome diselidiki. sejauh disadari secara langsung dan sponta, sebagai 'yang lain' dari kesadaran (Bakker, 1984: 119). Para eksistensialis mempertahankan aspek non- diskursifdalam intuisi. subjek, namumerekatidak mengikuti tekanan Husserl pada sikap objektif dan kontemplatif. Fenomen dianalisa menurut semua unsur Husserl lainnya. Harus dibersihkan dari segalapenyempitan dan interpretasi. berat sebeleh; sehingga mulai tampak dasar asali, yaitu dunia eksistensi nyata (Bakker,1984: 120). Dengan analisa ini ditemukan sifat-sifat pokok yang berlaku bagi eksistensi manusia,yang sekaligusunik, dan berlaku··bagi setiap manusia. Berikut ini akan dikemukakan sejauh mana letak ketergantungan ketiga filsuf(Sartre, Merleau -Ponty, Ricoeur) dari fenemenologi Husserl, yang mereka ikuti untuk menyelidiki/memahami problem-problem aktual yang dihadapi manusia (tentang realitas). Metode yang dipergunakan Sartre secara keseluruhan tidak berbeda dengan para. eksistensialis lainnya, yaitu .metode fenomenologi. Sartre pada awal mulanya mengikuti fenomenologi Husser!, namun kemudian ia membelot. MenurutSartre, fenomenologi Husserl itu kering .dan netral; tidak memberikan penkelasan yang memuaskan tentang Ada- nya fenomen-fenomen, karena tidak membedakan secara prinsipialobjek. dengan tampaknya objek. Husserl berhenti pada esensi, dengan demikia tidak pernah mencapai Ada-nya sesuatu objek. Salire berkeyakinan bahwa Ada merupakan syarat bagi tampaknya sesuatu (Bertens, 1985: 315). Untukitu kemudian Sartre lebih tertarik kepada ide Heidegger, yang mengungkapkan arti hakikat 'Ada' Dalam Sein und Zeit (Ada Waktu), Heidegger membahas tentang makna hidup dan makna kenyataan. tema pokok buku ini adalah sebuah pertanyaan fundamental: Apa maknanya, bahwa kitaada? (Hamersma, 1983: 126). Heidegger menganalisa keberadaan manusia di dunia dengan analisa fenomenologi. Eksistensi adalah absurd, manusia ada di dunia tidak dipilihsendiri, melainkan sebagai sesuatu yang telah ditentukan.Manusia 'dilemparkan' dalam 46 • Refleksi Aktualitas Fenomenologis Edmund Husserl .AJL lL a-_&.lU,... .a._AII.._JlA. IIo-_V sebagai Husserl memperolep peranan barn pada Merleau-Ponty. Pada faktisitasyang penuh 'keprihatinan' (Hamersma, 1983: 125). Bagi Sartre, fenomenologi Husserl masihmemuat kelemahan. Kelemahannya terdapat pada sikap ilmiah menjadi ~1va"'11t1"'1""1~~ antara yang dunia yang me:naJmp,aKlcan dirinya, dunia yang dihidupi atau manusiawi. Dengan kata dengan memberi peranan besar kepada kesadaran lengkap dengan emosi,kebencian, A~_II-'l.4.JI.""'IL.1-IL-""'JLi."l penderitaan, keterasingall, dan kerinduannya dikawinkan dengan dialektika Karl Marx, maka filsafat Satire menjadi suatu eksistensialisme yang humanise Jadi dari Husserl, Sartre hanya meminjam fenomenologi yang melingkupi intensionalitas kesadaran ya:ng dengan kebebasannya" Apa yang dilakukan oleh Satire itu, nampak sejalan dengan orientasi filsafatnya yang melibatkan diri secara politik dan sosial dalam masyarakat.. Titik tolakpembahasan hubungan subjek-objek diteljemahkan ke istilah etre-pour-soi dan hadir untuk hadir pada (Heraty, 1984: 146~147)o Satire antara keduanya meustahil terjadi sintesis .. melihat subjektivitas sedemikian rupa, sehinzga manusia menjadiancaman 47 .Jurnal Edisi '97 pokoknya pengertian intensionalitas Int diperluas pengertiannya, sehingga tidak saja meliputi kegiatan-kegiatan kesadaran, melainkan mengenai pula h'ubungan dengandunia Iuar dan hubungan dengan manusia lain.. Deskripsi fenomenologi yang olehHusserl dimaksudkan untuk kembali kepada sesuai dengan dan sampai kepadasikap ilmiah barn, bagi Merleau -Panty terutama &diartikan sebagaisuatu protes terhadap pendekatan benda~benda secaraobjektif dengan hubungan-hubungan kausalnya. meumt diahendaknya benda-benda dikembalikan kepada sebuah .dunia penghayatan, Lebenswelt menyryt I-IusserL Merleau ... Ponty berorientasi kepada karyaHusserl yang terakhir (Bruzina, 1970: 89) ,di mana tema penghayatan dunia lingkungan hidup atau Lebenswelt lebih diperhatikan. Iniberbeda dengan Sartre yang bertolak dari kaerya awal Husserl yang terutama mengambil tema ini kesadaran atau kesadaran. itu sendiri. Hal iniberati bahwaMerleau-Ponty menolak analisis yang menganggap Lebenswelt ini berpangkal; pada kegiatan subjek, sebagai suatu kecenderungan yang idealistik, mengarahkan segalanya kepada kesadaran kembali (Heraty, 1984: 148). Reduksi fenomenologik ini sementara menyingkirkan realitas sebuah dunia ilmiah bagi Husserl dandimaksudkan u·ntuk menemukan kejernuhan struktur-struktur logik. Merleau - Ponty mengokohkan kesimpulan, bahwa the great reductio is the imposibility of complete reduction 1965 dalam Toeti -Hertay, 1984: sehingga ia dari hakikat bagi Merleau -Ponty secara· tidak langsung menjelaskan ketunggalan·fakta-faktapada penghayatan yang malah pertama-tama ditanggalkan oleh reduksi Husser1 tadi. Jadi hakikat atau eidos digunakan sebagai latar belakang penghayatan konkret.. Inilah suatu pokok pemikiran 48 · • Refleksi Aktualitas Fenomenolog;s Edmund Husserl eksistensialis yang bergeser minat dari hakikat, essence atau eidos ke eksistensi, dari hakikat abstrak kepada kehadiran konkret. murni tersebut.. meskipun akhirnya melibatkan luar, tidak menjadikan dunia ii sebagai pusat perhatian seperti pada Merleau-Ponty .. samplng yang ............. A ...__ ..... "'........ tempat yang berbeda dalam tanggapanya, subjektivitas atau rasionalitas bagi Merleau-Ponty mendapat tanggapan berbeda pula, sehingga tugas fenomenologi ialah untuk mengungkapkan the nlystery of the world and the mystery reason .. Di satu pihak misteri dunia,di pihak lainmisteri rasio manusia secara bersama merupakan suatu kebertautan, hubungan antara keduanyamerupakan suatuengagement (Ponty, 1965: 19; Heraty, 1984: 149) .. MenuTut Husserl, pokok-pokok tersebut di atas akan lebih nyata bila diteliti dalam lapangan fenomenologik, mana berarti penjernihan fenomena sekaligus .. Merleau -Ponty menanggapi lapangan fenomenologik sebagai suatu lapangan suatu lapangan kegiatan untuk suatu phenomenal terutama menunjang fenomenologi Hl1C'C't=t>"t"" yangmenekankan ... reduksi eidetik. 49 eJumal Edisi Khusus Agustus '97 Namun Ricoeur menyadari keterbatasan' suatu deskripsi eidetik,·yang maksudnya menangkap ·struktur-struktur eidetik bila menghadapi misalnya gejala kehendak dan emosi. Ricoeur melihat deskripsi ini sebagai taraf mempunyai maksud-maksud sampai pada suatu pandangan tentang manusia dalam suatu metafisika., Dengan demikian ia berkeberatan terhadapfenomenologi Husserl yang disebut olehnya sebagai 'fenomenologik deontologik' (Spiegelberg, 1977 dalam Toeti - Heraty, 1984: 181). dan membatasi diri pada gejala-gejala kesadaran saja. Ricoeur meninggalkan suatu idealisme dogmatik untuk idealisme metodeik. Artinya bahwa deskripsi gejala kesadaran hanya diguakannya sebagai titik tolak, terutama dalam pengenlbagan metodenya. Di samping itu, Ricoeur juga berusaha mengatasi prasangka logisistik pada Husser!. Ricoeur berminat kepada gejala kehendak dan ernosi yang justru pertama-tama ditanggalkan pada reduksi eidetik HusserL Ricoeur ingin sampai pada suatu filsafat tentag manusia yang mengatasi keterbatasan gejala -gejala kesadaran saja. Ricoeur, dalam hal ini ingin memamfaatkan juga penelaahan problem secara ilmiah, terutama oleh psikologi. Dalam konteks ini Ricoeur memamfaatkan juga wawasan,.,;wawasan bellaviourism psikologi Gestalt dan psikoanalisa ·dalam filsafatnya tentangmanusia tersebut (Heraty, 1984: 181-182). Hal yang demikian kurang lebih juga telah dilakukan oleh Merleau-Ponty namun terdapatperbedaannya pula. Merleau- memusatkan perhatian kepada psikologi persepsi, Ricoeur menelaah kehendak. fenomena.. dengan ini dimaksudkan struktur intensionalitas pada fenomena. kesadaran menurut proses dan objek,atau act dan content. taraf·eidetik murni (Heraty, 1984: 182). Pada taraf pertama ini ada keberatan.. Keberatan taraf ini ialahketerbatasannya yang hanya sesuai untuk menghadapi 50 • Refleksi Aktualitas Fenomenolog;s Edmund Husserl gejala kesadaran murni serta takmampu menangkap hubungan atara kesadaran da tubuh.. Hal terakhir ini merupakan suatu 'misteri' bagi Ricoeur pada penghayatan 1 fenomenologinya men~~emUlG1Ka.n suatu yang adakalanya A""'''''-)I.. __ lp.I"_ .....'............ li. konstitusi aktif, ialah konstitusi fenomena dan mengemukakan pula konstitusi pasif, dimana fenomena telahditemuka secara tersedia. Pendapat pertama dikenal dengan pengertian idealisme transendental inilah yang ditinggalkan Ricoeur. Sedangkan taraf kedua akan lebih medapat perhatian dalam 'fenomenologi hermeneutik' yang masih akan dijelaskan kemudian, dimaa bagi subjek fenomena telah tersediadalam bentuk 'simbol'dan 'mitos' (Heraty, 1984: 182) .. Ketiga, taraf ontologi kesadaran yang berusaha menempatkan status kesadaran dalam keseluruhan ontologik atau metafisik" lni berarti bahwa Ricoeur akan sampai kepada suatu filsafat antropologi dan akhirnya pula sampai kepada pemikiran persoalan kebebasan, 'freedom' dan pula gagalnya kebebasan ini pada pengertian tentang manusia yang telah lhilaf, pada manusia sebagai 'fallible man' (Heraty, 1984:183). Fenomenologi pada Ricoeur itu dikembangkan dengan maksud-maksltd yang jauh, berusa'ha memberi gambaranyang total dankonprehensif tentang manusia. Untuk maksud khusus dikembangkanya fenomenologi kehendak. Inl n1i::JlnOpnj~l dinamika kehendak ditunjang oleh 'prinsip 1984: 183), sehingga untuk suatu deskripsi dinamika kehendak mencakup usur bukan-kehendak dan meneliti pula relasi antara kehendak dan bukan kehendak.. Yang menarik dalam hubungan ini ialah, 51 '97 bahwa dalam deskripsi bukan-kehendak ikut unsur jasmani,. hal maa sampai kini takdapat diikutsertakan dalam penelaahan struktur eidetik dapa gejala kesadaran. Fenomena kehendak menurut membedakan suatu tindakanatau kegiatan kehe:ndal menu rut gerak yang dikehe~daki, menentkan, menggerakkan tubuh, aku menyernjui' 1~~71 : 54). Ketiga-tiganya ditunjang oleh kegiatankehendak. gerak kehendak mempunyaipasangan atau korelatbukan- kehendak masing-masing, dalam artibahwa 'bukan-kehendak menjadi latar-belakang sebab' bagi kehendak dan sebaliknya kehendak memberi fokus kepada bukan -kehendak. Gerak pertama sebagai suatu keputusan ('decision') tampak 1Jertama-tama sebagai hasil analisis intensionalitas. Gerak kedua ialah .kelengkapan perencanaan koson.g oleh keputusan sebagai gerak pertama dan dengan analisis intensional menampilkan'gerak atau kegiatan' st.-'bagai kelanjutan keputusan. Gerak terakhir atau ketiga dipel'lukan untuk menyempurnakan kehendak yang diawali oleh suatu keputusan, dikonkretkan oleh kegiatan dan merupakan persetujuan. Persetujuan ini merupakan 'keikhlasan untuk menerima suatu keniscayaan' (Heraty, 1984: 184-18G). Di antara ketiga taraf inilah yag paling utama menanlpilkan dimensi kemerdekaan dalam pertentangan dengan keniscayaan. Ricoeur mengemukakan perumusa scbagai berikut: ' Keikhlasan adalah gerak kemerdekaan kearah alam supaya dipersatukan dengan keniscayaan mutlakl1ya dan mengubahnya menjadidirinya sendiri' (Rasmusse, 1971: i; 1). Penggunaan ·metode atau deskripsi eidetik dalam .l'o.\..-!.U.U.U.;x.,;A..U.II.UJ.L besar', Ricoeur hendak memperluas deskripsi 11 dengan mengikutisertakan perwujuda dengan memperoleh paradoks antara kemerdekaal1 dan alam. Paradoks ii dipecahkan oleh manusia meurut dua kemugkinan, ialah bahwaia menggerakkan kehendak kc,arah 'transendensi', tetapidapat pulasampai kepada kegl\~alan 52 • Refleksi Aktualitas Fenomenolog;s Edmund Husserl kehendak yang pada manusia dengan peristilahan religius disebut 'dosa' .. Oi antara kedua kutub fenomenologi kehendak kita lihat satu pihak kemerdekaan,di pihak alam suatu eksistensial' manusia sebagai eksistensi dan kita hadapi pada eksistensial kedua kutub ialah kemerdekaan lagi pihak, di pihak lain kekhilafan manusia atau 'fallibility' .. tahap ketiga ialah kenyataan yang dinilai menurut keberhasilan atau kegagalan kehendak: transendensi atau dosa (Heraty, 1984: 197) .. Pada tahap ketiga ini oleh RicoeUl'l diikutsertakan 'metode hermeneutik', ilah metode 'penafsiran' melengkapi kedua sebelumnya. Demikianlah sekelumit hasi! refleksi (tangkapan dan interpretasi) terhadap "Aktualitas .Fenomenologi HusserI dalam filsdafat Kontemporer' pada tiga filsuf: Satire, Merleau-Ponty, dan Ricoeur dari sekian banyak filsuf yang juga berusaha untuk mengaktualisasikan fenomenologi Husserl dalam pemikirannya, yang dapat disampaikan dalam tulisan ini. Penutup Berdasarkan paparan di atas dapatlah diambil kesimpulan bahwa seorang filsuf yang mengetrapkan metode fenomenologi, tidak akan menerima begitu saja kebenaran Ia akan mencari dalam usaha mendalam dilaksanakan dengan Dalam hal ini ada tiga tahap, yaitu reduksi fenomenologi, reduksi eidetis, dan reduksi transendentaL 53 eJurnal Edisi Khusus Agustus '97 Sedangkan dalam usaha pemikirankefilsafatan, fenomenologi merupakan metode untuk menganalisa unsur intuitif· dari pengertian kita, sehingga kita berhasil menemuka intisari atau .a.S.III.JI,.A"................... dari barang-barang dalam usahanya telah berhasil menemukan evidensi-evidensi yang Ug.,n~"'-'-'i;.Ar.JI" yang merupaka:n 'dasar yang dan tidak dapat dibantah lagi. Sementara itu, para. filsufeksistensialis (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur) mengetrapkan metode fenomenologi untukmemandang. kehidupan manusia sebagaimana adanya. Dengan metode fenomenologi, mereka berhasil membeda- bedaka beradanyamanusia dengan beradayang lain. Beradanya manusia adalah bereksistensi.. Sedang berada·· yang lain juga berada, namun tidak bereksistensi. Oleh karena manusia mempunyai cara berada yang khusus. Cara itu berupa kesibukan manusia, baik berupakesibukan dengan diri sendiri maupun dengan dunia luar. Dengan megarahkan pengetrapan metode fenomenologi ke suatu ·aspek tertentu, akan tercapai suatu pengertioan yang tertentu. Dengan mengarahkanpengetrapan metode itu ke aspek esensi atau intisari, akan menemukan hakikat dari sesuatu hal yang bersangkutan. Sebaliknya, dengan mengarahkannya ke aspek kehidupan manusia yang konkret seperti yang dilakukan oleh filsuf eksistensialis,akan dapat menemukan eksistensi manusia yangpenuhkesibukan. Oleh karena itu dapat disimpulkan, bahwa fenomenologi sebagai metode adalah baik sekali untuk diterapka dalam usaha pemikira.n kefilsafatan. Metode ini memberi jalan kepada manusia (subjek) utuk mencari dan VVt,cl""""'f"l1f"\<1':!1 kebenaran yang sedalam-dalamnya, menganjurkan begitu yang secara memaksa itu, .·fenomenologi sebagai metode sangat lJaik diterapkan sebagi dasar analisis sosial/kemanusiaan. 54 • Reflek..'ii Aktualitas FenomenologisEdmundHusserl DAITAR PUSTAKA F11safat KOlltelnporel; fakultas Filsafat UGM., 1 Historical Introduction, Nijhoff, The Hague. 1 University of California Angeles. Bruzina, R, 1970, Logos a.nd Eidos, the Concept Phenomenology, University of Kentucky, Mouton, TIle Hagus - PariSe Delfgaauw, B., 1988, Filsafat Abad 20, Alih Bahasa Soejono Soemargono, Tiara Wacana, Yogyakarta. Drijarkara, N., 1978, Percikan Filsafat, Pembangunan, Jakarta~ Hamersma, 1983, Tokoh- Tokoh iY/safa! Sara! Modern, Gramedia, Jakarta. Harun Hadiwijono, 1980, Sari ~iara}l Filsafat Bal"llt Kanisius, Yozyakarta o Sisv{anto, 1995, Laporan Penelitian, y ogyakarta~ Lorens Bagus, 1992, "Edmund Husserl Kembali Pada Benda- benda Itu Sendiri" dalam Fx. Mudji Sutrisno & f. Budi Pa.ra PenentlJ 55 • Jurnal Edisi Khusus Agustus .'97 Titus, Smith, Nolan, 1984, Persoalan-PersoalanFiIsaftit, Dialih Bahasa oleh Prof. Dr. H.M.Rasjidi, Bulan Bintang, Jakarta. Gramedia, Jakarta. 56 work_2kfbj5stjzetnprxkueixdxwfi ---- Study protocol for PRISE: a longitudinal study of sexual harassment during the transition from childhood to adolescence STUDY PROTOCOL Open Access Study protocol for PRISE: a longitudinal study of sexual harassment during the transition from childhood to adolescence Therése Skoog* , Kristina Holmqvist Gattario and Carolina Lunde Abstract Background: Sexual harassment is a widespread problem with serious consequences for individuals and societies. It is likely that sexual harassment among peers has its main onset during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence, when young people enter puberty. However, there is a lack of systematic research on sexual harassment during this developmental period. Thus, there is very little information about the prevalence of sexual harassment during this important transition, its consequences, and how to effectively intervene against and prevent the problem. The primary objective of the described project, entitled Peer Relations In School from an Ecological perspective (PRISE), is to examine sexual harassment and its developmental correlates during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence. Methods: The PRISE study has a longitudinal design over 3 years, in which a cohort of children (N = 1000) and their main teachers (N = 40) fill out questionnaires in grades 4, 5, and 6. The questionnaires assess aspects of peer sexual harassment and potential correlates including biological (e.g., pubertal development), psychosocial (e.g., self- assertiveness, self-image, peer relations), and contextual (e.g., classroom climate, norms) factors. In addition, we will examine school readiness and policies in relation to sexual harassment and collect register data to assess the number of reports of sexual harassment from the participating schools. Discussion: The PRISE study will enable the researchers to answer fundamental, unresolved questions about the development of sexual harassment and thus advance the very limited understanding of sexual harassment during the transition from childhood to adolescence - a central period for physical, sexual, and social development. Due to the sensitive nature of the main research concepts, and the age of the participants, the ethical aspects of the research need particular attention. Ultimately, the hope is that the PRISE study will help researchers, policy makers, and practitioners develop, and implement, knowledge that may help in combating a major, current societal challenge and adverse aspect of young people’s developmental ecologies. Keywords: Sexual harassment, Peer victimization, School, Longitudinal, Late childhood, Adolescence, Developmental transition Background Sexual harassment can be defined broadly as “improper behavior that has a sexual dimension” [1] or “unwanted sexual attention” [2]. It includes a range of verbal, phys- ical, and visual direct or indirect behaviors that the re- cipient perceives as unwelcome and/or unwanted. Some examples are uninvited sexual comments, grabbing, touching, and requests for sexual favors. As opposed to legal definitions of sexual harassment, psychological defi- nitions emphasize the victim’s subjective experience when determining whether an act should be regarded as sexual harassment or not [3]. Testimonies from the #metoo movement, and evi- dence from a small, tentative body of mainly cross- sectional research, converge to reveal that sexual har- assment becomes part of young people’s lives early in their development. It is well-established that the problem is highly prevalent in early adolescence [4– 7]; however, research on sexual harassment in late © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. * Correspondence: therese.skoog@psy.gu.se Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0345-5 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1186/s40359-019-0345-5&domain=pdf http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7456-2397 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ mailto:therese.skoog@psy.gu.se childhood (ages 10–12 years), is still in its infancy. This is unfortunate considering that late childhood is a period that is central for general physical, sexual, and social development, and, importantly, the transi- tion from childhood to early adolescence has been pointed out as the time in life when children are typ- ically confronted with and start engaging in peer sex- ual harassment for the first time. Trigg and Wittenstrom [8], for example, reported that 15% of high school and college aged students recalled being sexually harassed in the first through fifth grades. Moreover, in one study, more than 90% of students in middle school in the US (mean age 12.5 years) re- ported having been the target of some form of sexual harassment the previous school year, with verbal har- assment (e.g., name calling) being the most common form of sexual harassment [9]. Despite the evidence suggesting a high prevalence of sexual harassment at early ages, and the fact that knowledge of the devel- opmental processes underlying sexual harassment among young people is needed for effective preven- tion, the current literature lacks comprehensive, de- velopmentally and ecologically informed longitudinal studies covering the transition from late childhood to early adolescence. This is surprising not least given that the pubertal process, which occurs during this period for most girls and boys [10], has been identi- fied as a main trigger for the onset of sexual harass- ment [2, 11, 12]. More studies that follow young people over the course of the transition from late childhood to early adolescence are needed, preferably starting before puberty and its associated marked rise in sexual harassment. What is known about the development of sexual harassment at young ages? The existing literature on sexual harassment among young people (primarily adolescents) has provided some important insights into the phenomenon and its consequences. Firstly, studies from different countries in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia con- sistently find high prevalences of sexual harassment victimization among adolescents. In many studies [7, 13–15], half or more than half of the adolescents re- port being the targets of sexual harassment. These findings clearly indicate that sexual harassment is a significant and universal problem among young people around the globe. Secondly, adolescent research has identified a number of individual characteristics that are linked to an in- creased risk of sexual harassment victimization and per- petration. Concerning gender, sexual harassment has been described traditionally as harm that men or boys expose women or girls to [16, 17]. Accordingly, most adolescent research has demonstrated that girls are more often the targets of, and boys more often the perpetra- tors of, sexual harassment [2, 5, 18–20]. In sharp con- trast, however, other findings have revealed that boys are more exposed to direct sexual harassment than girls [7, 21, 22]. Research that examines specific forms of sexual harassment in relation to gender [19] has found that for some forms, girls are more exposed (e.g., being touched, grabbed or pinched in a sexual way) and for others, boys are more exposed (e.g., homophobic name calling). An- other set of studies have found that sexual harassment occurs both within and between both sexes and in both directions [13, 23, 24]. Other individual characteristics that have been related to sexual harassment in adoles- cence include pubertal timing [25, 26], gender-role con- tentedness [27], and sexual behavior [12, 25, 26]. Thirdly, in addition to individual characteristics, a body of literature has identified environmental charac- teristics that are related to sexual harassment. In addition to e-contexts [28], educational settings have been identified as a major arena for sexual harassment among young people [19, 29]. Some of the existing stud- ies have found that certain aspects of the school context, including teacher maltreatment [22] and feeling discon- nected from school [24], are linked to a higher preva- lence of sexual harassment. Aspects of the peer context, including bullying and peer relationship problems [22], having peers with problematic behavior [30], participa- tion in mixed-gender peer groups [2], and romantic rela- tionship status [24] have also been linked to sexual harassment. This is also true for aspects of the parent- adolescent relationship [31]. Finally, studies have identified an array of negative consequences of sexual harassment. Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, research has found that early ado- lescents seem to view verbal harassment as the most up- setting forms of sexual harassment victimization [19]. Some of the harms of sexual harassment among young people include lower self-esteem, poor physical and mental health, and trauma symptoms [11], shame, poor body image [14], depressive symptoms [18, 32], sub- stance use [33], adjustment problems [30], and academic problems [34]. Only a few protective factors against these consequences have been identified, including higher self-esteem and higher perceived support from others [35]. Considering that the negative effects have been found in different domains of functioning, sexual harassment appears to have a pervasive, negative influ- ence on young people’s development. Taken together, the existing findings point towards the importance of early interventions, as early as before or around the ad- vent of puberty, to combat the problem of sexual harass- ment among young people. For these interventions to be effective, understanding how sexual harassment develops Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 Page 2 of 10 at young ages is a fundamental first step. This step is yet to be taken. What is unknown about the development of sexual harassment in young ages? Although important knowledge has been gained from the growing literature on sexual harassment among young people, there are fundamental, unresolved ques- tions that remain to be answered. More research that can answer these questions is urgently needed, given the high prevalence and the adverse consequences associated with sexual harassment. One central limitation in the lit- erature is that most existing studies focus on adoles- cence; few focus on late childhood. Therefore, little is known about sexual harassment and its development in late childhood and the transition to early adolescence. Furthermore, the vast majority of studies are cross- sectional; few are longitudinal. The lack of prospective, longitudinal studies hinders insight into the develop- mental processes that underlay peer sexual harassment, its correlates, and consequences over time. Given that puberty is an assumed trigger of sexual harassment [2, 11, 12], research that aims to fully understand the devel- opmental processes related to sexual harassment and its developmental consequences should commence at or even before puberty (i.e., in late childhood). Such studies are important not only to find out the prevalence of sex- ual harassment at different ages, but also because devel- opmental processes could be different at different ages. For instance, it is possible that the consequences of sex- ual harassment at early ages (i.e., late childhood) could be different, and perhaps even worse, compared to later ages (e.g., late adolescence), given that younger children may be less skilled in coping with situations of sexual harassment. To date, whereas there is a body of research on sexual harassment over the course of early to late adolescence [36], studies that prospectively follow a sub- stantial group of children from late childhood through the transition to early adolescence (i.e., ages 10–13) are missing from the literature. Another limitation in the literature is that few studies have taken an ecological approach to the study of sexual harassment among young people. The focus in previous studies has primarily been on the individual level. Simi- larly, studies have primarily relied on data from single informants (i.e., typically victims of sexual harassment). Research needs to pay attention to the ecological con- text, on multiple levels, in which sexual harassment takes place, develops, and affects young people. One of the most central developmental arenas for young people is school, but at the same time, school has also been identified as a major arena for sexual harassment among young people [29]. Worryingly, studies further indicate that many schools fail to adequately acknowledge and combat sexual harassment in school [37, 38]. This is troublesome given that sexual harassment may interfere with children’s possibilities “to receive an equal educa- tional opportunity” [39], which is also mirrored in find- ings identifying negative consequences such as absenteeism and lowered grades following sexual harass- ment [34]. In line with a developmental-ecological per- spective [40], and in order to address the problem of sexual harassment efficiently, school-based studies that gather information from different informants are war- ranted. This would help to further knowledge about how, for example, attitudes and norms at the school and classroom levels affect the prevalence of sexual harass- ment. It would also enable an increased understanding for the barriers that may discourage young people’s dis- closure of sexual harassment. Theoretical framework of the PRISE study Against this background, this study protocol describes a new longitudinal, ecologically informed research pro- gram in Sweden, aiming to address sexual harassment among peers through the transition from late childhood to early adolescence: the Peer Relations In School from an Ecological perspective (PRISE) study. The current project has been designed to address and overcome the shortcomings in the current literature concerned with sexual harassment in early development. Several models of sexual harassment have previously been explored in the literature. The PRISE study is framed within developmental-contextual theoretical per- spectives on sexual harassment [2]. A key assumption in the current project is that individuals’ experiences of sexual harassment are embedded in their environmental context. Thus, a key theoretical framework for this pro- ject is the developmental-ecological perspective [40]. In line with this, the occurrence of sexual harassment in school can be seen as a result of the interaction between the individual and his or her (school) context. This no- tion is in line with a small body of literature that sug- gests that factors which protect against homophobic bullying include a positive school climate [41]. In the de- scribed project, we examine the interaction between three layers or levels of the individual and his or her context: the individual level, the classroom level, and the school level. At each level, there may be risk factors, protective factors, and potential consequences related to the occurrence of sexual harassment. The individual level includes individuals’ own experiences of being har- assed, harassing others, or witnessing harassment. It also includes biological (e.g., gender, pubertal development) and psychological (e.g., self-esteem, body esteem, resili- ence, satisfaction with class and school, reactions if sexu- ally harassed) factors within the individual. The classroom level includes the occurrence of sexual Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 Page 3 of 10 harassment in the class. It also includes teachers’ thoughts about sexual harassment (e.g., the seriousness of it), their efficacy in handling situations of sexual har- assment in the classroom, and how peers react to sexual harassment in the class. The school level involves the oc- currence of sexual harassment in the school, interven- tions conducted in the school, and school readiness to handle sexual harassment. Considering sexual harass- ment as a result of the interaction between these levels, individuals’ development can be influenced not only by their own experiences of being harassed or harassing others, but also by situations of sexual harassment in their peer group (and how they are handled by their teacher) and at their school. Research has shown that teachers have more knowledge about bullying than they do about sexual harassment [42], which may lead to teachers not seeing situations of sexual harassment, nor understanding their vital role in counteracting them. The PRISE study is further guided by the developmen- tal theory of embodiment (DTE) [43]. This theory is helpful in outlining the possible processes involved in the relationship between being sexually harassed and the negative outcomes examined in this project (e.g., depres- sive symptoms and disordered eating). The DTE derives from social constructivist and feminist frameworks and explains how individuals’ – primarily girls’ and women’s – experiences of their bodies, i.e., embodiment, are shaped as they engage with the world. According to the theory, social experiences shape individuals’ embodiment via three core pathways: 1) the physical domain, 2) the mental domain of social discourses and expectations, and 3) the social power and relational connections do- main. We suggest that sexual harassment may com- promise individuals’ experiences of their bodies within all three domains. The physical domain concerns indi- viduals’ experiences of ownership and agency in relation to their bodies. Experiences undermining body owner- ship and agency, such as having one’s body unwillingly scrutinized, commented on, or touched, by others, can inhibit experiences of embodiment. The mental domain of social discourses and expectations involves individ- uals’ experiences of stereotypes and expectations. Being exposed to disseminated stereotypes, for example stereo- typical, restraining expectations regarding how girls and boys should behave, also undermines embodiment. The third domain of social power and relational connections includes experiences of empowering or disempowering relationships. Prejudicial treatment, harassment, and liv- ing in communities with gender inequality are among the experiences undermining embodiment within this domain. We suggest that sexual harassment may undermine in- dividuals’ experiences of their bodies within all three do- mains (the physical, mental, and social power and relational connections domain), and that this may lead to lower body esteem and lower psychological well- being. To our knowledge, the only longitudinal study examining sexual harassment among girls in late child- hood (mean age 11.5 years) found that exposure to sex- ual harassment predicted a higher risk of developing disordered eating four years later [44]. Other studies have further established that low body esteem is a gate- way to disordered eating as well as depression in adoles- cent girls [45]. Therefore, in line with the DTE, low body esteem is suggested to mediate the relationship be- tween sexual harassment and its negative outcomes such as depressive symptoms and disordered eating. In relation to the issue of gender, it should be noted that since past studies have shown that both girls and boys are sexually harassed by both girls and boys [23], we do not define sexual harassment as male sexual ag- gression against women. However, some studies lend support to the notion that sexual harassment may be more damaging for girls than for boys [46]. Nonetheless, this conclusion may be premature, as outcomes typically have been biased towards internalizing symptoms, which are more commonly reported by girls. In fact, some show that the link between sexual harassment and ad- justment is stronger for boys than for girls [47]. Thus, it is possible that boys who are exposed to sexual harass- ment suffer equally damaging effects – but these effects may not have been captured by studies to date. The current project will examine a broader range of possible negative outcomes of sexual harassment, including ex- ternalizing symptoms which are typically more prevalent among boys. Research objectives In summary, fundamental and urgent questions remain concerning the development of peer sexual harassment during the transition from childhood to adolescence [37]. The current literature lacks comprehensive, devel- opmentally and ecologically informed longitudinal stud- ies covering the transition from late childhood to early adolescence. The lack of studies of the years in which sexual harassment emerges is concerning given that it prevents a full understanding of its prevalence, conse- quences, and risk and protective factors. This under- standing also needs to consider the different roles involved in sexual harassment (e.g., victims, perpetrators, and peers who witness it), and to be informed by eco- logical perspectives. Against the backdrop of the identi- fied gaps in knowledge in the literature, the primary objective of the PRISE study is to examine the preva- lence of sexual harassment over the course of the transi- tion from late childhood to early adolescence and its developmental correlates among boys and girls. The study is developmentally informed and has a Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 Page 4 of 10 developmental-contextual approach, meaning that bio- logical, psychological, social, and contextual factors will be examined in relation to sexual harassment over the course of three years (grades 4–6, ages 10–12 years). The project is guided by four research questions: 1. What is the prevalence of peer sexual harassment (victimization, perpetration, and witnessing) during the transition from childhood to early adolescence (ages 10– 12 years)? 2. What are the predictors of peer sexual harassment victimization, perpetration, and witnessing during the transition from childhood to early adolescence (ages 10– 12 years)? 3. What are the developmental consequences of peer sexual harassment for different subgroups of children during the transition from childhood to early adoles- cence (ages 10–12 years)? 4. What biological, psychological, social, and context- ual risk and protective factors moderate the potential link between sexual harassment and its developmental consequences during the transition from childhood to early adolescence (ages 10–12 years)? Methods/design Research design This research project, designed to examine sexual har- assment among peers during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence in Sweden, has a three- year longitudinal design. Data will be collected annually in grades 4 (T1) to 6 (T3) from one cohort of students, teachers, and schools via questionnaires. The question- naires will cover aspects of sexual harassment experi- ences among peers as well as biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors that there are theoretical and/ or empirical reasons to think might be related to sexual harassment. The study will run from 2019 to 2021. Participants The research project will be conducted in Sweden. It may appear paradoxical that Sweden has a high level of gender equality [48] and at the same time a high preva- lence of sexual harassment [49]. Therefore, Sweden pro- vides an interesting and important context for the study of the development of sexual harassment in early devel- opment and its correlates [38]. The study will include 1000 male and female stu- dents in approximately 40 classes. About 25–30 Swedish public and private middle schools (mellansta- dieskolor) will be recruited for the data collection. Most prior studies of sexual harassment have relied on data from single informants (i.e., typically victims of sexual harassment). The current project takes a developmental-ecological approach by collecting data from different informants at different ecological levels. For each of the participating classes, one main teacher will be included in the study and answer questions about the class and the school culture (N = 40). In addition, existing documentation will be col- lected from each school (N = 25–30). The sample size, N = 1000, is based on conventional calculations [50], aiming for 80% power, .05 alpha, the ability to detect small effect sizes, and using more than ten predictors (Miles & Shevlin, 2001). The size further accounts for some attrition (10%) that might occur over the study period. Measures Table 1 provides an overview and brief description of the instruments that will be used in the study. The in- struments have been chosen based on the theoretical framework [2, 40, 43] and prior empirical studies [4, 5, 13, 18]. Accordingly, data will be collected at the individ- ual level (e.g., from student self-reports), classroom level (e.g., from teacher reports), and school level (e.g., from school data). Measuring sexual harassment among young people is sensitive. It is important that all instruments are developmentally- and age-appropriate. During the spring of 2019, we have developed a measure of sex- ual harassment to be used among children (ages 10– 12 years). The measure consists of six items about physical, verbal, and visual sexual harassment at age 10–11 years; and an additional set of five items to measure physical, verbal, and visual sexual harassment at age 12 years. We ask about sexual harassment only among peers and at school. Other measures of sexual harassment used among older age groups [4, 5, 13, 18, 25, 26] have been used as inspiration when de- signing our measure. We have also consulted a group of experts (clinical psychologists, researchers, and school personnel) on child and adolescent develop- ment in general, and sexual harassment among young people in particular, in the development of our meas- ure of sexual harassment. Both the student and the teacher questionnaires have been pilot-tested with children of the same age as the target group and 4–6 grade teachers, respectively. Procedure Participant recruitment will be done in municipalities in the western part of Sweden, in and around the Gothenburg region. We will recruit classes in public and private (charter) schools in urban and non-urban areas by contacting school principals and school health service staff. Schools that teach grade 4 to grade 6 (Swedish 4th grade children are aged around 10) will be approached. Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 Page 5 of 10 Table 1 Overview of the study instruments Measure/Instrument Description/Construct Timing (T) of administration Student self-reports Demographic information Questions are asked about age, gender, living situation (housing and family structure), country of birth (own and parents’), language spoken at home, and socioeconomic status T1, T2, T3a Pubertal Developmental Scale [51] 5 items measuring pubertal status, pubertal timing. 1 item measuring perceived pubertal timing. 2 items measuring height and weight. T3 Perceived pubertal timing at T1, T2, T3 The Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale [52] 12 items measuring emotional support from teachers, parents, classmates, and friends . T1, T2, T3 Body Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults [53] 10 items measuring appearance-based body esteem T1, T2, T3 Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire [54] 10 items from the subscales measuring emotional and conduct problems T1, T2, T3 Victim Scale [55] 5 items measuring general peer victimization (physical, verbal, social) T1, T2, T3 School satisfaction (adapted, [56]) 2 items, e.g., “Do you enjoy school?” T1, T2, T3 Classroom satisfaction (adapted, [57]) 4 items, for example, "We help each other" T1, T2, T3 Sexual harassment victimization 6 + 5 items: verbal, visual, and physical sexual harassment victimization 6 items at T1 and T2 and 11 items at T3 Location 10 items: Location at school where the harassment took place T1, T2, T3 Offender 5 + 4 items: Gender and age of perpetrator(−s) T1, T2, T3 Witnesses 7 items: Witnesses to the harassment T1, T2, T3 Disclosure 7 items: Who was/were told about the harassment T1, T2, T3 Own reactions [58] 11 items: Behavioral and emotional reactions to the harassment, adapted T1, T2, T3 Sexual harassment perpetration 6 + 5 items: verbal, visual, and physical sexual harassment perpetration 6 items at T1 and T2 and 11 items at T3 Sexual harassment witnessing 6 + 5 items: verbal, visual, and physical sexual harassment witnessing 6 items at T1 and T2 and 11 items at T3 Sexual harassment at school and in the class 2 items: Sexual harassment is seen as a problem at school and in the class T1,T2,T3 Self-esteem [59] 1 item: self-esteem T1, T2, T3 Children's self-efficacy scale [60] 4 items about self-assertiveness, eg. “Stand up for myself when I feel I am being treated unfairly” T1, T2, T3 Children's hope scale [61] 6 items about agency and pathways, eg. “Even when others want to quit, I know that I can find ways to solve the problem” T1, T2, T3 Teacher reports Demographic information Gender, age, educational background, teaching experience, role at the school T1, T2, T3 Knowledge/Awareness about sexual harassment in the class 6 + 5 items T1, T2, T3 Class norms about sexual harassment 8 items: Different reactions that students might have to witnessing sexual harassment among peers T1, T2, T3 Teacher’s perceptions of the seriousness of sexual harassment and bullying 6 items: How serious a threat to students’ well-being the teacher considers sexual harassment and bullying to be, respectively T1, T2, T3 Teacher’s intentions to intervene [62] 7 items: Teachers’ intentions to intervene in sexual harassment between students, adapted T1, T2, T3 Teacher’s efficacy for intervening [62] 14 items; teachers’ efficacy in intervening in sexual harassment between students, adapted T1, T2, T3 Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 Page 6 of 10 Data will be collected via questionnaires completed by participating children and teachers, and via public data registers and contacts with the school principal (e.g., school policies). Students will fill out pen-and- paper questionnaires during regular school hours. Classrooms will be set up in a way to ensure that students will be able to fill out their questionnaire privately. At or around the same time, the class’s main teacher will respond to the teacher question- naire. We will send a questionnaire to the school principal via e-mail to obtain the school-level data. The data will be collected by the research team. The research team includes three senior developmental psychologists and one PhD student, who is a trained clinical child psychologist. Master’s students will also be part of the research team and participate in the data collection. Ethical considerations The PRISE study has been approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (reference number 2019– 02755). Written informed consent will be obtained from the legal guardians of the participating children and from the participating teachers. Oral informed consent will be obtained from the children. Children will be orally informed about the research in a way that they can understand. School health staff will be informed about the study in advance so that they can take any action necessary. Children will be informed, orally and in the questionnaire, that they can get in touch with their local school health nurse or school counsellor if they feel the wish or need to do so. Par- ticipants may withdraw from the study at any time without risking any negative consequences. All data will be handled confidentially. All participating school classes will be offered an incentive corresponding to EUR 140 per year. Analysis To answer Research question 1, we will mainly use descriptive statistics, including measures of central tendency and measures of variability. We will report on the percentage of students that report experiences of sexual harassment victimization, perpetration, and witnessing by gender for each time point. We will also report on teacher reports of sexual harassment among their students. Research questions 2, 3 and 4 will be answered using mainly multivariate regression analysis including structural equation modelling and growth analyses. Analyses will be both exploratory and confirmatory. Subgroup and multilevel analyses will be performed. We will control for the effects of other forms of peer harassment/victimization in the analyses in order to specify the unique effect of peer harassment that is sexual in nature. To answer the question of what the predictors of peer sexual harass- ment victimization, perpetration, and witnessing are during the transition from late childhood to adoles- cence (Research question 2), we will examine predic- tors at the school level (e.g., diversity and equal Table 1 Overview of the study instruments (Continued) Measure/Instrument Description/Construct Timing (T) of administration School Personnel Barriers to Bystander Action [62] 5 items: Teachers’ perceived barriers to intervening in sexual harassment between students, adapted T1, T2, T3 Perceptions of School Readiness [62] 12 items: Teachers’ perceptions of school readiness to work effectively against sexual harassment among students, adapted T1, T2, T3 Teacher’s conceptualization of sexual harassment Open-ended question T1, T2, T3 Teacher’s ideas about why sexual harassment among students occurs Open-ended question T1, T2, T3 Teacher’s ideas for the prevention of sexual harassment among students Open-ended question T1, T2, T3 School data Average parental education level in specific schools 1 item on parents’ mean educational level on a 3-point scale: 1 = primary, 2 = secondary, 3 postsecondary T1, T2, T3 School’s grade point average 1 item: The grade point average for the school T1, T2, T3 Reports of sexual harassment Filed reports of sexual harassment at the school T1, T2, T3 Measures against sexual harassment at the class and school levels Active measures taken against sexual harassment at the school T1, T2, T3 Content of the school’s diversity and equal treatment policies Analysis of any content of the school’s diversity and equal treatment policies that relates to sexual harassment T1, T2, T3 aT1 = grade 4; T2 = grade 5, T3 = grade 6 Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 Page 7 of 10 treatment policies), teacher/classroom level (e.g., teacher’s perceptions of the seriousness of sexual har- assment and bullying), and individual level (e.g., pu- bertal development). Similarly, to answer Research question 3 (What are the developmental consequences of peer sexual harassment for different subgroups of children during the course of middle school?) we will examine outcomes at the school level (e.g., reports of sexual harassment), teacher/classroom level (e.g., norms/beliefs about students’ reactions to sexual har- assment in the classroom), and individual level (e.g., self-esteem, externalizing symptoms, internalizing symptoms). We will examine the moderating effects of gender and age. Moreover, we will study the inter- relationships among sexual harassment victimization, perpetration, and witnessing over time as part of an- swering Research questions 2 and 3. Concerning Research question 4 (What biological, psychological, social, and contextual risk and protective factors moderate the potential link between sexual harass- ment and its developmental consequences?), we will study the role of gender, pubertal development, own reactions to sexual harassment, child resilience, and teacher/school responses to sexual harassment as moderators of the links identified in the analyses con- ducted to answer Research question 3. Furthermore, the data collected from schools (e.g., reports of inci- dents related to sexual harassment) will be analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively (content analysis). Discussion The described longitudinal research project, PRISE, which is based on a developmental-contextual frame- work [40], will enable the researchers to answer fun- damental, unresolved questions about the early stages of sexual harassment among young people. The PRISE study will advance the literature by studying individ- uals during a key developmental transition (i.e., from childhood to adolescence) in their contexts and by using multiple reporters of and perspectives on sexual harassment at school. Specifically, the study will move beyond current knowledge by examining the nature of the problem of sexual harassment when it is assumed to typically begin. This, in turn, will help in identify- ing the young people most at risk of negative out- comes. At the same time, it will also provide knowledge about protective factors. In summary, the PRISE study will advance the very limited understand- ing of sexual harassment during an age period that is central in a person’s physical, sexual, and social development. The PRISE study raises ethical questions that need to be addressed and handled carefully and sensitively. Ethical considerations are key given that the main participants are vulnerable (by being children) and that the instruments concern sensitive topics (e.g., peer victimization and perpetration). Although we have developed the questions about sexual harassment giving special consideration to the participants’ ages, there is still a risk that some of the children will feel provoked or uncomfortable in answering them. This may be particularly true for children who have been exposed to sexual harassment. Some researchers also describe what is referred to as the “question-behavior- effect” [63]; that behaviors that are asked about, espe- cially risk behaviors, will increase as a result of asking about them. Taking these issues into consideration, we will collaborate with the school health staff at each school to ensure that they are available for stu- dents in need of support. We will also follow sug- gested guidelines when designing the questionnaire to counteract the question-behavior-effect. On the other hand, it should be taken into account that in order to counteract sexual harassment and its negative conse- quences during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence, we are in urgent need of empirical knowledge concerning this matter. We also believe that many children will appreciate participating in the project through being able to share their experiences and having their voices heard. Given the project’s so- cietal benefits and that we will take action to avoid that any children getting hurt, we believe that the potential benefits of this project surpass its potential risks. Implications for policymaking and practice With the advent of the #metoo-movement, it became clear that sexual harassment is a widespread, world- wide concern, that needs to be addressed on all levels of society. While children have the right to education, it also remains without doubt that sexual harassment interferes with this right [22]. Consequently, schools should have a strong impetus to create a safe envir- onment for their students, free from sexual harass- ment. To be able to do so, more knowledge about the phenomenon, especially at the age when it typic- ally begins, is urgently needed. Knowledge about when, where, why sexual harassment occurs and who are its victims can help delineate potential ways to act against it early in its development. The PRISE study will move beyond current knowledge by exam- ining the problem of sexual harassment in the transi- tion between late childhood and early adolescence, enabling a better understanding of its onset. It will use a longitudinal design, to identify both risk and protective factors for sexual harassment and its conse- quences. In addition, the project will examine sexual harassment from the perspectives of victims, Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 Page 8 of 10 offenders, and witnesses, as well as on multiple con- textual levels (individual, classroom, and school), to enable a more ecological understanding of the phenomenon. Ultimately, the hope is that the project will help researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to de- velop, implement, and test interventions that can effect- ively combat a major, current societal challenge and adverse aspect of young people’s developmental ecologies. Abbreviations DTE: Developmental Theory of Embodiment; EUR: Euro; PRISE: Peer Relations In School from an Ecological perspective Acknowledgements We would like to thank Andrea Karlsson Valik, licensed psychologist and PhD student, for help with preparing the data collection. Authors’ contributions TS, KHG, and CL planned and designed this study in a collaborative effort. TS received the funding as the main applicant. KHG and CL were co-applicants. CL was responsible for the ethical review authority approval. TS drafted the first version of the manuscript. KHG and CL helped draft the manuscript. All authors have reviewed and approved the final version of this manuscript. Authors’ information TS, KHG, and CL are senior lecturers and associate professors at the Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Funding The research project has been funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare (reference number 2018–00667). The funding body has no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript. Availability of data and materials The dataset generated and analyzed during the current study is not publicly available due to its longitudinal nature and the sensitivity of the questions, but is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Ethics approval and consent to participate Ethical approval for this study was provided by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (reference number 2019–02755). Active informed consent to participate is solicited from the children and their legal guardians. In consideration of their age, children will consent orally directly to one of the researchers. The consent will be documented by the researchers. Legal guardians will be asked to consent in written, either via regular mail or electronically. For some parents, reading (Swedish) might pose a problem. If a written consent form has not been received, legal guardians will be given the opportunity to provide informed consent via telephone. The consent will be documented by the researchers. Teachers provide written, active informed consent. The consent procedure has been approved by the ethics committee. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. 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Fitzsimons GJ, Moore SG. Should we ask our children about sex, drugs, and rock & roll? Potentially harmful effects of asking questions about risky behavior. J Consumer Psych. 2008;18:82–95. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Skoog et al. BMC Psychology (2019) 7:71 Page 10 of 10 Abstract Background Methods Discussion Background What is known about the development of sexual harassment at young ages? What is unknown about the development of sexual harassment in young ages? Theoretical framework of the PRISE study Research objectives Methods/design Research design Participants Measures Procedure Ethical considerations Analysis Discussion Implications for policymaking and practice Abbreviations Acknowledgements Authors’ contributions Authors’ information Funding Availability of data and materials Ethics approval and consent to participate Consent for publication Competing interests References Publisher’s Note work_2nj4skyppzby7nrmdtgiv65oim ---- Science Magazine FEATURES Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ NEWS 15 FEBRUARY 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6428 6 8 3S C I E N C E sciencemag.org IL L U S T R A T IO N : (O P P O S IT E P A G E ) A N IT A K U N Z B ethAnn McLaughlin has no time for James Watson, especially not when the 90-year-old geneticist is peering out from a photo on the wall of her guest room at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Ban- bury Center. “I don’t need him staring at me when I’m trying to go to sleep,” McLaughlin told a December 2018 gathering at the storied New York meeting center as she projected a photo of her redecorating job: She had hung a washcloth over the image of Watson, who co-discovered DNA’s structure, directed the lab for decades—and is well- known for racist and sexist statements. The washcloth image was part of McLaughlin’s unconventional presentation— by turns sobering, hilarious, passionate, and profane—to two dozen experts who had gathered to wrestle with how to end gender discrimination in the biosciences. McLaughlin, a 51-year-old neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in Nashville, displayed the names of current members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) who have been sanctioned for sexual harassment. She urged other NAS members—several of whom sat in the room—to resign in protest, “as one does.” She chided institutions for passing along “harassholes” to other universities. “The only other places that do this are the Catho- lic Church and the military,” she said. In the past 9 months, McLaughlin has ex- ploded into view as the public face of the #MeToo movement in science, wielding her irreverent, sometimes wickedly funny Twit- ter presence, @McLNeuro, as part cudgel, part cheerleader’s megaphone. In June 2018, she created a website, MeTooSTEM. com, where scores of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) have posted mostly anonymous, often har- rowing tales of their own harassment. In just 2 days that month, she convinced the widely used website RateMyProfessors. com to remove its “red hot chili pepper” rating for “hotness.” And after launching an online petition, she succeeded last fall in spurring AAAS, which publishes Science, to adopt a policy allowing proven sexual harassers to be stripped of AAAS honors (Science, 21 September 2018, p. 1175). “It’s clear that she has a voice and that people are listening,” says biologist Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and a co-organizer of the Banbury Center meet- ing. “She is really trying to change society,” adds Carrie McAdams, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who sought out McLaughlin by phone last year to discuss how to report long-ago harassment. In November 2018, McLaughlin shared the second annual $250,000 Disobedience Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab in Cambridge for “ethical, nonviolent” civil disobedience. And, “impressed by the sheer force of her conviction” at the Banbury meeting, Erin O’Shea, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Mary- land, later pledged the institute’s financial support for a nonprofit, #MeTooSTEM, that McLaughlin is founding to support survi- vors of sexual harassment. Anita Hill, a professor at Brandeis Uni- versity in Waltham, Massachusetts, who in 1991 accused then–Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, emailed McLaughlin last summer thanking her for speaking out. Hill also recognized that McLaughlin would pay a price: “The impact on you and your career is not to be underestimated,” Hill wrote. Indeed, McLaughlin has made bitter ene- mies: Last fall, she says, she was anonymously FedExed a box of feces. And her scientific ca- reer is now on the line. Her tenure process was frozen for 17 months starting in 2015 while VUMC investigated allegations that she had posted anonymous, derogatory tweets about colleagues. The probe was spurred by complaints from a professor whom she had testified against in a sexual harassment in- vestigation. VUMC closed the probe without disciplining McLaughlin, but in 2017 a fac- ulty committee, having previously approved her tenure, unanimously reversed itself, ac- cording to university documents. Absent a last-minute reprieve, she will lose her job on 28 February, when her National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant expires. McLaughlin says she has not been look- ing for other jobs and hopes to continue in science. She says she has seven manu- scripts in development and recently sub- mitted a new NIH grant application. But she is consumed with #MeTooSTEM efforts, from supporting individual survivors to meeting with NIH Director Francis Collins in Bethesda, Maryland, last week and ad- dressing his new working group on sexual harassment. “I have a real strong belief that the [Vanderbilt] chancellor and the Board of Trust are going to do the right thing,” she says. “If not now, when?” MCLAUGHLIN GREW UP in Missouri and New Hampshire, exposed to both science and politics. Her mother was an elementary school teacher and her father an engineer- ing graduate student. He died suddenly when McLaughlin was 8, and the struggling family plunged deeper into poverty. Despite their difficulties, her mother found time to support women campaigning for city council. “A lot of our community was people she politicked with,” McLaughlin says. McLaughlin graduated from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and completed a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. She “was intense … and intellectually deep,” recalls her post- doc adviser Elias Aizenman of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. “She liked to work long and hard hours. She had high ex- pectations of her peers. And of herself.” #MeToo provocateur BethAnn McLaughlin battles on behalf of women in STEM—but her own job is in peril By Meredith Wadman THE TWITTER WARRIOR Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ NEWS | F E AT U R E S 6 8 4 15 FEBRUARY 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6428 sciencemag.org S C I E N C E She was first author on a 2003 Proceed- ings of the National Academy of Sciences paper that she and Aizenman initially had trouble placing, because it challenged dogma by finding that certain proteins linked to cell death also triggered a cell survival pathway in the brain. “I think I instilled in her to not be afraid to stick her neck out,” Aizenman says. “I admire her now for sticking her neck out in a different direction.” In 2002, McLaughlin took a position as a research assistant professor at Vander- bilt’s School of Medicine and was promoted to tenure-track assistant professor in 2005. She focused on understanding how brain cells cope with oxygen deprivation during strokes and cardiac arrest, with an eye to finding therapies. She trained students and published steadily in respected journals. (In 2017, two instances of possible image dupli- cation between her papers were flagged on the website PubPeer. McLaughlin acknowl- edged a mistake, apologized, and requested a correction in one case; a co-author explained the other.) In 2005, she was key to landing a $1.2 million private donation to launch an autism research institute at Vanderbilt’s Kennedy Center. She also founded VUMC’s Clinical Neuroscience Scholars Program in 2011, which links neuroscience graduate students with clinical experts, so students can see real-life manifestations of the condi- tions they study. In 2015, McLaughlin helped launch a Vanderbilt-hosted blog, Edge for Scholars, that bills itself as a space for “gritty truths” about academic life. Blogging anonymously as “Fighty Squirrel,” she began to develop a public voice on issues she saw affecting fe- male scientists, such as authorship inequity. Her posts soon became the site’s most popu- lar, with more than 400,000 views to date. “She was blogging about the larger Me- TooSTEM movement before it had a hashtag,” says Katherine Hartmann, an associate dean at VUMC who recruited McLaughlin. “She’s our top blogger, top recruiter, top social me- dia maven that makes it go.” MCLAUGHLIN’S NEW ROLE as the un- official standard-bearer of a new movement in U.S. science “is not who I had planned on being,” she said recently. She says her evolution has been “squarely tied” to her involvement in Vanderbilt’s investigation of a sexual harassment case, and what she believes were its consequences for her. In the fall of 2014, McLaughlin submit- ted her tenure package, and the following year her department and VUMC’s Appoint- ments and Promotions Committee recom- mended her for tenure, according to a later university report. But the university halted her tenure pro- cess in December 2015, in the wake of allega- tions that arose during the investigation of a colleague. In early July 2014, former gradu- ate student Erin Watt sued her former Ph.D. supervisor, neuroscientist Aurelio Galli, who was then at the Vanderbilt School of Medi- cine. Watt alleged in the lawsuit that Galli had sexually harassed and belittled her, leading her to quit the Ph.D. program. In late July of that year, McLaughlin, her then-husband (a Vanderbilt neuroscientist at the time, who collaborated with Galli), and a visiting McLaughlin friend and col- laborator, Dana Miller of the University of Washington in Seattle, were invited to din- ner at Galli’s home. Miller and McLaughlin later recalled that while preparing dinner, Galli threatened to “destroy” Watt. Miller recalled him calling Watt “a crazy bitch” and vowing to “spend every last dime” to ruin her. The women say Galli showed them a handgun and noted that he had a permit to carry it. Miller, a lesbian, also told inves- tigators that Galli made inappropriate com- ments about her sexuality. Galli, now at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, declined to comment on the dinner party. But he told Science: “I have never done anything to any student or any faculty in terms of harassment or retaliation.” He provided an email that McLaughlin sent him the day after the party: “Dinner was fantastic. … Thank you,” she wrote with a smiley face. In December 2014, a judge dismissed Watt’s lawsuit against Galli and he was immediately promoted. (Watt settled with Vanderbilt University, which she had also sued.) Miller says she was alarmed by Galli’s promotion, and in January 2015 reported the alleged events of the July 2014 dinner to a Vanderbilt administrator. McLaughlin testified in the ensuing investigation, back- ing up Miller’s account. In August 2015, investigators determined that the evidence they had obtained could not support a find- ing of harassment, according to a letter to Miller from Vanderbilt’s Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action, and Disability Services Department (EAD). Meanwhile, Galli alleged to EAD investi- gators that McLaughlin was sending derog- atory tweets about unnamed colleagues, including him, from anonymous, multiuser Twitter accounts. McLaughlin admitted writing a tweet that predated the dinner party, complaining, “Galli has 3 R01 [grants] and whines about being broke.” A tweet apparently directed at another person— described as the “hateful” principal inves- tigator across the hall—said, “I may stab her today.” McLaughlin told Science that she does not recall authoring such a tweet. (Four current or former Vanderbilt faculty members reported to have clashed with McLaughlin and contacted by Science de- clined to comment or did not return inter- view requests.) EAD questioned McLaughlin about the tweets, and an associate medical school dean launched a disciplinary investigation of her, according to university documents. During that probe, which stretched from December 2015 to April 2017, McLaughlin’s tenure process was frozen. She stopped PH O T O : L A N E T U R N E R / T H E B O S T O N G L O B E / G E T T Y I M A G E S Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ 15 FEBRUARY 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6428 6 8 5S C I E N C E sciencemag.org writing grant applications and taking on graduate students, she says; she felt her fu- ture was too uncertain. Her lab shrank. “It had a real impact on my research,” she says of the investigation. “My career has been significantly diminished in what should have been the most productive and fun and creative time.” An outside law firm hired by Vanderbilt concluded that McLaughlin “more likely than not” had written the “I may stab her” tweet, according to university documents. But the faculty disciplinary committee split two to one in her favor, and administra- tors did not discipline McLaughlin. They restarted her tenure process, and VUMC’s Executive Committee of the Executive Fac- ulty approved her tenure in summer 2017. But Vanderbilt School of Medicine Dean Jeffrey Balser asked the committee to re- consider. According to university docu- ments, he circulated the faculty disciplinary report to the committee, which then met in person. This time, it voted unanimously to deny tenure. Seven of nine members later said they did not consider the disciplinary report in their decision, according to uni- versity documents. “Faculty familiar with the bar at Vanderbilt in her department and at the institutional level determined she was up to snuff and voted her up for tenure,” says Valina Dawson, a neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who knows McLaughlin because both are reviewing editors at The Journal of Neuroscience. “Then the dean decided to in- tervene. … You get a bad feeling in your gut about the whole process.” In November 2017, McLaughlin filed a grievance, which is still being consid- ered by a faculty committee. (Jeremy Berg, editor-in-chief of Science in Washington, D.C., wrote a letter last fall in support of McLaughlin, saying her activism had “acceler- ated” AAAS’s decision to develop a process for potentially stripping fellowships from harass- ers.) A McLaughlin lawyer, Ann Olivarius of McAllister Olivarius in Saratoga Springs, says McLaughlin’s case “is a perfect example of the tactics that universities so often use to sweep complaints under the rug.” Spokespeople for both Vanderbilt and VUMC said they could not comment on ten- ure decisions or grievances, and VUMC de- clined to make Balser, now its president and CEO, available to comment. Their emailed statement added that, “VUMC is committed to establishing and maintaining an open, in- clusive, and equitable environment … [and] fostering an open and civil exchange of di- verse ideas and viewpoints.” Now, McLaughlin is waiting to learn what the grievance committee recommends. Whether the chancellor and Board of Trust concur will determine her future at VUMC. AS HER TENURE BATTLE continued, Mc- Laughlin grew more outspoken as Fighty Squirrel. Then, in May 2018, she read an account of alleged sexual harassment spanning 40 years by leading cancer sci- entist Inder Verma (Science, 4 May 2018, p. 480). Verma, who denied the allegations, resigned from the Salk Institute for Bio- logical Studies in San Diego, California, in June 2018. With a few clicks, McLaughlin realized that Verma remained an NAS mem- ber in good standing. That, she says, was when she decided to go public. McLaughlin began to campaign for change from her readily identifiable Twit- ter account, @McLNeuro. “You cannot ACTIVELY CONTRIBUTE TO FURTHER- ING SCIENCE IN AMERICA if you have impeded the progress of women by harass- ing, assaulting and retaliating against them. Period. Kick … Verma out of National Acad- emy of Sciences,” she tweeted days after the story ran online. The next day, she launched a petition that has been signed by 5700 peo- ple, urging NAS to eject members who have been sanctioned for sexual harassment. The next month, NAS published a land- mark report documenting high rates of sexual harassment in STEM and not- ing that many funding agencies haven’t taken “meaningful action” (Science, 15 June 2018, p. 1159). In August 2018, McLaughlin launched another petition, which has since drawn 2400 signatures, urg- ing NIH’s Collins to deny awards and other privileges to proven harassers. “TimesUp Francis,” it says. When she met with Collins last week, McLaughlin says, he apologized for not responding more quickly to sexual misconduct by grantees. “Apologies and involving #MeTooSTEM survivors are im- portant first steps,” she tweeted alongside a photo of herself with Collins. “Lots to do.” Separately, McLaughlin is keeping the pressure on NAS. In December 2018, she tweeted to NAS President Marcia McNutt, “Why don’t you quit @Marcia4Science and I’ll take over and show some decency?” As her profile rose, McLaughlin found herself receiving thousands of requests for help; since April 2018, she says she has counseled—often by telephone in the wee hours—more than 200 sexual harassment survivors and witnesses. One, Debra DeLoach, is a Ph.D. student at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom whom McLaughlin contacted in December 2018, after DeLoach tweeted that she had attempted suicide after being sexually harassed. “What she gave me was a sense of empowerment: the ability to nar- rate and write my own story. It helped me to reclaim my sense of agency,” DeLoach says. McLaughlin makes no apologies for her profane style. “We have faculty members who have grabbed and groped and raped and assaulted and retaliated and dimin- ished women. And they can be teaching your classes. It’s not OK,” she says. But her in-your-face delivery unnerves some establishment supporters. The So- ciety for Neuroscience (SfN) gave her an award for “significantly promoting” women at its annual meeting in San Di- ego in November 2018 and invited her to speak to a virtual conference last month. But after McLaughlin prerecorded her comments, she received a letter from an SfN lawyer disinviting her. “Some of the content [in your presentation] may be de- famatory and … could expose the society to potential legal liability,” it said. McLaughlin promptly launched a stream of Twitter fire. “Too bad @SfNtweets kicked me off their Gender and Diversity panel this week,” she tweeted. “Rebels and truth sayers need not speak.” (SfN declined to comment.) McLaughlin says she’s booked with speaking engagements through next fall, and she’s dealing with a legal case: In Oc- tober 2018, Galli sued her for defamation. But she keeps making people laugh. On the last day of the Banbury meet- ing, participants arrived in the confer- ence room to find that the wall photos of famous male scientists had been covered with paper photos of female scientists, fa- mous and not. Among them: Nobel laure- ates Marie Curie and Carol Greider, and BethAnn McLaughlin. j “We have faculty members who have grabbed and groped and raped and assaulted and retaliated and diminished women. And they can be teaching your classes. It’s not OK.” BethAnn McLaughlin, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ The twitter warrior Meredith Wadman DOI: 10.1126/science.363.6428.682 (6428), 682-685.363Science ARTICLE TOOLS http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6428/682 PERMISSIONS http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions Terms of ServiceUse of this article is subject to the is a registered trademark of AAAS.ScienceScience, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. The title (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published by the American Association for the Advancement ofScience Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6428/682 http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions http://www.sciencemag.org/about/terms-service http://science.sciencemag.org/ work_2of7zyk3xrcwdopmzhztllvlmy ---- Statements of Mentorship History, Teaching, and Public Awareness Statements of Mentorship Daniel A. Colón-Ramos1,2,3 https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0411-18.2018 1Department of Neuroscience, Program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, 2Department of Cell Biology, Yale University School of Medicine, CT 06510, and 3Instituto de Neurobiología, Recinto de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico, San Juan 00926-1117, PR Key words: Landis Award; mentor; mentoring The Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship was cre- ated in 2018 by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to recognize that “mentor- ship and training are critical to the development of excep- tional future scientists” and to honor the legacy of former NINDS Director Story Landis, PhD, in mentoring genera- tions of neuroscientists. I was honored to be nominated by my mentees and then selected by the committee as part of the inaugural group that received the award. While profoundly touched by the recognition, I am the first to admit that in mentoring, my aspirations exceed my ca- pacities or training (and anybody who has worked in my lab will be the second to admit that). My mentorship skills are a work in progress. Yet unlike scientific ideas, which are also “works in progress” that benefit from the critiques of our peers, mentoring approaches seldom benefit from the com- ments and wisdom of our colleagues and mentees. For example, I must have written, in the 10 years I have been faculty member, dozens of research statements and plans, progress reports, and grants that have all benefited from the collective wisdom of my colleagues and men- tees. My science is better for it. Yet, when it comes to one of the most important activities I do, the training of men- tees, it was in preparing for the Landis Award that I wrote my very first Statement of Mentorship. To be sure, one could argue that writing a Statement of Mentorship is not necessary or even important to being a good mentor. That the tasks necessary for being a good mentor are self-evident. Some might even argue that the best way to be a good mentor is to focus solely on the scientific ideas, not so much on the individual mentee. Yet I would argue that the few times I have gotten feedback on my mentoring, I have benefited tremendously from it, and so have my mentees and the science we do together (Fig. 1). When it comes to learning, be it in mentoring or regarding new scientific ideas or techniques, I worry about the “blind spots,” that which I do not know that I do not know. The remedy for that, when it comes to scientific ideas, has been open, effective, and critical discussions with my peers. Could our mentoring, similar to our scien- tific ideas, benefit from the collective wisdom and expe- rience from our colleagues and mentees? In that spirit, below I share my lab’s Statement of Men- torship submitted to the Landis Award, not as a finished set of ideas, but as a living statement of our lab’s aspira- tions and to initiate a dialogue around mentorship. I also share a number of mentoring resources who Dr. Michelle Jones-London from NINDS kindly sent me. Statement of Mentorship No matter who we are and no matter where we were born, we share a fundamental curiosity about the world Received October 24, 2018; accepted October 26, 2018; First published November 29, 2018. Acknowledgements: I thank past and present mentors for serving as role models and guiding me, through their actions, in this adventure of becoming a scientist and a mentor. I also want to thank my lab members, past and present, who taught me, in honest exchanges, to become a better mentor, scientist, and human being. They also helped polish some of the ideas and interests presented here through discussions at lab retreats, lab meetings, and by proofreading the mentoring statement. I want to thank in particular Emily Wang, Valentina Greco, Antonio Giraldez, Marc Hammarlund, and David Berg for thoughtful comments on the article, and for many years of discussions on these topics. I thank the Research Center for Minority Institutions program, the Instituto de Neurobiología de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, and the Marine Biological Laboratories for providing a yearly meeting and brainstorming plat- form for these ideas. This work is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant R01NS076558), NIH Pioneer Award, the National Science Foundation Grant IOS 1353845, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholars program. Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Daniel A. Colón-Ramos, De- partment of Neuroscience and Cell Biology, Yale School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, SHM B 163D, New Haven, CT 06510. E-mail: daniel.colon- ramos@yale.edu. https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0411-18.2018 Copyright © 2018 Colón-Ramos This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed. Commentary November/December 2018, 5(6) e0411-18.2018 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0411-18.2018 mailto:daniel.colon-ramos@yale.edu mailto:daniel.colon-ramos@yale.edu https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0411-18.2018 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ around us. That shared human instinct does not mean we are all meant to become scientists, that we all share the same motivations, or that we think similarly about science or the world around us. But it does mean that our shared curiosity is a fundamental aspect of our humanity. This universality is foundational to my philosophy as a mentor in science. I therefore start my mentoring pledge with an aspiration to “do no harm” to my mentee’s innate interest in science. While I recognize the universality of scientific curiosity, I also recognize that individual backgrounds shape our engagement with science. Our individual experiences dif- fer based on the intersectionality of our identities, which includes our identity as scientists but also includes our race/ethnicity, gender identity, religion, culture, socioeco- nomic status, etc. These factors influence our interests, motivations, and scientific ideas. It is in the richness of this intersectionality that most of the opportunities and challenges lie for me as a mentor. Science works best to produce truly novel insights when influenced by diverse ideas from individuals working together. I intentionally create a space within my labora- tory which harnesses our collective interests to build strong teams joined in a common pursuit of fundamental discoveries in science, while recognizing and celebrating our diverse backgrounds and identities. Supporting a di- verse group of mentees creates both interpersonal and group dynamics that reflect issues at play in our scientific communities and, at large, concerns of racial, gender, and socioeconomic equity, for example. This means opening a lab meeting with a discussion of the “#metoo” move- ment in academia; it means postponing afternoon meet- ings after the death of Eric Garner to talk to a mentee of color about what this death represents for her, as an underrepresented scientist of color working at Yale Uni- versity; it means traveling with my lab to Puerto Rico after the archipelago was devastated by Hurricane Maria to support and learn from our colleagues there (Fig. 1). In other words, recognizing, respecting, and fostering unique perspectives means challenging normative stan- dards, not only in the scientific paradigms tackled by our research program but also in the paradigms of who and how people are meant to succeed in science. How this philosophy towards mentorship translates at the bench includes active listening to arguments, challenging as- sumptions, and rigorous examination of the foundations of a discovery, all while respecting the dignity of the individual and fostering their growth as a scientist. Bal- ancing rigor while fostering growth requires investing the time needed to know and appreciate the individual per- spectives of my mentees. I have established the following mentoring approach to achieve this: 1. Common approaches to scientific excellence by investing in the individual. There are some funda- mental skills I feel all aspiring scientists need to learn (and experienced scientists need to polish) when rig- orously approaching scientific problems. Those skills Figure 1. Colón-Ramos lab in the Annual Lab Retreat in San Juan, Puerto Rico (March, 2018). In 2018, after Hurricane María, we decided to conduct our annual lab retreat and workshops in San Juan, PR. From left to right: Ernesto Cabezas-Bou, Mark Moyle, Leighton Duncan, Agustin Almoril-Porras, Shavani Prashad, Sarah Hill, Sisi Yang, Titas Sengupta, Richard Ikegami, Zhao Xuan, and Joon Lee. Not in the picture: Mayra Blakey, Josh Hawk, SoRi Jang, Ian Gonzalez, Laura Manning, Milind Singh, Noelle Koonce, and Lin Shao. Commentary 2 of 4 November/December 2018, 5(6) e0411-18.2018 eNeuro.org include recognizing assumptions in experimental de- sign, achieving best practices of reproducibility in quantifications and data analyses, and recognizing biases (among other skills). The way I approach men- toring and training is through structured meetings that invest heavily in the individual towards under- standing their drive, their unique perspectives, and how each can build towards the development of these skills. Specifically, upon arriving at the lab, each mentee is given a binder which includes infor- mation on the lab’s mission and our mentoring phi- losophy. We establish weekly meetings to discuss experimental design, findings, and interpretations. These meetings are tailored to encourage indepen- dent critical thinking and project ownership, so men- tees are asked to think about their experimental design, results, and interpretations prior to the meet- ing. Then, during the meetings, we focus on in-depth discussions in which mentees present their thoughts, identify and challenge assumptions, and conceptual- ize their research questions in broader contexts of overarching significance. Once a year, we have a dedicated meeting to discuss motivation and career goals, in which the mentee answers a set of ques- tions in writing which include self-assessment of strengths and areas of improvement as a scientist, evaluation of my performance as a mentor, and their project and personal career goals. These meetings provide an opportunity to understand, not only the strengths of the mentee, but their individual needs and their intersectionality of identity in the context of their motivation and progress. The meetings provide continuous reinforcement of key precepts of the sci- entific process (identifying assumptions, biases and good experimental design) while also creating a men- torship framework in which the mentees progres- sively grow as independent thinkers and in their identity as scientists. 2. Model by example: approaching science with rigor and humility. In science, knowledge is impor- tant but only as a first step to recognize the bound- aries of what we know and, importantly, where they end. It is therefore critical for the training scientist to feel comfortable in recognizing, with humility, their ignorance. I model this by making it clear to my mentees that I do not have all the answers, not in the research projects they are driving, and not in men- toring. Like the research projects, I approach men- toring as a team activity in which the mentor-mentee pair jointly learns how to navigate the new terrain. Being comfortable with recognizing our ignorance does not mean being complacent in mediocrity. The recognition of ignorance requires rigor and is a first step towards the recognition of opportunities in learning and growth. But in that process, while I am partial and supportive to the mentee, I am impartial and tough towards the work. I also request, and welcome, a similar treatment from the mentee to- wards my own ideas, biases, and assumptions. 3. Creating a network of mentors. Mentoring in my lab happens during individual sessions and also in sub- group meetings of teams working in conceptually related projects. The purpose of these meetings is to create a network of mutual mentoring and support. To achieve this, my lab and I have jointly brain- stormed and designed activities that allow us all to grow in our roles. We recognize that being mentors or mentees, like being teachers or students, is rela- tional, these are not fixed roles, and the roles change depending on the context. As scientists in the pursuit of knowledge, we need the mental agility to be both mentors and mentees. To learn this, all my mentees also serve as mentors to new lab members, regard- less of hierarchy in training. Experience is important for being a good mentor but is not sufficient; being a good mentor also requires skills in listening and teaching. To train in mentorship, the lab and I jointly created a mentoring document in which we articulate the responsibilities of both mentors and mentees. We also have sessions to discuss how we can all be better teachers and students to each other. In that way, we move beyond the normative hierarchical structures in scientific training and instead create a web of mutual accountability and support in which responsibility and leadership is encouraged. Finally, the relationship of shared accountability between lab members is reinforced through an annual two-day lab retreat in which we discuss in depth and in an infor- mal but stimulating setting the future of the lab (Fig. 1). In these meetings, we discuss the progression of projects, overarching conceptual questions of the field and what our lab can do to address them. The purpose of the lab retreat is to create a space away from the demands of everyday bench work to facili- tate this introspection, evaluation, and discussion. Discussions in the retreat have also included career path navigation, science and society conversations on bioethics and policy, and discussions on scientific reproducibility and transparency based on the Landis et al. (2012) report. In summary, my mentoring philosophy is based on recognizing, respecting, and investing in the individual, celebrating diversity of thought, and fostering collabora- tive efforts that allow us to jointly bring our unique expe- riences to bear in addressing the cell biology of the synapse and behavior. I work to create a lab environment which honors scientific rigor and respects the dignity of individuals to create a learning and discovery space where we are all comfortable identifying and recognizing our unique strengths and opportunities for growth. This mentoring document was jointly prepared in col- laboration with lab members who read and edited the document. Mentoring resources: NRMN, CienciaPR.org, or mentor training https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477740/ Mentoring articles on SfN Neuronline Commentary 3 of 4 November/December 2018, 5(6) e0411-18.2018 eNeuro.org https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477740/ http://neuronline.sfn.org/Career-Specific-Topics/ Professional-Development How to Get the Mentoring You Want: A Guide for Graduate Students at a Diverse University http://www.rackham.umich.edu/downloads/publications/ mentoring.pdf Making the Right Moves and Training Scientists to Make the Right Moves http://www.hhmi.org/programs/resources-early-career- scientist-development Individual Development Plan (IDP), a Web-based career- planning tool created to help graduate students and post- docs in the sciences define and pursue their career goals http://myidp.sciencecareers.org/ National Research Mentoring Network https://nrmnet.net/ Mentoring Compacts: Example compacts for download are available at https://ictr.wisc.edu/mentoring/mentoring-compacts contracts-examples/ Reference Landis SC, Amara SG, Asadullah K, Austin CP, Blumenstein R, Bradley EW, Crystal RG, Darnell RB, Ferrante RJ, Fillit H, Finkel- stein R, Fisher M, Gendelman HE, Golub RM, Goudreau JL, Gross RA, Gubitz AK, Hesterlee SE, Howells DW, Huguenard J, et al. (2012). A call for transparent reporting to optimize the predictive value of preclinical research. Nature. 490:187–191. Medline Commentary 4 of 4 November/December 2018, 5(6) e0411-18.2018 eNeuro.org http://neuronline.sfn.org/Career-Specific-Topics/Professional-Development http://neuronline.sfn.org/Career-Specific-Topics/Professional-Development http://www.rackham.umich.edu/downloads/publications/mentoring.pdf http://www.rackham.umich.edu/downloads/publications/mentoring.pdf http://www.hhmi.org/programs/resources-early-career-scientist-development http://www.hhmi.org/programs/resources-early-career-scientist-development http://myidp.sciencecareers.org/ https://nrmnet.net/ https://ictr.wisc.edu/mentoring/mentoring-compactscontracts-examples/ https://ictr.wisc.edu/mentoring/mentoring-compactscontracts-examples/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23060188 Statements of Mentorship Statement of Mentorship Reference work_2q5jrabamfhlxoavgjvnwvcj4u ---- ECSCW 2005 instructions Hansson, Karin; Cerratto Pargman, Teresa; Dahlgren, Anna (2020): Datafication and cultural heritage: provocations, threats, and design opportunities. In: Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: The International Venue on Practice-centred Computing an the Design of Cooperation Technologies - Workshop Proposals, Reports of the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (ISSN 2510-2591), DOI: 10.18420/ecscw2020_ws05 Copyright 2020 held by Authors, DOI: 10.18420/ecscw2020_ws05 Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, contact the Authors. Datafication and cultural heritage: provocations, threats, and design opportunities. Karin Hansson*, Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Anna Dahlgren Stockholm University khansson@dsv.su.se, tessy@dsv.su.se, anna.dahlgren@arthistory.su.se Abstract. Increasing digitization and the emergence of new data sharing practices are likely to change how our understanding of history is negotiated. The curation of data is always culturally and ideologically inflected. Accordingly, archiving practices are not only fundamental for our understanding of the past but vital in navigating the present. We have to pay particular attention to the consequences of the interfaces that curate history, especially in relation to big data. Crowdsourcing, social media, linked open data, and other participatory and open science practices challenge the archiving practices in cultural heritage institutions due to the character of the networked publics involved and the established structures between and within institutions. However, they also open up new opportunities and practices when it comes to understanding and defining our shared culture. In this workshop we will bring together researchers who have studied these issues or are working to develop critical perspectives on archiving practices. 2 Background The digitization of cultural heritage, increased datafication in all areas of society, and new infrastructures for sharing data within research and with the wider public are likely to change our views of the production of history. Participatory practices such as citizen science are, for example, enabled and further developed in projects that includes a broad public in crowdsourcing projects (Borowiecki, Forbes, & Fresa, 2016; Cameron, Kenderdine, 2007; Cerratto Pargman, Joshi and Wehn, 2019; Manzo, Kaufman, Punjasthitkul, & Flanagan, 2015). Digitization entails an increased datafication and development of data-driven practices in diverse societal sectors, which results in more and more human activities being monitored, analyzed, quantified, archived, classified, and linked to other data (Boyd & Crawford, 2012; Lyon, 2014). Easier access to large-scale and linked datasets have opened up new possibilities to explore and create value from data and have enabled the development of more evidence-based quantitative scientific practices. This quantitative turn has influenced new research fields such as digital humanities, digital social science, e- learning, e-business, learning analytics, etc., where access, storage, and analysis of data drives the development of new infrastructures and methodologies. This creates changes not only at the level of data techniques and methods but also for researchers’ practices. For instance, some of these changes include increased standardization, development of shared infrastructures, and direct publication of research data, which changes the preconditions for research not only in the natural sciences but also in the humanities (Borgman et al., 2012; Carusi & Jirotka, 2009; De La Flor et al., 2010; Ribes & Lee, 2010; Schroeder, 2008). Increasing datafication of research practices and their infrastructure create opportunities to nurture an open research culture, enabling researchers to share their results through open access (Kidwell et al., 2016; Nosek et al., 2015; Roche et al., 2014). Datafication and increased measurement practices are also reflected in areas such as education (Biesta, 2015), journalism (Coddington, 2015), and politics (Milan & Velden, 2016). Such practices are not only possible through the access, storage, and analysis of people’s data but via the tools for gathering and analyzing data. The proliferation of results is democratized through easily accessible infrastructures of people, survey tools, opinion polls and petitions, visualization, and dissemination to the public. This scientification, in which research methods are increasingly developed and integrated with everyday working practices, also creates expanded demands for a digital literacy. Not only is it necessary to understand how information is created and disseminated (boyd, 2011), but it is also necessary to foster deeper insights into research methodologies and archiving processes. 3 The critics of datafication claim that the belief in quantification poses dangers. For example, transparency decreases (it is often unclear on what grounds the data have been curated) (Andrejevic, 2014; Boyd, 2012; Bunnik et al., 2016; Driscoll & Walker, 2014), important values are lost if they are not easy to compile as numbers, and threats to personal integrity increase as data collections are disseminated, linked, and combined (Schradie, 2011). Efforts to generate, collect, identify, and classify data and data collections risk obscuring the multifaced work practices around history production, including reward structures, authority structures, formalization of knowledge, interdependencies among groups, trust mechanisms, and the transitional quality of data collections (Borgman, 2012). Datafication can also be seen as an increased commodification of various aspects of human practices, especially due to the datafication of our life-worlds. People's opportunities to express themselves and organize themselves through the use of social media also contributes to new forms of surveillance and sources for consumer research (Hansson et al., 2018). In the context of the humanities, there are critics who think that the qualitatively founded criticality that is at the core of contemporary research in the humanities is threatened and downplayed by, for example, politically controlled funding (Belfiore & Upchurch, 2013). Also, the majority of crowdsourcing and open science projects are within the realm of the natural sciences and areas where data is easy to quantify (Burke, 2012; De León, 2015). In the humanities, scientific processes are often different, and they demand other considerations. Research in the humanities is more about creating heterogeneity and differences than collaborating around one shared common goal (Anderson & Blanke, 2015). Furthermore, critics have pointed out that when archiving practices are distributed and maintained broadly over diverse sectors and groups in society, enabling a multifaced and fragmented notion of history, cultural heritage institutions might need to reevaluated their role in society (Fredheim, 2018). However, the developers of infrastructure and the critics rarely meet. Few academic studies or commercial design processes take criticism seriously by developing practices and tools that combine qualitative and quantitative approaches in a self-reflexive way. Furthermore, while areas such as e-research, cyberinfrastructure, and crowdsourcing, are generally well covered by the ECSCW community, the intersection between these areas and the increasing digitalization processes and datafication in the humanities is less explored. In this workshop we bring together researchers from HCI and CSCW who have studied these issues or are working to develop critical perspectives on technology, design, and research practices. We particularly welcome empirically-based 4 research that looks into digitizing and digitalization processes in cultural heritage institutions. We also welcome theoretical contributions that put research practice into a philosophical and historical context while also questioning established norms of what constitutes cultural heritage. Suggested topics and inquiries for the workshop In this workshop we are inviting 10–15 researchers to discuss common issues. Topics and inquiries for the workshop can for example be: The transformation of cultural heritage institutions in the age of datafication:  How do we make sense of the complex network of systems, information, people, values, theories, histories, ideologies, and aesthetics underlying various types of archiving practices? What are the design challenges?  What happens when data structures become central for how a cultural heritage institution operates? What are the unintended consequences?  How are critical archiving practices supported in cultural heritage institutions? o What are the cultural and ideological aspects of data curation? o How do we adopt intersectional perspectives in classification systems? Quantification of research practices:  What are the crucial design decisions when developing sharing platforms for research in the humanities? What are the opportunities and new practices in relation to understanding and sharing culture?  How do we navigate infrastructures, rewards structures, and social structures when designing systems that help preserve and share the cultural heritage?  What are the consequences and opportunities when using crowdsourcing, usually developed for micro tasks, in more qualitative research practices? Participation in archiving practices:  How is participation constructed and enacted in citizen science and crowdsourcing practices? How is participation constrained, for example, by infrastructural arrangements, technological affordances and social norms?  What are the implications for transparency, surveillance, and trust when designing for participation in the development of the cultural heritage sector?  What are the coping strategies and resistance to or appropriation of datafication? 5  What are the tactics, structures and normative foundations necessary for supporting participatory metadata practices? What are the challenges? How do we negotiate standardization versus complexity when developing metadata practices?  What are the implications of the (lack of) transparency and accountability of data practices in different sectors? What are the challenges this poses for users’ data literacy?  What are the new asymmetries and power relations that data practices may bring between memory institutions and audiences, or between different segments of audiences? We are especially interested in bringing together researchers and practitioners working with digitizing and digitalization processes. Description of the workshop activities This one-day workshop will explore the topics through prototyping and brainstorming sessions. The workshop is divided into two sessions. The first half consists of participant presentations of their research topics. The second half will be a brainstorming session where the topics of the workshop are further explored through collaborative prototyping. In human-computer interaction (HCI) design we are used to co-design methods such as sketches, prototypes, cases and scenarios to achieve a more informed design, grounded in the reality of potential users. Artistic techniques are also used to involve participants as informants and co-designers such as probes, scenarios, and role-playing. However, unlike most problem-focused design research, the aim with this workshop is not to use these methods to achieve a more informed design. Instead, we use the design process as a method to collaboratively materialize our own understanding of our research. Information on the workshop will be disseminated through our website (https://dataficationandculturalheritage.blogs.dsv.su.se) and via emailing lists relevant for the ECSCW community as well as a broader interdisciplinary research community. Accepted papers will be circulated beforehand to prepare attendees for discussions at the workshop. Beyond the themes highlighted here by the workshop organizers, other themes for the workshop that emerge from the position papers will be posted on the website. A key discussant, identified among the workshop attendees, will be assigned to each position paper to facilitate interaction and engagement in the workshop. The participants will prepare a 5- minute presentation to be delivered in the introduction of the workshop, but focus the will be on developing our ideas through collaborative prototyping. 6 We will take the workshop as an opportunity to explore future collaboration (e.g., a mailing list and/or collaborative research projects). The results from the workshop may be developed further for a special issue or anthology. Organization The workshop is organized by an interdisciplinary group of researchers from the fields of Human Computer Interaction and Digital Humanities. Karin Hansson, Associate Professor in Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University, has written extensively about technology-based participation from a design perspective. She is currently part of a research project on the development of #MeToo activism in Sweden, and part of the “Metadata culture” research group at Stockholm University. She has previously organized workshops on CSCW themes such as: The Morphing Organization – Rethinking Groupwork Systems in the Era of Crowdwork at ACM GROUP 2014, Sanibel Island, USA; Examining the Essence of the Crowds: Motivations, Roles and Identities at ECSCW 2015, Oslo, Norway; Toward a Typology of Participation in Crowdwork at ACM CSCW 2016, San Francisco, USA; Crowd Dynamics: Exploring Conflicts and Contradictions in Crowdsourcing at ACM CHI 2016, San Jose, CA, USA; Ting: Making Publics Through Provocation, Conflict and Appropriation, The 14th Participatory Design Conference 2016, Aarhus, Denmark. Together with Thomas Ludwig, she recently edited the Special issue: Crowd Dynamics: Conflicts, Contradictions, and Cooperation, The Journal of Collaborative Computing and Work Practices (JCSCW), Volume 28, September 2019. This SI started in a previous workshop at CHI. Right now she is co-editor together with Shaowen Bardzell, Malin Sveningsson, and Teresa Cerratto Pargman on another SI of JCSCW called “Materializing Activism”, which is a result of a workshop with the same title at ECSCW 2019. Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Associate Professor in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University. Her work contributes to the study of how digital technologies and applications reflect and configure socio-material practices and how emerging practices shape the development and design of digital technologies. In particular, she has published on design and appropriation of emerging technologies in the educational sector and on the epistemic, value-laden and social infrastructures, such technologies make possible but also disrupt. She coordinates the research area of Technology-enhanced learning and leads the Critical Computing group at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University. 7 Anna Dahlgren, professor of Art History at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University, has published on different aspects of photography and vernacular visual culture including the digital turn, print culture and archives and museum practices. Right now she is managing the research project Metadata Culture (http://metadataculture.se) at Stockholm University, an interdisciplinary research project that investigates and develop methods for obtaining qualified and extensive metadata for images in digitalized cultural heritage collections. 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Social Science Information, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 131–157. doi:10.1177/0539018408089075 work_2slpescrlfe43dl5jgogbh2tyy ---- PUBLISHER The Swedish Archaeological Society & Nordic Academic Press EDITORS Sophie Bergerbrant & Alison Klevnäs REVIEWS EDITOR Daniel Sahlén DIGITAL EDITOR Gustav Wollentz EDITORIAL BOARD Benjamin Alberti Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh Anders Carlsson Kerstin Cassel Catherine Frieman Roberta Gilchrist Yannis Hamilakis Carl Knappett Gavin Lucas Lynn Meskell Nick Shepherd Lena Sjögren Brit Solli Fredrik Svanberg Julian Thomas Anna Wessman SUBSCRIPTION Current Swedish Archaeology is published in one annual volume. Price per volume excl. post- age: SEK 200 for individuals, SEK 400 for institutions. Subscription orders should be sent to: Current Swedish Archaeology c/o Förlagssystem AB Box 30104 104 25 Stockholm Tel: 08-737 86 66 Email: csa@forlagssystem.se www.arkeologiskasamfundet.se/csa www.nordicacademicpress.com © The Swedish Archaeological Society & the Authors 2019 Nordic Academic Press Box 148 221 00 Lund Email: info@nordicacademicpress.com Revision of English language: Alison Klevnäs Graphic design: Lönegård & Co & Anders Gutehall Image processing & typesetting: Anders Gutehall Boat illustration on cover: Inger Kåberg Printed by Holmbergs, Malmö 2019 ISSN 1102-7355 (print) ISSN 2002-3901 (online) The Swedish Archaeological Society Vol. 27 2019 CURRENT SWEDISH ARCHAEOLOGY Editors: Sophie Bergerbrant & Alison Klevnäs The Swedish Archaeological Society In 1947 the first meeting to establish the Swedish Archaeological Society was held at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. The Society is the common body for professional archaeologists in Sweden, regardless of specialism. According to the statutes the purpose of the Society is to further Swedish archaeological research and to support this research by granting scholarships. The Society is especially tasked with attending to the vocational interests of archaeologists. This task is to be carried out by taking part in public debate, by influencing public opinion, and by being a body to which proposed measures are submitted for consideration. The Society also arranges discussions and seminars on archaeological topics. The Society’s board currently has fourteen members from universities, mu- seums and archae ological institutions in various parts of Sweden. Ingrid Berg from Uppsala University is the present chair. In 1993 the Society began issuing its annual journal Current Swedish Archaeology. Since then the journal has presented articles mirroring current archaeological research and theoretical trends. Sophie Bergerbrant & Alison Klevnäs Editorial .............................................................................................................. 7 THEME Alexandra Ion Who Are We as Historical Beings? Shaping Identities in Light of the Archaeogenetics ‘Revolution’ .......................... 11 John C. Barrett The Archaeology of Population Dynamics .......................................................... 37 Martin Furholt De-contaminating the aDNA–Archaeology Dialogue on Mobility and Migration: Discussing the Culture-Historical Legacy ............................................................ 53 Anna Källén, Charlotte Mulcare, Andreas Nyblom & Daniel Strand Archaeogenetics in Popular Media: Contemporary Implications of Ancient DNA ...................................................... 69 Marko M. Marila Slow Science for Fast Archaeology .................................................................... 93 Artur Ribeiro Science, Data, and Case-Studies under the Third Science Revolution: Some Theoretical Considerations ..................................................................... 115 Daniela Hofmann Commentary. Archaeology, Archaeogenetics and Theory: Challenges and Convergences ......................................................................... 133 Contents ARTICLES Anna Sörman Casting in the Longhouse: The Organization of Metalworking in Late Bronze Age Settlements in South-Eastern Sweden ................................................................................ 143 Fredrik Fahlander Fantastic Beings and Where to Make Them: Boats as Object-Beings in Bronze Age Rock Art ............................................... 191 Matthias S. Toplak The Warrior and the Cat: A Re-Evaluation of the Roles of Domestic Cats in Viking Age Scandinavia ........ 213 REVIEW & NOTICES Ingrid Berg Review: Johannes Siapkas. Antikvetenskapens teoretiska landskap II: Från Olympia till Leonidas (The Theoretical Landscape of Classical Studies II: From Olympia to Leonidas) .............................................................................. 247 Richard Grönwall & Rebecka Jonsson Sandby Borg: New Perspectives for Iron Age Archaeology in the Baltic Region. Report from an Archaeological Conference at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden. 8–10 May 2019 ..................................................................... 251 Magnus Djerfsten The Eastern Link: The Largest Archaeological Excavation Program in the History of Sweden? ................................................................................ 254 Christina Rosén Recent Excavations at Nya Lödöse ................................................................... 256 CURRENT SWEDISH ARCHAEOLOGY VOL. 27 2019 | https://doi.org/10.37718/CSA.2019.00 7 Editorial This year for the first time Current Swedish Archaeology presents a themed section with a collection of peer-reviewed discussion papers on a shared topic, instead of a keynote article and commentaries. In the future we plan to vary the format between keynotes and themed sections – each time fol- lowed by individual research papers covering our usual breadth of subjects and periods. For 2019 the theme format enables us to bring you nine fully reviewed papers, along with commentary, reviews and notices. We are also pleased that, with our second volume in six months, CSA production is now back on schedule. The use of natural science approaches in archaeology has long been dis- cussed and debated. Kristian Kristiansen’s keynote in CSA volume 22 re- sparked this debate and is one of our most downloaded papers. This year’s theme comes from a workshop called Can science accommodate multiple ontologies? The genetics revolution and archaeological theory, held in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cam- bridge in June 2018. Results from ancient DNA research often reach media headlines and hence huge audiences. How do interactions between genetic evidence and archaeological knowledge play out? The articles in this sec- tion reflect critically on relations between archaeogenetics and archaeology. The theme is introduced by Alexandra Ion, who presents the background to the workshop and goes on to evaluate narratives of archaeogenetics in relation to different audiences. It continues with a paper by John Barrett, looking at current interpretations of aDNA data and how they have been used to question earlier models that argued for the uptake of farming by indigenous hunter-gatherer populations. With the paper by Martin Furholt we stay within the sphere of the gene- tic interpretation of the spread of human populations, but this time in the https://doi.org/10.30.37718/CSA.2019.00 CURRENT SWEDISH ARCHAEOLOGY VOL. 27 20198 Editorial third millennium BC. The author argues that new genetic results have not had any meaningful impact on the way we view prehistory, despite the debate they create. He contends that aDNA results have been tacked onto some of the most outdated narratives in European prehistory, arguing in- stead for a practice-based approach to how new transregional objects and practices are integrated into local contexts. Next come Anna Källén, Charlotte Mulcare, Andreas Nyblom & Daniel Strand, the team behind the project Code–Narrative–History, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. They analyse the public debate resulting from two archaeogenetics papers based on human remains from central Sweden, including the ‘Viking warrior woman’. The authors show that there is sig- nificant interlacing of scientific, political and media discourses in and around archaeogenetic papers, and argue that aDNA researchers need to give greater consideration to public impact when they communicate results. Marko Marila argues for slow science in his paper. Using the discus- sions around slow science and the related idea that scientific importance is a matter of concern rather than fact, he proposes that archaeologists should start to cultivate methods of deceleration. The last peer-reviewed paper in this section is written by Artur Ribeiro and makes the case that while the so-called Third Science Revolution has brought significant enhancement in terms of scientific methods and ap- proaches, it risks transforming archaeology into a methodologically mo- nistic discipline. Ribeiro contends that especially when it comes to Big Data analysis, there is a risk that archaeological evidence is reduced to those ele- ments that are quantifiable. Daniela Hofmann wraps up the theme with a commentary. She con- cludes that the papers clearly show the issues that trouble archaeologists when engaging with Big Data, in particular aDNA. The strongest message to emerge from the papers is that this is not about unlearning and relearn- ing things we thought we knew about the prehistoric societies, but the need to defend different kinds of questions and approaches, and the idea that different ways of knowing are important. Three general research articles follow. The first, by Anna Sörman, explores bronze casting in the Scandinavian Late Bronze Age. Her study shows that traces of bronze casting frequently occur in Late Bronze Age settlements in south-eastern Sweden. By using an empirical, bottom-up ap- proach to the examination of spatial and social contexts of bronze casting, Sörman provides new insight into the social organization of metalworking. She shows that domestic arenas often hosted varied and complex remains of metalworking staged at various outdoor and indoor hearths, often located in the core areas of settlements. The author concludes that metalworking CURRENT SWEDISH ARCHAEOLOGY VOL. 27 2019 | https://doi.org/10.37718/CSA.2019.00 9 Editorial was not organizationally conceptualized as levels, but that it was a multi- faceted, communicative and user-oriented practice. We stay in the Bronze Age with the next paper by Fredrik Fahlander, who takes us from metalwork to boat motifs in rock carvings. He argues that rather than seeing the boat motif as representing real or symbolic boats in some form, we should see them as autonomous articulations, made to do something rather than to represent. Through this change of perspective we can understand the hybrid character of the boat motif as something which has no original elsewhere. Cats – the roles of cats in Viking Age society – are the topic of the last research paper in this volume. Matthias Toplak uses literary and archaeo- logical sources to understand cats from a human-animal relations perspec- tive, arguing that the cat was a symbolically, functionally and probably also emotionally important companion for humans beyond the borders of sex or gender in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. This year we expanded the CSA editorial team with two new members. Digital Editor Gustav Wollentz is working on moving the journal into the 2020s with a new digital platform for our Open Access model. Dan- iel Sahlén is the editor for reviews and notices. In this volume we have one review of a new book, a report from a recent conference, and two notices introducing fieldwork of international significance. In the future we hope to be able to present further short notices about current archaeological excavations, new exhibitions, and other events of interest to our national and international readerships, and we welcome contact from those respon- sible for relevant work. The review is of Johannes Siapkas’ 2018 Antikvetenskapens teoretiska landskap II: Från Olympia till Leonidas (The Theoretical Landscape of Classical Studies II: From Olympia to Leonidas), one of a series by the author mapping the theoretical underpinnings of knowledge production within classical studies. Then comes a report from the conference Sandby borg – New perspec- tives for Iron Age archaeology in the Baltic region, which was held at Linnaeus university, Kalmar, in May 2019, as part of a research project on the Sandby borg ringfort and massacre site. Articles discussing Sandby borg have previously been published in CSA volume 25. Next Christina Rosén describes the huge rescue excavation of Nya Lödöse, now part of Gothenburg. The excavation took place as part of exten sive city development between 2013 and 2018. The resulting archae- ological data cover periods from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries AD and give significant new information about town-dwelling in late medieval and early modern Sweden. CURRENT SWEDISH ARCHAEOLOGY VOL. 27 201910 Editorial The final notice in this volume is written by Magnus Djerfsten and in- troduces the ongoing and planned archaeological surveys and excavations in advance of the ‘Eastern Link’ – the new high speed railway which will require huge numbers of rescue excavations, particularly in the county of Östergötland. Up to 250 archaeologists will be employed during the years 2023 to 2025, with probably over 500 ancient monuments to be excavated. We look forward to many interesting results from these excavations in a region with a high density of archaeological remains. In the last editorial we mentioned the planned #metoo-related conference organized by the Swedish Archaeological Society (Svenska Arkeologiska Samfundet) that was going to take place in November 2019 in Växsjö, in cooperation with the Department of Cultural Sciences at Linnaeus Univer- sity. Due to unforeseen circumstances the conference has been moved to 2-4 April 2020, at the same venue. For more information, please see the web- page of the Swedish Archaeological Society. For those of you who cannot make it, a review of the conference will appear in the next volume. Wishing you a great 2020. We hope it will be full of new funding opp- or tunities for Sweden’s academic journals. Sophie Bergerbrant & Alison Klevnäs editors of Current Swedish Archaeology work_2tieqiangbctrobd4c6gedszlu ---- 1Caswell RJ, et al. BMJ Open 2020;10:e037599. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 Open access How, why, for whom and in what context, do sexual health clinics provide an environment for safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence: protocol for a realist review Rachel J Caswell ,1 Ian Maidment ,2 Jonathan D C Ross,1 C Bradbury- Jones3 To cite: Caswell RJ, Maidment I, Ross JDC, et al. How, why, for whom and in what context, do sexual health clinics provide an environment for safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence: protocol for a realist review. BMJ Open 2020;10:e037599. doi:10.1136/ bmjopen-2020-037599 ► Prepublication history and additional material for this paper are available online. To view these files, please visit the journal online (http:// dx. doi. org/ 10. 1136/ bmjopen- 2020- 037599). Received 10 February 2020 Revised 04 May 2020 Accepted 22 May 2020 1Department of Sexual Health and HIV Medicine, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, UK 2School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK 3School of Nursing, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK Correspondence to Dr Rachel J Caswell; rachelcaswell@ nhs. net Protocol © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re- use permitted under CC BY- NC. No commercial re- use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. Strengths and limitations of this study ► Proposes the use of realist approach to explore contextual factors and underpinning casual mech- anisms for safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence in a healthcare setting. ► Will integrate a wide range of evidence to consid- er what works, how and for whom when disclosing sexual violence in sexual health services. ► Will integrate secondary data, from a wide range of sources of literature including academic and grey literature, and primary data in the form of key infor- mant interviews. ► Will be guided by an advisory group where the pro- gramme theories will be developed and refined. ► The findings of the realist review will not be general- isable, although may be transferable, and therefore application of the findings to other settings should be considered carefully. AbStrACt Introduction Supporting people subjected to sexual violence includes provision of sexual and reproductive healthcare. There is a need to ensure an environment for safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence in these clinical settings. The purpose of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of how, why, for whom and in what circumstances safe and supported disclosure occurs in sexual health services. Methods and analysis To understand how safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence works within sexual health services a realist review will be undertaken with the following steps: (1) Focussing of the review including a scoping literature search and guidance from an advisory group. (2) Developing the initial programme theories and a search strategy using context- mechanism- outcome (CMO) configurations. (3) Selection, data extraction and appraisal based on relevance and rigour. (4) Data analysis and synthesis to further develop and refine programme theory, CMO configurations with consideration of middle- range and substantive theories. Data analysis A realist logic of analysis will be used to align data from each phase of the review, with CMO configurations being developed. Programme theories will be sought from the review that can be further tested in the field. Ethics and dissemination This study has been approved by the ethics committee at University of Birmingham, and has Health Research Authority approval. Findings will be disseminated through knowledge exchange with stakeholders, publications in peer- reviewed journals, conference presentations and formal and informal reports. In addition, as part of a doctoral study, the findings will be tested in multisite case studies. PrOSPErO registration details CRD4201912998. Dates of the planned realist review, from protocol design to completion, January 2019 to July 2020. IntrODuCtIOn What are the sexual and reproductive health consequences of sexual violence? The association between sexual violence and poor sexual and reproductive health of individuals is known; links with unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B, recurrent urinary tract infection, pelvic pain and pelvic inflammatory disease as well as genital injury and trauma are reported.1–7 For example, a large prospective UK- based cohort study of adolescents treated after sexual assault, found the pregnancy rate at 4 months was high (4%) relative to population estimates for young women (2% in girls aged 15 to 17 years and <1% in those younger than 16 years) and the STI rate was higher than expected (12%, compared with population estimates for new STIs at 4%).8 However, the relationship between sexual violence and sexual and reproductive health consequences is not straightforward. For example, where higher rates of STIs are reported it is not clear whether they are directly related to the assault or more indi- rectly associated. o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 2 0 -0 3 7 5 9 9 o n 1 7 Ju n e 2 0 2 0 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9246-2581 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4152-9704 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-06-17 http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 2 Caswell RJ, et al. BMJ Open 2020;10:e037599. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 Open access A Canadian team demonstrated an association between sexual assault as an adult and acquisition of a STI in the past year, however the survey of more than 35 000 partic- ipants was unable to tell whether the STI occurred as a consequence of the assault or whether the association was indirect, for example, the trauma of sexual assault has increased subsequent sexual risk taking, or whether STI acquisition was increased in this group independent of the sexual assault.2 The authors of this current review based in the UK, argue, irrespective of the reasons as to why poor sexual outcomes are higher in this group, a healthcare response is warranted. Indeed, sexual and reproductive health problems are the most frequently reported physical health concerns in those subjected to sexual violence.9 Sexual healthcare services It follows that services beneficial for those subjected to sexual violence will include pregnancy testing, pregnancy prevention (ie, emergency contraception), abortion services, STI testing and/or prophylaxis, treatment of injuries and psychosocial counselling. One online survey from the USA of 143 women identified prevention of medical and physical consequences as the main reasons to disclose sexual assault.10 However, it is well recognised that many do not access this healthcare. In an US study looking at post- rape medical care of 445 women, only 93 (21% of victims) received medical attention.11 The majority of those who did seek medical attention were concerned with STI acquisition and pregnancy.11 An earlier study reported similar findings with just over a quarter of women who had experienced rape as an adult receiving medical care.12 Here also they found the post- rape concerns of STIs, specifically HIV/AIDS acquisition, were identified on receipt of medical care.12 In the UK, sexual healthcare is delivered by primary care, third sector and community- based organisations as well as through integrated sexual health services. The latter, and where this review focusses, are expected to offer a full range of STI and blood borne virus testing, treatment and management and a full range of contracep- tive provision, along with health promotion and preven- tion activity. Local data collection at one of the largest integrated sexual health services in Europe, covering a population of 1.3 million, found that one adult per day attended to seek help after sexual violence (Umbrella Sexual Health Service, Birmingham, UK; internal report 2019). A national service specification for integrated sexual health services recommends that all patients should be screened for sexual violence.13 Additional guid- ance on sexual violence screening comes from BASHH (British Association of Sexual Health and HIV), the NHS (National Health Service) and Healthcare Improvement Scotland.14–16 The guidelines and standards set out the expectations for sexual health service provision for those seeking care after sexual violence. Individuals have further needs in addition to imme- diate sexual healthcare, and the sexual health sector can act as an important referral point for other services, for example, for forensic medical examination, social welfare support, community mental health support and legal aid. All individuals should be provided with access to the crim- inal justice system and there will be those in whom timely referral to forensic services is warranted.17 An important referral pathway, particularly for those who wish (or are unsure) to report to police, is for a sexual assault forensic examination. In the UK, Sexual Assault Referral Centres offer a range of services including forensic examinations that allows evidence to be stored and reporting to be considered at a later date. A systematic review identified key themes regarded by patients as priorities for delivering a high- quality service after sexual violence as being patient focussed, trauma informed and empowering.18 Underpinning this is the need for healthcare professionals to convey their belief in the patients’ experience.19–22 What are the issues around disclosure of sexual violence? The process of disclosure itself is not proven to be helpful in reducing mental health sequelae after sexual violence; the lack of significant differences in poor mental health sequelae between the disclosure and non- disclosure groups in the study by Carretta et al suggests that rape trauma is present irrespective of disclosure;23 but it may be that disclosure opens a gateway to further services and support. While changes in societal norms have led to an increase in disclosing sexual violence, most of it remains hidden.24–27 The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that around five in six victims (83%) did not report their experiences to the police with annual figures for non- reported episodes around 160 000.28 Many do not disclose because of stigma, victim- blaming, secrecy and self- silencing and self- blame.23 29 Despite recognising that sexual health services are selected by individuals as a place to disclose sexual violence and get help, it is not known what aspects of the sexual health service create a conducive environment for safe disclosure of sexual violence. With a wide range of people accessing this setting, for example, in respect of age, gender and ethnicity (the realist ‘context’), the service may need to adapt its environment and how it works (the realist ‘mechanism)’ if it is to meet the specific needs around safe disclosure (the realist ‘outcome’). An example of the contextual diversity in relation to accessing appropriate sexual healthcare is demonstrated by Du Mont et al were they found women who were sexu- ally assaulted by a current or former partner were less likely than those assaulted by another known assailant or stranger to have been administered emergency contra- ception (p<0.001) or prophylaxis for sexually transmitted infections (p<0.001), or counselled for the potential use of HIV post- exposure prophylaxis (p<0.001).30 This review will employ a realist approach31 to under- stand how, why, for whom and in what context, sexual health clinics provide an environment, for safe and o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 2 0 -0 3 7 5 9 9 o n 1 7 Ju n e 2 0 2 0 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 3Caswell RJ, et al. BMJ Open 2020;10:e037599. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 Open access box 1 A context- mechanism- outcome configuration related to sexual health clinics providing an environment for safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence If healthcare professionals are trained in trauma- informed care (‘con- text’) they will recognise the importance of, and offer, patient choice (‘re- source of mechanism’), so that patients feel empowered (‘response of mechanism’) and become more likely to make a disclosure (‘outcome’). supported disclosure of sexual violence. The authors are also aware that disclosure can have harmful psycholog- ical consequences, particularly when individuals are faced with negative responses.32 Studies have reported an associ- ation between negative disclosure experiences and higher risk of onset of mental disorder, such as post- traumatic stress disorder.33 34 If reactions to disclosure are critical in the recovery process,27 it is important to consider what is meant by negative responses, and to consider how we create the space for ‘safe’ disclosures in health settings. Aims and objectives The objectives are to: 1. Understand how and why any potentially relevant at- tributes of sexual health services optimise safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence for particular groups of adults in certain contexts. 2. Synthesise the findings from objective 1 into initial programme theories that can be tested in future case studies. Context of the review The review is part of a larger project and forms the basis of doctoral work for RJC. The programme theories gener- ated during the review process will be tested and refined during later stages of the PhD using a variety of research methods as part of a realist evaluation. The overall inten- tion is to build a framework for sexual health services to use in order to maximise safe and supported disclosure for those who have experienced sexual violence. MEthODS AnD AnAlySIS Methodology A realist approach is fitting for this complex area of health- care and will allow for a deeper understanding of how safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence works within sexual health services.35 36 Whereas traditional research modalities emphasise the usual cause- and- effect of a posi- tivist paradigm, the realist approach goes beyond asking if the intervention works, or comparing one intervention to another, and instead sets out to understand why an inter- vention works, for whom it works and in what circum- stances it works.31 The realist approach will consider the way different contexts produce differing responses to the intervention.37 The intervention in this case is sexual health service delivery and the desired outcome is safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence, although unintended outcomes will be examined. The authors are aware that harmful or unhelpful outcomes can occur in relation to disclosure and these will be reported where identified. Pawson and Tilley (1997) developed the following formula as a way to represent how interventions work: Context (C) + Mechanism (M) = Outcome (O) (CMO).31 The CMO is considered a heuristic; a method proposed to unravel the assumptions surrounding the theory (in realist terms and programme theory) of how the intervention works given contextual influences and underlying mechanisms of action. Mechanisms, in realist terms, are underlying causal processes. Pawson and Tilley construct programme mech- anisms as comprising both ‘reasoning and resources’.31 Here, mechanisms seek to explain how and why people respond (also referred to as ‘reasoning’) to resources offered by sexual health services to produce the outcome of safe and supported disclosure. Mechanisms are not components of the sexual health service but are better conceptualised as responses that individuals have to resources within that service such as trust, engagement, motivation and confidence in response to an aspect of the service. The review will search for the real, underlying and probably invisible causes of how safe and supported disclosure is realised.38 Box 1 provides an example of a CMO, depicting the resource and response of the realist mechanism. The ‘C’ of CMO, contexts, are considered factors that make the mechanisms more or less likely to be triggered. In this review, the potential key contexts include partic- ipants’ sexual identities, gender, immigration status, ethnicity and age, as well as aspects of the service such as healthcare professional attitudes and beliefs, as each is likely to influence an individual’s response to engage- ment with sexual health services. As put during a critique of realist research, ‘Context matters – a lot’.39 Applied realism aims to move beyond identifying which context enables a mechanism to be triggered, and instead to ‘explain(s) why the explanations are different in different contexts or for different subgroups.’38 Westhorp encour- ages a deeper understanding of the way contexts work when facilitating the triggering of mechanisms. She argues there is an additional mechanism at work within the context itself, allowing the programme mechanism to fire (or constrain its firing).38 As summarised by Jagosh ‘the advantage of the theory- driven approach (used in the realist review) is in addressing aspects of causation as this provides explan- atory power about why a programme worked or failed given the resources offered through an intervention and the response to those resources’.37 During this review, programme theories will be developed and underlying causal mechanisms identified as to how and why certain attributes of sexual health services optimise safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence. While the findings from this realist review may not be generalisable as interventions work differently in different o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 2 0 -0 3 7 5 9 9 o n 1 7 Ju n e 2 0 2 0 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 4 Caswell RJ, et al. BMJ Open 2020;10:e037599. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 Open access contexts and through different mechanisms, the theory- based understandings about the influences of contexts on mechanism and outcomes will be transferable to different contexts. Patient and public involvement Involvement in the review will take two main forms. First, participation in the advisory group involves patient advo- cates and other public stakeholders. This group advises on patient priorities and patient preferences on how best to support disclosure of sexual violence in healthcare settings. Second, patients will be recruited for informant interviews and will steer the project as they support or refute theory development and ensure the relevance and importance of findings. Current stage of the review work Despite the iterative nature of realist reviews, it is possible to produce a protocol that reflects the planned review’s intentions, the methods to be employed, the direction of work to date and the initial findings that form a guide for the next steps of the review. A reflective account will be maintained so that the sources of programme theories developed are transparent and the programme theories can be tracked back to sources. An advisory group was created at the outset of the project, that includes the researcher, RJC, two academics (with interests in researching the area of sexual violence and abuse, vulnerable groups and critical realism), a healthcare professional working in a London- based sexual health service with a special interest in sexual violence, a manager and an advocate from in a third sector agency supporting adults and children of all ages and genders after sexual violence, and a patient advocate working in LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) sector. Engagement with the advisory group is ongoing as initial ideas and programme theories are discussed and refined drawing from their experience and expertise. Three initial CMO configurations were agreed from the findings of an initial literature scoping exercise, a discus- sion with the advisory group and a meeting with doctoral supervisors. Planned review strategy The review protocol was registered on the PROSPERO database. The following proposed steps conform to the RAMESES (Realist And Meta- narrative Syntheses: Evolving Standards) standards of realist review:40 1. Focussing of the review. 2. Developing the initial programme theories and a search strategy using CMO configurations. 3. Selection, data extraction and appraisal based on rele- vance and rigour. 4. Data analysis and synthesis to further develop pro- gramme theory, context, intervention and mechanism configurations with consideration of middle- range and substantive theories. Focussing of the review The focussing of the review is to develop initial realist programme theories that hypothesise whether or not, how and why, sexual health clinics provide an environment for safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence. It will theorise contextual influences and the underlying mech- anisms of action that support this disclosure outcome. The underlying causal mechanisms will be considered from different viewpoints, with input from multiple stake- holders including service users, healthcare professionals and other support staff. An initial scoping exercise was undertaken by RJC using database searches (see online supplementary file 1 for broad search terms). All titles were reviewed by RJC. During this exercise the reviewer sought to capture broad and recurring themes about disclosure of sexual violence in order to theorise potential CMO configura- tions. Sixty- three articles, more relevant to the topic area, were reviewed in more depth as they provided potential key realist contexts and mechanisms. Examples of possible mechanisms identified during the scoping exercise included responses to the applica- tion of trauma- informed care. Trauma- informed care brings about a different approach to service users, for example, an awareness of the need for psychological safety during the consultation and when offering phys- ical examinations, with patient choice being central in the health consultation41–44 Possible responses from indi- viduals receiving this form of care are feelings of being understood and of feeling empowered. Wider contextual issues were also noted in the literature including stigma, victim- blaming and fear in relation to disclosure of sexual violence.45–48 Additionally there were challenges faced by particular patient groups in accessing care beyond that of the fear and stigma itself. For example, men, older age groups, those with pre- existing mental health complaints and sexual violence occurring within intimate partner relationships were identified in the scoping exercise as groups experiencing additional barriers when consid- ering disclosure of sexual violence.30 47 49–52 Each of these may be important contexts during programme theory development. Developing the initial programme theories and search strategy using CMO configurations Findings from the scoping exercise were discussed with the advisory group. Themes were prioritised with what were felt to be important contexts and potential mecha- nisms for addressing the review question; what are the key underpinning mechanisms, in differing contexts, leading to safe and supported disclosure of sexual violence? The initial programme theories (IPTs) resulting from the scoping review and advisory group meeting are expressed initially using the CMO configuration (see box 2). The advisory group also discussed the desired outcome and the importance of recognising that disclosure is not always beneficial for individuals, particularly if healthcare o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 2 0 -0 3 7 5 9 9 o n 1 7 Ju n e 2 0 2 0 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 5Caswell RJ, et al. BMJ Open 2020;10:e037599. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 Open access box 2 CMO frameworks Level of individual: Service users’ backgrounds (eg, differences in age/ gender/sexuality/disability/ethnicity) (context) create differing respons- es to aspects of the sexual health service, which in turn contribute or constrain a response (mechanism), thereby modifying the disclosure (outcome). Service level: Those subjected to sexual violence, attending a sex- ual health service where a trauma informed approach is promoted within the service (context), will identify the service as responsive to their needs (mechanisms) resulting in safe and supported disclosure (outcome). Service and community level: Sexual health services cognisant of social influences (eg, stigma/victim- blaming/cultural norms) and social move- ments (eg, #MeToo) (context) and that create environments sensitive to these social factors, either to counteract or to promote these wider social factors (mechanism) will result in safe and supported disclosure of those attending (outcome). Ta b le 1 S e a rc h c ri te ri a In c lu si o n C o n te xt A d u lt s (a g e d 1 8 y e a rs a n d o ve r) ; su b je c te d t o s e xu a l v io le n c e a n d a b u se ; so c ia l c o n te xt s th a t m a y im p a c t in te rv e n ti o n s o r se rv ic e p ro vi si o n ( e g , st ig m a /v ic ti m - b la m in g /c u lt u ra l n o rm s) a n d m o ve m e n ts ( e g , # M e To o ). S e tt in g s to in c lu d e s e xu a l a n d r e p ro d u c ti ve h e a lt h c a re s e tt in g s. M e c h a n is m (r e so u rc e a n d r e sp o n se ) D iff e re n t se rv ic e p ro vi si o n s, f o r e xa m p le , tr a u m a in fo rm e d c a re , ro u ti n e e n q u ir y, t ra in in g a n d e d u c a ti o n , u se o f te c h n o lo g y in t h is s e tt in g , so c ia l m e d ia a n d o n lin e p u b lic it y fo r th e s e xu a l h e a lt h s e rv ic e . C re a ti n g r e sp o n si ve s e rv ic e , b u ild in g t ru st , a n d s o o n . O u tc o m e D is c lo su re , sa fe d is c lo su re , su p p o rt e d d is c lo su re ; u n in te n d e d o u tc o m e : re - t ra u m a ti sa ti o n a n d v ic ti m - b la m in g . E xc lu si o n W e p la n t o e xc lu d e t h e f o llo w in g c o n te xt s (w it h ju st ifi c a ti o n in b ra c ke ts ): s tu d ie s fo c u ss e d o n a d u lt s d is c lo si n g c h ild s e xu a l a b u se , o r in ti m a te p a rt n e r vi o le n c e w h e re s e xu a l v io le n c e is n o t sp e c ifi e d . S tu d ie s p ri o r to 2 0 1 0 n o t in it ia lly in c lu d e d ( ju st ifi c a ti o n : tr a n sf e r o f p u b lic h e a lt h , in c lu d in g se xu a l h e a lt h c o m m is si o n in g in U K t o lo c a l g o ve rn m e n t in 2 0 1 3 , a n d g ro w th o f m o ve m e n ts s u c h a s # M e To o in s o c ia l m e d ia s in c e t h is t im e ). N o n - O E C D ( O r g a n is a ti o n f o r E c o n o m ic C o o p e ra ti o n a n d D e ve lo p m e n t) c o u n tr ie s, a n d n o n - h e a lt h c a r e s e tt in g s (ju st ifi c a ti o n : si g n ifi c a n t c o n te xt u a l d iff e re n c e s) . providers are unaware of the potential harm that can occur during the disclosure process. Using these CMO frameworks, an iterative searching scheme with inclusion and exclusion criteria was devised (table 1) and are planned for the following databases: AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine), BNI (British Nursing Index), CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Cochrane data- base, Embase, HMIC (Health Management Information Consortium), MEDLINE, PsycINFO and PubMed. Cita- tion tracking will be used in SSCI (Social Sciences Cita- tion Index) via the Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, and reference list screening of included studies. This iterative component is integral to the realist review. Inclusion and exclusion criteria provide a searching framework but unlike traditional systematic with rigid criteria, a broader range of evidence will be considered if relevant to develop or refine IPTs. Additional, separate searches may be conducted to identify literature relating to particular mechanisms. Around four to six key informant interviews (KII) are planned. Individuals, including service users who have experienced sexual violence, healthcare professionals and third sector professionals with relevant expertise, will provide a source of primary data contributing to theory building. In addition KII, will serve as a check of the rele- vance of the theories already proposed. Selection, data extraction and appraisal A realist review uses iterative, purposive sampling from a wide range of evidence to develop, refine, confirm and refute theories about how and why an intervention works, for whom and in what circumstance.53 Therefore the searches will include sources from a range of fields so that learning from other settings can be incorporated into the review and contribute to greater understanding of potential contexts and mechanisms.54 For example, one CMO identified healthcare staff trained in trauma- informed as an important context, with the potential to o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 2 0 -0 3 7 5 9 9 o n 1 7 Ju n e 2 0 2 0 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 6 Caswell RJ, et al. BMJ Open 2020;10:e037599. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 Open access trigger causal mechanisms. The authors plan to employ searches that include the concept of trauma- informed care beyond that found in sexual health setting. This will include searches from other specialist domains such as from mental health and substance abuse practice and research. A clear audit trail of the source of included pieces of evidence will be maintained. A grey literature search will include relevant policy documents. In addition, forward and backward citation tracking of key papers will be used together with hand searching of relevant journals. Any key papers already known to the authors and identified through initial scoping exercises will also be eligible for inclusion, as well as any recommended by members of the advisory group. At this stage the inclusion and exclusion criteria are guided by the focus of the review (see table 1), and the articles will be screened by title and abstract by RJC. A 10% random sample will be checked by CB- J and disagree- ments resolved with JDCR until consensus is achieved. The full texts will then be obtained and screened by RJC with a 10% sample checked by CB- J and again disagree- ments resolved by JDCR. Inclusion and exclusion decisions for full texts will be based on relevance and rigour in keeping with realist review methods as described in the RAMESES publica- tion standards: realist syntheses:55 ► Relevance - whether it can contribute to theory building and/or testing; and ► Rigour - whether the methods used to generate the relevant data are credible and trustworthy. This pragmatic approach judges the quality of the data and its sources by evaluating trustworthiness, plau- sibility and coherence.56 Judgements on each study will be recorded in a data extraction table. Furthermore, limitations of studies will be recorded when decisions are being made as to the ‘weight’ of studies in influencing the generation and refinement of the initial programme theories. Searching will continue until sufficient data are found (‘theoretical saturation’) so that the initial programme theories are sufficiently coherent and plau- sible. This will involve agreement from the literature findings as well as from key informant interviews and the advisory group.55 The full texts of all relevant documents will be imported into NVivo (a qualitative data analysis software tool). A core set of descriptors for each study will be recorded (author, title, year, country), type of data (primary evidence and study type, review, opinion piece), patient group, health setting, intervention description and outcomes. Data will be coded as context, mechanism or outcome. In addition, data will be recorded as containing evidence for the generation of IPT, for supporting or contradicting the IPT and evidence that provides explan- atory reasoning that contributes to the theory of how the intervention works. Analysis and synthesis to further develop programme theory, and context, intervention and mechanism configurations As Wong et al states, the basic analytical task in a realist review is to find and align the evidence to demonstrate that particular mechanisms generate particular outcomes and to demonstrate which aspects of context matter.40 Therefore, at this stage, the analysis will work to refine or generate new context- mechanism- outcome configu- rations to explain whether and to what degree, mecha- nisms are activated within a particular context to produce the outcome of safe and supported disclosure. Patterns of demi- regularity (semi- predictable patterns) across differing but related contexts and research fields will be considered.57 During this stage of analysis, the CMO find- ings will be synthesised back into the initial programme theories, and the IPTs refined as appropriate. Future advisory group meetings are planned to ensure IPTs continue to be viewed as important and relevant. The advisory group will help prioritise the explanatory accounts, and if these programme theories are felt to be described in insufficient detail by the literature identified in the initial searches, supplementary targeted searches of the academic and grey literature and additional key informant interviews will be performed. Additionally, input from the doctoral supervisors will include verifica- tion of the data and their agreement with the IPTs. Middle- range theories will be considered; these are the theories that ‘…involve abstraction, …but they are close enough to observed data to be incorporated in proposi- tions that permit empirical testing.’58 The final task will involve drawing on substantive theory to help further identify mechanisms and features of context, and in order to make sense of the pattern of findings. Possible rele- vant substantive theories include candidacy theory and social cognitive theory.59 60 Other theories used in papers identified during the review will be considered, as well as further searching for theories with good explanatory fit by the authors if a gap still exists.61 EthICS AnD DISSEMInAtIOn As key informant interviews are planned ethical approval was sought and obtained (Health Research Authority obtained, REC reference 19/WM/0297 IRAS project ID 266583). Informed consent will be obtained for all inter- views. Support for both participants and the interviewer is available and safeguards during the interview itself are agreed. RJC will perform all the interviews and is experi- enced in working with those subjected to sexual violence. The review will be published in a peer- reviewed journal and the authors will make the findings available to rele- vant interested bodies including third sector organisa- tions. The findings will be relevant for policy, decision makers and clinicians working in healthcare, particularly sexual health; the findings are also expected to be trans- ferable to other healthcare settings. In addition, the find- ings from the review will be of use to other researchers and academics in the field of violence and abuse, and o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 2 0 -0 3 7 5 9 9 o n 1 7 Ju n e 2 0 2 0 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 7Caswell RJ, et al. BMJ Open 2020;10:e037599. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037599 Open access can be used as a basis for further work. Finally, the review findings will be used for the next stage of the doctoral project and the theories about why, how and for whom this service works for disclosure of sexual violence will be ‘tested’ within two sexual health services in England. The development of coherent and plausible theoretical expla- nations of how, why and for whom sexual health services provide a safe and supportive environment for disclosure, will be invaluable for service user and professional alike. Contributors All authors contributed to the conceptualisation of the review. RJC wrote the first draft. CB- J, JDCR and IM critically reviewed it and provided comments to improve the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript. Funding This work was supported by University Hospitals Birmingham Research and Development, as part of a doctoral study by RJC. Competing interests JDCR reports personal fees from GSK Pharma, Hologic Diagnostics, Mycovia and Janssen Pharma as well as ownership of shares in GSK Pharma and AstraZeneca Pharma; and is author of the UK and European Guidelines on Pelvic Inflammatory Disease; is a Member of the European Sexually Transmitted Infections Guidelines Editorial Board; is a Member of the National Institute for Health Research Funding Committee (Health Technology Assessment programme). He is an NIHR Journals Editor and associate editor of Sexually Transmitted Infections journal. He is an officer of International Union against Sexually Transmitted Infections (treasurer), and a charity trustee of the Sexually Transmitted Infections Research Foundation. Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Refer to the Methods section for further details. Patient consent for publication Not required. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. Open access This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY- NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non- commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non- commercial. See: http:// creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by- nc/ 4. 0/. OrCID iDs Rachel J Caswell http:// orcid. org/ 0000- 0002- 9246- 2581 Ian Maidment http:// orcid. org/ 0000- 0003- 4152- 9704 rEFErEnCES 1 Grose RG, Chen JS, Roof KA, et al. 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Sexual healthcare services What are the issues around disclosure of sexual violence? Aims and objectives Context of the review Methods and analysis Methodology Patient and public involvement Current stage of the review work Planned review strategy Focussing of the review Developing the initial programme theories and search strategy using CMO configurations Selection, data extraction and appraisal Analysis and synthesis to further develop programme theory, and context, intervention and mechanism configurations Ethics and dissemination References work_32orav5bnnf6bir72tgi5qd5jm ---- Beyond the Fears of the Pandemic: Reinventing the Nation-State? 69 But one cannot explain everything with facts, ideas, and words. There is, in addition, all one does not know and never will. —Louis-Ferdinand Céline1 Once more, in politics, fearing has replaced planning. But this time the danger is not imaginary. The health crisis, coupled with an economic crisis, is probably the most severe one since 1929. As for the Enlighten- ment project of freeing people from fear and making them sovereign,2 it has been relegated to the museum of dead ideas. Fears proliferate, fuel- ing fantasies and dictating behavior. The triggering event, the coronavirus * Warm thanks to Annick Duraffour and Isabelle de Mecquenem for their com- ments. A short version of this essay previously appeared as “Pandémie, et si l’État-nation se réinventait?,” L’Express, April 6, 2020, https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/idees-et-debats/ pierre-andre-taguieff-pandemie-et-si-l-etat-nation-se-reinventait_2122871.html. Translated by Pierre Schwarzer. 1. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, La Vie et l’œuvre de Philippe Ignace Semmelweis (1818– 1865), in cahiers céline 3, ed. Jean-Pierre Dauphin and Henri Godard (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), p. 78. [Translator’s note: no translation available, thus the quotation has been trans- lated along with the article.] 2. Cf. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “Begriff der Aufklärung,” in Dialek- tik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988), p. 9; English translation: Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Frag- ments, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2002), p. 1. Pierre-André Taguieff Beyond the Fears of the Pandemic: Reinventing the nation-State? This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0. English translation © 2020 The Telos- Paul Piccone Institute, http://www.telosinstitute.net. Telos 191 (Summer 2020): 69–90 doi:10.3817/0620191069 www.telospress.com 70 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF pandemic, brings us face to face with a highly anxiety-provoking conjunc- tion: that of the inexplicable and the incurable—until further notice. This clashes head-on with the Prometheism of the moderns, which assumes that humanity only encounters problems it can solve. However, to succeed in explaining and mastering phenomena, one requires time, and fear only feeds impatience. The time of and for politics is utterly different from that of scientific research. As the unforeseen occurs, so does uncertainty that, in conjunction with the perception of a lethal threat, fosters fear and sets up a dictator- ship of urgency. And fear, paralyzing our capacity to imagine the future, tends to dictate its law to political leaders and ordinary citizens alike, with politicians believing they must reassure people and show them they know enough about the pandemic and are taking responsible actions against it. But the claim of explanatory omnipotence distorts the game: above all, it serves to comfort the public. An immodest power seeks to maintain the il- lusion that they have the situation under control. The parades and prances of approved experts, however competent they may be, hardly conceal our ignorance and powerlessness. They also stir up a paradoxical malaise: what good is such expertise if it does not advance knowledge or seriously control the pandemic? Medical statistics should not be a substitute for biomedical research or serve as a cover-up in the absence of effective treatments. It is as much about guarding oneself from a crippling catastrophism as it is about avoiding blind optimism. A truthful, lucid, and responsible intervention by a political leader would admit: “We do not know.” But who among our politicians would dare to take the risk of the simple truth? Managing scarcity to better camouflage it or indefinitely postponing po- litical decisions in anticipation of a “scientific consensus” is much easier. This is how, on April 9 of this year, the French government’s press secre- tary (for the presidency), Sibeth Ndiaye, stated on the radio station France Info: “We will decide on a possible extension of the mandatory wearing of masks to the entire population as soon as we can build it on scientific consensus.” She justified her statement by playing the French Academy of Medicine’s recommendation of compulsory mask-wearing against the guideline of the World Health Organization (WHO), which “does not rec- ommend the wearing of masks for the general population.” This is a wait- and-see attitude, ignoring the fact that, in the biomedical field, there can be no absolute consensus within the scientific community, which lives with BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 71 the controversies through which research advances knowledge. Above all, however, it means that one takes for granted that political decisions must be scientifically based, that politics must cease to be an art and become an applied science. This is the illusion of scientism par excellence. In situations of great danger (wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, epidemics), when questions of security and protection take precedence over all others, national sentiment returns to the surface and the “retreat” into the nation’s borders becomes a major imperative for protection. The awakening of the tragic, the experience of suffering Necessity without Justice, impels, along with the feeling of an intractable conflict of values, a great return to reality, which must be confronted in all its terrible aspects. The sudden pervasiveness of death is a brutal reminder of our finitude, but also of the fact that as humans, we are social animals now living within the framework of nations rather than that of tribes or empires. National solidarity thus regains its meaning “from below,” so to speak, silencing merchants of illusions and utopias, as well as the followers of a negative form of individualism, which is based on sanctified hedonistic and com- petitive values that undermine social ties under the cloak of openness. It should be noted, however, that while the feeling of a common threat unites or brings together, it can just as easily divide and oppose, depending on the associated passions and interests. A Critical Glance at the Tragic This brutal awakening of the tragic signals the defeat of the bright fu- ture promised by the secular religions. But it is a joyless tragedy. This is not a time for the rebirth of tragedy: we are less and less Greek, to over- throw a formula of Nietzsche.3 The merry tragic heroes are nowhere to be found. We only encounter the sad and tired ones. Fear and pity remain, but without accompanying moral sublimation. The tragic also lies in the rise of unsolvable dilemmas and problems: how can one respond effec- tively to the imperative of collective health without restricting individual freedoms? How can the economic machine be restarted without the sus- pension of prudential lockdown measures, that is, without endangering the lives of the most vulnerable? How can containment measures be jus- tified when they reveal socioeconomic inequalities and risk exacerbating 3. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hol- lingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), sec. 419, p. 226: “We are growing more Greek by the day.” 72 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF social envy? The tragic lies in the impossibility to justify once and for all the decisive choices: between health and the economy, between health and individual liberties. This revival of the tragic, however, is accompanied by the awakening of critical thought, which, stripped of its ideological bias, at last focuses on sociohistorical realities. At the same time as the reality of borders, French citizens can come to acknowledge the importance of the sovereign state, gnawed away for several decades by the Europeanization of bureaucracy and a neoliberal globalization that goes hand in hand with deindustrial- ization, offshoring, and technological dependency. Hence the hysterical posturing of a French state now overtaken by events it had certainly nei- ther foreseen nor even imagined; the elites in power having converted to an adaptationist gnosis, grounded in the belief that mankind’s salvation lies in its ever-increasing adaptation to the boundless world market order, celebrated as a triumphant march toward prosperity and happiness for all. A transfigured headlong rush, illustrating the “legitimation through the fu- ture” analyzed recently by Marcel Gauchet.4 The forced march toward adaptation at all costs, under the pretense of “reform,” was to be accomplished by the government of experts formed around President Macron, orchestrator of this new attempt to realize rea- son in history. But the resulting outcome is rather that of an involuntary display of incompetence and impotence. The actions of this government have been marked by a series of resignations or defections, as well as by successive turns, above all rhetorical, fueling the mistrust of its citizens— a growing one, apparent for many years now, between the rulers and the ruled.5 This wariness affecting many democratic societies is burdened by an anger that, in times of lockdown, is manifested by gestures of humor, in France as elsewhere. This is the case, for instance, in Spain, devastated by the pandemic, where people loudly beat their saucepans on their balconies in protest against the government. Like many Western governments, French political leaders have been fumbling around, multiplying their contradictory injunctions, one glaring example being when they chose not to postpone the municipal elections 4. Cf. Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World, trans. Oscar Burge (Princ- eton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 172–90. 5. Cf. Luc Rouban, La démocratie représentative est-elle en crise? (Paris: La Docu- mentation française, 2018); Pascal Perrineau, Le grand écart: chronique d’une démocratie fragmentée (Paris: Plon, 2019). BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 73 just when the official discourse turned to alarmism. Today, the conquer- ing discourse of the first years of Macron, turned toward the bright future of the start-up nation, is giving way to a dramatization of the situation re- flected in a martial discourse, adapted to a foreseeable dark future—after the health crisis, the economic catastrophe, or the recession on the horizon. Tragedy gives way to catastrophism, to a “twilight vision of the world.” The image of a march toward chaos gives rise to deep pessimism, nurtured by a despair so severe it could translate into violent revolts and an intensi- fication of social conflicts. As for fear, it favors the lifting of moral barriers and, for example, drives some distraught citizens to denounce their neigh- bors for violating the rules of the lockdown, a now commonplace practice. On March 16, 2020, in a solemn address to the nation, President Ma- cron repeated several times: “We are at war.” A new, unforeseen, invisible and elusive, unfamiliar, resistant, and mutant “enemy” was thus added to the list of our foes, our secular demonology renewed through biology and medical care. As a result, our political imagination expands in equal mea- sure with our weakened grip on reality. If, in the modern age, “health has replaced salvation,”6 then illness has replaced eternal damnation. Demons are now called “viruses.” But this is a strange “war,” since the enemy is unknown and only one side, the human side, has victims. The war meta- phor here is misleading. But it serves to rally the troops. Widespread lockdown seems to be the only overall response to the health challenge, in the absence of systematic screening and vaccination. Nothing really new, since the coercive measures taken to address the major epidemics of the past, from quarantine to a sanitary control of ships, as the Black Plague (1347–1349) and the Plague of Marseilles (1720–1722), illustrate among others. Although it is not a cure and only serves to pre- vent hospitals from overloading, general lockdown has been turned into a compulsory miracle cure, prescribed as part of the government’s medical catechism. This means that besides the collateral economic damage and the negative psychological effects that lockdown induces (stress, depression, emotional fatigue, etc.), one of the perverse effects of general lockdown is being ignored: the majority of the population is prevented from develop- ing neutralizing antibodies, thus blocking their immunization. It must be 6. The formula (from 1860) stems from the physician and historian of science José Miguel Guardia (1830–1897) and is quoted by Michel Foucault in The Birth of the clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Rout- ledge, 1976), p. 198. 74 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF acknowledged, however, that it is not scientifically established that herd immunity can be acquired. According to studies in China and the United States, COVID-19 could attack the human immune system, destroying the T cells that are supposed to protect the body from harmful invaders.7 This is another example of the limitations of our knowledge of COVID-19. There is a real problem here, stemming from a conflict of norms. As the historian Patrice Bourdelais reminds us, while it is true that “for centu- ries, the history of progressive scientific findings has contributed to imag- ining the possibility of eradicating infectious diseases,” medical optimism in this area now comes up against the emergence of new diseases, on the rise since the 1980s. As a result, “the progress of science in the under- standing of living organisms leads us to believe the eradication of infec- tious diseases is simply impossible and that we must try to control the spread of new epidemics as best we can.”8 Control, not eradicate: by this rule of practical wisdom, we recognize the limits of the Prometheism of the moderns. As in most European countries, since March 2020, all that Macron’s government has accomplished is preaching petty lessons in morality and hygiene for infantilized citizens and the mere performance of power to intimidate or console people—the old progressive refrain of a better to- morrow rings hollow.9 Its representatives merely repeat the necessary rules of “social distancing” by stigmatizing the bad subjects worrying too loudly about their madly amateurish tinkerings, unprepared for a health crisis compounded by an economic crisis. The drop in GDP in the first quarter of 2020 (– 6%) has lead some political leaders to advocate for a gradual lifting of the lockdown without waiting for reliable tests to be pro- duced. Those competing fears are dangerous, particularly because in their frenzy they supersede the much-needed focus on devising strategies to follow. Some doctors, such as Professor Jean-François Toussaint, propose 7. Stephen Chen, “Coronavirus Could Attack Immune System like HIV by Target- ing Protective Cells, Warn Scientists,” South china Morning Post, April 12, 2020, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3079443/coronavirus-could-target-immune- system-targeting-protective. 8. Patrice Bourdelais, “La compréhension du vivant conduit à penser que l’éradi- cation des maladies infectieuses est impossible,” interview by Simon Blin, Libération, April 10, 2020, https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2020/04/10/patrice-bourdelais-la-compre- hension-du-vivant-conduit-a-penser-que-l-eradication-des-maladies-infect_1784908. 9. Cf. Pierre-André Taguieff, L’Effacement de l’avenir (Paris: Galilée, 2000), pp. 266– 68; Taguieff, Le Sens du progrès: une approche historique et philosophique (Paris: Flam- marion, 2004), pp. 21–22. BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 75 to move away from “blind” quarantine toward “personalized” quaran- tine, which implies the use of reliable tests.10 Such a selective quarantine cannot be carried out without systematic screening. The condition for re- sponsible deconfinement is also mass screening, implying the availability of the required equipment. However, the expertocracy cannot stand any kind of opposition. Neither in the form of scientific controversy, nor in the form of a political debate based on respecting and listening to the adver- sary. But the facts are stubborn: thousands of French people are dying, and there is a shortage of effective protective masks, beds, respirators, and re- liable tests—even sanitizer, gloves, and safety gowns are running low. No amount of rhetoric can transform or transfigure the harshness of reality. For example, it turns out that France has been dependent on China for the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and the production of face masks (in March 2020, French manufacturers produced 8 million face masks per week, while healthcare workers used 40 million in the same period of time). It must be acknowledged that, in this respect, the current French government is not the only one in this predicament and that France, with its public hospitals struck by austerity policies, was very poorly equipped to deal with such an epidemic (few intensive care beds, few molecular bi- ology laboratories, etc.). The negligence of Western governments in the face of the pandemic is blindingly obvious. They began by underestimat- ing the danger, implemented preventive measures with a delay, and did not hesitate to make reassuring statements based on approximate or un- verifiable figures, sometimes purely and simply fake—as in China,11 Iran, or Turkey—and fallacious arguments—such as justifying the shortage of masks by claiming that they are of no use to ordinary citizens or that their use may even be dangerous. For example, President Trump never ceased to minimize the danger of the pandemic by comparing it to the seasonal flu and by repeating that ev- erything was “under control,” that the country was “very well prepared,” before panicking and totally changing his tune in the face of the increasing 10. Jean-François Toussaint, “Le confinement généralisé serait-il une erreur?,” uP’ Magazine, April 12, 2020, https://up-magazine.info/index.php/decryptages/analyses/ 45008- le-confinement-generalise-serait-il-une-erreur/. 11. Cf., among others, Steven Lee Myers, “China Created a Fail-Safe System to Track Contagions. It Failed,” new york Times, March 29, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/ 2020/03/29/world/asia/coronavirus-china.html; François Danjou, “Affaibli à l’intérieur, le parti redore son blason dans le monde,” Questionchine, March 29, 2020, https://www. questionchine.net/affaibli-a-l-interieur-le-parti-redore-son-blason-dans-le-monde. 76 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States, and then declaring, as a worried businessman, that it was necessary to “reopen the country” as soon as possible. Let us also recall the unfortunate statements of Agnès Buzyn, then Minister of Health, first on January 21, 2020: “The risk of in- troducing this virus into France is low but cannot be excluded,” then three days later: “The risk of importation is practically nil.” On February 15, she declared that “it is necessary to prepare our health system for a pos- sible pandemic spread of the virus,” before announcing the next day her candidacy for mayor of Paris and resigning from her post as minister. On February 25, 2020, on the radio station RTL, the new Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, asserted that “there are no longer any sick people in circu- lation in France today.” On the February 26, the football game between the Olympique of Lyon and Juventus of Turin, involving thousands of fans, was authorized in Lyon. As for President Macron, on March 7, he at- tended a performance at the Antoine Theater with his wife and encouraged the French, leading them by example, to continue going out in spite of the epidemic—so much so that at the end of the performance he declared: “Life goes on. There is no reason, except for the vulnerable populations, to change our habits of going out.” In an even more worrisome fashion, on March 12, as he made an alarmist speech on the spread of COVID-19, af- firming in particular that “the absolute priority for our nation will be our health,” he nonetheless called on the French, piously grounded in “scien- tific advice,” to go to the polls on March 15 in the first round of municipal elections: a major inconsistency, for which he is no doubt not the sole cul- prit. These messages were even more contradictory since, the day after the election, the same president announced quarantine measures for the entire country12—not without urging companies to continue their activity “whenever possible” on March 19. It was not until March 16 that Presi- dent Macron declared a “sanitary war” on COVID-19, which earned him a temporary increase in popularity, as measured by Ifop in a study carried out on March 19–20, 2020. We recognize here the phenomenon known as “rallying around the flag,” that is, a patriotic rallying in the face of an international crisis, which is the case for the pandemic.13 But this effect is 12. Cf. Jean-Paul Moatti, “The French Response to COVID-19: Intrinsic Difficulties at the Interface of Science, Public Health, and Policy,” Lancet, April 7, 2020, https://www. thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30087-6. 13. Bruno Cautrès, “La ‘start-up nation’ semble terriblement démodée et vieux monde aujourd’hui . . . ,” interview by Arnaud Benedetti, Revue Politique et Parlementaire, BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 77 generally short-lived and can be reversed if the crisis is prolonged with- out a clear way out. In an Ifop poll carried out on April 8–9, 2020, only 38% of French people trusted the government to effectively fight the pan- demic—a six-point drop compared to the previous survey carried out on March 26–27. The legitimism of the French is often fleeting. However, as Jérôme Fourquet rightly notes, “what currently preserves the executive branch is that the other Western leaders, including populists, do not seem to be doing any better.”14 As for the unfortunate British prime minister, Boris Johnson, after downplaying the danger—and riding on the comforting idea that mass immunization should be allowed to develop—he had to acknowledge in early March 2020 that this was a “national challenge,” without taking clear measures to deal with the pandemic. Less than a month later, the person who ostensibly shook hands in a hospital (“not even scared!”) tested posi- tive for COVID-19, before being hospitalized on April 5. All these senior political leaders have constantly sent contradictory messages, often re- flecting the discords among the experts themselves. This can only increase the mistrust of political leaders, who sail on sight and enter the future backward. The demagoguery of those in power, masking their short-sight- edness, uncertainty, and powerlessness with expert speeches under the sky of a scientism not unlike that of Homais,15 is obvious. The sacralization of “science” allows the rulers to cheaply relieve themselves of their respon- sibilities. The only science we get are mainly daily floods of statistics, which, depending on how we interpret them, worry or comfort us, inviting fantasies and rumors along. The public’s expectations toward the medical field increase with the feeling of a growing threat. The Raoult affair shows that, in situations marked by uncertainty and disarray, doctors who respond to the pub- lic’s demand for therapeutic hope are seen as gurus, masters of truth, and March 22, 2020, https://www.revuepolitique.fr/la-start-up-nation-semble-terriblement-de- modee-et-vieux-monde-aujourdhui/. 14. Jérôme Fourquet, “Covid-19: ‘Cette épreuve collective révèle les fractures pré- existantes de l’archipel français,’” interview by Eugénie Bastié, FigaroVox, April 5, 2020, https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/l-annulation-des-epreuves-du-bac-2020-repousse-l- horizon-d-une-sortie-de-crise-20200405. 15. Monsieur Homais, pharmacist by trade, is a character in Flaubert’s novel Ma- dame Bovary (1857). This grotesque figure, blending definitive decisions with apothecary recipes, is known for his social vanity and scientific pretensions. He embodies a kind of “scientific” idiocy that has become widespread since the middle of the nineteenth century. 78 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF saviors. They are endowed with a charismatic power comparable to that of famous healers or shamans. When they are not recognized and supported by the political and medical establishment, they appear both as Robin Hoods defying the ruling power and as benefactors to humanity. Replac- ing the reference to puerperal infection by the mention of the COVID-19 pandemic, one could attribute to Didier Raoult, with a zest of irony, these words of Philippe Ignace Semmelweis, quoted by Céline in his medical thesis: “Fate has chosen me to be the missionary of truth for the mea- sures that must be taken to avoid and fight the puerperal scourge.”16 The Raoult affair has the advantage of revealing the antagonism of two logics of action: that of the defenders of the scientific method, involving clini- cal trials that take time, and that of the supporters of therapeutic urgency, illustrating a pragmatic medicine of which Didier Raoult has become the champion.17 Here again we are treading on thin ice: the difficulty lies in avoiding both the scientific dogmatism of the medical bureaucracy and the demagogy of miracle workers, who do not hesitate to tap into the public’s mistrust of “official science” cut off from the field, thus running the risk of feeding the imaginary conspiracy accompanying the health crisis (“they hide everything from us,” “they take us for a ride,” etc.). Professor Philippe Gabriel Steg heavily criticized Didier Raoult’s media stance, in particular his criticism of randomized trials,18 dismissed as unethical in an emergency situation, amounting to letting the argument of authority (“eminence-based medicine”) prevail in medicine by disqual- ifying “evidence-based medicine”: What is presented as the fight of the “maverick” against the “ivory tow- er” is in fact exactly the opposite: to refuse the experimental method, verification, and replication is to return to the bygone era of ivory tow- er certainties, in which the authority and intuition of the boss were equal to proof. Conversely, medicine by evidence, derived from randomized 16. Céline, La Vie et l’œuvre de Philippe Ignace Semmelweis, p. 41. 17. Cf. Amélie Petit, “Hydroxychloroquine ou l’essai clinique à l’épreuve du Covid- 19,” Aoc, April 7, 2020, https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/04/07/hydroxychloroquine-ou- lessai-clinique-a-lepreuve-du-covid-19/. 18. In medicine, a randomized controlled trial is an experimental protocol that serves to evaluate the efficacy of a treatment, of a prevention measure, or of a drug. It consists in comparing an experimental group (also called intervention group) that is administered the treatment with a control group (or witness group) that has been administered either a standard treatment or a placebo. It prevents treatments from becoming subject merely to the whim of physicians. BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 79 clinical trials, amounts to giving each and every researcher, every doctor, regardless of rank, country, or specialty, the possibility of experimental- ly testing a hypothesis, of verifying or invalidating it, of replicating the results—and, via peer review, of criticizing or moderating the conclu- sions drawn from them; a process of confronting doubts, opinions, and verification.19 The Raoult affair, which divides the French, exemplifying the populist pat- tern “the people against the elites,” can be understood in its psychosocial dimension, characterized as follows by Jérôme Fourquet: It is a classic feature of times of crisis that the bearers of good news arouse interest and sympathy. But the infatuation toward Prof. Raoult, encour- aged by his skilled communication and positioning, is also based . . . on a movement already present during the “Yellow Vests” crisis: a severe mistrust of the given authorities, the opposition of the presumed prag- matism of the field to the supposedly disconnected elites, the province (Marseille) against Paris.20 In his public actions, President Macron likes to surprise. Such was the case when he secretly planned his visit to Didier Raoult at the University Hospital Institute in Marseille on April 9, 2020. It is true that this deci- sion was made after the success of several petitions in defense of Pro- fessor Raoult, attacked by many of his peers. A great communicator, this doctor-researcher was already an “international star”—as he likes to point out himself—before the controversies over the treatment of COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine. With hundreds of thousands of sig- natures21 on petitions in favor of his proposed treatment, the pro-Raoult movement had become a mainstream political force to be reckoned with. 19. Philippe Gabriel Steg, “Coronavirus: trois premières leçons sur l’épidémie,” April 11, 2020, Les Echos, https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/editos-analyses/exclusif- coronavirus-trois-premieres-lecons-sur-lepidemie-1194256. 20. Fourquet, “Covid-19.” 21. Cf., among others, “Chloroquine: l’appel urgent d’un groupe de médecins,” https:// www.petition-chloroquine.fr/. On the morning of April 10, 2020, this petition had 354,309 signatures. Another petition, “Il faut écouter le professeur Raoult,” https:// www. mesopinions.com/petition/sante/faut-ecouter-professeur-raoult/82737, was signed by 124,576 people. With regard to the pleas of medical professors, see “Traitement Covid-19: ne perdons plus de temps! #NePerdonsPlusDeTemps,” April 3, 2020, https://www.change. org/p/ephilippepm-traitement-covid19-ne-perdons-plus-de-temps-neperdonsplusdetemps, which had collected 468,167 signatures one week later. 80 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF And his growing fame made him a formidable opponent and critic of gov- ernment decisions. Hence the strategy of inclusion followed by the French president: to make this famous figure an ally rather than an enemy,22 dem- onstrating that he has no enemies, apart from those he calls “nationalists” or “populists,” with whom he does not argue. This communication strat- egy had been tested at the time of the mobilization of the Yellow Vests, through the organization of the “Great National Debate,” launched on Jan- uary 15, 2019. In a similar fashion, the April 9 visit to Prof. Raoult was in- tended to reactivate the image of a president who listens to the French, is intellectually curious and open to discussion. This unexpected visit can be considered a successful media coup. However, we can observe a notable increase of public discontent, in late March and early April 2020, with Macron’s management of the pan- demic. As Pascal Perrineau and Guillaume Tabard noted, “the government is being blamed for concealing information, for its opaque communica- tion, for responding too late, and for inadequately protecting those on the front line fighting the virus-related issues.”23 Of the respondents to an Ifop survey in early April, 73% believe that “the government has concealed certain information,” 58% that it “has not communicated clearly,” 63% that it “has not allocated the proper resources to the infrastructures and health professionals to fight against the virus,” and 70% that it “has not re- acted quickly.” Mistrust of elites is the backdrop for the rising tide of conspiracy theo- ries unleashed by the health crisis. And this mistrust is the shared premise of both the populist stance and the conspiracy mindset. Upon measuring the French population’s support of conspiracy theories, one discovers that the openness to conspiracy theories is not evenly distributed. According to the survey carried out from March 24–26, 2020, by Ifop with Conspiracy Watch and the Jean-Jaurès Foundation,24 more than a quarter of the French 22. Guillaume Tabard, “Faire du professeur Raoult un allié plutôt qu’un ennemi,” Le Figaro, April 9, 2020, https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/guillaume-tabard-faire-du-pr- raoult-un-allie-plutot-qu-un-ennemi-20200409. 23. Guillaume Tabard and Pascal Perrineau, “Face à la crise du Covid-19, les Fran- çais entre colère, inquiétude et légitimisme,” Le Figaro, April 10, 2020, https://www. lefigaro.fr/politique/face-a-la-crise-du-covid-19-les-francais-entre-colere-inquietude-et- legitimisme-20200410. 24. Rudy Reichstadt and Jérôme Fourquet, “L’épidémie dans l’épidémie: thèses com- plotistes et Covid-19,” Fondation Jean-Jaurès website, March 28, 2020, https://jean-jaures. org/nos-productions/l-epidemie-dans-l-epidemie-theses-complotistes-et-covid-19. BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 81 (26%) adhere to the claim that COVID-19 is human-made and either in- tentionally (17%) or accidentally (9%) conceived in a lab. Those most prone to conspiracy theories are composed of, on the one hand, the young- est generations, often appropriating news indiscriminately and without verification, and, on the other hand, the most disadvantaged social cat- egories, on average less qualified than the others and more tempted by alternative frames of interpretation, opposing “official truths” and postu- lating that “the truth is elsewhere.” For example, 27% of people under 35 agree with the view that the virus was intentionally developed in a labo- ratory, compared with only 6% of those over 65. Among the less wealthy, 22% agree with this thesis, while the more affluent ones only adhere by 4%. Furthermore, when it comes to partisan sympathies, 40% of the sup- porters of the Rassemblement National [the main far-right party in France] believe COVID-19 was intentionally created in a laboratory, which is per- fectly consistent with their systematic suspicion toward elites, supposedly irresponsible, corrupt, or criminal, as well as with the presumption that the true reasons for our ills are always hidden. Finally, the study establishes that being concerned about COVID-19 does not correlate with adhering to conspiracy theories. In this matter, the braggarts claiming or suggesting they had seen the virus coming and would have drawn the right consequences had they been in power ought to be dismissed. Such boasting is simply childish. But it does not excuse the procrastination, the palaver, and the contradictory directives of our political leaders. In any case, it is hard to see how the ir- responsible political and administrative leaders with regard to the health crisis could be held unaccountable. European Disunion, Disastrous Globalization, and National Sentiment One of the possible lessons one can draw from this pandemic is that the health of the citizens in each European nation, involving a general mobi- lization and a state of emergency—destined to remain temporary—must be placed above the “European values”—yet to be defined clearly—now sung by headless ducks gripped by the great fear of seeing their utopia fade away. The priority of life has destroyed the cozy illusions and wishful ide- alism. Who still believes the European Union can save anyone at all? That is the crux of the matter. No one would agree to die for “European values.” In difficult times, the French sing the national anthem and not the Euro- pean anthem. They can cooperate with this or that neighboring country, 82 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF regardless of the heavy machine called the European Union. Europe is not a homeland; Europeans are not a people. They are not a community of destiny and responsibility, despite the flood of Europeanist rhetoric poured into discourse over the last three decades. People lulled by the European Union’s rocking tunes are just good for wide-eyed daydreaming. In this respect, the responsibility of the elites is huge. They have indeed done ev- erything they could to denationalize minds. But they have not succeeded in wiping out national sentiment. Moreover, since the harm caused by offshoring and deindustrializa- tion among the nations caught in the dream has now been acknowledged, deglobalization returns to the agenda as a condition for the survival of the human species. This does not of course entail suppressing all trade among nations: deglobalization can only be partial, which implies that choices must be made. But it is important to rethink economic exchange by topping it with protective rules. Insofar as it is never symmetrical, interdependence is a subtle form of dependence for the least powerful na- tions. Thus, savvy and selective protectionism may be necessary after the crisis ends. How could one not now want “French-made” products, espe- cially when it comes to those that are vital for the country? How could we not firmly commit ourselves to a policy of reindustrializing France? Presi- dent Macron himself, visiting a small business on March 31, 2020, stated: “Today’s priority is to produce more in France.” These words have a symp- tomatic value for a political leader attentive to shifts in public opinion. If governing means forecasting, then many governments do not gov- ern. We can assume the French want to be governed, and well governed, that is to say, in reference to the common good. If, moreover, to govern is to choose, then the Macron governance based on the acrobatic principle of sitting on both sides of the fence at the same time [“en même temps”] is doomed to keep ducking and weaving. One can only choose properly and make the right decision when priorities are clearly defined, which presup- poses a hierarchy of values that today’s coy political leaders would never dare to assert, stripped as they are of any sense of history. For to do so requires that the feeling for the state is married with that of nationhood. Where are Georges Clemenceau and Charles de Gaulle? The utopia of a “happy globalization” has shattered against the rock of reality. For the pandemic can be seen in some respects as a pathology of globalization, a factor in accelerating the virus’s spread. However, we must be careful not to completely attribute its rise to entirely unnatural causes BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 83 so as to blame the culprits, always to be found among the “rulers” and the “powerful,” according to the old “revolutionary” principle fashioned by the leftists of the 1960s and 1970s: “Everything is political.” But one can also note that all partisans of “politically correct” verbiage are silent, a possible relief for the free-spirited. Our usual debates suddenly seem in- significant and can be dismissed as futile. In times of global lockdown, the paternalistic and compulsory preaching urging us to “live together” [“vivre-ensemble” is a politician’s euphemism for “multiculturalism”] seems incongruous, especially since lockdown hasn’t prevented civil so- ciety from rediscovering actual forms of mutual aid devoid of commercial intentions. The same holds true for the ritual celebration of multicultural societies, the objects of an ideological cult in the land of the intellectuals who “think well” and imagine the self-destruction of nations as the way to humanity’s salvation. Postcolonial and decolonial “theorists” have noth- ing to say on the matter, except that, according to their chorus, the origin of our ills can only be the legacy of European colonialism and “white capital- ism.” The eco-disaster activists, while rejoicing in the improvement of air quality, see in the pandemic a “sort of ultimatum from nature,” in the words of former TV presenter turned activist and politician Nicolas Hulot, who adds, reinforcing the most succinct anthropomorphism: “Nature sends us a message, it tests us on our determination.”25 Humans would thus atone, by the propagation of the virus-monster, for their faults, the main one being their lack of ecological awareness. The neofeminist agitations and misan- dries on the model of the #metoo or #balancetonporc [a hashtag used to denounce sexual predators, translatable as #snitchonyourpig] movement become derisory, even grotesque. One can only choke with laughter when one sees neofeminists improvising with gravitas on their unique theme: it is the patriarchy’s fault.26 As for the anti-speciesist or animalist sermons on “animal welfare” and the commando operations of vegan fanatics, they seem insignificant or burlesque, even abominable. Sophisticated prattle comparing the welfare of the lion and the gazelle becomes obnoxious. For, if one takes the reasoning to the absurd, the “welfare” of the corona- virus involves the unhappiness and death of millions of humans. What can 25. “Nicolas Hulot: on assiste ‘à un passage de cap de l’humanité,’” interview, BFMTV, March 22, 2020, https://www.bfmtv.com/actualite/hulot-sur-bfmtv-on-assiste-a- un-passage-de-cap-de-l-humanite-1880140.html. 26. Sandra Laugier, Pascale Molinier, and Patricia Paperman, “Nous défendre—face au discours politique sur le Covid-19,” Aoc, April 7, 2020, https://aoc.media/opinion/ 2020/ 04/06/nous-defendre-face-au-discours-politique-sur-le-covid-19/. 84 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF we conclude from this, except that the circle of foolishness intersects here with that of criminality? The chimeras vanish, clearing the horizon. In his address to the French on March 12, 2020, President Macron himself, seemingly returning to serious matters, made a strong reference to the idea of nationhood: “I am counting on you because the government alone cannot do everything, and because we are a nation.” Borderless peo- ple of all political stripes come to recognize the need for border controls, even border closures, and strict adherence to those micro internal bor- ders prescribed by the rules of quarantine. The pandemic could well have a positive effect, reshuffling the cards in many respects, provided we do not throw the baby (the democratic ideal) out with the bathwater (undem- ocratic neoliberalism). This predictable upheaval of the political sphere is of course not without danger, as it could awaken the desire for a clean slate. But this is a risk we must take, using a strong democratic foundation based on the French republican tradition27 as well as drawing inspiration from the experience of participatory or direct democracy in various coun- tries28—sometimes described as “populist.”29 What we know as specialty bias is illustrated by the “crisis exit” proposals made by intellectuals and activists who follow this or that re- demptive utopia. The world’s tireless “transformers” and “improvers” see in the pandemic a “major opportunity” to finally achieve the total change of their dreams. They all want, first and foremost, to destroy what they call “the system.” The illusion of a clean slate is in line with the communist mythology dreaming of a “great night” that changed everything: for the absolute enemies of the “system,” everything must be destroyed in order to rebuild it all on new foundations. The bias of specialization finds itself ironically exemplified by the posture of a survivor of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Alain Badiou, a vet- eran of revolutionary simplification. In late March 2020, in a short essay entitled “On the Epidemic Situation,” this preacher of communism quietly 27. Benjamin R. Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a new Age (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984); Pierre-André Taguieff, Résister au “bou- gisme”: Démocratie forte contre mondialisation techno-marchande (Paris: Fayard/Mille et une nuits, 2001); Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997). 28. Yannis Papadopoulos, Démocratie directe (Paris: Economica, 1998). 29. Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Os- tiguy, eds., The oxford handbook of Populism (Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2017). BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 85 calls to work “for the transnational progress of a third stage of commu- nism, after the brilliant stage of its invention and the strong and complex, but ultimately defeated stage of its state experimentation.”30 This call to build a new bright future says nothing about the tens of millions of deaths due to the vast communist “experimentation” that was unfortunately “defeated” by ruthless external forces, the forces of evil (capitalism, im- perialism, nationalism, etc.). The same refrain, on the opposite sidewalk, has long been hummed by the neo-Nazis, who imagine the Third Reich as a “state experiment” in Germanic racism and imperialism—with its “bril- liant” beginnings in Pan-Germanism—an experiment that is also “strong and complex, but ultimately defeated” by demonic powers—“international Jewish finance” and “Jewish Bolshevism.” Both are paving the way for their “third stage,” which is supposed to realize their respective dreams of reworking human nature. Ideologized nostalgia, whether for Communism or National Socialism, not only erases the criminal past, it embellishes and transfigures it. And this decriminalization of totalitarian regimes, modern political translations of Prometheism, gives rise to plans to restart the to- talitarian enterprise, sometimes under different names. Lucidity, Courage, and Solidarity However, there are signs, albeit weak and ambiguous, of a turning point that can be considered positive. With their backs to the wall, even the ruling elites who have had a global approach for a long time are wonder- ing about national destiny, at least tentatively so. They call for national unity and solidarity, which in no way excludes, in principle, cooperation between sovereign nations—one that in no way implies the final fusion hoped for by the new cosmopolitans of the left or right. But sovereignty must first be regained and restored. And this must be done unambiguously. When President Macron, on March 31, 2020, called for “rebuilding our national and European sovereignty,” his phrasing was confusing. Where then is the “European people” supposed to exercise so-called “European sovereignty”?31 European sovereignty is nothing but a sanctified chimera. By mechanically pretending that everything and its contrary can be done 30. Alain Badiou, “On the Epidemic Situation,” trans. Alberto Toscano, Verso Blog, March 23, 2020, https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4608-on-the-epidemic-situation. 31. Pierre-André Taguieff, “Emmanuel Macron, le président en marche vers ‘l’Eu- rope souveraine’ ou la dernière utopie messianique en butte au réel,” in Qu’est-ce qu’une nation en Europe?, ed. Éric Anceau and Henri Temple (Paris: Sorbonne Univ. Presses, 2018), pp. 283–324. 86 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF “simultaneously,” as Macron often says, only lame and nebulous synthe- ses can emerge. What needs to be reconstructed is national sovereignty. Let us recall the great illusion shared by communists, anarchists, and neoliberals: that the state would disappear, and that it had to disappear for the greater good of the human race. As it posits the disappearance of con- flicts in the world and thus the disappearance of any tangible enemy, the call for the “end of territories” and sovereignties was the meeting point of all the utopias of liberation, fueled by the promises of globalization: more exchanges and mixtures, and “openness” as a new moral impera- tive. The pandemic brutally reminds us, first of all, that the world is still not at peace, that it abounds in the most diverse threats, and second, that the sovereign state is the only effective instrument to “respond to the om- nipresent existential threats” because it is the only body that can make crucial decisions.32 However, when the leaders of a nation-state are unable or unwilling to control national borders, or tolerate lawless zones within the national territory, they forsake state power. Defending the sovereign state means defending the freedom of citizens. A strong nation-state is in no way incompatible with a strong democracy: it gives it a framework in which it can flourish. In recent years, in Europe, in the face of migratory pressure, we have seen not only a return of borders but also a demand for protective borders, a desire for better-controlled borders.33 The pandemic has given additional legitimacy to this demand while radicalizing it at once. In France, the im- perative of reindustrialization has been imposed through the awareness of the country’s extreme dependence on other countries for pharmaceuti- cal products. This policy of reindustrialization implies the restoration of a sovereign and strategic state, capable of anticipation and concerned about the common good, which is defined on the basis of national interest and not in reference to the mystique of free trade without borders. There is no sovereignty without borders, no national community or national territory, if it is true that the border is “the perimeter of the exercise of sovereignty,” as Michel Foucher puts it so well. Some people are worried about the emergence of a “neo-national world” that would feed on “neo-nationalist fevers,” summarily labeled “far right”—a way of disqualifying them by 32. Russell A. Berman, “The Reemergence of the State in the Time of COVID-19,” TELoSscope, April 9, 2020, http://www.telospress.com/the-reemergence-of-the-state-in- the-time-of-covid-19/. 33. Cf. Michel Foucher, Le Retour des frontières (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2016). BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 87 demonizing them through their reduction to a resurgence of “fascism.” Foucher interprets the contemporary return of borders, sovereignty, and national sentiment as a return of the repressed, after the long intellectual and political domination of the ideology of “governance,” linked to the cult of the post-national: We are thus clearly emerging from a period of the disqualification of bor- ders. I have always considered that . . . their negation carries the risk of a return of the repressed. That is what is happening to us today. And that is unfortunately what makes the far right so strong: in France in particular, we did not want to take the idea of nationhood seriously, we have di- luted sovereignty in international cooperation and in the construction of Europe. Nation, sovereignty, borders, they are part of the same political category, which is supposed to disappear in the face of “governance.”34 Let us note in passing that the controlled deglobalization we are entitled to hope for does not in any way imply playing the card of a degrowth policy, which, to satisfy a few radical ecologists, would be just as ruinous as un- bridled globalization. The supporters of border-abolition policies on both the left and the right are discovering the resistance of geopolitical reality, along with the hard truth of Aristotle’s formula that “necessity cannot be convinced.” The activists of the transnational leftist No Border network and the globalist or cosmopolitan voices of the “borderless world” remain speechless. The “borderless world” of their dreams becomes an increasingly unlikely pos- sibility. The total abolition of the limits between “us” and “the others,” between one inside and one outside, would transform the planet into a bat- tlefield of all against all. Borders should not be seen as barriers, walls, or barbed wire, but as places of passage subject to rules. The total opening of borders would create not only a state of unbearable interdependence but also a permanent state of war between individuals and groups. A Few Lessons It is therefore necessary to further undo the demonization of the national fact and the deification of the post-national, to strip it of the allure of an 34. Michel Foucher, “#Coronavirus. Avec la pandémie, nos stéréotypes sur les fron- tières sont remis en question,” interview, Agrobiosciences, April 3, 2020, http://www. agrobiosciences.org/territoires/article/coronavirus-avec-la-pandemie-nos-stereotypes-sur- les-frontieres-sont-remis-en-question#.XpB4dxQRl90. 88 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF emancipatory promise, even one of happiness for everyone.35 The stakes are clear: it is not a matter of abandoning the nation to xenophobic nation- alists, those whom today’s op-eds in a hurry call “populists,” in a mixture of fear, ignorance, and contempt, a way of lazily amalgamating heteroge- neous movements with contradictory orientations. One may hope that this will be the practical lesson drawn by the French from the terrible ordeal of the coronavirus pandemic. It may be that the question of the hour is that of sovereignism, but of a sovereignism no longer bound up with xenophobic nationalism and reinscribed in the republican tradition, itself rediscovered after three decades of attempts to disqualify it in the name of the multicul- turalist model, the chimeras of cosmopolitanism, arrogant Europeanism, or any kind of identity-based communitarianism. But this pandemic also reminds us that medical and hygienic advances, however real they may be, have not put an end to human vulnerability. The polymorphic artificialization of our existence does not protect us from epi- demics. The pandemic brutally opens our eyes to one of the battles lost in advance by Promethean humanity, the one it is waging against aging, to the sound of trans- or posthumanist drums.36 If populations are aging due to advances in hygiene and medicine, they are also becoming more frag- ile. Such is the perverse effect of the lengthening of human life, as Gabriel Martinez-Gros points out: “COVID-19, which is taking tens of thousands of our elders, is twisting the knife in our wound: humanity is aging, and we are fighting a battle against death that we cannot win in the long run, as the age of our populations rises—and it will inevitably rise.”37 This should encourage states to be strategic, to look beyond the short term and to use forward-looking analysis to prepare for challenging situations. Foresight should not be confused with prediction or prophecy. Prometheus is less farsighted than he is presumptuous. Above all, he was powerless. His followers, the Moderns, proud to live in the age of globalization, discover with awe the limits of the omniscience and om- nipotence they grant each other. The narcissistic wound is deep. But the truth emerges: the conquering progressivism that expects everything from 35. Cf. Pierre-André Taguieff, L’émancipation promise: Exigence forte ou illusion durable? (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2019). 36. Laurent Alexandre, La Mort de la mort: comment la technomédecine va boule- verser l’humanité (Paris: JC Lattès, 2011). 37. Gabriel Martinez-Gros, “Covid-19: la mélancolie de Donald Trump,” April 10, 2020, herodote.net, https://www.herodote.net/Covid_19_la_melancolie_de_Donald_Trump- article-2648.php. BEyonD ThE FEARS oF ThE PAnDEMIc 89 techno-science and free trade offers little more than deceptive promises, arrogant admonitions, and consoling words. Science is too important to be left in the hands of those who sacralize and instrumentalize it with dubious intentions. It is time to desecrate it and to no longer expect salvation from the marvels of technology or the miracles of growth. As to the “pragmatism” hastily deemed redemptive, this key concept of Macron supposed to open all doors and solve all problems, we now know it is but a nickname for opportunism and chameleonism.38 When one is first and foremost a showman, one can perfectly well play the role of a statesman as a professional. But this is just one of many roles played by Macron as well as by Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, and many other ac- tors who have proven themselves on the political scene. And we know that in Ukraine a comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, is a talented performer in the role of the head of state. None of them fits the famous definition of the President of the Republic proposed on January 31, 1964, by General de Gaulle: “The man of the nation, set up by itself to answer for its fate.” The quest of power for its own sake and the taste for prestige for prestige’s sake cannot bear the responsibility for a national destiny, or even imagine a great national design. In his solemn address on April 13, 2020, President Macron empha- sized his empathy and compassion for the French rather than the martial call to mobilize, without relinquishing his role as supreme leader in a dangerous situation. In a very measured fashion, he sketched out a self- criticism: “Were we prepared for this crisis? Clearly, not enough.” So it is not a mea culpa: the catastrophic mask management was “explained” by the global mask shortage or attributed to “weaknesses . . . in our logistics.” His declarations of humility were offset by the pride of having achieved an initial success due to the lockdown measures: “The epidemic is starting to slow down.” He especially made promises, regarding, among other things, masks and tests, for the period after May 11, the date set for the end of the general lockdown measures: “We will be able to test anyone who shows symptoms.” And he ensured France was actively engaged in vaccine re- search: “our country is the country that has undertaken the most clinical trials in Europe.” This speech is far from putting to rest the uncertainties concerning the actual means to fight the pandemic. But it is of great interest in an entirely 38. Cf. Pierre-André Taguieff, Macron: miracle ou mirage? (Paris: Éditions de l’Ob- servatoire, 2017), pp. 245–86. 90 PIERRE-AnDRé TAGuIEFF different matter: the call for “founding anew” and “reinvention” after the great “upheaval,” the insistence on the independence of France, with pa- triotic and sovereignist accents. European “sovereignty” seems to have vanished from the horizon, at least for the time of a presidential speech in which the head of state dares to declare: “Let us reinvent ourselves, my- self included.” It remains to be seen whether the metamorphosis will take place or whether it will be a mere conjuring trick. Too much is known about President Macron’s skills as an illusionist. What we sorely lack are real statesmen apt to face the great histori- cal challenges of the twenty-first century. We are in vain searching for possible heirs to the General de Gaulle or Winston Churchill. All we see when they lose their function of cognitive enlightenment to become in- struments of manipulation are reincarnations of Louis XV “the Beloved,” Louis XVIII “the Desired,” or Napoleon the Small, in the apolitical age of communicators, social networks, and professional pollsters selling the new opium of the people. The cult of the majority’s opinion—always as- sumed—by establishing the reign of media democracy, imperceptibly turned political actors into professional demagogues, surrounded by foot- men and apparatchiks. There are few exceptions. Incarnations of the weak autocrat type are multiplying. In the face of Trump and his unchecked verbal impulses, in the face of Macron and his long, drawn-out speeches, Bergson’s advice about political leaders is worthy of note: “Don’t listen to what they say, look at what they do.” Critical Theory of the Contemporary Since 1968, the quarterly journal Telos has served as the definitive international forum for discussions of political, social, and cultural change. Readers from around the globe turn to Telos to engage with the sharpest minds in politics and philosophy, and to discover emerging theoretical analyses of the pivotal issues of the day. Timely. Provocative. Independent. Telos is a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in politics, philosophy, culture, and the arts. Subscribe now at www.telospress.com. Telos Press Publishing PO Box 811 Candor, NY 13743 Tel: 212 · 228 · 6479 www.telospress.com work_336hph6p6zb5phjrqg6rtpbtra ---- ISSN (Online) 2162-9161 Educating for Democracy in Undemocratic Contexts: Avoiding the Zero-Sum Game of Campus Free Speech Versus Inclusion Nancy Thomas Tufts University Author Note Nancy Thomas, Institute for Democracy and Higher Education, Tisch College, Tufts University. Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Nancy Thomas, Director, Institute for Democracy and Higher Education, Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts University, Lincoln Filene Hall, Medford, MA 02155. E-mail: Nancy.Thomas@tufts.edu mailto:Nancy.Thomas@tufts.edu EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 81 Abstract The debate over free speech and inclusion in higher education is not new, but it has reached new levels of vitriol and confusion as legislators and others beyond the academy argue for unfettered speech. Mandating speech rights on campuses undercuts decades of learning around diversity, inclusion, and equity in higher education and in public life by mainstreaming undemocratic forces in some factions in U.S. society that thrive on creating divisiveness and fear of “the other.” Those with an absolutist perspective take a zero-sum game approach by pitting the important American principles of freedom and individualism against the equally important principles of equity and community. Not only is this an unnecessary choice, but it infringes on academic freedom and the right of academics to decide how best to educate for the health and future of democracy. Academic content, standards, norms, and pedagogy should be based on educational goals and objectives. The solution lies in fostering discussion about democratic principles and practices as well as a sense of shared responsibility among members of a campus community for student learning and success. Keywords: academic freedom, free speech, diversity, equity, inclusion, civic learning and engagement, political learning, campus climate, campus culture, educating for democracy, student activism, dialogue, deliberation EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 82 Since the 2016 election season, many people and organizations outside of academia—legislators, partisan pundits, and self-appointed watchdogs—have weighed in on the state of free speech on college and university campuses. For instance, in August 2017, drawing from model legislation drafted by the Goldwater Institute (Goldwater, 2017), North Carolina passed the Restore Campus Free Speech Act, which mandated that the Board of Regents adopt regulations protecting controversial speakers and disciplining students who interrupt those speakers. The law also requires academics to remain “neutral” about political controversies. Campus free-speech laws have been passed in California, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin, and have been proposed in Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska, and Wyoming (see Appendix); the Louisiana governor, however, vetoed proposed legislation in June 2017 (Deslatte, 2017), and the Kansas Senate narrowly rejected a bill in March 2018 (Hancock, 2018). Though they all fall under the category of free-speech legislation, the laws vary from state to state: Some allow speakers to seek monetary damages from institutions from which they are disinvited; others mandate that students who interfere with speakers face disciplinary action; and others eliminate free speech “zones.” The federal government has also become involved in such matters. In October 2017, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Justice Department would intervene in cases related to speech on campus and since then the department has filed a “statement of interest” in at least three cases (Greenwood, 2017; U.S. Department of Justice, 2018). People on both sides of the political aisle have derided free speech codes and zones, as well as “coddling” students by “creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse” (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2016). Jeffrey Herbst, current president of the Newseum, has insisted that the “real problem” facing colleges and universities is “an alternative understanding of the First Amendment” as a right to “prevent expression that is seen as particularly offensive to an identifiable group, especially if that collective is defined in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity” (Herbst, 2017, p. 2). Meanwhile, in August 2017, academics—indeed, the entire nation— watched in horror as White supremacists carrying torches marched in Charlottesville and a man plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, murdering Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others. Two weeks later, 100 EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 83 White nationalists, marching in a self-described “Free Speech Rally” in Boston, faced a response from over 40,000 counter-protesters (Danner, 2017). Shortly thereafter, a unanimous, bi-partisan Congress passed a joint resolution denouncing what had happened and decrying White supremacy and neo-Nazism as “hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of the United States” (Joint Resolution 49, 2017). Countering bad speech with more speech and good speech has seemingly been embraced as a sensible solution, not only in the public square but on campuses. I regularly serve on conference panels or work with faculty or administrators on this topic. In my conversations with leaders of public higher education institutions,1 they have made clear their legal parameters. They may not prohibit or censor speech absent (1) violence or dangerous actions, (2) imminent safety concerns, (3) disruption to in-class education (and, in some cases, to living spaces or professional offices), or (4) repeated harassment targeting individuals, not groups, because of their social identity.2 While I do not agree that public institutions have no choice but to allow all speech, I also do not think that the occasional racist speaker who addresses a few dozen people largely from off-campus represents the most significant challenge facing campuses. I am more concerned by how students and faculty who express hateful or discriminatory views can deeply affect the learning experiences of other students, particularly those who are the targets of that speech. The University of Alabama recently expelled such a student (Kerr, 2018) while the University of Nebraska allowed another student to stay (Quilantan, 2018). On campuses where these toxic students persist, faculty and administrators breathe a sigh of relief when they graduate, after which the campus climate improves, not just for minoritized groups but for all students. Yet, I have an even deeper concern about the rise of undemocratic forces in some segments of American society and the ability—or, rather, inability—of colleges and universities to name and teach about those forces 1 The First Amendment applies to government actors, which include public colleges and universities but not private institutions. Private institutions have more leeway, but for most, free expression is important to robust learning and ideas, and as a result is often a normative value, if not a written principle, in institutional handbooks or the written materials of both public and private institutions. 2 The First Amendments is the subject of thousands, if not millions, of pages of judicial decisions, law review articles, books, chapters, articles, and courses, so I cannot provide a “primer” in this space. I have, however, recorded a webinar that offers a short overview of the law. I also recommend Chemerinsky and Gillman’s Free Speech on Campus (2017). https://idhe.tufts.edu/resources?field_research_type_tid=All&field_research_theme_tid=1008 EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 84 without government intrusion. Both are matters of academic freedom, particularly of how colleges and universities educate for responsible citizenship3 in a diverse democracy. I certainly understand the appeal of the argument that colleges and universities should be places of unfettered speech. Of all the ideals expressed in the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech is arguably the most cherished. Most Americans support the right to free speech and strongly oppose government censorship (Wike & Simmons, 2015). In fact, free speech possesses transcendent value in the United States; citizens feel strongly that they should be free to express their views on the most controversial ethical, political, and social issues of the day. Free speech is widely held as an essential individual protection against unreasonable government intrusion. It is also critical to democratic governance, since the robust exchange of information and ideas is central to responsible civic engagement, such as voting and informed oversight of public affairs and policy making. Without free expression, civil rights and other social movements could be suppressed. Without a doubt, these are valid and powerful arguments. That said, I encourage a more rigorous discussion about free speech on campus, one that is framed by educators, not partisan lawmakers or self-appointed watchdogs outside of higher education. Not only do these laws infringe on students’ rights to speech (protest and activism), they overreach. In 1973, in a case about obscenity in commercial speech, Chief Justice Burger warned against adopting “an absolutist, ‘anything goes’ view of the First Amendment” (Miller v. California, 1973). Free speech is not, nor has it ever been, “absolutist,” particularly on college and university campuses, which are not synonymous with public square or streets; rather, they are learning environments with educational standards and goals. Despite its legal backing, unfettered speech on campuses may undermine decades of learning around diversity, inclusion, and equity in higher education and public life, and allow undemocratic forces that thrive on creating divisiveness and fear of “the other” to seep into the mainstream. An absolutist perspective takes a zero-sum game approach to this issue by pitting the important American principles freedom and individualism against the equally important values of equity and community. This is an unnecessary and ill-advised choice, since it infringes on the 3 I use the terms citizen, citizenry, and citizenship throughout this article to denote residency and civic participation, not legal status. EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 85 right of academics to decide how best to educate for the health and future of democracy. Content, standards, norms, and pedagogy should be based on educational goals and objectives, not politically motivated external mandates. Civic learning for a strong democracy and academic freedom are symbiotic. Academics enjoy the privilege of academic freedom so they can fulfil their responsibilities to educate for a stronger democracy (Thomas, 2015). Campuses must discuss and establish institutional norms for achieving and sustaining this symbiosis. How Did We Get Here? Decades of Work on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Much of the current debate about speech on campus traces back decades to efforts in higher education to serve new populations of students. Affirmative action, increases in minority student enrollment, and the introduction of interdisciplinary programs such as women’s studies and African-American studies prompted fierce backlash from people who disagreed with the critical frameworks informing these emerging disciplines or who wanted (whether consciously or subconsciously) to maintain racial and gender hierarchies. Higher education came under attack for diluting “the canon” and “closing minds” (Bloom, 1987), for enabling “tenured radicals” (Kimball, 1990), and for separating groups of people through multiculturalism and political correctness (D’Souza, 1991). As a new university attorney specializing in academic and student affairs in the late 1980s, I spent more time addressing this topic (and in loco parentis) than any other issue. From my perspective, campuses at that time looked like hotbeds of bigotry and intolerance. Some incidents were characterized as sophomoric, misguided attempts at humor. Student groups, for instance, raised money by selling t-shirts that read, “15 reasons why beer is better than women” (“#1: Beer doesn’t get jealous when you grab another one” and “#7: When you are finished, the bottle is still worth 5 cents”). Fraternity pledges wore blackface while performing skits in front appreciative audiences. Some “pranks” were both abhorrent and dangerous; one fraternity was suspended after two members passed out and were left naked, their bodies painted with racial slurs, at a nearby Black college (Applebome, 1989). Many of these incidents represented intentional expressions of hatred and bigotry: Swastikas and racist graffiti on walls; anonymous notes containing racist or homophobic; hate mail sent to women attending formerly men’s colleges. Professors also faced personal attacks. Students directed vicious and belittling EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 86 verbal attacks at faculty based on their personal characteristics and social identity (e.g., see Casey, 1989). In a 1989 survey of Black students at predominantly White colleges across the country, four out of five respondents reported having experienced some form of racial discrimination (Applebome, 1989). These acts of blatant hatred and bigotry still happen, but in the 1980s and 1990s, their frequency—and the fact that they were largely student-peer-driven—shocked educators. Bewildered and outraged, well-meaning administrators (and their lawyers) sought to shield new students from intimidation and from negative educational experiences that were substantially different from and unequal to the learning experiences of traditional students. Responses varied. Most colleges and universities already had in place anti- discrimination policies that protected employees and students on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, religion, physical ability, and, increasingly, sexual orientation. Between 1987 and 1992, an estimated one third of colleges and universities adopted hate speech codes (Gould, 2005, pp. 16-17), which were met with charges of censorship, identity politics, and political correctness. Courts consistently struck down speech policies at public institutions as vague or overly broad and therefore unconstitutional (e.g., see Doe v. University of Michigan, 1989). Campuses had a difficult time making the case that hate speech directed at groups protected under nondiscrimination laws rose to a level of targeted, repeated harassment that created truly hostile, illegal learning environments. Dissuaded from attempting to regulate student speech, campuses responded by implementing curricular and co-curricular interventions, such as cultural studies and centers, intergroup-relationship programs, interfaith centers, first-year experiences, living-learning communities, internal assessments of institutional climates for diversity, and more. Part of the motivation behind these efforts was practical. Prospective employers sought diverse candidates, especially as research repeatedly demonstrated an association between gender and racial workforce diversity and greater profits, earnings, and customer share (Herring, 2009) and enhanced leadership, innovation, and productivity (Robinson, Pfeffer, & Buccigrossi, 2003; Thompson-Reuters, 2016). In other words, campuses needed to admit and graduate diverse groups of students to keep up with employer demands. Over time, efforts to diversify programs and people became more mainstream, with many colleges and universities eventually supporting offices and senior positions in diversity and inclusion. Legal challenges to considering race in EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 87 admissions failed, at least temporarily (Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003; Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003), and though racist speech and incidents still occurred, they were normatively unacceptable and were often subject to stringent disciplinary responses. I will not pretend that all became quiet, inclusive, and equal. Significantly, income gaps between people of color and Whites remain as extreme as they were five decades ago (Campos, 2017). Organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League highlight, through rigorous tracking, the sickening numbers of hate crimes against racial, religious, LGBTQ, and ethnic groups. Structural inequality continues to plague this nation, particularly in the criminal justice and education systems. The academy continues to struggle to differentiate among naïve or uninformed statements, senseless but intentional insults, genuine injury, and provocative yet productive conflict and dissent. These trends notwithstanding, I found it hopeful that, over the course of three decades, the right and responsibility of colleges and universities to educate for a diverse workforce and democracy became well established and that racist, sexist, and other forms of hate speech became more normatively, culturally, and institutionally unacceptable. Arguably, things changed during and since the 2016 election season. According to statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Education, the number of hate crimes rose approximately 25% in the latter part of 2016 (Bauman, 2018). In January 2018, the Anti-Defamation League reported that racist fliers, banners, and stickers were found on college campuses 147 times in the fall of 2017, three times more than the 41 cases reported the previous year; 15 incidents had already taken place in January (Anti-Defamation League, 2018). In the Spring 2018 issue of Intelligence Report, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the number of hate groups rose to 954 in 2017, up 4% from 2016 (Beirich & Buchanan, 2018, p. 35). Neo-Nazi groups saw the greatest growth in 2017, up from 99 to 121 (pp. 35-36). Anti-Muslim groups also rose for the third straight year, tripling in 2015- 2016 and increasing another 13% in 2017 (p. 36). Distressingly, colleges and universities seem to be primary targets of White supremacist and hate groups. The states’ free-speech laws may mainstream these perspectives and, in the process, set the nation back decades. The academy has been here before and responded with concerted educational initiatives. Academics do not need to rehash this debate or roll back progress. EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 88 Pitting Freedom Against Equity I argue that Americans have been duped into playing a zero-sum game between the core democratic principles of freedom and equity. Clearly, Americans value freedom, but when freedom means “I demand my right to live free of any responsibility for others or for society,” it can result in harm, if not sustained inequality, for others. Unfortunately, academics oftentimes feel forced to choose between the two. First published in 1985, Habits of the Heart (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton) was discussed widely at the time I returned to school to study education leadership and policy. Using Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1831 visit to America as a launching off point for their book, the authors identified individualism as the driving cultural force in society. Individualism, they argued, caused (and causes) Americans to form small communities of family and friends and isolate themselves from broader society—an observation that still resonates today. In their chapter entitled “Pursuit of Happiness,” the authors wrote: Freedom is perhaps the most resonant, deeply held American value. In some ways, it defines the good in both personal and political life. Yet freedom turns out to mean being left alone by others, not having other people’s values, ideas, or styles of life forced upon one…. [I]f the entire social world is made up of individuals, each endowed with the right to be free of others’ demands, it becomes hard to forge bonds of attachment to, or cooperation with, other people since such bonds would imply obligations that necessarily impinge on one’s freedom. (Bellah et al., 1985, p. 23) They concluded that individuality and community are not opposed but, instead, mutually dependent. Americans recognize that too much freedom undermines a democratic republic, which is why they accept representative systems in which lawmakers are charged with making just laws that, for example, prohibit discrimination. More recently, the work of Danielle Allen (2014) has made a compelling and, to my mind, persuasive case that defining documents in U.S. history identify equality4 as a core democratic principle in American society. Relying on the first 4 Space constraints in this article prevent the important discussion clarifying the terms equity, equality, and equal opportunity. I distinguish them this way: providing fair access (equal opportunity) or treating everyone the same way (equality) is not the same as considering EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 89 line in the Declaration of Independence—“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”—and other historical sources, she echoed the concerns expressed in Habits of the Heart: Political philosophers have generated the view that equality and freedom are necessarily in tension with each other. As a public, we have swallowed this argument whole. We think we are required to choose between freedom and equality.… Such a choice is dangerous. If we abandon equality, we lose the single bond that makes us a community, that makes us a people with the capacity to be free collectively and individually in the first place. I for one cannot bear to see the ideal of equality pass away before it has reached its full maturity. (Allen, 2014, p. 21) I am not arguing for neutrality, that colleges and universities should somehow remain agnostic about which social ends—that is, freedom and individualism or equity and community—carry more heft. There are also other important considerations, such as individual and collective well-being, personal and shared responsibility, and social connectedness. When the relative weights of democratic principles are “objectively” balanced to force a choice, the outcome all too often reflects the opinions and preferences of those in power. Any exploration of these tensions that places free speech in the default position and starting point will tip the discussion in favor of freedom and individualism and away from equity and community. Higher education’s responsibility to educate for democratic citizenship and the hierarchy of prevailing democratic principles is an inherently political task rendered more difficult by today’s hyper-partisan context. Both Americans and elected officials have become increasingly polarized over the past 30 years (Pew Research Center, 2017) and it is affecting perspectives on higher education. In July 2017, the Pew Research Center reported that 58% of Republicans indicated that colleges and universities have a negative effect on “the way things are going in this country” (Fingerhut, 2017).5 In October 2017, Gallup reported that 67% of Republicans had “some” or “very little” confidence in higher education because they believed that colleges and universities are “too liberal,” “push their own differences in order to achieve fair outcomes (equity). The terms are related but not interchangeable. 5 This compares with the results of the 2015 survey in which 37% of respondents said higher education’s effect was negative, and 54% said it was positive. EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 90 agendas,” and “don’t allow students to think for themselves” (Gallup, 2017). In contrast, Democrats in the same poll believed that higher education is “essential to the nation” but too expensive (Gallup, 2017). A critical examination of freedom and equity should include an explicit examination of power and opportunity. For freedom to have meaning, everyone in the society should live in a climate of acceptance and tolerance in which choices can be made freely. The nation has yet to eradicate economic, social, and political inequality, in its systems and structures and in the hearts of its citizens. Colleges and universities should model for society ways to make equity more than an aspiration—which may mean adopting a view of freedom as essential but also accountable to the campus community. Academic Freedom and Campus Climates Academic freedom is most often understood as comprising protections for individual faculty members against unreasonable censorship of or interference by governments, administrations, or boards in their teaching, scholarship, or expressions of public opinion. At private institutions, academic freedom is usually interpreted as a contractual right; at public institutions, it is both contractual and constitutional. However, faculty academic freedom has limits. Institutions can sanction faculty for unprofessional conduct, ineffective teaching, false statements, arbitrary grading, or refusal to adhere to certain policies (e.g., accreditation requirements). It is widely accepted that, subject to professorial professional standards (e.g., fair grading), professors have academic freedom in the classroom. They have the right to establish standards for student learning, behavior, civility, and respect. They may establish requirements regarding the expression of students’ opinions, insisting that statements be supported by evidence and facts. Likewise, they may demand acceptable sources for intellectual arguments. They may also forbid students from interrupting classroom learning by, for instance, bringing in disruptive guests or insulting the professor. Academic freedom also belongs to individual institutions. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter in Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) wrote: It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment, and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevail the “four essential freedoms” of a university—to EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 91 determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study. The freedom of a university to make its own educational judgments served as one rationale in the major affirmative action cases allowing institutions to determine, on academic grounds, whether race could be considered in admissions decisions (Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003; Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1979). People outside of academia, such as lawyers and politicians, draw lines on campus demarcating the limits of speech: In certain spaces, mainly the classroom, educators may control speech because that is where learning happens, while in other spaces (e.g., the quad), speech cannot be limited. These arbitrary and outdated lines fail to reflect the current research on how students learn and the importance of context, institutional culture and climate, and the learning environment. Numerous studies have pointed convincingly to the significant impacts of the larger learning environment, not just the classroom, on student learning and success. For example, in their review of 30 years of research on how to improve student learning, Pascarella and Terenzini (1998) found that multiple forces shape learning and success and called for a broad range of interconnected changes and improvements. Reason and Terenzini identified the “organizational context” as critical to the student experience (Reason, 2009), while campus culture and climate have become common concerns of academics seeking proactive rather than reactionary approaches to challenges on campus (Peterson & Spencer, 1990; Ryder & Mitchell, 2013 ) and to improving student learning outcomes (Hurtado, Griffin, Arellano, & Cuellar, 2008; Tierney, 2008). In fact, some researchers have used the terms culture and climate interchangeably (Glisson & James, 2002; Hart & Fellabaum, 2008). Educators typically study campus climates to gain an understanding of and to address a particular problem (e.g., alcohol use, sexual misconduct) or to gain insight into the experiences of students with different social identities (e.g., women, students of color, historically marginalized groups) (Hurtado et al., 2008; Kuh et al., 2005). The research institute I direct studies campus climates in the context of political learning and engagement in democracy, exploring students’ perceptions about culture (norms, traditions, and symbols), structure (offices and programs), human attributes (compositional diversity, behaviors), and internal (decision making) and external (political context) forces (Thomas & Brower, 2017). EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 92 It simply does not make educational sense to conclude that learning is relegated to the classroom when decades of research suggest that learning is deeply connected to a complex ecosystem across campus. Colleges and universities have the academic freedom to set educational standards and goals beyond the classroom. In research conducted by the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University, my colleagues and I found that students want free expression but draw the line at hateful speech (Thomas & Brower, 2017). More recently, a March 2018 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey of U.S. college students revealed that while students supported the First Amendment generally, they approved of limits to speech in support of a campus learning environment in which diversity and inclusion are respected and protected. Specifically, 53% of students supported limiting hate speech on campus (46% supported unlimited speech) and 37% believed that shouting down speakers is sometimes acceptable (Gallup/Knight Foundation, 2018). These attitudes help explain the motivations behind student protests and attempts to shut down speakers whose views they believe to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic. Three decades ago, administrators drove efforts to diversify higher education and create welcoming campus learning conditions for new student populations. Today, the drivers are the students. I agree that shouting down or blocking access to controversial speakers is not good practice. In addition to potentially disrupting learning, shouting down speakers has the potential to garner support for that speaker’s viewpoints. Instead of censoring or punishing student protesters, educators (and decision makers, including state legislators) need to listen to students and hear what they are saying when they try to interrupt speakers or demand a disciplinary response to classmates who unapologetically espouse hate against minorities, since those students may also be responding to toxic and exhausting learning conditions. Movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter serve as critical reminders that discrimination is embedded in structures, cultures, attitudes, behaviors, and political systems that impact lives; students expect their colleges and universities settings to be different and better. Campuses are their temporary homes, and when students protest, they may be taking responsibility for those homes, effectively saying, “Not in my back yard.” They want institutional leaders to acknowledge that not all attitudes and speech belong in a learning environment, particularly, as the U.S. Congress articulated in the wake of the Charlottesville march, “hateful expressions of EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 93 intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of the United States.” Academic freedom gives educators the right to teach toward the goals of diversity and inclusion and maintaining healthy campus climates for all, not just some, students. Ultimately at stake is the ability of colleges and universities to educate not only for democracy but also against undemocratic forces emanating nationally and globally. Next Steps I write this article under the assumption that U.S. colleges and universities share certain goals, namely that students will learn and graduate with the knowledge and skills they need for individual success and prosperity, and that students will be prepared to participate in and shape a democracy that is truly participatory and deliberative, representative and equitable, educated and informed, and effectively and ethically governed (Thomas, 2014). How higher education institutions achieve these goals should be shaped by academics, not external policy makers. In the concluding sections, I offer some concrete suggestions for college and university educators. Assess the Campus Climate for Political Learning and Engagement in Democracy Do not assume that students, faculty, and staff feel a certain way (e.g., oppressed, insulted, angry, apathetic, hopeless), that normative values espoused by the institution (e.g., respect, social responsibility) shape the campus community, or that curricular efforts (e.g., civic learning experiences) achieve their goals. Assess your campus climate and identify the strengths and weaknesses surrounding political learning, discourse, equity, and participation. At the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education, my colleagues and I developed a conceptual framework for examining an institution’s structures, norms and culture, attitudes and behaviors, and internal decision-making process, as well as the external political forces surrounding an institution. We recommend qualitative approaches—predominantly focus groups—because “the medium is the message.” Campuses need to develop habits of discussion across differences of social identity, political perspective, and lived experiences. Embed those practices in the assessment process. Bolster Student Well-Being and Social Cohesion EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 94 Our research found that creating conditions for political learning was connected to the social-emotional well-being of students and social cohesion among diverse groups of students. Students need to develop trusting relationships with each other and with faculty. Colleges and universities can support strong faculty-student relationships and advising, establish hotlines and services for students who may be at risk emotionally, academically, or financially, and create welcoming physical spaces for historically underserved, commuter, nontraditional, and international students. These efforts should also include providing opportunities for students with more conservative perspectives to find each other and find a niche on campus. Host Campus-Wide Dialogues on Institutional Norms and Structures Campus-wide dialogues should be carefully organized and facilitated. It helps if a campus already teaches students, faculty, and staff the arts of facilitation and discussion. On four of the most politically engaged campuses we visited to conduct studies of political climates, students, regardless of their discipline, took required courses in which they were taught, as one student explained, to “disagree without being disagreeable.” In these courses, students learned to frame issues; to examine multiple, even unpopular, perspectives; to advocate, often for a position they did not personally hold; and to discuss controversial issues across differences of social identity and political ideology. The professors had been trained and were viewed by the students as skilled discussion leaders capable of defusing conflict without stifling viewpoints. One caveat, however, is that the professors held students to high intellectual standards and required them to support opinions with evidence and facts. Students reported that, despite contentious debates, they left the classroom “still friends.” On other campuses, students learned to engage in difficult discussions in co-curricular experiences. On one campus, students could not participate in community-based learning or study abroad without participating in intergroup dialogue training and mock conversations. Two of the institutions supported centers for public dialogue and local problem solving. On one campus, seniors in student government trained incoming student government members and leaders of SGA- supported clubs in the arts of dialogue and collaborative decision making. EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 95 Host Discussions on Free Speech and Inclusion Colleges and universities should host campus-wide dialogues on the First Amendment, its history and current application in higher education, and the many perspectives on it. Present the “absolutist” perspective alongside the perspective that hate speech is not welcome on a college campus. This will increase knowledge about the importance of free speech, enhance awareness of how some speech affects different people, and advance discourse skills. As I noted earlier, colleges and universities struggle to differentiate among naïve or uninformed statements, senseless but intentional insults, genuine injury, and provocative yet productive conflict and dissent. Students share responsibility with others in the campus community for making their learning experiences, and those of their peers, positive and productive. Yet, there should be room for mistakes, naiveté, and dissent. Conflict is almost always an opportunity for learning. Again, I am no fan of speech codes, and I do not think that institutional dialogues should result in speech codes or regulations. The best response, as campuses learned in the 1990s, is through educational programming. Speech “zones” and “walls” where people are encouraged to share their views, even if unpopular, can spur discussions and ideas; however, free speech should not be exclusively relegated to these spaces. Revisit Symbols and Traditions Traditions and symbols matter. Students and faculty at the campuses the Institute visited could point to events—a first-day celebration, a convocation parade in which faculty wearing academic regalia walked with the students, or a graduation with a community picnic—that sent messages to the campus community about the importance of community and social cohesion. Alternatively, imagine students walking onto campus the first day and facing a banner espousing White nationalist groups, which nearly happened at Appalachia State University in the fall of 2017 (Bawab, 2017). Such messaging is antithetical to the aims of higher education and will negatively impact an institution’s ability to achieve its educational goals. Many campuses today are engaging in discussions about buildings named after people who held anti-Semitic or racist views. These discussions offer myriad learning opportunities for students about democracy’s history, principles, practices, EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 96 and tensions. When done well, they can bring a campus together around shared goals and means for achieving those goals. Support Student Activism and Leadership; Listen to Student Perspectives Student activism is nothing new to higher education, but it may be approaching levels not seen in nearly a half century. In the 1960s and early 1970s, students protested the Vietnam war, gender discrimination, and racial discrimination. In the 1980s, they fought against apartheid in South Africa, demanding that their institutions divest from companies that supported racist regimes and, later, sweatshop labor. In that era, students also demanded changes in curricula, expanding interdisciplinary and cultural studies to the point that they are now common in higher education. On some campuses, student activism has been met with punishment, sometimes driven by pressure from legislators, donors, or trustees. The most extreme response to student activism, of course, happened at Kent State University, where the Ohio National Guard opened fire on demonstrators, and, two weeks later, at Jackson State University, where two Black students were killed by campus police during a confrontation. The Black Lives Matter movement against police violence and institutionalized racism triggered demonstrations and “die-ins.” As a result of the 2016 election, students have left campus to participate in women’s marches and other protests nationwide. Likewise, the recent surge of interest in decreasing gun violence among high school students has spread to colleges and universities. Higher education institutions can expect more activism on the part of students, including activism about limiting free speech in the interest of eliminating hateful rhetoric, discrimination, and undemocratic forces in parts of the nation, as well as activism against policies viewed as liberal, such as affirmative action. Rather than trying to quash these efforts, colleges and universities should view them as opportunities to work with students to teach the arts of organizing, social change, and collaborative leadership. Activism should be welcomed as perhaps the clearest example of students taking initiative and exercising leadership. Students want to be heard. Perhaps the best response is to listen. Make Decisions Based on Sound Academic Grounds, Not Partisan Perspectives Making decisions about educational content based on party affiliation is impermissible. College and university administrators need to be honest about their EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 97 motives when screening speakers or censoring viewpoints. Understandably, this is challenging. When members of political parties stand behind policies and actions that are antithetical to educational values and goals, including inequality and discrimination, it is hard to condemn ideas without sounding partisan. Hopefully, the lines will get easier to draw. Tellingly, influential Republican leaders have come out against the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Conservatives and liberals do and should debate issues such as crime, mass incarceration, terrorism, gun control, etc., and in doing so, welcome all perspectives. The problem is not Republicans or even conservative perspectives per se; the problem is White supremacy, White nationalism, and demagogic populism, as well as inequality and discrimination. Talking about ideas, not parties, will help academics avoid conflating these many influences. Resist Partisan Intrusion in Academic Affairs The assumption that students are easily indoctrinated and that they are not allowed to think for themselves, as revealed in the 2017 Gallup report, is unsupported by research. According to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, incoming students arrive with already formed political viewpoints. In fact, the first-year class in 2016 was the most politically polarized group in the 50-year history of the Freshman Survey (Eagan et al., 2017). In addition, several studies have refuted the claim that students change their political orientation while in college (Colby, Beaumont, Ehrlich, & Corngold, 2007; Mariani & Hewitt, 2008; Woessner & Kelly-Woessner, 2009). Examining a nationally representative sample of more than 7,000 undergraduates, Mayhew, Rockenbach, Selznick, and Zagorsky (2018) concluded that after the first year of college, 48% of students viewed liberals more favorably than when they arrived on campus and 50% viewed conservatives more favorably. The authors concluded that “college attendance is associated, on average, with gains in appreciating political viewpoints across the spectrum, not just favoring liberals” (Mayhew et al., 2018). This is precisely the kind of outcome educating for democracy should yield. Uphold Democratic Principles and Practices Inevitably, academics will find themselves forced to make statements and take positions that promote democratic principles and practices—and there are many opportunities. Many states have strict voter identification laws that disallow the use of student IDs for voter registration. In New Hampshire, the legislature is EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 98 currently considering a bill that would prevent students from voting in their places of domicile, despite a clear mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court conferring that right to students. In other legislation, North Carolina lawmakers forbid the removal of Confederate statues from public property, despite the governor’s admission that the law “overreaches” into local affairs (Campbell, 2015). They had also passed a regulation prohibiting law students at a civil rights clinical program from engaging in their core work, litigation (Roll, 2017). These efforts undermine students’ ability to participate in democracy, and colleges and universities must take a firm stance against them. Colleges and universities need to move beyond viewing speech as a mandate and appreciate the current conditions as a learning opportunity. They need to provide students, faculty, staff, and, arguably, communities external to the campus (legislators, too) with forums for understanding why these tensions exist and how, collectively, members of the campus community can create the kind of educational environment where democratic principles and practices thrive. In this process, colleges and universities, particularly public institutions, will need to make some hard choices when faced with unapologetic White nationalists, for instance. In making these choices, colleges and universities will need to consider the undemocratic forces at work nationally and globally, as well as higher education’s role in educating for democracy’s health and future. Ultimately, I hope that academics will grapple with what it means to educate for the democracy that most want but that we do not have. EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 99 References Allen, D. (2014). Our declaration: A reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality. New York: W. W. Norton. Anti-Defamation League. (2018). White supremacist propaganda surges on campus. Retrieved from https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/white-supremacist- propaganda-surges-on-campus Applebome, P. (1989, November 21). Two sides of the contemporary south: Racial incidents and Black progress. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/ 21/us/two-sides-of-the-contemporary-south-racial-incidents-and-black- progress.html Bauman, D. (2018, February 16). After 2016 election, campus hate crimes seemed to jump. Here’s what the data tell us. Chronicle of Higher Education. 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(2017). Why are Republicans down on higher ed? Retrieved from http://news.gallup.com/poll/216278/why-republicans-down-higher.aspx Gallup/Knight Foundation. (2018). Free expression on campus: What college students think about First Amendment issues. Retrieved from https://kf- site- production.s3.amazonaws.com/publications/pdfs/000/000/248/original/Kn ight_Foundation_Free_Expression_on_Campus_2017.pdf Glisson, C., & James, L. (2002). The cross-level effects of culture and climate in human service teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23(6), 767-794. Goldwater Institute. (2017). Campus free speech: A legislative proposal. Retrieved http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/campus-free-speech-a- legislative-proposal/ Gould, J. B. (2005). Speak no evil: The triumph of hate speech regulation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003). Greenwood, M. (2017). DoJ backs lawsuit alleging college violated free speech rights. The Hill. 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(2009). Does diversity pay?: Race, gender, and the business case for diversity. American Sociological Review, 74(2), 208-224. Hurtado, S., Griffin, K. A., Arellano, L. & Cuellar, M. (2008). Assessing the value of climate assessments: Progress and future directions. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 1(4), 204-221. Joint Resolution 46, S.J. Res. 49, 115th Congress (2017-2018). Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-joint- resolution/49/text/es?format=xml&overview=closed Kerr, E. (2018). Should students be expelled for posting racist videos? Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Should-Students-Be-Expelled/242364 Kimball, R. (1990). Tenured radicals: How politics has corrupted our higher education. New York: Harper & Row. Kuh, G., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. Whitt, E., and Associates. (2005). Student success in college. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2016). The coddling of the American mind. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of- the-american-mind/399356 Mariani, M. D., & Hewitt, G. J. (2008). Indoctrination U.? Faculty ideology and changes in student political orientation. PS: Political Science and Politics, 41(4), 773-783. Mayhew, M., Rockenbach, A., Selznick, B., & Zagorsky, J. (2018). Does college turn people into liberals? The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/does-college-turn-people-into-liberals-90905 Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973). Pascarella, E.T., & Terenzini, P.T. (1998). Studying college students in the 21st century: Meeting new challenges. Review of Higher Education, 21(2), 151- 165. Peterson, M. W., & Spencer, M. G. (1990). Understanding academic culture and climate. New Directions for Institutional Research, 1990(68), 3-18. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/49/text/es?format=xml&overview=closed https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/49/text/es?format=xml&overview=closed https://www.chronicle.com/article/Should-Students-Be-Expelled/242364 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ https://theconversation.com/does-college-turn-people-into-liberals-90905 EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 103 Pew Research Center. (2017). Political polarization, 1994-2017. Retrieved from http://www.people-press.org/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/ Quilantan, B. (2018). U. of Nebraska won’t expel white nationalist student, chancellor says. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/U-of-Nebraska-Won-t-Expel/242476 Reason, R. (2009). An examination of persistence research through the lens of a comprehensive conceptual framework. Journal of College Student Development. 50(6), 659-682. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1979). Robinson, M., Pfeffer, C., & Buccigrossi, J. (2003). Business case for inclusion and engagement. Retrieved from http://www.bus.iastate.edu/emullen/mgmt472/ Business%20Case%20for%20Diversity%20reading.pdf Roll, N. (2017). UNC board bars litigation by law school center. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/11/north-carolina-board- bars-unc-center-civil-rights-litigating Ryder, A., & Mitchell, J. (2013). Measuring campus climate for personal and social responsibility. New Directions for Higher Education, 2013(164), 31- 48. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957). Tierney, W. G. (2008). The impact of culture on organizational decision making: Theory and practice in higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Thomas, N. (2014) Democracy by design. Journal of Public Deliberation, 10(1), Article 17. Retrieved from http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol10/iss1/art17 Thomas, N. (2015). The politics of learning for democracy. Diversity and Democracy, 19(2). Thomas, N., & Brower, M. (2017). Politics 365: Fostering campus climates for student political learning and engagement. In E. Matto, A. McCartney, E. Bennion, & D. Simpson (Eds.), Teaching civic engagement across the disciplines. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association. http://www.people-press.org/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/ https://www.chronicle.com/article/U-of-Nebraska-Won-t-Expel/242476 http://www.bus.iastate.edu/emullen/mgmt472/Business%20Case%20for%20Diversity%20reading.pdf http://www.bus.iastate.edu/emullen/mgmt472/Business%20Case%20for%20Diversity%20reading.pdf https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/11/north-carolina-board-bars-unc-center-civil-rights-litigating https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/11/north-carolina-board-bars-unc-center-civil-rights-litigating http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol10/iss1/art17 EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 104 Thompson-Reuters. (2016). Making the business case for diversity. Retrieved from https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/business-case-for- diversity U.S. Department of Justice. (2018). Justice Department files statement of interest in California college free speech case. Justice News. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ justice-department-files-statement-interest-california-college-free-speech- case Wike, R., & Simmons, K. (2015). Global support for principle of free expression, but opposition to some forms of speech. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/11/18/global-support-for-principle- of-free-expression-but-opposition-to-some-forms-of-speech/ Woessner, M., & Kelly-Woessner, A. (2009). I think my professor is a Democrat: Considering whether students recognize and react to faculty politics. PS: Political Science and Politics, 42(2), 343, 352. https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/business-case-for-diversity/ https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/business-case-for-diversity/ https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-statement-interest-california-college-free-speech-case https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-statement-interest-california-college-free-speech-case https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-statement-interest-california-college-free-speech-case http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/11/18/global-support-for-principle-of-free-expression-but-opposition-to-some-forms-of-speech/ http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/11/18/global-support-for-principle-of-free-expression-but-opposition-to-some-forms-of-speech/ EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 105 Author Biography Dr. Nancy Thomas directs the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, conducting research and providing assistance to colleges and universities to advance student political learning and participation in democracy. The Institute’s signature initiative, the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE), is a large dataset for research and provides each of the 900+ participating colleges and universities with their students’ aggregate voting rates. Her work and scholarship center on higher education’s democratic mission, college student political learning and engagement, free speech and academic freedom, and deliberative democracy on campuses and in communities. She is the author of multiple book chapters, articles, and the monograph, Educating for Deliberative Democracy. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Public Deliberation and a senior associate with Everyday Democracy. She received her law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 106 Appendix Free Speech Laws Passed or Proposed as of March 1, 2018 Laws Passed State: California Title: Campus Free Speech Act URL: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180A CA14 State: Colorado Title: Right to Free Speech at Public Higher Ed Institutions URL: https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb17-062 State: Florida Title: The Campus Free Expression Act URL: http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2018/4/BillText/er/HTML State: Missouri Title: Campus Free Expression Act URL: http://www.senate.mo.gov/15info/pdf-bill/perf/SB93.pdf State: North Carolina Title: North Carolina Restore/Preserve Free Speech Act URL: https://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/billlookup/billlookup.pl?Session=2017&BillID= H527 State: Tennessee Title: Campus Free Speech Protection Act URL: http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/110/Amend/SA0333.pdf State: Utah Title: Campus Individual Rights Acthttps://le.utah.gov/~2017/bills/static/HB0054.html https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180ACA14 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180ACA14 https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb17-062 http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2018/4/BillText/er/HTML http://www.senate.mo.gov/15info/pdf-bill/perf/SB93.pdf https://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/billlookup/billlookup.pl?Session=2017&BillID=H527 https://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/billlookup/billlookup.pl?Session=2017&BillID=H527 http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/110/Amend/SA0333.pdf EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY IN UNDEMOCRATIC CONTEXTS eJournal of Public Affairs, 7(1) 107 Title: Campus Free Speech Protection Act URL: https://le.utah.gov/~2017/bills/static/HB0054.html#53b-27-101 State: Virginia Title: Higher Educational Institutions’ Free Speech on Campus URL: https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?171+sum+HB1401 State: Wisconsin Title: Campus Free Speech Act URL: http://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/59/kremer/media/1316/17-2408_1.pdf Legislation Proposed but Not Yet Passed State: Georgia Title: Georgia Campus Free Speech Act URL: http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/Display/20172018/SB/339 State: Illinois Title: Campus Free Speech URL:http://ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=2939&GAID=14&GA=1 00&DocTypeID=HB&LegID=104448&SessionID=91 State: Michigan Title: Campus Free Speech Act URL: http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(cybxwk00twt33clqpyzm1gsh))/mileg.aspx?page = getobject&objectname=2017-SB-0349 State: Nebraska Title: Higher Education Free Speech Accountability Act URL: https://nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/105/PDF/Intro/LB718.pdf State: Wyoming Title: Higher Education Free Speech Protection Act URL: http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2018/Introduced/HB0137.pdf https://le.utah.gov/%7E2017/bills/static/HB0054.html#53b-27-101 https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?171+sum+HB1401 http://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/59/kremer/media/1316/17-2408_1.pdf http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/Display/20172018/SB/339 http://ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=2939&GAID=14&GA=100&DocTypeID=HB&LegID=104448&SessionID=91 http://ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=2939&GAID=14&GA=100&DocTypeID=HB&LegID=104448&SessionID=91 http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(cybxwk00twt33clqpyzm1gsh))/mileg.aspx?page=%0bgetobject&objectname=2017-SB-0349 http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(cybxwk00twt33clqpyzm1gsh))/mileg.aspx?page=%0bgetobject&objectname=2017-SB-0349 http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(cybxwk00twt33clqpyzm1gsh))/mileg.aspx?page=%0bgetobject&objectname=2017-SB-0349 https://nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/105/PDF/Intro/LB718.pdf http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2018/Introduced/HB0137.pdf work_363irzbhqrf4bnksoeiqn2yppu ---- wp-p1m-38.ebi.ac.uk Params is empty 404 sys_1000 exception wp-p1m-38.ebi.ac.uk no 217546703 Params is empty 217546703 exception Params is empty 2021/04/06-01:56:17 if (typeof jQuery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/1.14.8/js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,String.fromCharCode(60)).replace(/\]/g,String.fromCharCode(62))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} Page not available Reason: The web page address (URL) that you used may be incorrect. 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Find a specific article by its citation (journal, date, volume, first page, author or article title). http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/ work_35umjexoive35n3lhnlrete4jy ---- The Secret Silent Spaces of Workplace Violence: Focus on Bullying (and Harassment) laws Review The Secret Silent Spaces of Workplace Violence: Focus on Bullying (and Harassment) Allison J Ballard * and Patricia Easteal Faculty of Business, Government and Law, University of Canberra, ACT 2617, Australia; patricia.easteal@canberra.edu.au * Correspondence: allison.ballard@canberra.edu.au; Tel.: +61-3-5023-5966 Received: 21 August 2018; Accepted: 24 October 2018; Published: 29 October 2018 ���������� ������� Abstract: Any form of workplace abuse, be it bullying, sexual or non-sexual harassment, or other forms of workplace violence, represents a significant problem for both workers and organisations. The reality that worker complaints of such abuse are often silenced, frequently for long periods of time, has recently been spotlighted by the #MeToo movement. In this article we focus particularly on workplace bullying (some definitions include harassment). We explore how potential, and actual, complaints of such abuse may silenced—both before complaints are ever made, and also at different points along the complaint or dispute resolution process. We investigate how definitional and naming issues, worker ignorance and incapacity, workplace investigations, (alternative) dispute resolution and the legal pathways available to targets of workplace bullying and harassment may act to silence complaints. We also provide some practical suggestions for the targets of workplace abuse. Keywords: bullying; harassment; workplace abuse; violence; silencing; naming; reporting 1. Introduction If there is any doubt about the existence, endemic nature of, and silencing of workplace violence, perhaps one of the best contemporary illustrations of its omnipotence is that evidenced by #MeToo. While this movement began in 2006–2007,1 it finally ‘went viral’ in late 2017, when a number of female actors spoke-up about often chronic (sexual) harassment experienced at work, typically at the hands of powerful older men. #MeToo’s grounding sentiment and driving force though is even older: This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. Women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don’t even seem to know that boundaries exist. They’ve had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can’t afford to lose. They’ve had it with the code of going along to get along. They’ve had it with men who use their power to take what they want . . . (Zacharek et al. 2017) While targets (and others) may have early opportunities to voice concerns about unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours directed towards themselves or others at work,2 they often choose to remain silent, particularly in respect bullying and harassment and other forms of workplace violence.3 They remain silent in the face of horrendous conduct. They do not speak-up. Why? As 1 The movement was started by black activist Tarana Burke while working with young girls in America who were survivors of sexual violence: #MeToo: Ten years before it was a hashtag, it began as one woman’s search for safety (ABC News online n.d.). 2 (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment 2012, p. 76). 3 Ibid, pp. 75–76. We define workplace abuse to include bullying, sexual harassment and non-sexual harassment and other forms of workplace violence. Laws 2018, 7, 35; doi:10.3390/laws7040035 www.mdpi.com/journal/laws http://www.mdpi.com/journal/laws http://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6980-0853 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0762-6626 http://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/7/4/35?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/laws7040035 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/laws Laws 2018, 7, 35 2 of 17 illustrated in Figure 1 below, in this article, we respond to that question by focusing on workplace bullying and examining some of these potential sites of silencing. In this way, we explore some of the potential contributors to not speaking-up, complaining and/or reporting. While there is no internationally agreed definition of workplace bullying, Einarsen’s definition, which incorporates mobbing, emotional abuse, harassment, mistreatment and victimisation as part of the bullying phenomenon, is utilised here: The systematic persecution of a colleague, subordinate or superior, which, if continued, may cause severe social, psychological and psychosomatic problems for the victim. (Einarsen 1999, p. 16) Laws 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 17 illustrated in Figure 1 below, in this article, we respond to that question by focusing on workplace bullying and examining some of these potential sites of silencing. In this way, we explore some of the potential contributors to not speaking-up, complaining and/or reporting. While there is no internationally agreed definition of workplace bullying, Einarsen’s definition, which incorporates mobbing, emotional abuse, harassment, mistreatment and victimisation as part of the bullying phenomenon, is utilised here: The systematic persecution of a colleague, subordinate or superior, which, if continued, may cause severe social, psychological and psychosomatic problems for the victim. (Einarsen 1999, p. 16) Figure 1. Workplace Bullying Abuse Incident Stages–Decision-making questions that may lead to silence. Silencing is a major issue as illustrated by the disparity between the alleged epidemic incidence of workplace bullying in Australia,4 the low reporting of such behaviour (Easteal and Hampton 2011), and the (relatively) few Australian court and tribunal cases which have been heard and decided (Ballard and Easteal 2014). Figure 1 above suggests that as an initial step, a worker must transform their adverse workplace experience into some form of a problem, controversy, or ‘dispute’ (Hoffmann 2003). That is, the wronged party must first realise that a problem in fact exists (that is, they must, for example, be able to ‘name’ the experience as bullying or harassment) (Ballard and Easteal 2018a). The target must then attribute this problem to another person (e.g., blame the alleged perpetrator) and bring it to their attention (Hoffmann 2003, p. 693) or to the attention of another person or entity, such as the employer/organisation. Rather than reporting the offending behaviour, the target may decide that the best strategy may be to remain quiet, find another job, and/or leave the organisation. While some decisions to quit (or stay) are based on a sort of expected-benefit rationale, others are driven by more intuitive or routinised decision-making processes (Harman et al. 2007, pp. 51–52). These decisions may be influenced by a range of ‘shocks’ or precipitating events (for example, a fight with the boss, an unexpected windfall, or an unanticipated job offer) and by an employee’s degree of harassment and other forms of workplace violence. 4 Workplace bullying is increasingly referred to as a silent epidemic. See (Williams 2011; Hanley et al. 2008). •Was it 'bullying'? •What is 'bullying' anyhow? •What should I do now? •Should I tell someone / forget about it /ignore it/leave? Potential silencers at incident •Do I complain/ report? •Who do I complain/ report to? •How do I complain? •What will happen to me if I complain? Potential workplace silencers post-incident •Alternative Dispute Resolution(private and/or court-referred)? •Legal pathways? •Was justice done? •Confidentiality agreeements? •Insurance? Potential silencers along internal /external workplace resolution pathways Figure 1. Workplace Bullying Abuse Incident Stages–Decision-making questions that may lead to silence. Silencing is a major issue as illustrated by the disparity between the alleged epidemic incidence of workplace bullying in Australia,4 the low reporting of such behaviour (Easteal and Hampton 2011), and the (relatively) few Australian court and tribunal cases which have been heard and decided (Ballard and Easteal 2014). Figure 1 above suggests that as an initial step, a worker must transform their adverse workplace experience into some form of a problem, controversy, or ‘dispute’ (Hoffmann 2003). That is, the wronged party must first realise that a problem in fact exists (that is, they must, for example, be able to ‘name’ the experience as bullying or harassment) (Ballard and Easteal 2018a). The target must then attribute this problem to another person (e.g., blame the alleged perpetrator) and bring it to their attention (Hoffmann 2003, p. 693) or to the attention of another person or entity, such as the employer/organisation. Rather than reporting the offending behaviour, the target may decide that the best strategy may be to remain quiet, find another job, and/or leave the organisation. While some decisions to quit (or stay) are based on a sort of expected-benefit rationale, others are driven by more intuitive or routinised decision-making processes (Harman et al. 2007, pp. 51–52). These decisions may be influenced by a range of ‘shocks’ or precipitating events (for example, a fight with the boss, 4 Workplace bullying is increasingly referred to as a silent epidemic. See (Williams 2011; Hanley et al. 2008). Laws 2018, 7, 35 3 of 17 an unexpected windfall, or an unanticipated job offer) and by an employee’s degree of ‘embeddedness’5 within an organisation.6 Choosing ‘exit’ over complaint though is not always an option which is open to the worker. Some people may choose to stay (and remain silent), because of loyalty to the organisation, for fear they would be unable to find a comparable position (or indeed any position) elsewhere, or because they may be reluctant to ‘sacrifice’ employment benefits accrued over a lengthy period of service with the organisation (which may also be understood as a form of ‘entrapment’ and ‘embeddedness’).7 If the target desires a legal or other remedy they will need to file some sort of claim or grievance, which may theoretically become a (legal) dispute if the other party rejects it.8 To become a formal grievance that can be addressed by an organisation’s official grievance policy or procedure, a dispute must essentially be made ‘public’.9 For some, making such an issue or concern public, offends their sense of privacy and dignity, fearing it may signal to the world that they cannot properly manage their working (public) life. Such a perception may facilitate their silence. We now look at each decision-making stage more closely commencing with ‘Something Happens’ in which we examine the potential silences arising from both naming/definitional issues and the ignorance/incapacity of bullying targets. In the next section (Breaking the Silence in the Workplace) the possible silences associated with workplace investigations and worker’s compensation insurance are considered. Then in the ‘Silence of the Legal Pathways’ we look at the ways in which the available causes of action and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can also silence targets. Finally, we highlight possible ways to foster voice in organisations and offer some practical tips for targets of workplace bullying and harassment. 2. Stage 1—Something Happens 2.1. Silence Due to Naming/Definitional Issues Discussing, complaining about, or remedying phenomena that have no shared or understood name or meaning presents significant difficulties. Although bullies have always existed, once a phenomenon, such as ‘workplace bullying’, ‘harassment’, ‘abuse’ or ‘violence’ is named, it is more easily talked and thought about (and acted upon). There are multiple synonyms for ‘bullying’ both in Australia and internationally (Ballard and Easteal 2018a, pp. 18–19, 8). This becomes problematic, particularly when trying to determine the incidence/prevalence of the (alleged) workplace abuse or in developing strategies to remedy it. If the problem is not defined consistently across workplaces, organisations, cultures, legislatures, or case law, it is difficult to truly understand the nature or extent of the problem or to adequately address it. Despite the explosion of research around workplace bullying, particularly since the 1970s, there is (still) no universally accepted understanding of ‘workplace bullying’.10 In some languages there is not even a linguistic term of describe the phenomenon or to convey its various behavioural aspects.11 Nevertheless, as suggested by Einarsen’s definition above, the phenomenon is typically understood as encompassing a wide spectrum of actions, ranging from lower-level workplace aggression and incivility, unreasonable work practices and inappropriate behaviours—some of which may be used as tactics to disguise and mask sadistic behaviours12, such as sexual assault and homicide. 5 ‘Embeddedness’ can be likened to ‘a net or web in which an individual can become stuck’: (Mitchell et al. 2001, pp. 1102, 1104). 6 (Harman et al. 2007, p. 53). See also (Mitchell et al. 2001; Ibid, p. 1104). 7 (Berthelsen et al. 2011, pp. 178–80; Harman et al. 2007, pp. 51, 53; Rusbult and Farrell 1983, pp. 429, 431; Mitchell et al. 2001, pp. 1102, 1105). 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 (Margevičiūtė 2017, pp. 205, 207; Wrench 2013, p. 323). 11 Ibid at p. 209. 12 For example, joking and initiation rites (Mayhew et al. 2004, pp. 117–18). Laws 2018, 7, 35 4 of 17 Using the ‘wrong’ words to describe social problems may not only distort perceptions, but also can affect the decisions made by leaders (such as law and policy makers) to address those problems (Burke 2017, p. 27). Decision-makers’ and employers’ interpretations of concepts like ‘reasonable’ behaviour take place in socio-legal arenas in which so-called objective standards are, in reality, neither neutral nor inevitable. 2.2. The Silence of Ignorance and Incapacity We suggest there is a silencing associated with the failure to conceive of conduct as being an act of bullying in the first place, and also with a target’s capacity to deal with it (even if it is in fact understood as a problem). We label this as the silence of ignorance and incapacity. Workplace abuses, such as bullying and harassment, can be associated with debilitating emotional, psychological and physical illness and injuries, which can render a target partially or completely incapable of complaint. In addition, other forms of harm can arise even when a target does not perceive certain behaviour as a ‘problem’ or as ‘bullying’. This lack of insight or perception, can, like mental and physical illness and injury, make any action to challenge the offending behaviour problematic. To illustrate this, if bullying manifests as the inequitable allocation of work, shifts, or overtime, or the denial of a promotion, training opportunities, or relevant job information, the target experiences a measurable harm. This harm may be by way of economic or status loss or a fall in work performance and it can occur even though the offending conduct is never understood by the affected individual as ‘bullying’ (Wrench 2013, pp. 322, 327; Jalloh 2015, pp. 1237, 1242; Unison 2013, p. 5). Such ‘ignorance’ may be more likely to harm minorities; as Brake observes ‘since perceiving and acknowledging discrimination [and arguably also bullying and harassment] is a prerequisite for engaging in any form of considered resistance to it, stigmatised social groups are less inclined to challenge systemic discrimination, thereby silently facilitating it’ (Brake 2005, pp. 18, 25). An incapacity to either ‘take on’ the bully/perpetrator/abuser or to report the behaviour can both be exacerbated by, and contribute to the physical and psychological problems that are correlates of being victimised. These include: fear, stress, and depression, shock, despair, anger, apathy, helplessness, insomnia, chronic fatigue, sadness, shame, guilt, anxiety, distrust, disgust, disbelief, powerlessness, irrecoverable loss of self-esteem, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), phobias, and various cardiac and musculo-skeletal problems (Nielsen and Einarsen 2012, p. 310; Cortina and Magley 2003, p. 247). It is known too that the damage caused by bullying (for example, reduced social status and confidence) ‘can continue, even after the bullying has ended’ (Peterson 2018; Olweus 1993). Targets of prolonged bullying may have more severe stress reactions than women who have been raped or train drivers confronted with ‘death by train’ (Mayhew et al. 2004, pp. 117–18). Difficulties in both complaining about and addressing bullying and harassment may be further intensified if a target self-medicates with drugs and alcohol, or if their social support networks collapse as a sequela to the workplace abuse (Einarsen et al. 2015, p. 21). Also, workers who endure mistreatment in silence, may experience the highest levels of psychological and physical harm (Salin et al. 2014, p. 1191). So, in effect there is a potential ‘double whammy’ with a person who is unable to complain on account of some mental, emotional or physical incapacity, being more likely to suffer further harm because they cannot or do not complain. Incapacity may also be worsened if the organisation/employer colludes in the bullying or acts as a perpetrator by creating oppressive, hostile, or toxic environments. This includes the organisation (or more particularly, its representatives or managers) scheduling targets for (unnecessary) medical and psychiatric assessments, subjecting targets to (dubious and undeserved) performance management plans, alleging breaches of the organisation’s values or code of conduct (and then undertaking questionable workplace investigations), and terminating targets for redundancy (Hoel 2013; Stacey 2013) or for (alleged) poor work performance or misconduct. Laws 2018, 7, 35 5 of 17 Such activities do not inevitably equate with bullying but importantly, they may. Problematic management activities might also intensify after an employee has complained about bullying.13 Where such activities appear (on their face) to be a legitimate exercise of an organisation’s power, it may be difficult for a target to even conceptualise the behaviour as bullying, let alone to formulate a plan for complaining about it. In these ways and others which will be looked at next, organisations can both perpetrate and silence workplace abuse. 3. Stage 2—Breaking the Silence in the Workplace While many targets do try and tackle bullying with various coping strategies, few manage to stop the conduct without outside help (Hogh et al. 2011, pp. 267, 273; Martino et al. 2003, pp. 117–18). Even where a worker is able to name what has occurred as ‘bullying’ or ‘harassment’ and does speak-up, they may subsequently be ‘silenced’ by a range of factors that typically only come into play after they have made a complaint. Such factors may include workplace investigations and adverse conduct on the part of worker’s compensation insurers and rehabilitation providers as discussed below. Additionally, as alluded to above, targets may be subject to work-related victimisation (WRV) on account of reporting. WRV may include intentional reprisals in the form of termination, involuntary transfer, demotion, poor performance appraisals, and/or the deprivation of jobs perks and overtime opportunities (Cortina and Magley 2003, pp. 247–48). Targets may also be subject to social retaliation victimisation (SRV) including intentional social reprisals by peers, subordinates, and managers (Cortina and Magley 2003, pp. 247–48). Such reprisals are often less tangible and formal than WRV. SRV can include (further) harassment, name-calling, ostracism, blaming, threats, and the ‘silent treatment’ (Cortina and Magley 2003, pp. 247–48). Retaliation, the ‘fastest growing discrimination claim,’14 is what Brake calls powerful medicine which acts to suppress complaints and preserve the status quo of the social order (Brake 2005, p. 20); though abused workers have also been known to retaliate against their supervisors.15 Brake argues that fear of retaliation is [emphasis added]: . . . the leading reason why people stay silent instead of voicing their concerns about [things like] bias and discrimination. When challengers are brave enough to overcome their fears of speaking out, retaliation often steps in to punish the challenger and restore the social norms in question. To a large extent, the effectiveness and very legitimacy of discrimination law turns on people’s ability to raise concerns about discrimination without fear of retaliation. (Brake 2005, p. 20) When (voice) strategies fail and employees fear or experience possibly retaliatory actions, they may reach-out to a union, or take long-term sick (or personal) leave, after which they often resign, ‘wash their hands of the situation’ and take their talents elsewhere (Lutgen-Sandvik 2005, iii); sometimes never to return to paid employment.16 They may also find themselves terminated from their employment17 as illustrated in a 2014 survey conducted by the (US) Workplace Bullying Institute, which found that 19 per cent of targets were forced out, fired (13 per cent), transferred (13 per cent), or resigned their 13 See for example the Australian anti-bullying case of Lynette Bayly [2017] FWC 1886 (5 April 2017) where an executive director claimed that her employer only levelled misconduct allegations against her in response to a bullying complaint she made against other executives early in 2017. 14 This is a cause of action where an employee alleges the employer has made a detrimental job decision in response to the employee’s having made a discrimination complaint or ‘protected expression’: (Sherwyn et al. 2006, pp. 350, 353). 15 Though high levels of employee ‘conscientiousness’ and ‘agreeableness’ mitigate the relation between abusive supervision and employee retaliation: (Lian et al. 2014, pp. 116, 122). 16 Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Naidu & Anor; ISS Security Pty Ltd v Naidu & Anor [2007] NSWCA 377 (21 December 2007) [284], [303]; Morabito v Comcare [2013] AATA 450 (2 July 2013) [33], [40]; (Vickers 2009, p. 259). 17 Ibid, p. 118. Laws 2018, 7, 35 6 of 17 employment (29 per cent). By comparison only 10 per cent of perpetrators were terminated while just 5 per cent resigned.18 3.1. Workplace Investigations Where allegations of workplace abuse are made to an organisation, the organisation is generally bound to conduct some form of workplace investigation. In the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Public Service for example, a centralised Professional Standards Unit (PSU) is responsible for conducting or overseeing all investigations into ‘inappropriate’ workplace behaviour. All ACT Government investigation functions were consolidated at the end of 2015 in a bid to improve timeliness, increase consistency and quality, and ensure independence and fairness (Condon 2018, p. 1). In 2017, of 85 matters referred to the PSU, 11 (or almost 8 per cent) resulted in findings of unsubstantiated allegations. The investigation process is an adversarial one which pigeon-holes the complainant as the ‘victim’ and the respondent as the (alleged) ‘offender’. It tries to deter poor behaviour through punishment, though such behaviour is often engaged in by more than one party and can be linked to an entrenched culture of poor behaviour (Condon 2018, p. 1). Workplace investigations (and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) as discussed below) may be conceptualised as part of the resolution process. By violating procedural fairness norms, workplace investigations may carry significant risks for employers if improperly conducted. They may be compromised by, for example, bias and pre-determined outcomes. Such risks are greater where the investigator is not truly independent or is an employee and also where are no (or inadequate) workplace policies (Ballard and Easteal 2018b). Workplace investigations have the capacity to silence the targets of workplace abuse and other complaints of workplace misconduct. They may also undermine fair and just workplaces and result in unfair and disputed outcomes which may end in litigation (Ballard and Easteal 2018b). For instance Ballard and Easteal (2018b) research which included the views of a small sample of workplace investigators found that: [I]nvestigations could be compromised due to the inexperience, lack of time and lack of qualifications and understanding of the rules of evidence, procedural fairness culminating in the investigator not adopting a neutral mind-set, but setting out to ‘prove’ the allegation]. (Ballard and Easteal 2018b) Several respondents reported that ‘influencing’ (e.g., being told of the organisation’s desired investigation outcome) may commence before the investigation—at the time of tendering for a workplace investigation, during the process, and afterwards (Ballard and Easteal 2018b). Where a target is subjected to a prejudged workplace investigation or is otherwise aggrieved about the process, they will not always not have the capacity or resources to complain about or challenge the process or outcome. This too is a form of silencing. 3.2. Silence Due to Insurers Another potential source of silence in relation to reporting (or reported) workplace abuse are the actions of insurers (Holley et al. 2015, pp. 85, 93), including through requiring medical assessments, evidence and reports (often construed as expert and/or independent reports) in respect of targets in worker’s compensation and similar claims. Such assessments (which may deter targets from claiming in the first place or encourage them to later discontinue a claim) may be conducted at the behest of respondent (employer) parties (workers typically cannot afford their own expert reports). Given this, such reports are often, unsurprisingly, supportive of both the employer and the role of worker’s compensation insurers and rehabilitation practitioners (whose adverse treatment of an injured worker 18 Namie (2004) and Harvey et al. (2006, p. 4) also found that the prognosis for targets is typically worse than that of bullies: Eighty-two per cent lose their jobs—44 per cent involuntarily and 38 per cent by ‘choice’. Laws 2018, 7, 35 7 of 17 may facilitate secondary psychological injuries) (Holley et al. 2015, p. 94). Insurers may decline compensation for injuries purportedly attributable to workplace abuse; often with spurious reasoning (Holley et al. 2015, p. 93). This strategy forces the target to either seek a review of that decision or to simply walk away in silence. Insurers may also mandate multiple assessments of injured workers in a process designed to ultimately procure a ‘favourable’ report for the insurer (for example one recommending minimal treatment) (Holley et al. 2015, p. 93). In addition, they may require attendance at medical appointments at short notice, often at inconvenient locations, with the threat of suspending weekly compensation payments should the worker not attend (Holley et al. 2015, p. 93). ‘Rehabilitation’ providers may also silence targets through a range of potentially intimidating tactics, such as pressuring recuperating workers to ignore the treating doctor’s advice and return to work (Holley et al. 2015, p. 94). Employers and rehabilitation providers have also been known to accompany targets/applicants/plaintiffs to their medical appointments and attempt to direct medical practitioners in respect of their assessment of the worker (We Are Union OHS Reps n.d.). 4. Stage 3—Silence of Legal Pathways In Australia, the targets of workplace bullying—or to be more precise, typically the lawyers of the targets—must generally ‘shop around’ or try to ‘fit a square peg through one of a variety of differently shaped holes’ in order to identify a sustainable course of action, or cause of action (Ash and Scott 2013; Bible 2012, pp. 32, 37). Navigating the negotiation and litigation jungle that is workplace bullying requires ‘cutting the cloth to fit the suit’ (Ballard and Easteal 2014). The ways in which lawyers perceive the (in)adequacies of each potential remedy affect the tailoring. As Weissbourd and Mertz point out, the law engages in ‘routine creativity’ in categorising particular events as legal types, even in the most ordinary and uncontested cases (Merry 1990, pp. 1, 4). If no appropriate cause of action can be applied to the particular circumstances there may simply be no applicable remedy or relief. Even though there are many potential remedies for workplace abuse, not all are suitable or applicable to every factual scenario. As such, the available remedies (or rather the lack of them) may have the potential to silence targets. For example, seeking remedy by way of an anti-bullying order under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (the FW Act) is restricted to those who are covered by the national regime; still employed by the relevant organisation; subjected to ‘repeated’ acts of bullying; and who have complied with the necessary procedural requirements to gain access to the jurisdiction (Ballard and Easteal 2016a). While workers may take the preliminary step of making an anti-bullying application, they often fail to follow-through with their application, despite repeated contacted attempts by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) (Ballard and Easteal 2016a),—effectively they are ‘self-silenced’. Furthermore, inaction (and silence) under this and other legal regimens may have economic or financial correlations. Private lawyers are not always affordable and legal aid/community legal service lawyers are not necessarily available to assist with employment disputes. Discontinuing or failing to persist with an application may therefore be linked to the inability of targets to obtain legal assistance or to targets’ learning that parties to relevant actions under the FW Act (e.g., applications for anti-bullying orders or remedy for unfair dismissal, breach of the general protections, or unlawful termination) are generally required to cover their own costs, including legal fees. In addition, there is no jurisdiction for the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to award financial compensation in respect of anti-bullying applications.19 And, it is little known, even within Australia’s legal community, that financial settlements and employment separation are sometimes negotiated in the context of anti-bullying applications.20 19 This is not to say though that within the confines of a confidential mediation or conciliation, such deals are not done. 20 In the legal practitioner author’s experience. See also, (Hamberger and Dean 2018). Laws 2018, 7, 35 8 of 17 With respect to the unfair dismissal regime, only those targets who have worked for the employer for the requisite period of time and who meet other criteria, such as award coverage or income threshold, are eligible to make an unfair dismissal application.21 There are similar barriers with respect to the other available causes of action under the FW Act and also in respect of evidentiary requirements. For example, targets of workplace bullying, like complainants of other types of adverse action, including unlawful discrimination, may have difficulty establishing they were subject to unlawful conduct (Allen 2009). Where the complainant bears the onus of proof (as they typically do under Australian anti-discrimination law), they may not have ready access to the evidence needed to discharge this burden.22 Inability to obtain such evidence may be due to the employer blocking access to the workplace or to work emails and other relevant documentation. ADR and Silencing Like workplace investigations, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has the potential to silence targets and to undermine attempts to resolve workplace bullying and provide satisfactory redress. ADR may also conceal potential future and ongoing harm to the target, including by denying them later redress (apart from those areas that cannot be ‘contracted out of’, even in a confidential settlement agreement).23 ADR’s limitations are important to acknowledge as most employment disputes typically involve some type of ADR process. As reported by the Commonwealth Attorney General: . . . not everyone with a dispute goes to court . . . [there are] other, less formal pathways that are used every day to resolve disputes. Most people resolve their disputes themselves. Others seek assistance from an independent third person or body . . . There are many ways to resolve disputes outside of the courts . . . 24 Worker concerns in respect of ADR in the context of bullying matters include: Unequal bargaining power in negotiating settlement; concerns about mediator impartiality; insufficient opportunity to be heard and/or for fact-finding; and unjust outcomes (Ballard and Easteal 2016b). Even with ‘settled’ matters (which non-parties might equate with a successful process and outcome), some targets express dissatisfaction with both process and outcome, sometimes believing there were unintended benefits for the perpetrators. Targets may feel anger, betrayal, and frustration at the process by the requirement to sign confidential deeds of release or ‘gag orders’, which prevent them from discussing what happened, or the way in which the dispute was finally resolved (Sourdin 2010). We suggest that aligned with this is a silence, which may be said to compromise the rule of law—open and transparent justice, and precedent-setting. 5. Ways of Allowing More Voice Standard operating procedures, behavioural norms, values, rules of conduct, taboos, key personalities, and the daily climate or civility of an organisation are each relevant in creating positive cultures (Harvey et al. 2006, pp. 5–6). As Lachman et al. observe though, no one solution exists for the complex social problem of negative human interaction within an organisational culture.25 An ethical culture requires leaders to have the moral courage to address disruptive behaviour, regardless of who is violating the desired code of conduct.26 21 Section 382 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). 22 Note that in general protections matters, there is typically a reverse onus of proof. 23 In Australia, these generally includes the right to make a worker’s compensation claim and to pursue statutory superannuation entitlements. 24 (Australian Government, Attorney-General’s Department 2012, p. 2). 25 (Lachman 2014, p. 57; Harvey et al. 2006; ibid, p. 8). 26 (Lachman 2014; ibid, p. 58). Laws 2018, 7, 35 9 of 17 The role of senior managers in leading the [cultural] change process cannot be over-emphasised. Leading by example is key if employees are going to change their own behaviour. (Suff and Streber 2006, p. 27) Therefore, organisations should be recruiting (protecting and retaining) individuals who are ‘citizens of the firm’—those who are optimistic, innovative, change agents who can safely and effectively guide other employees through technological change and organisation restructuring (Harvey et al. 2006, p. 2); these are times, which typically present a greater risk of workplace bullying (Liefooghe and Mac Davey 2001, p. 376). 5.1. Changing Workplace Practices In addition to addressing any deficiencies in leadership, organisations also need to address deficiencies in work design and organisational morality—where the substandard treatment of individuals is tolerated (or perhaps worse, expected) (Liefooghe and Mac Davey 2001, p. 376; Harvey et al. 2006, pp. 43, 6). One way of increasing the awareness of any organisational problem is to encourage the reporting of complaints. Such a reporting process must be formal, non-judgemental (Harvey et al. 2006, p. 8); supportive, fair, just, respectful, ethical, and available to both targets and witnesses. Organisations must also be prepared to support targets (and alleged perpetrators) before, during and after bullying events, including by providing programs that demonstrate their options in response to bullying, and with review mechanisms that can be used without fear of retaliation (Harvey et al. 2006, p. 9). Support also needs to be provided to alleged perpetrators (and others) including through additional training, awareness-raising, coaching, and counselling (Harvey et al. 2006, p. 8). Should these measures fail, putting appropriate mechanisms in place to terminate chronic bullies from the organisations may be necessary (Harvey et al. 2006, p. 8). Investing in employee and managerial capacity to deal with relationship issues where they may lead to behavioural problems at work will help provide both workers and management with the resources they need to tackle the problem (Harvey et al. 2006, p. 8). Doing so can enhance commitment and loyalty to the organisation [emphasis added]: A senior manager (who was the subject of multiple complaints from staff) once told me that in his 25 years of working for the organization[sic], the coaching he received as a result of the complaints that had been made against him was the greatest thing the organization [sic] had ever done for him—it had completely changed the way he managed and communicated with his staff. He felt as though the organization[sic] had invested in him. (Harvey et al. 2006, p. 8) Borgald and Theixos argue that empathy can be taught and learned, ergo empathy training is a ‘better (more just, more inclusive, and likely more beneficial) response to bullying’ (Borgwald and Theixos 2013, pp. 154, 156). (Alleged) perpetrators (like (alleged) targets) experience anxiety consequent to the possible rejection by their community and so a process of ‘inclusion allows perpetrators to experience increased desires to perceive themselves as acceptable people’ (Borgwald and Theixos 2013, p. 154). 5.2. Changing Workplace Policies Implementing appropriate workplace policies (and following them) could contribute to better workplace cultures. A ‘dignity at work’ policy for example, may be a first step in deterring aberrant behaviour, such as bullying and harassment, and dealing with specific incidents of bad conduct. For a policy to be effective it needs to ‘promote the positive behaviours that can encourage a culture of dignity and respect at work’ (Suff and Streber 2006, p. 27). Sound workplace policies (clear statements of the standards of behaviour expected by the organisation) can help to tackle bullying through Laws 2018, 7, 35 10 of 17 prevention, and so employers are advised ‘to develop workplace bullying policies that articulate commitments to promoting a workplace that does not tolerate bullying’.27 Merely introducing a bullying/harassment policy though is not enough to eliminate inappropriate behaviour; ‘an organisation’s approach needs to be integrated within the range of its people processes and systems in order to be effective’ (Suff and Streber 2006, p. 27). And there are counter arguments to zero-tolerance approaches. Some see such policies as potentially intrusive, punitive, counter-productive, ineffective in reducing bullying and violence, possibly leading to a surge in covert bullying, and possibly harming both targets and perpetrators.28 Further, naming behaviours as ‘bullying’ may deflect an organisation’s legal responsibility for a safe and equitable environment onto an individual or a group of individuals, blaming them and making liable for the unlawful conduct.29 5.3. Improving Workplace Investigations Investigative processes can be expensive, time-consuming, traumatic and disruptive to the workplace (Condon 2018, p. 2). While they may sometimes be a necessary component of the solution, and can indicate the root cause, they are not the answer to resolving workplace issues or changing challenging workplace behaviour, particularly those that are relationship-based (Condon 2018, p. 2). As Condon observes: There is no one magic formula for dealing with workplace issues but restorative or remedial approaches support a practical approach and give staff an element of control in the process and, more importantly, the solution to the issue. Some of the things we encourage work areas to try are empowering staff or managers to address the issues themselves or a more structured intervention, like a facilitated discussion, mediation or coaching. Sometimes it is necessary to work with the broader team dynamics or culture. (Condon 2018, p. 2) The aims of an investigation/misconduct process should be to identify and correct poor behaviour, develop positive working relationships, resolve conflict at the lowest possible level and only escalate to a misconduct process when necessary (that is when the behaviour is serious, repeated or continued, or there is a serious power imbalance between the parties) (Condon 2018, pp. 2–3). If I had a dollar for every time a HR area told me, ‘Well we tried to do mediation but one of the parties (usually the complainant) wasn’t open to it, so now we’re going to refer it for investigation’. How is that fair on the employee who was prepared to work on ways to fix the issue? . . . At the moment, on occasion we allow people to inappropriately use or hijack the misconduct or discipline process rather than be personally accountable for their relationships and behaviour in the workplace. Where relationship deterioration between staff is the root cause of behavioural problems, punitive processes are not going to resolve the issues and could, in fact, have the opposite effect. (Condon 2018, p. 3) 5.4. Improving the Anti-Bullying Regime It does appear that the FWC is taking a steady, incremental, and even-handed approach to the development and oversight of the anti-bullying jurisdiction. As evidenced by its track record with respect to other types of applications, which may also involve workplace bullying (for example, unfair dismissals and general protections matters), the FWC has also been able to resolve the majority of anti-bullying applications matters without proceeding to hearing. 27 (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment 2012, pp. 57, 70). 28 (Borgwald and Theixos 2013, pp. 149–50, 153; Stein 2003, p. 787). For instance, including because of the impact of the ‘bully label’ which creates a whole new category of stigmatised ‘other’: The bully. 29 (Stein 2003; ibid, p. 789). Laws 2018, 7, 35 11 of 17 While the jurisdiction has not elicited the flood of applications that were anticipated at the outset, generally receiving only around 700 applications each year, it must be said that the FWC has efficiently handled those matters that did come its way. The Applicant in the first order made under in the jurisdiction: Applicant v Respondent (AB2014/1052); applied to the FWC to revoke its earlier order just before Christmas in 2014. She wrote: Since our last meeting there has been a negligible amount of conflict between A and myself, and I have felt comfortable approaching my supervisor, B, with any concerns that I have. The past year of intervention from Fair Work has been very positive and helpful and I am very grateful for the support that has been given to me by Senior Deputy President Drake. I think that the New Year is an appropriate time to lift the orders and that it is in the best interest of everyone involved to do so.30 It is likely that more bullying matters might be resolved if the parties engaged constructively with the process rather than seeking to obstruct it through various tactics, such as stalling or making jurisdictional and other objections to the process. If the parties did engage positively (in keeping with the way the regime clearly intends that they do) the ultimate possibility that the FWC might make an anti-bullying order could be short-circuited early in proceedings.31 This would increase the likelihood of improved and ongoing working relationships. The employee’s ‘reasonable belief’ that he or she has been bullied (whether or not the employer shares this view and whether or not this view is true or well-founded) could be acknowledged by the respondent employer and addressed. Mediations (if held) and preliminary conferences could be better utilised by the parties to try and resolve the issue and seek an agreed way forward without the FWC needing to proceed to hearing, determination and possibly an order (with the accompanying publicity). The jurisdiction is designed to resolve matters expeditiously so as to preserve the working relationships between the parties without having to proceed to the ‘last resort’: Issuing an anti-bullying order. While the paucity of orders issued since 2014 might be seen by some as evidence of a deficiency, it could also be characterised as a marker of success. In other words, the regime is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The FWC manages applications expeditiously with the goal of keeping the targets of bullying employed and at work; resolving the bullying without needing to use its iron fist to crack down and issue orders. Where relationships have irretrievably broken down, and the employment comes to an end as a consequence, targets have other causes of action available to them. Where money does change hands in the context of a confidential anti-bullying ADR process and settlement, it would not be expected that the target would then return to work; rather any offer of payment would generally be made in the context of the worker agreeing to resign their employment. This is inconsistent with the anti-bullying jurisdiction’s stated goals of keeping the worker at worker. 5.5. Improving ADR Concerns about just outcomes in respect of bullying and harassment complaints subject to an ADR process were raised in Ballard and Easteal’s work, which concluded that better outcomes are possible: The idea of success is broadened where targets feel that they have been given voice and achieved a measure of justice. This prospect seems enhanced by legal representation helping to balance a landscape skewed by power imbalances, by the psychological and physical effects of bullying, and by the target’s perception of mediator bias. (Ballard and Easteal 2016b, p. 109) 30 Applicant [2014] FWC 9184. On 16 December 2014 the FWC, in response to the Applicant’s submission, revoked its orders of 10 September 2014. 31 Of course, as in other matters, the mediation of bullying disputes will not be appropriate in all cases, and the compulsory mediation of anti-bullying disputes may be problematic for many targets. Laws 2018, 7, 35 12 of 17 Another issue with ADR mentioned earlier is the confidentiality and non-disclosure nature of the settlement agreements. These might be obviated by legislative reform. For example, in the US, Arizona has legislation pending that would void non-disclosure agreements targets that ensure their silence. (Zacharek et al. 2017). We note that pro-employer advocates might argue that this would discourage settlement because employers would not want to pay money to targets if they could not do so under a veil of secrecy. However, where a matter does proceed to hearing and is determined, the monetary awards are publicly available. Similar public disclosure of agreements reached through ADR would alleviate some of the concerns around lack of transparency and precedent, but could also be a catalyst to those organisations that have been ‘caught with their pants down’ to do something constructive about the conduct, which led to the proceedings under the spotlight. 5.6. Legislative Protection from Retaliation Brake argues that legal scholarship has paid insufficient attention to ‘the ways people are punished for challenging inequality and the law’s response to these challenges’ (Brake 2005, p. 19). and that addressing retaliation is typically only regarded as an afterthought and as a relatively small part of the overall scheme for enforcing substantive legal protections (Brake 2005, p. 19). Legislative recognition of the act of retaliation itself, as a form of discrimination, would push the boundaries of the ‘dominant understandings of discrimination in useful and productive ways’ (Brake 2005, p. 21–22). Under this proposal, the target/s of retaliation claimant need not establish that she was treated worse because she was a woman, because he was homosexual, or because of being Muslim, rather the argument would be that the targets were penalised for challenging sexist practices, sexual orientation or religious bias (Brake 2005, p. 21–22). In Australia there are a number of legislative protections against victimisation or retaliation, including at Sections 104–6 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth),32 section 10 of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth), Sections 340–42 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), and section 50 of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW). In order to be successful in a victimisation complaint under the anti-discrimination law in NSW, a person must be able to establish some detriment that breaches the legislation. The benefits of such protective provisions are highlighted by James v Department of Justice, Corrective Services NSW [2017] NSWCATAD 238, a case heard in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT). Ms James made a complaint of bullying and sexual harassment (assault) in employment against a senior manager and was subsequently transferred, allegedly for ‘safety’ reasons, to another workplace for the duration of the investigation into her allegations. When the investigation concluded that the allegations were not substantiated, Ms James was not returned to her original workplace. She then made a further complaint to the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW alleging that her treatment ‘during and after the investigation, in being relocated to a different workplace and not returned, was detrimental conduct amounting to victimisation’ (Mattson 2017). When the matter did not settle at conciliation, Ms James asked that it be referred to the NCAT. The tribunal determined, on the balance of probabilities, that Ms James was not returned to her workplace because of the complaint and therefore that she had been victimised, noting that no intent to victimise was needed. She was awarded $20,000 in general damages in view of her diminished workplace status, loss of career enjoyment and quality of life, lost chances for promotion, and ongoing and significant distress.33 32 These provisions proscribes prohibited conduct for a discriminatory reason, for example terminating a complainant’s employment because they raised or proposed to raise an issue or concern about work health and safety. 33 (Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW 2017). Laws 2018, 7, 35 13 of 17 6. Practical Tips for Targets Any form of workplace violence can be a difficult and traumatic experience for the target of that abuse. If a worker suspects they are experiencing bullying and/or harassment, in the first instance they should obtain further information about the sort of conduct that does (and does not) constitute bullying.34 They should also review any applicable enterprise agreement, employment contract, or workplace bullying policy to see what steps if any are prescribed for them to follow (Safe Work Australia 2018). Additionally, it is helpful to discuss any concerns about workplace conduct with their general practitioner at the earliest opportunity, and, where appropriate to seek referral to a psychologist for counselling. Many Australian employers also have Employee Assistance Programs that provide free access to counselling support and related services for workers who are experiencing difficulties at work and/or outside of work. In addition, organisations, such as Lifeline or Beyond Blue, can provide assistance to targets of workplace bullying and harassment (Safe Work Australia 2018). It is useful for targets to document all relevant incidents by date, keeping a diary or record of what happened and any witnesses (Australian Human Rights Commission 2011). Developing a chronology of events may also be helpful (NSW Government Justice Law Access n.d.), as may keeping copies of any relevant work emails or other documents which evidence the bullying conduct. Targets should also consider discussing the situation with their union representative and/or a lawyer or another trusted individual at any early stage for both legal and psychological support. As a general rule, the sooner the offending behaviour is addressed, the more likely it is that harm and long term adverse consequences can be minimised.35 As Caponecchia and Wyatt observe: Addressing a report of alleged workplace bullying early will hopefully result in less formal procedures being undertaken, which can minimise the impact of the situation on all parties. (Caponecchia and Wyatt 2011, p. 111) 7. Conclusions As we have seen, complaints may be silenced in many ways at different points in the workplace violence/abuse to resolution process. In different ways and to differing extents these silencing mechanisms contribute to the gap between the claimed prevalence of the abuse and the number of cases formally disposed of by a court or tribunal. Targets are the most researched component within the bullying scenario (Rayner 1999; Beale and Hoel 2010). The predominant individualised focus has, in turn, influenced the mechanisms which organisations have used to counter workplace bullying, often through (post-occurrence) interventions rather than by preventative approaches (Berlingieri 2015, p. 342), such as changing the workplace culture. Valid and reliable methods to assess the (true) extent and nature of workplace bullying are important for developing and implementing effective intervention strategies to prevent workplace bullying, and also to influence legal and policy-related issues (Nielsen et al. 2010, p. 956); yet there has been little consistency in approach.36 This is an issue which governments, organisations, and employers need to consider seriously to address the problem, by nipping it in the bud (Nielsen et al. 2010, p. 967). Targets cannot complain about abuse if they do not perceive a problem. Therefore, the education of workers and organisations about what bullying is (and is not) and appropriate ways to seek redress is crucial, as is the development of organisational cultures, practices and processes which eliminate 34 See for example, (Interagency Roundtable on Workplace Bullying 2005). 35 This observation is based on the legal practitioner author’s experience but is also supported by the approach underpinning Australia’s anti-bullying jurisdiction. 36 See for example, (Purpora et al. 2012, p. 306), where the authors note that ‘horizontal violence’ has been defined and measured differently across different studies. Laws 2018, 7, 35 14 of 17 the occurrence of bullying in the first place. As Peterson observed, it is better to render those in your care competent rather than to protect them (Peterson 2018, p. 47). This is not about developing a zero tolerance approach, but rather facilitating ways for inappropriate conduct and misconduct to be identified and dealt with in a way which both minimises harm and undercuts those great facilitators of employee/worker silence: Fear of retribution, retaliation and revenge. To this end perhaps we should take up Brake’s suggestion and legislate to make ‘retaliation’ itself a protected attribute, rather than simply, a cause of action that only comes into play when targets have first exercised their statutory rights to make a formal complaint about some form of adverse unlawful workplace conduct (e.g., sexual harassment or discrimination). Author Contributions: A.JB. is the principal author. Both authors contributed intellectually to the conceptualisation and the writing of the article. Funding: No external funding was provided in respect of this research. 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Arizona Law Review 45: 783–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2011.0977 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13594320143000762 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:ERRJ.0000038648.08568.46 http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/096317909X481256 http://www.lawaccess.nsw.gov.au/Pages/representing/lawassist_employmentrights/lawassist_unfairdismissal/lawassist_goingtofwa_unfairdismissal/lawassist_conciliation_unfairdismissal/lawassist_howtowriteachronology_unfairdismissal.aspx http://www.lawaccess.nsw.gov.au/Pages/representing/lawassist_employmentrights/lawassist_unfairdismissal/lawassist_goingtofwa_unfairdismissal/lawassist_conciliation_unfairdismissal/lawassist_howtowriteachronology_unfairdismissal.aspx http://www.lawaccess.nsw.gov.au/Pages/representing/lawassist_employmentrights/lawassist_unfairdismissal/lawassist_goingtofwa_unfairdismissal/lawassist_conciliation_unfairdismissal/lawassist_howtowriteachronology_unfairdismissal.aspx http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2012.01.001 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23006653 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01437729910268614 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.68.3.429 https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/bullying http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726713516375 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0010880406294542 Laws 2018, 7, 35 17 of 17 Suff, Paul, and Marie Streber. 2006. 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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2013/07/On-line-Catalogue216953.pdf https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2013/07/On-line-Catalogue216953.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17465640911002536 http://www.ohsrep.org.au/faqs/ohs-reps-@-work-faqs-for-workers-/workers-and-medical-appointments http://www.ohsrep.org.au/faqs/ohs-reps-@-work-faqs-for-workers-/workers-and-medical-appointments http://www.workplacebullying.org/npost/ http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/ http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/ http://creativecommons.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Introduction Stage 1—Something Happens Silence Due to Naming/Definitional Issues The Silence of Ignorance and Incapacity Stage 2—Breaking the Silence in the Workplace Workplace Investigations Silence Due to Insurers Stage 3—Silence of Legal Pathways Ways of Allowing More Voice Changing Workplace Practices Changing Workplace Policies Improving Workplace Investigations Improving the Anti-Bullying Regime Improving ADR Legislative Protection from Retaliation Practical Tips for Targets Conclusions References work_36l725fm3fcbzcukplbfpz6yvm ---- Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community This article provides an overview of the ways in which the members of the Association of University Presses are working towards more inclusive practices in scholarly publishing. The authors consider the Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program (now in its fourth year), the work of the Association’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, the Gender, Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force and the new Equity, Justice and Inclusion Committee. They also look at press-based working groups and several ‘Toolkits for Equity’ that are currently in development. The volunteers engaged in these and other efforts are working to document how bias has shaped universities and university presses, to propose actions to disrupt this powerful force and to share what they have learned with their colleagues as well as with the larger scholarly publishing and academic communities. Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community Keywords Diversity; inclusion; equity; bias; university press; scholarly publishing The Association of University Presses (AUPresses, or ‘the Association’), founded in 1937, today represents a global community of more than 150 mission-driven scholarly publishers dedicated to the advancement of knowledge. Each university press brings a distinctive vision to its work. Yet we all are guided by, and united in, core values – integrity, diversity, stewardship and intellectual freedom – that define who we are, the work we do and the goals to which we aspire. AUPresses have taken recent steps to explore and advance our core value of diversity, with a goal of empowering inclusion, equity and, ultimately, justice. Bias is at the heart of many of the persistent inequalities we see across organizations, even progressive, well-intentioned Insights – 33, 2020 Towards inclusivity: developments in the UP community | Niccole Leilanionapae’aina Coggins, et al. NICCOLE LEILANIONAPAE’AINA COGGINS Editorial, Design and Production Co-ordinator and Assistant Project Editor University of Virginia Press GISELA CONCEPCIÓN FOSADO Editorial Director Duke University Press CHRISTIE HENRY Director Princeton University Press GITA MANAKTALA Editorial Director MIT Press 2 places like universities and university presses, so introspection and honest assessment of our practices, the interests they serve and the people and perspectives they exclude are essential components of this project. Armed with baseline information and critique as well as with continuing vigilance, we as leaders and colleagues can understand the scope of the problem and move to creatively disrupt the individual, structural and organizational barriers to equitable decision-making, power-sharing and community-building. We believe that this necessary work will contribute not only to our individual lives, workplaces and publications, but also to the network of stakeholders – the global knowledge ecosystem – that we as university presses serve. Beginnings The Association’s first diversity-conscious initiatives focused, not surprisingly, on recruitment, development and retention of early-career professionals in the scholarly publishing field, seeking to help our member presses diversify their staff. Its annual reports from the early 1990s mention the ways that the Association encouraged ‘equal opportunity’ and ’worked actively to promote the hiring of minorities and women for positions of responsibility in scholarly publishing’; this included securing and administering multi-year grants from the Metropolitan Life Foundation to fund summer publishing institute fellowships and from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support interns. Attendance by individuals who identify as a member of an under- represented group at our own Annual Meeting has also been supported by a longstanding ’Diversity Grant’ program. Every year since 2015 a mentorship program supported by our Professional Development Committee has linked those new to the profession with mid- and senior-level colleagues as all attend the Annual Meeting. Nearly 250 individuals have been matched with mentors in various departments at presses of different sizes and scopes since this program began. While not explicitly a diversity program, the mentorship matching recognizes the need to build professional relationships; when applying to the program, participants can request a match with mentors from a specific group, demographic or community. Mentors and mentees are introduced via e-mail prior to the meeting and pairs determine the amount of interaction prior to, during and after the meeting. Mentors advise mentees on getting the most value from the conference, introduce them to colleagues and discuss their career goals. Mentees are encouraged to talk with mentors about workplace challenges and opportunities. Last summer this program expanded to match virtual mentoring pairs of interested participants not able to attend the Annual Meeting. Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program Our community’s most recent effort to increase the recruitment and retention of those currently under-represented in publishing is the Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program, led by the University of Washington Press. In 2016 Washington, along with the MIT Press, Duke University Press and the University of Georgia Press, received US$682,000 from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation to create a three-year program offering year-long acquisitions editorial apprenticeships to individuals with sustained personal engagement with low-income communities and/or communities within the US that are under-represented in publishing. Staff at partner presses have learned from and applied the fellows’ perspectives and input and they have provided fellows not only with introductory experiences in scholarly publishing, but also with focused career and job-seeking advice and professional development opportunities, including attendance at the Association’s Annual Meetings at the beginning and end of the fellowship. Program organizers and Association leadership have worked to introduce members of each cohort ‘worked actively to promote the hiring of minorities and women for positions of responsibility in scholarly publishing’ ‘introspection and honest assessment of our practices … are essential components of this project’ 3 to the wider university press community through listservs and conferences, increasing their visibility to potential employers. The outcome so far of the program has been positive but also highlights where challenges of equity and inclusion remain. Ten of the 12 fellows of the first three grant cohorts received full-time job offers from around the community and nine accepted. However, two have since left their positions at university presses. The program won renewed support from the Mellon Foundation in 2018 with US$1,205,000 to expand to six university presses for another three annual cycles. Editorial fellowships are currently offered at the University of Washington Press, the MIT Press, Cornell University Press, the Ohio State University Press, the University of Chicago Press and Northwestern University Press. The duration of fellowships has expanded from 12 to 14 months to allow fellows’ terms to overlap. The second cycle of the fellowship is also attempting to apply early lessons to questions of longer-term retention. Together the two grant cycles will provide for a total of 30 fellows. Participating in the fellowship program has also encouraged host presses to confront diversity and equity challenges in their overall practices. Individual presses have noted a number of changes made since joining the program, including: • overhauling internship programs and creating new, more equitable entry-level opportunities, including paying interns and looking to less traditional recruitment channels when posting jobs • being more aware of the limitations of institutional employment screening processes, which sometimes filter out highly qualified entry- level applicants with valuable non-publishing experience in favor of those with publishing experience (which our members of staff already have) • incorporating considerations of diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the hiring process by improving interview practices, including regularly asking all candidates about their experiences with diverse communities or how they work towards equity and inclusion in their interactions with peers and colleagues • establishing working groups focused on equity and inclusion to create space for staff discussions and activities. The existence of these internal networks, particularly when supported by leadership, can be an important signal of a press’s commitment, willingness to examine all procedures with regard to equity and inclusion, and support for those who experience aggression or exclusion at work • increasing scrutiny of author and peer reviewer networks and faculty board rosters to ensure that a diversity of perspectives, resulting from lived experience as well as professional expertise, informs a press’s publishing decisions. Other opportunities to encourage inclusion and equity AUPresses has also collaborated with other scholarly publishing groups to encourage inclusive practices. The Association was one of the ten co- founders – along with the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) and UKSG – of the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) in 2016 and adopted the C4DISC Joint Statement of Principles in 2017.1 AUPresses continues to be centrally engaged with the C4DISC research and governance objectives. AUPresses’ recent Annual Meetings and webinars have been designed with greater inclusivity in mind as well. Recent conference keynoters have included publisher ‘the fellowship program has also encouraged host presses to confront diversity and equity challenges’ ‘recent Annual Meetings and webinars have been designed with greater inclusivity in mind’ 4 Chris Jackson in 2016;2 scholar Safiya Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression, in 2018; and Desiree Cooper, community activist and author of Know the Mother, in 2019. AUPresses webinars have considered relevant topics, such as Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives in spring 2018.3 Sessions at last summer’s Annual Meeting also included such topics as ’Transforming Scholarly Publishing Through an Equity and Anti-Racism Framework’,4 ‘Making the Invisible Visible: Creating New Career Paths for Experienced People of Color’, ‘Creating and Using Accessible Scholarly Ebooks: Tips from Those in the Trenches’5 and ‘Peer Review, Diversity and Inclusion’ in addition to two interactive collaboration labs, one on building and sustaining cultures of gender equity and inclusion and the other on the future of diversity, equity and inclusion in internships. With help from SSP, Association leadership also recently updated the code of conduct for the Association’s Annual Meeting6 along with better defined procedures for handling infractions. Diversity and Inclusion Task Force Although many conversations around equity in scholarly publishing have conveyed a clear sense of the problem through personal experience and anecdote, the need for baseline data on which to build assessment was acute. The Association’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, formed in 2017, first moved to document and understand diversity and inclusion issues within our community by surveying AUPresses member directors about relevant perceptions, needs and efforts. Members of the task force, along with Association leadership, also worked with Lee and Low Books on the second iteration of their important Diversity Baseline Survey of the wider publishing industry in order to broaden the participation of university presses.7 The Diversity and Inclusion Task Force also gathered resources to share with AUPresses members. Among the ideas and samples inventoried by the Task Force in its 2018 report are: equity mission statements (e.g. University of North Carolina Press8), recruitment and job placement tools, information about mentorship programs and remote peer networks to assist with retention and support, and equity training resources. The Task Force also documented how several university presses have established cross- departmental working groups to support equity and inclusion initiatives, which may serve as models within the community. Staff members who participate in these groups have frequently worked with press and university human resources departments to reassess and improve hiring procedures, to refine internship programs and to identify and promote local or conference-based equity training resources to their press colleagues. Working group members have also encouraged colleagues’ awareness of relevant issues by hosting speakers and book-club-style discussions, organizing community volunteer projects and articulating ways to create and sustain a welcoming workplace. While similarities among these groups are apparent, each group also addresses challenges and opportunities unique to their presses, universities and home communities. For example, the Johns Hopkins University Press group reports that their efforts are ’intimately informed by the historic redlining and systemic racism that shapes Baltimore City’; the Duke University Press group has taken steps to increase intern- and employee- recruitment outreach to nearby historically black colleges and universities; and the Cambridge University Press group operates a global mentor program. By gathering and presenting these groups’ ideas, the AUPresses Diversity and Inclusion Task Force seeks to facilitate employee-led inclusivity work at other presses. The Task Force’s resource list is available publicly.9 ‘the need for baseline data on which to build assessment was acute’ 5 Equity, Justice and Inclusion Committee Diversity and inclusion work continue to be an organizational priority for the Association. Our Diversity and Inclusion Task Force transformed in 2019 into a standing Equity, Justice and Inclusion Committee, which continues to develop the resource list as well as an anti- racism statement drafted by the Task Force. The Committee is charged with: • developing networking and mentorship opportunities for member-press staff from under-represented backgrounds, in co-ordination with the Professional Development and Annual Meeting Program Committees • recommending professional development opportunities and tools throughout the year via Association discussion lists, in co-ordination with the Professional Development Committee • developing best practices for creating inclusive environments at Association-sponsored events. At the time of writing the Committee is organizing a Community Read for our 2020 Annual Meeting to foster thoughtful and collective reading and discussion of equity and inclusion. They have invited nominations of relevant university press books from the membership, aiming to select two titles. They also intend to host in-person discussions in June 2020 in Seattle and are working to determine how best to support press-based or virtual conversations – perhaps even local collaborations with university, library or bookstore partners – for those who cannot attend that meeting. Gender, Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force While the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force has investigated the challenges of racism and homogeneity in the AUPresses community, we have also sought to engage in similar self-assessment of the ways our community members experience gender bias, galvanized by the #MeToo movement. In 2018 the Association created the Gender, Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force with the charge of assessing the full range of gender-related issues facing the community and its individual members and recommending policies, programs and resources that increase gender-equity, confront hostility and foster respect. Situating their work intersectionally and within the larger AUPresses project on equity, this group began by aiming to document the nature of the on-the-job gender-based harassment and discrimination qualitatively and quantitatively, devising a community survey to collect data. A critical first step was the group’s decision to include all member press staff in this survey, making it possible to identify experiences of inequity and harassment that might not have been known by leadership. The Task Force also reviewed the Association’s two most recent biennial compensation surveys, which illuminated gender imbalances in pay equity as well as in certain leadership positions and also suggested further research is needed on gender parity in career advancements and compensation. The surveys led to recommendations for individual presses to conduct compensation analyses for gender parity, ideally by external audit or in partnership with their universities. The Task Force’s full report was distributed to the AUPresses membership in early 2020. Having identified challenges that are unique to university press publishing – including author ethics and how to confront bad behavior; conference attendance and staff in the field; gender balance among staff, authors, peer reviewers, faculty committees and in marketing materials – this Task Force has recommended that the Association draft a model code of conduct or position paper to articulate the Association’s values in this area. It also recommends the creation of a toolkit of resources to help members nurture cultures of ‘policies, programs and resources that increase gender- equity, confront hostility and foster respect’ ‘recommendations for individual presses to conduct compensation analyses for gender parity’ ‘Diversity and inclusion work continue to be an organizational priority for the Association’ 6 respect and to address gender-equity and sexual harassment issues which may fall outside the broad guidance issued by a member’s parent institution. Anecdotal evidence indicates that raised awareness is beginning to shape new organizational priorities. For example, the Task Force’s report has begun to inform individual directors’ efforts to create codes of conduct and salary reviews in support of equity at their presses and to implement more inclusive gender categories – among other important demographics – on author questionnaires and title management systems to better understand and document the composition of their lists. The Association has also responded to the report’s request for more managerial training, particularly at the director level, by organizing a training session on equity and inclusion for directors at its upcoming Annual Meeting. Much of the groundwork laid by this Task Force will be carried forward by the Equity, Justice and Inclusion Committee. Toolkits for Equity: transforming scholarly publishing communities  In the latter half of 2019 several university press staff members spear-headed the development of anti-racism tools for scholarly publishing professionals. This team, led by Niccole Coggins (University of Virginia Press), Jocelyn Dawson (Duke University Press), Melanie Dolecheck (SSP) and Gisela Fosado (Duke University Press), is modeling its work on three toolkits developed by the American Alliance of Museums’ LGBTQ + Alliance to address transgender inclusion.10 The team’s new Toolkits for Equity speak to three distinct audiences. The first toolkit aims to provide guidance to white co-workers on how to become allies, the second seeks to inspire leadership teams within organizations to foster inclusivity and the third undertakes to assist people of color who already work in scholarly publishing in successfully navigating ‘white- supermajority’ spaces. Once finalized, the Toolkits for Equity will be made freely available to the scholarly publishing community via the C4DISC website. Members of the team will speak about the project at several industry conferences throughout 2020 and will work with AUPresses, SSP, C4DISC and other professional organizations to encourage widespread personal and organizational use. Conclusion All of these committees, task forces and working groups depend on the time and commitment of members who have many other obligations. This is both a remarkable testament to the individuals and a signpost of an ongoing challenge. Similarly, within our institutions, equity and inclusion work is often seen as extra-curricular – something that must be done on one’s own time, over lunch hours or after hours. In addition, finding modes of collaboration that allow all voices to be heard, while conserving precious time and achieving measurable results, can be difficult. Collaboration tools – conferencing software, document-editing platforms and scheduling tools – have been helpful to our long-distance team work, but technology tools do not by themselves produce engagement or consensus. Our community needs to envision equity and inclusion as first-level organizational priorities, central to the work of developing and publishing high quality scholarship. Time spent to make our policies, practices and publications more inclusive should be valued appropriately through compensation or credit. Our Association’s leadership, member presses and their staff are only beginning to understand how bias – intentional and implicit – and historically derived power structures ‘Toolkits for Equity will be made freely available to the scholarly publishing community’ ‘Our community needs to envision equity and inclusion as first- level organizational priorities’ 7 have shaped our institutional environments and our own work. Led by the volunteers serving in groups and informed by the courageous witness of publishing professionals who have encountered bias, exclusion, harassment and discrimination, efforts to collect baseline data, to brainstorm solutions and to identify resources for action will help all to develop practices over the long term to support the work of inclusion in scholarly publishing, higher education and the entire knowledge industry. American activist Pauli Murray (1910–1985) remarked that ’true community is based on equality, mutuality and reciprocity. It affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together’. That community is what we in the Association strive to build together. Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge insights provided by Larin McLaughlin, editor-in-chief of the University of Washington Press, co-chair of the AUPresses Diversity and Inclusion Task Force and principal investigator for both Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program grants. Abbreviations and Acronyms A list of the abbreviations and acronyms used in this and other Insights articles can be accessed here – click on the URL below and then select the ‘full list of industry A&As’ link: http://www.uksg.org/publications#aa Competing Interests The authors have declared no competing interests. References 1. “Joint Statement of Principles,” Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications, https://c4disc.org/principles/ (accessed 11 March 2020). 2. Chris Jackson, “’Diversity in Publishing’ Doesn’t Exist—But Here’s How It Can,” LitHub (October 10, 2017). Essay adapted from talk given to the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses, June 2016, https://lithub.com/diversity-in-publishing-doesnt-exist-but-heres-how-it-can/ (accessed 11 March 2020). 3. “Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives,” AUPresses webinar (spring 2018), https://aupresses.adobeconnect.com/pljzror7jsr0/ (log-in page accessed 11 March 2020). 4. “Transforming Scholarly Publishing Through an Equity and Anti-Racism Framework,” AUPresses, Annual Meeting session (summer 2019), https://vimeo.com/348025381 (accessed 11 March 2020). 5. “Creating and Using Accessible Scholarly Ebooks: Tips from Those in the Trenches,” AUPresses, Annual Meeting session (summer 2019), https://vimeo.com/347608282 (accessed 11 March 2020). 6. Annual Meeting Code of Conduct, AUPresses (summer 2019), http://www.aupresses.org/events-a-conferences/annual-meeting/aupresses-2019/code-of-conduct (accessed 11 March 2020). 7. “The Diversity Baseline Survey,” Lee & Low Books, (2015 and 2019), https://www.leeandlow.com/about-us/the-diversity-baseline-survey (accessed 11 March 2020). 8. “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: UNC Press Commitment,” University of North Carolina Press, https://uncpress.org/diversity-equity-inclusion/ (accessed 11 March 2020). 9. “AUPresses Diversity and Inclusion Task Force Survey Summary and Resource List,” AUPresses, http://www.aupresses.org/images/stories/documents/AUPresses_Diversity_and_Inclusion_Task_Force_2017-2018_Survey_and_Resource_List.pdf (accessed 11 March 2020). 10. “Gender Transition and Transgender Inclusion in the Museum Workplace: A Toolkit for Trans Individuals, Institutions and Coworkers,” American Alliance of Museums, LGBTQ + Alliance, https://www.aam-us.org/professional-networks/lgbtq-alliance/resources/ (accessed 11 March 2020). http://www.uksg.org/publications#aa https://c4disc.org/principles/ https://lithub.com/diversity-in-publishing-doesnt-exist-but-heres-how-it-can/ https://aupresses.adobeconnect.com/pljzror7jsr0/ https://vimeo.com/348025381 https://vimeo.com/347608282 http://www.aupresses.org/events-a-conferences/annual-meeting/aupresses-2019/code-of-conduct https://www.leeandlow.com/about-us/the-diversity-baseline-survey https://uncpress.org/diversity-equity-inclusion/ http://www.aupresses.org/images/stories/documents/AUPresses_Diversity_and_Inclusion_Task_Force_2017-2018_Survey_and_Resource_List.pdf https://www.aam-us.org/professional-networks/lgbtq-alliance/resources/ 8 Article copyright: © 2020 Niccole Leilanionapae‘aina Coggins, Gisela Concepción Fosado, Christie Henry and Gita Manaktala. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use and distribution provided the original author and source are credited. Corresponding author: Christie Henry Director Princeton University Press and Chair Association of University Presses Gender, Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force, US E-mail: Christie_Henry@press.princeton.edu Co-authors who have ORCIDs: Niccole Leilanionapae‘aina Coggins ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5666-2255 Gisela Concepción Fosado ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0012-2214 To cite this article: Coggins N L, Fosado G C, Henry C and Manaktala G, “Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community”, Insights, 2020, 33: 15, 1–8; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.506 Submitted on 24 January 2020            Accepted on 20 March 2020            Published on 06 May 2020 Published by UKSG in association with Ubiquity Press. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ mailto:Christie_Henry@press.princeton.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5666-2255 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0012-2214 https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.506 http://www.uksg.org/ http://www.ubiquitypress.com/ Beginnings Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program Other opportunities to encourage inclusion and equity Diversity and Inclusion Task Force Equity, Justice and Inclusion Committee Gender, Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force Toolkits for Equity: transforming scholarly publishing communities  Conclusion Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Acronyms Competing Interests References work_3ayh6sxrkbgqfobznakmux2dju ---- Harassment in science is real A s the rallying cry against sexual harassment and bullying in many fields, including aca- demia, continues to grow, more and more victims are coming forward with their sto- ries, reflecting how this damaging culture has been the norm across sectors for decades. Studies of women in academia report that more than half have experienced harassment. This behavior has remained ob- scured for many reasons: fear, resignation, and accep- tance. The scientific com- munity must recognize the difficult conversations that have started and embrace this watershed moment as an opportunity for rapid and essential cultural change. In our own fields of geo- physical and environmen- tal sciences, in which teams of researchers travel to far corners of the planet, harassment has long been a reality. Huts atop frozen ice sheets, bunks on research ves- sels, and poster-strewn office halls have all hosted scenes of inexcusable behavior. Our own personal stories comprise more than three decades of scientific achievement, yet cultural change in our fields seems as slow as the glaciers we study. Senior scientists have touched us inappropriately and have repeatedly in- vaded our personal space. Many of our male colleagues believe harassment is a thing of the past, yet some of these events occurred in the last 2 years. We have re- mained silent, fearful of the ramifications. When we did speak up softly, we saw no consequences, no action, and no change. We have witnessed friends, employees, and colleagues suffer in a culture that looks the other way, labeling bullying and harassment as “antics” or disguis- ing them as rigorous scientific review. The consequences for the harassed, bullied, and as- saulted are real. Women and men affected by harass- ment struggle to get jobs, secure tenure, win research funding, get appropriate authorship on papers, and receive scientific recognition. Perpetrators gain power and prestige. Victims—often students and postdocs who wield little power—“choose” other paths. Since news of the sexual misconduct of film execu- tive Harvey Weinstein broke, the #MeToo movement de- nouncing harassment is alight across the sciences. People are speaking up and sharing stories that they have hid- den for decades. We know from our research that melt- water produced by a warming climate can make glaciers move faster. We know, too, that major social events can trigger rapid changes in communities. The recent high- profile harassment cases are an opportunity to change the basic ethical culture of science. Cultural change must occur at the individual, team, profes- sional society, and institutional levels. This year, the American Geophysical Union adopted a new ethics policy that defines bullying and harassment as scientific misconduct. The American Geosciences Insti- tute, which encompasses more than 50 scientific societies, is working to adopt a common statement to address harass- ment. As societies move for- ward, harassers will no longer be bestowed academic honors while victims sit quietly in the audience. Change must come to institutions where harassers retire or resign and go to new institutions to begin again. The greatest opportunity for cultural change rests with individual scientists, teams, and professional societies. Men and women need to lis- ten, speak up, and learn and teach about the prevalence of harassment. Field teams and laboratory groups must openly discuss the culture and develop codes of conduct and equality alongside safety protocols. Societies and institutions must provide training for scientists at all career stages—especially for senior scientists—on how to be ethical leaders and how to confront harassers. Sci- ence requires diverse, innovative thinkers to protect our global citizens, understand our home planet, and push us to the outer reaches of space. Efforts in three arenas— individuals working to understand the prevalence of harassment, teams developing a code of conduct, and societies providing training toward ethical leadership— have the potential to stimulate powerful change. –Robin E. Bell and Lora S. Koenig Harassment in science is real Robin E. Bell is a professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York, and is president-elect of the American Geophysical Union. robinb@ ldeo.columbia.edu Lora S. Koenig is a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado. lora.koenig@ colorado.edu 10.1126/science.aar6134 “…cultural change rests with individual scientists, teams, and professional societies.” C R E D IT S : (I N S E T ) C H R IS T IA N H A R T M A N N / R E U T E R S (T O P R IG H T ) C O U R T E S Y O F L A M O N T -D O H E R T Y E A R T H O B S E R V A T O R Y ; (B O T T O M R IG H T ) N A S A S C I E N C E sciencemag.org EDITORIAL 8 DECEMBER 2017 • VOL 358 ISSUE 6368 1 2 2 3 DA_1208Editorial.indd 1223 12/6/17 11:23 AM Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ Harassment in science is real Robin E. Bell and Lora S. Koenig DOI: 10.1126/science.aar6134 (6368), 1223.358Science ARTICLE TOOLS http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6368/1223 PERMISSIONS http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions Terms of ServiceUse of this article is subject to the is a registered trademark of AAAS.ScienceScience, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. The title (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published by the American Association for the Advancement ofScience Copyright © 2017, American Association for the Advancement of Science o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6368/1223 http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions http://www.sciencemag.org/about/terms-service http://science.sciencemag.org/ work_3clefxycprfw7nneoe6blzp5ka ---- “These Women are Making a Statement Against Rape and yet the only Thing Y'All can Focus on is ‘Eww They're Naked’”: Exploring Rape Culture on Facebook in South Africa Vol.:(0123456789) Gender Issues https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-020-09268-x 1 3 O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E “These Women are Making a Statement Against Rape and yet the only Thing Y’All can Focus on is ‘Eww They’re Naked’”: Exploring Rape Culture on Facebook in South Africa Zaida Orth1  · Michelle Andipatin1  · Brian van Wyk2 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract Sexual assault on campuses has been identified as a pervasive public health problem. In April 2016, students across South African universities launched the #Endrapecul- ture campaign to express their frustration against university policies which served to perpetuate a rape culture. The use of hashtag activism during the protest served to spark online public debates and mobilize support for the protests. This article describes the public reactions to the South African #Endrapeculture protests on the Facebook social media platform. Data was collected through natural observations of comment threads on news articles and public posts on the student protests, and subjected to content analysis. The findings suggest that the #nakedprotest was suc- cessful in initiating public conversations concerning the issue of rape culture. How- ever, the reactions towards the #nakedprotest were divided with some perpetuating a mainstream public discourse which perpetuates rape culture, and others (re)pre- senting a counter-public that challenged current dominant views about rape culture. Two related main themes emerged: Victim-blaming and Trivialising Rape Culture. Victim-blaming narratives emerged from the commenters and suggested that the protesters were increasing their chances of being sexually assaulted by marching topless. This discourse seems to perpetuate the notion of the aggressive male sex- ual desire and places the onus on women to protect themselves. Other comment- ers criticised the #nakedprotest method through demeaning comments which served to derail the conversation and trivialise the message behind the protest. The public reaction to the #nakedprotest demonstrated that rape culture is pervasive in soci- ety and continues to be re(produced) through discourse on social media platforms. However, social media also offers individuals the opportunity to draw from and par- ticipate in multiple counter-publics which challenge these mainstream rape culture discourses. Keywords Rape culture · Social media · Qualitative · Content analysis · Facebook comments · University protest Extended author information available on the last page of the article http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2895-0417 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1805-9361 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1032-1847 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s12147-020-09268-x&domain=pdf Gender Issues 1 3 Introduction Immortalised in Greek Mythology and pop culture alike, Medusa is recognised as a monstrous, snake-headed creature who preys on men of all ages. However, a lesser-known detail about the Gorgon is that the origin of her appearance is a result of her rape. Indeed, Medusa was once a beautiful woman who caught the attention of the sea god, Poseidon. Following her rejection, Poseidon attacked Medusa in the temple of Athena, where she was seeking refuge. Athena, who was angered at the desecration of her sacred temple, turned Medusa into the famed monster. This centuries-old myth represents themes of a rape culture, which is continuously perpetuated to this day. The term ‘rape culture’ was first conceptu- alised in 1975 by Susan Brownmiller in her book, Against our will, to describe a culture or pervasive ideology, in which sexual violence is the norm and victims are consequently blamed for their assaults [4, 21, 26, 40]. Drawing from social construction theory, researchers have determined that rape is perpetuated through the construction of rape culture [39]. That is, societal attitudes or behaviours towards gender and sexuality that normalise sexual violence, are constructed and reproduced in society through modelling and social learning [4, 21, 39, 40]. Rape culture promotes rape by socialising boys and men to be sexual aggressors, and girls and woman to be sexually passive [26]. Consequently, society has accepted that relationships involving male sexual aggression are natural and normal [40]. At the time of its release, Brownmiller’s book was credited with changing pub- lic perception and attitudes towards rape, which in turn influenced changes in American laws regarding rape [10]. Despite this influence, it seems that for the last few decades the concept of rape culture itself has remained within gender and feminist studies discourse. It is only more recently that we see discussions and critiques around rape culture entering the mainstream discourse. This is evident in the increase of global social media movements such as #TimesUp, #MeToo, and #MenAreTrash, which were formed as a way to draw attention to the preva- lence of sexual assault in various spheres of life and to critique societal norms which allow these acts to continue. The revival of the concept of rape culture in the public consciousness can be attributed to the growth of digital feminism and activism, which utilises social media technologies to develop counter-pub- lics, and in turn, allows users to initiate and engage in conversations about sexual violence that challenge and contradict established social and legal norms by cir- cumventing the gatekeepers of traditional media [35]. Various studies have shown that social media has the potential to be a significant tool of public education, engagement and activism. However, as with any new technological advancement, we need to understand the mechanisms which support and influence communica- tion phenomena and engagement on these platforms. According to Baym and Boyd [2], social media complicates the nature of pub- lic life as it mirrors, magnifies and complicates various aspects of everyday life, which allows people to critique and question practices that are presumed to be stable and to raise awareness about social issues. In other words, we find our- selves replicating real-world practices, behaviours and attitudes in our social 1 3 Gender Issues media spaces. However, in social media, the boundaries between presence and absence, time and space, freedom of speech and censoring, and private and public are blurred and reconstructed [2]. Therefore, to better understand online engage- ment and discourse concerning social problems such as rape culture, we must consider the role and functionality of the ‘public’ and ‘counter-publics’ that existed before the rise of these platforms. The term ‘counter-public’ was first coined by Felski (1989) and later refined by Fraser (1990) to critique Habermas’ (1989) notion of the ‘public sphere’ [38]. According to Habermas, the public sphere emerged during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when relatively well-off individuals gathered together as a group of private individuals to engage on matters of mutual and public concern and consequently served to mediate between the state and private individuals [7]. Cen- tral to Habermas’ ideal of the public sphere are the principles of universal inclusion and absolute equality among its members, both of which are necessary to ensure transparency and successful engagement in the public sphere. However, in reality, the public sphere was much less open and less equal than Habermas’ account sug- gests. According to Charles and Rohwer [7], access to the public was associated with the white, male middle-class, as people of colour, women, workers and other marginalised groups have historically been excluded from participation in these pub- lic spheres. Despite the exclusion of these groups, the ‘public’ maintained its claim of open and universal participation and in doing so perpetuated the idea that ‘public con- cerns’ reflected the interests of all rather than the ‘white, male, literate and prop- ertied’ subjects who made up the public [7]. Consequently, counter-publics were formed as alternative publics that served as a forum where those who were excluded from public participation could share their narratives and lived experiences and legitimize their counter-discourse by challenging mainstream publics to acknowl- edge and respond to these realities [7, 25]. For example, scholars have studied how the exclusion of women and African Americans from public engagements have led to the rise of the Feminist counter-public and the Black Public Sphere as alternative routes of public engagement and political influence [7, 25]. These counter-publics gained traction through various avenues such as the increased availability of feminist and/or African American journals, the establishment of organisations such as the Negro Women’s Club Movement, the development of feminist literary circles and organised activism [7]. However, the opposition of these counter-publics served as a threat to the values and ideals of the dominant mainstream public, and as a result, were stigmatized and deemed inferior as a way of discrediting the movements [7]. Therefore, we need to move away from narratives which describe the public as a space of equal access and participation, rather we must understand the public sphere as a desirable space of privilege and legitimacy. In contrast, the counter-publics rep- resent the Other, the deviation from the norm of society [7]. This point is crucial in understanding how societal problems affecting people of colour, women, members of the LGBT + community, migrants and many other groups continue to be invali- dated or dismissed in the public sphere. In the context of feminist activism, the ‘counter-public’ represents a plurality of intersecting spheres to account for specific discursive spaces and practices of Gender Issues 1 3 women’s experiences and knowledge which seek to infiltrate and dismantle dom- inant narratives within a patriarchal sphere [35, 38, 24]. Several studies illustrate how young people, feminists, and activists utilise social media to raise awareness, and hold perpetrators and those responsible for practices of rape culture account- able when mainstream media fails to do so [1, 18, 39]. Social scientists stressed the importance of investigating the presence and nature of rape culture on social media as this has become the standard of how many people acquire their news and view- points on cultural issues [35, 39, 40]. For example, the majority of young women in the United States report that they were first made aware of concepts such as “rape culture’ through social media platforms [35]. It is thus suggested that social media may serve as a pedagogical tool and a key resource for feminist education and activ- ist terminology. Indeed, studies have documented how young people in the global south have utilised social media as a tool of empowerment to disseminate informa- tion and mobilise support for social change [1, 22, 27]. However, there remains a dearth of research examining the phenomena of rape culture on social media plat- forms [40]. #Endrapeculture Protest in South Africa In April 2016, students from university campuses across South Africa precipitated protests and hashtag campaigns such as #endrapeculture, #nakedprotest, #endpatri- archy and #chapter212 (referring to the South African constitution which aims to protect the rights, safety and dignity of all students), to raise awareness of universi- ties’ policies relating to sexual assault and rape on campus, which were critiqued for perpetuating a rape culture [20]. The protests were a clear indication of students’ frustration with universities’ lack of addressing rape and sexual assault on campus and the various institutional policies which may inadvertently be contributing to the problem [19]. This problem is not unique to South Africa, as campus administra- tions in other parts of the world are being criticised for the role they play in protect- ing the perpetrator and engaging in processes of victim-blaming [11, 23]. Through the use of the hashtag campaigns, the South African #endrapeculture student pro- tests reflected an online counter-public which served to attract attention, spark debates and mobilise support for the rape culture protests. Additionally, by using these hashtags, the South African protests mirrored similar rape culture protests that occurred in other universities across the globe, thereby strengthening the reach and scope of these counter-publics [18, 35, 40]. The current study explored rape culture discourse that emerged from the social media debates regarding the South African #endrapeculture protests. According to Zalenski et  al., the communication that occurs within social media platforms can either reinforce or challenge the dominant socially constructed view of rape culture [40]. From a postmodern feminist framework, it can be argued that social media can perpetuate the hegemonic language and power found within a patriarchal soci- ety that undermines women and reinforces male sexual aggression [15]. Alterna- tively, social media can challenge the dominant narrative and bring new information to light that deconstructs the dominant ways of framing reality and its associated 1 3 Gender Issues binary categories. Various studies have shown that rape and sexual assault is a prevalent problem within university and college campuses [18, 33]. Exploring the comments relating to the #endrapeculture protests provides insights regarding a rape culture within this context. Understanding this discourse and exploring the way it emerged and was constructed on social media can provide information to inform educational efforts and interventions to address sexual assault and rape on campus. Additionally, it can provide insight into the potential and limits of social media as a tool to address these issues on campus [1, 40]. Methodology An exploratory design with a constructionist strategy of inquiry was used as this paradigm is centred on the assumption that meaning is constructed by humans as they engage in the world they interpret [5, 9]. This approach is aligned with the post- modern feminist framework used in this study, which involves challenging dominant knowledge claims, especially those that suggest a universal ‘truth’ exists which can be seen as ahistorical and stable [15]. Data Collection Natural observation was conducted on the comment section of Facebook posts relat- ing to the April 2016 #endrapeculture student protest. Facebook was chosen as a suitable site to conduct the natural observation of the comment section, as it is a popular social media site and the comments were available in the public domain. Considering that the posts were public; there was no need to request access to online communities, nor was there any need to request consent [34, 39, 40]. During the data collection phase, news stories and public posts relating to the 2016 #endrapeculture protests were searched for on Facebook using the hashtags: #RUReferenceList, #nakedprotest, #endrapeculture and #chapter212. Only public posts and articles that were posted during the #Endrapeculture and #nakedprotests (between 11 and 30 April), with a comment thread of 10 or more comments were included in the analysis [30, 40]. According to Lijadi and van Schalkwyk, Facebook posts that generate more than 10 comments indicate sufficient discussion and are suitable for observation [30]. Posts meeting the abovementioned criteria were cop- ied into a data sheet along with the comments. The data sheet indicated the type of post (i.e. personal, news report, video etc.), the date posted, the date accessed, the number of shares and reactions [34] and the number of comments. During the data cleaning phase, the comments were copied into a new document, formatted and de- identified by deleting the profile pictures, usernames and any other personal infor- mation of the commenters. None of the comments was translated as we tried to keep to the original text. During the de-identification process, we numbered each user and used the letter ‘M’ to designate male users and ‘F’ for female users (ex. User 1, F). Gender Issues 1 3 Data Analysis The data sheets were loaded onto Atlas ti and analysed through qualitative con- tent analysis. Content analysis describes a process of analysing written, verbal or visual communication messages [8, 14]. As a research method, content analysis is used as a systematic and objective means of describing and quantifying phenom- ena, with the purpose of making replicable and valid inferences from data, to pro- vide new insights and a guide for practical action [14]. A total of 590 comments were collected from eight Facebook posts in August 2017. The data analysis involved the construction of an unconstrained categorisa- tion matrix based on themes from previous studies. However, due to the scar- city of studies that specifically explored rape culture discourse on social media platforms, we also utilized information from other studies delineating the con- cept of rape culture to develop the categorisation matrix [1, 2, 4, 18, 33, 40]. The initial categories included victim-blaming, perpetrator support, survivor support, statements about the Law and society, and the presence of patriarchy. Using an unconstrained categorisation matrix allowed for inductive principles to filter through the analysis process, by viewing the categories in the matrix as fluid rather than fixed [8, 14]. This approach was more aligned with the postmodern feminist framework of this study, by recognising that current concepts and cat- egories of rape culture are not static nor universally true. Following the develop- ment of the matrix, the authors re-read the data to better understand the context and nature of the comments. The first round of coding in Atlas ti involved devel- oping conceptual codes to describe the data. Following this, codes were further refined and categorised using the matrix. Some of the codes that emerged as sig- nificant did not align with the initial codes in the unconstrained matrix. As such, some of the themes in the matrix were removed and new themes were added to the matrix to better reflect the data. The methodology of this study is described in further detail in another article [34]. Ethical Considerations Ethics approval was obtained from the University of the Western Cape’s Senate Research and Ethics committee. As this study involved collecting data on social media, ethical decision making surrounding this study was based upon the guide- lines proposed by The Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) [32], the Brit- ish Psychological Society’s (BPS) Inter-Mediated Research Document [3] and the Facebook privacy policy. With regards to the natural observation of the comment section of posts concerning the #Endrapeculture protests, the comments were already posted in a public domain and could be read and accessed by any person with a Facebook account. Furthermore, the Facebook privacy policy states that users can control who is able to view the information they post or share. When a Facebook user shares a status update or other form of media, they can use the 1 3 Gender Issues audience selector tool to determine if the post will be shared with friends or with the public [16]. Based on this, it is argued that the comments on the #endrape- culture posts are perceived in the public domain as they interacted with people in the comment section that were not their ‘Facebook friends’. As such, the natural observation of the comment section did not require consent, as the information was publically available. Findings The findings from the current study suggest that the #nakedprotest was successful in introducing the concept of rape culture to the mainstream public and eliciting discussion centred on the topic of rape culture in society. This can be seen in the type of posts (i.e. mainstream media such as radio and news pages reporting on the protest) and the quantity and context of the comments. Since we only included arti- cles that were posted during the time of the protest, we may have missed articles that were posted in the days after the protest. Additionally, Facebook functions according to a specific algorithm which could potentially have influenced the search results. However, based on the rich nature of the data, we find that the included comments were sufficient. A total of 590 comments from eight Facebook posts were collected and analysed (Table 1). Theoretical saturation was reached at this point, in which no new themes emerged from the data and comments began to seem repetitive [30, 40]. Based on the recommendations by Lijadi and van Schalkwyk it can be concluded that the #nakedprotest action was successful in generating sufficient discussion in relation to the posts [30]. Although little standardisation exists regarding how to draw inferences on the significance of the level of engagement per post through the number of posts and comments on Facebook, a similar study exploring the percep- tions of rape culture on a campus in the United States of America collected com- ment threads from posts made by two local news stations that had 87 and 940 com- ments, respectively [18]. Table 1 Summary of user engagement for each Facebook post analysed Posted by Type of post Number of comments Reactions Shares News page Post with a video link 239 597 609 Public entertainment page Feature article 123 2403 615 Radio page Public 83 90 0 Facebook user Public 50 151 135 Facebook user Public 48 46 6 News page Feature article 23 34 1 University entertainment page Anonymous post 13 71 1 Facebook user Public 11 214 7 Total 590 3606 1374 Gender Issues 1 3 The findings from this study suggest that the public reaction to the #nakedprotest was divided between mainstream public and counter-public discourses; with some of the commenters criticising the protesters and their method of protesting, and oth- ers showing their support of the campaign. Commenters who were against the pro- test were shown to perpetuate a rape culture discourse through attitudes related to victim-blaming and trivialising rape culture. On the other hand, some commenters supported the protest and in doing so formed an online counter-public, which served to challenge the dominant narratives that perpetuated rape culture. The following section will highlight the two themes of victim-blaming and trivialising rape culture in relation to these two opposing reactions. Victim‑Blaming Victim-blaming is functional, as it serves to uphold the power relations in society by absolving perpetrators from punishment and allowing individuals to socially distance themselves from victims of rape and sexual assault [31, 39]. Traditionally, when we hear the phrase "victim-blaming," it is usually related to the context of rape and sexual assault. Various studies have focused on exploring and measuring con- structs of victim-blaming as it relates to sexual assault specifically [12, 13, 29, 39, 40]. The findings suggest that some of the commenters perpetuated victim-blaming practices through comments directed at the #nakedprotesters. These narratives were often challenged by people who called out those commenters for victim-blaming. Perpetuating Victim‑Blaming User 4 (M) Some of the rapist were busy playing “my mother told me to choose that 1 but l want the best of them all" pointing so if any of them fine ones get raped don’t be astonished cause they asking for it User 3 (M) By exposing your body you are creating more rapists, my dear. Would rather demonstrate fully covered to stop any potential rapist. As it stands you are very inviting In the first comment, User 4 suggests that rapists observing the #nakedprotest- ers were planning on choosing their next victim from the protesters. He also sug- gests that by marching topless, the protesters are asking to be raped, therefore, they should not be surprised if it happens. The second comment suggests that the display of naked female bodies can create more rapists. On the other hand, protesting fully covered would be more effective to stop ‘potential rapists’. The comment further suggests that the protester’s naked bodies are an invitation. In previous studies, victim-blaming emerged in discussions centred on how believable the survivor’s accounts were [18, 39, 40]. In these studies, commenters would point out details surrounding the circumstances in which the assault occurred to portray the survivor as an unreliable storyteller that was somehow complicit in their assault (e.g. “she wanted it” or “no1 believes the slut who cried rape”) [39, 1 3 Gender Issues 40]. These studies focused on exploring a rape culture discourse that emerged on social media following a publicised event of sexual assault (ex. Bill Cosby case or the Steubenville rape trials). In these cases, the victim-blaming narrative is linear and easily recognised. However, the #Endrapecultre and #nakedprotests were not aimed at seeking justice for a specific victim(s) of sexual assault, rather they were trying to create awareness of the broader social mechanisms which allow rape to be perpetuated, specifically on university campuses. Therefore, it was surprising that victim-blaming emerged as such a dominant theme in our study. Both of the above comments suggest that woman being topless is seen as an invi- tation to be raped; thereby implying that the way a woman dresses can either bring occasion to or prevent sexual assault. This serves to reinforce the notion that women need to take responsibility to prevent themselves from becoming victims of sexual assault by dressing “appropriately” [31, 35]. Victim-blaming is an integral part of rape culture discourse as it relates to the normalisation of male sexual violence in society. This narrative suggests that we are taught that sexual violence and male sexual aggression is the norm [4, 21]. There- fore, women are expected to anticipate sexual violence against them and should sub- sequently enforce behaviours and actions to avoid such encounters. Essentially the argument follows that if women enter a situation where there is a strong chance they might be assaulted, they should avoid engaging in behaviours that may increase that chance. However, the fallacy of this argument is revealed when women, children and men become victims of sexual assault in circumstances where sexual violence is not anticipated. In these cases, the victim-blaming narrative becomes incompatible. For example, news reports of rape cases where victims were subsequently murdered, are free of comments regarding the victim’s circumstances and are rather replaced with calls for justice and the perpetuation of narratives portraying rape and rapists as senseless deviants needing to be locked away from society. A recent example of this is the case of uyinene mrwetyana, a young student who was raped and murdered on the 24th of August 2019 after she went to collect a package by the Post Office [28]. Following this, thousands of South Africans gathered to protest the ongoing gen- dered based violence affecting the country [28]. This disjunction is related to the “just-world hypothesis”, a cognitive bias that an individual receives morally fair outcomes and consequences based on their behav- iours and actions [39]. Just world beliefs (JWB) derive from people’s desire to live in a world that is just and fair, thereby perpetuating a ‘you reap what you sow’ men- tality [29]. In this framework, victims are blamed for their misfortunes, whether it is related to abuse, sexual assault or poverty [29]. The comments related to the #nakedprotest implicitly reveal that the protest- ers should have known better than to march topless in the streets where they may be “inviting” a “potential rapist” to take action. Comments such as these serve to warn the protesters by pointing out that their behaviour might result in them being sexually assaulted, and if this should happen they would have no one to blame but themselves. Furthermore, by describing the “potential rapists” the commenters are reinforcing the notion that rape is faceless, and driven by male sexual needs. Consequently, this leads to the belief that rape is a deviant event that happens to women who failed to follow societal warnings to keep themselves safe [39]. In line Gender Issues 1 3 with JWB, the protesters are seen as violating societal standards of appropriate and acceptable dress. Therefore, they become rape-able. Challenging Victim‑Blaming User 7 (F) Stop victim blaming! These protests need to happen so people like you can gain awareness that the issue isn’t with the victim. Your analogy is a clear indication of this very issue. Why should kids be given the responsibil- ity not to be free or naked if they please so they don’t ’provoke’ or ’seduce’ the monsters? Cause that’s what paedophiles and rapists are right? Senseless beasts who can’t control themselves so we shift the blame to the victim because they provoked the senseless animalistic being that has no control over them- selves? This is what your analogy is communicating to myself and many others User 8 (F) User 46 there is no such thing as displaying yourself for more rape, that’s disgusting. No one should be deemed rape-able or blame the victim of rape. Stop justifying rape and making it seems like it’s a sequence of events that leads to the act of rape. The mere fact that sweets are on display in a shop does not mean you have a right to steal them. That should be common sense. The above comments suggest that commenters who supported the protest recog- nised the victim-blaming comments aimed towards the #nakedprotesters and chal- lenged these through posting their own counter-narratives. The comment made by User 7 attempts to challenge the idea that rapists and paedophiles are unable to con- trol their sexual desires and that the ‘victim’ should not take responsibility. Simi- larly, User 8′s comment uses an analogy to draw attention to the fact that what a woman wears should not be considered an invitation to rape. Recently, the #safetytipsforladies movement trended across social media. This movement was started by Hilary Brownman-Smart in March 2013 to express her exasperation with the dominant anti-rape advice articles which serve to perpetuate victim-blaming attitudes [36]. According to Brownman-Smart: I am absolutely sick to death of being told what to wear and what to do and how to be, as though any of that will somehow save me from being raped. It’s not a woman’s responsibility to prevent sexual assault. How about we teach men not to rape instead? [36] According to Furuhata, this hashtag movement represented a ‘symbolic rerout- ing’ of anti-rape discourse that marks a change in the direction concerning how we talk about and politicise sexual violence and its prevention [36]. The findings sug- gest that counter-narratives on victim-blaming stemming from Hashtag movements such as #safetytipsforladies are being reproduced in online debates such as these, which provides more support for similar counter-publics across the globe. There- fore, the commenters may not have consciously set out to form a counter-public (and may not even be aware of its existence). However, by drawing attention to and challenging the comments which perpetuated victim-blaming, they echoed similar 1 3 Gender Issues counter-publics formed in other contexts, and in doing so increased the reach of the victim-blaming counter-narrative. Trivialising Rape Culture Rape culture is maintained through a variety of mechanisms. However, denial of rape culture and the silencing of victims are two disempowering methods [6, 37]. Denial is sustained and maintained through shared values, violence and fear. Fam- ilies and friends of perpetrators of sexual violence deny that someone they know could be capable of such an act. By accepting the realities of rape and rape culture, people need to accept that rapists are not mentally disturbed deviants, rather they are people who have social ties, and can, therefore, be someone who is known to them. They would need to accept that sensible people in their lives are in fact capable of committing such a senseless act of violence. The denial of both the act of rape and the culture that perpetuates it leads to the assumption that neither the act nor the culture exists [37]. However, to deny rape culture when it presents with real social ramifications is to deny the experiences of those who have been affected by it [6]. Throughout the comment section, rape culture trivialisation emerged through dis- course aimed at criticising the protest method and demeaning the protesters. On the other end of the spectrum, people called out the commenters who focused more on other aspects of the protest, rather than the message being conveyed. Demeaning the Protesters User 20 (M) These people obviously don’t want to study, next they will be pro- testing about cloudy days or being lied to about father Christmas. Let’s start protesting about the healthy gym freaks because they make the rest of us look fat..! User 25 (M) But protesting like this is so outright pathetic and attention seek- ing User 26 (M) Don’t you people have anything better to do¿???????? How can the situation be so out of control that this needs to be protested in this manner? The above comments are aimed at the #nakedprotesters and suggest that these protesters are only raising the issue at hand because they do not want to study. The comment made by User 26 suggests a sense of denial as he does not believe the situ- ation to be so bad that it warrants protest action. These comments suggest that peo- ple engaged in ad hominem tactics, a fallacious argumentative strategy which hin- ders effective discussion of a topic by attacking the character or motive of the person making the argument [12]. Comments criticising the attire of the protesters present with a two-fold function. On the one hand, it reinforces sexualised and heteronorma- tive views of the female body. On the other hand, it serves to trivialise the message behind the protest as the commenters choose to focus more on the protester’s state of undress, rather than engaging with the issues being raised. Gender Issues 1 3 Challenging Trivialisation Tactics User 39 (F) “These women are making a statement against rape and yet the only thing y’all can focus on is ‘eww they’re naked’ User 27 (F) How is being raped by your fellow student nonsense? Everyone has a right to education and a chosen profession. If you’re a victim of rape should you judge carry on with your studies as if nothing happened? What if it happens to someone else? User 32 (F) Are people so indoctrinated by rape culture that the ONLY THING they took from this video is the fact that there are exposed breasts? User 16 (F) (User 24, F) you are focusing on one aspect of this protest and condemning it. The comment made by User 27 challenges the idea that the student protest is ‘nonsense’ by challenging people to think about it in a way that personalises the situation, while the comments made by User 32 and User 16 challenge the fact that some people only seem to focus on one aspect of the protest, rather than the mes- sage. The above comments also point towards the emergence of a counter-public within the comment threads. These commenters directly challenged those who insulted the protesters or focused more on the method rather than the message of rape culture, which was emphasised as the problem. Discussion The present study explored rape culture discourses resulting from the public reac- tions towards the #Endrapeculture and #nakedprotests that occurred across South African campuses in April 2016. Similar to previous studies [1, 18, 22, 39, 40], we found that social media played a key role, not only in drawing attention to the protest, but also providing a space for people to engage in debate and discussion around the topic of rape culture. Furthermore, the findings suggest that rape cul- ture discourses were prominent within the comment threads, with victim-blaming and trivialising rape culture representing the dominant attitudes of expression. These reactions to the protests are not unique to the current context as previous studies exploring perceptions of rape culture on social media also found victim-blaming attitudes to be a significant finding [39, 40]. Therefore these findings are not alto- gether surprising. Indeed, for the past few decades, research on rape and its related factors have shown that the dominant mainstream attitudes towards rape and sexual assault have persistently reflected a rape culture discourse in which women are often shamed and blamed for their assault. However, what has changed is the increased availability and access to social media and communication technologies which allows people to discuss issues around rape at a much broader level than ever before. Previous studies have shown that social media represents a growing arena of engagement, discussion and con- flict between those who speak out against the perpetuation of rape culture through 1 3 Gender Issues practices of victim-blaming, slut-shaming and perpetrator support and those who engage in these cultural practices [18, 38, 39, 40]. Similarly, our findings also indi- cate the emergence of an online counter-public, as many commenters rejected and challenged discourses which perpetuated victim-blaming practices and trivialised the issue by focusing more on the method of the protest, rather than the message behind it. Previous studies have shown how young feminists use social media to respond to rape culture and hold accountable the purveyors of its practices and ways of thinking when mainstream media, police and other authorities do not [35, 36]. The findings from this study reflect previous studies which indicate that people who challenge victim-blaming and the trivialisation of rape culture online seek to inter- rupt the cultural support that normalises male sexual violence [36, 38, 39]. It indi- cates that people can use social media to collectively respond and challenge domi- nant discourses surrounding sexual violence and rape culture. Based on this, we wish to highlight two points. Firstly, our findings support previ- ous studies that found victim-blaming and trivialising rape culture to be dominant themes, which it is concerning. As previously mentioned, the victim-blaming dis- courses emerged in our study, despite the lack of an identifiable victim. This sug- gests that victim-blaming discourses are ingrained in the public consciousness, even in the absence of sexual assault. Additionally, we argue that these unchang- ing attitudes towards rape, sexual assault and gender-based violence suggest that the mainstream patriarchal public sphere has failed to accept and legitimise the counter-narratives resulting from the feminist counter-public. According to Gouws, it is important to understand the way we talk about rape culture, or the discourse around rape culture, as this determines how rape culture is constructed, the extent and nature of moral outrage, and which solutions are pursued [20]. Furthermore, this discourse determines to what extent rape culture will be conceptualised as a politi- cal, societal, and institutional or health-related problem, and will thus be addressed according to those terms [20]. Therefore, government, public health officials, media and policy makers must address this issue by increasing public awareness and edu- cation around rape culture. Secondly, we wish to highlight the significant role social media plays in creating and maintaining counter publics which challenge mainstream discourse around rape culture. Before the advent of digital and social media communication technologies, people had to engage in various strategies and modes of communication to firstly establish a counter-public and secondly, to maintain it despite efforts from the public to dismantle and outlaw these groups [7, 25]. Despite these struggles, we see that these counter-publics were successful in bringing about various legislative changes such as the abolishment of the Jim Crow laws and the advent of women’s suffrage [7]. These changes were made possible as the counter-publics provided the oppor- tunity of increased public participation from those individuals who were previously excluded. Social media platforms allow people to continue and improve upon the practice of developing and maintaining counter-publics. For example, the 2016 #Endrapeculture protest not only mobilised support from universities across South Africa, it also allows for comparison to be drawn and lessons to be learnt from simi- lar protests in other parts of the world, thereby increasing the scope and shared nar- rative of rape culture as a counter discourse. Gender Issues 1 3 However, these movements are not without critique. Scholar researching online movements have often suggested that social media can be used for slacktivism [17]. In other words, the activism that occurs on these platforms are seen as superficial at best and do not translate to real-world changes [17]. Here we reiterate the argument made by Baym and Boyd [2] to state that real-world practices are often replicated on social media. In other words, any form of activism and advocacy that occurs on these platforms is driven by individual determinism, not the technology itself. Based on our findings, we are unable to make conclusions regarding the ‘real world changes’ that may have resulted from the #endrapeculture protests, however, we do argue that the value of social media lies in its ability to create opportunities for peo- ple to learn and engage on a variety of social issues that they otherwise may not have been exposed to. This in turn, allows for the proliferation of counter-narratives which lend support to counter-publics. To utilise social media technology effectively as a tool to aid in rape culture edu- cation and activism, we need to first understand how people use these platforms to engage in discussion and debate. Therefore, rape culture attitudes and practices online are reflective of attitudes and practices offline. As such, understanding the role of social media in shaping public opinions, attitudes and willingness to speak out against sexual assault can contribute to the facilitation of preventative measures against rape and sexual assault. Limitations We found that social media may be a valuable tool for researchers, both as a research site and a data collection tool [30, 34]. Facebook is considered one of the most pop- ular social networking sites and through this platform, we were able to collect rich qualitative data in a short amount of time. Therefore, we note that our findings are limited to this context as we did not include data from any other social media plat- form in the analysis. However, the results from our study are useful as it allows for comparisons to be made with similar studies. For example, Stubbs-Richardson et al. [39] examined rape culture discourse on Twitter and also found victim-blaming to be a dominant theme. Additionally, as the comments were collected in retrospect, there was no way for us to interact with the users in real-time. However, in another article, we explain how we conducted focus groups on Facebook as a way of trian- gulating the data [34]. Another point of consideration is related to the gender of the commenters and the language they used to post comments. For this study, we could only determine the gender of the participants based on their usernames and pro- files. However, we recognize that in doing so overlooks the multiplicity of gendered expression (and the intersection of sexuality) that may occur on these platforms. As such, the current study could not conclude how gender and sexuality intersect with GBV and rape culture discourse. While we did not include language as part of our analysis, it was interesting to note that the comments were posted in English. Con- sidering the diverse language demographics in South Africa, this suggests that many of the commenters may have been communicating in their second or third language [34]. From a linguistic perspective, it would be interesting to see how rape culture 1 3 Gender Issues is expressed in different languages. However, this also raises questions regarding the strategies individuals use to participate in publics and counter-publics. More research is needed to understand how factors such as gender (from a non-binary per- spective) and language may influence rape culture discourse, and what effect these have on legitimising narratives that emerge from the counter-public. Funding Ms Zaida Orth received funding from the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT) (Trace ID: M8VX1HHD1157) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) (Grant No.: 112696) towards the com- pletion of her MA Research Psychology Degree. This manuscript is based on findings from Ms Orth’s Thesis which she submitted in accordance with the requirements of her MA degree. Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Ethical Approval All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Hel- sinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed Consent No informed consent was needed for this study. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com- mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. 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Affiliations Zaida Orth1  · Michelle Andipatin1  · Brian van Wyk2 * Zaida Orth zaidaorth@gmail.com Michelle Andipatin mandipatin@uwc.ac.za Brian van Wyk bvanwyk@uwc.ac.za 1 Department of Psychology, University of the Western Cape, Robert Sobukwe Rd, Bellville 7535, South Africa 2 School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, Robert Sobukwe Rd, Bellville 7535, South Africa http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethicspdf https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120919926 https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2014.070106 https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1008749 https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1137962 https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1137962 https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353517715874 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.036 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.036 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2895-0417 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1805-9361 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1032-1847 “These Women are Making a Statement Against Rape and yet the only Thing Y’All can Focus on is ‘Eww They’re Naked’”: Exploring Rape Culture on Facebook in South Africa Abstract Introduction #Endrapeculture Protest in South Africa Methodology Data Collection Data Analysis Ethical Considerations Findings Victim-Blaming Perpetuating Victim-Blaming Challenging Victim-Blaming Trivialising Rape Culture Demeaning the Protesters Challenging Trivialisation Tactics Discussion Limitations References work_3gbwv6naovarxa2qibnf4evdji ---- Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists: The Origins of the Women’s Shelter Movement in Canada by Margo Goodhand Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2018 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 20:56 Ontario History Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists: The Origins of the Women’s Shelter Movement in Canada by Margo Goodhand Lisa Pasolli Volume 110, numéro 2, fall 2018 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1053517ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1053517ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) The Ontario Historical Society ISSN 0030-2953 (imprimé) 2371-4654 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer ce compte rendu Pasolli, L. (2018). Compte rendu de [Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists: The Origins of the Women’s Shelter Movement in Canada by Margo Goodhand]. Ontario History, 110(2), 237–239. https://doi.org/10.7202/1053517ar https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/onhistory/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1053517ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1053517ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/onhistory/2018-v110-n2-onhistory04085/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/onhistory/ 237book reviews put, a reordering of religion in society). Fi- nally, chapter 6 confronts the assumption that Canada has long been in a state of re- ligious decline and argues instead that this phenomenon is recent. The formativeness of this process of de-Christianization has contributed and continues to contribute to a reordering of people’s participation in civic life. While the authors do not ar- gue for religious revival, they do point to the vacuum of social power created by the decline in religious life, and wonder at the consequences of such a vacuum. It would not be hard to make an argument for the growth of political populism as by-product of this vacuum. But that’s a thought for an- other study. Leaving Christianity demonstrates secularization to be a process of religious re-ordering. Clarke and Macdonald ac- knowledge that the growth of world reli- gions within Canada’s cultural plurality has had an effect on the changes to reli- gious culture. However, they also conclude that Christianity itself has “undergone an unprecedented development” (200). Ca- nadians have left the church. They have left because they oppose “organized ex- pressions of Christianity;” they have left because they have found meaning outside of the structure and institution of Chris- tian churches; and they have left as a result of generational shifts in religious iden- tity. This book is an important contribu- tion to our understanding of the extent of religious change in the latter twentieth century. Clarke and Macdonald call atten- tion to the importance of the 1960s as a decade of change, and situate their work within broader scholarship on religious and social history that point to the way the monumental cultural changes (or fallout) reverberated across social institutions and especially organized religion. Julia Rady-Shaw Margo Goodhand’s Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists, a history of the women’s shelter movement in Canada, is engaging, powerful, and touching. Relying heavily on oral testimonies, she puts the spotlight on the creation of five shelters in 1973: Interval House in Toronto; Ishtar Transition House in Aldergrove, B.C.; the Edmonton Women’s Shelter (with a de- tour to the Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter); Saskatoon Interval House; and Vancouver Transition House. Much like the women she profiles, Goodhand’s his- tory recognizes the importance of the po- litical and the personal. Her book situates the shelters and transition houses in the politics of the women’s movement of the 1970s, but she also gives careful attention to those often invisible and grassroots la- bours that propelled their creation, includ- ing, in the most compelling sections of the book, the emotional support women pro- vided each other during some of the hard- est times of their lives. Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists The Origins of the Women’s Shelter Movement in Canada By Margo Goodhand Halifax & Winnipeg : Fernwood Publishing, 2017. 168 pages. $20.00 Paperback. ISBN: 9781552669990. $19.99 Kindle. ISBN: 9781773630014. (www.fernwoodpublishing.ca) 238 ONTARIO HISTORY This is a trim book—only 168 pages— yet it is packed with details and anecdotes that will be of interest to historians of Canadian feminism. Goodhand’s inter- viewees grapple with many of the issues and themes that appear, for example, in academic studies like Nancy Janovicek’s No Place to Go: Local Histories of the Battered Women’s Shelter Movement (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007). Take the issue of public funding. Virtually all of Goodhand’s inter- viewees identified the importance of Local Initiatives Program (LIP) and Opportuni- ties for Youth (OFY) grants, federal job- creation programs that ran for a short time during the early 1970s and allowed wom- en to pay themselves during the shelters’ founding years. They also, however, point to the trade-offs involved in accepting gov- ernment money. In more recent years, for example, women in the shelter movement worry that the “feminist, collaborative ad- vocacy role” of the 1970s has been lost in favour of the “client and employee” struc- ture demanded of government-supported programs, and that a “cone of silence” has descended on shelters and transition houses who must agree to curtail their advocacy work as a condition of public funding (135-136). The local variations of this story will be important to scholars who grapple with the relationship between feminism and the state. A related tension between ideolog y and action also runs throughout the book. Many of the women Goodhand interviews, especially those in Toronto and Vancouver, were concerned with the silence on domes- tic violence in much of the mainstream feminism of the 1960s and 1970s (violence against women was not addressed, for ex- ample, in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women). They urged recognition of wife battering as a societal rather than a private family issue, and considered their interventions as part of the political work of feminism. They also, though, had to bal- ance their politics with meeting the daily, urgent, on-the-ground needs of abused women and their children. Occasionally, this meant collaborating with those who were indifferent or even hostile to femi- nism. In the chapter about Alberta’s shel- ters, Goodhand tells us about women who came to shelter work not through the wom- en’s movement but through church-based community services. Members of the Cath- olic Women’s League, for example, did not identify as feminist and instead considered their shelter work (and, importantly, their financial donations to shelters) as charita- ble and missionary service. These kinds of adaptations, compromises, and forging cre- ative paths forward is an important part of feminist history, and Goodhand captures 239book reviews these complexities wonderfully. Again and again throughout this book, Goodhand’s interviewees assert that their biggest barrier to confronting vio- lence against women was the failure to rec- ognize the “scope and nature of the prob- lem” (141). Reading this book, one can’t help but reflect on the similarities with our present moment and the almost-daily revelations of entrenched violence that have come to light because of the #MeToo movement. Feminists still battle against an assumption that violence against women is the result of the individual patholog y of a bad man, rather than a manifestation of patriarchy and the oppression rooted in colonialism, racism, disability, and other kinds of inequality. There was widespread reluctance, for example, to identify the ten murders and sixteen injuries that resulted from the so-called Toronto van attack of April 2018 as patriarchal violence, despite the fact that it was perpetrated by a young man who was reportedly motivated by rage at being spurned by women and consid- ered himself “involuntarily celibate.” To- day, as in the early 1970s, “it’s a lot easier to pretend it isn’t a problem” (141) if we don’t recognize the “scope and nature” of gender-based violence. Goodhand’s his- tory captures both the ongoing need for feminist activism at the level of society and state, and, equally importantly, it reminds us of the need to recognize and support the women who do the fundraising, write the grants, organize the meetings, buy the groceries, and clean the houses, doing the daily work of caring for the victims and survivors of violence. Lisa Pasolli Queen’s University Tax, Order, and Good Government A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917 By E.A. Heaman Montreal and Kingston: McGill Univer- sity Press, 2017. xiv, 582 pages. $39.95 hard- cover. ISBN 978-0-7735-4962-3. In Tax, Order, and Good Government Elsbeth Heaman makes a compelling case that it is time to write taxes and pov- erty into Canadian history. Framed as an example of the “new political history,” the book studies Canada’s tax history as a social history of politics for the period 1867 to 1917. It does so from both the top-down perspective of the state and the bottom-up perspective of the people. Of work_3gnq7pw5l5dk3gqzu7sffuysam ---- Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). Open Access. This in an open access article published by Firenze University Press (www.fupress.net/index.php/ccselap) and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attri- bution 4.0 International License. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Comparative Cultural Studies: European and Latin American Perspectives 7: 223-225, 2019 DOI: 10.13128/ccselap-25826 | ISSN 2531-9884 (online) Book Reviews Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention di Michael Flood, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 20182 Antonio RAimondo di GRiGoli Università degli Studi di Firenze Il problema dell’uguaglianza di genere costituisce attualmente uno degli obiettivi pri- mari della nostra società, come sostiene tra gli altri l’Unesco che ha inserito la questione nell’agenda 2030 tra le priorità da raggiungere. Ancora oggi esiste una profonda resistenza nei confronti dello sradicamento della violenza di genere, da quanto è emerso dalla cam- pagna #metoo, che ci ha spinto a una riflessione sulle possibili strategie da adottare per decretarne la fine. Docente di sociologia presso la Queensland University of Technology (Australia) e leader del Mentors in Violence Prevention Programm (MVP), in Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention, rieditato per la seconda volta dalla prestigiosa casa editrice Palgrave Macmillian, Michael Flood ha posto l’accento sul ruolo degli uomini e sulla necessità di un loro coinvolgimento nella risoluzione del problema della violenza di genere. L’educa- zione alla prevenzione di tale fenomeno riguardante le donne rappresenta una delle chiavi di volta affinché si realizzi l’uguaglianza tra i generi (R. W. Connell, 1995; M. Flood; 2019; M. Kauffman, 2003; M. Kehler, 2017). Il volume si pone come un utile strumento teorico-pratico sulla natura e la dimen- sione della violenza di genere perpetrata dagli uomini nei confronti delle donne. Flood legge tale questione seguendo tre filoni principali: il primo riguarda l’individuazione della violenza contro le donne come questione sociale; il secondo si focalizza sull’importanza svolta dalla prevenzione primaria della veemenza verso le donne e il ruolo svolto dai gio- vani e dalla comunità, in riferimento alla risposta offerta alle vittime e ai perpetratori della violenza contro le donne; e il terzo si concentra sul coinvolgimento maschile (siano essi giovani o adulti). Nel complesso, questo studio si articola in tre parti, di cui la prima introduce alcuni principi guida che fungono da fari orientatori per il coinvolgimento di uomini e ragazzi al problema; la seconda si concentra, invece, sulle strategie e sugli scenari attuali che riguar- dano il coinvolgimento dei maschi alla questione in oggetto; la terza parte ha come nucleo le sfide attuali inerenti al lavoro da svolgere per una corretta sensibilizzazione contro la violenza di genere. Sul piano terminologico, esistono diverse espressioni che si riferiscono a forme di vee- menza interpersonale, tra cui la “violenza domestica” che è attuata in contesti domesti- ci, nelle relazioni familiari e intime e che nella maggior parte dei casi viene associata a quella concretizzata da un uomo nei confronti della propria moglie, della propria partner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ 224 Comparative Cultural Studies: European and Latin American Perspectives 7: 223-225, 2019 Book Reviews o di una ex compagna. Tuttavia, va sottolineato che l’espressione “violenza domestica” è adoperata anche per denotare la violenza tra partner dello stesso sesso, tra i membri della famiglia, compresi gli atti veementi tra fratelli e quelli tra genitore e figlio o viceversa, così come quelli commessi da donne verso i loro partner. Vi sono, inoltre, diversi termini che fanno parte del campo semantico della violenza domestica, come ad esempio il maltrattamento della moglie e la violenza tra partner. Ciò indica che esiste un ampio ventaglio terminologico con cui viene definito tale fenomeno che, sia in ambito politico che accademico, riscuote un grande successo tra gli esperti. Un’analisi della violenza di genere comporta anche lo studio degli abusi sessuali, psicolo- gici e verbali da una prospettiva multifocale. Difatti, un esame delle conseguenze degli atti veementi in sé non è sufficiente per una corretta e approfondita analisi del problema, dato che vanno esaminati anche (e soprattutto) altri fattori, tra cui le motivazioni che spingono a compiere questo tipo di azioni, la storia personale e il conseguente comportamento del ‘carnefice’. L’appartenenza a un determinato rango sociale ed economico di quest’ultimo, così come l’abuso di sostanze alcoliche e stupefacenti concorre a aumentare le possibilità di adottare atteggiamenti violenti. La costruzione della maschilità è un processo che inizia sin dall’infanzia che impone al bambino un modello di condotta “stoica” di essa (E. Anderson, 2009), basata sulla rigi- dità di espressione che spesso sfocia nell’uso della violenza sessuale e nell’intimidazione come strumento di costruzione e affermazione della maschilità (M. Flood, 2019; J. Messer- schmidt, 2015; C. Rinaldi, 2018). Questa prima parte del volume si chiude con alcune riflessioni di Flood su come affron- tare la violenza di genere; in particolare, lo studioso adotta una prospettiva pro-femminista e anti-patriarcale e spiega che i programmi politici, educativi e pubblicitari possono promuo- vere un’educazione alla prevenzione e il coinvolgimento dei giovani nella lotta alla violenza di genere. Ne sono da esempio alcune istituzioni statunitensi che si occupano della promo- zione di un dialogo fondato nel rispetto reciproco tra uomini e donne e tra uomini e uomi- ni, l’organizzazione Menswork e la National Organization of Men’s Against Violence (NOMA). Nella seconda parte del libro, lo studioso si concentra sulle strategie idonee al coinvol- gimento degli uomini per il contrasto della violenza verso le donne, quindi su come “con- durre gli uomini alla porta” (get men in the door) (p. 115). Flood traccia quattro dimen- sioni che hanno come nucleo il rapporto tra l’uomo e la violenza, costituiti dall’«uso della violenza, gli atteggiamenti verso la violenza, le risposte in caso di violenza e gli sforzi per prevenire la violenza» (Ibidem). Alla domanda su quanti uomini hanno commesso violen- za contro le donne, non ci sono molti dati, visto che le indagini tendono più a soffermarsi sulla vittima e non sui perpetratori della violenza. Le scarse informazioni esistenti pro- vengono dalle ricerche condotte dagli studiosi Headey, Scott e de Vaus su un campione di coppie di fidanzati nel lontano biennio 1996-1997. I risultati, pubblicati nel 1999, riporta- no che il 3.4 % degli uomini ha commesso violenza nei confronti della propria partner nel corso dell’ultimo anno dal loro fidanzamento (Ibidem). Le proposte offerte agli uomini e ai ragazzi per incoraggiarli a impegnarsi nella lotta contro la violenza verso le donne è comunque l’educazione che può provenire dalla scuola, dall’ideazione di campagne pubblicitarie e di programmi creati per il superamento degli stereotipi di genere. Flood ricorda alcuni esempi di programmi “face to face” utilizzati in Messico, in Congo e negli Stati Uniti. Questa metodologia vis-à-vis riscuote maggiore suc- 225 DOI: 10.13128/ccselap-25826 | ISSN 2531-9884 (online) Book Reviews cesso ed è la più utilizzata per favorire l’inclusione degli uomini e dei ragazzi nella sensibi- lizzazione contro la violenza sulle donne. Esistono, inoltre, altri programmi di educazione al contrasto della violenza di gene- re, come ad esempio i progetti della White Ribbon Australia che prevedono la realizzazio- ne di materiali audio e video; due campagne di sensibilizzazione chiamate Men Can Stop the Rape che invitano gli uomini a identificarsi con figure maschili non violente; e un’altra campagna denominata Don’t be That Guy, sviluppata in Canada nel 2010, che si focaliz- za sulla sfida lanciata agli uomini nel cambiamento dell’immaginario maschile e propone modelli positivi incentrati sul rispetto della partner. Il lavoro si conclude con le “sfide” a cui bisogna far fronte nella realizzazione di que- sto progetto globale di un’educazione all’impegno maschile nella lotta alla violenza sessua- le rivolta alle donne. Ad ogni modo, continuano a sussistere molte resistenze nei confronti dell’indirizzo pro-femminista sia da parti di uomini che di donne. Inoltre, molti soggetti che hanno commesso in passato atti veementi o che sono stati vittime di abusi sessuali o di violenza assistita, hanno maggiore probabilità di ripetere il fenomeno. Ritornando a quanto già affermato nei primi capitoli, Flood insiste che il problema della violenza dome- stica e di quella commessa esclusivamente verso le donne risiede nell’asimmetria delle relazioni di genere culturalmente costruite. Essa non può prescindere da altri fattori, come il background socio-economico del ‘carnefice’, dalle esperienze passate di violenza subita o agita o dalle alterazioni della personalità dovute all’abuso di alcol o di droghe. Non sono fattori predittivi, bensì hanno una certa influenza se si considera l’essere umano nella sua globalità. Nel complesso, il volume si presta a essere un utile manuale soprattutto per la parte riguardante la presentazione dei progetti di lavoro sulla maschilità con adulti e ragazzi, dato che il coinvolgimento degli uomini, mediante la rottura con il passato per quanto concerne un modello di mascolinità ancora obsoleto, aiuterebbe nella riduzione e nell’ab- battimento delle discriminazioni e nella violenza di genere, non solo verso le donne, bensì anche verso altre soggettività non conformi al modello binaristico sessuale e di genere. work_3gzhmtnnobcblj5c2c4cc33i4q ---- Diversifying MIR: Knowledge and Real-World Challenges, and New Interdisciplinary Futures RESEARCH Diversifying MIR: Knowledge and Real-World Challenges, and New Interdisciplinary Futures Georgina Born Challenges of diversity are being raised around the world, for example in response to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Against this background, this article, adapted from a keynote lecture to the 20th ISMIR conference, asks how MIR can refresh itself and its endeavours, scholarly and real world, by addressing diversity. It is written by an outsider, yet one who, as a music anthropologist, is intensely concerned with MIR and its influence. The focus is on elaborating auto-critiques that have emerged within the MIR community: social, cultural, epistemological and ethical matters to do with the diversity of the profession, of the music with which MIR engages, and of the kinds of knowledge produced. One theme is interdisciplinarity: how MIR would gain from closer dialogues with contemporary musicology, music anthropology and sociology. The article also considers how the ‘refresh’ might address MIR’s pursuit of research oriented to technological innovation, often linked to the drive for economic growth; concerns about sustainable economies, it argues, suggest the need for other values to guide future science and engineering. In this light, the article asks what computational music genre recognition or recommendation would look like if, under public-cultural or non-profit imperatives, the incentives driving them aimed to optimise imaginative self- or group development, pursuing not a logic of ‘similarity’ but diversity, or took human musical flourishing as their goals. The article closes by suggesting that the time is ripe in MIR for sustained interdisciplinary engagements in ways previously unseen. Keywords: MIR; diversity; ontology; interdisciplinarity; music sociology; music anthropology 1. Introduction 1.1 MIR and Diversity: Critiques from Within Diversity was a theme of the 20th ISMIR annual conference held in 2019; the conference ‘tagline’ was ‘Across the Bridge’, which was taken to reflect the ‘diversity of scientific disciplines, seniority levels, professional affiliations, and cultural backgrounds’ characterising MIR as a field.1 Yet when the conference chairs invited me to give a conference keynote, they asked me to speak to insufficient diversity in two senses: they wanted insights into how to create ‘a more diverse ISMIR in terms of discipline’, and they also noted that ‘[w]e are trying hard to overcome the current bias [towards] Western male engineers’.2 This article is a revision of the keynote address that resulted from their invitation. Together, these observations suggest that the MIR community embraces diversity as a positive value, with some believing that it already embodies this value, while others consider it to be a goal towards which ISMIR should be moving, while acknowledging that it currently has a deficit. Diversity is one of those values perhaps too often carelessly invoked. It can also be controversial, particularly if the language of ‘diversity’ is employed in ways that occlude older concerns – notably matters of inequality, injustice or bias. In the words of influential writers, the elevation of diversity in recent public and policy debates can mean ‘that other kinds of vocabularies are no longer used,… including terms such as “equal opportunities”, “social justice”, “anti-racism” and “multiculturalism”’, terms with complex histories linked to the histories of political movements such as feminism and anti-racism. For ‘when the terms disappear from policy talk, a concern is that such histories might also disappear’ (Ahmed and Swan 2006: 96). This warning is especially salient in the current moment, when the world is reeling from the events that impelled movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, as well as their sometimes violent consequences.3 Because, of course, it is not so much the events – although they matter in themselves – but their chronic, repeated nature and structural foundations that are the terrain on which efforts towards diversity must be built. Academic and scientific fields are just as likely to host these structural foundations as other areas of intellectual, cultural and social life. They, too, are likely to be sites in which those inequalities, injustices or biases made more palatable by the term ‘diversity’ may become apparent and may require to be addressed. And if we think music Born, G. (2020). Diversifying MIR: Knowledge and Real-World Challenges, and New Interdisciplinary Futures. Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval, 3(1), pp. 193–204. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.58 Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK gemb2@cam.ac.uk https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.58 mailto:gemb2@cam.ac.uk Born: Diversifying MIR194 is immune to such issues, then the recent furore that has arisen within the academic music theory community over accusations that it embodies and upholds a ‘white racial frame’ should give pause for thought.4 Evidence of gender imbalances in MIR is provided by Hu et al. (2016), who also describe the organisational response: the creation at the 2011 ISMIR conference of ‘Women in MIR’ or WiMIR sessions ‘in order to identify current issues and challenges female MIR researchers face, and to brainstorm ideas for providing more support to female MIR researchers’ (Hu et al., 2016: 765). A complementary perspective comes from a wide-ranging, reflexive discussion of ‘Ethical dimensions of MIR’ by Holzapfel, Sturm and Coeckelbergh (2018), which identifies bias in several senses. Among them are demographic biases stemming from the fact that the MIR community, ‘as many engineering research communities’, is characterised by researchers who ‘are typically WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, rich, operating within democracies) (Henrich et al., 2010), from a limited set of geographical origins, and a majority is male’ (Holzapfel et al., 2018: 50). Also significant for these authors are ‘technical biases’ apparent in how ‘[d]atasets are biased towards Eurogenetic forms of music, and consequently MIR tasks are biased towards challenges that are meaningful in these idioms’ (ibid.). The consequence is that ‘[m]usic that is under- represented in MIR datasets, or that does not fit MIR tasks and evaluation measures, is unlikely to be interpreted in a semantically correct way by methods that emerge from the biased MIR community’ (ibid.). Holzapfel, Sturm and Coeckelbergh link these obser- vations to a further point: they trace the ‘MIR value chain’, suggesting that MIR researchers do not have clear through-lines of influence to the several ensuing stages their research feeds into: software development, product design, publishing and thence to the end-user. ‘MIR research, as most engineering research, is often not immediately involved in the following steps through the value chain. This leads to a barrier between MIR research and the higher levels of constraints on system design’ (ibid.). Certainly, this describes a dilemma; yet while their analysis is valuable, arguably it does not go far enough. They present this problem as an ethical one stemming from a delinked value chain that results in a ‘remoteness from users’ (ibid.). But that understates the effects of this fragmentary value chain, which is that MIR, by delivering a music-‘information infrastructure’ (Kornberger et al., 2019), acts as a perhaps unwitting participant in reproducing and favouring the normative, restricted repertoire of commercial popular music and associated types of musical expression proffered to consumers by the global digital music industries. Indeed, the authors detail one such outcome: ‘An example can be conceived of in relation to rhythm, where most MIR tools focus on common time signatures, which finds its continuation in tools within digital audio workstations’ (ibid.). I return later to the risks of a collusive relationship between MIR and the digital music industries. My task, then, is to offer suggestions about how to diversify ISMIR and, by implication, MIR as a field. I take this as an ambitious challenge: to try to help the MIR community understand the scope, scale and depth of the undertakings entailed by responding to calls for greater diversity in the structural sense. For these challenges may not be obvious and, importantly, they are not singular but several. I frame the concerns I want to raise not by a narrow understanding of diversity but a broad one, asking: how can MIR refresh itself and its endeavours, scholarly and real world, by addressing diversity? What can diversity mean for a field like MIR? 1.2 Messages from Vermeer At this point, I return to the 2019 ISMIR conference, which took place in the city of Delft, home of one of the world’s greatest painters, Johannes Vermeer. I want to draw three initial messages, or prompts to thought, from reflections on Vermeer, whose works are striking for their capacity to convey Dutch domestic life in the 17th century. Among their many virtues and innovations is to dwell sympathetically on women’s interiority, their everyday activities and their creativity – for example, when conversing with one another, when writing a letter (Figure 1), or when seated to perform at the virginal (Figure 2) – through a compelling visual humanism focused on facial expressivity and embodied experience. This prompts a first message for the MIR community: women as bearers of diverse modes of subjectivity, and subjectivity as coloured by embodied experience, which in human societies is mediated by such social differences Figure 1: ‘Mistress and maid’, by Johannes Vermeer (pub- lic domain), c. 1666–1667, The Frick Collection, NYC, USA. (Source https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/6/61/Vermeer_Lady_Maidservant_Hold- ing_Letter.jpg). https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Vermeer_Lady_Maidservant_Holding_Letter.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Vermeer_Lady_Maidservant_Holding_Letter.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Vermeer_Lady_Maidservant_Holding_Letter.jpg Born: Diversifying MIR 195 as gender, class, race and ethnicity – so that subjectivities, experience and embodied experience are not everywhere the same. A second fascinating message for the MIR community, and for the era of big data, stems from the fact that a mere thirty-four works are attributed to Vermeer: it is that cultural value does not equate with scale, size or ubiquity. A third message arises from the ways in which Vermeer experimented with rare pigments, with the portrayal of light, and with perspective, for he is believed to have employed optical aids like the camera obscura to achieve his most spectacular effects. What we witness in Vermeer, then, is early science in the service of art – which prompts a question for ISMIR: which masters or mistresses does the science and engineering of MIR serve? 1.3 Addressing MIR from the Outside Before proceeding, it is important to acknowledge that I write as an outsider to MIR – I am not a scientist but a qualitative social scientist – and it is perhaps foolhardy to advise colleagues whose methodologies I would be hard pressed to understand. Nonetheless, I am emboldened because in recent years I have been in dialogue with some colleagues in MIR. On the other hand, as someone who has worked for decades on the anthropology and sociology of music, media and digital cultures, I have had to confront and analyse matters of gender, class, race and ethnicity in my research, issues that arose vividly in my ethnographic studies of computer music (Born, 1995) and the BBC (Born, 2005a), as well as in a European Research Council (ERC)-funded interdisciplinary research program that I led involving ethnographic studies tracing the impact of digitization and digital media on musical practices worldwide (Born and Devine, 2016; Born, 2021). These experiences caused me to develop a theoretical account of how social relations of gender, class, race and ethnicity enter into – or mediate – the musical and media fields and institutions that my team and I researched (Born, 2012). It is on this basis that I developed the framework set out below. To take one element of the ERC project: in a mixed qualitative and quantitative study, Kyle Devine and I showed that of the young people entering higher education in the UK to study music technology degree courses over a five year period, 90 per cent were male, and that they came from a lower social class background and had only slightly higher representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicity (BAME) students than the average demographic profile for all British undergraduate students (Born and Devine, 2015). This is a restricted gauge of humanity entering music technology, and it appears to correlate with the gender equality challenges for ISMIR, as shown also by statistics on gender representation at ISMIR that the chairs ran for the 2019 conference. In what follows I will certainly address questions of diversity in this demographic sense. However, I will do more. 2. Four Interrelated Dimensions of Diversity I want to draw out four interrelated dimensions of diversity with which I suggest ISMIR should engage. Each has a certain autonomy and matters in itself. But they are also interrelated and together present a formidable lattice of challenges. 1) The first is the one just referred to: who gets to be a member of ISMIR, which is to say, what is the demographic makeup of MIR as a profession? Could it be more diverse? And how do the field’s feeder educational and employment structures result in these ‘typically WEIRD’, male (gendered) and white (raced) demographics? But while matters of educational and employment equality and equity are critical goals in themselves, diversity raises much more than this. 2) The second dimension of diversity is to do with whose music and which music, among the vast ocean of sounds in the world, gets to be the focus of MIR’s influential scientific practices. As shown above, it is an accepted strand of criticism within the MIR community that the techniques and parameters employed in MIR tend to derive from, and reflect, commercially dominant areas of global popular music. Yet those techniques and parameters come to be applied in powerful technologies as though they were universal, with inevitable what might be called ‘de-pluralizing’ effects. Why is this the case? Could MIR be more responsive to musical diversity – which is likely to equate with social and cultural diversity? And linking back to the first dimension: might a more diverse population of MIR practitioners favour awareness of and sensitivity to a wider spectrum of the world’s musics? Figure 2: ‘Lady seated at a virginal’, by Johannes Vermeer (public domain), c. 1670–1672, The National Gallery, London, UK. (Source https://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki- pedia/commons/5/55/Lady_Seated_at_a_Virginal%2C_ Vermeer%2C_The_National_Gallery%2C_London.jpg). https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Lady_Seated_at_a_Virginal%2C_Vermeer%2C_The_National_Gallery%2C_London.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Lady_Seated_at_a_Virginal%2C_Vermeer%2C_The_National_Gallery%2C_London.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Lady_Seated_at_a_Virginal%2C_Vermeer%2C_The_National_Gallery%2C_London.jpg Born: Diversifying MIR196 3) The third aspect of diversity is directly implicated in the previous point: it concerns the foundational epistemological and ontological premises that currently undergird MIR as a field. In the face of greater musical diversity, can such premises be sustained or will they necessarily be pluralised – and therefore fundamentally challenged? How can MIR equip itself with epistemologies and ontologies of music responsive to a greater diversity of musical cultures? Might that demand new interdisciplinary partnerships, bringing areas of humanistic and social scientific music scholarship into dialogue with MIR in ways that are currently undeveloped? 4) The fourth and final dimension of diversity, an overarching question, also follows on. This returns to my earlier question, riffing on Vermeer: which masters or mistresses does MIR serve – the profit-seeking imperatives of commercial music tech corporations and online music services, entangled as they are in the recorded music industries? And which mistresses should MIR serve in order to diversify its goals, partners and worldly effects? In sum: could MIR cultivate a more plural set of orientations and institutional partners so as to include non-commercial, publicly-oriented initiatives aimed at enhancing human musical flourishing, and – given escalating anxieties about impending climate catastrophe – the need to create sustainable music economies? As one of the escala- ting preoccupations of our time, should this issue be foregrounded within the MIR community? The remainder of the article elaborates on these four facets of diversity, drawing out connections between them. 2.1 The Social Diversity of MIR as a Profession and its Consequences Regarding the first dimension of diversity, important insights come from research in science and technology studies (STS) that probes how certain kinds of social relations come to be immanent in technological design. As the STS scholar Madeleine Akrich has argued, design is a key stage in which engineers ‘script’ envisaged uses into their technologies, in this way ‘configuring’ potential user identities and preferring certain patterns of use (Akrich, 1992). To exemplify: the workings of gender, in particular, have been probed by Nelly Oudshoorn and her colleagues, who undertook empirical research on the design of information and communications technologies (ICTs). Through comparative case studies of the design cultures of two online ‘digital cities’ developed in the Netherlands, Oudshoorn et al. found that in both cases the designers worked with an ‘I-methodology’ (Oudshoorn et al., 2004). Although the designers aimed to create technologies with all-embracing appeal and usability – to configure the user as ‘everybody’ and ‘anybody’ – a key slippage was evident in a guiding assumption that the designers themselves, and their own subjective and corporeal experiences of the technologies, represented a universal user. Since ICT designers are predominantly male, their ‘I-methodology’ hindered their ability to imagine the potential and actual diversity of the eventual population of users. The technologies resulting from these processes, emerging from gendered conditions and assumptions, embodied and entrenched existing norms – prominent among them gender norms. In their words, ‘The dominance of the I-methodology…resulted in a gender script: the user who came to be incorpo- rated into the design of [the ICT] matched the pref- erences and attitudes of male rather than female users. As almost all designers were male and tech- nologically highly competent, they made [the ICT] into a masculine technology.’ (Oudshoorn et al., 2004, p. 44) To design technologies and interfaces that respond to real social diversity, then, Oudshoorn et al. argue that I-methodology, along with its universalising projections, must be reflexively acknowledged and consciously changed. In this way they offer a powerful cautionary tale relevant to all those fields feeding into the design of new technologies, including MIR. In suggesting that social relations and imaginaries are scripted into technological design, I am not making an essentialist point that gender identities always determine design; nor do I imply that actual users are entirely constrained to follow the scripts inscribed in the technologies. As Akrich argues, the uses made of any technology cannot be read off design assumptions; user-configurations are not wholly determinant of actual uses. Rather, I am suggesting that wider social relations of gender, race, class and so on, on the one hand, and practices of technological design, on the other, exist in relations of mutual constitution. In other words, they mediate one another and result in the conception and design of certain kinds of technologies. That is why who gets to engineer matters. Now, there is clearly a danger that such ideas can become too crude; nonetheless, the point is that all kinds of experience – including gendered experiences, but not limited to this – will affect design paradigms. So this is not just a matter of equal opportunities for those currently marginalized, whose talents may be unrecognised by the engineering profession, although that is important in itself. It is equally about the likely benefits of enriching, by diversifying, the social ecology of research groups, and thus the collective imagination and design practices of which they are capable – so that everyone gains, potentially including end-users. The underlying point is that scientific and engineering fields like those of MIR, which are all too easy to envision as spaces isolated from wider social forces, are in fact consequential sites in which these social forces are played out, and therefore ripe for a politics of diversity. A first reflexive challenge for MIR as a field, then, is to recognize MIR as a site in which existing cultural categories, as they relate to social inequalities, injustices and biases, are being reproduced or amplified, and that it could be otherwise. Whoever is doing the science and engineering, I-methodology and its normative drive needs to be Born: Diversifying MIR 197 altered, and consciousness of the diversity of users and user needs – and also of musics and musical communities – should take its place, resulting optimally in more diverse knowledge and technologies. As to the problem of attracting and educating a next, larger generation of women engineers and engineers from BAME communities, this remains a key challenge for the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines at large, and one without easy solutions. The recursive weight of history is great, as Judy Wajcman, a leading feminist scholar in STS, comments regarding the gendering of STEM: ‘In contemporary Western society, the hegemonic form of masculinity is still strongly associated with technical prowess and power.… Notwithstanding the recurring rhetoric about women’s opportuni- ties in the new knowledge economy, men continue to dominate technical work. … These sexual divi- sions in the labour market are proving intransigent and mean that women are largely excluded from the processes of technical design that shape the world we live in.’ (Wajcman, 2010: 145) For Wajcman, long-standing ideologies of masculinity are a core force behind the scarcity of women in STEM and the gendering of the cultures of STEM, suggesting that masculinity itself might benefit from being reflexively scrutinized. Is this an exercise for ISMIR and its feeder fields? Can it be avoided? Finally, here, it is salutary to invoke the philosopher Peter-Paul Verbeek’s work on the politics and ethics of technological design, notably his paper ‘Materializing morality: Design ethics and technological mediation’ (Verbeek, 2006). Verbeek has long argued that STS should enter into direct dialogue with engineers and engineering discourses, thereby helping to foster among engineers a self-critical and self-reflexive paradigm such that ‘the ethics of engineering design… take more seriously the moral charge of technological products and rethink the moral responsibility of designers accordingly’ (379). His eloquent point is one that might inform reflections within MIR about the moral seriousness of matters of diversity. 2.2 MIR and Musical Diversity: Whose Music, Which Music? The second dimension of diversity is the question of whose music and which music become the focus of MIR’s scientific practices and their influential applications, for example in recommendation systems. It is well accepted that, as Emilia Gómez and her colleagues put it, ‘Since the beginning of [MIR],… most of its models and technologies have been developed [on the basis of] mainstream popular music in the so-called “Western” tradition’ (Gómez et al., 2013: 111). They continue, however, that the last few years have seen ‘an increasing interest in applying available techniques to the study of traditional, folk or ethnic music’ (ibid.). This is certainly laudable, and it is clear that computational ethnomusicology has been developing as a key test-bed for opening up and diversifying the musical sounds and cultures with which MIR engages. Recently, for example, Xavier Serra and his team have put rigorously to the test the limits of the kinds of musical sounds, knowledge and representations dealt with by MIR in the ERC-funded CompMusic project (2011–17). As they describe it: ‘we work on computational approaches to describe music recordings by emphasizing the use of domain knowledge of particular music traditions … focusing on five music cultures’ from the Maghreb, China, Turkey, North and South India (Serra, 2014: 1; Serra, 2017). ‘A target application for this work’, they continue, ‘is a system with which to browse through audio music collections of the chosen cultures; being able to discover specific characteristics of the music and relationships between different musical concepts’ (ibid.). While they assume that ‘there are universal musical concepts, like melody and rhythm’, they stress ‘that many important aspects of a particular music recording can be better understood by considering cultural specificities’ (2014: 2). They focus on non-Western ‘art music traditions, [and] thus on types of music that have been formalised and for which theoretical frameworks have been proposed for their understanding’ (2). The team consulted expert musicians and musicologists in each tradition to select recordings for the corpora being put together, and their efforts seem exemplary in these terms. Addressing similar challenges, Olmo Cornelis and collaborators aimed to test the presumed universality of existing analytical approaches to pulse and tempo by examining how existing ‘automated tempo estimation approaches perform in the context of Central-African music’ (Cornelis et al., 2013:1). Advocating a ‘multidisciplinary approach’, they employed a range of musicological and ethnomusicological scholarship to hone the study, from Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff to Kofi Agawu and Justin London. While they acknowledge that ‘a major difficulty is… the dominance of Western musical concepts in content-based analysis tools’ (2), it is surprising that this team was nonetheless content to check whether existing beat trackers can or cannot be used reliably for Central African music – rather than taking the cue from that music’s difference with regard to pulse and tempo and, in that light, asking: which tools might be needed to address it, and how radically does MIR’s existing conceptual and computational toolset demand to be revised in order to tackle the salient aesthetic features of this non- Western music? There is, in other words, surely a risk of teleology in beginning with existing tools derived from the analysis of Western pop and seeing if they ‘work’ for some fragmentary, decontextualised trait extracted from the total socio-musical existence of Central African music. Indeed, this teleology is registered in their preliminary comment that ‘the research in this paper relies on existing computational tools, and does not aim to introduce novel approaches in beat tracking and tempo estimation’ (2). Born: Diversifying MIR198 Although an auto-critique of the elevation of Western pop music as a universal model for all music is beginning to develop within MIR, then, it seems that the profound challenges posed by ‘other’ musics have not yet been sufficiently registered and worked through (Born and Hesmondhalgh, 2000). One kind of challenge stems from all those acoustic, electronic and computer art, popular and folk musics in which melody, harmony, tempo and rhythm do not capture key aesthetic features, which are likely to include qualities such as timbre, ‘gesture’, microtonality, melisma, spatialisation (Smalley, 1986, 2007), and the rhythmic subtleties identified by Steven Feld and Charles Keil as ‘groove’ or ‘participatory discrepancies’ (Keil, 1987; Keil and Feld, 1994). The problem is that decades after the musicological debate began over these less readily quantized and notated, multidimensional aesthetic qualities, musicology still has great difficulty analysing them. Perhaps the musicologist Anne Danielsen’s work – which combines quantitative and qualitative research on microrhythm in groove-based popular musics (Danielsen, 2010, 2012) – casts light and might be adapted into computational analytical tools of great subtlety. But this seems to be the scale of the problem. It is also notable that, in reaching across disciplines, there is a risk of going backwards into the future: the work of the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (Lomax 1968, 2003), for example, is cited approvingly in some computational ethnomusicology; but his reductive quantitative approach to the analysis and classification of non-Western musics has long been controversial and criticised within his own field (Feld, 1984).5 The points made so far about the challenges posed by non- Western and other musics have been limited to their subtle intra-musical features. When it comes to broader cultural understandings of these musics, the problems for MIR are of another order, and can include the very assumption that such musics can or should be represented and made available globally through recordings, and digital corpora, at all. The nature of these problems can be conveyed by a case study from my ERC research program carried out in North India by Aditi Deo (Deo, 2021). Deo wanted to investigate the digital recording and archiving of North Indian folk musics, particularly music from low caste communities, part of a current wave of archiving initiatives in the region stimulated by ideas of cultural heritage and facilitated by the ease of digital recording. In Rajasthan one focus of her work was a cultural collective called Lokayan run by high caste young male activists. Lokayan was in partnership with a Bangalore-based organization called the Kabir Project led by middle class artists and intellectuals, funded mainly by national and international charities and development agencies. Together, Lokayan and the Kabir Project were digitally recording a number of elderly, illiterate, low caste hereditary women folk singers renowned for their repertoire of songs devoted to Kabir, a 15th century Hindu mystic poet and saint popular among low caste communities. Through a secular pluralist reinterpretation of Kabir, the Kabir Project sought to use ordinary people’s devotion to Kabir’s poetry and related folk music to attract local people to a politics of secular nationalism. However, among the low caste adherents, the saint and related cultural and musical traditions have a different significance, for they are associated with resistance to caste-based discrimination and, thus, with opposition to the pervasive inequalities of caste and class to which these groups are subject. Hence, the very use that the Kabir Project was making of Kabir and related folk traditions entailed a wilful erasure of the affective and political meanings of the saint and the music for local low caste communities. One of the most renowed singers in the local community was the blind, elderly woman folk singer Gavara-devi Gosayi. In this film clip, shot by Deo in 2012, Gosayi was performing live at an annual festival called the Kabir Yatra. The sheer pleasure and joy of the audience, drawn largely from surrounding rural communities, is palpable as Gosayi and her musicians perform live. The second clip, in contrast, shows Gosayi singing, accompanied by her own harmonium playing as well as two young male percussionists, inside a local recording studio where she was being recorded by Lokayan activists. Gosayi is visibly uncomfortable; she had never experienced recording before these recording sessions, and she preferred to play live performances out of doors for her usual audience – local followers of Kabir. What comes across is how social inequalities of gender, caste and age permeate the recording session, shaping the sociality of the studio and its musical results. As Deo notes in her analysis of the sessions, the young men overrode the singer on focal aesthetic matters: ‘Critical aspects of the energy of this genre came from its improvisatory form, interactions between vocalist and instrumentalists, and the open-air contexts of its customary performance. The cramped studio, and Gavara-devi’s unfamiliarity with studio techniques, skewed the recording process…. The recording studio emerged… as a space of negotiation over musical sounds and technical practices between those with unequal social status and power’ (Deo, 2021: 17). In Lokayan recording sessions, then, social relations of gender, caste and age influenced both the recording process and the ensuing musical sounds. Gosayi’s music was made for live performance, not recording, and she was not in a position to understand the implications of recording in the sense either of the sounds being abstracted, frozen, commodified, and lifted into global circulation online, or of any potential monetary reward. In general, ideas of individual authorship, ownership and copyright are quite alien to these musicians. It was when we took this research to an anthropology conference in Delhi that we became aware of the intensity of the issues that it raises. For a clamorous debate occurred about all digital archiving projects focused on Indian folk musics, coming as these musics do from low caste and ‘tribal’ groups. The accusation made by critics of these practices was deeper than musical accuracy, https://musdig.web.ox.ac.uk/digital-archiving-oral-vernacular-musics-northern-india https://musdig.web.ox.ac.uk/digital-archiving-oral-vernacular-musics-northern-india Born: Diversifying MIR 199 cultural sensitivity or even turning this music into a commodity. It was, rather, that the very disembedding of this music from its live, local communities of practice by recording perpetrated a form of ontological violence, an ontological violence fuelled by the social, cultural and economic distance between local musicians – whose music is profoundly embedded in communal socialities and religious cosmologies – and development-aid-funded activists, and a violence that those who value and respect Gosayi, her music and her community must call out. So the challenge posed to MIR by non-Western musics is not just to get the rhythmic or timbral analysis right, or to take the cues about musical difference from such musics and not impose inappropriate musical values, qualities and systems on them. It is also to recognize that all musics – and most spectacularly those non-Western musics that have as yet resisted incorporation into the global archives of digitized recorded music – have an ontology, that those ontologies are plural and often deeply social as well as religious or cosmological (Bohlman, 1999; Born, 2013; Sykes, 2019), and that they may be antithetical to, or profoundly different from, the universalised music ontologies assumed by MIR and companion disciplines. This poses ethical and political tests akin to those posed by discourses of sustainability – but here, tests of musical and cultural sustainability. 2.3 Musical Diversity and MIR’s Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions The third aspect of diversity follows on: it concerns certain epistemological and ontological assumptions underpinning MIR as a field, which turn on the way that ontology is understood. If MIR intends to embrace a wider diversity of musical cultures, can such assumptions be maintained? How could MIR equip itself with tools suited to analysing and modelling a greater diversity of musics? These questions arise from the very different approaches to analysing ontologies of music that characterise MIR, on the one hand, and contemporary musicology and ethnomusicology, on the other. In computer and information sciences, ‘an ontology defines a set of representational primitives with which to model a domain of knowledge or discourse. The representational primitives are typically classes (or sets), attributes (or properties), and relationships (or relations among class members)’ (Gruber, 2009: 1). Similarly, for music informatician Darrel Conklin, applying this approach to a corpus of Basque folk songs, ‘an ontology is an encoding of concepts and their relations in a domain of knowledge’ (Conklin, 2013: 162). In these disciplines, ontology is therefore conceived in terms of modelling concepts, knowledge and representation. In marked contrast, in contemporary musicology and ethnomusicology, such an approach would be identified with the analysis and modelling of an epistemology of music – that is, conceptual knowledge about a certain music. For in these disciplines, ontologies of music are considered to exceed knowledge and representation. If, in philosophy, ontology is ‘the study of what there is’ (Hofweber 2020), or ‘the study of being or existence’ (Gruber ibid.), then contemporary musicology and ethnomusicology adhere more closely to this approach when analysing ontologies of music: they are interested in analysing ‘what music is’ in any particular musical culture in terms that include but exceed knowledge and representation by taking into account the embodied, social and material aspects of any musical culture (Bohlman, 1999; Born, 2005b, 2013). Currently, MIR takes a range of digital data as an appro- ximation of the contours of a musical culture. In this sense MIR itself embodies a theory of ‘what music is’, or what might be called an analytical ontology (Born, 2010: 232): one that assumes that music can universally be represented by datasets of digital sound recordings, perhaps with added digitised scores or other kinds of metadata, various kinds of knowledge and representation, perhaps with human annotations, and that such representations capture the most salient aesthetic and ontological features of all musics. But we have just seen through Deo’s Rajasthan case study that this is not the case. For the music of Gavara-devi Gosayi and her community is immanently bound to live performance, to the socialities engendered in such performance situations, and to the cosmologies and poetry associated with a 15th century poet-saint as they are infused with a politics of resistance to caste oppression. All of these qualities – this rich embodied, social and material assemblage – together constitute the actors’ ontology of music, and many of them are shed once the sounds are captured by recording, digitised and put into circulation on the internet. So what gets lost in MIR’s epistemological and ontological assumptions? To presume MIR’s theory of music is to foreclose on many living musics, and to prioritise ontologically those sounds that, through recording, have been disembedded from originating bodies, socialities and locales – a process that R. Murray Schafer named ‘schizophonia’: how recording splits sounds from its originating sources (Schafer, 1994). Turning this around, the question arises for the MIR community: if more musical diversity is sought, and if respecting the musical ontologies of the source communities is ethically responsible and aesthetically desirable, then what kind of knowledge practices might support MIR to analyse and model these kinds of musical cultures ‘as a whole’ (Serra, 2017: 1), or at least more adequately and less reductively? Would it not make sense to consider whether there are ways to bring the cultural, social and material dimensions immanent in diverse ontologies of music into MIR’s analytical frame? This means going far beyond thinking of ‘a musical culture as a stylistically coherent musical repertory’ that can only be accessed via ‘available digital traces’ (op cit. 2). To tackle this challenge would mean prizing open those base epistemological and ontological premises of MIR through close dialogue with those music scholars and disciplines whose specialism is the analysis of music’s cultural, social and material as well as sonic dimensions: that is, music anthropologists and sociologists. Implicit in this move would be another challenge: to break with ‘mentalist’ Born: Diversifying MIR200 conceptions of music, an abstraction that is perhaps so axiomatic in computation, given its long-standing links to cognitive and information-theoretical ontologies, that it has become second nature in MIR. What, then, if we began again, refreshing MIR by building a new kind of relationship between the field and music anthropology and sociology? And by taking the terms of the ontology at issue from each musical culture, rather than by squeezing it into the existing template of what can most readily and efficiently be formalised, computationally represented and modelled? Doing this entails recalibrating how interdisciplinarity proceeds in this field. Instead of taking computer and information sciences to be keystone disciplines around which other disciplines revolve and to which they are subordinate, another approach would entail enabling the distinct disciplines to dialogue without hierarchy, and to ask music informaticians to consider alternative epistemological and ontological grounds, perhaps by inventing novel hybrids of qual-quant modelling in ways as yet unimagined and unforged. Such a reshaped interdisciplinary practice is actually envisaged in a UK Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project on interdisciplinarity that I co-directed, which examined empirically different kinds of interdisciplinary practice in several major interdisciplinary fields and adduced three basic forms (Barry and Born, 2013a, 2013b). The first, which we call the ‘additive’ or ‘synthesis’ mode of interdisciplinarity (and which is close to what is often called multidisciplinarity), involves bringing different disciplines to the table and allowing each to contribute as they are, without any of them being changed. The second, the ‘subordination’ or ‘service’ mode of interdisciplinarity, is akin to the situation now in MIR: a core discipline or disciplines, the computer and information sciences, supervise inputs from other, subordinate disciplines, so that a ‘dash’ of the social or cultural may be added to the framework without this disturbing the premises of the master disciplines. This subordination mode is a common way in which the physical and natural sciences bring in aspects of the qualitative humanities and social sciences; and this is what MIR is doing when it adds a touch of ethnomusicology to its research, but without this threatening to alter or disturb its core epistemological and ontological premises. In effect, nothing much need change. In contrast, the third mode, the ‘agonistic’ mode of interdisciplinarity, is the most promising because in this mode there is no hierarchy, and the potential is that all contributing disciplines might change through mutual transformations and the genesis of entirely unforeseen, novel methodologies and theories. This third, agonistic mode of interdisciplinarity therefore takes the form neither of a synthesis nor a hierarchy. Rather, it is driven by an agonistic relationship to existing forms of knowledge – that is, by a common sense of the problematic limits of established disciplines. What we are highlighting is how agonistic interdisciplinarity stems from a collective desire to contest or transcend the prevailing epistemological and ontological assumptions of given or established disciplines through innovative knowledge practices that aspire to render the new hybrid interdiscipline irreducible to the simple addition of its antecedent disciplines – in this case, MIR plus music anthropology/sociology. The leading information theorist Geoffrey Bowker portrays something akin to this mode of interdisciplinarity as key to the ‘new knowledge infrastructures’ demanded in the present. As he puts it, ‘The epistemic cultures of the academy all have their own historical “ways of knowing”… [But today], the objects of study… require the triangulation of multiple methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, and call upon… investigators to integrate multiple epistemic viewpoints’ (Bowker, 2018: 207). Indeed, in finding inventive ways to overcome or finesse the qual-quant divide, an agonistic interdisciplinarity between computational musicology and music anthropology and sociology could prototype new methodologies that are urgently required by the digital humanities in general. Two further points follow. Such a new interdisciplinarity is not limited to music anthropology and sociology. If they can bring social, cultural and material dimensions of music to MIR, then psychoacoustics can bring auditory perception – and more generally, the natural sciences of music can bring greater acuity in analysing features relevant to cognition (Aucouturier and Bigand, 2013) – and music analysis can throw light on higher dimensions of musical structure. And the benefits potentially flow both ways: these disciplines will in turn be nourished by what MIR brings to the interdisciplinary exchange. To take two examples: MIR can ‘bring unprecedented signal- processing sophistication to cognitive neuroscience and psychology’ (ibid.: 495); while the Tarsos platform developed by Joren Six, Olmo Cornelis and Marc Leman offers tools for enhancing the analysis of pitch organization beyond prevalent concepts in Western music theory – ‘octave equivalence, stability of tones, equal tempered scale and so on’ (Six et al., 2013: 126). Tools like Tarsos respond to the extraordinary diversity of pitch distribution in non-Western classical and folk musics and some areas of 20th century art music; and research of this kind conveys vividly how much music theory has to gain, in terms of diversifying its conceptual range and resources, from dialogues with MIR. 2.4 Diversifying the Real-World Masters/Mistresses that MIR Serves I come finally to the fourth dimension of diversity: the question of which masters or mistresses MIR serves. MIR is an international field based mainly in academia, but it has strong links to industry and the burgeoning start-up ecology of music AI. My sense is that its culture is ambiguous, oriented both by the ethos of academia and by responsiveness to the commercial goals of the digital music economy. It is as though, fortuitously, MIR serves both; and this seems to go along with certain commercial precepts being transferred almost Born: Diversifying MIR 201 unconsciously into the field. In an area of application like music recommendation, the focus is on a series of goals – attracting and retaining consumers, increasing user engagement, boosting revenues – that find their way into scientific analysis and matters of design. So just as a theory of music is manifest in MIR, where music is conceptualized, after Western pop, as everywhere taking the form of a ‘track’ or ‘song’, a theory of the human subject is built into recommendation – a human subject who is existentially overwhelmed by the scale of the global digital music archive, whose evolving taste is structured by a preference for ‘similarity’, who is individualized, and who seeks to maximize her/his listening events (Born et al., 2020). Built into machine learning applications, these models are likely performatively to shape, rather than merely reflect, listener practices (Prey, 2018): another potential reduction of human cultural diversity. Against this background I want to ask: which mistresses should MIR serve in order to diversify its goals, partners and worldly effects? If MIR’s pursuit of scientific research oriented to technological innovation often comes to be tied, directly or indirectly, to the drive for economic growth, then the escalating criticisms of the FAANG6 corporations along multiple vectors (among them transparency, accountability, privacy and security), and parallel concerns about sustainable (music) economies (Devine, 2019), remind us of the urgent need for other goals and values to guide future science and engineering. We might ask: what would computational genre recognition and recommendation look like if, under public-cultural or non-profit imperatives, the incentives driving them aimed to optimise musical self- or group- development, linked to goals of human flourishing (Nussbaum, 2003; Hesmondhalgh, 2013)? Or if they aimed to foster not a logic of ‘similarity’ but diversity? Or if they were built to enhance the potential cultural and social as well as musical riches and benefits of music discovery? Or if, rather than honing normative models of genre, computational genre systems could be tuned so as to respond to and give insight into different individual and collective perspectives on genre? Such questions would imply rendering the interface both legible or transparent and modifiable; it might mean enabling the user to call up and browse among the genre systems – that is, the musical universes – of, say, Angélique Kidjo, Kim Gordon or Diamanda Galás, of Indonesian noise music scenes or Canadian First Nation Country musicians. Being less normative may be less commercially viable, but it might well enhance and enliven our music-computational tools, experiences and futures, while empowering users and responding to, and stimulating, the sociable nature of our musical lives. 3. Conclusions Diversity has many potential meanings. It is often understood in terms of the social makeup of a profession or discipline – whether MIR or music anthropology. And this certainly matters. But one of the ways it matters is by fostering a population of practitioners harbouring a more variegated cache of cultural and musical experiences to inform practice – in MIR, ways of computationally analysing and modelling music. This article has set out four key interrelated components of diversity relevant to MIR, each of which has an autonomy, while together they add up to a series of potential interlocking changes. For progress to occur, it should be clear by now, the new forms of interdisciplinarity envisaged should have ambitions not only of epistemological and ontological kinds but of ethical and social kinds. To be clear: this is not a call to reinvent an already discredited wheel – one example is the repeated return to data-rich but impoverished conceptions of the social in the lineage linking Adolphe Quetelet, the early 19th century inventor of empirical social research and of the idea of ‘social physics’ (Donnelly, 2015; Adolf and Stehr, 2018), through Gabriel Tarde, the early 20th century sociologist who held that ‘society is imitation’ fuelled by collective flows of affect (Tarde, 1903),7 to the ‘social physics’ espoused by MIT’s Alex Pentland (Pentland, 2014).8 Today’s exponents of this lineage risk repeating conceptual and methodological errors while neglecting the abundant resources of contemporary social theory. It is essential, then, to avoid resuscitating outdated paradigms, and a good way to do this is to create an ‘agonistic’ interdisciplinarity integrating current thinking in relevant disciplines: to put MIR into interdisciplinary dialogue with today’s ethnomusicology, music anthropology and sociology. The time is ripe for sustained interdisciplinary engagements in ways previously untried, and the new hybrid knowledge forms suggested in this article demand cumulative and coordinated efforts. The recent concept of ‘responsible innovation’, the title of a journal founded in 2014, offers a stimulus; it foregrounds the benefits of reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness in emerging technological design, suggesting that these are favoured by ‘an open organisational culture, emphasising innovation, creativity, interdisciplinarity, experimentation and risk taking; … [and] commitment to public engagement and to taking account of the public interest’ (Stilgoe et al., 2013: 1573). This suggests the importance of creating new institutional ecologies, collective efforts within which such values can be cultivated, for example when transforming MIR through the four facets of diversity. And this in turn prompts a call for action: an invitation to MIR colleagues to join myself and others from relevant disciplines in forming a think tank or similar initiative to develop and take forward these ideas. Think tanks in this vein have recently arisen to address ethical issues surrounding the development and application of AI.9 Music informatics, given its prominent position in the ongoing evolution of the data and computational sciences as they affect culture, surely deserves its own initiative of this kind. Notes 1 See the statement about the conference posted on 16 July 2019: https://transactions.ismir.net. 2 Email to the author from the conference chairs, 14 May 2019. https://transactions.ismir.net Born: Diversifying MIR202 3 I wrote this article (in late August 2020) as the protests erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer, one of a series of acts of police violence in the USA that inflamed the Black Lives Matter movement. 4 The paper that set this controversy in motion was written by Dr. Philip A. Ewell, originally a plenary talk at the 2019 Society for Music Theory meeting: https://mtosmt. org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20. 26.2.ewell.html. For a journalistic account of what ensued, see: https:// w w w. i n s i d e h i g h e r e d . c o m / n e w s / 2 0 2 0 / 0 8 / 0 7 / m u s i c - t h e o r y - j o u r n a l - c r i t i c i z e d - s y m p o s i u m - supposed-white-supremacist-theorist. 5 On the history of responses to Lomax’s cantometrics, see Savage (2018). 6 The acronym FAANG stands for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. 7 On Quetelet, Tarde and their relationship in relation to the history of criminology, see Beirne (1993). 8 On ‘social physics’ in Quetelet and Pentland, and the connections between them, see Adolf and Stehr (2018). 9 See the Data and Society institute (https://datasociety. net), AI Now Institute (https://ainowinstitute.org), and 3A Institute (https://3ainstitute.cecs.anu.edu.au). Acknowledgements I am grateful for dialogues with Bob L. T. Sturm, Fernando Diaz and others from the ‘AI, Recommendation, and the Curation of Culture’ workshop in Paris, October 2019, notably Jeremy Morris and Ashton Anderson. I am also grateful to Emilia Gómez for conversations, information and for inviting me, with Cynthia Liem, to give a keynote at the 20th ISMIR conference. My thanks, finally, to Andrew Barry and Kyle Devine, with whom many of these thoughts were incubated. Competing Interests The author has no competing interests to declare. References Adolf, M., & Stehr, N. (2018). Information, knowledge, and the return of social physics. Administration and Society, 50(9), 1238–1258. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1177/0095399718760585 Ahmed, S., & Swan, E. (2006). Doing diversity. Policy Futures in Education, 4(2), 96–100. DOI: https://doi. org/10.2304/pfie.2006.4.2.96 Akrich, M. (1992). The description of technical objects. In W. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, pages 205– 224. 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Born, G. (1995). Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520916845 Born, G. (2005a). Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC. London: Vintage. Born, G. (2005b). ‘On musical mediation: Ontology, technology and creativity’. Twentieth-Century Music, 2(1), 7–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S147857 220500023X Born, G. (2010). On Tardean relations: Temporality and ethnography’. In M. Candea (Ed.), The Social after Gabriel Tarde, pages 230–247. London and New York: Routledge. Born, G. (2012). Music and the social. In M. Clayton, T. Herbert & R. Middleton (Eds.), The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edition, pages 261– 274). London: Routledge. Born, G. (2013). Music: Ontology, agency and creativity. In L. Chua & M. Elliott (Eds.), Distributed Objects: Meaning and Matter after Alfred Gell, pages 130–154. Oxford: Berg. 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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ tismir.58 Submitted: 03 March 2020 Accepted: 14 September 2020 Published: 22 October 2020 Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Ubiquity Press. OPEN ACCESS https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.05.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.05.008 https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478002192-013 https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478002192-013 https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243905285847 https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243905285847 https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/ben057 https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.58 https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.58 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 1. Introduction 1.1 MIR and Diversity: Critiques from Within 1.2 Messages from Vermeer 1.3 Addressing MIR from the Outside 2. Four Interrelated Dimensions of Diversity 2.1 The Social Diversity of MIR as a Profession and its Consequences 2.2 MIR and Musical Diversity: Whose Music, Which Music? 2.3 Musical Diversity and MIR’s Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions 2.4 Diversifying the Real-World Masters/Mistresses that MIR Serves 3. Conclusions Notes Acknowledgements Competing Interests References Figure 1 Figure 2 work_3k4scrhrbnaa3aqbtb4kghxxcu ---- SOCIETÀMUTAMENTOPOLITICA 11(22): 205-208, 2020 ISSN 2038-3150 (online) | DOI: 10.13128/smp-12640 societàmutamentopolitica r i v i s t a i t a l i a n a d i s o c i o l o g i a Citation: Cosimo Marco Scarcelli (2020) Un’intervista a Karen Ross: dodici domande su genere e partecipazione (ma non solo). SocietàMutamentoPo- litica 11(22): 205-208. doi: 10.13128/smp- 12640 Copyright: © 2020 Cosimo Marco Scar- celli. This is an open access, peer- reviewed article published by Firenze University Press (http://www.fupress. com/smp) and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attri- bution License, which permits unre- stricted use, distribution, and reproduc- tion in any medium, provided the origi- nal author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All rel- evant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Competing Interests: The Author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interest. L’intervista Un’intervista a Karen Ross: dodici domande su genere e partecipazione (ma non solo) a cura di Cosimo Marco Scarcelli Karen Ross è professoressa di Gender e Media presso la School of Arts and Cultures della Newcastle University (UK). I suoi ambiti di ricerca si focalizzano soprattutto sul- la relazione tra genere, media e società con un’attenzione particolare ai social media e alla comunicazione politica. Studiosa appassionata e sempre attiva, Karen ha scritto saggi fondamentali riguardo ai temi in questione; è d’obbligo ricordare Gender, Politics and News: A Game of Three Sides  (2017, Wiley Blackwell), la curatele Gender equali- ty and the media. A challenge for Europe (2016, Routledge; con Claudia Padovani) e A Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media (2012, Wiley Blackwell) e il suo lavoro come principal editor: The International Encyclopaedia of Gender, Media and Communication  (Wiley, 2020). Tra gli articoli più recenti si segnalano: Facing up to Facebook: politi- cians, publics and the social media(ted) turn in New Zealand (2015, in «Media, Culture & Society» con Fountaine S. e Comrie M.); Scaling Social Movements Through Social Media: The Case of Black Lives Matter (2018, in «Social Media + Society», con Mundt M., Burnett C.M.) e Women, men and news: It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it (2018, in «Journalism Studies»; con Boyle K., Carter C., Ging D.). Karen è stata Lead Rese- archer per il progetto AGEMI (Advancing Gender Equality in the Media), dal 2017 al 2019. È stata responsabile dell’European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) dal 2011 al 2013. È stata anche coordinatrice per UK e per l’Europa del Global Media Monito- ring Project. 206 a cura di Cosimo Marco Scarcelli D. Karen, intanto grazie mille per aver accettato di rispondere alle mie domande e per il contributo che potrai dare a questa special issue di «SocietàMutamentoPoliti- ca» che si concentra su genere e partecipazione. Sei una delle più importanti studiose nel campo di Gender & Media e lavori da molto tempo su diversi argomenti in questo settore. Cosa ti ha spinto a iniziare a concentrarti su questi specifici temi? R. All’inizio degli anni Novanta, mi sono candida- ta alle elezioni del consiglio comunale e, grazie a questa esperienza, mi sono improvvisamente resa conto che i media inquadravano le donne che lavoravano in politica in modi molto diversi dagli uomini. Dopo l’elezione (che ho vinto!), ho deciso di spostare i miei interessi di ricer- ca dalle tematiche relative alle rappresentazioni etniche, a qualcosa che mettesse al centro le donne, impegnate in politica, ma non solo, considerandole come oggetto e soggetto dei discorsi creati nella cronaca. Nel corso del tempo questo interesse si è espanso fino a includere il mio interesse attuale: i social media e il loro utilizzo da parte delle donne in politica. Ma non mi occupo soltanto di questo, per esempio, sto anche lavorando con una collega statunitense a un progetto nel quale stiamo esaminando in che modo i mezzi di infor- mazione in tre paesi (Stati Uniti, Finlandia, Regno Uni- to) inquadrano l’esperienza della violenza da parte del partner. D. Dal tuo, speciale, punto di vista cosa significa lavorare oggi sul rapporto tra genere e media e come è cambiato questo tipo di ricerca negli ultimi anni? R. Ho lavorato in questo campo di studi per quasi tre decenni e posso affermare che capire il modo in cui i media inquadrano le donne è fondamentale ora, così come lo è sempre stato. Se prendiamo in considerazione le notizie, possiamo affermare che il discorso è decisamente cambiato in que- sto periodo e che gli esempi di rapporti sessisti espliciti sono sempre meno. Ciò non toglie, però, che continuia- mo ad assistere ad una banalizzazione delle donne attra- verso le più disparate modalità e che ci sia un’articola- zione del discorso molto dissimile se si ha a che fare con gli uomini o con le donne. La svolta politica alla quale stiamo assistendo in tutta Europa e a livello globale, che evidenzia una certa tendenza verso destra, è accompagnata da una reazione avversa al progresso della condizione femminile. Non solo, c’è il pericolo di un possibile ribaltamento dei dirit- ti per i quali le donne (e gli uomini) si sono battuti per molti anni, pensiamo, ad esempio, al diritto a un aborto sicuro. Queste tendenze politiche retrograde non hanno risparmiato l’Accademia. In alcuni paesi, come l’Un- gheria, è stato vietato l’insegnamento delle discipline che stanno sotto al termine ombrello Women Studies. Accadimenti del genere ci dimostrano la minaccia che le analisi femministe e di genere possono rappresentare per alcune società e le loro istituzioni. E i media? I media rappresentano delle istituzioni molto importanti. Un altro cambiamento all’interno del campo di stu- di è quello relativo all’oggetto di ricerca, un mutamento spinto dall’esplosione dei media digitali e in particolare dei social media. Assistiamo, in altri termini, a un cre- scente interesse al modo in cui le disuguaglianze pre- senti nella società, così come vengono rappresentate dai media tradizionali, vengono sfidate (o, potrei dire, sem- plicemente replicate) dalle tecnologie digitali. Gran par- te del lavoro contemporaneo su genere e media, incluso il mio, si concentra ora su piattaforme come Instagram, Facebook e Twitter. In breve, si può osservare che la promessa della tecnologia come forza emancipatrice per le donne si è dimostrata in realtà un’arma a doppio taglio. Da un lato, alcune piattaforme consentono alle donne di avere una voce e di parlare con chiunque voglia ascoltarle senza essere filtrate dai media mainstream, dall’altro, quelle stesse piattaforme stanno consentendo una proliferazio- ne di abusi, specialmente contro le donne. D. Pensi che gli studi su genere e comunicazione rap- presentino oggi un campo di ricerca riconosciuto nel mon- do accademico? R. Dipende… Come ho accennato in precedenza, anche se nella maggior parte dei paesi è possibile tro- vare corsi di insegnamento dedicati a genere e media e talvolta perfino interi corsi di laurea ad hoc, in alcuni paesi questi studi sono sotto attacco. La partita si gioca su un campo più politico che pedagogico, come se l’in- segnamento potesse essere considerato come un mero argomento accademico separato dai mondi reali in cui avviene la pratica politica; come se la politica non fosse personale o non fosse pedagogica. D. In termini generali, qual è – a tuo parere – la con- nessione tra il ruolo dei media, il genere e la partecipazio- ne nella società contemporanea? R. Un modo ovvio in cui i media digitali hanno stimolato il coinvolgimento delle donne (e degli uomi- 207Un’intervista a Karen Ross: dodici domande su genere e partecipazione (ma non solo) ni) nella società è evidenziato dalle modalità in cui le piattaforme digitali come Twitter, Facebook e WhatsApp vengono utilizzate sui dispositivi mobili come meccani- smi per riunire le persone per protestare in modo rea- le e su strade reali; come testimoniano i (letteralmente) milioni di donne in tutto il mondo che hanno partecipa- to a manifestazioni e proteste contro il presidente Trump nei giorni successivi al suo insediamento. Un altro esempio evidente è l’attivismo femminista dell’hashtag #MeToo e la creazione di spazi digitali per combattere il sessismo e consentire alle donne di riunirsi in comuni- tà di interesse che possono anche dare forma all’azione. Infine, un altro aspetto interessante è quello legato allo sviluppo di e-business di proprietà delle donne, compre- se aziende focalizzate sui media e siti web femministi come Jezebel. D. Pensi che, in termini di media, genere e parteci- pazione, potrebbe esserci un ruolo specifico delle giovani generazioni, in particolare delle giovani donne? R. Sì! Le giovani donne sono “native digitali”, sono cresciute su Instagram e non solo usano la tecnolo- gia esistente per fare campagne su temi particolari, ma stanno anche sviluppando i propri strumenti tecnologi- ci, imparando a programmare e gradualmente prenden- do piede all’interno di un’industria tecnologica ancora troppo maschile. D. Concentrandoci sulla pandemia e su ciò che, a partire da gennaio 2020, sta accadendo nel mondo, abbiamo visto che diversi leader mondiali hanno seguito varie strategie per combattere la diffusione del virus e per comunicare con i cittadini. Pensi che il genere dei leader in questione abbia influito in qualche misura sulla loro comunicazione? R. Sì, in una certa misura sì. Ho anche scritto qual- cosa di recente su questo. Farei in questo caso un esempio in particolare e cioè quello di Jacinda Ardern, una delle donne elogiate per la sua leadership durante la pandemia. Ricordiamo che il suo successo non è dovuto solo al suo sesso, ma anche a ciò che è, a ciò in cui crede, ai suoi valori. Basti pensa- re a Margaret Thatcher, Imelda Marcos o anche Theresa May, per riconoscere che essere donna non è garanzia di efficacia, in una crisi globale o in qualsiasi altro momen- to storico. Ciò che è interessante, e un po’ ironico in termini di discorso giornalistico, è che gli stessi identici trat- ti di leadership che vengono attribuiti a un leader poli- tico come Jacinda Ardern, come compassione, empatia, umiltà e ascolto attivo, sono stati convenzionalmente intesi come “femminili” e quindi incompatibili con una leadership propriamente detta (quella, per inteso, classi- camente collegata al così detto “uomo forte”). Tuttavia, sembrerebbe che in una crisi globale siano invece carat- teristiche che rendono la leadership dav vero efficace. Naturalmente, tali tratti non sono realmente connessi ad un solo genere. Ma dobbiamo ricordare che, come la storia ci insegna, le donne non hanno praticamente mai avuto l’opportunità di diventare leader politici. Anche ora, nel 2020, ci sono solo 12 capi di governo donne su 193 nazioni che sono membri dell’Unione Interparla- mentare. D. Rimaniamo ancora un attimo sull’attualità e sul- la politica e muoviamoci verso un altro grande tema degli ultimi giorni, le elezioni statunitensi e Kamala Harris come prima donna vicepresidente della storia americana. Pensi che questo potrebbe rappresentare un cambiamento importante? R. Sì, spero davvero che questo cambiamento rap- presenti un punto di svolta in termini di chi può essere considerato un politico efficace. È già chiaro dai recenti annunci di Harris e Biden che le donne giocheranno un ruolo significativo nella loro amministrazione. La prima nomina di Harris è stata Karine Jean-Pierre come suo nuovo capo di stato maggiore. Jean-Pierre è un’attivista accademica haitiana-americana, lesbica. Lei è stata una figura chiave in tre campagne presidenziali, inclusa la storica vittoria di Barack Obama nel 2008. Inoltre, il 29 novembre, Joe Biden ha messo, per la prima volta, delle donne a ricoprire ruoli senior nel cam- po della comunicazione. Tuttavia, essere “solo” una donna, “solo” una don- na afro-indiana americana non conterà nulla se Harris non userà la sua posizione per spingere sul cambiamen- to, non solo per ciò che concerne le donne, ma anche per quel che riguarda la promozione attiva di un programma di equità. D. Vorrei ora parlare di uno dei tuoi ultimi lavori, The International Encyclopaedia of Gender, Media and Communication che hai recentemente curato per Wiley. Perché hai deciso di avviare un progetto così complesso e quale può essere oggi il ruolo di questa Enciclopedia? R. Ottima domanda! Sono un membro dell’Advisory Board per la serie International Encyclopaedia di Wiley e alcuni anni fa, quando consideravo le nuove proposte sui differenti argomenti, ho chiesto perché nessuno si facesse avanti con una proposta riguardante il genere e i media. 208 a cura di Cosimo Marco Scarcelli A quel punto tutti hanno rivolto il loro sguardo verso di me e qualcuno ha detto “ottima idea, perché non lo fai?”. Quindi, dopo un anno o due in cui ho pensato che fosse un progetto troppo articolato e, per questo, scoraggiante, mi sono detta “No, se qualcuno deve farlo, devo essere io”, così ho iniziato la mia avventura. Ho avuto la grande fortuna di poter coinvolgere nel progetto un team di bril- lanti associate editor, tra cui il mio intervistatore, il mio buon amico Cosimo Marco Scarcelli. Questo gruppo ha reso il progetto più facile per me, ma poi devo ammette- re che la collaborazione ha anche portato a un risultato migliore di quello che avrei potuto ottenere da sola. Sono immensamente orgogliosa di ciò che abbiamo ottenuto con l’Enciclopedia e spero che si riveli una fonte utile per docenti, colleghi ricercatori e studenti. D. Quali sono stati i momenti più difficili che hai affrontato in questo lavoro? Qual è stata la soddisfazione più grande? R. Forse la sfida più grande, come per qualsiasi acca- demico, è stata iniziare, ottenere il primo lavoro, pub- blicare il primo articolo. Ma sono stata fortunata perché all’inizio c’era un mercato del lavoro abbastanza vivace, ci si poteva muovere con più facilità e non si avevano carichi di insegnamento pesanti nei primi anni. Que- sto mi ha permesso di strutturare bene il mio curricu- lum sin dall’inizio. Un’opzione, bisogna dirlo, che non è disponibile per la maggior parte dei giovani studiosi che iniziano ora e che devono affrontare una situazione lavo- rativa molto più complicata. Immagino che la mia più grande soddisfazione professionale sia stata ottenere una cattedra. Però devo dire anche che ogni dottorando che vedo completare il suo percorso formativo per me rappresenta una meravi- gliosa soddisfazione. So bene che ciascuno di loro si sta lanciando verso un futuro incerto e precario. Ma sono sicura che, grazie alla loro tenacia e alla loro bravura, sopravviveranno. D. So che sei una studiosa molto attiva e quindi immagino che tu abbia un nuovo progetto nel cassetto... vuoi parlarci di qualcosa in particolare? R. Ho molti progetti in corso in questo momento, ciascuno con obiettivi e stadi di avanzamento differen- ti. Sono il coordinatore britannico ed europeo del Global Media Monitoring Project e presto esaminerò i dati che abbiamo raccolto nell’ultimo periodo di monitoraggio per iniziare a ragionarci e scrivere a riguardo. Sto anche lavorando con due colleghi in Nuova Zelanda a un progetto incentrato sulle elezioni neozelan- desi di ottobre 2020 e sui post di Facebook dei due prin- cipali leader del partito, Jacinda Ardern e Judith Collins. Poi…ho una collaborazione con una collega statu- nitense sulla rappresentazione delle notizie sulla violen- za di genere. Infine, sto lavorando con i colleghi del mio dipartimento, a un progetto su piccola scala che coinvol- ge i residenti in due case di cura locali per supportarli nelle riprese del loro “Corona Winter”: produrremo un cortometraggio con le riprese che hanno fatto, con l’o- biettivo di mostrare la resilienza, l’umorismo e la creati- vità delle persone anziane che vivono in strutture di case di cura, come correttivo all’insistenza dei media sul fatto che le case di cura sono i luoghi dove vai a morire. D. Un’ultima domanda, quali sono i tuoi consigli per un giovane studioso che vuole iniziare a lavorare in que- sto specifico campo? R. Innanzitutto le/gli direi: assicurati di volere dav- vero intraprendere la carriera accademica. Se è quello che vuoi, preparati a essere flessibile. Il tuo primo lavo- ro potrebbe non essere davvero quello a cui aspiravi: il settore specifico potrebbe non essere il tuo preferito e il contratto durare solo per un periodo breve, potrebbe richiedere molte ore di insegnamento, magari di argo- menti con cui non hai una grande familiarità. Ma pren- dilo! Devi prima mettere il piede nella porta e accumu- lare esperienza. Trova altri studiosi che ammiri e rispet- ti e chiedi se puoi fare due chiacchiere con loro. Fai in modo che alcuni colleghi intorno a te ti nutrano intellet- tualmente e ti sostengano. Fai attività volontarie, come organizzare panel di conferenze e rivedere articoli e pro- posal. Sii audace! Invia e-mail alle riviste nelle quali vor- resti pubblicare un giorno e offriti volontario per scrive- re la recensione di un libro. Renditi visibile. Ma attenzio- ne...sii gentile con te stesso, coltiva sempre l’amore per i tuoi amici e la tua famiglia. E ricordati di assaporare ogni istante della tua vita. (Traduzione di Cosimo Marco Scarcelli) Sulle tracce della partecipazione Simona Gozzo, Elisa Lombardo, Rossana Sampugnaro Quale genere di astensionismo? La partecipazione elettorale delle donne in Italia nel periodo 1948-2018 Dario Tuorto, Laura Sartori Partecipazione e genere in Europa: una questione di contesto? Simona Gozzo1 Partiti populisti, diritti e uguaglianza di genere Marilena Macaluso Il collo di bottiglia della rappresentanza di genere. Le elette nel Parlamento Italiano nel nuovo millennio (2001-2018) Rossana Sampugnaro Che genere di diritto? Il controverso rapporto tra movimenti delle donne e trasformazioni dell’ordinamento giuridico Delia La Rocca Meccanismi di riproduzione del gender gap nella sfera politica e nei media Marinella Belluati The ties that fight. Il potere integrativo delle reti online femministe Elena Pavan Sharing a Meme! Questioni di genere tra stereotipi e détournement Roberta Bracciale Quando gli adulti negano agency sessuale e partecipazione alle ragazze e ai ragazzi. Adolescenti, sexting e intimate citizenship Cosimo Marco Scarcelli Il corpo desiderato: differenze di genere Maria Fobert Veutro Lavoro gratuito e disuguaglianze di genere Rita Palidda Le politiche di genere tra «ridistribuzione» e «riconoscimento». Un percorso di lettura Franca Bonichi Oltre le specificità di genere. Cura e diritti nella prospettiva relazionale di Amartya Sen e Martha Nussbaum Valentina Erasmo Prostituzione e sfruttamento tra vulnerabilità, familismo e segregazione sociale: il caso delle donne Rom Emiliana Baldoni Dentro i confini simbolici del gender order nel volontariato: pratiche e narrazioni della partecipazione delle donne Stella Milani Il ruolo delle donne nell’accoglienza e nell’inclusione dei migranti. Tratteggi di un’agency al femminile Ignazia Batholini Un’intervista a Karen Ross: dodici domande su genere e partecipazione (ma non solo) a cura di Cosimo Marco Scarcelli La mia Amica Vittoria Giuseppe Vecchio Le trame della ricerca sociologica: ritratto di Vittoria Cuturi Rossana Sampugnaro Leadership e gestione della complessità* Vittoria Cuturi Una questione complessa Simona Gozzo Complessità politica e complessità sociale (ma non solo) Gianfranco Bettin Lattes L’intuito di Vittoria Cuturi Roberto Segatori Una lezione di metodo Rossana Sampugnaro Il leader minimo Andrea Pirni Leadership e democrazia: il contributo di Vittoria Cuturi alla sociologia politica Lorenzo Viviani Complessità e leadership Antonio Costabile Leadership e radici sociali del potere legittimo Pietro Fantozzi Ripensare le politiche di salute nell’era neoliberista. Welfare mix e sofferenza psichica. Quali spazi d’intervento per la società civile? Antonella Cammarota, Valentina Raffa* The 2019 European Elections on Twitter between Populism, Euroscepticism and Nationalism: The Case of Italy Carlo Berti, Enzo Loner* Storie di ordinaria radicalizzazione: fattori causali e trigger events nelle narrazioni inconsapevoli dei giovani italiani di seconda generazione Gaia Peruzzi, Giuseppe Anzera, Alessandra Massa Nota introduttiva Lorenzo Viviani Forme del ‘collettivo’ ai tempi del corona virus Franca Bonichi Vecchie e nuove rimozioni: rileggendo La solitudine del morente di Elias alla luce della pandemia Andrea Valzania Un teorema (quasi) perfetto Il libro di Giulio Moini, Neoliberismo, Mondadori, Milano, 2020 Roberto Segatori Appendice bio-bibliografica sugli autori work_3m66ibwo4fa3lpw6z7pjngec7i ---- Competing at the top level with Crohn’s disease 365Treasure A. Br J Sports Med March 2020 Vol 54 No 6 Competing at the top level with Crohn’s disease Alyx Treasure Early potEntial and rEalisation of olympiC drEams By the time I was 17, I had already spent 2 years going in/out of hospital. Having been told at the age of 9 that I would make the Olympics, I was very focused on my sporting goals. I had no prior family history of Crohn’s. It took 2 years for me to get a diagnosis and this severely affected my athletic development by preventing me from training/competing. I lost my oppor- tunity to go to college in the USA, which had been a long- term ambition, and it would have been easy to give up on the sport. Fortunately, I didn’t give up. I achieved my ultimate goal to qualify for the Cana- dian Olympic team in the high jump. I jumped 1.94 metres in the qualifying round, which put me in the Olympic final and helped me to realise my lifelong dream aged 24 years. HEaltH vErsus sporting goals When you’re told at 9 years old that you will make the Olympics you become driven, I would remove anything in my path to achieve my target. I was told several times that I had to quit athletics due to my condition, and one doctor advised me to ‘pick health or sport’. I didn’t do well with being told what I could or could not do, and over the years, I have argued with my medical team. However, I needed to be challenged and it is great when you can have open and honest discussions with clinicians. I have valued most those clini- cians who can advocate on my behalf with the rest of the medical team and help to explain what I am going through. ‘my CroHn’s, my symptoms’ My symptoms are not gastrointestinally driven, and instead, I develop pain and discomfort, which limits my ability to perform. It isn’t about what I eat. It has been difficult to find a balance during my career and I am still fighting it. I am not sure that I have it remotely figured out. We are told by the dieticians and the nutritionists that look after us that we need to eat ‘hard to digest foods that support athletics’ (such as complex carbohydrates, vegetables and high- fibre foods). Unfortunately, these don’t work well for me and I have found that I have to use meal replacements to ensure I have enough energy for training. Luckily, I can tolerate protein, which supports my recovery. I have trained in a semi- fasted state, but hitting peak levels for sustained periods is tough when we are doing a 4–5 hours training session. optimising tHE CarE of my Condition I find it hard talking with those both inside and outside the sporting environment about diet. It is difficult to find people with an insight into the disease who can empathise. I have learnt that there is no one- time fix and no gastroenterologist, nutritionist or doctor who can help me. The biggest factor on which I focus on is my preparation. I dedicate months to the maintenance of consistent behaviours, which add up to success. These include optimising my eating, sleep, medication, physio and training. Consistency is hard with Crohn’s and I have to fight bad periods to train my body as best as I can, to perform when the time is right. atHlEtiCs in tHE #mEtoo Era I had to tell people that I wasn’t faking it with my symptoms, and as a young female athlete, I learnt to be assertive. Athletics is cutthroat. I made it, but I was hardened through the process. I was told that I had to be ‘tougher’ to deal with my symptoms and I coped with this, but some athletes may not have responded so well. Luckily, I had people telling me posi- tive things about my performance, which helped to balance me out and I was able to respond to those who challenged me. I think the key is supporting athletes to become self- aware about what works for them, and then taking an individualised approach to help them recognise what drives them and how to maximise their medical management alongside their performance. BEComing an advoCatE for otHErs I struggled being diagnosed at 17 years old, and I imagine that it would be worse being diagnosed aged 13 or 14 years as you are going through a lot of changes at the same time. I wanted to become an advocate for others with Crohn’s disease. I had nobody to look up to and learn from, and having a role model who demonstrates that you can reach the top level in the sport with Crohn’s is important. I became a spokes- person for Crohn’s Canada, and I am pleased to be able to share my experiences to help others (figure 1). We are in a better place now that Crohn’s and other gastric concerns are being researched, and there are medica- tions and treatment plans available. futurE HopEs and goals I achieved my initial life goal aged 24 years. It took 2 years for me to re- focus, but I want to break the Canadian high jump record (1.98 m at the time of writing) and qualify for Tokyo 2020. I will then be 28 years old and I will consider retirement as I cannot continue to put the same pressure on my body. I am studying business and sustainable fashion so that I have a career beyond athletics, and I am looking forward to living a ‘normal’ life. Three pieces of advice for a clinician working with an athlete with Crohn’s disease: 1. Communication—I have a great team at Athletics Canada who offer a holistic overview, but I think we need more in- tegrated communication within teams to stop different professions working in silo’s. Having the physiotherapists work closer with support staff, such as dieticians, would really support the athletes to reach their peak condition. 2. Holistic understanding of symptoms— The complexity of symptoms that arise from Crohn’s and their ability to arise outside of GI- specific complaints means we need to take a whole- body approach. Alteration in eating habits and energy output, increased fatigue or chronic pain, all need to be re- viewed for how these symptoms inter- act with GI concerns. The complexity of symptoms and how they are inter- Prince George, British Columbia, Canada Correspondence to Alyx Treasure, Prince George, BC, Canada; alyx_ treasure@ hotmail. com patient voices figure 1 Alyx Treasure pictured left with BJSM Associate Editor Paul Blazey. o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b jsm .b m j.co m / B r J S p o rts M e d : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b jsp o rts-2 0 1 9 -1 0 0 8 0 7 o n 5 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://www.basem.co.uk/ http://bjsm.bmj.com/ http://bjsm.bmj.com/ 366 Treasure A. Br J Sports Med March 2020 Vol 54 No 6 patient voices related should have a greater focus in terms of the relationship between pa- tient and clinician. 3. Individualised approach—Crohn’s is a difficult disease to manage as it manifests differently in each patient. Worse than that, it seems to mutate and change over time so you feel that you can never fully understand it. This makes it incredibly difficult to have productive conversations with clini- cians on what is happening and why. This is why a long- term individualised program that is monitored closely by the medical team (and more impor- tantly by the patient) is essential. You are your own best advocate and if you can’t get a grasp on how your body re- sponds, it is near impossible to make positive impacts on your management of the disease. Alyx is an ambassador for Crohn’s and Colitis Canada who can be found at the following web address—http:// crohn- sandcolitis. ca/ or via social media @ getgutsycanada. Contributors This work was written up by Paul Blazey—Associate Editor with BJSM following an in- person interview conducted with the athlete in focus, AT. funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not- for- profit sectors. Competing interests None declared. patient consent for publication Obtained. provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed. © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. No commercial re- use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. ► Additional material is published online only. To view, please visit the journal online (http:// dx. doi. org/ 10. 1136/ bjsports- 2019- 100807). to cite Treasure A. Br J Sports Med 2020;54:365–366. Accepted 2 June 2019 Published Online First 5 July 2019 Br J Sports Med 2020;54:365–366. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2019-100807 o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b jsm .b m j.co m / B r J S p o rts M e d : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b jsp o rts-2 0 1 9 -1 0 0 8 0 7 o n 5 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://crohnsandcolitis.ca/ http://crohnsandcolitis.ca/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2019-100807 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2019-100807 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1136/bjsports-2019-100807&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-02-10 http://bjsm.bmj.com/ Competing at the top level with Crohn’s disease Early potential and realisation of Olympic dreams Health versus sporting goals ‘My Crohn’s, my symptoms’ Optimising the care of my condition Athletics in the #MeToo era Becoming an advocate for others Future hopes and goals work_3mdu7b7venck5icgbnz4tjzwwa ---- It’s time to address sexual violence in academic global health 1Ridde V, et al. BMJ Glob Health 2019;4:e001616. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001616 It’s time to address sexual violence in academic global health Valery Ridde,  1 Christian Dagenais,2 Isabelle Daigneault2 Editorial To cite: Ridde V, Dagenais C, Daigneault I. It’s time to address sexual violence in academic global health. BMJ Glob Health 2019;4:e001616. doi:10.1136/ bmjgh-2019-001616 Handling editor Seye Abimbola Received 4 April 2019 Accepted 6 April 2019 1IRD (French Institute For Research on sustainable Development), CEPED (IRD- Université de Paris), Universités de Paris, ERL INSERM SAGESUD, Paris, France 2Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada Correspondence to Professor Valery Ridde; valery. ridde@ ird. fr © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. InTroduCTIon Looking back over the first year of the global #MeToo movement that brought sexual violence (from harassment to coercion and assault) out in the open,1 we note that this issue has received little attention in academic global health. Recent cases of sexual miscon- duct in Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS)2 and Oxfam show that the global health community must act to address this problem.3 In just a few months, the #MeToo movement raised awareness, stimulated new debates and placed this issue squarely on the public agenda in politics, business and entertainment. But academic global health still does not adequately prepare (women and men) students and academics for this problem; and recent discussions on global health training ignore the problem.4 Indeed, there is an urgent need to implement evidence-based comprehensive and inte- grated prevention strategies to address sexual violence in global health academic research.5 Collaboration between partners from coun- tries with unequal incomes and power is common in academic global health.6 7 While challenges of power, money, publication, data use, and so on, within such collabora- tions are widely discussed,6 8–10 there is rela- tive silence around sexual violence. Gender inequality in global health is increasingly discussed11—as scientific panels are often composed of a majority of (or only) men and the work of unpaid young women represents a large proportion of global health intern- ships.12 There is a new movement to highlight women leaders in global health,13 and junior women researchers are calling to depatriar- chalise science for French-speaking women.14 Despite these discussions, the general lack of consideration for sexuality issues in research fieldwork remains.15 16 In 1985, Gurney stated, “for female fieldworkers, reciprocity… may be prob- lematic if powerful males in the setting expect sexual favors in return for research access.”11 There may also be a culture of sexual harassment in global health due to expectations that the level of openness and comfort with sexuality (required to work in some aspects of the field) translates into an openness towards sexual advances17—‘even apparently innocuous sexualizations have a considerable effect on the way gender and sexuality are negotiated during the research encounter.’18 There are many guides to support researchers engaged in global health partner- ships to ensure that collaborations are fair and ethical,19 20 but none addresses sexual violence head on. While data on the content of each course are not available, the same lacunae seem to apply to preparation for global health internships.21–23 A recent systematic review of US medical students’ global health intern- ships found no mention of sexual harassment or assault in curricula.24 Likewise, existing academia-wide movements do not include specific consideration for the peculiarities of global health—for example, the Athena Swan Charter for the advancement of gender equality in higher education25 and the Title IX US civil rights law which has enabled students to compel colleges and universities to take action against gender-based sexual harassment and assault on campuses.26 How are we Involved as aCademICs? our (re)awareness of THe problem Stories of sexual harassment of female students by academics (and of sexual relations between academics and students) are not new. But they are all too rarely addressed in academic training, especially in the Global North where universities are increasingly devel- oping global health training programmes and sending more and more students into the field. Compared with domestic students in North America, international students are at higher risk of experiencing sexual violence on campus27 28 and are less likely to seek help if assaulted.28 Academic institutions need to be held accountable for the well-being of the o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://g h .b m j.co m / B M J G lo b H e a lth : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jg h -2 0 1 9 -0 0 1 6 1 6 o n 2 8 A p ril 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://gh.bmj.com/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001616&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-04-26 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9299-8266 http://gh.bmj.com/ 2 Ridde V, et al. BMJ Glob Health 2019;4:e001616. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001616 BMJ Global Health foreign students they host and the domestic students they send abroad. In recent months, three young women shared with one of us, in informal discussions, their experiences of sexual harassment in the field. One of them met with many actors involved in her subject in the country concerned. She reported that one researcher she was advised to meet was very insistent, on several occasions. And he was not the only one. After a few days of fieldwork and too many insistent requests, she bought and wore a fake wedding ring, pretending to be a married woman to avoid harass- ment. In 1977, Carol Warren reported using the same strategy in the USA,29 which suggests that this problem is not confined to a particular social context and that this coping strategy is quite common. The other two young women were in direct contact with high-ranking individuals in government and an international financial institution to conduct interviews to obtain data for their research. The insistent demands of these high-ranking individuals for more informal, off-duty and very personal meetings put these two students in a very uncomfortable position, at risk to their integrity and research. As with sexual violence in universities in the Global North,30–32 victims of harassment and assault abroad are often unable or reluctant to disclose and may wait until the end of their fieldwork, or even graduation, to disclose. They may only disclose to informal sources of support, such as friends and family. In all three cases presented above, even though there had never been any cause for suspicion, the supervisor was indirectly responsible for putting students in contact with colleagues who used their power for sexual harassment. This situation—that is, supervisors themselves being the indirect cause of the event—may further delay disclosure to formal/academic sources of support and limit our ability to act preventively in future placements. These deeply unsettling cases led us to rethink our role and responsibilities as academics. Of course, we could avoid the issue by arguing to ourselves that the cases are on the boundary between sexual harassment and seduction; that ‘sexuality enacted in the field can be experi- enced as both threatening and pleasant.’18 The boundary can sometimes be blurred. Some have described how ‘to be a young, female graduate student definitely has advan- tages in a male-dominated setting.’11 And some academics have claimed that female students harass them to get good grades. However, these cases are likely the excep- tion. But perhaps less of an exception are male students from universities in the Global North who, during global health research field placements, engage in inappro- priate and sometimes predatory sexual behaviour. The consequences of sexual harassment on women's academic careers, health and well-being are now well known, including declines in productivity, higher stress and less funding.33 In a recent survey of 198 global health organisations, including just one university, only 25 had a sexual harassment policy that meets the four best prac- tices according to Global Health 50/50: commitment and definition; confidentiality and non-retaliation; staff training; and reporting and accountability.3 As with other inequalities in global health research partnerships, sexual violence will likely continue ‘for as long as the culture of consciously unknowing what is known continues unchal- lenged.’8 We are at the heart of a ‘public secret’, a concept well known in public health.34 wHaT Can aCademICs and aCademIC InsTITuTIons do? Our actions must be informed by up-to-date preven- tion guidelines on sexual violence on college/university campuses. But these need to be adapted to address specific issues in academic global health, with programmes for all students and academics (male and female) to address both victimisation and perpetration, and for entire academic communities so that active bystanders can contribute to changing cultural norms and behaviours among peers.5 Such approaches should include: (1) raising awareness; (2) acknowledging barriers to change; and (3) increasing action through skills practice. But until such a prevention package is adapted and imple- mented, what can academics and academic institutions do? We propose the following: 1. Immediately sanction perpetrators according to policy guidelines. Although it is difficult for universities to sanction international research partners who are not under their jurisdiction, one sanction for violating the policy would be to cease collaboration. 2. Adopt a comprehensive sexual harassment and vio- lence policy globally, spearheaded by schools of global (public) health in the Global North. Accreditations given by the Council on Education for Public Health in North America and the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region should add the presence of these policies as an evaluation criterion. These policies should be shared with universities and funding agencies, who are in a good position to raise researchers’ awareness about sexual violence and re- quire adherence to sexual violence prevention poli- cies in funded research. They should clearly state what constitutes sexual violence, including harassment. They should also refer to a code of conduct between faculty/researchers/supervisors and students, guide- lines for reporting and a clear set of sanctions for vi- olating the policies. Global South partners should be made aware of the policies, agree to adhere to them for continued partnership and be held responsible for the conduct of their employees and collaborators. The policies must be systematically included in the guides to good practice for scientific partnerships in global health and be disseminated to all academics, for exam- ple, through a massive open online course. 3. Stop participating in the culture of sexual harass- ment. This means intervening with our harassing colleagues when we are made aware of such situa- tions, rather than solely advising young women on how to ‘manage’ them (eg, ‘wear a wedding ring’, o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://g h .b m j.co m / B M J G lo b H e a lth : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jg h -2 0 1 9 -0 0 1 6 1 6 o n 2 8 A p ril 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://gh.bmj.com/ Ridde V, et al. BMJ Glob Health 2019;4:e001616. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001616 3 BMJ Global Health ‘don’t meet him alone’, and so on). Upstream, ac- ademics should be more aware of the situation by serving as mentors and by systematically discussing the issue during classes and before students leave for the field.35 36 Academics referring students to their colleagues should have a responsibility to act when made aware of sexual violence on their part by fol- lowing policy procedures and enforcing sanctions. Academics also must be trained in how to receive disclosures and to support students who have been harassed or assaulted. Such training should be survi- vor centric, increase policy and service awareness and reduce victim blaming. This, in turn, would increase confidence in institutional responses and encourage disclosures. Confident listening spaces should exist, both before and during fieldwork, to discuss and sug- gest possible solutions. The scientific literature on challenges facing young women doing research in a male-dominated field should be mobilised for train- ing purposes.16 18 29 37 38 It is also important to make available in the field mentors trained in harassment management to support anyone (women and men) involved in these situations and help them find ap- propriate solutions, or at least talk about them. 4. Fund and implement sexual harassment and assault resistance training for students as part of an integrated sexual violence prevention strategy based on the best available evidence.5 Evidence-based programmes exist to help students become more active bystanders39 and better resist sexual violence,40 41 as well as programmes that show promise for reducing male students’ perpe- tration of sexual violence.42 If ‘the female researcher can- not prepare for all eventualities, … at least she can enter the setting with some idea of how she might respond to sexist re- marks, sexist behavior, and sexual hustling.’11 For example, the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act programme has resulted in an annual victimisation reduction of up to 63% in five forms of sexual violence experienced by female students in Canada.40 A working group should be set up to determine whether this programme can be specifically adapted for global health research, test- ed and evaluated. ConClusIon The eminent anthropologist Françoise Héritier, who died a month after #MeToo began, envisaged that ‘the consequences of this movement [could] be enormous. On condition that we lift not just one corner but the entire veil, pull all the threads to rethink the question of the relationship between the sexes, tackle this status of male domination and destroy the idea of an irrepressible male desire.’43 One year later, nothing has changed in academic global health. The National Academies of Sciences, Engi- neering, and Medicine in the USA has just proposed important structural changes to protect against sexual harassment.33 When will academic institutions involved in global health take up the charge? Maybe it’s time for global health to have its own #MeToo movement. acknowledgements We thank the persons who entrusted us with and allowed us to share their stories for constructive purposes and the persons who agreed to read a previous version of this text to improve its arguments. Thanks also to Donna Riley for the editing support and Seye Abimbola for the editorial support. Contributors VR had the idea about the paper and wrote the first draft. CD and ID improved the paper. All authors have read and approved the final text. funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Competing interests None declared. patient consent for publication Not required. ethics approval Not requiered provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed. data availability statement No additional data are available. open access This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http:// creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by- nc/ 4. 0/ REfEREncEs 1. Basile KC, Smith SG, Breiding MJ, et al. Sexual violence surveillance: Uniform definitions and recommended data elements, version 2.0. Atlanta, Georgia, 2014. 2. UNAIDS Independent Expert Panel. 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Our (re)awareness of the problem What can academics and academic institutions Do? Conclusion References work_3n664wqkzfdk7l7zgkqxirfzo4 ---- untitled Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 2019, 13, 243–258 https://doi.org/10.1123/jcsp.2018-0065 © 2019 Human Kinetics, Inc. ORIGINAL RESEARCH #SportToo: Implications of and Best Practice for the #MeToo Movement in Sport Mitch Abrams Learned Excellence for Athletes Michelle L. Bartlett West Texas A&M University The #MeToo movement has brought long needed attention to the epidemic of sexual assault and sexual violence. In the world of sports, the need to prevent and address such acts requires individuals with training in clinical, forensic and sport psychology. These professionals must have particular understanding of the dynamics of sexual violence within the athletic and sport culture. This paper serves to highlight context-specific approaches to pertinent identification and treatment issues. An overview of sexual abuse victim and perpetrator identifica- tion will be offered. In addition to the introduction of risk assessment and recommendation of comprehensive prevention programming, treatment needs in the athletic context will be explored. Group-level interventions currently being utilized will be reviewed, recommended topic areas to be covered in protocols will be enumerated and suggestions for systemic and cultural change in the sport domain will be offered. Keywords: assessment, sexual assault, sport, violence With enhanced media attention to the epidemic of sexual assault and sexual violence in the world of sports, and in particular college sports, an opportunity to address and prevent such acts is presenting for individuals with a unique skill set. The #MeToo movement, founded by Tarana Burke in 2006, may be the most widely seen social media phenomenon demonstrating the importance of a mean- ingful response by those involved in sports. Individuals that have training in two vital areas: clinical psychology/counseling and in sport and performance, particu- larly in understanding athletic and sport culture, bring pragmatic expertise to the table. Specifically, clinical sport psychologists with forensic training can establish themselves as a critical piece in the call to address and remediate these prominent issues in today’s sport landscape. The problem of sexual violence in sports sits at the nexus of the subspecialties of clinical psychology, sport psychology, and forensic psychology. This paper serves to provide an overview of context-specific approaches to pertinent identification and treatment issues. An overview of sexual abuse victim Abrams is with Learned Excellence For Athletes, Fords, NJ. Bartlett is with the Dept. of Sports & Exercise Sciences, West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX. Address author correspondence to Mitch Abrams at MitchAbramsPsyD@gmail.com and Michelle Bartlett at mbartlett@wtamu.edu. 243 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC https://doi.org/10.1123/jcsp.2018-0065 mailto:MitchAbramsPsyD@gmail.com mailto:mbartlett@wtamu.edu and perpetrator identification will be offered along with a critical examination of prevention programming. Risk assessment methodology will be reviewed in the context of factors that contribute to a culture that tolerates sexual assault. Group- level interventions currently being utilized will be reviewed, recommended topic areas to be covered in protocols will be enumerated, and suggestions for systemic and cultural change in the sport domain will be offered. Sexual Assault and Abuse Identification Prior to the Larry Nassar scandal at Michigan State University and U.S. Gymnas- tics, there has been concern about sexual abuse and assault in sport. Dr. Celia Brackenridge captured these issues in her seminal tome Spoilsports: Understand- ing and Preventing Sexual Exploitation in Sport, published in 2001. Before this, former NHL hockey player Sheldon Kennedy and another unnamed player came forward and accused their former coach Graham James of sexually abusing them for years between 1984 and 1995. Later, Theo Fleury, another prolific NHL star came forward with his story that mirrored the abuse Kennedy had endured. They collectively reported that James had abused several male hockey players under his supervision for many years. This was long before the Jerry Sandusky abuse at Penn State Football, hidden under the guise of camps for underprivileged or troubled youth. Perpetrators are not only coaches and sport staff, but athletes, as well. In 2013, Jameis Winston, then quarterback of the Florida State University football team, was accused of sexual assault. No charges were filed, however, in 2016, the university paid $950,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the victim alleging a violation of Title IX by FSU in handling her complaint. Winston was later accused of groping an Uber driver and was suspended three games of the 2018 season by the NFL. In 2016, former NFL safety Darren Sharper was convicted of multiple charges of drugging and sexually assaulting several women across many cities. He is currently serving a 18-year sentence in federal prison and will have to report as a sex offender when he completes his incarceration. In contrast, former Stanford University swimmer, Brock Turner, received a mere 6-month sentence for a sexual assault conviction on an unconscious woman outside a campus fraternity house (see also Abrams, 2010, pp. 217–219). In all of the cases, there was the opportunity for law enforcement, sports administration, governing bodies, and many other adults to intercede, but for a variety of reasons, they all failed to do so; leaving countless victims in their wake. These represent only a few of the sexual abuse scandals that have existed in the sports world.. Sexual grooming itself is defined by Craven, Brown, and Gilchrist (2006, p. 297) as a “process by which a person prepares a child, significant adults and the environment for the abuse of this child. Specific goals include gaining access to the child, gaining the child’s compliance, and maintaining the child’s secrecy to avoid disclosure.” The process of recruitment in sports provides an opportunity for adults to have significant authority and control over the athletes that want to compete for them, and parents often trust that their children are going to be safe, regardless of whether it is accurate for them to do so. Coaches who are successful with improving performance and/or helping the athlete advance to higher levels of competition may sometimes be erroneously presumed to be equally JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 244 Abrams and Bartlett Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC concerned with the athletes’ psychological health and development. Simulta- neously, there are many coaches that are tremendous role models, and some of which have literally saved the lives of athletes who may have gone down treacherous paths without their guidance. The purpose of these statements is not to demonize sports, but to recognize that sports can create an environment conducive to the recruiting and grooming of victims by a sexual predator. Sports leagues have attempted to subvert the potential for sexual predators to access athletes by utilizing criminal background checks. Unfortunately, criminal background checks are inadequate if the coach (or doctor, or any other predator in the authoritative milieu) has not previously been caught, arrested and/or convicted. Sexual predators may be particularly adept at avoiding apprehension and thus a “clean” background check may give the illusion of safety, setting the stage for precarious situations. It is then of paramount importance to understand that sex offenders are not a homogenous group that all have the same proclivities, grooming patterns, preferences, attitudes, presentations, etc. Identifying perpetrators requires understanding the many criminogenic factors that contribute to sexual offending. Identifying victims requires understanding of the often complex presentation of trauma-related symptoms. Victim Identification When screening for sexual abuse trauma-related symptoms, it is important to understand that the groomed, abused athlete may not present symptoms in a typical manner. A victim may present as confident and well-adjusted at some times, and at other times they may present as scared, irritable or angry. In addition, the victim may appear depressed or anxious or traumatized with inconsistent presentations. This is partially due to the abuser intentionally keeping their victim off guard, unbalanced and thus, easier to control. For example, the abuser may shower the victim with praise and gifts while alienating them from watchful parents, then later threaten the athlete with harm if they should tell others about the abuse. This is one of the ways offenders may groom their victims by separating them and ingratiating themselves with the targeted victim, therefore setting the stage for the abuse to occur. Furthermore, where one might anticipate seeing “traditional” symptoms of simple post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, emotional hyper-reactivity, etc., many people that have endured long-term abuse develop complex PTSD (c-PTSD), which presents differently (Roth, Newman, Pelcovitz, van der Kolk, & Mandel, 1997). C-PTSD presents with emotional dysregulation, but symptoms also include shame and guilt, distorted perceptions of self, relationship difficulties, dissociation, and low-level paranoia. Simple and/or Complex PTSD, eating disorders, depressive disorders, and anxiety disorders all have been associated with trauma. Substance abuse is a mechanism sometimes utilized by the victim to self-medicate the trauma-related emotional pain. Furthermore, there will be some who develop symptoms that spontaneously remit, and there will be some who never become symptomatic at all. Because of a sport culture that encourages obedience and the suppression of emotions (Sinden, 2013), athletes may struggle in ways that don’t mimic traditional clinical features. The clinician must be educated about trauma-informed care and the athlete culture, JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 #SportToo: The #MeToo Movement in Sport 245 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC to maximize the likelihood of identifying symptoms the athlete may have ambivalence about sharing. In summary, the many different strategies used by the perpetrators leads to many different reactions by victims. It is important that those working with potential victims of sexual assault are aware that compared with presenting traditional trauma symptoms (flashbacks, nightmares, emotional reactivity, etc.) consistently, the athlete victimcan present symptoms of sexual abuse inconsis- tently. For example, the victim may portray confidence one day, and on another may look like a shell of themselves; frightened, fragile, and confused. Thus, it is critical to refer the athlete to a clinical sport psychologist who has experience in identifying trauma in sports. If the sport organization does not have such a referral source, one should be sought out immediately. The American Psychological Association provides a resource to find a local sport psychologist on their website at https://locator.apa.org. Again, advocates may be well-intended and can assist with policy changes, but it is difficult to help without having experience working with both victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse. . .especially those that have navigated the world of athletics and understand the culture of sport. Sexual Violence Risk Assessment If/when an organization identifies a perpetrator suspected of abuse or assault, this individual subsequently needs to be assessed to determine if/what treatment they would benefit from. Often the organizational patterns have been to either cover up the actions or dismiss them from the institution. If the latter is chosen, and no assessment is completed, the perpetrator leaves and finds victims elsewhere. Further, when the alleged perpetrator is an athlete and not a member of the staff, there are added factors that schools and athletic departments struggle with. Resources invested in the athlete will be lost and the hopes of the athlete assisting school athletic success (with accompanying increase in revenue) may leave with them. Instead of reducing victims, it increases victims elsewhere, while protecting the “brand” of the university or organization. There are a variety of tools available to assess risk and determine likelihood of future offending. However, these tools have yet to be normed on athlete popula- tions. Since sex offending is a comparatively low base-rate crime and there have not been sufficient athletes who have been identified as perpetrators, it is difficult to study athletes-as-perpetrators and develop specialized offender risk assessment tools accordingly. This may be an area of future research, but in the absence of such tools, utilization of current methodology is an appropriate mechanism to assess violence in sport domains. Historically, risk assessment utilized three models: unstructured clinical decision making, actuarial decision making, and Structured Professional Judg- ment. Unstructured clinical decision making is the oldest and most widely used method that involves no specific guidelines for the evaluator. They “simply” offer their clinical opinion without support of well-considered static and dynamic risk factors and it is supported by their professional qualifications and credentials. This has been criticized in the literature for lacking reliability, validity and account- ability (Litwack & Schlesinger, 1999). JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 246 Abrams and Bartlett Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC https://locator.apa.org The actuarial method utilizes algorithmic tools that predict violence by comparing an individual to a norm-based reference group and provide a more precise, probabilistic estimate of future violence. This is more mechanical, but it improves upon the poor reliability and validity of unstructured approaches (Grove & Meehl, 1996; Litwack, 2001; Quinsey et al., 1998). However, because of the removal of professional discretion and rigidity of actuarial approaches (Douglas & Kropp, 2002; Hart, 1998), the forensic field has evolved further by utilizing the Structured Professional Judgment approach, which has been popu- larized by those focusing on recidivism prevention utilizing the Risk Needs Responsivity (RNR) model (Andrews & Bonta, 1998). This process allows for professional discretion in adjusting risk conclusions from the actuarial predictions with consideration of other risk-related information. For example, a meta-analysis of sexual offender recidivism (Hanson & Bussiere, 1998) noted two broad factors were associated with sexual recidivism: deviant sexual interests and antisocial orientation/lifestyle instability. Similarly, Malamuth et al. (1996) identified in his Confluence Model, hostile masculinity and impersonal sexual orientation as supported precursors to increased risk of sexual violence. The Structure Professional Judgment approach has been shown to have good validity (Douglas & Webster, 1999) and discriminates well between recidivists and non-recidivists in retrospective research (Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2004). It is recommended that risk assessment of athletes utilizes actuarial instruments when possible and support the obtained data with other information gleaned by psychological testing, clinical interview and collateral information. Moreover, the ability to assess an individual’s likelihood of future assault is actually a conglom- eration of very specialized skills that most sport counselors have not been trained with. It is critical for every sport organization to know what medical and/or mental health professionals they have access to and what skillsets those professionals possess, as well as how to gain access to other professionals with required expertise if needed. Ideally, this would be a clinical sport psychologist with forensic training. A non-exhaustive list of tools that assess risk of recidivism and then can be synthesized in the context of other empirically supported criminogenic factors follows. These include the Historical Clinical Risk Management-20, Version 3 (HCR-20; Douglas, Hart, Webster, & Belfrage, 2013), the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment (SARA; Kropp, Hart, Webster, & Eaves, 1995), the Static-99R (Phenix, Helmus, & Hanson, 2012), and the Psychopathy Checklist—Screening Version (PCL-SV; Hart, Cox, & Hare, 1995). Other personality measures used to assess psychological factors that may also detect an individual’s potential for violence include the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 2007), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory – 2nd Edition, (MMPI-2; Butcher et al, 2001), the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory – 2nd Edition (STAXI-2; Spielberger, 1999), and the Rorschach Inkblot Test (Weiner, 2005), primarily utilizing the Comprehensive System (Exner, 2002), which has proved to be very useful in forensic assessments. The utilization of RNR models allow for assessment of risk and recommenda- tions for treatment. Though sex offender treatment has not been specifically modified for people employed in or participating in athletics, and the specifics of sex offender treatment go beyond the scope of this article, it is prudent to extend already established programs that focus on building strengths that compensate for JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 #SportToo: The #MeToo Movement in Sport 247 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC criminogenic risk factors, such as the Good Lives Model (Ward, 2002; Ward, Melser, & Yates, 2007; Willis & Ward, 2010), to athlete populations that demonstrate sexual assault risk factors. Sexual Assault Prevention There is little doubt that sexual assault is an epidemic, especially on college campuses. Among undergraduate students, 23.1% of females and 5.4% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacita- tion (Cantor et al., 2015) with an additional 25% of transgender college students experiencing sexual assault while on campus (New, 2015). The rate of sexual assaults on campuses has remained relatively unchanged over the past 20 years (Fedina, Holmes, & Backes, 2016). Conley et al. (2017) asserted that sexual assault is the most common form of violence on college campuses, yet only about 12% are sexual assaults are reported (Coray, 2016). One in nine girls and one in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult and females ages 16-19 are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault (Finkelhor, Shattuck, Turner, & Hamby, 2014). Women of the age of 18-24 are at the highest risk for sexual assault compared to the general population (Robers, Kemp, Rathbun, Morgan, & Snyder, 2014). Some researchers have found lifetime incident rates of childhood sexual abuse for females to be 1 in 4 (25%) and 1 in 6 (16%) for males (Dube et al., 2005). Though the perpetrators tend to be males and acquaintances that the victim knows, more males are victimized than one might assume (Bullock & Beckson, 2011). There have been some researchers who have argued that athletes are more likely to perpetrate sexual violence (e.g. Eskenazi, 1990) than non-athletes. Research has found that involvement in contact versus non-contact sports may not contribute to higher levels of aggression against women (Marchell, 1998; Smith & Stewart, 2003). Recently, Navarro and Tewksbury (2017) found that athletes and non-athletes were similar in the degree of rape myth acceptance (RMA) with athletes reporting stronger agreement than nonathletes did. Interestingly, in this same study, the authors found “an unanticipated and inverse relationship between Greek organization membership and RMA; Greeks were not particularly adherent to rape myths,” as it could be that Greek organizations desire to combat their stereotype. Other studies have found that athletic participation has been identified as an uninfluential factor in rape myth acceptance (Humphrey & Kahn, 2000). Caron, Halteman, and Stacy (1997) and Smith and Stewart (2003) concluded that there was no significant difference between athletes and non-athletes on aggressive sexual behavior. They opined that thecharacteristics of athletes themselves rather than their athletic participation must be considered further in examining the presumed link between athletes and sexual assault. However, there may be factors in sport culture that may contribute to assaultive behaviors if left unchecked. These may include hostile (or toxic) masculinity, especially when paired with a culture of impersonal sex (Malamuth et al., 1996), rape supportive attitudes or rape myth acceptance (attitudes that shift the blame for sexual assault from the perpetrator to the victim (Holland & Cortina, 2017; see also Abrams, 2010, p. 234), sense of entitlement, group dynamics that lead to JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 248 Abrams and Bartlett Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC Groupthink (Janis, 1972) and deindividuation, drug/alcohol use, and a lack of consequences. Hence, this is why these must be addressed in comprehensive prevention programs. The most prolific models used to prevent sexual assault have centered upon Bystander Intervention models. This is interesting considering the fact that Bystander Interventions were the descendent of the Bystander Effect, or Bystander Apathy (Darley & Latane, 1968), which found that individuals do not offer help to a victim when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely related to the number of bystanders and there is a diffusion of responsibility. It has been found that if one person stands up, more are likely to do so, but if no one helps, people are left wondering what the right thing to do is (Fischer et al., 2011). Other barriers to bystander intervention models include: unconscious racial bias (Katz, Merrilees, Hoxmeier, & Motisi, 2017), rape myth acceptance, bystander efficacy, alcohol use/intoxication, peer perceptions, perceptions of sexual assault severity, and gender of the bystander (Labhardt, Holdsworth, Brown, & Howat, 2017), with males less likely to intervene (Leone & Parrott, 2019). Jackson Katz’ (1995) Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP Program) is a widely disseminated sexual violence prevention model in sports, which utilizes a bystander-based approach. The research does not support that this is an effective program, though it tends to be well-received by the audience (Williams & Neville, 2017). Also, college-level bystander programs have increased participants’ feel- ings of self-efficacy for and frequency of intervening in situations that could lead to a sexual assault (Katz & Moore, 2013), based upon self-report. The NCAA has historically supported bystander-based approaches, as well (NCAA, n.d.). However, when examined more closely, it has been recognized that actively intervening in a peer or stranger’s aggressive behavior is a challenging task even for well-trained adults (Casey & Ohler, 2012) and, further, youth identified more barriers than facilitators to bystander behavior. For adolescents, the prospect of intervening is laden with real social and sometimes physical risks (Storer, Casey, & Herrenkohl, 2016). This has led Leone et al. (2017) to conclude, although bystander intervention programs have been identified as a promising prevention strategy for sexual aggression, a recent meta-analysis suggests they have a stronger impact on attitudes and behavioral intentions than on actual bystander behavior (Katz & Moore, 2013). The best evidence that bystander interventions are necessary but not sufficient is the fact that while bystander interventions have been the primary modality of prevention for decades, the rate of reported sex crimes on college campuses has continued to surge and Bureau of Justice Statistics noted that campus sexual assaults jumped from about 4,000 in 2012 to 5,000 in 2013 (Robers et al., 2014). There are consistently increasing reports of sexual assault complaints through the years despite the ongoing attempts at prevention. However, this increase in reporting may also signify greater access to knowledge on how to report. Other approaches include “Shotgun approaches,” such as rookie symposia or single-time viewings, which may be moving and momentarily eye-opening, but these approaches don’t change culture by themselves and can often fall out of the athletes’ consciousness shortly after the presentations. Findings suggest that longer term interventions than are typically presented may be one important aspect of producing stable change over time (Heppner et al., 1999). Additionally, in their JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 #SportToo: The #MeToo Movement in Sport 249 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC review of college sexual assault prevention programs, Vladutiu, Martin, and Macy (2011) found that effective sexual assault prevention programs are professional- facilitated, targeted at single-gender audiences, and offered at various times throughout students’ tenure at college. They are workshop-based or offered as classroom courses with frequent and long sessions. Program content should include gender-role socialization, risk education, rape myths, rape attitudes, rape avoidance, men’s motivation to rape, victim empathy, dating communication, controlled drinking and/or relapse prevention (Vladutiu, Martin, & Macy, 2011). When pairing the increasing sexual assault reports with the correspondingly large settlements in Title IX lawsuits (most settlements are not made public), it becomes obvious that more comprehensive programs for sexual assault prevention are necessary. Moreover, because there are factors in the athlete culture that may contribute to sexual assault, programming should be tailored to athlete populations while being mindful that there are heterogenous subcultures inside the sports world. Admittedly, it is difficult to know how successful programs are because dependent variables such as decreases on measures with high face validity (such as rape supportive attitudes, male dominance/power, reporting that the subjects feel more equipped to stand up when witnessing a violent event, and victim empathy), do not reliably lead to a change in behavior. Nonetheless, it is the opinion of the authors that there is a need for more aggressive models that focus on the accountability of the perpetrator. These are the conditions that led to the develop- ment of the Abrams Plan for Violence Prevention, Assessment, and Treatment (Abrams, 2010). Abrams Plan for Violence Prevention, Assessment, and Treatment At the core of the Abrams Plan for Violence Prevention, Assessment, and Treatment is the Risk Needs Responsibility (RNR) model developed by Don Andrews and James Bonta in the late 1990s, which has proliferated the forensic psychology world for the past twenty years. As mentioned earlier, the philosophy focuses on the fact that offenders have risk factors that contribute to their criminality and each risk factor has a treatment need to which it corresponds. Finally, there is appreciation that not all risk factors have the same responsivity to treatment and that should be considered in the context of how treatment is formulated for offenders. Abrams (2017a, 2017b) has spoken about the need to utilize the RNR model in athlete violence from a prevention, assessment, and treatment point of view. Prevention must address the many factors that can contribute to athlete violence, including those often embedded and interwoven in the male athlete culture. Bystander Intervention is a minor part of the modelbecause the author appreciated, especially in team sport dynamics, a lesser status athlete is less likely to stand up to more influential seniors, especially if they are acting in a way that is overtly or covertly supported by the coaches and administrators above them. With a primary focus on culture change, interventions need to utilize both a top-down and bottom- up approach and include addressing the myth of false reports and victim prototype, the legalities of consent, drug and alcohol education, consequences, and the male athlete culture. JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 250 Abrams and Bartlett Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC Addressing the myth of false reports. Often athletes believe allegations of false reports are common, so, when providing statistics to athletes about victimization, it is critical to include that false reports of sexual assault occur, according to FBI statistics, at the same rate as any other crime (2-5%; Lisak, Gardinier, Nicksa, & Cote, 2010), which is very rare. It is far more likely that a victim will not come forward than make a false report (63%, Rennison, 2002). This may be due to the isolation that accompanies the trauma, which is compounded by people not believing them or shaming them, as if they were willful participants in their victimization. If one adds the retraumatization that occurs in the administration of a Sexual Assault Forensic Examination (see also Abrams, 2010, p. 224) and in cross- examination where Rape Shield laws have not protected victims, the likelihood of false report is again exceedingly unlikely in comparison to an unreported rape. Addressing the myth of the victim prototype. When presenting on incidence rates, it is important to help male athletes understand that sexual assault affects them, as well. This is because given incidence rates, it is nearly impossible that they do not know someone who has been a victim; not to mention the much higher incidence of male victimization than people realize (Bullock & Beckson, 2011). Understanding in this domain is in its infancy, as it is recognized that hazing in male sports has, at its core, victimization based upon power differentials, and sometimes that victimization is sexual (Heil, Martin, & Kavussanu, 2016). Male athletes may have been a victim of sexual assault during hazing rituals without realizing it. Addressing the legalities of consent. The next component addressed in the RNR model is discussion about the legalities of consent. Many people do not understand, appreciate or agree with what is necessary to constitute consent (Witmer-Rich, 2016). Attention must be paid to statutory limitations that delineate how old an individual must be to legally give consent. This is also complicated by differences from state to state on how sex crimes are defined. Issues of incapaci- tation, including being unconscious, mentally ill and/or intoxicated (by substances they ingested or those that were slipped into their drinks to incapacitate them) must be addressed. Also, when discussing consent, it should be highlighted to audiences that some states have “Forcible Compulsion” components of their sexual assault statutes, whereby it is a sexual assault when a person complies with sexual activity for fear of being harmed if they do not comply; and that threat can be overt or implied. Male athletes may be confused when they hear this, but it is critical for them to understand two things: 1. Laws have shifted because the laws have done such a poor job of assisting victims and leading to prosecution and 2. Regardless of whether one agrees with a law, one should still be educated about what the law is that must be followed. Drug and alcohol education. This leads to the next content area: drug and alcohol education. There is little confusion that alcohol can be used as a weapon in an attempt to make women more susceptible to the advances of men. It is the reason why “Ladies Drink Free” specials are seen at clubs and bars. There are some who have challenged that drug and alcohol education is akin to blaming the victim. Drinking to the point of incapacitation can be poor judgment. However, poor judgment on the part of the victim does not justify the rape. Encouraging individuals to exercise better judgment can also be advantageous. Studies have JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 #SportToo: The #MeToo Movement in Sport 251 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC shown that athletes engage in frequent bouts of binge drinking (Brenner & Swanik, 2007; Yusko, Buckman, White, & Pandina, 2008), pointing to the need for alcohol education. Alcohol intoxication is not a defense that will be effective in avoiding culpability in sexual assault cases (Go, 2017). Addressing consequences. Perhaps the penultimate conversation that could have lasting impact is discussing with young male athletes what prison is like. Being able to explain the phenomenology of incarceration, such as a lack of the most basic freedoms, an ever-present threat of violence, extorsion, and guard indifference, can have eye-opening reactions. All in all, being able to share with young men what incarceration is really like, should they wind up there, is a powerful part of prevention programming. Addressing male athlete culture. There is also the issue of the male athlete culture in general. The athlete culture, in and of itself, suppresses the willingness of athletes to discuss their emotional struggles and a stigma that seeking psychologi- cal help is a sign of weakness (Wahto, Swift, & Whipple, 2016). Often the misogynistic themes that can be seen in locker room talk objectifies females, idealizes female conquests, legitimizes rape, promotes homophobia and equates femininity with weakness (a poor performing male athlete may be teased for throwing like a girl or having some other feminine characteristic), or any theme of status, toughness, and anti-femininity (Leone & Parrott, 2019). This can be compounded by the belief that the coach/staff will fix any transgression an athlete or staff member engages in. However, we should also be mindful that our society (parents, coaches, athletes, etc.), continues to fuel the athletically talented indi- vidual with the idea that they have a different set of rules (Coakley, 2017). This need for a culture shift exists far before the student-athlete understands what college athletics consists of; leaving universities responsible to remediate athlete entitlement. Accountability should be demanded overtly at all levels of sport participation, but specific attention must be added to youth sports where the athletes may be more plastic and receptive (Bavelier et al., 2010). When coaches and administrators, especially males, set the tone that abuse of women will absolutely not be tolerated, and levy swift consequences regardless of the talent level of the perpetrator, change may start. To incite change it is also important to pay attention to the attitudes that the male athletes embrace and how group dynamics can lead them to an epidemic of sexual acting out. Groupthink (Janis, 1972) can lead to deindividuation where someone who normally has a good set of morals and would not engage in deviant behavior, joins in the group attitude and takes part in collective, systematic misogyny. The presence of a misogynistic peer norm also decreases the likelihood of prosocial bystander intervention in males (Leone & Parrott, 2019). A crucial factor related to culture that needs to be highlighted and targeted for intervention is Toxic (or Hostile) Masculinity (Malamuth & Thornhill, 1994; Malamuth et al., 1996), which is a prevailing set of attitudes predicated upon male dominance, devaluation of women, misogyny, suppression of emotions and homophobia. It is the backbone of “locker room talk” (see also Stripling (2017) for examples) and may lead boys, who often struggle with self-esteem, to question what it means to be a man. Malamuth and colleagues posited in the Confluence Model of Sexual Aggression (1994, 1996), that it is the combination of hostile JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 252 Abrams and Bartlett Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC masculinity and impersonal sex that creates an explosive mixture that sets the stage for assault. It may be puzzling how, when these factors often converge on college campuses, this has not been a major focus of intervention. . .especially since the model has been around for over twenty years. Again, hostile masculinity, may be further exacerbated by the male athlete culture that restricts allowing athletes to experience, process, and utilize their emotions (Wahto et al., 2016). The concepts of respect, honor, integrity and loyalty are often used as hashtags rather than being qualities that are valued and nurtured. Ultimately, sports administrators and coaches MUST demand accountability and high moral character. Unfortunately, the teams, coaches and organizations often share culpability either because they knew about the problem and didn’t get the athlete the help they need, or they did not know and they should have. Further, for many athletes, especially those coming from single-parent house- holds, coaches can provide the guidance and male role-modeling that they are not getting otherwise. There may be many coaches that are effectively saving these boys’ lives. However, there is compelling evidence in the incidence rates that male athletes are not consistently getting clear messages demanding respect for females and that there will be zero tolerance, regardless of the physical abilities of the athlete, for any deviance from this credo. Athlete populations must be sensitive to the Toxic Masculinity that may be present in the male athlete culture and work to contradict it. Severe punishment is necessary as a deterrent, but it is insufficient alone. Better prevention and risk assessment is needed to determine the best course of action. Because prevention does not require clinical acumen per se, it can be particularly powerful to have former/ current athletes work in presentations to change the culture. Culture shift requires team leadership, coaches, and captains to carry the torch of acceptable behavior, with coaches potentially being fired if continually perpet- uating an adverse culture (Stripling, 2017). Playing sports, especially at the college and professional level, is a privilege, not a right. And athletics departments and sport organizations can do a better job of holding their coaches, staff, and student- athletes accountable. Similarly, treatment of sexual and domestic violence also needs to be handled by professionals with expertise and training in such areas that may not be standard in all relevant graduate education. The importance of using a three-pronged approach: comprehensive prevention, risk assessment, and treat- ment, cannot be underestimated in moving toward reduction of sexual assault incidences and victims, and the world of athletics is no exception. Summary Violence is not a new phenomenon in American society and, not surprisingly, it is represented in the sport culture, as well. The #MeToo movement has brought to the forefront the need to talk about victimization openly and honestly in sport; while also setting the stage for change. In conclusion, there is a great need to identify both victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse and violence, with the hopes of delivering services to victims that have been historically under attended to, and to perpe- trators, with the hope of addressing their criminogenic factors. It is prudent then, to progress towards a three-prong approach to target sexual assault in athlete populations focusing upon comprehensive programming, risk JCSP Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019 #SportToo: The #MeToo Movement in Sport 253 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 04/06/21 12:56 AM UTC assessment and treatment for perpetrators. Comprehensive programming that targets hostile masculinity, teaches the legalities of consent, provides drug and alcohol education, discusses incidence rates and consequences for all parties involved must supplant the proliferated Bystander Interventions which have not proven to lead to lasting change. Culture shifts will require longer, ongoing interventions, rather than single session “shotgun” approaches. Moreover, an appreciation that the skills required to change approaches to sexual assault prevention lay at the intersection of clinical, forensic and sport psychology is long overdue. We must bring experts with these backgrounds together to implement programmatic change. This must include consideration of the Risk Needs Responsivity approach utilizing Structured Professional Judgment to identify sport-involved-perpetrators (athletes, coaches and staff) and, when indicated, provide treatment to them to reduce their potential for recidivism. If treatment is not provided, the perpetrator may move on to another area where their offending history is unknown and secure more victims. References Abrams, M. (2010). Anger management in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Abrams, M. (August, 2017a). Models to address campus sexual assault: History and new directions. 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Chapman * and Christine Greenhow Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA; greenhow@msu.edu * Correspondence: chapm276@msu.edu; Tel.: +1-908-268-3765 Received: 1 December 2018; Accepted: 28 January 2019; Published: 1 February 2019 ���������� ������� Abstract: Research is rarely created for private use; researchers publish their work so that others can read and use it, to advance the collective understanding of a field and impact people’s lives. Yet traditional approaches to scholarship, which emphasize publication in subscription-based rather than open access journals, inhibit not only the dissemination of research but also its usefulness, particularly outside of academia. Across all fields, scholars, educators, and members of the public benefit from scholarship which is easily accessible. Open science and public, social scholarship can break down these barriers to accessibility and utility. In this age which calls for a more informed citizenry, the use of social media to share and promote discussion of research could change not only the nature of scholarly communication but also the nature of scholarship and scholars’ roles. In this conceptual article, we argue that practicing public, social scholarship and increasing the use of social media to promote scholarship are the civic responsibility of citizen-scholars, so that research becomes more widely accessible, shareable, and usable in the public sphere. Keywords: social media; scholarship; citizen; civic engagement; research; open science; public scholarship 1. Introduction In the age of social media, the nature of scholarship has begun to shift toward greater openness and transparency and the utilization of various multimedia formats [1–3]. Historically, the traditional model of scholarship has been structured around communities of scholars, grouped into institutions, whose research is disseminated through academic journals, available via institutional or individual paid subscriptions. This approach has limited public access to research. Recent calls for open science, or the idea of openly sharing scientific knowledge as early as possible in the discovery process can be seen as an invitation to promote wider consumption of research through publication in accessible formats or open access journals [4,5]. It can also be seen as a move toward re-envisioning the role of scholars, especially in terms of how scholars contribute to public discourse and the role that technologies like social media might play in facilitating this contribution. Advancing the knowledge base and participating in public discourse through scholarship are two ways in which scholars contribute to civic life. Social media may assist scholars in these practices, enabling them to share work; interact with a broad audience; and become citizen-scholars, generating research with a commitment to the improvement of society. In this conceptual article, we argue that performing open, public, and social scholarship using social media is the civic responsibility of today’s citizen-scholars, so that research becomes more accessible, shareable, and usable in the public sphere. Next, we present a short overview of the traditional model of scholarship, followed by brief descriptions of three converging trends in scholarly practices: open science, public scholarship, and social scholarship, which foreground our discussion of the responsibilities and practices of citizen-scholars in the age of social media. Publications 2019, 7, 11; doi:10.3390/publications7010011 www.mdpi.com/journal/publications http://www.mdpi.com/journal/publications http://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0727-0698 http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/7/1/11?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications7010011 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/publications Publications 2019, 7, 11 2 of 9 2. Traditional Model of Scholarship In the traditional model of scholarship, scholars from different disciplines convene in a common physical place (e.g., university or college) and conduct research, which is disseminated through the classes they teach on campus and through publications. Ideally, scholarship is grounded in openness; being transparent about one’s research allows others to see that it is legitimate, and to corroborate or dispute it through subsequent research. However, criteria for funding and publication have not typically encouraged open science; they do not promote the sharing of materials, software, codes, or data sets between researchers, nor do they promote the publication of findings without statistically significant results [6]. In addition, research findings that are published are often inaccessible to many, given the high costs of academic journals. Although the concept of the university is a relatively modern construct, the idea that there was a place where scholars gathered to teach and students gathered to learn is considerably older. Though there have been different understandings and purposes of universities over time—from religious institutions which prepared students for religious life, to government-run centers of learning where graduates became members of polite society, to practical institutions intended to prepare students to enter agricultural or mechanical professions—research conducted and classes taught at universities have long been shaped by constraints [7]. Whether their purpose was religious, secular, or practical, universities were the centers of knowledge that was given out to particular people for a particular purpose. The constraints of this university model, with its control of scholarship production and knowledge flows, benefitted some students, such as those who wanted to train in a specific vocational field or to pursue religious life. However, not all people who seek to pursue additional education are able to attend a university; cost, location, or the amount of time needed to pursue a degree, among other factors, are prohibitive for many prospective students. With traditional forms of scholarship, students are limited in their higher education choices by the campus-based model. The ways in which research has historically been disseminated (e.g., through teaching) advantages students who have the desire and means to attend a university while disadvantaging others. In addition to limits imposed by institutional contexts, funders and publishing outlets also constrain meaningful, comprehensive scholarship dissemination and in turn, public discourse. Research, particularly in the sciences, is built upon openness and transparency [8]. Research is conducted, ideally, in such a way that others can follow the work that was done and the conclusions that have been drawn. However, this openness is neglected, sometimes to the point of being disincentivized, when it comes to the dissemination of research. Sources of funding and publication outlets seek to support and publish new research with significant findings, even though research which corroborates prior research or research with null findings can be as valuable in making sense of the world [8]. This contributes to the development of scholars who do not have a complete view of research in their field, as publications skew towards statistically significant results, and data, materials, methods, or codes are not shared. 3. Open Science In light of these limitations above, the traditional, campus-based model of scholarship no longer remains the only viable model. From university-organized electronic communications, such as online or hybrid courses, to informal and independent learning made possible and accessible through online resources, the internet has shaped when, where, and with whom learning and teaching occur [9]. In addition to making it possible for students who are interested in higher education to have options beyond coming to campus to learn, the internet has created a space for open science. Open science is a model of scholarship in which all aspects of the research process are open and transparent. As Masuzzo and Martens argue: Publications 2019, 7, 11 3 of 9 The overall goal of open science is to accelerate scientific progress and discoveries and to turn these discoveries into benefits for all. An essential part of this process is therefore to guarantee that all sorts of scientific outputs are publicly available, easily accessible, and discoverable for others to use, re-use, and build upon. [4] (p. 1) Thus, in enacting open science, scholars make their methods, codes, and materials, as well as their research results, available to the public at no cost. With open science, the expectations and requirements of publication shift from only publishing new, statistically significant research to publishing rigorously conducted research that can include studies which corroborate prior research or have null findings. Furthermore, the call for open science includes more than a call for sharing research tools, data sets, and findings. Some open access journals, in addition to providing free access to the research that they publish, also work to support open science in other ways. For example, the University of Huddersfield Press has sought to actively engage the scholarly community via social media to support researcher interactions and disseminate research publications beyond academia [10]. The press uses Facebook and Twitter to connect authors to each other, to share information about its processes, and to increase the reach, or potential audience, of its publications [10]. Additionally, Huddersfield Press seeks to develop the next generation of scholars, offering funds to provide early career scholars with time for writing and editing and inviting them to writing retreats offered by the publishing house [10]. This investment in future scholars is intended to illuminate the process of accessible academic publishing, provide them with skills to build their body of work, and increase the amount of open access research [10]. In addition to utilizing open access publishing outlets, some in the research community have called for the elimination of publishing research results in academic journals entirely [11]. Instead of publishing results at the end of the research process, Hartgerink and van Zelst argue that each step of research should be communicated separately as it is completed, allowing each step to be evaluated and refined before moving on to the next step. Elements of the research process, they argue, should be made public through networked modules with open access, which would allow not only for the connection of the pieces of a particular study but also for connection of those elements to other, related studies [11]. This method of communicating research processes and outputs would also allow for the inclusion of methods, codes, and materials, for which traditional academic journal formats typically do not have space [11]. The open science model of scholarship has several potential challenges and benefits over the traditional model [12]. Challenges to enacting open science, especially involving social media, include the risk of ideas being stolen, the difficulties of getting credit for work published primarily on social media, disagreement about standards and incentives for conducting open science, and the time and effort needed to learn how to use social media tools to create open access networked models or to initiate and sustain social media accounts for open science purposes [13]. On the other hand, those in favor of open science argue that it breaks down barriers: between scholars who are researching similar questions, between scholars from different disciplines, and between scholars and learners. If open science practices were normative (e.g., open publishing or networked modules that include data sets, protocols, and findings shared with other researchers), scholars who are researching the same topics or asking similar questions could become knowledgeable of others’ work and build on it. In this way, open science could foster a more accurate and comprehensive knowledge base in a discipline, including knowledge of successful and failed interventions. Additionally, complex societal problems typically require interdisciplinary research teams. Open science could spark more boundary-crossing and productive collaborations at the intersection of disciplines, where increased access to data sets make data-sharing and multi-method analyses from diverse perspectives possible. Open science can also increase the ability of learners to access research, especially for those not affiliated with a university, or who cannot or do not want to pay for journal access. Members of the public seeking current research on a particular topic face fewer barriers through open science. Finally, open science benefits scholars, as papers published in open journals are more likely to be cited and mentioned in Publications 2019, 7, 11 4 of 9 the media [12]. Together, these affordances of open science contribute to a multiplicity of paths for the acceleration, dissemination, and usefulness of “discoveries into benefits for all” [4]. 4. Public Scholarship While calls for open science are relatively recent in academia, the idea that scholarship should be public is not new. John Dewey, in the early 1900s, argued that scholars should interact with the public in order to identify, shed light on, and help solve societal problems [14]. Moreover, Dewey thought that science could be most helpful in alleviating social problems and contributing to progress through robust public inquiry [14]. For Dewey, public inquiry was the way in which scholarship was useful to all, and not limited to particular fields where new research might trickle down to people who might use it [14]. A more contemporary definition of public scholarship expands upon Dewey’s associations between the process and products of research, education, and their potential impacts on democratic values and civic action. Imagining America, a higher education consortium in the United States dedicated to public scholarship in the arts, humanities, and design, defines public scholarship as “scholarly or creative activity integral to a faculty member’s academic area . . . [that] contributes to the public good and yields artifacts of public and intellectual value” [15] (p. 1, emphasis added). Public scholarship includes the diverse ways in which scholars and their community partners communicate knowledge. In public scholarship, the purpose of both the research and the ways in which it is circulated is to contribute to education and civic life [15]. This goal can be achieved through a variety of research or creative activity which enhances teaching and learning, promotes an informed citizenry and various methods of civic education, increases awareness of civic responsibility and encourages civic engagement, and investigates and creates solutions to societal problems [15]. With this definition, public scholarship is seen not only through the lens of open science; but is understood to contribute to the public good. There are a variety of ways in which scholars can engage in public scholarship that attend to these goals. For instance, scholars engaged in public scholarship can seek to circulate their research not only through publications but through conferences and public lectures, reports and meetings for community partners, and editorials. Additional avenues for public scholarship include contributions to websites and blogs, exhibitions of creative work, engagement with the media, and utilization of social media and online applications to connect with a broader audience. Public scholarship also includes collaboration, which can occur during the research or creative process through to the many ways in which the results of the collaboration are communicated to the public. Any of these means of research dissemination have the potential to increase the public’s engagement with scholarly work, and in turn, enhance education and civic life. Next, we present a third model for scholarship, social scholarship, which exists at the intersection of public scholarship, open science, and social media. It envisions the role social media might play in enacting open, public scholarship as well as the benefits and challenges of embracing this approach to scholarship today. 5. Social Scholarship: A Model for Open, Public Scholarship through Social Media Building on the central ideas of open science and public scholarship, social scholarship is a recent model for scholarly practices that re-envisions Boyer’s (1990) seminal, four-dimensional model for scholarly activities (i.e., scholarship of discovery, teaching, integration, and application) in light of social media advancements [16]. Social scholarship seeks to take advantage of social media affordances (i.e., user-generated content and promotion of users and their interrelationships) and values (i.e., knowledge as accessible, co-constructed, decentralized, and connective) to evolve the ways scholarship is performed in academia. Cohen (2007, paragraph 1, as cited in [1]) defines social scholarship as “the practice [ . . . ] in which the use of social tools is an integral part of the research and publishing process . . . [and is characterized by] openness, conversation, collaboration, access, sharing and transparent revision.” Publications 2019, 7, 11 5 of 9 Social scholars use social media to publish and interact with scholarly output and to join an online community devoted to their topic [1] (Cohen, 2007, April 5, paragraph 4). “Openness” has typically referred to open data-sharing, open source code, open peer review, or freeing the academic literature from paywalls [4], but with social scholarship, its meaning has broadened to include alternate forms of peer review, public engagement in science, and the recognition of various forms of output as legitimate products of research effort [1]. Social scholarship integrates the use of these social media tools throughout the research and publication process in ways that promote wider access, openness, transparency, and collaboration. For instance, social scholarship advocates informal, social review of articles as a complement to traditional and open science peer review models [4]. In open science peer review, journals publish reviewer reports either as a component of the pre-publication review process or post-publication, where, after editorial review, submitted articles are published online and peer review occurs openly (i.e., reviews with names of reviewers are published by the journal alongside the article and authors are invited to publish revisions in response) [4]. By adding an informal social review process, scholarly work is made openly accessible on social media platform(s) to a broad audience of specialists and non-specialists and undergoes an explicit or implicit review. In explicit review the audience on social media is invited to scrutinize and post or comment on the scholarly work using the social media platform. For example, in the case of the #arseniclife debate on Twitter, tweets indicated skeptical and non-skeptical views of a scientific article that claimed bacteria could replace phosphorus for arsenic in its genetic material [17]. To back up their claims, Twitter users involved in the #arseniclife conversation, tweeted links to critiques and studies refuting the original study’s central claim, which were published on blogs before publication in traditional academic outlets. Ultimately, the arsenic life hypothesis was dismissed with the open access publication of a study refuting it by one academic blogger. In implicit review, the audience engages with the scholarly work as indicated by metadata (e.g., favoriting, liking, retweeting, sharing, tagging, bookmarking, page views, download numbers, etc.) which can sustain public interest in the research and reveal the extent of connections the work has generated. Advantages to incorporating informal, social review as part of social scholarship practice are that it may help identify inaccuracies; resurface overlooked research, practice, and policy implications; sustain debates on controversial findings; raise research visibility by engaging journalists; and engage the broader public in cutting edge science [1,2,17]. Furthermore, studies have shown that such informal review can produce higher-quality research with better verified claims [17]. On the other hand, challenges with informal review are that non-specialists, journalists, and social media influencers, or those with outsize followings, can shape conversation in misleading or unwarranted ways, all within public view, and contribute to the spread of misinformation. For a more complete discussion of the practices that make up social scholarship and their benefits and challenges, see [1,2]. In addition to the above example of using Twitter to promote wider access, openness, transparency, and collaboration through social scholarship, other social media such as Facebook and the academic social network sites (Research Gate and Academia.edu) also have the potential to influence open, social scholarly practices. Facebook, for example, has been noted for its ability to enhance scholars’ engagement with an open, collaborative research process, and not merely with research outcomes or published research; drawing on their social capital, or the people and information resources available to them in their online social network of Facebook friends, scholars share various types of information, ask for resources, and question a wide and diverse audience about what problems are worth investigating in the first place [18]. As on Twitter, academics on Facebook can engage in formal and informal social review; sustain attention to topics or controversial research; disseminate work quickly to a wide audience; and gain recognition, feedback, and support from peers worldwide [13,18]. On the other hand, critics of the use of Facebook to advance new forms of scholarship point out that Facebook’s designed features “constrain their users, fostering ‘conviviality and liking’ over debate and discussion” (p. 166) because Facebook seeks to control users’ attention and behaviors, giving people more of what they like in accord with the targeted advertising on which the platform depends [18]. Publications 2019, 7, 11 6 of 9 Unlike Facebook and Twitter, social media like ResearchGate and Academia.edu, both for-profit companies founded in 2008, were designed to facilitate academic and research practices and have features that can promote open dissemination practices and knowledge-sharing within academic communities [19]. For instance, ResearchGate supports knowledge-sharing and research dissemination by allowing academics to upload research products, “follow” other academics, and get notified when academics of interest upload new scholarly products. Similar to the aforementioned examples of explicit and implicit social review on other social media platforms, academics on ResearchGate can comment on research publications, and ask and reply to questions with the questions feature. Users can signal their engagement with others’ projects and publications, contributing to implicit social review, by viewing, downloading, bookmarking, recommending, following, or sharing the work. These activities are counted and totaled by the platform so that users can see how much interaction the scholarship is generating. Although, in contrast to ResearchGate, Academia.edu is more popular for scholarship in the arts and humanities than in the social sciences, it has similar features for knowledge-sharing, open research dissemination, and social review [19]. Like ResearchGate, users of Academia.edu can upload research artifacts, including a wide range of outputs such as peer-reviewed publications, working drafts, book chapters, conference papers, and teaching material. On “sessions” pages, users can comment on papers or leave line-by-line annotations. Through the “views” feature and through the analytics dashboard on each scholar ’s profile page, users can see indicators of engagement their work has generated. However, drawbacks to using these social media platforms for new forms of scholarship have been noted in the literature. One criticism is that site features, such as the analytics dashboard on Academica.edu, reinforce a form of “navel-gazing”, incentivizing scholars to constantly self-monitor and self-promote rather than focus their attention on knowledge advancement and dissemination for the collective good [20]. Concerns over the quality and credibility of work openly shared on these sites [19,21], as on Facebook and Twitter [13,18], have also been noted. Perhaps most importantly, the integration of these social tools into scholars’ lives is largely uncharted and unexplored territory which may have far-reaching, potentially negative consequences we have yet to understand. A recent review of the literature on ResearchGate and Academia.edu as tools for scholarly communication, for instance, found only two studies that actually investigated scholarly practices when using these academic social network sites [19]; one study examined whether authors comply with publishers’ copyright agreements when uploading their articles to ResearchGate [22], and the other examined question-and-answers and small group discussions on ResearchGate [23]. On the other hand, scholars have theorized several advantages to using these academic social network sites for open, social scholarly practices: They help users to keep up with research trends, build communities, and engage in conversation; they improve open sharing of scholarly outputs at various stages; they stimulate alternate formal and informal forms of peer review; and they develop and enhance academic reputation and identity [19]. Thus, social scholarship exists at the intersection of open science, public scholarship, and social media. Although research documenting such new forms of scholarship-in-practice is nascent, social scholarship principles emphasize widening the open review process to encompass informal social review, encouraging scholarship dissemination beyond academic journals platforms as legitimate outlets for research, and changing the dynamics of traditional knowledge production from scholar to consumer toward collaborative knowledge production built on public engagement with research via social media. 6. Citizen-Scholars Whether working from the traditional model of scholarship or the open, public, and social scholarship approaches emerging today, academics, especially those at land-grant universities, have always had the important responsibility of generating and circulating discoveries that advance the Publications 2019, 7, 11 7 of 9 knowledge base, improve education, and contribute to the public good. Indeed, one of the many purposes of education has long been to produce informed citizens who participate in civic life [24]. Broadly speaking, civic refers to all aspects of life that are related to the communities in which one lives, ranging from one’s neighborhood and municipality through to state and national issues and government [24]. Civic responsibility, in turn, refers to the idea that all members of a community bear responsibility for its social and societal problems and are willing to be informed about, and take action regarding, these issues [24]. Citizen-scholars, then, have a civic responsibility to work toward the generation of accessible, shareable, usable scholarship that informs the public and helps address pressing societal problems. Citizen-scholars also have a responsibility to stay up-to-date on their field of study and to engage civically in issues that pertain to their expertise. Although civic engagement has typically referred to conventional ways in which people fulfill their civic duty (e.g., voting) [25], this definition is changing in light of citizens’ adoption of social media for civic and political purposes and new models of citizenship today. For instance, Bennett theorized two citizenship styles in use today: dutiful citizenship and actualizing citizenship [26]. These two models differ in their approaches to civic engagement, sources of information, expressions of civic opinions, and types of civic actions [27]. Dutiful citizenship is the traditional model of citizenship, where civic engagement is an obligation and duty; information comes from legacy news sources such as newspapers and television news, civic expression is done through writing letters to newspapers and through voting, and civic action is related to traditional political party or governmental structure [27,28]. In contrast, actualizing citizenship is a more contemporary model. Citizens who hold this style of citizenship see civic engagement as personal; what is “known” is a blend of information and action that has been co-created and co-curated over online social networks. Civic expression occurs over a wide variety of platforms, and civic action includes more fluid membership in online groups, social media movements (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo), protests, marches, and consumer boycotts [27,28]. In this context, citizen-scholars are poised at the intersection of scholarship trends, social media advancements, and contemporary forms of civic engagement to participate in the public co-curation and co-creation of knowledge, educational innovation and evidence-based solutions to complex problems. Particularly in this time of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” it is critically important for citizen-scholars to contribute to the knowledge and public discourse being shared via social media. 7. Conclusions In this conceptual article, we have explored the benefits and challenges of practicing contemporary approaches to scholarship in service to making research more widely accessible, shareable, and usable in the public sphere. Today’s citizen-scholars, perhaps now more than any time in history, have an obligation and an opportunity to utilize powerful, ubiquitous social media platforms to engage the public in science and collective, civic action. The need for informed and educated citizens has not diminished in the age of social media. In the era of “fake news,” the distribution and discussion of accurate and timely research is critical, and citizen-scholars, through open, public, and social scholarship, can play a significant role in promoting an informed citizenry. Author Contributions: Both authors contributed substantially to this work. Both authors contributed to the article’s conceptualization, writing—original draft preparation, and writing—review and editing. Funding: This research received no external funding. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. References 1. Greenhow, C.; Gleason, B. Social scholarship: Reconsidering scholarly practices in the age of social media. Br. J. Educ. Technol. 2014, 45, 392–402. [CrossRef] http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12150 Publications 2019, 7, 11 8 of 9 2. Greenhow, C.; Gleason, B. The social scholar: Re-interpreting scholarship in the shifting university. 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Introduction Traditional Model of Scholarship Open Science Public Scholarship Social Scholarship: A Model for Open, Public Scholarship through Social Media Citizen-Scholars Conclusions References work_3qdzjsmiordmhh3ej2tpi7glbq ---- S106015031800147Xjra 243..265 Why Beauty Matters GEORGE LEVINE FOR those of us for whom “literary Darwinism,” which bases its “scien-tific” approach to literary criticism on evolutionary psychology, has seemed an intellectual disaster, but who continue to believe that it is important to incorporate science cooperatively into our study of litera- ture; for those who are concerned about how art and literature matter in a world so troubled and dangerous; for those convinced Darwinians who find themselves skeptical about and uneasy with the mechanico- materialist version of Darwinism that Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have made popular; for those who find that the science they credit is yet inadequately attentive to women’s perspectives, Richard Prum’s The Evolution of Beauty offers a potentially marvelous option. A dis- tinguished ornithologist, Prum has undertaken an enormously ambitious project, whose implications run from evolutionary biology to aesthetics. From the perspective of a very unscientific literary guy and a wannabe birder, I slightly distrust my enthusiasm for the book. But Prum’s argu- ments are creatively provocative and brilliantly argued, even when they get rather iffily hypothetical; his ornithological studies are intrinsically fascinating, even to nonbirders, and at the same time they have poten- tially transformative implications. What he has to say, even if his infer- ences can and should be challenged, deserves the most serious engagement. From the perspective of science, Prum’s arguments make a strong entry in growing resistance to the dominant paradigm of evolutionary biology (and its virtually exclusive assumption taken over by evolutionary psychology), that all evolutionary change is adaptive, and that it happens algorithmically, without agency, intention, or mind. From the perspective of the humanities, Prum lays the groundwork for a potentially creative and liberating aesthetic theory. From the perspective of interdisciplinary scholarship, he suggests fresh ways for science, the arts, and the human- ities to talk creatively to each other. In addition, he reinforces a strong George Levine is Professor Emeritus of English at Rutgers University. He is the author of many books on Victorian literature, culture, and science, among them: Darwin and the Novelists (1988), Darwin Loves You (2006), Darwin the Writer (2011), Dying to Know: Narrative and Scientific Epistemology in Victorian England (2002), and his edited volume, Aesthetics and Ideology (1994). Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 243–265. © Cambridge University Press 2018. doi:10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core feminist program from within the framework of scientific study. Prum’s insistence on the importance of history, with all its contingencies, in understanding the way things are now may be old news to humanists, but it has a particularly important resonance within the virtually atempo- ral mechanico-materialist system that much scientific study prioritizes. The evolutionary history on which Prum sets out is an unusual one. It is not a history of adaptations leading to speciation, but a history of “beauty,” an “aesthetic” history. His unusual focus is on individual prefer- ences, on desires and pleasures and even intentions. “We need,” he says, “to embrace Darwin’s aesthetic view of life and fully incorporate the pos- sibility of nonadaptive arbitrary aesthetic evolution by sexual selection.”1 Victorianists will recognize that although this is not a book about Victorian culture, the story it tells has Victorian resonances. They should be pleased to note that a fundamental move in Prum’s argument is the attempt to replace modern “Darwinism,” taken as the fundamental assumption of evolutionary science, with a Darwinism more in keeping with Darwin’s complete theory. The book’s subtitle, “How Darwin’s Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World,” aggressively affirms the centrality of Darwin’s idea of sexual selection against the dominant, but only selectively Darwinian, view that natural selection does it all. Prum impressively builds a case, out of Darwin’s original formulations of sexual selection, that female aesthetic choice provides a better expla- nation than the traditional adaptationist one for many evolutionary changes, not least the evolution of humans away from their primate origins. Into the mechanisms on which all serious biologists agree, Plum inserts the scientifically dubious elements of individual desire and inten- tion; in addition, he makes the case that evolutionary biology now is largely conducted from a male perspective. Without challenging the importance of natural selection, he argues for a shift of perspective that would allow for other evolutionary forces—most particularly, female choice. Reading the book for its wondrous study of birds and its chal- lenge to evolutionary psychology, I was startled to realize that I was read- ing also a fresh and singularly strong argument for feminism. Prum’s work, from the perspective of a scientist, arrives at similar conclusions, working with similar Darwinian ideas, that Elizabeth Grosz develops in a series of important books that courageously and importantly reconnect the biological and material with important cultural projects like femi- nism, despite the long history of misuse of such material for racist and sexist cultural projects.2 244 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core The idea of “the evolution of beauty” might be said to have its begin- nings in the late eighteenth century, particularly in the work of Erasmus Darwin, Charles’s famous grandfather, but later most fully among the Victorians: first, in Darwin’s focus in The Descent of Man on “mate choice,” and then in the disagreements that followed between Darwin and A. R. Wallace about sexual selection. For Darwin, sexual selection was a hard-earned idea that grew from his deeply felt realization that the extravagances of some natural phenomena required an explanation for which his central theory of natural selection wouldn’t work. The intensity of the problem as he experienced it is implied in what he famously wrote to Asa Gray in 1860: “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick.”3 While Darwin found a nonadaptationist explanation for that feather, Wallace, after years of debate in correspon- dence with Darwin, did not; and Wallace became a key figure in the sci- entific rejection of sexual selection that endured well into the twentieth century. Wallace also famously veered off from Darwin by arguing, almost in anticipation of current theories of intelligent design, that the enor- mous complexity of the human mind and brain (he uses mathematics as an example) is evidence that natural selection could not explain the development of mind. His rejection of sexual selection had longer-term consequences for science. Today’s evolutionary biology—though obviously not accepting Wallace’s move to spiritualism and despite its usual designation as “neo-Darwinian”—is on Prum’s reading Wallacean rather than Darwinian. In his 1889 book, Darwinism, Wallace represents Darwin as insisting that “all the fixed characters of organic beings have been devel- oped under the action of the law of utility.”4 Wallace thinks of himself as Darwinian because his book is, as he puts it in the preface, based on the argument that “all [emphasis mine] specific characters are (or once have been) either useful in themselves or correlated with useful characters” (186). But sexual selection doesn’t work that way. Tracing the evolution of beauty, Prum shows how it evolves precisely as it was not useful, and yet important enough to influence speciation itself. Prum and Darwin insist on inutility as a force in the development of varieties and species. Darwin needed the theory of sexual selection not only to account for the peacock’s extravagant plumage, but also to account for racial divergence in a world he thought of as monogenetic: we all descend from the same beings, but each race, he believed, devel- oped distinct aesthetic preferences, preferences not necessarily linked to natural selection and utility. On the one hand, then, almost an aesthetic WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 245 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core relativist—every race’s perception of beauty is distinctive—Darwin was, on the other hand, a Victorian gentleman who was also, from our current perspective, both racist and sexist. Victorian science shared these tendencies with Darwin and because of them found it impossible to accept Darwin’s theory of mate choice because it could not credit the female with as much power as the theory required. But it is hard to claim now that the theory is “forgotten,” as the subtitle of Prum’s book suggests. R. A. Fisher, with brilliant mathematical ingenuity, made the case for it against scientific consensus, first in 1915 and then in 1930 (it may be beside the point of the science, but Fisher was also outspokenly racist and a supporter of eugenics). Prum notes, however, that Fisher’s ideas, which tended to confirm that sexual selec- tion works by showing just how it works, “would be mostly ignored for the next fifty years” (35). Now, as Prum certainly does acknowledge, “all biologists embrace the fundamental concept of mate choice” (65). What is controversial and fresh, then, in Prum’s argument (aside from the wonderful ornithological studies he describes in the first half of the book) is his “embrace” of what he calls Darwin’s aesthetic approach, making “beauty” (and the largely female choice that evokes it) central to evolutionary study, and deploying it as part of what seems a larger argument with important aesthetic and social implications, far from the racist traditions in which the idea was born. While Prum rightly connects his own perspectives on sexual selec- tion with Darwin’s, his embrace of the female role in speciation and evo- lutionary change takes him a long way, even from the Darwin he is trying to reinstate. Evelleen Richards has convincingly demonstrated that Darwin’s willingness, against the grain of his culture, to allow that females had the power of choice and thus to lead to important biological changes was not built on an affirmation of women’s strength, but on its reverse.5 The choice for extravagant inutility is what women do as they follow fash- ion trends. Silly women simply haven’t got the kind of functional intelli- gence that would encourage them to choose the mate with the best chance of reproduction and survival. Rather, they like fancy ornaments, subject to the whims of fashion. They are too coy and silly to choose the useful. Prum regularly ignores Darwin’s ingrained sexism, and makes the inutility of female choice one of the great strengths of the theory: inutility challenges the dominant Darwinian theory of our time, just as Darwin argued against Wallace. In the face of the inutility of female mate choice, contemporary insistence that all evolutionary change is adaptive seems to leave too much out. 246 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core Prum insists that Darwin’s theory was forgotten in large part because — even against Darwin’s own sense of the superiority of males to females—he so strongly focuses on female agency, female desire, female purpose. “We cannot doubt,” he writes in The Descent of Man, that, though led by instinct,” female birds ” know what they are about, and consciously exert their mental and bodily powers.”6 When he describes the female’s reaction to courting males, he says, “we cannot doubt” but that “the females, supposing that their mental capacity sufficed for the exertion of a choice, could select one out of several males.”7 Darwin lets himself “suppose,” and in effect urges that we do as well. His language cedes to the realities he is discovering: “The exertion of some choice on the part of the female seems almost as general a law as the eagerness of the male.”8 Certainly for the purposes of his argument, Prum’s avoidance makes sense. Although Darwin was, in our current terms, Victorianly sexist, his science, as Jim Enderby reminds us, took him where few of his contem- poraries were willing to go. The theory of sexual selection gives the female a strong role in evolution, while “several of his contemporaries —such as Alfred Russel Wallace and St George Mivart—rejected Darwin’s proposal that female choice could have played any role in evo- lution because females were so notoriously fickle.”9 Prum finds the same attitude more quietly embedded in modern evolutionary biology, and he contends that “Darwin’s idea that the aesthetic evaluations invoked in mate choice among animals constitute an independent evolutionary force in nature is as radical today as it was when he proffered it nearly one hundred fifty years ago” (323). Part of what encourages trust in Prum’s arguments is that he is not scientifically unorthodox when discussing the sheer mechanisms of sex- ual selection. In The Blind Watchmaker, for instance, Dawkins describes those mechanisms, as they produce the extravagances of everything from feathers to vaginal tracts, which become so important to Prum’s argument. Dawkins also implicitly rejects the kind of doubts Victorians had about the important role “weak” and “coy” females play in evolution- ary development. So, while it is not quite fair to say that Darwin’s theory is now “forgotten,” it is fair to argue that it has been twisted in un-Darwinian ways as it has been assimilated to natural selection. Wallace had done that one hundred and fifty years ago. “Female prefer- ence, says Dawkins, is a genetically influenced variable just like any other” (202).10 For Prum, however, the most important point is that today’s dominant paradigm resists the idea that elaborate ornamentations “are WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 247 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core merely meaningless, arbitrary (albeit fabulous) results of co-evolutionary fashion” (65). It was unease with the implication that his fickle females were subject to fashion that made Darwin’s development of his theory so difficult; Prum, relieved of the cultural pressures of Victorian sexism, finds meaning in female mate choice. Moving from Prum’s language to my own, the strict adaptationist approach, which Darwin also rejected, does not allow for art for art’s sake: a point I will develop later. It does not contemplate the free play of desire or the power of female self- interest. It does not emphasize sufficiently the possibility that sexual selection can at times win out over natural selection—well, at least up to a point. Darwin first invokes sexual selection by distinguishing it from natural selection. “It acts,” says Darwin, “in a less rigorous manner than natural selection. The latter produces its effects by the life or death at all ages of the more or less successful individuals,” while the former “rarely leads to death of the vanquished male.” In addition, while for natural selection there is “a limit to the amount of advantageous modification” possible, in sexual selection “there is no definite limit.”11 “Sexual selec- tion,” Darwin goes on, “depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex in relation to the propagation of the species; whilst natural selection depends on the success of both sexes, at all ages, in relation to the general conditions of life.”12 Which is simply to say that Darwin imagined sexual selection not as a major footnote to natural selection, but as a process that works independently of it and is yet required for a fully coherent explanation of evolutionary change. Female desire, however arbitrary, can at times win out. “The process of adaptation by natural selection,” Prum insists from the start, “is not synon- ymous with evolution itself” (11). Prum focuses primarily on only one of the two major aspects of sex- ual selection to build his case. The male role is usually the one most attended to, with emphasis on the violent struggle of male against male for possession of the female, and thus the development of weapons like horns and talons. This struggle, Darwin believed, makes of the male a more powerful, an even more intellectually powerful figure than the female, who “coyly” waits to be mastered. But he insists on the difference between the two forms of sexual selection: “In a multitude of cases the males which conquer other males, do not obtain possession of the females, independently of choice on the part of the latter.”13 Prum’s book builds on the second aspect, “mate choice,” in which the female chooses among males and thus plays the dominant role. Here, the 248 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core male’s superior physical powers are not the essential element and often play no role at all in mating. The nausea Darwin felt at the sight of the peacock’s feather was, of course, caused by how impossible he thought it would be to account for it by way of natural selection. Sexual selection became his way of account- ing for it. To clarify the problem, let us look briefly at Prum’s ground- breaking work on the color of dinosaurs. After studying closely a raptor-like feathered dinosaur (discovered in China in the last century), Prum came to realize that “the evolution of aesthetic plumage ornaments originated not within birds but way back in terrestrial theropod dino- saurs. The dinosaurs co-evolved to be beautiful—beautiful to them- selves—long before one exceptional lineage of dinosaurs evolved to become flying birds” (143–44). That little parenthetical “beautiful to themselves” is loaded. Simple as it seems, it makes a major move to undercut the idea that speciation is entirely or even dominantly always the result of the adaptation seized upon by natural selection, or survival of the fittest. Rather, “the evolution of beauty contributed to the evolu- tion of feathers themselves” (144). Not natural selection. Originating as simple tubes on dinosaurs, feathers evolved with “downy tufts” and eventually into the “planar” forms that make such glo- rious canvases for color and are familiar to us in birds. Female dinosaurs, demanding beauty in the male, selected for developments in the feather that allowed it to display color. Only later, after beauty had begun doing its job, did feathers save dinosaurs from absolute extinction by turning them into birds. Color first, not flight. Aesthetic pleasure, not utility. The planar feathering that, eventually and luckily for us, developed into feathers that enabled flight was not an adaptation for flight. The won- derful irony here is that a desire for the beautiful divorced entirely from any useful purpose—what our practical-minded culture is trying to defund—saved dinosaurs from absolute extinction by allowing them to transform into birds. For evolutionary biologists following in Wallace’s tradition, the idea that something other than adaptive fitness drives evolutionary change has been particularly difficult. There is still, apparently, disagreement in the field about whether beauty “means” something other than what it is, and thus can be assimilated to the adaptationist model. Many biol- ogists believe that the beauty of the male, often extravagant and danger- ous to the male, “signals”—and “honestly signals”—reproductive fitness. The minority, to which Prum belongs, believes that while “adaptive mate choice can occur” it “is probably rather rare.” These astonishing WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 249 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core ornaments “are merely meaningless, arbitrary (albeit fabulous) results of co-evolutionary fashion” (65). A poem, a peacock’s feather, should not mean, but be. Just as dollar bills have been detached from the “gold stan- dard” for which they were originally promissory notes, Prum explains, beauty was detached from what it honestly signaled. The miser wants the dollar bills and does not worry about Fort Knox. The female wants the color and manages without any motive but her own pleasure to choose. The same thing can hold for humans. While neo-Darwinist explana- tions imply that “there must be something of greater value in sexual attraction beyond mere sexual attraction” (357)—the theory of “honest signaling”—the evidence is that there is no relationship between body shape and fertility. Prum cites a mathematical study by two biologists that has “documented that cultural mating preferences can create feed- back loops that result in the evolutionary elaboration of certain traits that are deemed desirable but have no survival or fecundity value—only aesthetic value” (261). Sexual attraction is sexual attraction—art for art sake, beauty for beauty’s sake, pleasure for pleasure’s sake. As Prum neatly puts it, establishing a key phrase for his whole argu- ment, “Beauty Happens.” Released from the gold standard, the dollar’s value is entirely a matter of agreement, a social construct, and everyone wants it. Released from the utility it theoretically signaled, beauty becomes also a social construct: an agreement of both parties that the prettier the better—according to their lights. The resonance of this idea for aesthetic theory and criticism is strong and clear and remarkably in harmony with much extremely unscientific aesthetic theorizing of recent years. Prum offers many examples of bird behavior and development that illustrate this sort of nonadaptive exchange. To make its mating “call,” for one remarkable instance, the Club-winged Manakin rubs its wing feath- ers together at a very high frequency, but to produce the sound the wing bones can not be hollow. Yet hollowness seems a condition for bird flight and is characteristic of all other Manakins. The Club-winged fly less well than their cousins because, Prum tells us, their ulnas “are four times wider and three times larger in volume . . .There is nothing else like it in any other bird in the world” (150). But, then, of course, no other birds produce such sexy wing sounds. The beauty of the Club-winged Manakin’s “song” has a history. It is a physiological evolution different from that of all the other Manakins, who are otherwise closely related, and it evolved very clearly from mate 250 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core choice, the female’s desire for the beautiful. To win mates, this Manakin degenerated in fitness; it evolved “a decrease in overall survival capacity” (152) under the pressure of female desire. The club wings are inherited by both male and female, but so too is the desire for them. This inheri- tance across both sexes assures a cascade of beauty-oriented changes: from generation to generation females get pickier and pickier; offspring inherit larger and stronger bones to make the music that will satisfy. In the pursuit of pleasure, it all becomes extravagantly useless and a sepa- rate species is born. De gustibus non est disputandum. Beauty is not truth; it signifies “nothing but itself” (322). In this whirling, self-reinforcing, aesthetically inspired dance, the female seeks the sound; the male body shapes itself to the female’s pleasure. The evolution of beauty entails a remarkable amount of free play. The idea of the aesthetic as a social contract is not the only impor- tant inference Prum draws from the evolutionary engagement (and con- test) of female and male. Along with attraction, mating includes a power struggle, the stronger male trying to impose himself on the less powerful female. In a chapter on duck sex, Prum describes the extraordinary behaviors and physiological changes among males in mating season, all in response to choosy female ducks who are choosy “because they can be” (155). This study is one of the few the book discusses that wasn’t con- ducted by Prum and his team, but it dazzlingly confirms his larger argu- ments. Most interesting for Prum’s point, and more distressing for anyone who sentimentalizes ducks, is the behavior of “puddle ducks,” the drakes of which regularly rape the females. Prum complains about ornithologists’ decision to call bird rape “forced copulation.” He wants, rather, to emphasize the “violent, ugly, dangerous, and even deadly” nature of sex among these ducks to make clear that it happens against the wills of the females. Recognition of the female perspective here becomes essential. The cost of duck rape is not only direct damage to the female’s well-being, but indirect genetic loss: the females and the spe- cies suffer because successful rape not only lowers the number of avail- able females, but also diminishes the chances the offspring will inherit the traits—the “beauty”—that the females prefer. Among “puddle ducks,” as Prum calls them, the two modes of sexual selection are in contest: the male’s combat for power and dominance, the female’s desire for the beautiful. To overcome the resistance of the female, the males have developed long penises, sometimes longer than their own bodies. To counter, the female has developed a long sinuous vaginal tract with “thickened, convoluted walls . . . wrapped in a mass WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 251 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core of fibrous tissue”; “the longer and twistier the penis, the more complex the vaginal tract, full of nooks and crannies” (160). Prum and his team have discovered that though 40 percent of the puddle ducks’ sexual rela- tions are coerced, “only 2–5 percent of the young in the nest are sired by a male who is not the chosen partner of the female.” The length and the nooks and crannies “are actually incredibly effective at preventing fertil- ization by force” (172). In the end, the female carries almost exclusively the young of the male of her dreams, the most aesthetically satisfying of her courtiers: By being overwhelmingly successful at bottling up the penis during forced intromission, and preventing the vast majority of attempts at forced fertiliza- tions, female ducks have managed to maintain the advantage of this sexual arms race. Even in the face of persistent sexual violence, female ducks have been able to assert and advance their sexual autonomy—their individual freedom to control paternity through their own mate choices. . .female mate choice continues to predominate. . . .Beauty continues to thrive even in the face of persistent violent attempts to subvert the freedom of mate choice that creates it. (174) Although females cannot “evolve to assert power over others in respect to sexual violence,” they can “evolve to assert their own freedom of choice. . . . Males evolve weapons of control . . . females are merely coevolving defenses that create opportunity for choice. It’s not a fair fight,” Prum concludes; “however, as ducks show, female sexual auton- omy can still win” (174). If nothing else, these remarkable stories of bird mating and evolution build a strong case: the grim story of the mind- less demands of natural selection for fitness, on matters of life and death, as Darwin notes, must take one step to the side. Natural selection cannot explain it all; room must be made for beauty, and thus for desire and intention and purpose. * There is yet another way in which current dominant scientific assumptions are simply not adequate to the realities of the natural world. Darwin’s theory has been taken to imply that nature provides no “agency” for the enormous evolutionary changes through which it moves across geological time. What happens in evolution happens algo- rithmically: no mind directs it, no desire impels it. Daniel Dennett argues influentially that “life on Earth has been generated over billions of years in a single branching tree—the Tree of Life—by one algorithmic process or another.”14 And he defines algorithm as working on three fundamen- tal conditions—first, “substrate neutrality,” which in effect means that 252 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core what matters is not the particular contingent content of the process, nor the causal powers that may drive them, but a simple logical structure which applies everywhere always. Second, “underlying mindlessness”: however designed the outcome might seem to be, it is constructed of a series of steps that, if taken (and even an idiot might be able to take any one of those steps, as in a computer program), will—third—always produce the results, apparently designed or not (51). Algorithms func- tion independently of mind, of conscious direction, or of telos. Although, as Dennett shows, all of this has been subject to much dis- agreement and uncertainty, Prum writes into an intellectual culture in which the “algorithmic” reading has largely triumphed. He mentions Dennett only once, but in doing so he makes clear what his own program is: “I propose that Darwin’s really dangerous idea is the concept of aes- thetic evolution by mate choice.” Implicitly conceding that natural selec- tion works algorithmically, he yet claims that “natural selection can not be the only dynamic at work in evolution” (18). In fact, his view of aes- thetic evolution is that it runs precisely counter to the algorithmic. Unhinging sexual selection from reproductive fitness leads Prum to his main point: “the inherently serendipitous and unpredictable nature of aesthetic evolutionary process” (118). The ornithological studies that I have described are strong evidence that, as Prum claims, birds “act as agents in their own evolution” (10). The conclusion to his startling histories is even more startling, for his lan- guage seems almost Lamarckian. He claims, for instance, that the history of the beauty of the Manakin’s song is one strong example of how “ani- mals are aesthetic agents who play a role in their own evolution” (324). Prum never mentions Lamarck, and he certainly rejects the Lamarckian notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, but his language occasionally resembles Lamarck’s, in suggesting that sexual selection reinserts into the evolutionary process the “intention” that Dennett regards as a “skyhook”—it ain’t scientific. Darwin’s own meta- phorical language, as particularly with the very active “Natural Selection,” often looks as though it is affirming agency even though he goes to great pains to deny it literally. Lamarck was eliminated from the evolutionary canon in part because he believed in inheritance of acquired characteristics, but largely because this meant that he believed that organisms might “act as agents in their own evolution.” This idea of “agency” is subtly (and sotto voce) alive in Prum’s argument—as it was in Darwin’s—even though Prum would certainly argue that while individu- als have intention, the broad transformations toward speciation are not at WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 253 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core all “intended” by an agent; they result from the normal unintentional developments within population genetics. Samuel Butler, in a long series of anti-Darwinian books, culminating in Evolution, Old and New, argued that a theory that eliminates agency is radically flawed. Prum’s birds, cer- tainly not acting with teleology in mind, yet act with a purposiveness it is hard to dismiss. But “for the current generation of biologists,” writes Jessica Riskin, “naturalism precludes treating agency as an elemental feature of the nat- ural world, or indeed as anything beyond an irresistibly compelling appearance.”15 Whether Prum’s experiments produce “an irresistibly compelling appearance” that is belied by the reality or not is for science ultimately to decide. In any case, Riskin shows, in her magisterial book The Restless Clock, that it has been possible to be a pure mechanist and materialist and at the same time a scientist who believes in agency. Thinkers as different as Lamarck, Darwin, Dennett, and Prum are all entirely naturalistic in their studies and arguments; all exclude from their nature studies any action from the “outside”—certainly any divine hand. The great irony that provides the structure of Riskin’s careful and learned study of agency is that removal of agency from nature has its modern foundation not in science but in religion itself—most particu- larly, natural theology. That famous Paleyan parable of the difference between the watch and the stone effectively turns nature into a machine without agency, and since there is no agency in nature, a God is required to explain its appearance. Dennett’s algorithmic reading of nature is his substitute for Paley’s god, since agency of some sort is essential to any adequate explanation of nature’s functioning. The running watch (inter- estingly, Paley chooses a machine to make his point) cannot do it simply by virtue of its intrinsic material nature. Ironically, then, Dennett’s posi- tion is fundamentally a religious one. Except he leaves God out. Riskin points out that neo-Darwinism developed, particularly in Germany in the late nineteenth century, by making all scientific explana- tion dependent on a mechanical model, excluding not only any form of spirit, but any sort of internal agency. So Lamarck’s explanation of evo- lutionary development, “according to which living forms developed grad- ually and contingently driven by their own inner agencies,” was rejected. Neo-Darwinians “reject the idea that intrinsic agencies operate in nature” (251), and thus also reject Darwin’s endorsement of Lamarck’s view “that the ‘habits,’ ‘ways of life,’ and circumstances of animals very gradually shaped their organs” (269). 254 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core The problem of agency looms over all naturalistic explanation. So Prum’s argument is doing something extraordinary in telling us that mate choice is an “intrinsic agency operating in nature.” Yet he is simply building on Darwin’s own ideas: “It is impossible to doubt,” says Darwin of birds, in a sequence that constantly evokes human language for beauty, “that the females admire the beauty of their male counter- parts.”16 “The taste for the beautiful,” says Darwin, comfortably using lan- guage of intention, and desire, “is not of a special nature in the human mind.”17 Riskin’s book is one major intervention in a developing concern about agency. Being Paleyan without God suggests that something is miss- ing in current scientific explanation, and J. Scott Turner’s Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism has Failed to Explain It, directly addresses the problem. He claims that such a position represents a serious “crisis” in biological thought. On the Dennett/Paley model, biology, Turner claims, fails to make its own sub- ject, “life,” distinguishable from the inorganic. If “life” is a machine that can be understood in strictly chemical/physical terms, then how does it differ from Paley’s stone? Where is the distinction among the sciences? Agreeing that “it seems hard to attribute striving and desire to anything living without getting into unscientific ways of thinking,” Turner asks, “How do you experiment with desire?”18 In effect, although I have no idea whether he would accept Turner’s analysis, Prum’s ornithological studies might be read as just that, “experiments with desire.” Mate choice is a choice—usually a female choice. It implies, at least anthropomorphi- cally speaking, a desire for the pleasurable—“taste,” as Darwin puts it. Prum’s female ducks work hard to protect their “taste.” Prum does not avoid the implications of the verb “to choose,” as Darwin had to do when he was challenged about the metaphorical implications of “selec- tion.” For, of course, selecting entails choosing, and choosing entails something that certainly has the appearance of consciousness. Facing just this question of the appearance of agency (calling his language anthropomorphic suggests that the agency his language implies is mere appearance), Darwin responds to criticism of his anthropomor- phism by offering in the fifth edition of The Origin of Species (1869) a description of natural selection that would satisfy Dennett: It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to any author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets? . . . So again it is difficult to avoid personifying WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 255 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core the word Nature; but I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and prod- uct of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us.19 This is the language of algorithm, certainly central to Dennett’s own version of Darwin, and, if irregularly, it is a language Darwin endorses. Here, Darwin urgently, almost angrily, withdraws agency from nature. It is telling that to make this point Darwin uses for clarification “the movement of the planets,” in effect equating inorganic and organic nature. This is the Darwin that Prum ignores and Dennett uses. From Turner’s point of view, Darwin fails here to distinguish life from nonlife. But Darwin’s position in these problems is, as ever, ambiguous. He could not give up on his anthropomorphic metaphor, “natural selection,” and the language with which he otherwise describes “her” actions bursts with intention.20 As Riskin discusses him, Darwin remains somewhere in a limbo between the brute mechanism that relied on a distant god to get things moving, and another naturalist tradition, which saw the energy coming from an engine within.21 Prum’s history of beauty very persuasively puts at least some agency back into evolutionary development just where Darwin did when he dis- cussed sexual selection. “We now agree,” Prum points out that ornament evolves because individuals have the capacity, and the freedom, to choose their mates, and they choose the mates whose ornaments they prefer. In the process of choosing what they like, choosers evolutionarily transform both the objects of their desires and the form of their own desires. It is a true evolutionary dance between beauty and desire” (65). That “dance” is the basis of the aesthetic theory that Prum is suggesting—beauty is, as it were, a negotiation between the desirer and the object desired; in a feed- back loop, desire transforms the object, which in turn reacts on the one who desires. As Darwin says, there is no limit to how beautiful and strange and extravagant these developments might be. * The extent of Prum’s daring becomes yet more overt when he notes that “in surprising ways . . .the evolutionary hypotheses I’ve outlined are strongly consistent with, and supportive of, contemporary gender theory” (318), and then asks, “Who could have imagined that evolutionary biol- ogy and queer theory could be on the same page about anything?” (319). Prum’s argument that “aesthetic evolution has great explanatory power” (236) stretches across his science into large cultural issues, where his work might be taken as a strong, scientifically argued counterforce to 256 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core evolutionary psychology, as it is now practiced, and as evidence on funda- mental issues with which the humanities and social sciences are regularly engaged. The best way to see what’s wrong with literary Darwinism is to see what’s wrong with the science that sustains it (although Jonathan Kramnick, working from the opposite direction, does a very strong job on it, and one that all literary scholars can profit from reading.)22 Although he claims that much of his own work might be thought of as “evolutionary psychology,” since it concerns itself with the will and desires of animals in mate choice, Prum laments that today’s evolutionary psy- chology “has a profound, constitutive, often fanatical commitment to the universal efficacy of adaptation by natural selection” (227). As read- ers of literary Darwinist criticism well know, “there is never any doubt what the conclusion of any evolutionary psychology [or therefore, I would add, literary Darwinist] study will be” (227). Total adaptationism implies that all art, all culture, must be understood in terms of utility. The negative force of Prum’s arguments, against the bad science of evolutionary psychology, as he sees it, and against its founding thesis, the universality of adaptation for fitness, seems to me very powerful. But as it extends from birds to the human, Prum’s book becomes more problem- atic. No doubt his arguments are vulnerable, and one important review has already suggested that his claims—or at least the inferences he makes from his studies—are excessive: “The experience of seeing evi- dence of your favorite theory everywhere is prevalent among scientists,” the reviewer half mockingly complains.23 But by the time we arrive at the chapter called “Human Beauty Happens Too,” Prum has, from my point of view, earned the right to what he confesses are only “specula- tions” that need to be “tested and analyzed” before they can be dismissed. Once again, the argument begins with a rejection of neo-Darwinist orientations: the “dominant view of hominin evolution as an interplay between male-male competition and adaptive, ecological natural selec- tion is insufficient to explain the key innovations that have occurred in the evolution of human cognitive, social, and cultural complexity” (299). That view, Prum claims, has diverted attention from the real prob- lems, which can best be recognized through an evolutionary history that attempts to account for our separation from our primate cousins. His alternative view is that “women’s pursuit of pleasure is at the very heart of the evolution of human beauty and sexuality” (just as, he has forcefully shown, female choice is at the very heart of much bird beauty and sexual- ity). The aesthetic history for which he is asking takes “pleasure as the WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 257 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core central, organizing force in mate choice, and mate choice as a major dynamic in evolutionary change” (284), and as the primary force separat- ing us from our primate cousins. That case, which Prum made about birds, he tests out again about women. We cultural studies types have long been used to thinking about the “male gaze,” which turns women into objects. Prum argues that evolutionary psychology, even in its psychological experiments, reifies “the male gaze as an adaptation,” and has thus enshrined sexist bias in human evolutionary biology and notably failed to explain the mate preferences of the other half of the species” (241). Attending to that other half, Prum rereads our break with other primates and every- thing from the unusual anatomy and large size of the penis (in compar- ison with other primates) to cultural variations in physiognomy and perceptions of beauty, and to the abundance of sexual practices, includ- ing homosexuality. So that, as with birds, the inutility of the aesthetic and the aesthetic drive accounts for a great deal in species development. “What is it that you women want?” is a famous grumpy male response to feminism. Prum builds much of his argument in answering that ques- tion and offers a hypothetical but strongly explanatory account of our split with primates. Simian social organization tends to inhibit change, since, for the most part, primates establish groups with a macho leader who prohibits other males from having sex with any females, and who will often kill the young who have been sired by a former leader. “Viewed through the lens of human biology,” Prum tells us, “the average male baboon, gorilla, or chimpanzee is an infanticidal maniac” (289). Males in these primate organizations leave the young to their mothers, who expend enormous energy on them, and then often find that energy wasted by male violence. As primates, we lowered the degree of violence that sustained a community: “The evolutionary mechanism for lowered male aggression, cooperative social temperament, and social intelligence . . .proceeded not by natural selection but by aesthetic sexual selection through female mate choice. (292)” The efforts in evolutionary biology to regard “beauty” as an honest signal of fitness once again makes beauty “mean” something. But human beauty “means” fitness no more than bird beauty does. Both males and females—unlike most primates and other animals—make “mate choices.” Sexual behavior across cultures varies as wildly as lan- guages and customs, and the “big challenge is to understand how our biological history and our cultural history interact to create the various expressions of human sexuality” (233). Prum notes that human males, 258 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core unlike most primates who “pursue every sexual liaison available to them,” are quite picky, in part because men make much larger “parental invest- ments” in their offspring than other primate males do. The neo-Darwinist explanation of feminine beauty is that ample breasts and hips are not only beautiful but also biologically right for reproduction; yet, as Prum points out, primate breasts only become prominent in breeding season. The permanent breasts of human females can be explained in the same ways as the peacock’s feathers, and long, crooked vaginal tracts, and club wings: so, too, the larger penises of human males (primates have very small ones, and so much for horny King Kong). All, in Prum’s theory, are effects of aesthetic agency in mate choice. Everywhere, Prum argues for (and produces evidence for) the irra- tionality of aesthetic evolution, the free wild arbitrariness of mate choice, and of the beautiful. He insists—consistent with Riskin’s representation of the history of naturalist thought—that neo-Darwinist thinking repre- sents the world as entirely “rational,” functioning always in the direction of adaptation, meaning. Prum reinserts irrationality into evolutionary his- tory by not taking beauty as a signal, certainly not a signal of fitness, by reinserting agency and taking seriously will and desire. He claims that recognizing the irrationality allows for a better understanding of evolution historically and of current cultural practices as well. On this account, mate choice, both male and female, has produced the human species out of the world of primates, largely by satisfying female desires and female needs. Prum reexamines neo-Darwinist expla- nations of human qualities in a wide range of areas, everywhere from penis size, to female orgasm, to “decrease in the difference in body mass between the sexes,” to reduction of the size of male canine teeth, to male investment in the young. Each of these changes satisfies what seem like female needs and desires (the question of whether penis size and scrotum are particularly attractive to women, as Prum suggests, I leave open). Humans “make more substantial reproductive investments. . . .resources, time, and energy to the protection, care, feeding and social- ization of their offspring” (255). All of these suggest a widespread dimin- ishment of male aggression in the human split from primates. They also seem to be nonadaptive even as they satisfy female needs and desires. Again, orgasmic female pleasure seems a particularly human trait. Prum’s attempt to show how the most apparently nonadaptive phe- nomena can be understood better through the “Beauty Happens” the- ory, leads him to the chapter, “The Queering of Homo Sapiens,” on homosexuality. The phenomenon has the same status within the theory WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 259 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core of natural selection as the peacock feather that upset Darwin: How could it possibly be related to reproductive success and fitness? Sexual behavior, Prum points out, need not be understood in terms of sexual identity. That idea is not even two hundred years old, and sexuality is sexuality in whatever form it might take. “Diversity of sexual practices is a pro- foundly human characteristic that must be accounted for,” says Prum, but homosexuality is not a “conundrum” (304). The wild freedom of sex- ual practices among humans (again, distinguishing us from other pri- mates) has always included sexual activity with no effect on reproduction. This is yet another instance in which aesthetic evolution is not connected to adaptiveness. It becomes a conundrum only if one is committed to the total adaptationist theory. Consistent with its approach to all evolutionary phenomena, neo-Darwinism attempts to transform the phenomenon into an adaptive one and has thus come up with the “helpful uncle” theory. The nonpro- ducing male contributes in the long run to overall fitness by helping busy moms and dads raise their children. Prum’s speculation—very much a speculation—is, however, this: homosexuality “might have evolved through female mate choice as a mechanism to advance female sexual autonomy and to reduce sexual conflict over fertilization and parental care. According to the aesthetic hypothesis, the existence of same-sex behavior in humans is another evolutionary response to the persistent primate problem of sexual coercion” (307). Once again, female choice, female interest, becomes the explanatory hypothesis. Granted, the evi- dence is thin, maybe no better than the “helpful uncle” theory, but it is at least not (yet) contradicted by the evidence and it entirely normal- izes a phenomenon that has historically been taken as an anomaly and would otherwise be taken as a “conundrum”—at best. But then one last big question, one that Prum himself recognizes. If it is the case that “female sexual autonomy played a critical role in the evolution of human sexuality and reproduction,” if it was “a critical factor in the evolution of humanity itself,” why are women in human culture so consistently made secondary? Why is violence against women almost a norm of human cultures? Why in 2018 is a “#metoo” campaign even nec- essary? The fact seems strong evidence against the triumphal female-oriented aesthetic history Prum has outlined. But Prum has an explanation, one that further opens the way to cultural and gender stud- ies. First, males too have evolved in that other mode of sexual selection, and have “evolved mechanisms to advance their capacity for sexual coer- cion and violence” (351). Given male physical strength, in the struggle 260 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 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What matters most here is the expulsion from the discussion of the idea that the current state of male domination is somehow a biologically implanted, evolutionary necessity, against which no cultural resistance, like the current “#metoo” movement, can ultimately have any power. Prum believes that there remains the possibil- ity of women “fully consolidating the previous evolutionary gains in sex- ual autonomy” (352). Prum’s book is so heartening not because he has conclusively made his case. The speculative nature of so much of his large conclusion leaves much in doubt. There is, in addition, always the danger that he, like the eugenicists he attacks, is biologizing cultural phenomena, a practice with an unpleasant Victorian and post-Victorian history. But one cannot not take biology into account in this very material world. And Prum has made a fascinating and forceful case for the idea that it is possible to find other and more fully satisfying explanations of current biological and cultural phenomena, and that serious scientific investigation, freed from the full adaptationist dogma, is not doomed to the same predictable conclusions that evolutionary psychology had been imposing on us. Perhaps pie in the sky. But the aesthetic evolutionary history that Prum lays out through his startling and wonderful chapters on bird life, fol- lowed by his strong speculations on the causes of the human split from primates, makes sense. It is certainly a workable hypothesis. To this lay critic, it is refreshingly plausible. I hope it is right. Whether or not the larger case holds up, however, the “Beauty Happens” theory provokes fresh thinking, not only about scientific method and perspective, not only about cultural phenomena in general, but specifically about art. It suggests a world that has evolved virtually on the principle of “art for art’s sake.” Free arbitrary pursuit of the beautiful to its wildest possible extravagances may be recognized as no mere self- indulgence after all, but as a condition of change and growth, a prod to creativity and the new. If Prum is right, we humanists might infer WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 261 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core that the “beauty” we study—often with a sense of guilt for devoting such energy to art rather than to the harsh realities of the world that science and social science and the daily newspaper constantly reveal to us—is not a diversion from harsh reality but is integral to it and evolving as the world evolves. Making huge inferences from Prum’s already large ones, beginning with recognition that beauty is not marginal but central to evo- lutionary history and life itself, we can feel reassured of the significance of the humanities and in our own professional engagement with the beautiful, though it gets us no degrees in business and economics, and may seem a long way from the immanent moral and humanitarian crises that confront everyone, everywhere, every day. Prum’s theory of art as the coevolutionary development of funda- mentally arbitrary likings and attractions—perceiver affecting perceived, perceived affecting perceiver—is a useful tool for understanding (and valuing) cultural difference. It foregrounds individual free-ranging “taste,” explains not by reduction to algorithm but by affirming individ- ual, contingently provoked desire. Despite science’s long, honorable, necessary commitment to an objectivity and factuality that excludes pur- pose, will, and intention, evolutionary history, on Prum’s account, can only be fully understood if it allows for the power of pleasure and includes the history of beauty. Theorists, critics, scholars, feeling the pressures of the need to mean and to matter, to be useful in some way in relation to the most pressing concerns of culture and society, often wonder (usually privately) whether it makes sense spending one’s life criticizing novels and poetry while the world is burning. (Among us Victorianists, one senses this feeling in the recent manifesto and activities of the V21 group.) Some richer sense of the importance of what is not “useful” might help. It is, on Prum’s account, just in individual desire, in the disregard of the merely useful, that sexual selection directs change to new forms of beauty and of life. Prum is working now on a whole theory of aesthetics, one that makes any defined universal elements in art chimerical. In an essay strictly about aesthetics, Prum argues that “beauty is not dependent on meaning to exist.”24 Art is always in process, always a matter of desire (unhinged from “meaning” and “utility”—though any work of art may itself be meaningful and useful in some way). Its variations are limited only by the range of possible human desires. Here, heuristically, is Prum’s sum- mary point: “Once we understand that all art is the result of a coevolutionary historical process between audience and artist—a coevolutionary dance between display and desire, expression and taste— 262 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core we must expand our conception of what art is and can be. . . . Being an artwork means being the product of a historical process of aesthetic coevolution. In other words, art is a form of communication that coevolves with its own evaluation.”25 Like Club-winged Manakins mating. So Prum takes his ornithology to quite daring hypotheses that it will well repay literary scholars to consider. But I want to conclude by daring a bit too, with an analogy: Darwin’s Origin is also pervasively hypothetical. The strategy was not so much to prove that evolution by natural selection happened as to demonstrate that the hypothesis that it did happen, and largely by means of natural selection, fits better what we certainly know about nature than any other hypothesis out there. Darwin knew he couldn’t prove it in 1859, but he wanted minimally to show that his expla- nation of evolution fit the existing facts better than the dominant one he was trying to displace. The Origin too laid out its hypotheses as a plan, a framework for future investigation: “I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.”26 “In the distant future,” Darwin wishfully affirms, “I see open fields for far more important researches.”27 I make no claim that Prum’s work has Darwin’s power or significance. As I write, I think of endless objections and questions and doubts. But The Evolution of Beauty has something of the ambition of the Origin, some- thing of its beauty and factual density, and much of its hypothetical argu- mentative structure. Like the Origin, it is based on dazzling and important field work, making large claims that run against the grain of the day’s dominant scientific paradigm. Like the Origin, those inferences have implications that resonate through a wide variety of fields of study. Like the Origin, it still must be taken as a heuristic, a provocation to fur- ther work. Prum chose this popular mode of expounding his large argu- ment just because he wanted to cultivate the field for those “young and rising naturalists” who might enter their advanced work more disposed to look at evolution from the perspective of “Beauty Happens.” I am myself ready to be unconvinced, but not before Prum’s arguments are shown to be inconsistent with what’s out there in nature and with what my own experience has taught me that literature does. NOTES 1. Prum, The Evolution of Beauty, 238. All subsequent references to this edition are noted parenthetically within the text. WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 263 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core 2. Pearl Brilmeyer has called my attention to the important work of Elizabeth Grosz, which anticipates much of Prum’s argument, emphasizing in particular the distinction between natural selection and sexual selection: Becoming Undone. See particularly the chapter “Art and the Animal.” And see also The Nick of Time. 3. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 8:140. 4. Wallace, Darwinism, 188. 5. Richards, Darwin and the Making, chapter 8. 6. Darwin, Descent, 2:258. 7. Darwin, 2:259. 8. Darwin, 2:273. 9. Endersby, “Darwin on Generation,” 89. 10. Dawkins, Watchmaker, 202. 11. Darwin, Descent, 2:278. 12. Darwin, 2:398. 13. Darwin, 2:263. 14. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 51. 15. Riskin, The Restless Clock, 368. 16. Darwin, 1:63. 17. Darwin, 1:64. 18. Turner, Purpose and Desire. 19. Darwin, Origin, 93. 20. See my discussion of this issue in Darwin the Writer. For a fuller discus- sion, see Richards, “Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection and its Moral Purpose,” 64. 21. Riskin, The Restless Clock, 248. 22. Kramnick, “Against Literary Darwinism.” 23. Flannery, “Objectifying Male Birds.” 24. Prum, “Coevolutionary Aesthetics,” 829. 25. Prum, Evolution of Beauty, 336. 26. Darwin, Origin, 482. 27. Darwin, Origin, 488. WORKS CITED Darwin, Charles. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1860. Vol. 8. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1964. 264 VLC • VOL. 47, NO. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core ———. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. New York: W. W Norton, 1987. Dennett, Daniel. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Endersby, Jim. “Darwin on Generation, Pangenesis, and sexual selection,” in The Cambridge Companion to Darwin. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Flannery, Tim. “Objectifying Male Birds.” New York Review of Books, December 21, 2017, 20–22. Grosz, Elizabeth Richard. Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. ———. The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Kramnick, Jonathan. “Against Literary Darwinism.” Critical Inquiry 37, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 315–47. Levine, George. Darwin the Writer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Prum, Richard. “Coevolutionary aesthetics in human and biotic artworlds.” Biology and Philosophy, (2013) 28:811–32. ———. The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World and Us. New York: Doubleday, 2017. Richards, Evelleen. Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Richards, Robert. “Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection and its Moral Purpose.” The Cambridge Companion to “The Origin of Species.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Riskin, Jessica. The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over what Makes Living Things Tick. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Turner, J. Scott. Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism has Failed to Explain it. New York: HarperOne, 2017. Wallace, A. R. Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection, With Some of its Applications (1889). London: Macmillan, 1912. WHY BEAUTY MATTERS 265 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S106015031800147X https://www.cambridge.org/core Why Beauty Matters Notes Works Cited work_3txpdsxxgfhtjlltnvljvypydi ---- Some Things Are Rarely Discussed in Public – on the Discourse of Corruption in Healthcare Comment on "We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems" Some Things Are Rarely Discussed in Public – on the Discourse of Corruption in Healthcare Comment on “We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems” Peter Stiernstedt* ID Abstract In an editorial titled “We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems” the authors Hutchinson, Balabanova, and McKee hope to encourage a wider conversation about corruption in the health sector. Such conversations are difficult to hold for at least five reasons; it is hard to define corruption; corruption may allow some fragile health systems to subsist, shifting blame – are those involved in anti-corruption research colluding with corrupt officials; the legitimacy of studying corruption; and, that far too little is known about how to tackle corruption. This commentary explores those reasons and concludes that the authors make a strong case for a more open and directed discussion about corruption. Keywords: Corruption, Anti-corruption, Governance, Healthcare Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Citation: Stiernstedt P. Some things are rarely discussed in public – on the discourse of corruption in healthcare: Comment on “We need to talk about corruption in health systems.” Int J Health Policy Manag. 2019;8(9):560– 562. doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2019.51 *Correspondence to: Peter Stiernstedt Email: peter.stiernstedt@uwl.ac.uk Article History: Received: 30 April 2019 Accepted: 10 June 2019 ePublished: 24 June 2019 Commentary School of Law and Criminology, University of West London, London, UK. http://ijhpm.com Int J Health Policy Manag 2019, 8(9), 560–562 doi 10.15171/ijhpm.2019.51 The title of this commentary is borrowed from the opening sentence of an editorial by the authors; Hutchinson, Balabanova, and McKee.1 In it the authors wish to address the health communities’ dirty secret2 with the intention to encourage a wider conversation within the health sector. The editorial opens broadly establishing the nature of some aspects of our lives and discourse that we wish to keep private. An example given is how sexual abuse traditionally remained secret, and how the #MeToo movement has not only empowered victims to speak out but has also progressed the overall discourse of a sensitive topic. They stipulate that talking about abuse of different kinds facilitate the process of addressing and changing things for the better. The focus under consideration here is the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain” – to use the definition of corruption by Transparency International.3 Thus, by shedding light on why conversations about corruption in the health sector are difficult to hold, the authors strive to nurture the conversation within and among the many national and international stakeholders. This is a laudable ambition which receives complete concurrence also from this author, a scholar with similar interests as a corruption researcher. The lingering question is; who benefits from long, technical discussions over why something that should work in theory but does not work in practice? Breaking the status quo would mean to question it, and in doing so talking openly about and problematizing corruption. To that end, corruption is established as a problem also in the health sector where the authors lean on the findings from the 2013 corruption barometer by Transparency International. Here it was reported that in 42 of 109 countries surveyed, over 50% citizens viewed their health systems as corrupt or very corrupt.4 A member of the general public with little or no insight in to previous research into the measurement of corruption might be astonished at such a result, or sceptical, particularly around the inherent difficulties with measuring corruption using perceptions based indices.5 The figures, albeit from 2013, are striking and might inspire a detailed read of the whole editorial. Despite methodological flaws, the survey by Transparency International achieved a significant raising of awareness of the issue in the sector. However, when an academic or professional with a vested interest in corruption research suggests the importance of the findings, warning bells go off – or at least they should. To what end are these figures used; are we talking about just raising awareness or is it something more, like design and implementation of anti-corruption measures or even policy-making? The authors, who have worked as researchers on an international project on corruption, have witnessed how when describing achievements health ministers rarely discuss the role of corruption and the weaknesses of governance that often underlies it. To that end the authors have identified five reasons to why fruitful conversations on corruption are difficult to hold; it is hard to define corruption, corruption may allow some fragile health systems to keep going, blame shifting – are those involved in anti-corruption research http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0824-8396 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2019.51 https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2019.51 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.15171/ijhpm.2019.51&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-06-24 Stiernstedt International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 2019, 8(9), 560–562 561 colluding with corrupt officials, the legitimacy of studying corruption, and, that far too little is known about how to tackle corruption. First, it is hard to define corruption. It is here that conversations on corruption can get stuck – or at least lose their full potential of achieving some meaningful change where definitions proliferate and contradict or are noticeable by their absence. As pointed out by the authors the United Nations Convention against Corruption does not even try to define its subject, instead, is merely lists a number of corrupt practices.6 Acknowledging the many interpretations of the concept of corruption, the editorial also contains a definition developed by the Cochrane Collaboration7 as “The abuse or complicity in abuse, of public or private position, power or authority to benefit oneself, a group, an organization or others close to oneself; where the benefits may be financial, material or non-material.” While there are no arguments for this particular definition being more viable than any of the other more established versions it does present something more tangible and add to the overall understanding of the phenomenon. In terms of nurturing an open discussion perhaps this is the most appropriate approach as corruption can take many forms, not all of which may be recognized as corruption by everyone. The transformation from definitions to effective anti-corruption instruments and policy is obviously another question. Second, corruption may allow some fragile health systems to keep going, and if corruption is removed without addressing other potential weaknesses in the health system an equitable delivery may suffer. An unintended consequence of the eradication of corruption to support the most vulnerable (in need of a functioning and equitable health system) could thus end up hurting them even more. This idea of corruption fundamentally constructed as problem-solving is dealt with in-depth by Marquette and Peiffer8 in their examination of why anti-corruption initiatives fail. They recognise that corruption can in fact offer a way of dealing with socio- economic problems, particularly in weak institutional environments. The proposed solution is that anti-corruption interventions need to better understand the functions that corruption may serve, and find alternative ways to solve the problems that people face. This approach resonates well with the overall objective of nurturing an open discussion to increase mutual understanding. Third, blame shifting, where it is easy for those involved in corruption to blame other, less powerful actors as corrupt and in doing so deflect attention from themselves. The question of how to conduct research on corruption is not easily answered. Research can present the individual with the unexpected moral dilemma as to whether or not immediately to act upon what is being discovered but thereby risk losing valuable access to information. This information could perhaps not benefit those already affected but, over a period of time lead to both better policy and effective legislation. Alternatively, the researcher also runs the risk of becoming the target and effectively blamed for negatively influencing the delicate power balances. This may involve not just a risk for career and reputation but also to life and limb. Fourth, there is a concern over the legitimacy of studying corruption and the risk of diverting attention from other, possibly more important, issues. This fourth reason is supported by a 2007 article by a Turkish scholar9 claiming that corruption may be a manifestation of a neoliberal attack on the state. Neoliberal is here interpreted as a politicised definition of corruption, where efforts are concentrated on fighting against legally definable forms of corruption. It should be noted, however, that when looking at the work of this scholar one is struck by the author’s own opposition of the ideas encapsulated in neoliberalism. In itself this anti-neoliberal stance is not an argument for neglecting to question the legitimacy of corruption studies, but rather a call for a more nuanced picture. The authors of the editorial clearly evidence that the dismantling of the public health system in Anglo-western societies in the Reagan-Thatcher era noticeably failed in terms of preventing corruption in the health sector. Nevertheless, questioning the legitimacy of corruption studies should arguably not be confined to any one governance system. Instead and in line with the overall message of the editorial such studies actively encourage an open and broad discourse of corruption. Fifth and finally, despite years of efforts to uphold good governance, far too little is known about how to tackle corruption. The authors cite the Cochrane report on interventions to reduce corruption in the health sector that found no studies exist which provide empirical evidence of successful strategies reducing corruption. Going beyond the health sector, this seems to be true also on a general level, as U4 research10 show that most anti-corruption initiatives fail. Regardless of sector the causes of failure and success however seem to be similar; failure occurs because of “design-reality gaps,” a mismatch between the expectations built into the design of the anti-corruption initiative as compared to on- the-ground realities. Conversely, success can be achieved by minimising or closing those gaps, but beyond that it is the politics of the situation that determines success. The intricacies of such politics are recognised by the authors, partly due to the reluctance to speak openly about corruption. The authors argue that even if an agreement is reached to address corruption there is still an issue of effectively triaging the problem. Priorities must be balanced between what is practically achievable and politically viable. The authors deduce the importance of understanding the reasons behind why corrupt practices thrive in the health sector. Such understanding is created by constantly asking questions about who benefits and in what way, as this could shed light on the underlying causes. Further, and perhaps most importantly, the more that is understood about the causes in general the more is also understood about the extent to which they can be changed. From here it becomes possible to develop pragmatic solutions.11 It is suggested that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), committed by the governments of the world to be achieved by 2030, could be leveraged to tackle corruption in the health sector.12 Hence, even if corruption may not yet be spoken about fully and openly in the halls of power at least it is shown that there is scope to incorporate the subject in the SDGs. There Stiernstedt International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 2019, 8(9), 560–562562 are arguably many stakeholders within countries and the international community when it comes to health-related SDGs. Those could be unified through having a more open debate about corruption and how research can help bridge any design-reality gap. Through the work of Zyglidopoulos et al13 the authors outline four broad paths of corruption research; individual, organisational, national and cultural. While the paths are not claimed to be presented in order of importance, perhaps they are or at least should be treated as. In doing so the authors not only make a strong case for an open discussion about corruption but also provide a direction for that discussion. A direction that would allow policy- makers, academic researchers and health sector professionals to discuss some things that are rarely considered in public. Ethical issues Not applicable. Competing interests Author declares that he has no competing interests. Author’s contribution PS is the single author of the paper. References 1. Hutchinson E, Balabanova D, McKee M. We need to talk about corruption in health systems. Int J Health Policy Manag. 2019;8(4):191-194. doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2018.123 2. Jain A, Nundy S, Abbasi K. Corruption: medicine’s dirty open secret. BMJ. 2014;348:g4184. doi:10.1136/bmj.g4184 3. Transparency International - What is Corruption? https://www. transparency.org/what-is-corruption. Accessed April 30, 2019. 4. Transparency International. Global corruption barometer 2013 report. https://www.transparency.org/gcb2013. Accessed October 31, 2018. Published 2013. 5. Andersson S, Heywood P. The politics of perception: use and abuse of Transparency International’s approach to measuring corruption. Polit Stud. 2009;57(4):746-767. doi:10.1111/j.1467- 9248.2008.00758.x 6. United Nations. Convention against Corruption. New York: United Nations; 2003. 7. Gaitonde R, Oxman AD, Okebukola PO, Rada G. Interventions to reduce corruption in the health sector. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2016(8):Cd008856. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD008856.pub2 8. Marquette H, Peiffer C. Corruption and Collective Action. U4 Research Paper 32. https://www.u4.no/publications/corruption-and- collective-action. Published 2015. 9. Bedirhanoğlu P. The neoliberal discourse on corruption as a means of consent building: reflections from post-crisis Turkey. Third World Quarterly. 2007;28(7):1239-1254. 10. Heeks R, Mathisen H. Understanding success and failure of anti- corruption initiatives. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Brief); 2011. 11. Khan MH. Introduction: Political Settlements and the Analysis of Institutions. Afr Aff (Lond). 2018;117(469):636-655. doi:10.1093/ afraf/ady051 12. Mackey TK, Vian T, Kohler J. The sustainable development goals as a framework to combat health-sector corruption. Bull World Health Organ. 2018;96(9):634-643. doi:10.2471/blt.18.209502 13. Zyglidopoulos S, Hirsch P, Martin de Holan P, Phillips N. Expanding Research on Corporate Corruption, Management, and Organizations. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications; 2017. https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2018.123 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g4184 https://www.transparency.org/what-is-corruption https://www.transparency.org/what-is-corruption https://www.transparency.org/gcb2013 https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9248.2008.00758.x https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9248.2008.00758.x https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD008856.pub2 https://www.u4.no/publications/corruption-and-collective-action https://www.u4.no/publications/corruption-and-collective-action https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/ady051 https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/ady051 https://doi.org/10.2471/blt.18.209502 work_3qlnybgv3vdhdfgkuxn3gqmvxi ---- Languaging in digital global South– North spaces in the twenty‑first century: media, language and identity in political discourse Sangeeta Bagga‑Gupta1* and Aprameya Rao2 Introduction “Some philosophers […] have defined humans as essentially linguistic animals [oth- ers] as political animals […] both definitions contain a germ of truth […] political discourse analysts would probably claim […] that the one definition necessarily involves the other” (Chilton and Schaffner 2011: 301). The study presented here builds upon cross-disciplinary analysis of “languaging” (Linell 2009) or the meaning-making and deployment of semiotic resources in con- temporary political mediascapes in the nation-states of India and Sweden (henceforth Abstract Drawing inspiration from two theoretical framings: a sociocultural perspective on languaging and writings on a decolonial‑turn, the study presented in this paper center‑stages issues related to the need to engage analytically with, (i) social actions of political parties, citizens, including netizens in Web 2.0 settings, and (ii) alternative epistemologies where issues from the global‑South are privileged. A central concern of decolonial linguistics enables asking new questions that destabilize established Eurocentric models of language. Thus, peripherally framed sociocultural premises contribute to critical social‑humanistic perspectives that allow for (potentially) unpack‑ ing northern hegemonies and contributing to global‑North challenges. Building upon an analytical design, this paper presents cross‑disciplinary analysis of languaging in contemporary political mediascapes of the nation‑states of India and Sweden. Bringing to bear that language does not only mirror reality, but is also a constitutive cultural‑ tool, the study aims to highlight the contrastive ways in which the dominating political parties and citizens engage with languaging (i.e. the deployment of semiotic resources across language‑varieties, modalities, including imagery). The study unpacks similari‑ ties and differences in salient issues related to the nature of social media and language and identity‑positions in political discourse, highlighting dimensions of the participants voices. Thus, patterns that emerge from the contrastive analysis of political discourses, including the features of social media are highlighted and discussed. Data includes social media pages of two political parties from both the nation‑states across a 6‑week period at the end of 2017. Keywords: Global‑South, Global‑North, Sociocultural perspective, Decolonial, Languaging, Identity‑positions, Political discourse, New social media, Ethnography Open Access © The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. R E S E A R C H Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40728‑018‑0047‑z *Correspondence: sangeeta.bagga‑gupta@ju.se 1 School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, P.O. Box 1026, 551 11 Jönköping, Sweden Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1846-858X http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1186/s40728-018-0047-z&domain=pdf Page 2 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 In and Sw). Far from being only a system of signs that express ideas or mirror intent, language-use or languaging (and discourse more broadly) is itself a constitutive cul- tural-tool (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Säljö 2010; Wertsch 1998). Going beyond a nar- rower understanding of language and taking a performatory stance on doing language, “Communication = Languaging = Meaning-making” (Bagga-Gupta and Dahlberg 2018) irrespective of the number of language-varieties or language-modalities (oral, written, signed, etc.) participants deploy across time and physical-digital practices (Bagga-Gupta 2017a, b, c, 2014). Recognizing that languaging/discourse “is what makes human cul- tures possible and unique” (Keating and Alessandro 2011: 331), the present study aims to raise issues regarding mundane political “ways-of-being-with-words” (Bagga-Gupta 2014) across global-South–North (henceforth GSN) spaces. More specifically, we focus on how new social media enable (or curtail) the participation of political parties, lead- ers and netizens. More specifically, the study looks at the ways in which the two largest political parties in In and Sw, including their citizenship (and other potential internet users), “language”, i.e. participate in mediascapes. By focusing upon the mundane nature of languaging across a 6-week period, the study unpacks similarities and differences with regards to the nature of the media itself, languaging and identity-positions in political discourse. In addition to a sociocultural perspective on languaging and discourse, this study draws upon issues of hegemony and colonial framings (“Sociocultural perspectives and decoloniality as complementary analytical lenses” section) by focusing upon ide- ologies related to identity, nation-states and language. Global-South spaces are either overshadowed by global-North ideologies or deprived of agency in much of the schol- arship on languaging and discourse. The contrastive design of this study, including our backgrounds, i.e. experiential histories (vis-à-vis knowledge about language- varieties, political and cultural experiences from In and Sw), allow for problematizing mainstream center-periphery assumptions in the scholarship. In addition to recog- nizing that alternative epistemologies are marginalized across time–space, the socio- culturally oriented, decolonial perspective on media, identity and language presented here, also call for encompassing geopolitical spaces like Sw that are not commonly associated with colonial ninetieth and twentieth century powers (Bhabha 1994; Has- nain et al. 2013). Inspired by Maldonado-Torres (2011) and others’ writings on a decolonial-turn, this study center-stages issues related to the need to engage analytically with alternative epis- temologies where concepts and issues from the global-South are privileged. Following Khubchandani (1997) and some of our own previous writings (see particularly Bagga- Gupta 2017a, b, 2013), this means, for instance, that a central concern of decolonial linguistics asks new questions that can potentially destabilize established Eurocentric models of language, media and identity. This is one way for scholarship to go beyond issues of northern hegemonies (Gramling 2016; Makoni 2012). Another point of departure for the study presented here is acknowledging the increas- ing role that new mediascapes play across the globe, including the paucity of research that systematically studies the ways in which digitalization shapes human existence in Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 3 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 global-South spaces in general (Narayan and Narayanan 2016), and the political playing field across GSN more specifically. This means that social actions of political parties, its members and netizens in Web 2.0 settings are relevant sites of engagement for analysis. The rest of this introductory section further elaborates on the theoretical framing used here (“Sociocultural perspectives and decoloniality as complementary analytical lenses”) and discusses media-types (“Media-types across spaces. Some perspectives on India and Sweden”) before presenting methodological framings and the nature of the datasets deployed in this study (“Methodological framings and data”). The central “Dis- course and mediascapes” section presents the analysis under three overlapping themes: nature of the media (“Media features, convergence and participation spaces”), identity- positionings in political mediascapes currently (“Identity-positionings in political social media”) and, the nature of language in political social media (“Languaging features in social media”). The final section presents reflections on salient issues regarding the ways in which mediascapes enable and curtail new ways-of-being-with-words across GSN. Sociocultural perspectives and decoloniality as complementary analytical lenses A key premise in sociocultural perspectives is that communication or languaging or par- ticipation is a situated and distributed process (Lave and Wenger 1999; Vygotsky 1962; Wertsch 1998). This means that languaging—irrespective of whether the communica- tion deploys one or more language-varieties/modalities (Bagga-Gupta 1995, 2012, 2014, 2017a, b; Gynne 2016; Messina Dahlberg 2015)—is (i) collaboratively achieved, and (ii) constitutes a significant dimension of the construction of human realities; communica- tion is not a conduit that in some neutral sense transfers knowledge or mirrors reality. A key theoretical idea that frames such an action oriented, sociocultural perspective builds also upon the mediational role attributed to cultural-tools that have emerged across time and are appropriated by humans individually (Säljö 2010; Wertsch 1998). The symbiotic relationship between cultural-tools and people in inter-action with one another, has resulted in scholars hyphenating concepts (as can be seen in our own writ- ing here and previously). This points to the significance of a social lens and the irre- ducible inter-connections of people and tools. However, while the rich potentials and dimensions of communication in concert with intellectual and material tools (like paper-pencils, calculators, computers, the internet, etc., including language itself ) are recognized, attention in data analysis of social-practices in the global-North (at least) has been dominated by an “oral language bias” (Bagga-Gupta 2012, 2017a, b) and by a “monolingual bias” (Gramling 2016). This means that complex, multilayered languag- ing behaviour is marginally emphasized in the study of meaning-making. Focusing upon data from digital mediascapes across the GSN, (potentially) enables going beyond both these biases since Web 2.0 sites are de facto not “merely” oral or monolingual in charac- ter (Crystal 2011; Jewitt 2009). Furthermore, power differentials in social practices are centre-staged empirically in this study from a decolonial framing (Abu-Lughod 1991; Comaroff and Comaroff 2009; Connell 2014; Mignolo 2012; Quijano 2000). This represents a call for a new reflexivity where the need to engage in empirically framed research is highlighted (Bagga-Gupta 2013; Hasnain et al. 2013). This enables a move away from philosophically and/or auto- biographically oriented colonially framed discussions and towards the illumination of Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 4 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 the many ways-of-being-with-words from across settings. Here social practices that are—in global-North contexts—glossed as mono/bi/multi/trans-lingualism, mono/bi/ multimodality and nation-state aligned identity-positions, including super/hyper-diver- sity, can potentially be studied from alternative perspectives (Bagga-Gupta and Dahlberg 2018; Hasnain et al. 2013; Pavlenko 2003; Santos 2014; Savransky 2017). Such alternative perspectives need to be cognizant of the fact that participation in contemporary medi- ascapes is completely contingent upon access to technological and digital tools. This means that participation and access issues can be both including and excluding across GSN spaces. Cultivating a decolonial imagination (Savransky 2017) implies going beyond the hegemonies of (i) namism where references to key postcolonial texts in the Anglo-Saxion scholarship circulate, and (ii) “academic branding” (Pavlenko 2018) where some neolo- gisms have gained currency in the twenty-first century (Bagga-Gupta and Dahlberg 2018). Namism, including other “ISMs of oppression” (Rivers and Zotzmann 2017), have tended to fix issues of power differentials in terms of historically colonized places. Such strategies however risk cementing ideologies. Going beyond such framings, we argue for the need to recognize decolonial perspectives in terms of a paradigm where it is the here and now in all spaces—east/south and west/north, including physical-virtual—that are worthy of empirical scrutiny (Bagga-Gupta 2017a, 2018). Such a stance implies that ana- lytical units-of-analysis cannot be reduced to bounded entities based upon “imagined” boundaries that demarcate and create communities, nations, individuals or language- varieties/modalities (Andersson 1994; see “Methodological framings and data” section). While the idea of a language being a bounded unit and monolingualism, inherent in the Eurocentric one-nation-one-language ideology, have been challenged repeatedly, they are particularly difficult to dislodge in global-North discourses where it gets nor- matively mapped onto a one-language-one-individual norm. This means that while “cit- izens” in Sw are designated a default monolingual identity-position, “immigrants” get positioned as bilinguals (irrespective of their language-repertoires). While the fallacy of such reasoning is increasingly acknowledged in some global-North scholarship, bi/ multi/translingualism (as well as translanguaging) at the individual level continues to be marked in terms of the exotic, not “normal”. The study presented here focuses upon the ways in which both individuals and institutions like political parties’ language in public mediascapes; it points towards the performative work that participants and institutions “do” with semiotic resources across GSN settings. Media‑types across spaces. Some perspectives on India and Sweden Digital technologies, including the advent of the internet, have had major consequences for citizens and institutions like political groups, schools, etc. (Narayan and Narayanan 2016). Different media—newspapers, radio, television, social media and Web 2.0—have expanded the scope and nature of engagement between political parties, politicians and citizens, including netizens (Saleem and Stephan 2016). New media has opened inter- actional spaces that allow for the creation of new types of “affinity spaces” and assem- blages (Gee 2005). Communities with different interests assemble in open and closed groups without ever having to meet in-real-life (henceforth IRL). While there is recog- nition in a general sense that already existing communities/institutions (like political Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 5 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 parties) participation in mediascapes has transformed their discourses, there is little theoretically pushed empirical scholarship that substantiates this. “Theoretical research in understanding issues related to the new media environment […] may help create sys- tems of knowledge that may be conducive to generalization of findings” of relevance to lives across the GSN (Srivastava and Enakshi 2016: 42). Contributing to this gap is an explicit aim of the study presented here. Digitalization generally and Web 2.0 platforms specifically have changed not only engagement patterns, but also how democracy plays out in everyday life (Narayan and Narayanan 2016). While participation is contingent upon access to digitalization tools in a very tangible sense, issues of engagement do not follow a linear, foreseeable, develop- mental trajectory. Such issues of access and participation have seen the emergence of an interest in the study of alternative digital political spaces (Schroeder 2016); here affinity spaces are potentially open for politicians, citizens and political parties, anywhere 24/7. This does not mean, however, that openness automatically results in universal access or inclusiveness. Openness implied in digitalization is simplistic and reductionist and tech- nology cannot be viewed as an agent that makes individuals, institutions or nation-states more democratic. Given that technologies have “implications for patterns of sociality” (Ingstad and Whyte 2007: 20), it is necessary that research recognizes both the affor- dances and constraints that digitalization gives rise to. Such a stance calls for the scru- tiny of the mundaneness of contexts of participation. In terms of the volume of users, Asia and Europe account for double the number of users as compared to the rest of the world combined. Internet penetration in In and Asia (46%) are considered to be an issue as compared to the economically developed Europe (where it stands at around 80%).1 However, in terms of volume, Asia is estimated to have the highest number of netizens (over 1.9 billion), with Europe at 659 million. Internet penetration currently stands at about 36% (462 million users) in In 2 up from 20% in the first decade of the twenty-first century (Crystal 2011); this is below the world average of 51%. Social media sites have exploded in both In and Sw and statistics indicate that there is almost a 100% connectivity across the lifespan in Sw: 79% of 2-year olds and over 50% of 76+ year olds use the internet regularly for a wide range of activities.3 Social media has not only become a significant tool for political communication and campaigning in In, but is reported to have also led to a rise in young peoples’ political awareness (Rahul 2016). It is also reported to have “reshaped the way people access political information” (Saleem and Stephan 2016: 84). “Though the digital divide remains a stark reality of the Indian new media environ- ment, it is not a static, one-dimensional disparity between those with access to new media technology and those without access” (Srivastava and Enakshi 2016: 28). For instance, In is ahead of the United States with a reported 240 million users of Facebook. However, this constitutes one of the lowest figures across the globe since this adds up to 1 Internet World Statistics. http://internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. Accessed 25 January 2018. 2 Internet World Statistics—Asia. http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/in.htm. Accessed 20 December 2017. 3 Swedes and the Internet (in Swedish). https://www.iis.se/fakta/svenskarna-och-internet-2017/. Accessed 30 December 2017. Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access http://internetworldstats.com/stats.htm http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/in.htm https://www.iis.se/fakta/svenskarna-och-internet-2017/ Page 6 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 only 19% of the nation-states population (June 2017). While In is the largest market for Facebook, Facebook constitutes the most popular internet platform in Sw. In addition to issues of penetration, language constitutes a key feature that shapes openness and access. A mere 10 language-varieties are reported to occupy over 80% of the internet (Crystal 2011). While English is reported to be the most popular internet language (496 million), Hindi, Gujarati and Swedish—three of the four language-varie- ties in the datasets analyzed in this study (English is the fourth)—are part of the category “other” language-varieties used on the internet (314 million) (ibid). While the entry of Multinational Corporations into In in the 1990s led to the launch of several news channels, it was the internet boom, which provided platforms for direct communication between politicians and citizens (Bali 2017). The digital revolution had a similar impact in Sw. “Social media can serve as a new form of more targeted com- munication in order to capitalize on its interactive potential. Therefore, social media’s main power can be seen in the inclusion of targeted communities with a possible ele- ment of feedback (through likes, comments, etc.)” (Saleem and Stephan 2016: 81). Hav- ing direct (potential) access to citizens, political parties and politicians no longer need to rely (only) on traditional media (Bali 2017). At the same time, new media potentially gives citizens direct access to political parties and politicians (Narasimhamurthy 2014). Today, mediascapes like Facebook and Twitter have become the first sources of informa- tion about a politicians’ day-to-day activities across the globe. Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook enable anyone with an internet connection and a Facebook membership to participate both as consumers and as online producers of con- tent. The virtual spaces of Facebook support pictures, videos, different scripts, emoti- cons/emojis, comments (depending on the “openness” of the specific page), etc. (Fig. 1). Facebook page owners can curate who can participate in terms of reading content and posting comments and reactions. Data generated on a social media platform like Face- book allows an analyst to “see” the volume of (i) consumption (through the number of “views”) and (ii) production (through the number of reactions—in terms of “likes”, and other emoticons/emojis, and top comments) every post receives; the nature of this con- sumption can be gauged primarily by the volume of reactions. Other members of Web 2.0 platforms can only be assumed to be in close symbiosis with one another, and post comments or click reactions for other potential readers (including the specific page host) in ways that supports such consumption. These media features shape the methodologi- cal framings of the data focused upon in this study. Methodological framings and data The significance of everyday mundane languaging in social practices, including the insti- tutions in which people are embedded, have consequences for what is analysed as data. Here both the impact of new media and the need “to adopt a critical stance” for analy- sis is a key challenge (Flewitt et al. 2009: 44). Putting the analytical gaze on languaging constitutes renewed attempts to sidestep monological static understandings that mark essentialist, bounded notions of language and identity (see “Sociocultural perspectives and decoloniality as complementary analytical lenses” section). Since it is within the matrix of mundane interactions of everyday life that conventions are established (Berger Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 7 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 and Luckmann 1966), there exists a need to address the complex nature of languaging itself. The analytical-methodological framings drawn upon in this study build upon a unit- of-analysis marked by a “Boundary-Turn” (Bagga-Gupta 2013) and other associated turns like the Colonial Turn and the Mobility Turn (Landri and Neuman 2014, Sheller and Urry 2006) in the literature on language and identity since the 1990s (see also Bagga- Gupta 2018; Clifford 1997; Hasnain et al. 2013; Scollan and Scollan 2004). Through anal- ysis of empirical data, the case is made that a comparative framing where languaging is scrutinized from emic perspectives enables going beyond accounting of language as the sole property of communities or nation-states or individuals. The data used here has been generated as part of the larger EL project (Everyday Life archives, 4) at the CCD research group.5 Using an ethnographic design that focuses upon “natural” datasets, our objective has been to map the nature of contemporary languaging and political discourse in the mediascape Facebook. Analysis in ethnography, including 4 Project Everyday Life Archives. http://www.ju.se/ccd/EL. Accessed 25 January 2018. 5 Research Group Communication, Culture and Diversity, CCD. http://www.ju.se/ccd/. Accessed 25 January 2018. Fig. 1 First/opening pages of the four political parties: BJP, Congress, Moderaterna and Socialdemokraterna Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access http://www.ju.se/ccd/EL http://www.ju.se/ccd/ Page 8 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 netnography, calls for making available accounts “of human social activity out of which cultural patterning can be discerned” (Wolcott 1999: 69). This means that while datasets have been systematically generated, we have mapped events in In and Sw in order to cre- ate local and cross-cultural understandings within which to situate the analysis and pre- sent accounts of cultural patterning. Thus, sociocultural framings of the nation-state contexts are taken into account in order to make sense of the social media data. The data includes all posts across a six-week period—1/10 to 15/11 2017—on the official Facebook pages of four political parties. These include two dominant politi- cal parties in In: Bharatiya Janta Party (henceforth BJP) and the Indian National Con- gress (henceforth Congress), and Sweden: New Moderates (henceforth Moderaterna) and Social Democrats (henceforth Socialdemokraterna). All four party Facebook pages display maximum openness and access. This means that anyone with an internet con- nection can potentially access their pages. While the BJP is the largest party in the In parliament currently and has formed the government at the national level, the Congress is the largest opposition party. Socialdemokraterna is the largest party in the coalition- led government in Sw currently, and Moderaterna is the largest party in the opposition. The dataset covers all posts and includes videos, live-videos, infographics and pho- tographs posted on the official pages and comments and reactions by political party members and netizens. A first level of analysis included a day-by-day scrutiny of the entire data. This was categorized into number of videos, live-videos, infographics, pho- tographs, likes, emoticons/emojis, etc. (Table  1) and included the creation of thematic patterns. A second level of analysis attempted to create an overarching picture of the patterns by identifying themes across every seven-eight-day period. Screenshots of sali- ent themes were compiled for further analysis. Table 1 illustrates the total posts uploaded by the four political parties across the six- week period. The frequency of posts is higher in the In-dataset as compared to the Sw- dataset. Furthermore, the volume of posts differs across the parties: Socialdemokraterna have the fewest posts. While a total of 111 videos were posted by In political parties, the total number of videos posted in the Sw-dataset was only 40. This gap is also valid for infographics: In political parties posted 245 infographics, and Sw parties posted 51 infographics. In the data regarding live-videos, the total numbers posted by the BJP was Table 1 Quantitative overview of the Indian and Swedish Facebook datasets of four politi‑ cal parties B BJP, C Congress, S Socialdemokraterna, M Moderaterna Political party/Time period Videos Infographics Live‑videos Photographs B C S M B C S M B C S M B C S M 1–7 October 9 11 0 8 21 18 4 5 9 0 0 3 19 14 4 4 8–15 October 5 10 1 13 25 24 4 2 6 1 0 6 22 28 3 2 16–23 October 12 10 3 2 20 23 5 2 7 0 0 0 17 5 3 2 24–31 October 7 9 1 2 19 11 7 6 8 1 0 3 20 12 9 4 1–7 November 16 3 2 1 23 16 1 4 6 4 0 0 21 51 9 3 8–15 November 14 5 4 5 25 20 5 6 4 3 0 1 23 68 3 4 Total 63 48 11 31 133 112 26 25 40 9 0 13 122 179 31 19 Grand total B&C + S&M 111 + 42 245 + 51 49 + 13 301 + 50 Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 9 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 over three times those observed in the Sw-dataset. A sharp contrast can also be noted with regards to photographs: the In parties posted six times the total uploaded by the Sw parties. Facebook algorithms allow users to check the top comments for a given post. Using this system, the top 100 comments of some posts were chosen (based on the themes identified and the total reactions and comments they had received—for instance, as noted during the week-by-week analysis) for further systematic analysis. Here the focus was on the emerging themes and the nature of languaging. The next section presents our ethnographically framed analysis. Discourse and mediascapes Three clusters of themes that overlap in different ways emerged in the systematic analy- sis of the datasets. These are discussed and illustrated in this section. Media features, convergence and participation spaces The specific features of Facebook enable different types of affordances in terms of the type of discourse and participation that is possible. Four issues related to these features contribute to the first theme that has emerged. Common Facebook features Facebook verifies pages belonging to well-known institutions/organizations or individu- als. Facebook page “owners” can present a cover photograph and a profile picture on their “main” page. Credentials of the person or the institution/organization that “owns” the pages are available here (unless the owner does not add such information or decides to keep this information closed for non-“friends”). These include contact details and the “about” section on the homepage presents biographical data about the individual or institution/organization. Most institutions/organizations also have a “sign up” option here. Three of the four political parties—Congress, Moderaterna and Socialdemokra- terna—offer netizens the “sign up” feature on their homepages (Fig.  1). The Congress and Socialdemokraterna have an “apply for membership” link on their pages, while the BJP and Moderaterna don’t. Facebook pages also allow internet users to post links on a political parties’ official website. Homepages in the datasets included hyperlinks to pho- tographs, videos (including live-videos) and other messages posted by the party. Convergence and re‑cycling Many messages or items that are uploaded on the political parties’ pages have been picked up from elsewhere. For example, short TV-footage from other media channels by political parties on Facebook (Fig. 2). This constitutes an instance of convergence or re- cycling in mediascapes. Such convergence allows political parties to actively publicize a political leader’s TV appearance or other messages across different media. This can also be seen in the use of hashtags, which was originally invented for the microblogging web- site Twitter in 2007 and which entered the realm of Facebook in 2013.6 Online users cre- 6 CNN Hashtags http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/12/tech/social-media/facebook-hashtags/index.html. Accessed 15 January 2018. Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/12/tech/social-media/facebook-hashtags/index.html Page 10 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Fig. 2 Re‑cycling of media content by political parties BJP (17/10 2017) and Congress (16/10 2017) on their Facebook pages Fig. 3 Re‑cycling of politicians’ personal posts on political parties’ Facebook pages (3/11/2017; 14/11 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 11 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 ate hashtags to discuss specific events and relevant issues (Figs. 2, 3). In comparison to the Sw-dataset, the In-dataset displays generous usage of hashtags (see “Languaging fea- tures in social media” section). Figure 2 displays a screengrab of a video (BJP page) where the In Finance Minister Mr. Arun Jaitley is speaking to a TV-channel regarding structural reforms like GST (Goods and Services Tax; implemented in July 2017) and the structural overhaul of the entire monetary system called “demonetization” (implemented in November 20167). A second screengrab in Fig. 2 (Congress page) illustrates the use of footage from TV-media as well as a hashtag highlighting the RSS’s (the parent organization of BJP) alleged anti-woman mindset. Participants and participation patterns While Sw political leaders’ posts on their individual Facebook pages were at times re- cycled on their party pages (Fig. 3), this was never the case in the In-dataset. Addition- ally, there were no instances of any politicians directly interacting with the netizens in the commentary sections of the posts. This is interesting given that two politicians who appear frequently in the In-dataset—the prime-minister Mr. Narendra Modi and the BJP party head Mr. Amit Shah—are active users of Facebook (and other mediascapes). Figure  3 displays two posts—that of the Sw foreign minister Ms. Margot Wallström and prime-minister Mr. Stefan Löfven from their individual Facebook pages—that are picked up and presented in the official pages of their party, the Socialdemokraterna. In both cases the message has a clear relevance to prominent events in society: the first is Wallström’s participation in the #metoo movement that strongly impacted institutions/ organizations and public arenas, and the second is Sweden’s qualifying for the 2018 foot- ball World Cup, after they beat strong favorites Italy. Both these re-cycled posts also display hashtags—something that is not common in the Sw-dataset: #metoo and #viärs- verige (we are Sweden). In addition to the participation of political leaders in discourses in mediaspaces, Fig.  3 highlights an important theme related to identity-positions (see “Identity-positionings in political social media” section) i.e. discourse where politicians and parties display an allegiance with the citizens and their concerns. This is one way in which new media constitutes an affinity space where assemblages are formed. 7 Firstpost.com Demonetisation http://www.firstpost.com/business/demonetisation-anniversary-a-year-later-heres- what-prime-minister-narendra-modi-had-said-on-8-november-2016-4198753.html. Accessed 1 January 2018. Du är välkommen a� ställa frågor! Vi försöker svara så mycket och så snabbt vi kan på frågor om vår satsning på cancervård. Kommentarer som handlar om annat eller som kränker andra tar vi bort. Om du vill ha svar om andra ämnen är du välkommen a� skriva �ll socialdemokraterna eller regeringen via respek�ve hemsida. Tack för bra samtalsklimat! /Klara You are welcome to ask ques�ons! We try to answer as much and as quickly as possible with regards to our work in the area of cancer support. We will remove comments that are related to other issues or that discriminate. If you wish to have a response about other issues, you are welcome to write to the party or the government via their respec�ve pages. Thank you for a good conversa�onal tone! /Klara Fig. 4 Party representatives’ participation in the commentary flow on Facebook pages Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access http://www.firstpost.com/business/demonetisation-anniversary-a-year-later-heres-what-prime-minister-narendra-modi-had-said-on-8-november-2016-4198753.html http://www.firstpost.com/business/demonetisation-anniversary-a-year-later-heres-what-prime-minister-narendra-modi-had-said-on-8-november-2016-4198753.html Page 12 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Party representatives from Socialdemokraterna also regularly comment on their party Facebook page (Fig.  4), responding to comments by netizens in the comments section. They often address the person who has put up a post with a “Hi” and sign off using their first names. The party specifically urges participation on their webpages in a civilized manner and asks comments to be issue-specific with a good tone. Netizens participation on party Facebook pages in terms of uploaded comments and reactions (emoticons/emojis, shares) opens up the political dialoguing arena for (poten- tially) everyone. A number of themes emerge in the analysis of this type of engagement. While the Sw-dataset consists of posts and comments that are only presented in Swedish (including digital languaging; see Moderaterna and Socialdemokraterna screengrabs and “Languaging features in social media” section), the In-dataset displays the use of at least the easiest job in the world . is to cri�cize… you can point out mistakes made by Modi too….. you can definitely do so.. modi is not god.. modi can also make mistakes.. maybe he is a big-�me actor.. may be modi is a casteist person…… may be modi is benefi�ng the rich... may be modi is under pressure from america and Pakistan…… you can tell him anything... anyways who is he??.. he is ul�mately only the prime-minister for 5 years…. jnu people also call him a "pimp"..... kejriwal calls him a thief….. sonia calls him "the dealer of death"…. yuvraj calls him someone who makes tall promises…… mamata calls him dictator…. lalu has called out modi for him tantrums….. all together what is the level of modi??... in independent India, you can abuse a man si�ng on the chair of prime-minister............ but you cannot steal one thing from him.. because that cannot be stolen as it is in born... and that modi's love for the country….. Thanks Indian Na�onal Congress for exposing lies of Jumla Regime, keep the good work going The biggest mistake of the Congress party is that it could not break the Indian dalit and communist people from the Hindu religion and bring them into the fold of Islam or Buddhist faith. Mayawa� and all other dalit and communist people always threaten to leave hinduism and embrace islam or buddhism. But that did not happen. Congress is destroying itself Everyone telling congress what did in last 60-70 years. I just want u to see our honorable sushma swaraj speech in UN. She has beau�fully describe what development were made a�er the independence. She is from BJP but yet she knows what were the development and we common people can't see it. Vote anyone u like its our rights but what has been done we cannot dismiss. Fig. 5 Citizens participation on political parties’ mediascapes (28/10 2017; 8/11 2017; 11/10 2017; 8/11 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 13 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 three language-varieties (English, Hindi, Gujarati) and two scripts (Latin, Devanagari), including digital languaging (Fig. 5; see BJP and Congress screengrabs and “Languaging features in social media” section). Access to the comments is dependent on participants (or any reader’s) knowledge of these scripts and the ways in which they are “chained” in languaging (see “Languaging features in social media” section). The long Hindi comment in Fig.  5 in the Devanagari script criticizes the opposition parties and detractors in In for criticizing the prime-minister. The next two screengrabs in Fig. 5 illustrate the use of both English and Hindi in the Latin script. While the regu- lar font illustrates English, italized text marks Hindi/Gujarati in our translations. How- ever, one can ask whether the English marked text, primarily nouns like Congress, Dalit community, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu religion, or Mayawati (a politician’s name) belongs only to English or to both the language-varieties in use here. The term “party” is simi- larly fuzzy in that it can be understood as both Hindi and English. Similarly, issues can be raised for proper-nouns like Modi, Kejriwal, Sonia, Yuvraj (a moniker for Mr. Rahul Gandhi), Mamata and Lalu (names of senior politicians in different parties), and names of two countries—America and Pakistan; the salient issue here is that it cannot be taken for granted that these terms are part of only one or the other language-variety. The com- mentators’ use of the Latin script, albeit in small case letters, to present the name of a well-known university is interesting here: “jnu” (Jawaharlal Nehru University). This rep- resents digital languaging (see “Languaging features in social media” section). A commentator uses the word “Jumla”, a negative term that points to the sorry state of affairs in the country. While this lexical item is not new in Hindi, its present con- notation with respect to the government makes it a neologism in In political discourse. Furthermore, composite words that build upon English and Hindi morphology and syn- tax are used by the authors, pointing to Web 2.0 participants knowledge of such usage. We see two examples of such languaging in Fig.  5: “feku” (originating from the Hindi term “phekna”, to throw) and “pappu” (a dumb person)—terms used here to describe the In prime-minister and the Congress party chief. The last screengrab in Fig. 5 illustrates another feature common in digital languaging (see also “Languaging features in social media” section): the use of the short form “u” for you, small-case letters for politicians’ names (sushma swaraj). Netizen comments are very diverse across the six-week period that the datasets cover. Many of these are related to issues of identity-positions (Fig.  6; see “Identity-position- ings in political social media” section). Participants in the In-dataset often focused on corruption and related terminology “corrupted”, “corrupt”, “scam”, “brashtachar” (Hindi: corruption). This focus on corruption as a socio-economic problem stood out from the rest of the themes in the In-dataset. A number of these comments relate to the demon- etization drive that was initiated by the BJP government in November 2016. Another striking theme that emerges in the In-dataset commentary is what can be called “leader- debasing” or “hero-worshipping”, including nationalism (see “Identity-positionings in political social media” section). Referring to the leader of the Congress party, Mr. Rahul Gandhi (son of the former leader Ms. Sonia Gandhi and son and grandson of the late prime-ministers Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and Mrs. Indira Gandhi respectively), the comment is negatively framed and ridicules the political leaders’ actions (regarding visiting religious places). The final participant comment presented in Fig.  6 not only marks the leaders Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 14 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 name by adding the respectful “ji” (modiji), but hails the prime-minister as a great leader. Here the commentator signs off with a patriotic “jaihind” (Hindi: hail India; a salutation to the nation-state). Comments to the party posts in the Sw-dataset are often either negative comments directed towards the opposition or direct questions aimed at specific posts (Modera- terna, 15/11) or a positive post (Moderaterna, 13/11); these often elicit a response by a party representative (Fig.  4) or other like-minded netizens. The first participant com- ment on the Socialdemokraterna posts are often by a party representative who invariably recommends participants to keep their comments focused, requests for good etiquette and presents further links, photographs to support the main post (6/11; Fig. 4). A mis-match between the party posts and comments that participants write below them are common. Figure 7 illustrates this issue: while the caption clearly criticizes the Gujarat state-government for ignoring the health of children in the state, the comment below it is concerned with issues in another state (Himachal Pradesh) in northern-India. Fig. 6 Some themes in citizen participants’ comments (8/11 2017; 13/11 2017; 17/10 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 15 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Fig. 7 Mis‑match between message and captioning of post and participant comments (30/10 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 16 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 The participant, using abusive language, chides the Congress. The explicit message pre- sented by Socialdemokraterna party representatives (Fig. 4) asking citizens to only write comments relevant to the post and present other issues in other sites also illustrates this issue of mismatch. This highlights a possible loss of opportunities for dialoguing between citizens and politicians. Captions and slogans Some type of a caption or slogan accompanies every Facebook post in the dataset. Some of these are simple; for instance, use of rhetorics or puns are limited in BJP captions. In Fig. 8 Rhetorical captioning by opposition parties (18/10 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 17 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 contrast, Congress pages regularly incorporate wordplay, rhetorics and puns: targeting prime-minister Mr. Narendra Modi for allegedly favoring corporate houses, Fig.  8 uses humor to criticize the governments’ policies. The last three words in the caption, “Trust PM Modi to teach you a lesson on how to give gifts for lifts” rhyme and taunt the prime- minister, whose caricature holds a helicopter in one hand and a banner, in the other, that reads “I love freebies”. The hashtag “#JanKiBaat” (Hindi: People’s thoughts) furthermore, plays with the prime-minister’s popular monthly show on All India Radio, titled “Man Ki Baat” (Hindi: Private thoughts). While Moderaterna and Socialdemokraterna posts implicitly call attention to one another’s lack of achievement during their governance, they uncommonly target one Fig. 9 Recycling of messages in political party posts (13/10 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 18 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 another’s leaders in such a manner. Posts of the Socialdemokraterna were simpler as compared to posts by Moderaterna. Recycling of captions and slogans with other mes- sages in the posts is a common feature in the dataset (Fig. 9). Many posts or infographics/pictures sections that are re-cycled display elements of slogans. Slogans constitute a common feature of the Swedish party posts. Slogans call- ing on citizens to join as members are common in the Sw-party posts: “Bli medlem du också” (Swedish: Become a member you too). Figure  10a presents two common types of pictures used with slogans. In the first, three slogans are presented together with a Now we will make Sweden safer with the help of more powerful reforms. You are also needed in this work – become a member at (web address) Increased child allowance and reduced taxes for re�red people The Swedish model will be developed, not undone Reforms for a safer Sweden. Become a member you also Swedish pay will be in place in the Swedish workplace Foreign companies can currently send their employees to Sweden without having to pay them even close to Swedish pay- levels. We are put�ng a stop to that! People who compete for work in Sweden will have to do it on Swedish terms. Do you agree? Share this picture! Same pay for same work will be the case for everyone The Swedish model will be developed, not undone It takes nine years before even half of all newly-arrived immigrants have any type of work. We want to improve integra�on: - Entrance-work for more people into work - Maximum-support levels so that it is more lucra�ve to work rather than receive state-support - Integra�on-duty for newly-arrived immigrant adults… See More A hopeful future for Sweden Integra�on will increase, segrega�on will reduce. Today you get your pay-check! But despite Löfvens elec�on promise about not increasing taxes for ordinary workers, over 500 000 have had to pay higher taxes. We want to revive the work line with reduced taxes on work. It should always be beneficial to shi� from state-support to work, only in this manner can exclusion be stopped! - Like and share if you agree! Read more here (web page address) 500 000 have had to pay higher taxes. We want to revive the work line with reduced taxes on work with increased support to work. Now we will make Sweden safer with the help of more powerful reforms. You are also needed in this work – become a member at (web address) Increased child allowance and reduced taxes for re�red people The Swedish model will be developed, not undone Reforms for a safer Sweden. Become a member you also Swedish pay will be in place in the Swedish workplace Foreign companies can currently send their employees to Sweden without having to pay them even close to Swedish pay- levels. We are put�ng a stop to that! People who compete for work in Sweden will have to do it on Swedish terms. Do you agree? Share this picture! Same pay for same work will be the case for everyone The Swedish model will be developed, not undone It takes nine years before even half of all newly-arrived immigrants have any type of wf ork. We want to improve integra�on: - Entrance-work for more people into work - Maximum-support levels so that it is more lucra�ve to work rather than receive state-support - Integra�on-duty for newly-arrived immigrant adults… See More A hopeful future for Sweden Integra�on will increase, segrega�on will reduce. Today you get your pay-check! But despite Löfvff ens elec�on promise about not increasing taxes for ordinary workers, over 500 000 have had to pay higher taxes. We want to revive the work line with reduced taxes on work. It should alway s be beneficial to shi� from state-support to work, only in this manner can exclusion be stopped! - Like and share if you agree! Read more here (web page address) 500 000 have had to pay higher taxes. We want to revive the work line with reduced taxes on work with increased support to work. Fig. 10 Slogans in Swedish political social mediascapes (a 2/10 2017; 24/10 2017; b 12/11 2017; 25/11 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 19 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 faceless embodiment where two hands can be seen (the younger hand is caringly placed above an elderly hand holding a walking stick): i. “Höjt barnbidrag och sänkt skatt för pensionärer” (Swedish: Increased child allow- ance and reduced taxes for retired people) is centered; ii. “SVENSKA MODELLEN SKA UTVECKLAS INTE AVVECKLAS” (Swedish: The Swedish model will be developed, not undone) in the left lower corner; and iii. “REFORMER FÖR ETT TRYGGARE SVERIGE. Bli medlem du också” (Swedish: Reforms for a safer Sweden. Become a member you too) on a round button in the right lower corner. In addition to the messages and pictures, color schemes reinforce political party identity-positions. The messages associated with Socialdemokraterna in Fig.  10a are in red while the color associated with Moderaterna (blue) is used to present the negative message here. Figure  10b from the Moderaterna pages are similarly presented in tones of blue, the party color. The BJP and Congress posts are also color-coded with saffron and a white lotus, including a green vertical ribbon on the left (BJP) and the orange- white-green horizontal bars (representing the In national flag) with a white upright hand (Congress). The second type of picture associated with slogans, presents a leading politician or an unknown individual (Fig.  10a). Two women, one staring at the viewer and one whose head is covered in a shawl (and is almost not visible) are presented with texts regarding equality of pay in the workforce. Unequal pay for men and women on the one hand, and for foreign investors on the other, are targeted in the slogans here. In Fig. 10b, a woman worker is presented as a backdrop to the information regarding the need to get people off state-support and back into the labor-market. An important feature of infographics where slogans are presented is the re-cycling of messages. This re-cycling appears in all four examples presented in Fig. 10a, b, reinforcing political messages and ideologies. Identity‑positionings in political social media Many aspects that are relevant to the theme of identity-positions have already been touched upon in “Media features, convergence and participation spaces” section. The second theme (of three) that emerge in our analysis relates to identity-positions more specifically. Three issues contribute to this theme that in itself overlaps with the other two themes that have emerged in the analysis. Aligning to scholarship that goes beyond traditional understandings that regard identity as “a stable structure located primarily in the individual psyche or in fixed social categories” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005: 586), our point of departure is that identity relates to dimensions of a person, group or a phe- nomenon that is stable in some sense over time (Bagga-Gupta et al. 2017; Gleason 1983; Wetherell 2010; Wetherell and Mohanty 2010). Allegiance with the nation-state (or states in the In sub-continent), religions, party ideologies, or other communally consti- tuted fractions, or key politicians are relevant dimensions of identity-positionings in the discourse that plays out on mediascapes. Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 20 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Religion and secularism Citizens in both In and Sw have the right to freedom of religion. While the In-consti- tution explicitly frames the nation-state as a secular country, Sw is officially a kingdom whose constitution builds upon a parliamentary democracy. While the state and the church in Sw went separate ways in 2000, Christianity remains a part of the public realm in that—in comparison—expressions of other religions that are practiced by the citizen- ship are marginal in official or medial discourses. While an amendment to the In-consti- tution incorporated the word “secular” over four decades ago (in 1976), interpretation of secularism in In has been a matter of debate. However, what is relevant for the present analysis is that all religions are part of the public realm and four world religions acknowl- edge the geopolitical spaces of In as their birth site. Hindu festivals dominated the data generation months of October–November, and the In-dataset shows that both parties greeted citizens on different occasions (Fig. 11). For instance, both parties greet netizens on Diwali that is celebrated across the sub-conti- nent. The imagery in these posts showcases lighted diyas (lamps), since Diwali is the “festival of lights”. The lexical item “Diwali” is presented in the Latin script with the hori- zontal line of the Devanagari script across the top. In addition, the In-dataset includes photographs of the two main leaders of BJP and Congress visiting temples (Fig. 12). Such actions by the politicians and the prominence they receive on social media platforms highlight efforts to align the party-political discourse towards different groups in society. In other words, an act of identity-politics, the greetings, the temple-visits and the pres- entation of such events, are important dimensions of political discourse. For instance, Fig. 11 Political party greetings on festivals (19/10 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 21 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s visit to several temples in Gujarat in October 2017 coincided with his campaign in the state (for the December 2017 elections). These temple visits have been discussed in terms of a possible bid to woo Hindu voters to the Congress.8 The saffron color associated with Hinduism is also the color of BJP’s party emblem. In addition to religious festivities, giving recognition to significant dates and anniversaries connected to a political party also creates identity-positionings for party leaders and the party itself. Figure  13 is a re-cycled post from the Sw prime-ministers page where he congratulates the youth wing of the Socialdemokraterna on their 100th anniversary. The post includes a YouTube video especially created to commemorate the occasion for the party congress in 2017. This highlights the convergence (see “Media features, conver- gence and participation spaces” section) and re-enforcement of the party’s history, ide- ologies and identity-positionings. Patriotism and nationalism Patriotism and allegiance expressed towards the nation-state, regional-states or commu- nal groupings, and their symbols and important dates are prominent identity-markers in the datasets (see above). Figure 14 highlights identity-positions in terms of sub-nation- alism related to the Gujarat state-elections (held in December 2017). Here both BJP and Congress use hashtags, videos and infographics that explicitly express such an allegiance. While the BJP’s post presents its core message in the Devanagari script, its hashtags are presented in English in the Latin script: #ProudToBeGujarati and #ProudToBeIndian. In contrast, while the Congress post presents its core message in English in the Latin script, its hashtags are presented in Hindi albeit in the Latin script: #GarvSeGujarati (Hindi: 8 Indian Express Gujarat elections http://indianexpress.com/elections/gujarat-assembly-elections-2017/gujarat-elec- tions-2017-rahul-gandhis-devotion-to-temple-politics-catches-bjp-off-guard-4976225/. Accessed 15 January 2018. Fig. 12 Political party leaders visiting religious sites (19/10 2017; 11/10 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access http://indianexpress.com/elections/gujarat-assembly-elections-2017/gujarat-elections-2017-rahul-gandhis-devotion-to-temple-politics-catches-bjp-off-guard-4976225/ http://indianexpress.com/elections/gujarat-assembly-elections-2017/gujarat-elections-2017-rahul-gandhis-devotion-to-temple-politics-catches-bjp-off-guard-4976225/ Page 22 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Fig. 13 Identification and allegiance to own party (28/10 2017) Fig. 14 Identification and allegiance to different groups: “Proud to be Gujarati”, “Garv Se Gujarati”, “Proud to be Indian”, “Garv Se Congressi” (15/11 2017; 13/11 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 23 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 proud to be from the state of Gujarat) and #GarvSeCongressi (Hindi: proud to be mem- ber of Congress). While both parties highlight ethnic-linguistic pride vis-à-vis Gujarat as a significant dimension of their political agendas, the BJP highlights an In national identity while the Congress highlights membership in their party as a significant dimen- sion of a voters’ identity. This can be understood in terms of the fact that the prime- minister and BJP leader are from this state, while the Congress party and its leader (who is presented in the photograph) need to make their identification to citizens in this state explicit. Similar issues can be seen in Fig.  3 (“Media features, convergence and participation spaces” section) where the Socialdemokraterna party page shared prime-minister Ste- fan Löfven’s post. The national flag covering the entire post can be regarded as an unu- sual photograph given the concerted efforts by the government and Socialdemokraterna to distance themselves from nationalism. However, in the context of sports, expressing exhilaration at the nation-states qualification for the 2018 football World Cup legitimizes such a post. In contrast, the Congress party’s symbol, an upright-hand superimposed on the tricolors of the national flag, has a clear nationalistic connotation. Cult of personality The dataset shows that all four parties forefront their leaders (see “Media features, con- vergence and participation spaces” section). However, there appears to be a stronger personality-centric approach in the discourse of the In-dataset. This is visible through the uploaded photographs, hashtags, live-videos and videos. The prime-minister is omnipresent in the In-dataset (as can be gleamed from the figures presented so far; see also Rao 2017). While the first screengrab in Fig. 15 is text-centric and presents the headlines of different international print-media, his picture is part of the infographic. The title of the infographic is also the main message of the post: “World bodies stick to their endorsement of PM Modi’s reform measures”. In addition to the omnipresence of the prime-minister, this can be understood as an instance of “local-chaining” (see “Lan- guaging features in social media” section) where reinforcement of key messages and a strong identification with the prime-minister is salient (even in data where his picture is not present). While the BJP uses their leaders’ surname in their posts, the Congress uses their lead- ers’ first name (second screengrab, Fig. 15): the hashtag #NavsarjanwithRahul also high- lights a personality-driven approach to electioneering in Gujarat. Navsarjan, a Gujarati lexical item presented in the Latin script, means revival or new beginnings. While the Sw-dataset also has examples of a personality-driven political discourse, either full names or no names of the politicians are presented. The third screengrab (Fig.  15) is a collage of three photographs where the prime-minister is showcased interacting with both citizens and the police-force during his much-publicized tour of the coun- try (primarily in the marginalized suburbs of larger cities and rural areas). Identifica- tion with the citizenship and members of the security forces is an important theme that emerges in the Sw-dataset. This maps onto what is being perceived as heightened issues of national security threats and lawlessness together with the need for political parties to engage with the concerns of the common person. The last two screengrabs illus- trate such concerns through the imagery of strong and committed political leaders. The Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 24 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 repeated presence of the party leader of the Moderaterna in the Sw-dataset can also be understood by the fact that Mr. Ulf Kristersson replaced Ms. Anna Kinnberg Batra who resigned from her post at the end of September 2017. in Gujarat, farmers have been betrayed rather than helped by the government, now the hope is on congress: Ri�ka Ambalia’s story #RevivalWithRahul “OUR STREETS AND CITY-SQUARES WILL BE SAFE FOR EVERYONE”. This was Stefan Löfven’s message when he visited Svenljunga yesterday and Go�sunda today. The prime-minister is currently travelling through the country to meet people and visit the police. Sweden shall be a safe country. Read more here: (webpage address) Together we can make a difference – become a member today! Directly through Swish or by visi�ng: (webpage address) “I want that Sweden should become a country for the hopeful. And I want that the New Moderates should be a party for the hopeful”. __________________________ Ulf Kristersson Party leader in Gujarat, farmers have been betrayed rather than helped by the government, now the hope is on congress: Ri�ka Ambalia’s story #RevivalWithRahul Fig. 15 Political leaders—personality cult (13/11 2017; 3/10 2017; 9/11 2017; 2/10 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 25 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Languaging features in social media Issues of relevance to the final theme that has emerged in the analysis, i.e. language, have been both implicitly and explicitly touched upon in “Media features, convergence and participation spaces” and “Identity-positionings in political social media” sections. Three issues that contribute to this theme are presented here. Content‑chaining and local‑chaining As has been illustrated above, the very fabric of Web 2.0 mediascapes like Facebook opens up for both the re-cycling of content from other media-types wherein party- members posts (from their individual Facebook pages) or TV-broadcasts or newspa- per texts, etc. are presented (see for instance, Figs.  2, 3, 7, 9, 12, 14). Such re-cycling of content constitutes “content-chaining” of digital media, including texts from across the spectrum of other virtual platforms (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.; Fig. 14) and media (TV, newspapers, blogs, etc.; Figs. 2, 3, 7, 9, 12, 14). Content-chaining is marked by the modality pluralism of languaging in digital spaces (see also Gynne and Bagga- Gupta 2015; Messina Dahlberg 2015). Content-chaining often has the goal of presenting a convergence of a specific message (this includes, but is not restricted to, party slogans; Figs. 10, 14); it also highlights some news or event (Fig. 2). Party symbols and colors are also important dimensions of content-chaining. Another form of chaining that has been identified (see “Media features, convergence and participation spaces” and “Identity-positionings in political social media” sections) as a dimension of the nature of languaging in the political party mediascapes relates to the language-varieties/modalities and other semiotic resources in the datasets. As high- lighted earlier, while the In-dataset display the deployment of at least three language- varieties (English, Hindi, Gujarati), including at least two scripts (Latin, Devanagri), the Sw-dataset displays the use of only one language-variety (Swedish) in the Latin script. STEFAN LÖFVEN CONDEMS SEXUAL EXCESSESS “I feel a deep disgust against this. These are serious viola�ons. We all must therefore stand up to the fact that our society is not equal enough. We must in a real sense stand up for women and men’s equality, rights and responsibili�es” said Stefan Löfven in TV-4 channel’s party-leader debate. This is how we work for increasing equality: (web page address) (Cap�oning text): We have obviously done this in comparison to other countries. But when one sees this, then one realizes how wide ranging the problem is and it is for this reason that I am a feminist. Fig. 16 Subtitled video screengrab from the Sw‑dataset (1/11 2017) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 26 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Furthermore, in the In-dataset, words and phrases presented in Hindi or English are transliterated into the script that is conventionally deployed by the other language-vari- ety (see Figs. 2, 5, 6, 7, 14). Such languaging blurs the boundaries between language-vari- eties. Figures 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16 highlight the chained use of oral (video), written (infographics, comments), pictorial, embodied communication, etc. Such “local-chain- ing”—irrespective of whether one or more language-varieties/modalities are in use—has been identified in the In- and Sw-datasets. Local-chaining represents a routine discur- sive-technological order where more than one language-variety/modality, resource and tools are used by the participants. Subtitling and access While subtitling is part of local-chaining, it merits special attention given that non- subtitled videos from other media (TV, YouTube) are subtitled prior to presentation in the political party posts. The volume of uploaded videos, recycled-videos and live- videos in the datasets varies (Table  1). Quantitatively there are fewer live-videos in the Sw-dataset as compared to the In-dataset. One political party in each of the two nation- states—BJP and Moderaterna—have quantitatively more live-videos than their counter- parts (Table 1). While all the uploaded and recycled-videos (for instance, from TV-news channels) in the Sw-dataset are subtitled in Swedish (Fig.  16), none of the In ones are subtitled. The Sw-dataset is interlingually subtitled. Figure 16 illustrates a screengrab of a video-clip that presents key statements made by the prime-minister during a leading TV-channels party-leader debate where issues of sexual harassment and discrimination were discussed. This theme became a key topic across the media following the #metoo movement in Sw. Here is it interesting to note that the Sw TV-news broadcasts are not automatically interlingually subtitled during their live-broadcasts (all non-Swedish oral language is, however, intralingually subtitled). This means that both the political parties get these videos interlingually subtitled before they are uploaded on their pages. In contrast, none of the live-streamed videos in the datasets are subtitled. Subtitling in Swedish makes oral Swedish language available for participants who, for different reasons, cannot access spoken Swedish language. This suggests that issues of accessibility are attended to in the Sw political parties mediaspaces. However, it can be argued that the monolingual nature of the languaging in the Sw-dataset curtails issues of access for citizens who use lan- guage-varieties other than Swedish. In contrast, the Hindi–English (and Gujarati) lan- guaging in the oral and written modalities in the In-dataset, it can be argued, is more inclusive for citizens. Digital languaging As the analysis in “Media features, convergence and participation spaces” and “Identity- positionings in political social media” sections has richly illustrated, digital conventions are an important dimension of the languaging in current political discourse (Figs. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14). A unique feature of digital languaging is the use of emojis and emoticons to convey sentiments. These have become popular among netizens across the globe and its usage is more popular in the In-dataset as compared to the Sw-dataset. This means that in addition to experiences with different conventional language-varieties and an internet Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 27 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 connection, participants need to know how to make sense of digital language conven- tions in order to be able to participate in social practices where symbols like “#” or web- page addresses constitute dimensions of the languaging. Hashtags can (potentially) draw attention to a message in a minimalistic manner. TV broadcasts in In are noted for using hashtags to either criticize or praise a person or an issue. Some hashtags in our datasets clearly reveal a specific point of view/ideol- ogy that a post attempts to promote. However, an understanding of events across time in the national contexts (for both netizens and us, the analysts) are a pre-requisite for meaning-making of the content of digital languaging. This means that while the political party pages are (potentially) accessible to anyone anywhere, such access is contingent upon familiarity with language-varieties/modalities deployed on the page, contextual knowledge as well as conventions of digital languaging. For instance, the hashtag #vad- fanfårjag (Swedish: what the hell do I get) itself refers to the Socialdemokraterna mes- sage (6/11) that everyone needs to contribute with taxes in order to get access to free education, health-care and other services. The Congress hashtag #JavabDegaHimachal (Hindi: the state of Himachal Pradesh will respond) in the infographic, accompanying a video (7/10), points to the upcoming state elections (9/11). The Congress ruled the state and the hashtag points to a response by the citizens that could bring them back to power in the state. A BJP hashtag that accompanied a video (6/11), #ModiDhumal4Vi- kas (Hindi/English/digital: Modi and Dhumal for Development) brings to the forefront another dimension of digital languaging in global-South settings like In: while the term “vikas” can be attributed to the language-variety Hindi, it is also part of Asian Englishes. Furthermore, being proper nouns, the two politicians’ names—prime-minister Mr. Nar- endra Modi and Mr. P.K. Dhumal—cannot be said to belong to only Hindi, English or for that matter Swedish. Furthermore, the number “4”, is part of standard digital languaging and denotes “for” (and also “four”). The idea that one language is bounded and completely distinct from other language- varieties, builds upon political ideology. As highlighted in the  “Introduction” section, recent global-North scholarship explicitly problematizes such monolingual and mono- centric biases (Gramling 2016). However, these discussions tend to occur among Euro- pean (American and Australian) scholarly networks, that do not include the rest of the world. These global-North discussions have proposed neologisms that are in themselves problematic, not least since key points of departure related to their emergence include recent waves of migration, including digitalization in global-North spaces themselves (Bagga-Gupta 2017a, b, 2018; Bagga-Gupta and Dahlberg 2018). A comparative view- ing of digital datasets of political parties from across GSN settings therefore is signifi- cant, and potentially allows for critically understanding how language plays out in public mediascapes. Discussion and reflections on ways‑of‑being‑with‑words across the global‑South/North “Currently, there are probably as many foetal theories of Internet language behavior around as there are linguists; The Internet is the largest area of language develop- ment we have seen in our lifetimes” (Crystal 2011: 148; 149) Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 28 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 In addition to contributing from analysis of empirically framed scholarship to illumi- nating the area of new mediascapes, what do the findings of this study offer in terms of mundane political languaging or the “ways-with-words” (Heath 1983) and the concomi- tant identity-positions or “ways-of-being” (Bagga-Gupta 2014) across GSN settings? Furthermore, in addition to making relevant a multi-theoretical and multi-disciplinary stance, what new types of issues have been made visible when empirical datasets across GSN settings are focused upon within the same analytical framings? Going beyond decolonial framings where global-North hegemonies are commonly articulated, does an engagement with decoloniality (in particular in an empirical study) contribute in specific ways to current concerns regarding communication and diversity in the global-North? These are the types of issues that this study has attempted to explore and can contribute towards. These are discussed broadly in this final section. Emerging in the early 1990s, the internet has succeeded in shrinking the world meta- phorically and literally. It allows scholars from different disciplinary hues to reflect upon the powerful, highly problematic ideas related to bounded, “imagined communities” (Andersson 1994), including demarcated nation-states. A focus upon datasets made up of political parties’ Facebook pages requires the creation of empirical materials that emerge from the local contexts of two different nation-states. However, such medias- capes, unlike the constructed boundaries that demarcate one nation-state from another, are not hermeneutically sealed spaces; they are part of the larger medial landscapes, including societal contexts. The internet allows anyone with a technological device and a connection, including a desire to connect with anyone else with similar connectivity, to connect. Here language has been and continues to be an issue—particularly in terms of access to the “multilingual internet” (Crystal 2011: 78-91). Reports on global usage- patterns (“Media-types across spaces. Some perspectives on India and Sweden” section) highlight that the internet-usage picture is not static, and the new media situation across GSN settings cannot be simplified to an issue of haves-have-nots. Savransky’s (2017) call for cultivating a decolonial imagination means that scholar- ship needs to focus upon the here and now in all spaces, including re-viewing datasets that can empirically contrast the here and now across GSN contexts. The findings in this empirically framed study highlight the multilayered communication that makes-up dis- courses that circulate in the Facebook pages of political parties across GSN contexts. The specific media features of the social networking site Facebook, that is reported to be immensely popular in both nation-states, support complex processes of convergence where materials from other media are curated and presented. In addition to the politi- cal parties who host the Facebook pages, active participants in these pages include party representatives and netizens. Political leaders’ participation in these “affinity spaces” (Gee 2005) takes place in different ways. For instance, (i) when leaders’ posts from their individual Facebook pages are re-cycled on the parties’ pages; (ii) when a special post is created center-staging them in some special role or with a special message; or (iii) when a leader is positioned in lieu of the party symbol and ideology. This “cult of personality” pattern is stronger in the In-dataset, and more-so in the BJP materials, but is present in the datasets from both nation-states. Patterns of participation that emerge in the analyses raise issues concerned with un- reached/reachable potentials for democratic dialoguing between parties, politicians and Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 29 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 citizens. In addition to a mismatch between comments by netizens and the contents/ themes of uploaded party posts, the “interaction order” (Goffman 1983) at this scale can be understood in terms of the following: • an initiation of a topic when a post is uploaded (I), • a comment by a citizen (C), and • a response by a party representative (R) or • a comment–response by another citizen on the same thread as the first comment (C–R). Such ICR/C-R sequences are common in the analyzed datasets. They do not constitute dimensions of rich/in-depth dialogues. The latter would involve discussions that enable the emergence of newer understandings or positions. These interactional patterns have some semblance to the classical IRE (initiation–response–evaluation) interaction order typical of classroom instruction (Mehan 1979). Other interactional features on Face- book—the “thumbs-up” likes, emoticons/emojis, shares, links to other websites, etc.— too do not enhance dialoguing between politicians and citizens in any clear-cut manner. It is perhaps the case that new media features do not support such dialoguing. Thus, mediascapes offer parties and politicians a new platform to advertise curated positions. This includes displaying allegiances with citizens and their interests and concerns and downplaying the opposition. This orientation is a dimension of identity-politics: politi- cians align their activities and discourse towards different communities, including per- sonality-driven approaches and different ways of identifying with the citizenship; they engage with citizens and accentuate differences between ideologies. Such orientations project strong and committed political leaders. “When political parties and candidates directly connect with potential voters through social media, and give them the option of ‘like’ the posts and ‘comment’ on messages and pictures in an interactive manner, it cre- ates an element of personalization” (Saleem and Stephan 2016: 91). Since a personaliza- tion element is limited in the datasets, the findings raise issues concerning the promise of democratic potentials of contemporary mediascapes. Thus, while Web 2.0 platforms hold promise of being democratic platforms (Narayan and Narayanan 2016; Schroeder 2016), analysis at the micro-scale presents a gloomy picture. Other features vis-à-vis identity-positions are related to the issue of secularism. While secularism is understood in global-North spaces in terms of the separation of religion from the state (which would suggest that secularism is officially a new situation in Sw), in the context of In, secularism can be more clearly understood in terms of “Sarva Dharma Samabhava” (Sanskrit: equality of all faiths). This is recognized as being part of Hindu philosophy and its essence has been pushed by scholars and leaders like Vive- kananda, Ramakrishna and Mahatma Gandhi; Sarva Dharma Samabhava embodies “the equality of the destination of the path’s followed by all religions (although the path’s themselves may be different)".9 Without claiming that such an ethos can automatically 9 Wikipedia Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarva_Dharma_Sama_Bhava. Accessed 20 December 2017. Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarva_Dharma_Sama_Bhava Page 30 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 solve issues related to societal tensions, it holds promise for current challenges faced by global-North settings like Sw and Europe. Despite popular understandings of what is understood as secular, the analyses suggest that while there exists a recognized pluralism in In, a hegemonic mono-religious norm exists in Sw. Given that the Swedish state  separated from the church only in 2000 also calls attention to why (in comparison to the In-dataset) no religious symbols or slogans have been identified in the Sw-dataset. Could their very absence in political party dis- courses highlight a disconnect between the multiethnic citizenship in Sw and the pri- marily mono-ethnic political elite? For instance, othering in public discourses in Sw has, in the twnty-first century, become marked through implicitly linking Islam with terror- ism/extremism. In this light, religious plurality that marks public spaces in In, where all religions are openly marked and celebrated becomes interesting (this is not to deny the challenges inherent for individuals and groups who profess allegiance to different religions in “normally diverse” settings like In). The point that is interesting for pre- sent purposes is that differences in identity-positionings between the two nation-states highlights the importance of contributions from the global-South towards invigorating understandings of diversity—a contemporary issue that is proving to be difficult to man- age in global-North settings like Sw. Another significant theme that this study highlights and where understandings from the global-South can potentially illuminate areas of current concerns in the global-North relate to conceptualizations related to language. This has particular significance since a monolingual ethos has contributed to making the “inclusion” of minorities an uphill task in contexts like Sw. American anthropologist Ruth Finnegan (2015) succulently reminded language scholars (in the global-North) at the end of her academic career, that there is need to pause and ask if “we” really know what, where and for whom lan- guage is. Decoloniality here represents a call for a new reflexivity that enables posing such uncomfortable questions that have the potential of illuminating non/mainstreamed ways-of-being-with-words. Going beyond both namism and academic branding and dealing with naturalistic datasets where the analysis builds upon theoretical framings is, we argue, key here. Monolingual positions in the scholarship obscure the fact that most humans live lives engaging with and deploying resources from more than one language-variety (Gal and Irvine 1995; Hasnain et al. 2013; May 2014). A monolingual bias marks the global-North political discourse as compared to a much more fluid meaning-making interactional order in the In-dataset. In the latter, meaning-making is marked with the ways-of-being- with-words that are common dimensions of IRL interactions across the globe. Having gained popularity in the global-North scholarship only recently, such fluidity is seen as novel and continues to be accounted for in terms of recent mobilities, urbanization, including digitalization; it is marked in terms of “super/hyper/urban-diversity”, and “pluri/trans/metrolingualism or -languaging” (Blommaert 2015; Vertovec 2006). These glossed concepts build implicitly upon a non-marked mono-ethnic, monolingual norm. In addition to the fact that such scholarship is marked by reductionistic sloganism and academic branding (Pavlenko in press), a colonial hegemony underlies the continuing invisibility accorded to the patterned ways-of-being-with-words that mark languaging across time–space in the “rest of the world”. Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 31 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Thus, identifying features of languaging across the datasets, and particularly from the global-South are significant. They mark important dimensions of human exist- ence, and are not specific to contemporary times alone. In other words, our concern is related to making visible the dominating colonially framed monoglossic understand- ings of bounded language-varieties/modalities, including the monolingual ethos in the Sw-dataset. We call attention to the need for engaging with scholarship from and by global-South scholars with the intent of reconceptualizing languaging behavior and identity-positionings beyond boundaries. Thus, while a colonial linguacentrism, only in a limited manner, recognizes that routine ways of sense-making in digital (and IRL) set- tings are not only rich sites for research, but that languaging needs to be researched from points of departure where more than one language-variety are made analytically sali- ent. “Dehegemonizing standard language” (Hasnain and Gupta 2002) points to a mono- lingual norm  that exists primarily in global-North spaces from where  the majority of language and identity scholars are referenced. While this situation is slowly changing, monolingual positions continue to remain non-marked, thus normalizing and legitimiz- ing oppressive webs-of-understandings (Bagga-Gupta 2018). Different types of chaining identified in the In-datasets constitute “normal commu- nication and languaging”. Chaining here builds upon oral, written, pictorial, embodied resources within Facebook and other media-types (Bagga-Gupta 2017b, c; Horowitz 2007; Jones and Hafner 2012). Furthermore, the medley of modalities, varieties, tools and embodiment illuminated in this study is similar to the complex, intricate ways in which oral-written-virtual-irl-embodied dimensions are chained and have been identi- fied previously in other types of institutional settings (Bagga-Gupta 2017a, b, c, 2004; Gynne 2016; Messina Dahlberg 2015). Like one of the first digital symbols, “@”, that heralded the digital era, the “#” too has become a new letter/character in the contemporary netizens alphabetic tool-kit. The local-chaining in the Facebook pages where a symbolic representation i.e. #, leaves one space (Twitter) and is presented in another (Facebook), not only constitutes content- chaining, but now becomes a marker of social media savviness. From sociocultural action and emic perspectives these dimensions of discourse constitute normal languag- ing. Symbolic units like “#” and web-page URLs constitute fluid resources deployed by all individuals and communities that interface with digital mediaspaces. This means that being able to participate in contemporary political discourse is not contingent only upon access to digital technologies or peoples’ skills in a specific language-variety or oral or written modality. It is the situated-distributed nature of specific kinds of knowledge— for instance what “#” stands for or a string of alphabets strung together in a web page address—that are key dimensions of participation in mediascapes. Going beyond con- ventional language competencies, languaging here thus needs to be accounted for (in the analysis) in terms of the access that participants have to resources across digital media- scapes. The point that is salient is that it is not knowledge about a specific bounded lan- guage, or a specific writing system or membership in a particular nation-state that is significant in an overarching sense. Rather it is the ways-with-words that are contingent upon the ways-of-being, including the sociohistorical experiences of participants in a multitude of affinity spaces that are significant. Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access Page 32 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 Abbreviations BJP: Bharatiya Janta Party; GSN: global‑South and North; In: The Nation‑State of India; ICR/C‑R: initiation‑comment‑ response/comment‑response; IRE: initiation‑response‑evaluation; IRL: in real life; Sw: The Nation‑State of Sweden. Authors’ contributions The first author, SBG, has in collaboration with the second author, AR, designed the study. Both authors have contrib‑ uted equally to the creation of the datasets, its first level of analysis and its final analysis. The authors have collaborated through face‑to‑face meetings and by using social media platforms in weekly data‑sessions and joint analysis. SBG and AR have had responsibility to do the initial elaborations of different sections of the paper. SBG has had overall responsibility for the study and the writing of the “Introduction” and “Discussion and reflections on ways‑of‑being‑with‑ words across the global‑South/North” sections. AR has been engaged in working on parts of the “Introduction” section and has commented on the development of the “Introduction” and “Discussion and reflections on ways‑of‑being‑with‑ words across the global‑South/North” sections. Both authors have worked closely in the writing and development of the “Discourse and mediascapes” section. The first author is the corresponding author. Both authors have read and approved the final manuscript. Authors’ information Sangeeta Bagga‑Gupta is Full Professor of Education at Jönköping University, Sweden, and Adjunct Professor 2016–2018 at AMU, Aligarh Muslim University, India. She conducted her doctoral studies at the multidisciplinary department of Communication Studies at Linköping University, Sweden and her post‑doctoral studies at Gallaudet University in Wash‑ ington DC, USA. Her multidisciplinary research focuses on communication broadly, identity, culture and learning from ethnographically framed, multi‑scalar, sociocultural and decolonial framings. She is the scientific leader of the research group CCD, Communication, Culture and Diversity (http://www.ju.se/ccd) since the end of the 1990s, and is Director of the research milieu LPS, Learning Practices inside and outside Schools since 2016 (http://ju.se/en/research/research‑groups/ learning‑practices‑inside‑and‑outside‑school‑lps.html). Sangeeta Bagga‑Gupta currently leads the large scale Swedish Research Council project PAL, Participation for all? (http://www.ju.se/ccd/pal). She publishes extensively in international peer‑reviewed contexts and her latest edited books include: Identity Revisted and Reimagined. Empirical and Theoretical Contributions on Embodied Communication Across Time and Space (2017 with Springer). Marginalization Processes across Different Settings. Going beyond the Mainstream (2017 with Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Aprameya Rao is a multimedia journalist and graduated from KC College, Mumbai, India. He has a Bachelors degree in economics and a Masters degree in Media Studies. He currently covers Indian politics and foreign relationships in his work for Firstpost.com. Author details 1 School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, P.O. Box 1026, 551 11 Jönköping, Sweden. 2 B‑007, Radhakrishna CHS, Mira Road, Thane 401107, India. Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the support of Dr. Guy Karnung in bringing clarity and precision to the screengrabs and figures that are used in this paper. We acknowledge the support of our institutions during the intensive periods of work‑ ing on the research reported in this study. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Availability of data and materials The datasets used in the study presented in the paper are publicly available materials on the social media platform Facebook. The datasets are posts and comments etc. posted between the period 1 October and 15 November 2017 by four political parties, their members and participants on the internet. Webpages to the four pages are: https://www.facebook.com/BJP4India/. https://www.facebook.com/IndianNationalCongress/. https://www.facebook.com/moderaterna/. https://www.facebook.com/socialdemokraterna/. Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applicable. Funding We, the authors, have not received any specific funding for carrying out the research presented in this study. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Received: 18 February 2018 Accepted: 18 April 2018 Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access http://www.ju.se/ccd http://ju.se/en/research/research-groups/learning-practices-inside-and-outside-school-lps.html http://ju.se/en/research/research-groups/learning-practices-inside-and-outside-school-lps.html http://www.ju.se/ccd/pal https://www.facebook.com/BJP4India/ https://www.facebook.com/IndianNationalCongress/ https://www.facebook.com/moderaterna/ https://www.facebook.com/socialdemokraterna/ Page 33 of 34Bagga‑Gupta and Rao Bandung J of Global South (2018) 5:3 References Abu‑Lughod, Janet. 1991. Before European hegemony. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Andersson, Benedict. 1994. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bagga‑Gupta, Sangeeta. 2012. Challenging Understandings of Bilingualism in the Language Sciences from the Lens of Research that Focuses Social Practices. 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Wertsch, James. 1998. Mind as Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wetherell, Margaret. 2010. The Field of Identity Research. In The Sage Handbook of Identities, ed. Margaret Wetherell, and Mohanty Chandra Talpade, 3–26. London: Sage Publications. Wetherell, Margaret, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (eds.). 2010. The Sage Handbook of Identities. London: Sage Publications. Wolcott, Harry. 1999. Ethnography. A Way of Seeing. Walnut Creek: AltaMira. Downloaded from Brill.com04/06/2021 12:56:00AM via free access http://www.ijims.com/uploads/7f33858cd2c22045d277A27.pdf https://doi.org/10.4172/2332-0761.10002046 https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856516660666 https://doi.org/10.1068/a37268 https://doi.org/10.1068/a37268 Languaging in digital global South– North spaces in the twenty-first century: media, language and identity in political discourse Introduction Sociocultural perspectives and decoloniality as complementary analytical lenses Media‑types across spaces. Some perspectives on India and Sweden Methodological framings and data Discourse and mediascapes Media features, convergence and participation spaces Common Facebook features Convergence and re‑cycling Participants and participation patterns Captions and slogans Identity‑positionings in political social media Religion and secularism Patriotism and nationalism Cult of personality Languaging features in social media Content‑chaining and local‑chaining Subtitling and access Digital languaging Discussion and reflections on ways-of-being-with-words across the global-South/North Abbreviations Authors’ contributions Author details Acknowledgements Competing interests Availability of data and materials Ethics approval and consent to participate Funding Publisher’s Note References work_3u5qtgz3lrfqpgwyi3slnoptgq ---- The values of culture? Social closure in the political identities, policy preferences, and social attitudes of cultural and creative workers Edinburgh Research Explorer The values of culture? Citation for published version: O'Brien, D, Taylor, M & McAndrew, S 2019, 'The values of culture? Social closure in the political identities, policy preferences, and social attitudes of cultural and creative workers', The Sociological Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026119871401 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1177/0038026119871401 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Published In: The Sociological Review General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. 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Social closure in the political identities, policy preferences, and social attitudes of cultural and creative workers Siobhan McAndrew University of Bristol, UK Dave O’Brien Edinburgh College of Art, UK Mark Taylor University of Sheffield, UK Abstract Cultural consumption and production are both characterised by multiple dimensions of inequality. Research in cultural stratification has highlighted the links between the exclusivity of cultural production, the type of cultural works created, and the audiences and public receptions for culture. We contribute to this agenda by examining a hitherto unexplored area: the cultural values and political identities of workers in the creative industries and cultural sector. Analysis of the British Social Attitudes (2010–2015) surveys and British Election Study Internet Panel (2016–2017) surveys demonstrates that creative and cultural workers have distinct cultural values. They are among the most left-wing, liberal and pro-welfare of any occupations and industries. This sets them apart from the average respondent who is relatively more right-wing, authoritarian and more in favour of welfare control. When examining their non-electoral participation, we also find they are highly civically engaged in terms of contacting elected representatives and government officials, signing petitions, political volunteering, political donations, participating in demonstrations, ethical consumption and boycotts, and industrial action. Moreover, they are more likely to report that they supported Remain in the 2016 EU ‘Brexit’ Referendum, to report unhappiness with the Leave result, and to identify with Remain voters. We conclude that distinct occupational cultures are particularly Corresponding author: Siobhan McAndrew, University of Bristol, 2.02, 11 Priory Road, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1TU, UK. Email: siobhan.mcandrew@bristol.ac.uk 871401 SOR0010.1177/0038026119871401The Sociological ReviewMcAndrew et al. research-article2019 Article https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/journals-permissions https://journals.sagepub.com/home/sor mailto:siobhan.mcandrew@bristol.ac.uk http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F0038026119871401&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-08-28 2 The Sociological Review 00(0) significant in the case of the cultural and creative sector, given creative workers’ role in representing society and the civic realm via the products of their work. We also argue that occupational cultures constitute an important, under-recognised source of social and cultural division. Keywords cultural and creative industries, cultural workers, left-right politics, liberalism, social attitudes, social closure, values Introduction Cultural production is currently the subject of high-profile media and policy discus- sion, in particular the connection between who produces and who is represented on stage, page and screen. Exclusion from key cultural industries, such as film, television and theatre, indicates a need for change and reform. There are numerous examples: longstanding campaigns such as #OscarsSoWhite drawing attention to the lack of diversity within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (and associated award nominations and winners); focus on how the film industry is structured and who is represented following #MeToo (Banet-Weiser, 2018); recent criticism of arts organi- sations in the UK, such as the National Theatre and Royal Opera House, for failing to deliver on promises of gender parity in productions; and public policy responses from institutions such as the British Film Institute and the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to the dominance of arts and cultural occupations by those from middle class social origins (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [BEIS], 2018; Draper, 2018). Two lines of thought prevail in such debate. On the one hand, there is concern regard- ing careers ruined and destroyed, or never begun, as a result of biases around who is assumed to be the right ‘type’ to be a director, lead a major theatre production, or work in particular sections of the media. These systemic biases are well-established by a long- standing academic literature (Gill, 2014; Wreyford, 2018). Secondly, there is a broader sense that the characteristics of those who do enter the sector are connected to the repre- sentations created, and in turn the demographics of the audience. A different demography of production might create different representations and audiences. This latter point has been well-critiqued from both a political economy of culture perspective (Gray, 2016; Mellinger, 2003), and by critical race theorists of media (Saha, 2018). However, impor- tant questions remain around aspects of cultural production in the context over debates on representation and consumption. This article develops this literature by focusing on the values of those working in the cultural sector, who are thus an important component of artistic, literary and media pro- duction. Currently, we have almost no empirical understanding of cultural workers’ val- ues beyond bespoke industry surveys (Creative Industries Federation [CIF], 2016) and high-profile public statements (Harkaway et al., 2019). Sociological research can make a vital intervention here, by clarifying the values and attitudes of cultural workers and how they are patterned (Campbell, O’Brien, & Taylor, 2019). This article contributes to explaining the continued inequalities identified by current sociological research on the McAndrew et al. 3 creative industries, as well as making an intervention into public debates regarding ine- quality and cultural production. We begin by situating our interest in attitudes and values within the literature on the relationship between cultural production, cultural consumption and social inequality (Brook, O’Brien, & Taylor, 2017; O’Brien, Allen, Friedman, & Saha, 2017; Oakley, Laurison, O’Brien, & Friedman, 2017; Oakley & O’Brien, 2016). In doing so we con- nect, for the first time, research on cultural production and inequality to research on values. Considered together, these literatures indicate the importance of understanding the cultural dimensions of values and value divisions, and the under-researched role of values and attitudes in cultural production. To understand the values of those occupations producing culture, we move in two stages. First, we use British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey data to examine the values of those producing culture, including those working in the arts and media. We demonstrate a major gulf in values between people producing culture and the nation at large, not sim- ply explained by these cultural producers’ relative youth and high education. We find that cultural sector workers exhibit unusually liberal, pro-welfare and left-wing attitudes. Secondly, to validate this analysis, we use British Election Study (BES) data to explore basic values alongside measures of political behaviour in the form of reported EU Referendum vote choice and political repertoires, as well as attitudes towards the Referendum result and identification with Leavers and Remainers. We identify important values-related differences between cultural workers and others in both datasets, along with differences in their political participation. These two analytic stages build on exist- ing findings regarding the social closure of occupations associated with cultural produc- tion (O’Brien, Laurison, Miles, & Friedman, 2016; Oakley et al., 2017). How different occupations foster different attitudes and values has been important for theories of a ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002). Until recently, such research tended to celebrate the ‘open’ and meritocratic attitudes of cultural workers, rather than relating these values to questions of inequality, theorised recently by Littler (2018). In demonstrating the cohe- siveness of cultural occupations around specific values distant from much of the rest of the population, we identify a further dimension whereby cultural production in the UK is socially closed. This position is mirrored by work on the labour force of the sector in terms of class, gender and ethnicity (O’Brien & Oakley [2015] provide a summary). This analysis has implications for the literature on cultural production, the primary frame for our article. It also has implications for discussion of contemporary social divi- sions perceived as ‘cultural’ or values-based. Our analyses indicate that the values of Britain’s cultural workers are relatively distant from the population that they claim, and are expected, to represent. Accordingly, understanding the values of cultural workers is an important public, as well as academic, area of concern. Cultural production, inequality and the problem of values Culture is marked by inequality. Here, we focus on culture in terms of arts and media par- ticipation and consumption, in turn distinguished from education, religion and everyday cultural practices such as language or food cultures (Miles & Leguina, 2017). Sociological work has identified how the production of culture is characterised by significant 4 The Sociological Review 00(0) inequalities. Numerous authors highlight the exclusion of women, ethnic minorities, and those from working class origins, noting the employment conditions and hiring practices underpinning these problems (Alacovska, 2017; Ashton & Noonan, 2013; Banks, 2017; Conor, Gill, & Taylor, 2015; Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2011; McRobbie, 2015; Saha, 2018). Of particular interest is the attempt to connect these inequalities in production with those in consumption. For example, recent work on consumption for England suggests that ‘about 8.7% of the English population is highly engaged with state-supported forms of culture . . . this fraction is particularly well-off, well-educated, and white’ (Taylor, 2016, p. 169). This ‘middle class’ domination of cultural consumption (for example theatre, dance, visual arts and even cinema) is matched by middle class social origins’ overrepresentation in the cul- tural workforce (O’Brien et al., 2016; Oakley et al., 2017). The overlap between cultural production as a set of occupations dominated by the middle class, and that same middle class dominance of audiences for state-supported cultural forms, has important social implications (Hanquinet, 2017). Knowledge of arts and culture, whether classical or contemporary, has been highlighted as crucial in gain- ing access to other middle class professions, such as financial services and senior mana- gerial occupations (Friedman & Laurison, 2019; Rivera, 2015). Indeed, Rivera’s conception of ‘hiring as cultural matching’, where leisure pursuits and taste patterns play a role in employment decisions, is a good example of the importance of cultural con- sumption in reproducing social inequalities (Bourdieu, 1984). In the creative industries, Koppman (2016) has similarly demonstrated that shared tastes and cultural socialisation are crucial to individuals being viewed as the right ‘sort’ of creative worker. Whilst this literature is extensive, with rich empirical and theoretical contributions, the question of shared values and socio-political priorities, as opposed to shared patterns of cultural tastes, backgrounds, or demographic characteristics, is under-examined. Indeed, values tend to be implicit in discussions of cultural workers’ commitment to long hours and exploitative working conditions (McRobbie, 2015), rather than the subject of formal investigation. Moreover, this empirical question has particular significance given recent theorisation of the connection between cultural production, cultural representation and cultural consumption (Hesmondhalgh, 2018; O’Brien et al., 2017; O’Brien & Oakley, 2015). The values of cultural workers might both account for some of the social closure of cultural occupations, and have wider importance for social division more broadly. Relatedly, social and political division has been discussed recently in terms of values divides (Jennings & Stoker, 2016), in which context the match or otherwise between cultural producers’ values of cultural production and those of the rest of the population raises questions about these occupations given their role in imagining the nation-state (Anderson, 1983; Elgenius, 2011; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983). This task has a long history, with contemporary cultural production and consumption central to new identities and the formation of citizens’ values and attitudes (Bennett, 2013). Understanding culture, understanding values The role of cultural production in shaping values has particular salience given current social and political divisions. These are most obviously crystallised in the example of the UK’s Referendum on EU membership, whether in the form of media ascriptions of McAndrew et al. 5 ‘winners and losers’ of social change, or generational and educational contrasts (Livermore & Clarkson, 2017). They have been addressed in recent political science research relating to Brexit (Clarke, Goodwin, & Whiteley, 2017; Farrell & Newman, 2017; Glencross, 2016; Hobolt, 2016), Westminster politics (Allen & Cairney, 2017; Evans & Tilley, 2017), and the emergence of ‘Two Englands’ divided by values as much as economics and class (Jennings & Stoker, 2016, 2017). Sociology has also responded in the form of a social media series (The Sociological Review, 2016), a recent edited collection (Outhwaite, 2017), a special issue (Dodd, Lamont, & Savage, 2017), as well as monograph treatments (e.g. Seidler, 2018). Whilst much of this literature has referred to ‘cultural’ differences or ‘cultural’ explanations for social divisions (following Alexander, 2003), attention has tended to focus on those exhib- iting cultural backlash (Goodhart, 2017; Norris & Inglehart, 2019) rather than those ‘lead- ing’ cultural change (although Jennings & Stoker [2017], from a political science perspective, have explored the values of higher-status professionals). While findings have emerged regarding associations between cultural consumption and Euroscepticism (Chan, Henderson, Sironi, & Kawalerowicz, 2017), there has been no formal assessment of the role of the cultural sector in current social divisions of the type exemplified by ‘Brexit’. At the individual level, values can be understood as ‘an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable’ (Rokeach, 1973, p. 5); as ‘conceptions of the desirable that guide the way social actors (e.g. organi- sational leaders, policy-makers, individual persons) select actions, evaluate people and events, and explain their actions and evaluations’ (Schwartz, 1999, p. 24); ‘internal cri- teria for evaluation’ (Hechter, 1993, p. 3); and as higher-order preferences over specific preferences, relating to longer-range goals, ideals, moral values and identities (Frankfurt, 1971; Hirschman, 1982; Sen, 1997). Such meta-preferences are involved in self-con- struction and vision of the future, and consideration of themes including ‘solidarity, fair- ness, prudence, and nationalism’ (Fischer, 2014, p. 59). We know that values are primarily formed and embedded during formative years, with cultures changing due to cohort replacement (Mannheim, 1928/1972; Ryder, 1965). It has been found that those born between 1986 and 1990 have significantly different basic values compared with older cohorts due to their experience of the recession of the late 2000s, with ‘increases in the importance of Security-Conformity values during hard times . . . concen- trated among the economically vulnerable and the young’ (Austin, 2015, p. 149). Values are also thought to be patterned by occupation, with those of public sector workers different from those in financial services, for example. In the following analysis, we first investigate the basic values and attitudes of cultural producers, comparing them with other occupational groups. We use measures of values relating to some of the most polarising political questions: from left to right, liberal to authoritarian, and pro-welfare to anti-welfare. We validate findings using a second dataset including relevant values and attitudinal items, which moreover incorporates measures of political behaviour. Cultural producers and cultural values: Data and analysis First, we consider the values of cultural workers, in light of their advantaged social back- ground as established in the previous section (O’Brien et al., 2016; Oakley et al., 2017). 6 The Sociological Review 00(0) There has however been little to date on the social attitudes and values of these workers, particularly from a quantitative perspective (Florida’s [2002] work on America notwith- standing). Variation in basic values by occupation forms a lacuna in the literature on values, with one exception being Broockman, Ferenstein, and Malhotra’s (2019) pio- neering study of the values and policy preferences of Silicon Valley’s elite. We accordingly draw upon the BSA survey, a long-running, high-quality survey fielded annually since 1983 (save the 1987/1992 election years). It involves a multi-stage stratified random sample, with respondents interviewed face-to-face. Each year it asks respondents of their position on basic values, from which are calculated values scales provided with the dataset. Balanced left–right and libertarian–authoritarian values scales were first devised by Heath and Evans with others in the 1990s. In a paper validating these scales, they con- cluded that: ‘[w]hen measured suitably, these form consistent, stable and consequential elements of British political culture’ (Evans, Heath, & Lalljee, 1996, pp. 108–109). We analyse three values dimensions: libertarianism–authoritarianism; welfarism; and left–right values, with details of the items making up each scale specified in online appen- dix Table A2 (see note on access at end of article). To check scale reliability some two decades following their original validation, we calculated Cronbach’s alpha for each val- ues scale, finding 0.74 for libertarianism-authoritarianism, and 0.82 for each of the wel- farism and left–right scales (see Table A3 in the online appendix). We then treat each scale measure as the dependent variable, modelling values positions in terms of occupation to assess whether cultural workers are distinctive, first by comparing them with other work- ers at different levels of occupational status, and then in terms of occupational sector. For the first, we draw on the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC), which categorises occupations across sectors. We use a five-fold categorisa- tion: managerial/professional, intermediate, employers in small organisations, lower supervisory and technical, and routine. Secondly, we use the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 2007, which classifies businesses by type of economic activity. Twenty-one sectors are categorised as well as those who have never had a job and those whose work is ‘not classifiable’. ‘Arts, entertainment and recreation’ includes those employed in creative, arts and entertainment activities; in libraries, archives, museums and other cultural activities; those employed in gambling and betting activities; and those employed in sports, amusement and recreation activities (Prosser, 2009). This is a little broad, but other sectors are likewise – for example, the categorisation of health practition- ers in SIC 2007 covers surgeons and health care assistants alike. Indeed, any differences we find between cultural workers and other sectors might well be attenuated by the inclu- sion of those employed in gambling and sports. Using both occupational status and indus- trial classification allows us to be more certain as to whether any differences are sectoral rather than down to occupational position per se. Ideally, we would distinguish sector and occupational status within a single set of analyses. The key difficulty is that many sectors are relatively concentrated in terms of occupational status, and sample sizes are not suf- ficient to identify occupational versus sectoral effects. Accordingly, we provide both sets of analyses so that cultural workers can be compared with members of other sectors of equivalent occupational status, followed by an exhaustive set of sectoral comparisons. Because the percentage of arts, entertainment and recreation workers in each wave of the BSA is very small (between 1.5% and 2%), we boost our sample by combining six https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0038026119871401 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0038026119871401 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0038026119871401 McAndrew et al. 7 waves of the BSA, pooling the 2010–2015 datasets. We make the strong assumption that there are no period effects on values over this timeframe. Descriptive statistics are avail- able in the online appendix (Table A1). We run an identically specified set of models to examine whether cultural workers are distinctive, taking the same set of additional variables associated with values differences into account. We first treat libertarian–authoritarian values as the outcome of interest (where higher indicates greater authoritarianism); secondly, support for welfare (where higher indicates greater anti-welfarism); and finally, left–right values (where higher indi- cates more right-wing values). We examine how scores on each scale vary by occupa- tional class (comparing cultural workers with managerial, intermediate and routine workers not based in the arts); and then by industrial code. In both cases, we restrict the comparison to BSA survey respondents aged between 23 and 65, to exclude student-age respondents and those of retirement age. This yields a sample size for our analyses ranging from 11,313 to 11,936. Despite this relatively large sample size, given the small proportion of respondents who are cultural workers, we do not restrict the analysis to those who are currently employed: those identifying with a particular sector are likely to retain a connection via shared worldview and per- haps intend a return to work. Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of scores on each scale: lower scores represent more left-wing, more liberal and more pro-welfare values respectively. Figure 1. Distribution of scores on Left-Right, Liberal-Authoritarian, and Welfare scales. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0038026119871401 8 The Sociological Review 00(0) Explaining this relationship: Occupational values in the cultural sector The data show that arts workers are the most liberal on average of all industrial sectors in the BSA. We next examine whether they are more liberal on average than each of the other groups once socio-demographic confounders are taken into account, modelling values as a function first of occupational class, then of sector. In the first case, we catego- rise managerial/professional and intermediate/working class cultural workers separately, to test whether the cultural sector is distinct when taking account of its heavily profes- sional composition. We could also theorise that those with particular values self-select into different fields, with values further reinforced by the sectoral environment. Given that we are working with cross-sectional survey data, we discuss associations between variables rather than making a strong causal argument. In models taking account of occupational class summarised in Figures 2, 4 and 6, we set routine workers as the reference category. In each, unadjusted (raw) means and confidence intervals are presented in grey, and adjusted (predicted) means and confidence intervals in black. In our second, sectoral set of models (with results presented in Figures 3, 5 and 7), we include terms for each economic sector, setting arts, entertainment and leisure workers as the reference category, comparing workers in other sectors to our key sector of interest. Because of the importance of education for basic values (Surridge, 2016) we control for differences in educational attainment, distinguishing graduates, those with some higher education, A-level or equivalent, the old O-level or equivalent, CSEs, ‘foreign qualifica- tions’, no qualifications, and don’t know/refused to answer (a relatively large group). We also control for gender, social generation, marital status, ‘home nation’, ethnicity and reli- gion of upbringing (see online appendix Tables A4–A9 for full details). We find that the effects of socio-demographic control variables on libertarian–author- itarian values are consistent with the established literature (see Tables A4–A5 in the online appendix). With regard to education, every educational group is found to be more liberal than those with no qualifications, except for those providing a ‘don’t know’, refusal or ‘not applicable’ response. The sizes of the effects are as expected, being largest for those with the highest credentials. Turning to occupational class in Figure 2, comparing each group in turn to routine workers, we find (via the confidence intervals presented in black) that managerial and professional workers are significantly more liberal than routine workers, lower supervi- sory and technical significantly less so, while there are no statistically significant differ- ences between those in intermediate occupations, small business owners and routine workers. Those who have never worked appear significantly more liberal, perhaps com- prising a group of those travelling or still in study. We also find that those in the ‘arts: managerial and professional’ and ‘arts: intermediate and routine’ groups are significantly more liberal than routine workers. Moreover, they are more liberal than members of the managerial and professional group, although the difference is not statistically significant. The difference between the two categories of arts workers is also not significant, sug- gesting they share a sectoral rather than class-based values profile. Nevertheless, these results imply that the ‘arts worker’ difference holds even after accounting for education, gender, ethnicity and religion of upbringing. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0038026119871401 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0038026119871401 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0038026119871401 McAndrew et al. 9 These results can be compared with those from a model including a full set of sectoral terms (Table A5), to investigate whether the arts remain distinctive. All sectors were sig- nificantly less liberal than the arts sector at the 1% level, including educators, health work- ers and public administrators, save for information and communication (where p = 0.052), households as employers, extraterritorial organisational workers (such as diplomats and organisations such as the United Nations), and those who have never worked, where such workers were all predicted to be less liberal but where differences were not significant. To simplify presentation of the model results, we calculated predicted scores for each sectoral group assuming mean values for each control in Figure 3. To reiterate, arts work- ers remain the most liberal even when socio-demographic controls have been taken into account, with differences that are statistically significant from all other groups except ICT workers (the second-most liberal group before taking other variables into account), domestic workers, and people who have never had a job or who work in extraterritorial roles (both very small in number). This leaves us confident that there is indeed a sectoral difference in worldview. Turning to welfarist values, in terms of occupational status, those with managerial or professional status are more anti-welfare than those of routine or semi-routine status; so are intermediate workers, and small business owner-employers, and those of lower supervisory or technical status (Figure 4). By contrast, those who have never had a paid job are clearly more pro-welfare. However, arts managers and professionals are more Figure 2. Mean scores on libertarian–authoritarian scale by occupational classification. 10 The Sociological Review 00(0) pro-welfare than even this group, while intermediate arts and entertainment workers are more pro-welfare than routine workers, if a little less than those who have never worked. We see similar patterns when examining the model with a full set of terms for eco- nomic sector (Figure 5). The arts and entertainment sector is the most pro-welfare of all sectors at the 1% level except for, again, domestic workers, people who have never had a job, and those in extraterritorial roles. Finally, we model left–right values. Considering occupational status (Figure 6), those of managerial or professional status, intermediate status and small business owners were all more right-wing than routine and semi-routine workers once other socio-demographic controls were taken into account (Table A8). Lower supervisory workers and those who had never worked were not significantly different. In this model, cultural workers were predicted to be slightly more right-wing on average in their political values than routine and semi-routine workers. However, differences were not significant, and even with a larger sample unlikely to be very large in size. The final model using BSA data predicts left–right values in terms of industrial sector (see Figure 7). Arts, entertainment and lei- sure workers are predicted to be the most left-wing of all sectors, but differences are generally smaller than in the earlier models, and in many cases not statistically signifi- cant. Specifically, workers in the water, transport, hospitality, administration, education, health, services, domestic service, extraterritorial, never-worked and unclassifiable sec- tors are not predicted to be significantly more right-wing (Table A9). Figure 3. Mean scores on libertarian–authoritarian scale by occupational sector. McAndrew et al. 11 Taking the three values measures together, compared with workers of equivalent occupational status, cultural workers are the most liberal on average, and the most pro- welfare (except for the ‘never worked’ sector). Differences in terms of left–right values are less pronounced at a sectoral level, but cultural workers are more left-wing than managerial and professional workers, regardless of their own occupational status. Moreover, it does not appear that the liberal, pro-welfare and left-wing orientation of the arts sector is simply a result of cultural workers being more educated or professionally dominated: differences between arts workers and people working in other sectors increase once other variables are controlled for. These results suggest that cultural pro- ducers, tasked with interpreting and representing cultural memory and the cultural pre- sent, share a distinctive worldview setting them apart from much of the British public. The differences are admittedly not large given the noise in the data, relating in turn to the small size of the cultural workers group (n = 273) in our sample.1 Validating the analysis To further validate the results from the BSA analysis, we incorporate analysis of data from the BES online panel administered by YouGov. The most recent (13th) wave of the BES at the time of our analysis, collected in June 2017, has 31,196 respondents, of whom 26,669 also participated in the previous wave, and of whom 5,832 have participated in all 13 waves from February 2014. Cases are weighted to resemble the national population. Figure 4. Mean scores on welfare scale by occupational classification. 12 The Sociological Review 00(0) The BES is particularly valuable in offering a combination of attitudinal and behav- ioural variables: in addition to asking the types of attitudinal questions typical of the BSA, respondents are asked about their behaviour, including voting, and non-electoral behaviours such as signing petitions and taking industrial action. We can therefore iden- tify whether occupational groups’ attitudes are similar in the BES and in the BSA, and how political behaviours vary by occupation. We thereby triangulate between the two sources to counter the problem of the cultural sector being small in terms of workforce, and to take advantage of robust data at the sectoral level where such sources tend to be lacking. While the BSA is noted for its high-quality sample, drawn from the postcode address file, the BES, in having a number of waves available for the post-June 2016 period, allows us to relate the values of cultural and creative workers explicitly to EU Referendum vote choice. Its key drawback is its online panel design meaning responses are likely to suffer from associated biases, for example regarding poor representation of the digitally disadvantaged. Further, the range of values measures available is smaller. Measures of workforce composition also differ. Accordingly, the BSA and BES are best used in combination to compare cultural workers to others. Together, they offer comple- mentary topic coverage as well as the opportunity for model validation across datasets. We use the following measures for comparison. First, we investigate the left–right and libertarian–authoritarian scales available in the BES to assess whether similar patterns in values exist across the two surveys. Note that these scales run 0–10 rather than 1–5 as in Figure 5. Mean scores on welfare scale by occupational sector. McAndrew et al. 13 the BSA. We then extend our analysis with two attitudinal variables directly relevant to Brexit, of importance given its relation to cultural divides and as a new source of identi- fication. First, on a 0–10 scale, respondents were asked ‘How happy or how disappointed are you that the UK voted to leave the EU?’, where 0 is ‘Extremely disappointed‘, and 10 is ‘Extremely happy’. Secondly, on a 0–10 scale, they were asked ‘How much do you think you have in common with people who want to remain in the EU?’, where 0 is ‘Nothing’ and 10 ‘A great deal’, with this latter measure drawn from Wave 9.2 These two attitudinal variables thereby capture two elements of people’s attitudes towards the EU Referendum, both around an affective response to the result, and a measure of how closely people identify with Remain voters. Finally, we examine two behavioural variables. The first is whether respondents reported having voted to leave the EU, or remain a member. To simplify, we set those who report not having voted aside. The second is a measure of non-electoral political participation. This is an additive scale made up of whether respondents reported having undertaken the following within the last 12 months, drawn from Wave 6: •• Contacting a politician, government or local government official •• Signing a petition on the internet •• Signing an offline petition •• Volunteering for a political party or action group Figure 6. Mean scores on left–right scale by occupational classification. 14 The Sociological Review 00(0) •• Giving any money to a political party, organisation or cause •• Taking part in a public demonstration •• Buying – or refusing to buy – any products for political or ethical reasons •• Going on strike or taking industrial action. The Cronbach’s alpha for the eight items is 0.71, indicating reasonable internal consist- ency. Taken together, these measures capture a broader repertoire of political behaviours and attitudes than available in the BSA, relating directly to the EU Referendum and broader civic engagement. As with the BSA, the fraction of people in cultural occupations in the BES is small. There are further compromises for comparative purposes. Unlike the BSA, there is no variable capturing industrial classification, and fine-grained Standard Occupational Codes are also not available. However, the BES team does include a varia- ble for whether respondents work in occupations classified as the cultural and creative industries (CCI), following the DCMS definition (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS], 2016). This group is significantly larger and broader than that in the BSA, at around 5.5%. It comprises advertising and marketing; architecture; crafts; design; film, TV, video, radio and photography; IT and software development; publishing; muse- ums, galleries and libraries; and music, performing and visual arts. Neither the SIC nor CCI definitions should be viewed as capturing only the subsidised arts sector. However, again, these broader definitions are more likely to reduce rather Figure 7. Mean scores on left–right scale by occupational sector. McAndrew et al. 15 than enhance any sectoral differences we might identify. The BSA cultural workers sam- ple includes gambling and sports (mostly retail betting staff and gym and recreation centre staff), while the BES CCI sample includes those who might otherwise be catego- rised as private sector professional services workers. Indeed, 88% of CCI workers in the BES sample are in managerial and professional occupations, meaning that given our sample sizes, the confidence intervals around estimates for intermediate and routine CCI workers are large. This reflects the occupational basis of the DCMS definition, in which the majority of CCI occupations are located in NS-SEC I and II. Otherwise, our modelling strategy is similar to that for the analysis using BSA data. We use linear regression where the variables are measured on 0–10 and 0–8 scales, and logistic regression for the model of Referendum vote choice (Leave support = 1, Remain = 0). Again, we restrict analysis to those aged 23–65, with identical control variables as for the BSA models, save for religion of upbringing, which is unavailable (using current religious affiliation radically reduces the sample size and so was rejected as an alternative). Again, detailed model results are available in our online appendix (see Tables A11–A16). Figure 8 displays predicted outcomes for each of the models using the BES, again with (weighted) raw means and confidence intervals in grey, and means and confidence intervals after adjusting for control variables in black. Consistent with Figure 4, those working in CCIs in managerial and professional jobs are found to hold significantly more liberal values than any other group, save for those non-managerial CCI workers Figure 8. Predicted outcomes for each of the models using the BES. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0038026119871401 16 The Sociological Review 00(0) (where the confidence interval is very wide, perhaps reflecting the small sample). Unlike in Figure 7, however, those working in CCIs are not here estimated to be significantly more left-wing than the remainder of the population. In this dataset, those in managerial and professional jobs in the CCIs hold similar economic left–right values to those in managerial and professional jobs outside the CCIs. This discrepancy may partly arise due to its being an online panel, with participants particularly well educated and politi- cally engaged, for which sample weights cannot entirely adjust. It further suggests that the left–right differences identified in the BSA sample are likely to be small in the popu- lation if they do exist. The results for our other attitudinal variables are, however, largely consistent with the hypothesis that cultural and creative industry workers hold different attitudes from the rest of the population about the decision to leave the EU. This is particularly the case in terms of happiness with the Referendum result. CCI workers in managerial and profes- sional jobs are significantly less enthusiastic about leaving the EU than any other group, although note that intermediate and routine CCI workers have attitudes indistinguishable from their comparators. By contrast, while those working in the CCIs identify more strongly with Remain voters, these differences are not significant when other variables are taken into account – intriguing given the prominent emergence of ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ as new political identities (Curtice, 2018). We also find differences in political behaviour. Behavioural measures are particularly valuable in indicating active commitment to engagement (Pattie, Seyd, & Whiteley, 2003). Those who are highly engaged behaviourally are likely to have greater political agency and efficacy (Sewell, 1992) and symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 2002), even if their political aims are dissensual. Moreover, behavioural choices provide potentially inform- ative contrasts with values-based measures. The former require explicit choices among strategic alternatives, while the latter relate to instinctive reactions to morally infused questions, to capture the culture–action link (Vaisey, 2009, p. 1688). Regarding the Referendum, only 34% of those working in managerial and professional jobs in the CCIs who reported voting said that they supported leaving the EU in the BES, compared with 52% of the total population who voted in the Referendum. Our model shows that even after accounting for socio-demographic variables, a statistically significant difference persists between those working in cultural and creative jobs and people working in other managerial and professional jobs (see Table A13). While a large literature on EU Referendum vote choice now exists, this occupational effect is a novel finding suggest- ing avenues for further research. In addition, managers and professionals in the CCIs have significantly higher rates of non-electoral political participation than managers and professionals in non-CCI jobs, likely capturing both greater volume of participation and more diversified participation, even taking into account other relevant variables. This may reflect homology between activism for an arts organisation in sourcing funding and support and citizen activism: they involve similar skills and resources (Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995) in translating effort into political outcomes. Civic engagement also reflects access to civic networks of political activists and others who are politically engaged (Putnam, 2000), as well as hav- ing trust in other people and institutions as a basic value (Uslaner, 2000). Our model pre- dicts that compared with otherwise demographically similar managers and professionals, McAndrew et al. 17 creative workers engage in about a quarter of an activity more on average, a difference approaching half the size of the effect of being a graduate compared with having no quali- fications. This is of note since in values-related research the ‘graduate effect’ is generally considered large (see Table A16). Further research would allow us to identify the extent to which this reflects cultural workers’ closer proximity and access to state institutions. In sum, we find that key political attitudes and values of professional and managerial CCI workers appear quite distinct from other workers of equivalent occupational status: significantly less likely to have voted Leave, significantly unhappier with the Referendum result, and with significantly broader political repertoires indicating an additional dimen- sion of social advantage and status. For intermediate and routine CCI workers, differ- ences with other workers of the same occupational status are less distinct, leaving open the possibility that the intersection of sector and occupational status accounts for value and behavioural divergence, although we remain cautious regarding likely mechanisms due to small sample size. Conclusion Cultural production is rightly considered an important area for understanding and explaining contemporary British society. There is extensive evidence that cultural pro- duction is marked by significant forms of exclusion, with associated exclusions found in patterns of cultural consumption. The role of values and attitudes in these exclusions has yet to be fully understood. Our research provides a first contribution in demonstrating that cultural production is characterised by distinct values. We find that cultural workers exhibit values that are unusually liberal, pro-welfare and left-wing by comparison with those of similar occupational status and, in terms of liberalism and welfarism, with cognate sectors. They are also relatively unhappy about leaving the EU, while also reporting having voted Remain to a higher degree than the rest of the population. They also appear to possess greater political efficacy, so that their position in governing the ‘cultural conversation’ is reinforced by their more extensive civic engagement. This suggests a divergence in worldviews between those tasked with representing the nation to itself, and those who inhabit it. It reflects elements of the ‘Two Englands’ high- lighted by Jennings and Stoker (2016) more overtly pronounced in cultural occupations, themselves largely urban-based (Oakley et al., 2017). This divergence has also been noted for Britain, France and the US by Piketty in his (2018) analysis of new cleavages and multidimensional inequalities. This divergence relates to a more general question on the relationship between values and practices. There is a longstanding research tradition concerned with how media frame particular social issues and thus shape and influence society’s values and attitudes. Recent examples include work on austerity and politics (Wren-Lewis, 2018); perceptions of welfare recipients (Reeves & De Vries, 2016); and factual welfare television (De Benedictis, Allen, & Jensen, 2017). While extremely valuable in describing and prob- lematising representation, our contribution is novel in providing the first large-scale empirical analysis of the values and attitudes of cultural workers – with findings which suggest why particular frames might be chosen, and which indicate avenues for further 18 The Sociological Review 00(0) research. That cultural workers tend to be liberal, pro-welfare and relatively left-wing may not be wholly surprising. The question that follows, then, is the distance between the attitudes and values of the sector’s workers and the academic analysis demonstrating bias in reporting or representation, as seen in theatre (Rogers & Thorpe, 2014), and pub- lishing (Ramdarshan Bold, 2019). We are hopeful this discussion will prompt new research to help understand this somewhat paradoxical divergence between values and representations. Are cultural workers’ values irrelevant to the type of culture produced, because the political econ- omy of production is more influential? Here the work of Saha (2018, developing Gray, 2016) demonstrates that costs, ownership and funding models are more impor- tant than ‘demography and representation’ for explaining poor representation and lack of diversity. If this is so, then we might see liberal attitudes as a key criterion for entry to cultural work (as Friedman & Laurison [2019] have observed regarding television commissioning), while indicating that these same attitudes and values are insufficient for challenging and changing the inequalities underpinning the public concerns increasingly voiced. Acknowledgements The authors thank Aveek Bhattacharya, Will Jennings, Jonathan Mellon and the British Election Study team, Michael Rushton, participants at the University of Leicester CAMEo Annual Conference 2017 and at the Understanding Everyday Participation colloquium (Manchester, June 2018), Michaela Benson and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and assistance. We also gratefully acknowledge our collaboration with Arts Emergency, Create London, and the Barbican Centre via the Panic! 2018 project. Funding This work was supported by AHRC grant AH/P013155/1, ‘Who is Missing from the Picture? The Problem of Inequality in the Creative Economy and What We Can Do About It’. Online supplementary data Survey question wording and 16 tables of descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, model results and postestimation tests are available at http://bit.ly/cw_paper_supplementary_data Notes 1. To guard against Type I error, we also conducted a range of postestimation tests, reported in the online appendix (Table A10). We tested whether the categorical variables capturing occupational status and industrial classification were jointly significant in the separate values models: in other words, whether the set of dummies capturing (a) occupational status and (b) sectoral membership added explanatory power to the relevant models compared with not being included. We also tested whether being a cultural worker was statistically significant taking the three values measures as joint dependent variables, nesting items within individu- als. Of the 17 postestimation tests reported in the online appendix (Table A10) all are signifi- cant at the 5% level of significance and all but one at the 1% level. 2. 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Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. www.thesociologicalreview.com/news_stories/tagged/the-sociology-of-brexit www.thesociologicalreview.com/news_stories/tagged/the-sociology-of-brexit work_3uv5mej2ajfirjxvogsgcbwgc4 ---- Building transformative capacity in southern Africa: Surfacing knowledge and challenging structures through participatory Vulnerability and Risk Assessments Article Building transformative capacity in southern Africa: Surfacing knowledge and challenging structures through participatory Vulnerability and Risk Assessments Daniel Morchain Programme Strategy and Impact Team (PSIT), Oxfam GB, Oxford, UK Dian Spear African Climate & Development Initiative, University Avenue South, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa Gina Ziervogel Environmental & Geographical Science Building, South Lane, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa Hillary Masundire Department of Biological Sciences, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana Margaret N Angula Department of Geography, History and Environmental Studies, University of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia Corresponding author: Dian Spear, African Climate & Development Initiative, 6th Floor Geological Sciences Building, University Avenue South, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7700, Cape Town, South Africa. Email: dian.spear@gmail.com Action Research 2019, Vol. 17(1) 19–41 ! The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1476750319829205 journals.sagepub.com/home/arj http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2417-3980 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4219-6809 http://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/journals-permissions http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1476750319829205 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F1476750319829205&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-03-15 Julia Davies African Climate & Development Initiative, University Avenue South, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa Chandapiwa Molefe Department of Biological Sciences, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana Salma Hegga African Climate & Development Initiative, University Avenue South, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa Abstract Although participatory approaches are becoming more widespread, to date vulnerabil- ity assessments have largely been conducted by technocrats and have paid little atten- tion to underlying causes of vulnerability, such as inequality and biased governance systems. Participatory assessments that recognise the social roots of vulnerability, however, are critical in helping individuals and institutions rethink their understanding of and responses to climate change impacts. This paper interrogates the contribution of Oxfam’s Vulnerability and Risk Assessment methodology to enabling transformation at both personal and institutional levels. Three Vulnerability and Risk Assessment exer- cises were conducted in Malawi, Botswana and Namibia by one or more of the authors in 2015 and 2016. Reflecting on these workshops, we explore the contribution that a process like the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment may bring to transformation. We conclude that these types of inclusive and representative participatory approaches can shift narratives and power dynamics, allow marginal voices to be heard, build cross–scalar relationships and enable the co-creation of solutions. Such approaches can play a key role in moving towards transformational thinking and action, especially in relation to climate change adaptation. Keywords Vulnerability assessment, adaptation, Southern Africa, participatory process, transfor- mative capacity, climate change Introduction Action research in the form of truly participatory, representative and inclusive vulnerability assessments may represent a much-needed shift in risk-reduction strategies. Indeed, action research involves bringing together a range of 20 Action Research 17(1) stakeholders to participate in an inclusive process to integrate diverse knowledge and find solutions to problems that concern them and their communities (Bradbury, 2015; Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, & Maguire, 2003). This is different to traditional research projects, which are largely conducted by experts and often miss the nuances of local context, perspectives and preferences (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003; Ortiz Arag�on & Glenzer, 2017). They have also tended to focus on the biophysical impacts of hazards on systems and communities, whilst often over- looking socio-economic factors like governance and gender inequality (Preston, Yuen, & Westaway, 2011). Indeed, many vulnerability assessments undertaken in the context of climate change work have followed this traditional, technocratic approach. As such, vulnerability assessment approaches have largely lacked crea- tivity and innovation in their implementation, and likewise have failed to recognise vulnerability as a social-ecological construct (Tschakert, van Oort, St. Clair, & LaMadrid, 2013). NGOs and civil society organisations have often filled this gap, albeit almost exclusively at a local level. Information about these participatory vulnerability assessments have seldom been published in peer-reviewed journals, which limits their sectorial impact. However, even participatory vulnerability assessments have often failed to be sufficiently inclusive of women and marginal- ised groups, and few have created an environment that enables such groups to freely take part in the exercise and effectively share their knowledge – leading to ineffective risk-reduction strategies (Morchain, Prati, Kelsey, & Ravon, 2015). This lack of focus on social considerations and inequalities in VAs means that issues of power and local knowledge are ignored (Ravon, 2014). Action research is essential for dealing with complex problems such as climate change in a holistic way, as it allows the root causes of marginalisation and vul- nerability to be explored and questioned (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003; Ortiz Arag�on & Glenzer, 2017). This includes questioning the assumptions that drive the current ways in which we respond to global environmental challenges, and in doing so may open new paradigms of social change that position people, not technology alone, at the core of climate change solutions (O’Brien, 2016). In practice, this means recognising that incremental adaptation efforts are often not enough to overcome the challenges presented by climate change and other development processes. Instead, incremental adaptation should operate alongside more strategic approaches that enhance adaptive and transformative capacity and build resilience by addressing the systemic causes of vulnerability (Butler et al., 2016; Kates, Travis, & Wilbanks, 2012; Pelling, O’Brien, & Matyas, 2015; Ziervogel, Cowen, & Ziniades, 2016). To date, there has been limited work on how vulnerability assessments might feed into and support a transformative adaptation agenda. This paper addresses this gap by presenting an approach to vulnerability assess- ments that goes beyond a biophysical and technical focus to understand relational and structural vulnerabilities. It aims to reflect on how a cross–scalar vulnerability assessment process, carried out in Malawi, Botswana and Namibia in 2015 and 2016, might enable transformation that is rooted in social justice and that is built with the knowledge and experience from a wide range of actors across Morchain et al. 21 governance scales. As such, acting on climate change related vulnerabilities becomes an entry point to address multifaceted risks and obstacles to development. The approach draws on a social learning approach that Chung Tiam Fook (2017) suggests can help to unearth structural challenges to identify optimal entry points for transformational adaptation. Such learning is a key component of action research (Burns, Harvey, & Ortiz Arag�on, 2012). Transformation The action research literature acknowledges that transformation is necessary for dealing with wicked problems such as climate change and inequality, where addressing root causes of marginalisation requires engaging with power relations (Ortiz Arag�on & Glenzer, 2017). What is transformation and how is it enabled? Here we understand transformation to be a process that, whether implicitly or explicitly, gradually or suddenly, re-examines the structures that contribute to or hinder the ability of people to have fair access to opportunities to achieve their wellbeing. Literature on transformation is deeply embedded in trying to under- stand structural change and the importance of broader social transformation (Few, Morchain, Spear, Mensah, & Bendapudi, 2017; Pelling et al., 2015; Ziervogel et al., 2016). From a justice perspective, transformation requires ques- tioning who holds power and accountability in society, and how power might be redistributed to increase representation and inclusivity. A current example of transformation is the #MeToo movement, which has challenged historically paternalistic and misogynistic structures (institutions, reg- ulations, policies and practices e.g. in relation to wage disparities, insufficient rep- resentation of women in decision making bodies, but also in relation to the fundamental right to speak up and be heard without fear of reprisal). The move- ment is redrawing what is considered acceptable and unacceptable in the way men and institutions act in relation to women. In other words, #MeToo is contributing to transforming the ways in which power dynamics can – and can no longer – define gender relations. Processes like Oxfam’s Vulnerability and Risk Assessment methodology aim to inspire change that could be considered either transformational (i.e., the transfor- mation of adaptation practice); or transformative (i.e., the transformation of broader aspects of development through adaptation activity) (Few et al., 2017). Such a framing of transformation within vulnerability assessments enables an exploration of the forces shaping climate governance on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, processes like the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment can contest and eventually contribute to transforming the very ideology of adaptation per se, which often solely aims to reduce biophysical impacts. Through the lens of transformation, adaptation responses can be developed in a more inclusive manner that draws from fringe sources of knowledge (e.g. marginalised groups) and which frames adaptation in the broader context of development (De Wit, 2018; Morchain, 2018). 22 Action Research 17(1) We argue that transformation can be enabled by developing an integrated, holistic understanding of the broader system in which adaptation takes place, as well as through the building of relationships and the co-development of solutions (Few et al., 2017; Pelling et al., 2015; Ziervogel et al., 2016). Fundamental to enabling this is cross–scalar collaboration and participation between the multiple stakeholders that play a role in shaping current and desired future adaptation pathways – a feature of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment. Not only can such a participatory approach help stakeholders to develop new skills and build relationships and networks across scales; it can give a voice to otherwise margin- alised individuals or groups, thereby building trust, empowering communities and creating opportunities to shift hierarchical structures of power and authority (see Butler et al., 2016). Through this exercise, stakeholders begin to gain a better understanding of how perceived risks and hazards might affect people differently. New voices, and possibly new leaders, emerge. With an integrated understanding of the problem, stakeholders can work together to find innovative solutions and develop a landscape-wide vision for alternative development pathways (Morchain & Kelsey, 2016). For engagement to lead to transformation, the process needs to be socially inclusive and relational. It also needs to challenge existing societal norms, values and beliefs, and compel stakeholders to question predominant knowledge and governance structures (Jernsand, 2017). These potential outcomes are all indicators of transformation, as they initiate new ways of both knowing and doing (also see Pelling et al., 2015 and Butler et al., 2016). However, sustaining this change beyond the confines of multi-stakeholder engagement processes requires that transforma- tion is supported by an enabling – in many cases transformed – institutional envi- ronment. Without this, deep-rooted and long-lasting change is unlikely to occur. This means that new policies, plans or agreements may need to be forged and that organisational structures and values may need to be revisited with transformation in mind. According to Few et al. (2017, p. 4), radically changing this conventional formulation requires structural reorganisation (‘a major change in the governance structures that frame adaptation’) and reorientation (‘a reconfiguration of social values and social relations in adaptation’). Investment in capacity building is also critical for enabling transformation. This is a common challenge in the developing country context, where resources are usually limited. Burch (2010, p. 287) emphasises that ‘addressing a lack of techni- cal, financial, or human resources is less a matter of creating more capacity than of facilitating the effective use of existing resources’. Part of increasing effectiveness in climate adaptation and development efforts depends, precisely, on ensuring responses are aligned with the needs of people directly affected, as can be identified through participatory vulnerability assessments. Capacity building should not be exclusively understood as, or aimed solely at, building technical skills. Indeed, leadership and process facilitation skills are key elements in capacity building. Yet facilitation and leadership skills alone are not able to shift structures. Rather, their objective should be to steer conversations and promote a constructive Morchain et al. 23 dialogue that challenges existing power dynamics. Having transformation ‘cham- pions’ emerge from vulnerability assessments is an ideal outcome. Key to these processes being long lived is community self-organisation, and the capacity and willingness of communities to initiate, and live with, change (Butler et al., 2016; Pelling et al., 2015). Facilitation, understood in the broadest sense, thus plays a key role in shaping pathways to transformation. Ziervogel et al. (2016) invite the exploration of an alternative paradigm that focuses on ‘transformative capacities’ as opposed to adaptive capacities. This con- scious shift demands a reconsideration of where change needs to happen and, as such, leads us to explore the extent to which socio-economic structures promote or hinder equity and sustainability – and subsequently challenge the social injustices existing within the system. For Ziervogel et al. (2016), acquiring and using trans- formative capacities means that people can have a say in shaping the world that they wish to inhabit. This can be pursued by promoting empowerment through participation and co-creation. However, because this is likely to require shifts in agency and power, its success will partly depend on a wide spectrum of stake- holders welcoming, accepting, or exploring collaboratively what new paradigms might entail. The three mutually reinforcing transformative capacities that Ziervogel et al. (2016) suggest are needed include: individual agency, social cohe- sion, and the promotion of a renewed spiritual and pragmatic awareness of the importance and fragility of our relationship with ecosystems. The three Vulnerability and Risk Assessments that we ran in Southern Africa aimed to shift the discussion and the framing of adaptation towards building transformative capacity. The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process, developed by Oxfam in 2013, was initially aimed at pushing staff, partners and community members to think beyond the frequently-used programmatic responses to challenges such as disaster risk, climate change impacts and addressing food insecurity, and to explicitly address structural challenges across levels of governance. This process has since been increasingly adopted by academia and multilateral organisations looking to devel- op a holistic understanding of challenges and opportunities from multiple perspec- tives. As such, the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment methodology and the action research approach share the common objective of learning and co-development of knowledge in line with the principles social learning. They both call for a consid- eration of power dynamics and a greater understanding of context, which can result from bringing together different stakeholders with diverse knowledge and allowing these voices to be heard through inclusive and representative participa- tion. The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process aims to give stakeholders the opportunity to experience the benefits (and difficulties) of thinking about adapta- tion and development in a multi-hazard, multi-stakeholder, exploratory and par- ticipatory manner. In seeking social progress, then, the process of understanding 24 Action Research 17(1) and assessing vulnerability becomes as important, if not more, than its very find- ings (Preston et al., 2011). The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment is carried out in a two-day workshop that is facilitated by a combination of NGO/government officials or NGO/ academic partners. It seeks to include representatives from communities, civil society organisations, NGOs, academia, local and national government and the private sector (Morchain & Kelsey, 2016). The first step in the four-step process is the Initial Vulnerability Assessment, in which a list of hazards and issues are identified and prioritised in relation to the key social groups and livelihood activ- ities in question. All participants vote in these prioritisations. In the second step, Impact Chain Exercise, participants map the direct and indirect impacts of these priority hazards and issues. This step aims to build a better understanding of how impacts can multiply and accumulate through systems over time and highlights possible leverage points for action. Step 3, Adaptive Capacity Analysis, fleshes out participant ideas for addressing challenges or system inequalities identified in step 2. In the final step, Aligning Findings with Opportunities, the ideas developed are turned into implementable solutions by participants exploring possible funding opportunities and identifying key stakeholders that need to be engaged. Where possible, it also links the findings of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment to existing plans and processes. This is important for establishing how the responsi- bilities for action might be shared amongst stakeholders and for reducing any possible duplication of efforts and/or allotted finances. The ultimate objective of this type of vulnerability assessment is to make plan- ning and decision-making processes more equitable and participatory, and to increase the agency of people experiencing reduced power to influence such pro- cesses. Indeed, it is recognised that processes that genuinely enables stakeholder representation and participation can lead to more beneficial social and environ- mental outcomes (De Vente, Reed, Stringer, Valente, & Newig, 2016). They also increase the potential for transformation by questioning prevailing values, norms and governance; developing new ways of working that are based on collaboratively-derived visions for an alternative development pathway and pro- viding a platform for the establishment of new partnerships and cooperatives, including through community self-organisation. The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment, nevertheless, is merely a two-day exercise with stakeholders, and as such it only provides a structure under which these dialogues can start. The real test of the long-term sustainability of these objectives – and indeed of their expected outcome of promoting or achieving transformation – is in the follow- up and in subsequent efforts to consolidate relationships between stakeholders. Methods Linked to the ‘Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions’ research project, the Universities of Botswana, Cape Town and Namibia worked with Oxfam GB to promote research uptake. As part of this partnership an Oxfam GB representative Morchain et al. 25 trained researchers at these universities in how to conduct a Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process. Workshops were conducted in Botswana (Masundire et al., 2016), Malawi (Morchain et al., 2016) and Namibia (Hegga et al., 2016) with different contexts (see Table 1), co-facilitated by the University staff and Oxfam GB representative (all co-authors on the paper). Ahead of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment, stakeholder-mapping exercises were conducted with local stake- holders, which led to the identification of the so-called Knowledge Group (the key stakeholders in the landscape in question). This ensured that a large diversity of views, including those of marginalised and least powerful groups, would be present in the room. Ahead of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshop, individ- uals or institutions within the Knowledge Group were also asked to produce their own version of the lists of key ‘hazards and issues’ and of ‘social groups and livelihoods’, as a way to ensure that a wide range of perspectives informed the framing of the exercise. The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshops brought together the Knowledge Group (ca. 20–35 persons) for a two or two and a half day event, where the four steps of the methodology were undertaken as a collaborative effort. In facilitating the three Vulnerability and Risk Assessments, our intention as researchers and practitioners was to avoid influencing the process with the agendas of our project or organisations. This was due to ethical concerns, but also because a biased process would risk losing legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders. However, the fact that we are all knowledgeable about climate change and development means that we inevitably added substance to the debate through our facilitation. Reflexivity is important, and we recognise that our affiliations (as academics work- ing on climate change and an NGO working on poverty reduction) and the nature of our funding streams (i.e. the ‘Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions’ and the ‘Tea Revitalisation’ projects) themselves strongly framed the discussion. The out- come would surely have been different if we were health sector professionals, or even if we worked in the climate field but represented, for example, a multilateral bank. Therefore, every vulnerability assessment undertaken is itself framed for a purpose, which affects its outcome. Despite this, we sought to minimise this bias by framing the problem widely (as one of development and not exclusively of climate change) and by using our knowledge and experience to gently guide, rather than regulate, conversations. Throughout the three workshops, we also consciously tried to promote discus- sions wherein stakeholders with the least power would have a safe and welcoming environment to speak, as well as enough time to do so. For example, we avoided using scientific jargon and encouraged speaking in mother tongue and using ver- nacular language among stakeholders. Translators were available to assist when language was an obstacle, and in cases where less powerful groups seemed more comfortable discussing their ideas in small groups and voicing their consensus through a neutral translator, rather than a group representative, this was done. This bottom-up, participatory approach is fundamental to the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process. Through ongoing engagement beyond the workshop, 26 Action Research 17(1) T a b le 1 . K e y a sp e c ts o f V u ln e ra b il it y a n d R is k A ss e ss m e n t w o rk sh o p s c o n d u c te d in B o ts w a n a , M a la w i a n d N a m ib ia b a se d o n H e g g a e t a l. (2 0 1 6 ), M a su n d ir e e t a l. (2 0 1 6 ) a n d M o rc h a in e t a l. (2 0 1 6 ). B o ts w a n a M a la w i N a m ib ia C li m at e S e m i- a ri d T ro p ic a l S e m i- a ri d F o c u s B o b ir w a S u b -D is tr ic t R u ra l a n d p se u d o -u rb a n M u la n je a n d T h yo lo M u n ic ip a li ti e s T e a in d u st ry O n e si C o n st it u e n c y in th e O m u sa ti R e g io n R u ra l L iv e li h o o d s C o m m e rc ia l a n d sm a ll -s c a le /s u b si s- te n c e li v e st o c k a n d c ro p fa rm in g ; M o p a n e c a te rp il la rs ; v e g e ta b le tr a d in g ; h a n d ic ra ft s; so c ia l g ra n ts T e a in d u st ry : S m a ll h o ld e r (s m a ll sc a le ) te a g ro w in g a n d c o m m e rc ia l (e st a te ) te a g ro w in g ; c o m m u n it y e n tr e p re n e u rs ; sk il le d a n d u n sk il le d la b o u r C o m m e rc ia l a n d sm a ll -s c a le /s u b si s- te n c e li v e st o c k a n d c ro p fa rm in g ; n o n -t im b e r fo re st p ro d u c ts (e .g .: m o p a n e c a te rp il la rs a n d m a ru la fr u it s) ; fi sh h a rv e st in g ; h a n d ic ra ft s; so c ia l g ra n ts S ta k e h o ld e rs P o li c y m a k e rs ; lo c a l a n d d is tr ic t g o v - e rn m e n t o ff ic ia ls ; N G O s; c o m m u n it y le a d e rs ; fa rm e rs a n d m o p a n e c a te r- p il la r h a rv e st e rs ; c h u rc h g ro u p ; c o m m u n it y -b a se d o rg a n is a ti o n s; u n e m p lo y e d yo u th T e a e st a te m a n a g e rs ; in te rn a ti o n a l a n d d o m e st ic te a tr a d e rs a n d re ta il e rs ; n a ti o n a l a n d d is tr ic t g o ve rn m e n t; lo c a l p o li c e fo rc e ; c iv il so c ie ty o rg a n is at io n s; u n io n re p re se n ta ti v e s; c o m m u n it y m e m b e rs ; N G O s O n e si c o m m u n it y, th e tr a d it io n a l a u th o ri ty , R e d C ro ss , th e S C O R E p ro je c t, th e O n e si C o n st it u e n c y D e v e lo p m e n t C o m m it te e , th e O n e si C o n st it u e n c y O ff ic e , O lu sh a n d ja H o rt ic u lt u re A ss o c ia ti o n , th e M in is tr y o f Y o u th , S p o rt s a n d C u lt u re , M in is tr y o f A g ri c u lt u re , W a te r a n d F o re st ry a n d O m u sa ti R e g io n a l C o u n c il . S e le c te d v u ln e ra b il it ie s a n d so m e o f th e im p a c t c h a in (p a rt ia l li st ) 1 . D ro u g h t ! re d u c ti o n in w a te r, c ro p y ie ld s, fo d d e r, m o p a n e c a te rp il la rs & w il d li fe sp e c ie s. 2 . In a d e q u a te a lt e rn a ti v e s to a g ri c u l- tu re -b a se d li v e li h o o d s ! fe w e r o p ti o n s fo r in c o m e g e n e ra ti o n . 1 . C li m a te c h a n g e ! re d u c e d : q u a n ti ty a n d q u a li ty o f te a p ro - d u c e d , in c o m e , fo o d se c u ri ty , a c c e ss to w a te r. 2 . L o w w a g e s, h a rs h tr e a tm e n t a n d se x u a l h a ra ss m e n t o f te a 1 . D ro u g h t ! re d u c e d : c ro p y ie ld s, fo d d e r, w a te r a n d g ra ss , n o n - ti m b e r fo re st p ro d u c ts . In c re a se d : li v e st o c k m o rt a li ty a n d lo ss o f w il d li fe . (c o n ti n u e d ) Morchain et al. 27 T a b le 1 . C o n ti n u e d B o ts w a n a M a la w i N a m ib ia 3 . F o o t a n d m o u th d is e a se ! E x tr a ti m e & c o st o f tr a n sp o rt a ti o n to fi n d n e w m a rk e ts . p lu c k e rs ! p o v e rt y, fo o d in se - c u ri ty , v ic ti m is a ti o n 3 . A g e in g te a b u sh e s ! L o w y ie ld s, lo w q u a li ty , re d u c e d e m p lo y m e n t & in c o m e o p p o rt u n it ie s. 2 . F lo o d ! In c re a se d : d a m a g e to in fr a - st ru c tu re , w a te r b o rn e d is e a se s, so il e ro si o n , lo ss o f li fe . D e c re a se d : g ra zi n g , c ro p y ie ld s 3 . L a c k o f a c c e ss to c li m a te in fo rm a - ti o n ! c o m p ro m is e d p la n n in g P ro p o se d re sp o n se s (p a rt ia l li st ) 1 . In c re a si n g aw a re n e ss a n d u p ta k e o f d ro u g h t m a n a g e m e n t st ra te g ie s 2 . D e v e lo p in g m a rk e ti n g sk il ls a n d e d u c a ti o n 3 . E x p lo ri n g a n d e x p lo it in g o p p o rt u n i- ti e s id e n ti fi e d su c h a s th e a b u n d a n c e o f g ro u n d w a te r fo r c ro p ir ri g a ti o n a n d b o tt li n g w a te r fo r h u m a n c o n su m p ti o n 1 . Im p le m e n ta ti o n o f n a ti o n a l c li - m a te c h a n g e la w a n d p o li c y ; p ro v is io n o f ta rg e te d w e a th e r & c li m a te in fo rm a ti o n 2 . C re a ti o n o f a W o rk in g G ro u p to a d d re ss se x u a l h a ra ss m e n t; p o li c y d e ve lo p m e n t o n re d u c in g h a ra ss m e n t; tr a in in g o f w o rk e rs in in d u st ri a l & la b o u r re la ti o n s 3 . In ve st m e n t in re se a rc h a n d d e ve lo p m e n t in th e te a se c to r 1 . In fl u e n c e u p ta k e o f d ro u g h t m a n a g e - m e n t st ra te g ie s a n d a c c e ss to w a te r so u rc e s 2 . U se o f e a rt h d a m s fo r fl o o d c o n tr o l 3 . S tr e n g th e n in g a d v ic e a n d o p ti o n s fo r se a so n a l c li m a te in fo rm a ti o n fr o m e x te n si o n o ff ic e rs 28 Action Research 17(1) this type of approach can help to build trust, enhance the integration of knowledge and lead to creative and innovative solutions. The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process enhances the degree to which stakeholders take ownership of the problem, because knowledge and trust is built from within the Knowledge Group itself. This increases commitment to jointly finding and implementing sol- utions, rather than the identification and implementation of solutions being driven by external facilitators/researchers. Identifying and acting on potential contributions to transformation The ambition behind conducting the Vulnerability and Risk Assessments in Botswana, Malawi and Namibia has not just been to understand vulnerability in a social-ecological landscape that faces both high impacts from climate and envi- ronmental change and considerable challenges around marginalisation and gover- nance. These assessments aimed to take an initial step towards collaboratively identifying transformation pathways in development practices through adaptation responses. Because of the social learning principles in the design of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process there is a focus on learning from each other, seeing different perspectives and collectively finding solutions. We believe the process started to sow the seeds of transformation. Transformations that aim to shift behaviours, norms and practice need to be embedded and absorbed within social structures, and as such they exist as continually evolving processes; not as products. Notwithstanding, there are other transformations that can result from technological breakthroughs, which can indeed be categorised as products – e.g. a radically adapted seed. These types of transformations are, nev- ertheless, less relevant to this discussion. Much of the contribution to transforma- tion that the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshops generated depended on their appropriate framing. These framings consisted of being deeply cognisant of power dynamics; seeing current problems in a holistic light; building new rela- tionships and networks based on trust; and contributing to future change (also see Butler et al., 2016). Each one of these is described in more detail below. Participation, power and agency Participatory processes such as Vulnerability and Risk Assessment can shift dom- inant power dynamics (see Jernsand, 2017). One place where power imbalances often reveal themselves is in group settings, where there tend to be unspoken rules as to who gets to talk and who is listened to. In the Vulnerability and Risk Assessments, there was mostly a combination of external and internal facilitators, and each workshop was designed as a structured process that had both plenary and small group discussions. This meant that all participants were actively encouraged to participate. The facilitators managed to establish an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect, which encouraged stakeholders to express their views. This was Morchain et al. 29 especially important given that the participants were from various backgrounds and not all were formally educated. One participant in Botswana reflected that ‘this was an opportunity for different views to come together. Everyone was free to express themselves on any issue they wanted’. Although some of the participants who were used to being listened to from their regular position of power tried to ‘push’ their opinions, others from the local villages, who might not normally say much in a context where there are government officials, managed to share valuable perspec- tives and were listened to. One stakeholder reflected that ‘at the beginning of day 1 I didn’t understand why mopane caterpillar harvesters [who are predominantly female] were sitting around this table. Now it is clear’. Through the carefully facilitated Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process, opportunities emerged across all three cases for power differentials to shift in small ways. This reflects a conscious effort to build agency of the least powerful (one key transformative capacity) by setting up processes for speaking ‘truth to power’ that can contribute to narrowing power differentials. In Namibia, an expert from the agriculture sector acknowledged that he was impressed with the ‘wealth of knowl- edge and level of understanding of local farmers’. This illustrated the potential to transform how government officials and experts perceive farmers’ knowledge, and the possibility to open up new avenues for communication between groups that might otherwise have limited interaction with one another. Recognition of the value of local knowledge encourages knowledge co-production, power sharing and egalitarianism, which is necessary for transforming conventional decision- making processes. Vulnerability and Risk Assessments are certainly not a solution for shifting power, but rather speak to one of the potential ways in which this might be achieved. Pushing the boundaries of existing structures of authority can be empow- ering, as evidenced by an elderly basket weaver who commented that ‘I used to think my ideas weren’t worthwhile. Now I think I can make changes in my life and I know it is possible’. Once stakeholders became comfortable working together they found value in the participatory approach. One participant said: ‘I’ve been thin- king. . .the next time we should invite ourselves to each other’s meetings rather than wait for people to come from far to do it’. Indeed, participatory approaches that are initiated and facilitated internally are an important indicator of transformation. Vulnerability and Risk Assessments can also serve to promote the agency of marginalised groups, as they raise awareness of people’s challenges in a semi-public space, thereby increasing the understanding – and accountability – of authorities. This could lead to the rise of so-called ‘champions’ at different levels. One striking aspect of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process in Malawi was the issue of harsh treatment and sexual harassment of tea pluckers. This was at first rejected as not being relevant or pertinent enough for discussions related to risk and vulner- ability – which reveals a narrow understanding of vulnerability – but was eventu- ally recognised by everyone as a key aspect. This shift was enabled by genuine representation in the group, and by creating an environment whereby one of the least powerful groups, the tea pluckers, managed to freely convey the issue of 30 Action Research 17(1) sexual harassment as fundamental to the industry’s sound operation and sustain- ability. In doing so, they gained support from the representative of the Ministry of Labour who, from a position of power, managed to impel tea estate managers to agree to the formation of a multi-stakeholder working group to look into this issue in more depth. This outcome shows that the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment can also be a process whereby alliances are formed to push for a specific agenda to address vulnerability. It has also been found elsewhere that through collaboration, participants of such processes can have more power working together than indi- vidually (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003). Shift in understanding the problem Underpinning the conceptual frame of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment is the opportunity for participants to develop a richer understanding of the ways in which current issues and hazards affect different social groups and (eco)systems in the landscape, and how these interactions may overlap and possibly exacerbate the impact. This exploration includes an analysis of how impacts might be best addressed, drawing on knowledge from all stakeholders in the group. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Vulnerability and Risk Assessments led to a shift in understanding the nature of the challenge at hand. As one of the participants in the Namibian Vulnerability and Risk Assessment said ‘Through discussions I realized that it’s the information that is needed. If all the people were here to hear what we have discussed it would be easier for us to deal with the changes in climate. I am impressed and surprised by the information [we got] – some of it I didn’t know about.’ In Namibia, the participants found the Impact Chain Analysis exercise to be particularly valuable. As explained by a government official from the Omusati Region, ‘the part where we did the Impact Chain Analysis in groups was useful and interesting because I came to understand the problems arising from the hazards’. This speaks to building the transformative capacity of changing how we view our relation to the natural environment (as described by Ziervogel et al., 2016) as a key factor that can suffer, but also contribute to supporting people’s efforts to build their resilience. Because different social groups experience the impacts of hazards differently, according to their vulnerability, the process allowed stakeholders to understand the same issues from different perspectives. In the Malawi case, the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment improved everyone’s understanding of the impacts faced by the tea industry and how different groups and sectors are affected. In environments that lack strong foundations of repre- sentative governance, existing power holders tend to understand the meaning of sustainability of an industry – tea, in this case – almost exclusively from economic/ financial perspectives, thereby overlooking important social aspects. The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment in Malawi showed that the industry’s Morchain et al. 31 sustainability has most often been measured according to domestic and macroeco- nomic indicators, while social risks have largely been ignored. Discussions around promoting a living wage for unskilled labourers tended to be dismissed with argu- ments that suggested the industry’s profitability was more important. In this sense, the transformative element introduced by the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment was to find a way to foster a multi-stakeholder dialogue whereby the full spectrum of hazards and issues could be jointly identified, assessed and prioritised. The fact that ‘sexual harassment and harsh treatment of unskilled workers’ emerged as one of the four key hazards represented a breakthrough that pushed social issues up in the discussion about the tea industry’s sustainability. As Few et al. (2017) indicate, lasting transformative change requires the reorganisation of governance structures that promote social justice. As seen in the Malawi case, such reorganisations can benefit from cross-sector partnerships among civil society, private sector (tea estates) and government (Ministry of Labour). Through the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process in Malawi, stakehold- ers became more aware of the importance of understanding the ‘big picture’ of the industry’s sustainability, which they began to realise depends not only on its finan- cial/economic productivity, but also on the wellbeing of its stakeholders. The emphasis on understanding the system holistically is definitely one of the important contributions that the Vulnerability and Risk Assessments made. However, a Vulnerability and Risk Assessment needs to be followed by a longer-term pro- cess, otherwise it is likely that participants will return to their former way of understanding climate impacts and adaptation. Starting to see alternatives Throughout the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process, the Knowledge Group became increasingly comfortable with one another, with the process and with each other’s points of view. Through this process, the diversity of Knowledge Group members’ interests and knowledge led to new ideas on adaptation possibil- ities. These emerging alternatives to traditional ways of approaching development challenges is a key contribution of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment towards transforming the mindsets of stakeholders through collaborative and cross–scalar ways of thinking. In Namibia, the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process helped the group to realise that there is a lack of self-organisation at the community level, and they learnt that being more organised could increase their resilience to drought. One adaptation idea that emerged in this case was that they could work together to set up a food bank mechanism at the traditional authority office. Each household could contribute 20 litres of mahangu (pearl millet) after each harvest, which would serve as a contingency plan for low rainfall seasons and contribute to com- munal food security. In Malawi, the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment was valued because it pro- moted ways to revise the members’ initial assumptions and to think beyond the 32 Action Research 17(1) obvious threats and opportunities to the industry; i.e. from understanding progress based on the industry’s financial competitiveness, to progress resulting from a combination of financial, social and environmental conditions. The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment provided the methodological approach to do this, as well as a solutions-oriented approach that enabled participants to come out of the exercise not just with newly identified problems and risks, but also with jointly generated ideas to move forward. Building social networks across scales In addition to being fundamental to action, relationship building is one of the most important outcomes of participatory processes (Ortiz Arag�on & Glenzir, 2017). It is also essential for building the transformative capacity of social cohesion (see Ziervogel et al., 2016). In all three of the cases, the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment helped to forge new relationships between stakeholders, especially across different levels of governance. In Namibia, a member of the Constituency Development Committee said, ‘I networked with different stakeholders including UNAM (the University of Namibia, a tertiary institution) and SCORE’ (a United Nations Developed Programme climate resilience project). This speaks to how the workshop linked people working at the local constituency level to those working on regional and national programmes and with national universities. A forestry officer at the Namibia Vulnerability and Risk Assessment specified how important it was to him to have ‘networking and harmonization of multi- stakeholders to have one objective of addressing the issue [of climate change]’. In Botswana, the good results of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment exercise in Bobirwa, together with strategic efforts by the University of Botswana, caught the attention of national level government officials, who proposed running a national level training in Mahalapye in August 2018 (which included a training on the methodology for district economic and district development officers from across the country). This provided a rare opportunity for Ministers and Directors to engage with planning officers and with marginalised groups to stress the impor- tance of bottom up development and adaptation planning in a practical way. The sustained engagement of high level government personnel beyond the Mahalapye event, and the commitment of the trained district level officials from different parts of the country to support new Vulnerability and Risk Assessment processes (e.g. coming to co-facilitate one VRA workshop in Chobe District in January 2019) suggests an honest, meaningful buy-in by key decision-makers. In addition to developing new relationships, stakeholders who do not usually speak to one anoth- er were exposed to each other’s views in a safe and informal space for dialogue. This helped not only in conveying information from the bottom up, but also from powerful stakeholders to those with less power. In Malawi, for example, tea pluck- ers appreciated learning about the bigger picture operation of the tea industry and all its complexities, which seemed to spark a sense of belonging and unity with the other people present. Morchain et al. 33 Beyond the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshop Adaptation responses often focus on discrete events and interventions aimed at reducing climate change risks, impacts and vulnerability. What is clear is that processes are just as important, particularly when more transformative changes are needed. As such, there are many conversations, activities, attitudes and struc- tural arrangements that can either support or hinder transformation. Given that the two-day workshops were brief, the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment in itself did not constitute transformation of the system, although it did start to shift ways of working. Importantly, the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process set in motion novel and alternative conversations and processes that can continue to build transformative capacities and support transformation goals. In Botswana, a series of engagements emerged from the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment. The sub-district’s economic planner attended the initial workshop and asked the team from the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions project to consider convening another Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshop within the sub-district. He wanted staff to gain competence in running a Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process so that the sub-district council could use the methodology for future planning, with the intention of undertaking genuinely bottom-up devel- opment planning processes. This ‘adoption’ of Vulnerability and Risk Assessment as a planning tool by the sub-district management can be a significant contribution towards transformation, which crystallised in a national-level event where econom- ic and planning officers from all districts of the country were trained on Vulnerability and Risk Assessment in August 2018 (with co-funding provided by the Government of Botswana). Subsequently, a national newspaper featured a speech by the Acting Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration who endorsed the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment, saying that it made development planning participatory, representative and inclusive. This indicates high-level buy-in to the process, which is essential for transforma- tion. Separately, the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions team was also invited to contribute to the District Development Plan by adding a chapter on climate change. Another significant influence beyond the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshops was how the findings were shared through other platforms and arenas at both regional and sub-national levels. Coming out of the Namibian Vulnerability and Risk Assessment, a short video was made on the process. This was used for teaching in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in courses on vulnerability assessments and climate change and food security/devel- opment, more generally. In addition, the video was screened at the international Adaptation Futures conference in 2016, and a Vulnerability and Risk Assessment role play session was held to promote discussion on emerging vulnerability assess- ment approaches. The findings from the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshops in Namibia and Botswana were also presented at the Africa Drought Conference 34 Action Research 17(1) held in Windhoek, Namibia in 2016. This prompted further informal engagements amongst the Omusati Regional Council officials during the conference, co- organised by researchers from the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions proj- ect. This vertical interaction across scales is central to transformation, yet is often missing (Pelling et al., 2015). It also provided an opportunity to share a multi- faceted understanding of vulnerability that drew on social, environmental and economic concerns, experienced differently, depending on scale and goals. In Malawi, a direct impact after the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment work- shop was the intention expressed by the representative of the Ministry of Labour to revisit existing statutes that protect unskilled labourers in the tea industry from sexual harassment and harsh treatment and review their enforcement to date. Although it is difficult to assess direct causality, the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process – understood as an element in the larger context of the Malawi Tea 2020 programme – is likely to have contributed to the promotion of gender equality in the tea sector, in the form of subsequent investments and alli- ances with Oxfam by large producers and retailers in the United Kingdom. On the other hand, this example also shows that the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment only initiated a moment of transformation. Dealing with the deeper causes that have led to these attitudes and abuses would require a continued process aimed at addressing the underlying factors (such as through discussions facilitated by the working group intended to be created after the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment). Lessons learned and conclusions The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment approach taken in Namibia, Botswana and Malawi served to build transformative capacities among stakeholders, includ- ing the three identified by Ziervogel et al. (2016), i.e. agency, social cohesion, and a new understanding of the relationship between people with ecosystems. The pro- cess enabled a crucial ‘inward journey’ at both individual and institutional levels. It also allowed possible adaptation actions to be identified and began paving the way for imagining more transformative opportunities that could jointly address both climate risks and broader developmental concerns. Through the different workshop processes, new light was shed on how different hazards and risks play out in the three landscapes studied, how the impacts of these hazards manifest to affect social groups differently, and some of the underlying factors making people vulnerable. Because of the nature of the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment process, adaptation responses were explored in the context of the larger developmental challenge in the southern Africa region, and from a diverse range of perspectives. In so doing, the process allowed a shift in understanding climate change as a biophysical challenge alone, to understanding it as a social issue, largely determined by existing power and governance arrangements. It also emphasised the need to include a spectrum of knowledge sources to reach an optimal understanding of the problems at hand. Crucially, the Vulnerability and Morchain et al. 35 Risk Assessments described here helped to identify and raise the profile of issues that had been previously unaddressed or not addressed sufficiently, but that none- theless contribute to the vulnerability of least powerful groups. For example, the challenges of mopane caterpillar harvesters in Bobirwa; the sexual harassment and harsh treatment of unskilled labourers in the tea industry in Thyolo and Mulanje; and the lack of social and self-organisation preventing collective action at the community level in the Omusati region of Namibia, were all unearthed through the process. This indicates an early step toward transformation, in that it repre- sents the advancement of social justice outcomes that could, in the longer term, increase the effectiveness of adaptation efforts. Shifting power dynamics by promoting and creating alliances between relatively powerless and powerful actors across several levels of governance is a step towards enabling transformation. Alliances can be built so that issues affecting powerless groups can be acknowledged and addressed together with individuals and institu- tions with power, where previously these groups had no influence (e.g. the case of the Ministry of Labour in Malawi supporting the plight of tea pluckers). The three cases discussed in this paper also show that facilitating women’s participation and enabling their voices to be heard by decision makers at higher governance levels is essential for securing social justice as a central objective of transformation in adaptation. It follows that connecting the outcomes of processes like the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment with higher levels of government and other influential stakeholders, including multilateral organisations, is often vital for the seeds of transformation to have a chance to germinate. Although Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshops can improve under- standing of the problem, forge relationships between different scales and sectors and identify possible solutions in themselves, for transformation to be enabled there needs to be a continued process rather than a one-off workshop. In addition, such a process should be increasingly driven by stakeholders (e.g. local govern- ments, civil society organisations), rather than by external organisations. This requires building the capacity and leadership of internal actors and organisations to convene, organise and facilitate such a process, which itself requires these actors to appreciate the value of investing their time in it. Ideally, for actions to be taken forward, leaders that can create and maintain a constructive atmosphere among participants, including beyond the workshop process, should be identified. The national level training of government officials in Botswana in August 2018 is illus- trative of this: following the training, the trainees applied their new skills by run- ning a Vulnerability and Risk Assessment in Mahalapye District. However, it became clear that ongoing support from the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment promoters (in this case the University of Botswana and Oxfam GB) would still be needed if the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment processes are to be repeated sub- nationally. In other words, stakeholders’ reactions to the activity suggested their mindset had welcomed the principles of Vulnerability and Risk Assessment – and of transformation. However, even with a political mandate and will, such processes still need operational support. 36 Action Research 17(1) The implications of Vulnerability and Risk Assessment-type processes are important to consider for development and climate researchers and practitioners. The first big change that is required is the way that people and organisations contribute to framing adaptation. Rather than esteeming ‘expert’ sources of knowledge and prioritising the biophysical elements of climate change, a more holistic and people-centred framing is needed. Second, it is important to recognise power and governance (including climate financing structures) as important shapers of both vulnerability and adaptation outcomes – and, subsequently, to include these as key determinants of climate and development research. Third, by acknowledging social justice and the principles of inclusivity, and making repre- sentation and fair participation standard to adaptation practice, researchers and practitioners could contribute to a genuine shift in what the sector values. In this way, adaptation efforts would centre on people, not on infrastructure and other technical fixes. Truly participatory vulnerability assessments tend to be convened and facilitat- ed by non-governmental or civil society organisations and are therefore rarely reported in peer-reviewed journals. Action research offers the opportunity to main- stream vulnerability assessments in academic circles, with a renewed appreciation that vulnerability assessments need to address social injustice and the climate change adaptation problem beyond a technocratic/biophysical narrative. By cre- ating dialogue spaces, building social capital, confronting embedded practices and promoting learning, vulnerability assessments can help promote transformations in the face of complex challenges (Ortiz Arag�on & Glenzer, 2017). Indeed, engag- ing in participatory processes that can shift narratives and power dynamics; allow marginal voices to be heard; build cross–scalar relationships; and enable people to see the need for systemic change and co-created alternative solutions, is an impor- tant step in better understanding and influencing the context in which such trans- formations can occur. It is time for leading institutions in the climate change sector to recognise that achieving more socially just outcomes from adaptation efforts requires transform- ing the approaches they have so far pursued, even though this may risk their current influential positions. Indeed, it would be disingenuous to call for transfor- mation in the sector, while expecting at the same time to preserve intact the roles and privileged positions of power of researchers, practitioners, and members of multilateral and donor institutions. Transformation, after all, also requires looking inwards and being willing to dissent and disrupt an existing order that largely disregards justice in climate change adaptation. Acknowledgements We are grateful to all the stakeholders for their active participation in the Vulnerability and Risk Assessment workshops. Irene Kunamwene, Kulthoum Omari Motsumi, Nelly Raditloaneng and Elizabeth Ndeunyema are thanked for assisting with facilitating small group discussions, and Itireleng Masilo and Letsweletse Mponang are thanked for Morchain et al. 37 translating. We welcome and invite your comments and reactions at our action research community’s interactive ARJ blog housed at ARþ http://actionresearchplus.com Declaration of conflicting interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author- ship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author- ship, and/or publication of this article: Some of this work was carried out under the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions project (ASSAR). ASSAR is one of four research programmes funded under the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), with financial support from the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DfID) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. The views expressed in this work are those of the creators and do not necessarily represent those of DfID and IDRC or its Board of Governors. The South African Department of Science and Technology is also acknowledged for funding some of this research. ORCID iD Dian Spear http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2417-3980 Gina Ziervogel http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4219-6809 References Bradbury, H. (Ed.). (2015). The SAGE handbook of action research (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Brydon-Miller, M., Greenwood, D., & Maguire, P. (2003). Why action research? Action Research, 1(1), 9–28. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/14767503030011002 Burch, S. (2010). Transforming barriers into enablers of action on climate change: Insights from three municipal case studies in British Columbia, Canada. Global Environmental Change, 20(2), 287–297. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.11.009 Burns, D., Harvey, B., & Ortiz Arag�on, A. (2012). Introduction: Action research for devel- opment and social change. IDS Bulletin, 43(3), 1–7. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.2012.00318.x Butler, J. R. A., Suadnya, W., Yanuartati, Y., Meharg, S., Wise, R. M., Sutaryono, Y., & Duggan, K. (2016). Priming adaptation pathways through adaptive co-management: Design and evaluation for developing countries. Climate Risk Management, 12, 1–16. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2016.01.001 Chung Tiam Fook, T. (2017). Transformational processes for community-focused adapta- tion and social change: A synthesis. Climate and Development, 9(1), 5–21. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2015.1086294 De Vente, J., Reed, M. S., Stringer, L., Valente, S., & Newig, J. (2016). How does the context and design of participatory decision-making processes affect their outcomes? 38 Action Research 17(1) http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2417-3980 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2417-3980 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2417-3980 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4219-6809 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4219-6809 Evidence from sustainable land management in global drylands. Ecology and Society, 21(2), 24. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08053-210224 De Wit, S. (2018). A clash of adaptations: How adaptation to climate change is translated in northern Tanzania. In S. Klepp & L. Chávez-Rodr�ıguez (Eds.), A Critical Approach to Climate Change Adaptation: Discourses, Policies and Practices (pp. 107–124). London: Routledge. Few, R., Morchain, D., Spear, D., Mensah, A., & Bendapudi, R. (2017). Transformation, adaptation and development: Relating concepts to practice. Palgrave Communications, 3, 17092. 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Vulnerability and Risk Assessment in Botswana’s Bobirwa sub- district: Fostering people-centred adaptation to climate change (pp. 61). Cape Town, South Africa: Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR), University of Cape Town. Morchain, D. (2018). Rethinking the framing of climate change adaptation: Knowledges and politics. In S. Klepp and L. Chávez-Rodr�ıguez (Eds.), A critical approach to climate change adaptation: Discourses, policies and practices (pp. 125–144). London: Routledge. Morchain, D., & Kelsey, F. (2016). Finding ways together to build resilience: The Vulnerability and Risk Assessment methodology. Oxford, England: Oxfam. Retrieved from https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/finding-ways-together-to-build- resilience-the-vulnerability-and-risk-assessment-593491 Morchain, D., Prati, G., Kelsey, F., & Ravon, L. (2015). What if gender became an essen- tial, standard element of Vulnerability Assessments? Gender and Development, 23(3), 481–496. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2015.1096620 Morchain, D., Weinmann, W., Kachepa, C., Jeans, H., Lefu, H., Mtegha-Kawamba, L., & Thole, E. (2016). MALAWI 2020 Vulnerability and Risk Assessment in the tea industry. Oxford, England: Oxfam. O’Brien, K. L. (2016). Climate change and social transformations: Is it time for a quantum leap? Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 7(5), 618–626. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.413 Ortiz Arag�on, A., & Glenzer, K. (2017). Untaming aid through action research: Seeking transformative reflective action. Action Research, 15(1), 3–14. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.1177/1476750317700253 Pelling, M., O’Brien, K., & Matyas, D. (2015). Adaptation and transformation. Climatic Change, 133(1), 113–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1303-0 Morchain et al. 39 Preston, B. L., Yuen, E. J., & Westaway, R. M. (2011). Putting vulnerability to climate change on the map: A review of approaches, benefits, and risks. 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Retrieved from https://doi.org/10. 3390/su8090955 Author biographies Daniel Morchain is senior adviser of Resilience & Climate Change Adaptation at Oxfam GB, based in Oxford, UK. Daniel was a co-principal investigator of the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) project (2014-2018). Dian Spear was the Southern Africa lead of the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) project (2014-2018) based at the University of Cape Town. Gina Ziervogel is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, and a Research Chair at the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on climate adaptation and development at both the household and municipal level, with a focus on applied and interdisciplinary projects. Hillary Masundire is a professor of Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Botswana. He was the Botswana lead of the ASSAR project. Margaret N Angula is a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, History and Environmental Studies at the University of Namibia. Her current research focuses on gender and vulnerability assessments as well as climate change adap- tation. She was a researcher on the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) project. Julia Davies was a senior research assistant on the Adaptation at Scale in Semi- Arid Regions (ASSAR) project at the University of Cape Town, where she con- tributed to research on climate change adaptation and development challenges in Namibia and Botswana. She is now a PhD student in the School of Geography and 40 Action Research 17(1) Development at the University of Arizona and is working on urban food security and climate change issues in sub-Saharan Africa. Chandapiwa Molefe was research assistant on the ASSAR project, she coordinated and facilitated research themes in Botswana, as well as contributing to research on Climate change governance, Social differentiation and Dynamics of Ecosystem services. Salma Hegga is an independent consultant and interdisciplinary researcher of environmental changes and disaster resilience. She was a post-doctoral research fellow on the ASSAR project the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) project. Morchain et al. 41 work_3va5hzzs2jeplbdcfrzjklyqi4 ---- We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems Eleanor Hutchinson1 ID , Dina Balabanova1 ID , Martin McKee2* ID Abstract The health sector consistently appears prominently in surveys of perceived corruption, with considerable evidence that this has serious adverse consequences for patients. Yet this issue is far from prominent in the international health policy discourse. We identify five reasons why the health policy community has been reluctant to talk about it. These are the problem of defining corruption, the fact that some corrupt practices are actually ways of making dysfunctional systems work, the serious challenges to researching corruption, concerns that a focus on corruption is a form of victim blaming that ignores larger issues, and a lack of evidence about what works to tackle it. We propose three things that can be done to address this situation. First, seek consensus on the scale and nature of corruption. Second, decide on priorities, taking account the importance of the particular problem and the feasibility of doing something about it. Third, take a holistic view, drawing on a wide range of disciplines. Keywords: Corruption, Governance, Bribery, Absenteeism, Procurement Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Citation: Hutchinson E, Balabanova D, McKee M. We need to talk about corruption in health systems. Int J Health Policy Manag. 2019;8(4):191–194. doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2018.123 *Correspondence to: Martin McKee Email: martin.mckee@lshtm.ac.uk Article History: Received: 2 November 2018 Accepted: 9 December 2018 ePublished: 22 December 2018 Editorial Full list of authors’ affiliations is available at the end of the article. http://ijhpm.com Int J Health Policy Manag 2019, 8(4), 191–194 doi 10.15171/ijhpm.2018.123 Some things are rarely discussed in public. Quite reasonably, most of us, if we are not among the growing number of social media celebrities, believe that the more intimate aspects of our personal relationships remain private. We can reasonably argue that they are of no concern to anyone else. But there are some things that take place in private, and which traditionally remained secret, that are at last being discussed openly because they do concern others. Sexual abuse and exploitation by those in positions of power exemplify such things. For too long, even though such behaviour was known about, it was tacitly accepted and few were sufficiently brave to talk about it. Those that did, especially if they were the victims, often suffered from doing so. They came to realise that actions that were, by any moral or ethical framework, wrong were simply accepted. That was the way things had always been, and would always be in the future. Quite simply, nothing could be done. Yet something can be done. The #MeToo movement has empowered the victims of such abuse to speak out, holding the perpetrators to account. Now, it is the abusers who find themselves excluded. This does not mean that the problem has been solved. Few things are. Slavery was abolished in much the world more than 150 years ago but there are still hundreds of thousands of forced and indentured labourers and, in a few countries, slaves. But at least by talking about abuses of different kinds, it is possible to begin the process of changing things. The #MeToo scandals are most closely identified with the arts world, although medicine is not immune.1 Yet we, in the health policy community, have our own dirty secret.2 It is something that we all know exists but we are often too polite to talk about it. It is corruption in the health sector. Too often, we spend long hours discussing why something that should work in theory does not work in practice, without asking who benefits from the status quo. Or why, despite investing in extra staff and facilities, many people still struggle to get the care they need, without asking where those staff are and what they are doing with the resources provided for them. Our failure to confront this issue is all the more surprising given that surveys, such as those conducted by Transparency International, consistently find that the health sector is among the most corrupt in many countries. In its 2013 “corruption barometer” it reported that, in 42 of 109 countries surveyed, over 50% of citizens viewed their health systems as corrupt or very corrupt.3 Scholars have also developed detailed frameworks that describe the main manifestations of corruption in the health sector.4,5 We also know that this has consequences. It undermines the trust that underpins effective, equitable, and responsive healthcare.6 It also costs lives, with a 2011 study estimating that about 140 000 child deaths annually could be attributed to corruption.7 Yet when health ministers describe their achievements, both real and anticipated, at international meetings, while they will sometimes be frank and admit to specific failures, using them to discuss the lessons they have learned, they rarely discuss the role of corruption and the weaknesses of governance that http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9718-2407 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7163-3428 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0121-9683 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2018.123 https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2018.123 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.15171/ijhpm.2018.123&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-12-22 Hutchinson et al International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 2019, 8(4), 191–194192 often underlies it. A new paper from a group of authors from North American universities makes the case for a renewed drive to tackle this issue. They argue that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which the governments of the world have committed to achieving by 2030, and including policies in a wide range of areas, could be leveraged to tackle corruption in the health sector.8 They showed how corrupt practices were likely to impede progress on several of the health-related SDGs, such as universal health coverage, but also how SDGs in other areas, such as SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) and 17 (Partnerships) offer means by which action might be mobilised. As researchers working on an international project on corruption, in which we are focusing on the health sector, we have been reflecting on why it is that these conversations are so difficult to hold. We have identified five main reasons. First, it is difficult to define corruption. Indeed, practices that are clearly corrupt are often described in other words. Even in one language, English, these include, for example, backhander, bribery, exploitation, extortion, fiddling, fraud, graft, nepotism, jobbery, payola, profiteering, racketeering, and skimming. Others, in languages other than English, have also gained international currency, even if their meaning has changed in the process. An example is baksheesh, which has evolved from its original meaning of charitable giving in Persian (بخشش ). “Dash”, used widely in West Africa, is believed to originate in the Portuguese word doação, or giving of gifts. Others are widely used in certain regions but have not spread widely elsewhere, such as the Urdu word rishwat (رشوت), used widely throughout the Indian sub-continent. The United Nations Convention against Corruption does not try to define its subject, instead, simply listing a number of corrupt practices.9 The Cochrane Collaboration, in its review of measures effective in reducing corruption, did.10 It defines corruption as “The abuse or complicity in abuse, of public or private position, power or authority to benefit oneself, a group, an organization or others close to oneself; where the benefits may be financial, material or non-material.” This can take many forms, not all of which may be recognized as corruption by everyone.4,11 For example, irregularities in procurement of medical consumables and equipment, especially where these involved bribes, would probably be accepted by most people as corrupt. But what about the widespread practice of inducements, some of little monetary value, such as pens, by pharmaceutical sales representatives?12 There is considerable evidence that this is associated with increased prescribing of the brands concerned.13 Then there are informal payments, made to secure faster or higher quality treatment.14-16 Again, the corrupt nature may be obvious, but where is the dividing line from unsolicited tokens of gratitude? Theft of drugs or equipment from public facilities to be used in private ones is clearly corrupt, as it denies them to those in the public facilities. But what about absenteeism or late arrival or early departure from work in the same public facility, which also denies patients an essential component of care, the time of the health worker?17,18 Second, some practices that seem corrupt may actually be seen by those concerned, both providers of services and their beneficiaries, as the only means of enabling some fragile health systems simply to keep working. Health professionals may feel they have no alternative to bribe officials to obtain necessary authorisations to function. The recipients of the bribes are clearly corrupt, but what about those offering them? Informal payments extracted from those with the ability to pay may be channelled into the operation of the health facility rather than the pocket of the health worker, thereby allowing those who cannot afford payments to be treated. Should they be condemned for this? More generally, is there a danger that efforts to remove corruption without addressing the other weaknesses in the health system might threaten the delivery of care further and hurt the most vulnerable? Third, how do we conduct research on corruption in ways that capture what is really happening? It is very easy for those involved in graft to shift blame to other, less powerful actors as corrupt and deflect attention from themselves. How does one engage in anti-corruption research without colluding with corrupt officials, for example when the researcher observes abusive or exploitative behaviour but seeks to maintain the access necessary to report it, a dilemma recognised in other settings where there are power imbalances?19 Fourth, is it even legitimate to study corruption? There is a view in some quarters that concerns about corruption divert attention from more important issues, such as the unequal distribution of global resources, itself a factor in the emergence and persistence of corruption. Some of those adopting this paradigm see a focus on corruption as a manifestation of the neoliberal attack on the state,20 noting how it was prioritized by development agencies in the 1980s during the Reagan- Thatcher era, when many public health systems were being dismantled. Finally, we still know far too little about how to tackle corruption. Despite years of investment in good governance, levels of corruption remain high and, in some places, growing. The Cochrane review found no studies meeting their criteria that provided empirical evidence of effects of strategies to reduce corruption and only nine that could be used to describe the range of strategies that have been tried that could guide future evaluations of promising strategies, even if there is insufficient evidence so far.10 So, what can be done to address these problems and initiate a debate on corruption in health systems? A first step is to convene key stakeholders in the health system, including policy makers, health professionals, and managers, to seek agreement on the scale and nature of corruption in each health system. The challenges are, however, formidable. There will often be a considerable reluctance to speak openly, especially by those who are disempowered. Such individuals will need considerable support and, in some cases, protection if they are to expose corrupt practices. Second, and once agreement has been reached on the problem, it will be necessary to prioritize action. Decisions should be guided by both the impact on the health system, and especially on vulnerable groups, and the existence of a potential remedy that has some feasibility of success. Some corrupt practices may not matter much while others might Hutchinson et al International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 2019, 8(4), 191–194 193 pose severe threats to health. Some may even be rational responses to a dysfunctional system. Sometimes, the choice will be helped by the opening of a window of opportunity. It will be very important to understand the reasons why corrupt practices thrive, constantly asking questions about who benefits in different ways and what are the underlying causes and the extent to which they can be changed. By understanding the incentives that operate, including the use of corrupt practices to overcome unnecessary structural and organizational barriers, it may be possible to develop pragmatic solutions that can command approval.21 Drawing on Kingdon’s work on policy streams, it is important to concentrate on what matters most and can most easily be addressed at a particular time.22 Third, as with many complex problems, it is essential to take a holistic view. Research on corruption in the health sector is often published in specialist anthropology and political economy journals and much less in the health literature. This means that it is largely absent from the main databases covering health systems, PubMed and EconLit, or if it is there it is difficult to find, perhaps because the term “corruption” is seen as judgmental and thus avoided in some cases. There is a clear need for a multi-disciplinary response, yet many countries where corruption is widespread lack traditions of multi-disciplinary working, which exacerbates their other problems related to limited research capacity. It is entirely understandable if researchers decide that they would rather study less contentious and, in some cases dangerous topics. Finally, it is important that the research community sets out what it can offer. Zyglidopoulos et al identify four broad paths for research on corruption, in: (1) individuals, (2) organizations and industries, (3) different countries (largely from an economic development perspective), and (4) different cultural contexts (from an anthropological perspective).23 This work draws on a range of disciplines, including social psychology,24 criminology,25 development economics,26 and even media studies, such as that asking why a corrupt activity becomes a scandal.27 Now is an especially propitious time to do this, taking advantage of new opportunities, many of which fall within the umbrella of “big data,”28 using tools such as social network analysis.29,30 In writing this editorial, we hope to encourage a wider conversation about corruption in the health sector. This topic has failed to engage most global policy-makers, who seem to put it in the “too difficult” tray. Only a few groups, such as Transparency International, are campaigning for it to receive attention. Clearly, much could be done already, even without further research, where the political will exists. Yet, there is also a clear need for research, to ensure that policies adopted take account of the prevailing context and actually work, avoiding the risk of unintended consequences. A first step is to agree on a possible research agenda is lacking. Above all, even if corruption is not yet spoken about publicly in the corridors of power, we know that it exists and is widespread. If we are to achieve the health-related SDGs, we must have that conversation within and among the many stakeholders within countries and the international community. Acknowledgements This editorial is an expanded version of a blog by the authors on corruption, available at https://ace.soas.ac.uk/ five-reasons-corruption-health/. It is an output of the SOAS Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) research consortium funded by UK Aid from the UK Government [Contract P0 7073]. The views presented in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies or the views of SOAS-ACE or other partner organisations. For more information on SOAS-ACE visit https://ace.soas.ac.uk. Ethical issues Not applicable. Competing interests Authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions MM drafted the paper, which EH and DB revised. Authors’ affiliations 1Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. 2Department of Public Health & Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. References 1. Jagsi R. Sexual Harassment in Medicine - #MeToo. N Engl J Med. 2018;378(3):209-211. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1715962 2. Jain A, Nundy S, Abbasi K. Corruption: medicine’s dirty open secret. BMJ. 2014;348:g4184. doi:10.1136/bmj.g4184 3. Transparency International . 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Expanding Research on Corporate Corruption, Management, and Organizations. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications; 2017. 24. Anand V, Ashforth BE, Joshi M. Business as usual: The acceptance and perpetuation of corruption in organizations. Acad Manag Perspect. 2004;18(2):39-53. 25. Anechiarico F, Jacobs JB, Jacobs JB. The pursuit of absolute integrity: How corruption control makes government ineffective. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; 1996. 26. Wedeman A. Looters, rent-scrapers, and dividend-collectors: Corruption and growth in Zaire, South Korea, and the Philippines. J Dev Areas. 1997;31(4):457-478. 27. Hirsch PM, Milner D. When scandals yield “it’s about time!” Rather than “We’re shocked and surprised!.” Journal of Management Inquiry. 2016;25(4):447-449. 28. Hlatshwayo S, Oeking A, Ghazanchyan MM, Corvino D, Shukla A, Leigh MLY. The Measurement and Macro-Relevance of Corruption: A Big Data Approach. Washington DC: International Monetary Fund; 2018. 29. Diviák T, Dijkstra JK, Snijders TA. Structure, multiplexity, and centrality in a corruption network: the Czech Rath affair. Trends Organ Crime. 2018. doi:10.1007/s12117-018-9334-y 30. Colladon AF, Remondi E. Using social network analysis to prevent money laundering. Expert Syst Appl. 2017;67:49-58. https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-31-2-251 https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.26.4.984 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.10.015 https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czj015 https://doi.org/10.1177/1367493515587060 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-018-9334-y work_3xnx5ouzcjaedjpuu2d6v5oeeu ---- ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising a partir de un estudio de caso: Deliciosa Calma de Campofrío Revista de Estudios Sociales 68 | 2019 Revisitando la industrialización latinoamericana en el siglo XX: entre el Estado y el mercado ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising a partir de un estudio de caso: Deliciosa Calma de Campofrío Can Advertising be Feminist? Ambivalence and Gender Interests in “Femvertising” from a Case Study: Campofrio´s “Deliciosa Calma” A publicidade pode ser feminista? Ambivalência e interesses de gênero na femvertising a partir de um estudo de caso: Deliciosa Calma de Campofrio María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez Edición electrónica URL: http://journals.openedition.org/revestudsoc/31794 ISSN: 1900-5180 Editor Universidad de los Andes Edición impresa Fecha de publicación: 1 abril 2019 Paginación: 88-100 ISSN: 0123-885X Referencia electrónica María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez, « ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising a partir de un estudio de caso: Deliciosa Calma de Campofrío », Revista de Estudios Sociales [En línea], 68 | 2019, Publicado el 22 abril 2019, consultado el 10 julio 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/revestudsoc/31794 Los contenidos de la Revista de Estudios Sociales están editados bajo la licencia Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 88 ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising a partir de un estudio de caso: Deliciosa Calma de Campofrío* María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez ** Fecha de recepción: 16 de julio de 2018 · Fecha de aceptación: 30 de octubre de 2018 · Fecha de modificación: 31 de enero de 2019 https://doi.org/10.7440/res68.2019.08 Cómo citar: Menéndez Menéndez, María Isabel. 2019. “¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising a partir de un estudio de caso: Deliciosa Calma de Campofrío”. Revista de Estudios Sociales 68: 88-100. https://doi. org/10.7440/res68.2019.08 RESUMEN | Una reciente estrategia publicitaria, llamada femvertising, parece llamada a terminar con el sexismo que siempre ha acompañado a gran parte de la publicidad. Se trata de una propuesta que no sólo supera los paradigmas sexistas sino que incorpora elementos de empoderamiento de las mujeres. Sin embargo, no está exenta de riesgos, por su carácter ambivalente y por los intereses de género que compromete. El presente artículo reflexiona sobre los aspectos teóricos de la femvertising y realiza un estudio de caso para aproximarse a una publicidad sobre la que apenas existe bibliografía. Las conclusiones nos anuncian que se trata de un fenómeno complejo que exige seguir siendo profundizado en su análisis para diagnosticar su compromiso con la igualdad. PALABRAS CLAVE | Ética de la publicidad; feminismo; femvertising; género; sexismo Can Advertising be Feminist? Ambivalence and Gender Interests in “Femvertising” from a Case Study: Campofrio´s “Deliciosa Calma” ABSTRACT | A recent strategy known as “femvertising” appears to seek to end the sexism that has always accompanied much of advertising. It not only proposes overcoming sexist paradigms, but also incor- porates elements of female empowerment. However, it is not exempt from risks, given its ambivalent nature and the gender interests it invokes. This paper reflects on the theoretical aspects of “femver- tising” and employs a case study as a way to approach this type of advertising, on which there is hardly any literature. The conclusions suggest that this is a complex phenomenon that requires deeper analysis in order to diagnose its commitment to equality. KEYWORDS | Ethics of advertising; feminism; “femvertising”; gender; sexism A publicidade pode ser feminista? Ambivalência e interesses de gênero na femvertising a partir de um estudo de caso: Deliciosa Calma de Campofrio RESUMO | Uma recente estratégia publicitária, denominada femvertising, parece determinada a acabar com o sexismo que sempre acompanhou grande parte da publicidade. Trata-se de uma proposta que não apenas supera * El presente texto es resultado del proyecto I+D FEM2017-83302-C3-1-PB (2018-2021), “Produsage juvenil en las redes sociales: construcción de la identidad sexual y gestión de las desigualdades de género”, financiado por el Ministerio de Industria, Economía y Competitividad del Gobierno de España, en el Marco del Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia. ** Doctora en Filosofía y Licenciada en Periodismo. Profesora titular de Comunicación Audiovisual y Publicidad de la Universidad de Burgos, España. Experta en estudios feministas y de género. Últimas publicaciones: “Entre el neomachismo y el retrosexismo: antifeminismo contemporáneo en las industrias culturales”. Prisma Social. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 2: 1-30, 2017; “Golosinas visuales: biopolítica, postfeminismo y comunicación de masas”. Iberic@l. Revue d’études ibériques et ibéro-américaines 11: 87-99, 2017. * mimenendez@ubu.es 89O T R A S V O C E S ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising | María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez os paradigmas sexistas, mas também incorpora elementos de empoderamento das mulheres. No entanto, não está isenta de riscos, por seu caráter ambivalente e pelos interesses de gênero que compromete. O presente artigo reflete sobre os aspectos teóricos da femvertising e realiza um estudo de caso para se aproximar de uma publicidade sobre a qual existe apenas bibliografia. As conclusões sugerem que se trata de um fenômeno complexo que exige aprofundamento em sua análise para diagnosticar seu compromisso com a igualdade. PALAVRAS-CHAVE | Ética da publicidade; feminismo; femvertising; gênero; sexismo Introducción La representación de las mujeres en publicidad ha sido ampliamente estudiada en la literatura acadé- mica desde los años setenta del siglo XX (McArthur y Resko 1975; Rincón 1997; Lynn, Hardin y Walsdorf 2004; Royo-Vela, Küster-Boluda y Vila-López 2005; Gill 2008b; Navarro y Martín 2011; Knoll, Eisend y Stein- hagen 2011; Hernández-Ruiz, Martín y Beléndez 2012), poniendo en evidencia problemáticas recurrentes como el uso de estereotipos de género o la cosificación del cuerpo femenino, materia sobre la que apenas ha habido progresos. A mediados de los años noventa apa- rece una publicidad ligada al feminismo, en el marco del commodity feminism,1 en la que los estereotipos de género se fusionan con ideales feministas con un objetivo comercial. Como una evolución, surge ya en la segunda década del nuevo siglo lo que se ha llegado a conocer como femvertising, estrategia que cada año utilizan decenas de marcas. Un estudio realizado en 2014 con consumidoras en Estados Unidos concluía que el tratamiento de las muje- res en publicidad era una de las claves para llamar la atención y fidelizar a las posibles consumidoras.2 Las marcas han comprendido, por razones tanto de imagen como comerciales, que deben abandonar el tradicional sexismo publicitario si desean mejorar su relación con las consumidoras. En el estudio citado, algo más de la mitad de las encuestadas aseguraron que habían com- prado productos de ciertas marcas después de ver repre- sentaciones positivas de las mujeres en sus anuncios, y el 94% dijo que usar a las mujeres como sex symbols en publicidad era dañino para su género. Como contrapunto, un 25% seguía comprando una marca o producto aunque atentara contra la dignidad femenina. También Facebook, una de las plataformas que aglutina hoy la más impor- tante inversión publicitaria a nivel planetario, realizó un estudio en 2017 que demostró que los anuncios que se interesan por el empoderamiento de las mujeres son 1 El concepto es de difícil traducción al español: feminismo comercial, feminismo mercantilista, feminismo de merca- do, mercantilización feminista o feminismo consumista son algunas de las posibilidades. En este texto se mantiene la fórmula en inglés. 2 SheKnows, disponible en la web: w w w.sheknows.com más rentables.3 Tras un análisis de las publicaciones de esta red social se demostró que los estadounidenses respondían entre un 8 y un 10% más positivamente a las marcas que realizaron acciones en favor de la igualdad de género, en comparación con aquellas que realizaron menos acciones en ese sentido, o ninguna. En general, la estrategia aumentaba la fidelidad con la marca y proveía una imagen positiva de esta. El propio origen de la palabra femvertising no está claro. La mayoría de textos defienden que es la suma de femi- nism y advertising (Becker-Herby 2016, 6), lo que debería traducirse como publicidad feminista, pero otros pocos eligen la suma de female y advertising (Carrillo 2016, 3; Polidura 2017, 30), que desembocaría más bien en la idea de publicidad en femenino. Según Medeiros, Bulhões y Dantas (2015, 2), el concepto empezó a tomar protago- nismo en 2014, en la Advertising Week (AdWeek) de Nueva York, uno de los eventos publicitarios más impor- tantes del mundo, con la exposición de Samantha Skey, directora de ventas de SheKnows Media. Se trataría del neologismo con el que se define aquella publicidad que, además de evitar mensajes especialmente lesivos sobre las mujeres (estereotipos de género, vejación de la ima- gen femenina, ridiculización de las mujeres), se esfuerza por ofrecer un discurso potencialmente emancipador, por lo que estaría más cerca de la primera propuesta, que de la segunda. Más allá de ser una tendencia social, la femvertising (también denominada publicidad go-girl, pro género o Ad-her-tising) ha generado mejores resul- tados para las empresas, convirtiendo la publicidad en un agente de cambio social. Estos hallazgos resaltan la necesidad de que los mensajes publicitarios represen- ten con mayor precisión a sus públicos para relacionar- se mejor con ellos y optimizar las actitudes de marca (Drake 2017, 594). Feminismo y publicidad parecen dos términos antagó- nicos, dado que la publicidad se construye a partir de la utilización de estereotipos fácilmente comprensibles (Jalakas 2017, 13). Estudios de audiencia han demostrado que la mayoría de las mujeres reportan que la publicidad las hace sentir mal respecto a sus propios cuerpos, un malestar muy superior al que sienten los hombres. La 3 Estudio disponible en https://w w w.facebook.com/business/ news/insights/how-gender-positive-ads-pay-off 90 O T R A S V O C E S rev.estud.soc. No. 68 • abril-junio • Pp. 88-100 • ISSN 0123-885X • e-ISSN 1900-5180 · https://doi.org/10.7440/res68.2019.08 mayoría de mujeres relata su cansancio ante la utiliza- ción extendida de todo lo femenino como algo pasivo, desnudo, débil, sexualizado y objetivado, y ello puede explicar que en 2015, la igualdad de género se convirtie- ra en una de las principales causas sociales elegidas por las marcas. Ese mismo año, se entregaron los primeros premios Femvertising en Estados Unidos, los cuales reconocieron a aquellas firmas con impacto social a par- tir de valores feministas (Jalakas 2017, 14). Sin duda, si la publicidad sexista es un freno a la igual- dad, la publicidad feminista podría trabajar a su favor. Sin embargo, existe la sospecha de su instrumentaliza- ción únicamente con objetivos comerciales. Hay posicio- nes que definen cualquier uso de las políticas feministas desde la cultura popular como un feminismo bastardo y apolítico: Angela McRobbie (2009) considera que estas estrategias contribuyen a desarmar el movimiento feminista; Rosalind Gill (2007) opina que se trata de opciones que sugieren que las mujeres tomen el control de sus vidas mediante el consumo, y no a través de la lucha colectiva. Para estas autoras, la publicidad nunca podrá liderar el cambio social. Entre las audiencias, sin embargo (y a pesar de que existen pocos estudios sobre recepción de la femvertising), parece que estos men- sajes despiertan tanto el escepticismo como la alegría, ambivalencia por la que su análisis es complejo. En relación con las posibilidades de interacción que hoy existen en la red aparecen campañas como la popular #Like a Girl (de la firma Always) —visualizada más de 61 millones de veces— y el anuncio más compartido en YouTube en 2013 de la campaña Real Beauty Sketches de Dove. En este sentido, más allá de la definición de falso feminismo, y de acuerdo con Jalakas (2017, 15), puede ser útil explorar cómo encajan estas campañas en el feminismo actual, en especial entre las jóvenes, quienes las utilizan y dotan de sentido en las redes sociales. Así, la femvertising podría contribuir a cierto “despertar feminista” entre la juventud, favoreciendo el debate sobre las cuestiones de género. Hay consenso en admitir que el público consumidor que percibe una imagen positiva de la firma mejora su rela- ción con ella, aunque en la femvertising —debido a su ambivalencia— esto es menos claro, ya que no siempre es evidente la relación entre el mensaje publicitario y el activismo feminista. Algunas empresas han elegido alentar a las mujeres a adoptar rasgos tradicionalmente masculinos, como la ambición o el coraje, y actividades más relacionadas con la socialización de los hombres, como algunos deportes. Otras estrategias de femverti- sing, por el contrario, hacen referencia a rasgos feme- ninos, poniendo un importante énfasis en la apariencia. En tercer lugar, se construye una mujer más bien ambi- valente: bella, pero fuerte, voluntariosa, pero amable. Si bien la androginia tiene una larga historia en publicidad, con la femvertising sería la primera vez que las marcas adoptan una posición esencialmente feminista (Abitbol y Sternadori 2016, 117). A partir de lo anterior, puede definirse femvertising como la publicidad que se realiza a favor de las muje- res, con mensajes e imágenes que las empoderan (Becker-Herby 2016, 18). El empowerment femenino aparece entonces como un objetivo feminista que, sin embargo, se construye en torno a la promoción comer- cial de productos dirigidos a las féminas, que, la mayoría de las veces, pertenece a un metadiscurso que no rompe el mensaje global sexista, como los productos light o los de belleza, moda y cosmética. Así, se hace necesario reflexionar sobre la femvertising para estudiar si se tra- ta de una fórmula únicamente comercial y que no tiene reparo en instrumentalizar la acción feminista, si puede incluso ser una modalidad sofisticada de sexismo que hace más difícil su identificación o si en realidad ofrece un universo emancipador a las consumidoras. El análi- sis es clave por su discurso altamente ambivalente y por los intereses de género que compromete. Es bastante común identificar su origen en la campaña propuesta en 2004 por la marca de productos de higiene Dove (creada en 1955 y perteneciente a la multinacio- nal Unilever), bautizada como Real Beauty (Medeiros, Bulhões y Dantas 2015, 2; Becker-Herby 2016, 6; Jalakas 2017, 14), resultado de un análisis de mercado asesora- do por Susie Orbach y Nancy Etcoff, que reveló que las mujeres consideraban que el concepto belleza se había vuelto inalcanzable, lo que afectaba a su autoestima.4 Orbach era una autora reputada de los estudios femi- nistas por su denuncia de la opresión estética que sufrían las mujeres (Orbach 1978).5 En realidad, habían existido propuestas de comunicación similares mucho antes, destacando entre ellas la de la empresa The Body Shop, que en 1997 lanzó Love Your Body, protagonizada por Ruby (una muñeca fuera del estándar de delgadez, inspirada más bien en la belleza pictórica de Rubens), y donde se divulgaban eslóganes como “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do”. La creadora de la empresa, la activista social Anita Roddick, fue una de las primeras que supo combinar ética y negocio. A esta campaña la siguieron otras antes de que Roddick vendiera la firma. Son pro- puestas que vienen a discutir un discurso, el publicita- rio, cuestionado históricamente por su posición ética (Feenstra 2013, 48). 4 El estudio, realizado en 2004 y titulado La verdad acerca de la belleza, se basó en datos cuantitativos recabados de encues- tas mundiales, con la participación de 3.200 mujeres entre 18 y 64 años, de Estados Unidos, Canadá, México, Gran Bretaña, Italia, Francia, Portugal, Países Bajos, Brasil, Argentina y Japón. El trabajo se amplió a otro, global, en el 2005. 5 En su libro, Orbach denunciaba la esclavitud del estereotipo de belleza actual, la obsesión por la delgadez, la fobia a la obe- sidad y la enorme carga de violencia contra las mujeres que todo ello produce. Desde entonces, la autora británica es una referencia ineludible de los estudios sobre cuerpo y género. 91O T R A S V O C E S ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising | María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez Metodología Como ya se dijo, la femvertising prácticamente no se ha explorado en la literatura especializada y, sin embargo, es un campo fértil para estudios multidisciplinares intere- sados por las relaciones entre teoría feminista, estudios culturales y estudios publicitarios y/o de comunicación, ofreciendo un espacio de innovación, con especial rele- vancia en el cambio social y la eliminación del sexismo. El presente texto brinda una interpretación de un fenó- meno social reciente, para lo que elabora un estudio de caso, junto con una reflexión sobre las cuestiones conceptuales implicadas en la responsabilidad social de la publicidad en relación con el sexismo. El análisis de caso permite acercarse de manera exploratoria a dicho fenómeno, al que apenas ha dedicado atención la lite- ratura académica, y que puede definirse por su carácter complejo, dinámico y ambivalente. Del trabajo analítico se extraen variables que permiten avanzar en la elabo- ración de un marco teórico básico con el que inter- pretar y comprender términos como femvertising, pero también otros como empowerment o prosumer.6 La novedad que ofrece este artículo consiste en rela- cionar el fenómeno de esta publicidad contemporánea con presupuestos teóricos relativamente aceptados, vinculados a los estudios feministas específicos del ámbito de la comunicación. El artículo se divide en cuatro apartados: en primer lugar, se introduce el marco teórico relacionado con el objeto de estudio mediante una reflexión bibliográfica; luego, se analiza una campaña publicitaria de femvertising a través de la descripción de un estudio de caso, en el que se aplica una metodología propia, aunque inspirada en otros textos y que puede ser utilizada en investigaciones posteriores. En tercer lugar, se reflexiona sobre los retos éticos que plantea esta publicidad a partir de la discusión de resultados, y, finalmente, se elaboran las conclusiones. Marco teórico: ambivalencia e intereses de género La investigación académica sobre femvertising es toda- vía escasa, y en lengua española prácticamente no existe, quizá porque, como fenómeno de masas, también es una realidad reciente. De hecho, es fácil encontrar artículos de opinión en prensa e internet, pero no así en la lite- ratura especializada. Aunque el concepto como tal sea contemporáneo, se trataría de una evolución del denomi- nado commodity feminism, y representa la tendencia en publicidad que intenta aunar activismo y feminismo a través del consumo. Al calificar sus productos como una 6 Término del marketing digital que describe a un tipo de usuario web que, además de ser consumidor de la marca, tam- bién es generador de contenido en el blog de la empresa o en sus redes sociales. Prosumer, por tanto, es un anglicismo que define a un consumidor que no se conforma sólo con consumir. “opción feminista” se construye una marca que permite a su público respaldar la causa, de manera que se propone un consumo apoyado en la identidad del producto y no en el producto mismo (Reker 2016, 3). Este fenómeno va de la mano de lo que hoy podemos lla- mar feminismo mediático, un protagonismo inédito hasta ahora, relacionado con el movimiento de mujeres que se rebela de forma clara contra la explotación económica, las servidumbres culturales y la violencia (Cobo 2011, 20). El feminismo se ha renovado y ha hecho mucho más visibles sus reclamaciones de igualdad. La principal novedad ha sido su capacidad para llegar a la agenda de los medios de comunicación y, junto con la viralidad conseguida en las redes sociales, convertirse en un discurso de masas capaz de movilizar a mujeres en las calles de todo el mundo. El movimiento #MeToo es probablemente lo más popular de este resurgimiento del feminismo como respuesta a los retrocesos experimentados en las últimas décadas con la hegemonía de las políticas neoliberales y neocon- servadoras. En España, la multitudinaria manifestación/ huelga del 8 de marzo de 2018 es un hito en este mismo sentido, como previamente lo había sido el Tren de la Libertad, que en 2014 hizo caer a un ministro.7 El commodity feminism se puede considerar, no obs- tante, como una apropiación del feminismo con fines comerciales, estrategia tanto ensalzada por su supues- to progresismo como criticada por reducir la política feminista a un artículo mercantilizado y destinado al público de masas: Commodity feminism refers to the way feminist ideas and icons are appropriated for commercial purposes, emptied of their political significance and offered back to the public in a commodified form —usually in advertising. The term pays homage to Marx’s notion of “commodity fetishism” and is often framed within contemporary Marxist and feminist terms. (Gill 2008a) En lugar de luchar contra la legitimidad del discurso feminista, las marcas intentan canalizar los aspectos clave de ese discurso a través de marcadores semióti- cos que se pueden adjuntar a nombres de productos. Las firmas compiten por ser las primeras y mejores en traducir los discursos y reclamaciones de las muje- res a signos comerciales. Aunque a primera vista esto puede aparecer como evidencia de una nueva era de 7 El #MeToo se refiere a un movimiento en redes sociales que, en octubre de 2017, denunció el acoso sexual a partir de las evidencias contra el productor de cine Harvey Weinstein. Al movimiento se sumarían multitud de celebridades en los meses siguientes e inspiraría otros movimientos similares en múltiples países. A consecuencia del #MeToo, el 8 de mar- zo de 2018 marcaría un hito a nivel mundial, con la manifes- tación de miles de personas en diversos lugares del mundo, especialmente preocupadas por la lucha contra la violencia hacia las mujeres. 92 O T R A S V O C E S rev.estud.soc. No. 68 • abril-junio • Pp. 88-100 • ISSN 0123-885X • e-ISSN 1900-5180 · https://doi.org/10.7440/res68.2019.08 pluralismo cultural democrático, se trata de un proceso inherentemente contradictorio: una dialéctica con- tinua entre el discurso dominante y el de resistencia (Goldman, Heath y Smith 1991). Para muchas autoras, este feminismo mercantil se apropia estratégicamente de los valores feministas, poniendo su potencial político al servicio de las marcas (Lazar 2006; Gill 2008b; Reker 2016) mediante una estrategia corporativa centrada en el consumo como fuente de identidad. El commodity feminism aparece como una estrategia de publicidad empleada por empresas que desean construir mensa- jes apoyados en el empoderamiento de las mujeres y la oportunidad de la reciente visibilidad del feminismo. El empoderamiento, centrado en el consumo individual, estaría al servicio del cambio social. El término clave es empoderamiento, decisivo en el feminismo. Se trata de un concepto sociopolítico capaz de trascender la participación política formal. Se origina en Estados Unidos durante los movimientos civiles de los años sesenta, y una década más tarde comenzó a adoptarse en los movimientos de mujeres, en respuesta a la necesidad de generar cambios en las relaciones de poder entre los sexos (De León 1997). El empoderamiento está relacionado, de acuerdo con John Friedmann (1992), con tres tipos de poder: 1) Social, o acceso a la riqueza productiva; 2) Político, o acceso a la toma de decisiones; y 3) Psicológico, o capacidad individual. En el mismo sentido, Jo Rowlands (1997) menciona tres dimensio- nes: 1) Personal, o el desarrollo del yo, la confianza y la capacidad individual; 2) Relaciones próximas, o capaci- dad de negociar en las interacciones y decisiones; y 3) Colectiva, o participación en las estructuras políticas y en las acciones basadas en la cooperación colectiva. El empoderamiento, por consiguiente, se desarrolla en dos planos: el individual, que sería el proceso por el cual las personas incrementan sus niveles de autoestima y capacidad a partir de la identificación de sus propias necesidades, y el colectivo, que implica la unión de los individuos para luchar por objetivos comunes. De acuerdo con Porroche-Escudero, “el desarrollo de la conciencia política es un prerrequisito y una solución para el empoderamiento” (Porroche-Escudero 2017, 59). La autora citada considera que el empoderamiento debe cumplir cuatro principios para ser considerado como tal: 1) Potenciar la capacidad crítica para tomar decisiones autónomamente; 2) Reconocer que el empo- deramiento no puede ser un monólogo desde el cual un discurso experto alecciona al público; 3) La información transmitida debe ser valiosa, relevante y efectiva; y 4) Debe favorecer la conciencia política, impulsando no sólo el empoderamiento individual sino también el colectivo, es decir, debe ser capaz de generar cam- bios sociales más allá de la modificación individual (Porroche-Escudero 2017, 60-61). En la línea que se viene exponiendo sobre la (re)apropia- ción y despolitización de conceptos subversivos por parte del statu quo, Bacqué y Biewener destacan que, a partir de los años ochenta, el concepto empoderamiento es adop- tado por la derecha norteamericana para ponerlo al ser- vicio de las políticas neoliberales. Así, tener un empleo y formar parte de la economía de mercado se convierten en el paradigma de individuo “gestor de su propia vida”; la capacidad de hacer elecciones se reduce a poco más que encontrar un lugar en el mercado de consumo, sin plantearse jamás la justicia social o la emancipación (Bac- qué y Biewener 2016, 22). En las políticas conservadoras se emplea como recurso contra la pobreza, de tal manera que desplaza a las personas pobres la responsabilidad de su propio acceso a la riqueza. Desaparece la idea de comunidad y únicamente queda la de individualismo, en una cadena de equivalencias que articula “libre elección, competencia, propiedad, trabajo, responsabilidad y self- help” (Bacqué y Biewener 2016, 95). Los estudios críticos sobre las técnicas que están detrás de la femvertising destacan como un factor decisivo la visibilidad que el feminismo está tomando en la actua- lidad, libre de los prejuicios con los que hasta ahora se representaba, y a partir de movimientos de empodera- miento de las mujeres. Todo ello estaría modificando el rol consumidor, pero a costa de la instrumentalización del activismo y la ideología feminista. Tal y como pro- pone Reker (2016), la idea clave pasa por inculcar en los consumidores (y en especial en las consumidoras) la creencia de estar realizando cambios significativos, rechazando el destructivo clima sexista anterior. La cuestión del prosumidor (público que consume y al mismo tiempo crea) se revela como un elemento más de la estrategia, al participar de una investigación crea- da por la propia marca, pero generado por un público que participa a través de canales interactivos, en lo que podría denominarse activismo comercializado. Es difícil, sin embargo, no observar estas opciones de compra feministas como algo más que una forma de terapia ante la discriminación sistemática de género. En efecto, en su sentido cultural, Dowsett señala que sería un fenómeno que anima a las mujeres a expresar su empoderamiento mediante el consumo. Se trata de una política tanto progresista como conservadora: pro- gresista, en la medida en que ofrece una respuesta a la tensión feminismo/feminidad mediante el apoyo a las políticas de independencia y autodeterminación, pero conservadora, en el sentido en que se entiende que las masas son un problema que necesita control. Por lo tan- to, además de resolver la tensión feminismo/feminidad mediante la revalorización de los productos feminiza- dos y las mujeres que los utilizan, transforma las mer- cancías en una forma de control social. Dicho de otra manera, las reclamaciones feministas se desactivan y las mujeres se convierten en inofensivas para el sistema, aunque lo hacen a través de un consumo de productos feminizados y mediante la exaltación de la feminidad. El commodity feminism construye subjetividades feminis- tas que son cada vez más globales (Dowsett 2014); otra 93O T R A S V O C E S ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising | María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez cosa es que sean realmente emancipadoras. Si bien “en ciertos casos los progresos en la eliminación de este- reotipos son notables, en otros se intenta manipular a la audiencia por medio de tácticas contrarias al activismo feminista” (Rodríguez y Gutiérrez 2017, 337). La literatura que analiza la femvertising, en general, no arroja un balance positivo. Más que dar voz a las mujeres, parece una estrategia capaz de rentabilizar la frustración que produce el mandato de feminidad, ofre- ciendo el deseo de consumir como solución. “The ques- tion now is whether the people who buy what Verizon, Always and the others are selling can also get on board with the more complex heart of the movement, the place where true equality is almost never an easy sell” (Zeisler 2014). Se trata, entonces, de un falso recurso, un espejismo de igualdad que no es más que una fantasía de poder (Douglas 2010). En parte por su relación con contenidos periodísticos y no sólo publicitarios, se ha convertido en una potente estrategia de branding, cuyo peligro es convertir el dis- curso feminista en algo atractivo pero despolitizado, muy alejado de la incomodidad que siempre han desper- tado las reivindicaciones feministas.8 El individualismo que define al mundo neoliberal, ahora pensado como herramienta para consumir, sustituye las características esenciales del feminismo: su carácter político y colectivo. Femvertising en la publicidad española: el caso de Campofrío En este epígrafe se analiza un estudio de caso con el objeto de investigar si la femvertising es capaz o no de subvertir o trascender el tradicional sexismo publicita- rio pues, como ya se ha expuesto, no hay acuerdo sobre el potencial emancipador de esta publicidad. Para ello, se analiza la campaña publicitaria de una firma, buscando su compromiso con la igualdad y el empoderamiento femenino. Partiendo de la idea de que la femvertising es una publicidad que abandona los criticados estereotipos de género y convierte a las mujeres en protagonistas, para llevar a cabo el estudio se ha utilizado la metodolo- gía elaborada por Becker-Herby, quien define la femver- tising en función de cinco categorías de análisis.9 Otras cuatro categorías adicionales se han construido a partir de las aportaciones que sobre el empoderamiento reali- za Porroche-Escudero. Estas cuatro variables permiten 8 Branding es el concepto que en publicidad se utiliza para hablar de la construcción de marca. Como ocurre con la mayoría de términos del ámbito publicitario, se suele utilizar en inglés y así se mantiene en el texto, como otros del campo publicitario que se mencionan más adelante. Previendo que el público lector no esté familiarizado con algún concepto, se explica su significado cuando aparecen. 9 Rodríguez y Gutiérrez (2017) también aplican esta metodolo- gía a dos campañas de publicidad española (Kaiku y Desigual). afinar el estudio sobre empoderamiento y mejoran la propuesta de Becker-Herby, que puede ser demasiado descriptiva pues es posible que un spot cumpla con todos los criterios, aun sin incorporar elementos de empoderamiento. Finalmente, se construye una cate- goría que profundiza en la idea de prosumidor/a. Tras la exposición de estas herramientas metodológicas se aplica el modelo a la campaña elegida. La firma: Campofrío Campofrío, empresa de productos cárnicos líder en el sector, nació en 1952 de la mano de José Luis Ballvé,10 quien instaló la primera fábrica en la ciudad española de Burgos. En la actualidad es una empresa multina- cional (salió a Bolsa en 1998), que en España cuenta con nueve fábricas repartidas por varias provincias y una plantilla que se acerca a las tres mil personas. El grupo Campofrío es propietario de marcas líderes como Revi- lla, Oscar Mayer o Navidul, a las que hay que sumar las propias, entre ellas Finíssimas, Cuida-t + y Pavofrío. En el año 2000 se había convertido en la mayor empresa cárnica de la Unión Europea y una de las más importan- tes del mundo, revelando una historia tanto corta como exitosa (Moreno 2009, 103). Tal y como explica Moreno, “Campofrío fue pionera en la incorporación del fordismo en las relaciones laborales, la división multifuncional y la planificación estratégica así como en constitución de un departamento de I+D en las empresas alimentarias españolas” (Moreno 2009, 131). Desde el punto de vista publicitario, desde el 2009, con la campaña Elena Salgado, Campofrío comienza su cola- boración con la agencia McCann WorldGroup. De su mano, se ha convertido en un referente del marketing emocional y el uso de storytelling.11 De esta colabora- ción se pueden destacar dos características principales: la creatividad y la emotividad: “Sus últimas campañas publicitarias han estado marcadas por el factor emo- ción como estrategia para empatizar con el consumidor y, en los últimos años, para cargar de positividad los ánimos de una sociedad afectada por la crisis económi- ca” (Martínez-Rodrigo y Raya-González 2015, 282). En efecto, con la campaña navideña de 2011, Cómicos, Cam- pofrío contagió de emoción a un país entero, incluso antes de que se emitiera el spot televisivo, extendién- dose a través de las redes sociales. Consiguieron ser la marca más recordada de la publicidad navideña, y con ella empezaba el camino del éxito. Campofrío, junto con McCann, forman un tándem que se supera cada año, siempre innovando, arriesgando y adelantándose a las 10 La historia de Conservera Campofrío se había iniciado en 1944, aunque la actual etapa comienza con su adquisición por parte del empresario bilbaíno Ballvé, junto con Clemen- te Garay (Moreno 2009, 108). 11 El término se refiere a la narración de historias, y en la publici- dad contemporánea es una de las estrategias de mayor éxito. 94 O T R A S V O C E S rev.estud.soc. No. 68 • abril-junio • Pp. 88-100 • ISSN 0123-885X • e-ISSN 1900-5180 · https://doi.org/10.7440/res68.2019.08 empresas de la competencia. Tanto en Europa como en Latinoamérica han sabido reconocer este talento, lo que se demuestra por la cantidad de premios con los que se han reconocido sus campañas publicitarias. La campaña publicitaria: Deliciosa Calma El 12 de mayo de 2016, Campofrío lanzó el primer spot de la campaña Deliciosa Calma (ver imagen 1),12 campa- ña publicitaria para su producto Pavofrío (embutido de pavo), bajo la dirección creativa de Mónica Moro, desde la que se ofrecía la posibilidad de acudir al restaurante del mismo nombre. Allí, la prestigiosa chef Susi Díaz ofrecía platos saludables, desestresantes y llenos de rebeldía. El restaurante fue un proyecto efímero que durante algu- nos días estuvo abierto en Madrid, en las instalaciones del restaurante La Contraseña.13 Deliciosa Calma incluía una acción digital, donde las consumidoras podían ganar una cena con sus amigas, y recibió más de siete mil soli- citudes. Esta acción, liderada por la empresa Momentum, acogió a 150 comensales, que fueron recibidas por la actriz Llum Barrera, quien actuó como anfitriona. El anuncio (y la bienvenida en la web) arranca con un dato real de un informe Nielsen: “El 66% de las mujeres 12 Disponible en: https://w w w.deliciosacalma.com/ 13 Los días 19, 23 y 31 de mayo, así como el 4 de junio, en dicho restaurante se contó con la presencia de Susi Díaz, chef con una Estrella Michelín y dos Soles, popular por participar en el programa televisivo Top Chef, encargada de manejar el restaurante, dirigido únicamente a mujeres. Los ingredien- tes de la carta fueron elegidos a partir de un estudio de la Universidad de Berkeley sobre alimentos que ayudan a ali- viar el estrés, entre los que se incluía el pavo. españolas aseguran sentirse estresadas”. Para solucio- narlo, la empresa propone un restaurante para mujeres (el target de Pavofrío),14 donde los platos de la carta son reivindicaciones contra la presión social que soportan las mujeres.15 El spot es protagonizado por las actri- ces Carmen Maura, María Barranco y Rossy de Palma, quienes formaron parte del reparto de la más famosa e internacional de las películas de Pedro Almodóvar: Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988), título directamente relacionado con el eslogan de la cam- paña. El objetivo de Deliciosa Calma, según la agencia de publicidad, era llamar a la reflexión sobre el origen de las cargas femeninas y las maneras de liberarse de ellas mediante actividades elegidas y libres. Deliciosa Calma seguía el camino emprendido un año antes con Me gusto, en la que se proponía claramente una actitud de empoderamiento femenino. Como explica la revista MarketingNews.es,16 conceptualmente el spot se apoya en la idea de que una sociedad equilibrada también elimina el estrés, al basarse en los datos de Nielsen y en el estu- dio de alimentos de la Universidad de Berkeley. Al igual que han hecho otras muchas corporaciones que incorporan acciones de femversiting, y como estrategia para explicar la sintonía entre el mensaje que propo- ne el producto y la identidad de la firma, Campofrío 14 El término target hace referencia al público objetivo o diana de un anuncio. 15 Algunos platos del menú: Hoy no llego a recoger a mis hijos al cole con carpaccio de pavo acompañado de ya está su padre para hacerlo, ¡digo yo! con brunoise de verdura y foie; Que se me note la lorza con el top me importa un pimiento con cre- ma de hierbas recién cortadas; Macarrón rosa de no pienso tener hijos y qué! con helado de yogur griego, sopa de coco y arándanos o Canelones de no me caso porque no me da la gana rellenos de requesón, ceps y virutas de parmesano. 16 Disponible en goo.gl/C8Mnez. Imagen 1. Fotograma de apertura del spot de la campaña Deliciosa Calma Fuente: página oficial de la campaña (https://www.deliciosacalma.com/). 95O T R A S V O C E S ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising | María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez colaboraba en esta ocasión con la Fundación Ana Bella y su Escuela para el Empoderamiento de la Mujer, que aporta recursos a mujeres socialmente excluidas. De ello se desprende que la empresa genera contenido más allá del puramente publicitario, como parte de una campaña de Responsabilidad Social Corporativa (RSC), a través de la cual “Campofrío muestra su interés por el entorno y se compromete con su público con hechos concretos, y en la que es constante la generación de emoción” (Mut y Breva 2012). La campaña fue un gran éxito, tanto desde el punto de vista profesional como comercial. Desde el punto de vis- ta profesional, resultó premiada con casi una treintena de galardones de prestigio.17 Comercialmente, y según la revista especializada IpMark,18 Deliciosa Calma ayudó a incrementar las ventas totales de Pavofrío en un 12,4%, frente a los meses anteriores a la campaña. Su notoriedad de marca también aumentó en 14 puntos, el mercado de referencia se incrementó del 11,7% al 12,9% (+1,2 puntos) y la marca superó en 11 puntos la media de impacto del mercado de la alimentación. En poco más de tres meses, el spot había dejado atrás los trece millones de visualizaciones, superando a firmas emblemáticas como Coca-Cola o Adidas. Un estudio de mercado, realizado por Milward Brown, descubrió que el 76% de las perso- nas que habían visto el spot habían dicho que lo habían disfrutado, y el 61% lo encontraba valioso. El anuncio se convirtió en el más popular en YouTube en el 2016. Estudio de caso El spot de dos minutos de duración se divide en tres partes: la primera, de presentación, está ambientada en espacios domésticos; la segunda, central, se desarrolla en el restaurante; la tercera parte es el cierre que cul- mina con el pack shot y el claim.19 El spot arranca con varias escenas muy rápidas, en las que se ve a mujeres superadas por las tareas de cuidado y/o profesionales, y donde se introduce la estadística del informe Niel- sen. Tras una imagen en primer plano de un hacha de cocina que cae violentamente sobre la tabla de cortar, sugiriendo simbólicamente un “basta ya”, un cambio de música nos traslada al restaurante, mientras un texto superpuesto, tras leer el nombre del local (Deliciosa Calma), nos indica que se trata del primer restaurante que cocina platos libres de estrés. Vemos a la encargada de sala que va tomando nota por las diferentes mesas, 17 Puede consultarse una lista de premios en goo.gl/8S9Y5G. 18 Disponible en goo.gl/ThDPrp. 19 Pack Shot es, literalmente, la imagen del producto. En los spots televisivos suele aparecer al final, con una toma fija que muestra el producto y generalmente el eslogan o el claim y el logotipo de la marca. Claim es un término similar al eslogan, pero con algunas diferencias, en especial la duración, que es más larga en el eslogan. El claim suele usarse para reforzar la idea publicitaria. todas ocupadas por mujeres, hasta que llega a la última, donde están las actrices Carmen Maura, Rossy de Palma y María Barranco. Las peticiones de estas son un guiño intertextual a la película de Almodóvar: “Estamos al bor- de de un ataque de risa con reducción de nervios”, pide Maura, a la que sigue la alusión al gazpacho por parte de Rossy de Palma (elemento esencial en su papel en el film) y la frase “se te hace una bola horrorosa, horro- rosa”, que hizo popular el personaje de María Barran- co. Finalmente, vemos a la jefa de sala hablando con la cocinera, quien está sorprendida de que el local esté tan lleno: “Normal, somos 15 millones de mujeres”, explica la primera. Comienza el cierre del spot con una voz en off que argumenta: “Una sociedad equilibrada también ayuda a reducir el estrés”, y aparece el pack shot, donde se ve por primera vez el producto (Pavofrío) junto a la dirección web y una apelación directa a la consumidora para que se inscriba y pueda conseguir una mesa en el restaurante. Análisis Para Becker-Herby, hay cinco variables que permiten identificar la estrategia de la femvertising: 1) Utilización de la diversidad: al igual que el feminismo contemporá- neo que es interseccional, en esta publicidad las mujeres deben ser diversas (edad, tamaño, origen étnico), y por ello, la femvertising abandona el cuerpo normativizado de las modelos; 2) Elaboración de mensajes expresa- mente a favor de las mujeres: deben ser inspiradores e inclusivos, que refuercen lo positivo, buscando sen- timientos de confianza y autoafirmación. Así, la fem- vertising rechaza mensajes en los que el producto es la solución a los problemas que tiene la consumidora; 3) Ruptura de los estereotipos y/o mandatos de género: desafío frente a lo que el patriarcado considera que las mujeres o las niñas “deben ser”. La femvertising utiliza escenarios que rompen los estereotipos, por lo que es raro que se usen mujeres en el espacio doméstico o ejer- ciendo tareas típicamente femeninas. Por el contrario, suelen aparecer en ambientes competitivos, de ocio, atléticos, profesionales o bien neutros; 4) Minimización de la sexualidad: se trata de negar la “mirada masculina” habitual del sexismo publicitario. En la femvertising, si se exhibe el cuerpo, se realiza de forma mucho más natural, sin exagerar la apariencia con poses sexuales o sofisticaciones estéticas; y 5) Representación autén- tica de las mujeres: esta variable se refiere a todos los aspectos publicitarios, desde el talento, el producto, la ambientación o el estilo. En la femvertising, el mensaje de la campaña debe sentirse real y en sintonía con el producto anunciado. Este impulso sobrepasa la publi- cidad y las consumidoras esperan que la marca sea consecuente con las mujeres más allá de la campaña publicitaria (Becker-Herby 2016, 18-20). La propuesta de Becker-Herby se acerca con efectivi- dad al objeto de análisis, pero sus resultados pueden 96 O T R A S V O C E S rev.estud.soc. No. 68 • abril-junio • Pp. 88-100 • ISSN 0123-885X • e-ISSN 1900-5180 · https://doi.org/10.7440/res68.2019.08 ser únicamente descriptivos, por lo que se necesita un esfuerzo adicional para estudiar si la publicidad, además de estar a favor de la igualdad, es capaz de motivar el empoderamiento de las consumidoras. En consecuen- cia, se incorporan otras cuatro variables de análisis a las cinco anteriores, elaboradas a partir de la propuesta de Porroche-Escudero que se explicó en el marco teórico (2017, 60-61). Estas son: 6) Fomento de la capacidad crí- tica para tomar decisiones; 7) Propuesta de un discurso propio frente al de una voz experta y exógena; 8) Infor- mación valiosa, relevante y efectiva; y 9) Impulso de la conciencia política, no sólo individual sino colectiva. La décima variable, activismo o impulso de la participa- ción del público, se incorpora para estudiar el concepto prosumidor/a en la femvertising, categoría relacionada con toda publicidad contemporánea. A continuación, veamos estas variables de análisis apli- cadas a Deliciosa Calma: 1. Utilización de la diversidad: el spot de Campofrío ofrece un elenco de mujeres, cuyas edades se pueden adscribir a una horquilla de entre treinta y cincuenta años en su mayoría, a excepción de la actriz Carmen Maura, que es mayor. Las mujeres que vemos en las mesas y las que trabajan en el restaurante, así como las del inicio del spot que aparecen en el entorno doméstico, en su mayoría superan las edades de las actrices que suelen protagonizar los anuncios. Todas son blancas (como la mayoría de mujeres españolas) y responden al fenotipo más común: cabello more- no, ojos oscuros. Si bien en esas variables se rompe el criterio de diversidad, hay que tener en cuenta el target de la firma y la estructura poblacional españo- la, aunque se echa de menos alguna protagonista de origen diferente, por ejemplo, mujeres latinoame- ricanas. Ninguna es obesa o formalmente no nor- mativa, aunque al inicio se nos muestra a una mujer incapaz de abrochar la falda. No son, en todo caso, las recurrentes modelos muy delgadas, altas y jóvenes. Aparecen bien vestidas y arregladas, como se espe- ra en una cena formal, aunque de manera bastante convencional, revelando que pertenecen a una clase social media-alta. Ninguna aparece sexualizada o instrumentalizada desde el punto de vista estético, aunque sí reproducen cierto canon, subvertido en la cuestión de la edad. Definitivamente no se expone un modelo de perfección al estilo hegemónico actual (muy joven y delgada), por lo que, aunque incorpora elementos de la idea canónica de feminidad y tam- bién de clase social y origen étnico, no se representa tan opresivo como suele ocurrir en la publicidad mainstream.20 El claim final refuerza estas ideas 20 Mainstream es un anglicismo que significa tendencia o moda dominante. La traducción literaria del término mainstream es “corriente popular”. El término mainstream en inglés está compuesto por dos expresiones: “main”, que significa “prin- cipal”, y “stream”, que expresa “corriente o flujo”. expresamente: “Pavofrío, alimentando otro modelo de mujer”. 2. Elaboración de mensajes expresamente a favor de las mujeres: el mensaje es sin duda a favor de la igualdad de género, y el discurso se construye a través de los nombres de los platos, que indican la necesidad de desprenderse de responsabilidades, pero también la importancia de no sentir culpabili- dad al hacerlo. En ningún momento (excepto en el pack shot) se relacionan estos mensajes de manera específica con el producto, y la idea no es adelgazar (habitual en los productos bajos en calorías, como es el embutido de pavo) sino el bienestar: reducir el estrés, sentirse bien, disfrutar de la vida. Como debilidad, señalada en algunas críticas en prensa e internet, se puede indicar que Campofrío elige la estrategia de femversiting precisamente para pro- ductos considerados por el público como bajos en calorías, pero no tanto saludables. En este sentido, no se rompe la asociación entre cuidado de la línea o de la salud y el género. 3. Ruptura de los estereotipos y/o mandatos de género: el spot apela a romper los mandatos de género cuan- do dice de modo expreso que el padre puede recoger a las criaturas en el colegio, que no importa si se tie- nen arrugas y/o kilos de más o que el matrimonio no es el fin principal en la vida. Con estas ideas se ponen en discusión principios claros de la socialización femenina (y por extensión, de la masculina). A través del menú, las protagonistas van discutiendo los este- reotipos de género que tienen que ver con el mundo de los cuidados, la esfera profesional, y también el mandato de belleza que exige un único modelo de feminidad normativa. La elección del restaurante como espacio discursivo (una vez que el anuncio se desplaza desde el ámbito doméstico) sugiere la transgresión liminar, mediante la ruptura de fron- tera que simboliza el hacha de cocina que cae en la tabla de cortar, para ocupar el entorno público, en lo que intuimos que es una cena, en una ubicación libre de hombres y que puede descodificarse como una conquista de áreas masculinas, pero también como un lugar neutro desde el punto de vista de género, pues el restaurante ofrece un espacio de aspecto más bien familiar. Todas las trabajadoras que aparecen en el spot son mujeres, sugiriendo también una toma de posición en una profesión, la restauración, que ha encumbrado numerosos nombres masculinos como chefs de prestigio, mientras que apenas existen mujeres en el olimpo de la alta cocina, paradójica- mente un espacio femenino por tradición. 4. Minimización de la sexualidad: en el spot de Campofrío las mujeres son atractivas, pero dentro de cierta normalidad, y no se exponen con criterios de sexualización, aunque sí de belleza clásica. Apenas se descubre el cuerpo de las mujeres que aparecen, 97O T R A S V O C E S ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising | María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez todas van vestidas sin escotes, y no hay elementos fetichistas de la sexualización normalizada (como transparencias o encajes) ni exhibición gratuita de zonas del cuerpo. En ningún caso se puede inferir, del visionado del spot, que exista ningún tipo de instrumentalización de la imagen de las mujeres. No se han diseñado de forma clara imágenes para complacer la “mirada masculina” y se han elegido con cuidado puestas en escena no sexualizadas. La sensación que da ese espacio poblado de mujeres es de comodidad y equilibrio. 5. Representación auténtica de las mujeres: este crite- rio es difícil de conseguir si lo que promueve el spot, como en este caso, es un mundo utópico. No obstan- te, sí hay una relación fuerte y clara entre la idea del inicio (las mujeres están superadas por las tareas que deben afrontar), la posibilidad de romper los manda- tos de género (que es lo que nos sugieren los platos de la carta, pero también la propia actitud de esas muje- res que deciden juntarse para disfrutar de la comida, sin sentir culpa por delegar tareas) y el concepto que utiliza la firma, al poner en relación a las mujeres con los alimentos que se han demostrado científicamente positivos para reducir el estrés (entre ellos, el pavo). En este sentido, el comercial rechaza los mandatos de género e incorpora una idea muy importante para el feminismo: la sororidad. Estas mujeres deciden jun- tarse, compartir su ocio y poner en común la necesi- dad de romper las cadenas. La amistad entre mujeres, una de las más potentes ideas del feminismo, aparece aquí sin fisuras hasta el punto de incomodar a algu- nas personas que consideran molesto no sólo que se reúnan sin hombres en un espacio segregado, sino que hablen de ellos y/o critiquen sus acciones, tal y como se reflejó en algunas entradas de blogs y publicaciones de internet.21 Sin importar que la esta- dística demuestre que las mujeres son cuidadoras en un porcentaje mucho más alto que los hombres, pues muchas mujeres manifestaron que, si bien el anuncio les había gustado, encontraban inadecuada la forma de reflejar la maternidad. Otras escribían que los hombres salían perjudicados en el spot. Una curiosidad es que la plataforma Change.org recibió una petición para la retirada del anuncio, iniciativa auspiciada por parte de hombres que consideraban que el anuncio era denigrante para su sexo. Consi- guió recoger 126 firmas.22 6. Fomento de la capacidad crítica para tomar decisio- nes: el anuncio de Campofrío nos ofrece a mujeres que, tras una toma de conciencia (a partir del estrés que generan las múltiples tareas que deben afrontar 21 Algunos ejemplos en: http://bit.ly/2iQoleg;http://bit.ly/2w MH40n; http://bit.ly/2xs1EAs; http://bit.ly/2eyXFxv o http:// bit.ly/2vTq8k9 22 Disponible en goo.gl/kCduYC. tanto en la esfera privada como en la profesional), deciden hacer un alto y elegir opciones vitales que las descargan de responsabilidades o culpas. Aun- que el spot no puede enseñarnos el proceso, este se infiere a partir del cambio de ritmo, tono y situación que se ofrecen antes y después de la imagen del hacha de cocina cayendo sobre la tabla de cortar. 7. Propuesta de un discurso propio frente al de una voz experta y exógena: esta variable es especialmente interesante en el análisis de publicidad porque la mayoría de comerciales utilizan una voz prescriptora que, en el caso de productos dirigidos a mujeres, en ocasiones construye una voz crítica que culpabiliza a la consumidora, a la que se anima a elegir un tipo de consumo concreto para solucionar sus problemas. En Deliciosa Calma esto no se produce. En ningún momento algo o alguien les dice a las protagonistas lo que tienen que hacer. Más bien se nos presenta la solución como fruto de una toma de conciencia personal, a partir de una reflexión que no se ve en la pantalla pero que es fácil intuir en el fuera de campo. 8. Información valiosa, relevante y efectiva: la publi- cidad actual se apoya en argumentos en esencia emocionales y no tanto racionales, por lo que no se suele encontrar información científica o autén- ticamente relevante en los anuncios. No obstante, en productos de alimentación hay una tendencia a proporcionar evidencias científicas producto de la investigación, sobre todo en lo que se denomina alimentos funcionales, aquellos que proveen ele- mentos nutricionales o dietéticos suplementarios y sobre los que la regulación publicitaria es muy estricta. En el caso de Deliciosa Calma se usan dos datos reales e importantes: el que informa sobre el nivel de estrés de las mujeres y el que propone que una alimentación saludable puede ayudar a paliar el estrés (aunque en el spot no se menciona el estudio universitario en que se basa la campaña publicitaria). En este caso no encontramos ejemplos de informa- ción hiperbólica o innecesaria, construida a partir de sofisticados neologismos, como es habitual en pro- ductos de cosmética o belleza. 9. Impulso de la conciencia política, no sólo individual sino colectiva: la elección de un restaurante sólo para mujeres y atendido por mujeres, en el que ellas reconocen entre sí los problemas que comparten, es el indicador más visible de la incorporación de este principio por parte del spot. Puede ser buscado o no, pero la lectura que se extrae es que las mujeres no están solas ante el estrés y la sobrecarga, muchas otras comparten sus problemas, y quizá el primer paso para superarlos es ponerlos en común y apo- yarse en las otras. Esta dimensión es precisamente la más política de todas. No por casualidad fue la que más recelo despertó entre el público, pues la toma de conciencia común es lo que mueve al cambio social, 98 O T R A S V O C E S rev.estud.soc. No. 68 • abril-junio • Pp. 88-100 • ISSN 0123-885X • e-ISSN 1900-5180 · https://doi.org/10.7440/res68.2019.08 y eso es lo que ahora mismo reclaman los movimien- tos feministas con más fuerza que nunca. 10. Activismo o impulso de la participación del público: las numerosas solicitudes que Deliciosa Calma reci- bió para asistir al restaurante indican que la firma ha implementado correctamente una acción que impli- ca la respuesta del público más allá del consumo. El activismo, en este caso, se puede observar no sólo en la solicitud de participación, que puede analizarse como el deseo de beneficiarse de un regalo, sino en que la propia estrategia digital animaba a otras fór- mulas de participación, como elaborar nuevos platos libres de estrés. La participación del público, en este caso, ha servido para que la marca recopile abun- dante información sobre su campaña, adquiriendo propuestas que puede emplear en sucesivas actua- ciones. Esta es la estrategia que define el papel del prosumidor/a, quien participa en esos canales inte- ractivos y, al mismo tiempo, forma parte de la propia investigación publicitaria, influyendo en el diseño de posteriores acciones. Del análisis anterior se puede concluir que Deliciosa Calma amplía la representación femenina. Aunque no lo hace de manera radical, sí lo hace de forma signifi- cativa: es importante la visibilidad de mujeres que han dejado atrás la juventud (aunque en el spot no se llega a las ancianas) porque la prohibición de envejecer es uno de los grandes problemas identificados por la literatura feminista, junto con el modelo opresivo de belleza (Orbach 1978 y 2009; Wolf 1990; Sontag 1990). En el mis- mo sentido, el discurso de Deliciosa Calma discute la idea de la mística femenina (Friedan 1963)23 o la construcción social y estereotípica de la maternidad, en la línea de tex- tos feministas como los de Badinter (1980), Rich (1996) o Gimeno (2018). Asimismo, rechaza cualquier identifi- cación con la “mirada masculina” teorizada por Mulvey (1975) y por Berger (1972), y que constituye una de las críticas más recurrentes en la literatura feminista.24 El mensaje potencialmente subversivo es expreso: ani- ma a las mujeres a romper mandatos sociales, que sean ellas las que elijan y que se sientan bien por hacerlo, sugiriendo que eso les ayudará a conseguir calidad de 23 Friedan llama mística de la feminidad a aquello que la cultura y la sociedad consideran como esencialmente femenino y que, como horma moral, se pretende para todas las mujeres. La obra de Friedan es un clásico del pensamiento feminista de segunda ola. 24 La mirada, en teoría fílmica, describe cómo el público espec- tador interactúa con los medios visuales. El concepto mirada masculina, clave en la teoría fílmica feminista a partir de la obra de Mulvey, sugiere una forma de mirar sexualizada que empodera a los hombres al posicionar visualmente a las mujeres como un objeto del deseo masculino heterosexual. Berger, por su parte, en su propuesta sobre cómo mirar el arte, explica que “los hombres miran a las mujeres y las mujeres se miran a sí mismas siendo miradas” (1972, 55). vida: reducción del estrés y, en la propuesta aspiracional de la campaña publicitaria, felicidad. Esta idea enlaza con la necesidad de autenticidad y credibilidad que habíamos definido como prerrequisito para la femvertising; ello, a pesar de la debilidad que constituye el hecho de que el alimento anunciado es considerado óptimo para mante- ner la línea. En esta dirección, hay que reflexionar acerca de la posibilidad de que el aparente cuestionamiento de estereotipos se asiente, pues precisamente sobre ellos las protagonistas del anuncio pueden sugerir también otra lectura: las tareas de cuidado y domésticas siguen siendo responsabilidad suya; de ahí la ambivalencia a la que alude el título de este artículo. Por último, en ningún momento se instrumentaliza el cuerpo o la imagen de las mujeres, que aparecen no sexualizadas, seguras de sí mismas y portadoras de un mensaje positivo: ninguna de ellas puede leerse como una caricatura, un insulto a la feminidad o un modelo negativo de ser y estar como mujer en el mundo. No es menos importante que la campaña sea capaz de reflejar una toma de conciencia endógena, elaborada por las propias mujeres y no expuesta desde un dis- curso externo a ellas mismas. La puesta en común de los problemas compartidos, mediante esa toma de conciencia, indica que el mensaje es político y llama a la acción colectiva, al cambio social. El spot no sólo infor- ma del cansancio y el hartazgo de las mujeres, sino que advierte a toda la sociedad de lo injusto de la situación y sugiere que las mujeres, independientes y conscien- tes de su situación, no se quedarán de brazos cruzados ante ello. Lo anterior indica que la campaña incorpora principios básicos del feminismo de forma respetuosa y sostenible, aunque lo haga sin ofrecer una salida con- creta relacionada con la exigencia de cambios. No hay que dejar de lado el papel activo del público, ese prosumidor/a que hoy es capaz de interactuar con las firmas en un discurso que ya no es unidireccional. La estrategia de conexión con las consumidoras es un recurso muy potente pero exige un cuidadoso diseño si se desea que funcione. La acción digital de Deliciosa Calma y la respuesta de miles de mujeres que quisieron participar de la iniciativa nos indican que ha recibido más apoyo que rechazo, a pesar de las críticas comen- tadas. El aumento de las ventas pone sobre la mesa la necesidad de incorporar mensajes socialmente respon- sables desde las firmas si desean fidelizar a una audien- cia cada vez más exigente desde el punto de vista ético y sociopolítico. Conclusiones La femvertising se presenta como un fenómeno que probablemente ha llegado para quedarse, dado que, cada vez más, las marcas son conscientes de la nece- sidad de crear contextos de responsabilidad social. En este sentido, la crítica a las acciones en favor de la 99O T R A S V O C E S ¿Puede la publicidad ser feminista? Ambivalencia e intereses de género en la femvertising | María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez igualdad parece ser positiva y, además, intervenir en el aumento de las ventas. No obstante, desde una perspec- tiva feminista, presenta tensiones ante la posibilidad de destruir el lesivo sexismo de la publicidad mainstream a costa de la instrumentalización del propio feminismo, que puede ser “domesticado”, o bien utilizado con fines espurios. Esta tensión es clave para seguir profundizando en este tipo de publicidad que se revela como un espa- cio de investigación muy fértil que, de momento, carece de estudios en lengua española. Incluso, los que existen en inglés no son muy numerosos. Es, por tanto, necesa- rio seguir reflexionando sobre conceptos relacionados con la femvertising, como son el de empoderamiento o el de prosumidores/as, pues la ambivalencia de la pro- pia femvertising se revela como algo intrínsecamente unido. Quizá los fenómenos complejos sólo pueden recibir respuestas complejas, sin posibilidad alguna de establecer una sola lectura, ya sea, en este caso, la de pervertir el propio feminismo o la de empoderar a las consumidoras. Lo indudable es que las mujeres sienten hartazgo de los modelos, tanto corporales como actitu- dinales, que propone la publicidad convencional, y las marcas deben tomar nota si desean mantener su rela- ción con ellas. También es un hecho que hoy asistimos a un movimiento feminista más visible y rearticulado que el de la década anterior, y que no parece que las nuevas generaciones, al menos en Occidente, estén dispuestas a acatar algunas o muchas de las normas de género radicalizadas en el nuevo siglo. No puede darse, al menos de momento, una respuesta contundente a la pregunta retórica que encabeza este artículo. La publi- cidad siempre es una herramienta de comunicación destinada a aumentar ventas y/o prestigio de la marca, por lo que no podemos exigirle que opere en otro para- digma. Salvo el caso de la publicidad institucional, sus fines siempre serán comerciales. 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Salon, 22 de julio, https://www.salon. com/2014/07/21/worst_sales_pitch_ever_the_ad_ industrys_shameless_history_of_using_feminism_to_ sell_products/ work_3ygwbwjanfhjpef2dzhaqqgsfy ---- Misogyny, feminism, and sexual harassment | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4103/ipj.ipj_32_18 Corpus ID: 51935103Misogyny, feminism, and sexual harassment @article{Srivastava2017MisogynyFA, title={Misogyny, feminism, and sexual harassment}, author={K. Srivastava and S. Chaudhury and P. Bhat and Samiksha Sahu}, journal={Industrial Psychiatry Journal}, year={2017}, volume={26}, pages={111 - 113} } K. Srivastava, S. Chaudhury, +1 author Samiksha Sahu Published 2017 Sociology, Medicine Industrial Psychiatry Journal Feminism is a gamut of socio political movements and ideologies that share a common goal to delineate, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes.[8] Feminist movements over decades have campaigned for rights of women, including the right to vote, to hold public office, to work, to earn fair wages or equal pay, to own property, to receive education, to enter contracts, to have equal rights within marriage, and to have maternity leave. Feminists have also… Expand View on Wolters Kluwer ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 2 CitationsBackground Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper Physiological Sexual Disorders Movement Maternity brand of multivitamin Contract agreement Crime Act 2 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency UniBO @ AMI: A Multi-Class Approach to Misogyny and Aggressiveness Identification on Twitter Posts Using AlBERTo Arianna Muti, A. Barrón-Cedeño Computer Science EVALITA 2020 1 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Safe at work: Options for British Columbia to support survivors of domestic violence in the workplace L. Gonçalves Political Science 2020 PDF Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 33 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Radical Feminism and Feminist Radicalism Ellen Willis Sociology 1984 82 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories Lorraine Code Sociology 2002 134 Save Alert Research Feed The dictionary of feminist theory M. Humm Sociology 1989 281 Save Alert Research Feed Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave Nicola Rivers Sociology 2017 51 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed The law code of Manu Manu, Patrick Olivelle Sociology 2004 48 View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction R. Tong Sociology 1989 1,085 Save Alert Research Feed Globalization and Feminist Activism M. Hawkesworth Political Science 2006 104 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed From head shops to Whole Foods: the rise and fall of activist entrepreneurs Blake Slonecker Sociology 2018 13 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice S. Knaak Sociology 2006 33 Highly Influential View 3 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Everything you wanted to Know about Fourth Wave Feminism – But were Afraid to Ask Prospect; 14 August, 2017 Available from: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ magazine/everything-wanted-know-fourth-wave-feminism. [Last accessed 2018 2018 ... 1 2 3 4 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 2 Citations 33 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE work_4565xczgobccrgaw56onxtzvfy ---- Legal Solutions to Street Sexual Harassment in the #MeToo Era All Rights Reserved © Mount Saint Vincent University, 2018 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 20:56 Atlantis Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice Études critiques sur le genre, la culture, et la justice Legal Solutions to Street Sexual Harassment in the #MeToo Era Denise Brunsdon Volume 39, numéro 2, 2018 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1064071ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1064071ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Mount Saint Vincent University ISSN 1715-0698 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Brunsdon, D. (2018). Legal Solutions to Street Sexual Harassment in the #MeToo Era. Atlantis, 39(2), 40–56. https://doi.org/10.7202/1064071ar Résumé de l'article Street sexual harassment is the unwelcome commoditization of women’s bodies by fellow citizen-strangers. This harm is under-recognized by traditional, Anglocentric common law. This paper begins by discussing the #MeToo wave, in particular by suggesting that it is a re-branded version of the feminist movement that is helpful but not sufficient to address street sexual harassment. Second, the paper outlines how street sexual harassment harms women. Third, some contextual analysis of why governments and legal systems have been slow to address street sexual harassment are provided. Fourth, the paper assesses the various areas of the law that may be used to curb street sexual harassment. Finally, this paper canvasses the ways other governments have taken action against street sexual harassment. Ultimately, this paper argues that the lack of protection of the basic civil right to use the public sphere free of sexual harassment is a failure of the Canadian justice system, and a criminal response remains essential. Other methods of legal regulation are inadequate without the social condemnation that criminal law carries. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/atlantis/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1064071ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1064071ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/atlantis/2018-v39-n2-atlantis04853/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/atlantis/ Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 40 Research Legal Solutions to Street Sexual Harassment in the #MeToo Era Denise Brunsdon, JD, MBA, is an associate at Ben- nett Jones LLP (Calgary) and is the recipient of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, in particular for her gender-based community volunteer work. She has published broadly on issues of gender and techno- logy, and gender and politics. Abstract: Street sexual harassment is the unwelcome commoditization ofwomen’s bodies by fellow citizen- strangers. This harm is under-recognized by tradi- tional, Anglocentric common law. This paper begins by discussing the #MeToo wave, in particular by sug- gesting that it is a re-branded version of the feminist movement that is helpful but not sufficient to address street sexual harassment. Second, the paper outlines how street sexual harassment harms women. Third, some contextual analysis of why governments and legal systems have been slow to address street sexual harassment are provided. Fourth, the paper assesses the various areas of the law that may be used to curb street sexual harassment. Finally, this paper canvasses the ways other governments have taken action against street sexual harassment. Ultimately, this paper argues that the lack of protection of the basic civil right to use the public sphere free of sexual harassment is a failure of the Canadian justice system, and a criminal response remains essential. Other methods of legal regulation are inadequate without the social condem- nation that criminal law carries. Keywords: street sexual harassment; #MeToo; street harassment; catcalling; law; sexism; feminism; Canada; United States; criminal; critical legal studies; legislation Introduction Street sexual harassment is the unwelcome commodit- ization of women’s bodies by fellow citizen-strangers. Street sexual harassment can be defined as unwanted comments, gestures, and actions made in a public place related to the innocent party’s perceived sex, gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation (Stop Street Harassment 2015). This includes actions such as whistling, leering, sexist slurs, persistent requests for a name or number, following, flashing, and public masturbation (Stop Street Harassment 2015). Histor- ically, this behaviour has been described using the un- gendered and non-descript term of “catcalling.” The insults—or “compliments” as they may be mischarac- terized by perpetrators—can be frequent but unpre- dictable. This consistent but randomized violence creates sizeable harm by making public space uncom- fortable, even unsafe, for women. Dread of this im- pending violation of dignity is a state of oppression for many women. This harm is under-recognized by traditional, Anglo- centric common law. The #MeToo wave ofthe femin- ist movement has brought a renewed interest in, and public discourse about, the oppression that mainly women face, usually at the hands ofmen. Personal ex- periences—so prominent in the #MeToo wave—are often absent in legal discourse and, to some extent, academic research generally. The feminist movement, in contrast, relies on the power of storytelling and consciousness-raising to counteract the dominant male viewpoint. This paper explores the ways that the #MeToo wave of feminism has raised awareness of sexual harassment, how this might bring attention to street sexual harassment in Canada, and the potential legal remedies available. Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 41 This paper begins by discussing the #MeToo wave, in particular by suggesting that it is a re-branded version ofthe feminist movement that is helpful but not suf- ficient to address street sexual harassment. Second, the paper outlines how street sexual harassment harms women. Third, some contextual analysis of why governments and legal systems have been slow to address street sexual harassment is provided. Fourth, the paper assesses the various areas ofthe law that may be used to curb street sexual harassment. Finally, this paper canvasses the ways other govern- ments have taken action against street sexual harass- ment. Ultimately, this paper argues that the lack ofprotec- tion of the basic civil right to use the public sphere free of sexual harassment is a failure of the Canadian justice system, and a criminal response remains es- sential. Other methods of legal regulation are inad- equate without the social condemnation that criminal law carries. The #MeToo Context I contend that the true value of#MeToo is not in its expression as a new “movement.” Rather, #MeToo fits within the greater feminist movement, and is not a separate movement unto itself. This article there- fore labels the movement as a “wave” within the fem- inist movement, an approach endorsed by others (Parry 2018). The #MeToo wave of feminism is a modern and di- gitally-flourishing take on a traditional pillar of the women’s movement: consciousness-raising. Women sharing their oft-similar stories of gender-based viol- ence creates a unifying experience out of what can seem to be an individual or even invisible problem. The #MeToo wave has created a more open social climate for discussing gender-based violence, includ- ing street sexual harassment. Many #MeToo stories seem to include—and re- sponses to these stories gain oxygen from—the abuse of power. This is evident in the #MeToo focus on Weinstein-style harassment, i.e. abuse within a rela- tionship ofunequal power. However, this focus poses a challenge to addressing issues ofstreet sexual harass- ment, or sexual assault more generally, where the issue is not about an individual asserting and abusing their power over a more vulnerable colleague or date. Acts of street sexual harassment are more randomized and anonymous. Perhaps because a single incident of street sexual harassment is less destructive or violent than a rape, it is wrongly deemed innocuous. The more universal an experience in men’s lives, the more often society rationalizes street sexual harassment as a harmless experience (e.g., “boys will be boys,” “locker room talk,” and various other anachronisms for broad-based and socially acceptable gender violence). This ignores how a hundred incidents of harassment invade the psychological safety and self-worth ofwo- men. The genesis of#MeToo mainly regarded the struggles of privileged, white, cis, wealthy, and often celebrit- ized women, the root theme of this wave of the fem- inist movement. The lessons, however, can and should be broader. Intersectional analysis acknowledges that multiple spheres of structural disadvantage exist but cannot be understood by simply adding layers ofdis- advantage. Race, gender expression, and all the factors that signal non-conformity to the patriarchy’s ideal- ized woman can affect the way she is harassed and the harms she experiences. Notions of attractiveness are socialized, including social preference by race, eco- nomic status, gender expression, and physical ability. The harm from street sexual harassment varies based on social preference and status. Street sexual harass- ment is not reserved for women who are deemed so- cially desirable, and can also be used as a tool to police and demean women perceived as undesirable or nonconformist. Thus, while the #MeToo wave of feminism has provided an important shift toward personal and widely shared stories, an intersectional feminist lens is also necessary to address street sexual harassment. Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 42 The Harm Many women can still recall their first personal ex- perience with street sexual harassment because it was traumatizing (Trudy 2013; Vinciguerra 1994). Norma Anne Oshynko wrote in her Master of Law thesis that “street harassment can best be understood as an integral part of a system of sexual terrorism which allows men to dominate and control women” (Oshynko 2002). Street sexual harassment tells women that our pres- ence in the public sphere is open for comment and criticism by strangers. The attacks remind women that our bodies are commodities to be freely con- sumed and commented upon by fellow citizens. Sev- eral scholars have argued that street sexual harassment—and the lack of legal recourse available to survivors of it—is an ongoing denial to grant wo- men their basic human rights. Gender scholar Robert Allen wrote: Whether in the workplace or on the street, the purpose of sexual harassment is to reduce wo- men to objects sexually vulnerable to men, and to reestablish the traditional power relation- ship between men and women. Indeed, wo- men’s sexual vulnerability to men is a key locus ofmale power, something men learn to expect. (1995, 134) As Cynthia Grant Bowman wrote in her Harvard Law Review article, street harassment is the denial ofa ba- sic civil liberty: The most fundamental definitions of liberty include the right of an individual to go where she chooses in spaces that are public. Indeed, liberty of this sort is essential to equal particip- ation in the affairs of the polis. The security to move about in public, what Blackstone called “the power of locomotion,” is one of the most basic civil rights; it is essential to the rights to assemble and petition for redress of griev- ances—the primary prerequisites to participa- tion in public affairs and admission to the public realm. Thus, when the law fails to pro- tect women from street harassment, it deprives them of one of the basic goods for which gov- ernment was ordained, leaving them in an Hobbesian wilderness men do not share. (1993, 520-21) Image 1: A sample ofonline posts sharing thoughts about and personal experiences ofstreet sexual harassment. (Clockwise from top left: Collazo 2013; unknown; Laxer 2013; Alston 2012; Moore 2015; Boosil 2015; CompleteStreetsCat 2015) Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 43 More specifically, the many harms of street sexual harassment include feeling powerless, dehumanized, and isolated; fearing for one’s safety; and the practical effects ofchanging one’s daily habits, including going outside less and at more restricted times (Davis 2017; Fox 2016). No recitation of the harm flowing from street sexual harassment would be complete without noting the role that sexual harassment plays in con- doning gender-based violence. Widespread objecti- fication of women’s bodies is linked to violence against women (American Psychological Association 2007; Oddone-Paolucci, Genuis and Violato 2000). Recognizing these harms is important because dam- ages are a key element under the law, but also because such recognition helps to stamp out the myth that some women enjoy street sexual harassment. As with other forms of sexual violence, myths exist to rein- force the acceptability of the violating conduct. That “catcalls” are inoffensive and even flattering is one such myth. New York Post writer Doree Lewak con- troversially wrote of street harassment as a “drive-by dose ofconfidence [that] is the 10-second antidote to all that negative feedback in the real world” (2014). Although some women may claim that they enjoy the experience, this does not address the lack of consent to such harassment by all women. The Statistics The nature of street sexual harassment makes it diffi- cult to track; it is constant yet unpredictable. Often, the woman is alone and the only witnesses are friends of the offender. Often, the harassment comes from a moving vehicle. Hollaback! and Cornell University began a large-scale research survey on street harassment in 2014. There were over 16,600 respondents overall, making this survey the largest analysis ofstreet harassment to date. The study found that, globally, the majority of wo- men experience their first incident of street harass- ment during puberty (Livingston 2014). In Canada, 620 women participated in the survey: 73% reported their first experience with street harass- ment between the ages of10 and 17, and 79% ofwo- men reported being followed by a man or group of men that made them feel unsafe during the past year (Livingston 2014). Over 60% of women reported changing their daily lives to avoid harassment, for ex- ample by taking different modes oftransportation or a different route home, not going out at night, not so- cializing, feeling distracted at school and work, and changing the time of leaving an event or location (Livingston 2014). A 2013 Hollaback! Ottawa com- munity consultation on street sexual harassment found that 97% of respondents had experienced har- assment on the street in the past year (Hollaback! Ot- tawa 2013). Image 2: Tom Fonder 2014 Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 44 Relevant Academic Theories A primary reason for the lack ofgovernment priority given to street sexual harassment is its disproportion- ate effect on women. As briefly discussed below, dominance feminism best explains the lived experi- ences of women subjected to street sexual harass- ment. Critical legal studies (CLS) also helps explain why women are refused full and equal access to legal protections and why the law systematically under- serves less powerful communities. Dominance feminism emphasizes the difference in power between men and women and how men’s in- terests dominate the agenda in a patriarchal society (Chamallas 2012). Women’s lack of power means a lack of voice in state priorities and governance (MacKinnon 1983). Street sexual harassment does not often attack male dignity. The status quo allows men to engage in street sexual harassment at their whim. Thus, the current system of what is deemed acceptable street sexual harassment shoulders women with the majority ofthe harm. Dominance feminism explains why street sexual harassment is not men- tioned in the House of Commons or newspapers (Baumgardner and Richards 2000). Such awareness would require the legislature and media to step out ofthe dominant male perspective. Critical legal studies has value in dissecting discrim- ination within the law. CLS deconstructs the way that power embeds and recreates itself within the legal system, never devolving to the vulnerable. Crit- ical legal theory posits that: Legal thought originates, of course, within the consciousness of the dominant class because it is in this class’ interest to bring it into being, but it is accepted and interiorized by everyone because of the traumatic absence of connec- tedness that would otherwise erupt into awareness. (Gabel 1992) Feminist legal theorists would point out that the dominant class is overwhelmingly male. Relevant Canadian Law Sexual harassment has been recognized as an offence under the anti-sex discrimination provisions in the human rights codes present across Canada’s provinces (Janzen v. Platy 1989). Freedom from sexual harass- ment is thus a human right in part because sexual harassment is an affront to dignity, personal integrity, autonomy, and personhood (Allen 1995; British Columbia Law Institute 2001). ChiefJustice Dickson for the Supreme Court stated in 1989 that sexual harassment is “an abuse ofboth eco- nomic and social power” (Janzen v. Platy 1989). Courts have recognized that sexual harassment in- cludes leering (Webb v. Cyprus Pizza 1985), sexually suggestive gestures (Sharp v. Seasons Restaurant Ontario 1987), and derogatory or degrading remarks. These legal cases involved workplace sexual harass- ment, however, not street sexual harassment. In considering street sexual harassment, one funda- mental question is whether the legal response should be a matter ofprivate or public law, as both could play a role. Broadly speaking, public law is an umbrella term to describe the areas oflaw that affect society as a whole, and private law regards disputes between indi- viduals and commercial entities. After reviewing ele- ments of private law, this paper argues that, ultimately, the social condemnation aspect of public law, in particular, the Criminal Code established by the federal government, makes it a more useful avenue to begin addressing street sexual harassment. The Criminal Code is taught to law students as the set of rules the government uses to indicate what behaviour the state condemns and will punish through a reduc- tion in civil liberties. i. Private Law Feminist scholar Catharine MacKinnon (1987) wrote: “Sexual harassment, the event, is not new to women. It is the law ofinjuries that it is new to” (3). In a 1992 Law Society ofUpper Canada (LSUC) conference pa- per, lawyers stated a similar idea: “There is no inher- Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 45 ent barrier preventing resourceful counsel from con- ceiving a cause of action arising from circumstances wherein a client has been the victim ofsexual harass- ment” (LSUC 1992, D-2). This progressive stance would prove naive. Sexual harassment by way of sex discrimination has been a proven tort (Lajoie v. Kelly 1997), but courts have been reticent to recognize it in other instances (Seneca College v. Bhadauria 1981). The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench said that whether the court recognized a tort of sexual harassment “is still an open question” (Campbell- Fowler v. Royal Trust Co. 1993). Gillian Demeyere provides a helpful summary of sexual harassment torts to date: While courts have uniformly allowed actions for breach of contract based on alleged sexual harassment to proceed, the treatment of ac- tions in tort has been less consistent. Some courts have declined to exercise their jurisdic- tion over claims asserting independently re- cognized torts where the conduct alleged might be also described as sexual harass- ment.... There can be little dispute that the wrong of sexual harassment can include the violation of interests long protected by the common law. Indeed, the pleadings approach concedes as much, by finding actions that plead independ- ently recognized causes of action to be within the jurisdiction ofcommon law courts. But by holding actions that plead merely “sexual har- assment” to be beyond the jurisdiction of the common law, the pleadings approach impli- citly declares that the wrongfulness of sexual harassment consists wholly in the fact that it is a form of sex discrimination. So understood, the common law cannot come to recognize a new tort of sexual harassment, because Bhadauria tells us that sex discrimination falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of human rights commissions. (2005, 647, 663) The courts have recognized a tort of sexual harass- ment by other names, recognizing that sexually har- assing conduct is tortious. But court recognition of the explicit tort remains weak. The established torts of battery, sexual assault, nuisance, and emotional distress all hold elements relevant to street sexual har- assment. As mentioned earlier in this article, sexual harassment results in a loss of dignity, autonomy, personhood, and personal integrity (BC Law Institute 2001, at 11). Additional harms flow from any ofbat- tery, assault, nuisance, or emotional distress that is sexual or gender based “including difficulties relating to depression, anxiety, mood disorders, disturbances of sleep, eating, sexuality, personality, interpersonal relationships, child development, and learning abilit- ies” (British Columbia Law Institute 2001, 11). Tort law and its awards have recognized such damages. Sexual assault is an accepted sexual violence tort, of- ten seen in cases of childhood sexual abuse. Even with near-universal societal rejection of rape, Cana- dian courts have not awarded civil remedies for sexual assault consistently. The harm of sexual assault “has not yet been fully recognized by the civil justice sys- tem” (British Columbia Law Institute 2001). Craig Brown and Melanie Randall (2004) argue for an ex- pansive, public insurance-like system: This leads us to examine alternative ways that the financial resources available to automobile accident victims might also be available to be- nefit victims of domestic and sexual violence. This involves the reform of the criminal injur- ies compensation system and a clear articula- tion of a rationale for compensation. Given that this would involve significant public ex- penditure, and therefore political opposition, we also consider models for a private insurance response. Our conclusion is that the only vi- able solution to the gross under-compensation of those injured by acts ofdomestic and sexual violence in Canada, is a substantially enhanced public compensation scheme. (316) If sexual assault survivors do not feel adequately compensated by the civil justice system, there is little hope for victims of street sexual harassment. One problem is that there is rarely any physical evidence. Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 46 Further, unlike a rape at a house party, where wit- nesses may have a personal connection with the com- plainant, there is not necessarily a personal connection with witnesses on a public street corner. Legal remedies in civil suits are aimed to put the Plaintiff in the situation they would have been in but for the wrong done to them. Courts have struggled to adequately award damages to sexual assault survivors seeking to be put in the situation they would have been in prior to the acute attack; street sexual harass- ment survivors have even less reason for hope. Com- pensable losses due to street sexual harassment too often result from cumulative experiences and are, therefore, too multi-causational to satisfy the tort framework. DB et al. v. Johnson (2012) is one Canadian civil litig- ation case related to street sexual harassment that proved a success. Various plaintiffs filed a claim against their neighbour for damages arising from as- sault, battery, and intentional infliction of mental suffering. The behaviour included making lewd sexu- al suggestions and comments, verbal sexual harass- ment, inappropriate touching (such as grabbing breasts and buttocks, sometimes in public). The Court commented that “[t]he whistling, catcalls and insults by themselves, however objectionable, cannot support a claim for damages.” Nonetheless, the Court decided that “non-consensual touching aside, each of the female plaintiffs, satisfied me that they had suffered humiliation and intimidation and an appre- hension of sexual assault.” The Court assessed dam- ages at between $350 and $5,500 per plaintiff. Unhelpfully, this victory was only possible because there was an identifiable Defendant making continu- ous and traceable assaults. It is also worth noting that the Defendant did not defend in the action. A British Columbia report on civil remedies in cases of sexual assault recommends extending the bases for liability to include negligence, vicarious liability, and breach ofnon-delegable duty (British Columbia Law Institute 2001). An expanded conception of sexual assault and its causes increases the chances of remed- ies for survivors. It also increases potential street sexual harassment recovery when combined with growing class action capacity in Canada. The basic purpose ofclass action law is to change the costs and benefits in any legal situation so plaintiffs can band together to distribute the costs of litigation across a number ofPlaintiffs who each have a right to a remedy that would not individually be sizeable enough to warrant a law suit. Companies that might normally breach their duties because the harm to an individual customer would not merit an expensive ac- tion become justly exposed to their aggregate liability (Canadian Bar Association: BC Branch 2017). Street sexual harassment class action suits could use traditional negligence and vicarious liability law to build class actions against the actors whose inertia fa- cilitates street sexual harassment. Examples might in- clude outdoor construction companies that refuse to act against staff or contractors who sexually harass passersby, municipalities whose inaccurate transit schedules leave women vulnerable for long periods of time, or bars that, instead of calling the police, eject harassing patrons who then move to verbally harass others in the public sphere. Overall, private tort law has struggled to account for women. Margot Schlanger (2002) has explored the reasonable person standard in torts and its bias toward what men deem reasonable. Martha Chamallas’ re- search has determined that “the negligent infliction of emotional harm and negligent interference with rela- tionships are low in the hierarchy of compensable harms, in part because of their cognitive link to wo- men and women’s injuries” (2005, 4). Remedies for gender-based violence are no different. In “Gendered Harms and the Law ofTort: Remedying (Sexual) Harassment,” Joanne Conaghan identified structural concerns within tort law: It may be precisely because the law recognizes the “wrong” inherent in defamation that it is socially perceived; it may be because the law denies a remedy for many of the acts which constitute sexual harassment that it is too often Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 47 socially denied. In other words harm is socially constructed and legally constituted; unless a harm is recognized as such by society and by law, it is not experienced as such. That is why for years many women have put up with sexual harassment without complaint: the social and legal failure to recognize the injury entailed has led women simply to endure it, repressing their feelings of violation, incipient outrage, the sense that a wrong had been perpetrated [foot- notes removed]. (1996, 429) Even established gender-based harms struggle within status quo tort law; new concepts such as street sexual harassment face many challenges. Though Conaghan (1996) and Brown and Randall (2004) argue for a continued use of tort law as part of the feminist pro- ject, this article argues it cannot be the only avenue for upheaval, particularly where street sexual harass- ment is concerned. The threshold for intention in any torts—albeit on the balance of probabilities—may be too onerous in most cases ofstreet sexual harassment. ii. Public Law The criminal law also has a poor record addressing gender-based violence. Sexual assault rates are disturb- ingly high and convictions disturbingly low; this has been driven by many factors related to systemic miso- gyny in the policing and judicial establishments (Ran- dall 2004). The outcome for more fleeting forms of gender violence, such as street sexual harassment, re- mains an open question. The following portion ofthe article will address specific sections ofCanada’s Crim- inal Code. There is no Code provision squarely focused on street sexual harassment. Section 265. Assault The s.265 sexual assault provision of the Criminal Image 3: This chart provides a short form ofthe key Criminal Code provisions that could be argued to be applicable to street sexual harassment. Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 48 Code does not work well for street sexual harassment because street sexual harassment involves words and not physical touching or force, as described under s.265.1(a). Under s.265.1(b), any act or gesture that is reasonably perceived as a subjective threat could be considered assault. So, although the collection of street sexual harassment experiences in a woman’s life may be threatening on the whole, each incident will likely seem too benign to reach the s.265 threshold. Highly menacing sexual harassment—even on the street—could reach this threshold, however. Section 264. Harassment The s.264 criminal harassment provision is often called the anti-stalking provision. However, much re- search exists on the section's deep inadequacy in ad- dressing stalking (for example, see MacFarlane 1997). Section 264 sets too high a threshold for use against street sexual harassment. The Code requires “re- peated” acts. Although women’s lived experiences of street sexual harassment are repeated, the perpetrator is usually different in each instance. Because the Code historically requires that a single harasser attack the same women repeatedly, street sexual harassers who randomize their attacks on different women re- ceive impunity under this current provision. Section 173. Indecency The public indecency sections of the Code hold po- tential to curb street sexual harassment. Street sexual harassment is instinctively—as the harm discussed above provides—an indecent act. Unfortunately, des- pite a rich body ofstatutory interpretation, indecency has never been thoroughly interpreted through a feminist lens.1 Anti-pornography issues involving de- cency have focused on overall threats to women, but within the community standards test. The com- munity standards test is a judicial endorsement of tyranny of the majority. This is demonstrated by the Court’s recognition that public opinion surveys may be appropriate to measure “a general average ofcom- munity thinking and feeling”(R v. Labaye 2005). The court has focused on the “harm” issue within the community standards test, arguing that social norms are not determinative2 but this half-measure is insuf- ficient. Lise Gotell cites Jeffrey Weeks in her deconstruction of the Butler decision. In R v. Butler, Butler, a Man- itoba video storeowner, was convicted under the Criminal Code obscenity law for distributing porno- graphic videos. Butler claimed the Code violated his constitutional right to freedom of expression. The Court upheld the obscenity law as a justifiable restric- tion on freedom of expression. Weeks (and then Go- tell) wrote: “Moral panics are flurries of social anxiety, usually focusing on a condition or person, or a group of persons, who have become defined as a threat to accepted social values and assumptions” (Weeks 1986, 95). Gotell (1997) notes that the Butler factum sub- missions embody the core problem with the com- munity standards test: The role of law as guardian of the moral uni- verse is clearly defended and applauded in each of these factums. Implicit here is the assump- tion that the depiction of sexual practices that lie outside of majoritarian norms constitutes a threat to the community itself. (53) Although some feminists interpreted Butler as a vic- tory, the victory is steeped in a problematic legal framework. Queer theorists such as Brenda Cossman (2004) contend that Butler did not apply a feminist lens to community standards. As Gotell (1997) states, “Butler merely provide[d] a new feminist language to legitimize and modernize what is really an old conser- vative, moral agenda” (at 99). Community standards tests such as those discussed in Butler—even those that purport to focus on harm over norms—are antithetical to feminism. Community standards embody normative social codes of conduct that have oppressed women throughout Anglocentric history. The weakness ofthe community standards test is directly linked to indecency, a concept that has for years been used to regulate women’s behaviour through government-sponsored regulation of sexual and artistic preferences. The decency provisions are also steeped in gender roles: the male-dominated le- gislature and courts are here to protect women and children from exposure to culture that is unseemly and “slutty.” More modern interpretations of inde- Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 49 cency based on community standards and harm have facially attempted to move away from embodying majority preferences, but feminists have effectively exposed such court claims (Cossman 1997). I con- tend that such decency provisions are the sword of moral panic and a key tool in regulating women’s sexual behaviour. To call on legal definitions of de- cency and community standards to protect women against street sexual harassment therefore seems counterproductive. The Criminal Code, as the book of rules to indicate social condemnation of beha- viours, should focus on the harassers, not on the so- called decency ofthe harassed. I suggest that the courts and the legislature should avoid the community standard in reviewing the de- cency of street sexual harassment according to s.173(1) and move toward a more feminist focus on the agency ofeach individual woman. Leading schol- ars in the US have similarly argued for a sexual har- assment doctrine that employs a reasonable person standard that accounts for complainants' intersec- tional identities (Onwuachi-Willig 2018). The relevant “flashing” provision, under section 1.75(b) of the Criminal Code, will not be considered under the scope of this paper because “flashing” is an obvious and recognized form ofextreme street sexual harassment. The “flashing” sections state that anyone who (a) causes a public disturbance by shouting, us- ing insulting language, using obscene language, or molesting another is guilty ofdisorderly conduct, and any person who (c) loiters in public and obstructs persons who are in the same place is committing a crime. Either (a) or (c) could be used to criminalize street sexual harassment. Even if the harassment is not as obviously acute or offensive as flashing, an action that disturbs a woman in public should be considered a disturbance if she feels the language directed to her was insulting, obscene, or bothersome (the traditional definition of molestation) sufficient to satisfy ss.173- 175. Finally, any street sexual harassment that results in a woman feeling uncomfortable while walking her preferred public route should be considered obstruc- tion. To make a woman uncomfortable in public is a core kind of obstruction. Obstructing women’s free participation in the public sphere is central to the negative impact of street sexual harassment. In this way, ss.173-175 are the most fitting response to street sexual harassment. To properly capture and condemn street sexual har- assment, the public indecency provisions provided in ss. 173-175 should be made more generic to encom- pass verbal indecency, or the list of indecent acts should be expanded beyond such physical acts as flashing to explicitly include indecent verbal assaults. Section 180. Nuisance Section 180 is the last potential option to criminalize street sexual harassment. Satisfying subsection (a) re- quires viewing street sexual harassment as endangering women’s health and comfort. It also requires viewing the (predominantly female) victims as members ofthe public. This should be straightforward. However, the legal community has a history of accepting the male viewpoint as the norm and actively asserting the male right, under and in the law, not to know about the ex- periences ofwomen. Feldthusen (1990) references the danger present when a dominant group assumes, uses, or imposes their narrative as the neutral viewpoint: “[M]most male law professors still refuse to consider, let alone engage with, the issues. Instead they exercise the male ‘right not to know’: to ignore, deny, neuter, trivialize, and redefine gender issues in legal educa- tion” (70-71). Envisioning a New Code Provision As is evident from the above discussion, there is no Code provision squarely focused on street sexual har- assment. None of the existing laws are easily adapt- able. Overall, the indecency and nuisance portions of the Code seem prima facie more useful than the assault or harassment portions. In two recent cases, the Canadian Courts have ad- Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 50 dressed possible use ofthe Code provisions to penalize street sexual harassment. In R v. Kohl, the complain- ant was jogging when the accused, a stranger to her, jumped out from behind bushes and blocked her way in a threatening and frightening manner; the accused did not touch her or speak to her. The complainant ran away and the accused chased her down the street. When the complainant ran to a house to seek help, the accused stood at the end of the driveway and stared at her. The complainant stated that she was very frightened. In this case, the accused was con- victed of criminal harassment under s.264(2)(d) and was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. He ap- pealed the conviction and the sentence. The appeal of the conviction was dismissed, but the sentence appeal was allowed to reduce the sentence to two years, with conditions. This is an extreme case of street sexual harassment that met the threshold for criminal har- assment as envisioned by the Code. In R v. Burns, the perpetrator whistled at the com- plainant and said "nice butt" or "nice ass." After the complainant ran to get away, the Appellant called out, "Are those pants painted on?" The Appellant was acquitted of the conviction for harassment, with the Court noting: While the [perpetrator’s] conduct was clearly inappropriate and unwanted, we do not see the incident as amounting to threatening conduct within the meaning of those words in s.264(2)(d). Although the complainant justifi- ably felt upset and scared by the appellant's conduct, viewed objectively, we do not see it as rising to the level ofa "tool of intimidation de- signed to instill a sense offear. (R v. Burns) This Court decided that this very common example of street sexual harassment did not warrant sanction under the Code. Despite inadequacies, criminal law stands as our soci- ety's main mechanism to condemn actions. I there- fore contend that the Canadian legislature should enact new criminal laws against street sexual harass- ment. Street sexual harassment provisions may not be easy to prosecute, but neither are many provisions of the Criminal Code regarding sexual violence. Con- demnation under the Code is an important start to es- tablishing the basic type of conduct that will not be tolerated. A new provision eschews the need to re-en- vision older provisions alongside unbiased statutory interpretation. The struggle to recognize sexual harassment is ampli- fied by the law’s chosen human rights approach, which requires the right be tied to a status; for example, that ofan employee. This caveat hinders the full protection of dignity that women deserve in all roles and situ- ations. The advantage of a criminal law approach to street sexual harassment is that it codifies the breach of attacks on dignity across the citizen experience. i. Looking Internationally Many jurisdictions around the world have taken ac- tion to curb sexual harassment and provide helpful lessons or ideas that Canada should consider. For ex- ample, in 2010, UN Women launched targeted pro- grams to increase women’s public safety in Ecuador, Egypt, India, Papua New Guinea, and Rwanda (United Nations 2010). In 2014, the Nepal police implemented a focused campaign to curb sexual har- assment on public buses. Police register complaints and file reports regarding the places and circumstances of harassment (Stop Street Harassment 2014). In the District ofColumbia, it is now illegal to engage in ab- usive language or conduct that disturbs a person's path through a public space (Badger 2014). In March 2015, Peru passed an anti-sexual harassment law that states that any act or threat affecting the freedom and dignity of movement and the right to physical and moral integrity of vulnerable peoples is harassment and punishable (Steinkellner 2015). Belgium and Portugal have made it illegal to sexually harass or in- timidate a person and violation of the law is punish- able by a fine ofup to one year in prison; Portugal has made it three years if the victim of harassment is younger than 14 years (King 2016). In November of 2017, Belgium handed its first court judgment related to street harassment. The state fined a man nearly €3000 for harassing a female police officer (Flanders Today 2018). Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 51 Many jurisdictions have taken the route of ticketing for street sexual harassment. In partial response to the #MeToo movement, France has passed legislation which will target several forms of sexual harassment, including street harassment. The new law will ban “insulting, intimidating, threatening and following women in public spaces,” any ofwhich can lead to a fine of up to €750. France’s junior minister for gender equality, Marlène Schiappa, stated, “Harass- ment in the street has previously not been punished. From now on, it will . . . forbid insulting, intimidat- ing, threatening and following women in public spaces" (Politico 2017; Harper’s 2018.) There are some significant drawbacks, however, to a ticket-based regime, including the potential for bias in implementation and the potential for dispropor- tionately targeting marginalized groups (White 2018). Further, a ticketing system may undermine any message the state intends to make about the seri- ousness of street sexual harassment. Compared to the more common breaches that result in tickets—speed- ing, parking incorrectly, riding a bicycle without a helmet—tickets send no strong message about soci- ety’s unwillingness to accept a particular behaviour. ii. Recent Canadian Developments In March 2017, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women conducted a study on violence against young women and girls in Canada and presented their findings and recommendations to par- liament (House of Commons 2017). The committee provided 45 recommendations to help prevent gender- based violence. A few recommendations recognized the lack ofresearch on street harassment and called for the Government of Canada to fund initiatives, in- cluding new research and analysis of existing research that addresses intersectional violence, street harass- ment, and sexual harassment in public spaces and its effects on women (House ofCommons 2017). The Government ofCanada proposed Bill C-309, An Act to Establish Gender Equality Week, to recognize certain hardships faced by women. The Act proclaims the last week of September each year in Canada as “Gender Equality Week.” The Bill received Royal As- Image 4. This graphic shows some ofthe activist work being done to bring street sexual harassment to the fore. (Hui 2015; Brown 2014; Killermann 2014; Magwood 2014; Romano 2014; White 2014; Jurecko 2016; Crosby 2017; Gillis 2018). Atlantis Journal Issue 39.2 /2018 52 sent on June 21, 2018, and September 2018 saw the first Gender Equality Week. The notable feature about this Act is that 2016 debates on the issue re- flect recognition of “[c]atcalling, harassment on the street, slut shaming, [and] victim blaming” as com- monplace, and that “[w]e need to raise the bar on those” (House ofCommons Debates 2016). Yet, not- ably, the Act itselfdoes not explicitly recognize street harassment. Kiera Liblik has noted that Canada has ratified the Convention on the Elimination ofAll Forms ofDis- crimination Against Women (CEDAW), a UN docu- ment focused on eliminating sex-based discrimination, and has suggested that failing to criminalize street harassment would be against the in- terests ofCEDAW(Liblik 2015). Conclusions Many women’s organizations, including Women in Cities International and Hollaback!, are helping to share personal stories and raise consciousness about street sexual harassment. Street sexual harassment is an affront to human dignity and the right to parti- cipate freely in the public sphere, a basic civil liberty. Street sexual harassment—and the lack of legal re- sponse to it—is therefore an ongoing denial of basic rights. The shift in awareness and recognition of workplace sexual harassment provides some hope for similar change regarding street sexual harassment. However, judicial systems still struggle to bring justice to women survivors of workplace harassment. No current Canadian law may be sufficient to address street sexual harassment, due to historical bias in construction and application of the law. New crimin- al laws are therefore required. Other jurisdictions are enacting stronger anti-street harassment provisions than Canada. It is time for our legislators to lead on women’s right to dignity in public. Endnotes 1. The Butler decision is one of the better-known in- decency decisions. This article will refer to Butler be- cause it engages core questions around indecency. Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Min- ister of Justice) [2000] 2 SCR 1120 is an equally rel- evant and concerning decision. 2. Craig (2009) states: “Chief Justice McLachlin de- termined in Labaye that the type ofharm identified in Butler (that being ‘conduct which society formally re- cognizes as incompatible with its proper functioning’) must be assessed not by community standards of tol- erance, but rather by those norms which our society has formally recognized in the constitution or similar fundamental laws: ‘The inquiry is not based on indi- vidual notions ofharm, nor on the teachings ofa par- ticular ideology, but on what society, through its fundamental laws, has recognized as essential. Views about the harm that the sexual conduct at issue may produce, however widely held, do not suffice to ground a conviction. This is not to say that social values no longer have a role to play.’” [footnotes removed] Acknowledgements I wish to thank Alexandra Heine, Mikayla Hill, Sydney Olsen, Victoria Rudolf, and, in particular, Gitanjali Keshava and Darci Stranger for their research assistance. 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Iverson, PhD1,2,3, Omonyêlé Adjognon, ScM1,3, Alessandra R. Grillo, BS1, Melissa E. Dichter, PhD, MSW4,5, Cassidy A. Gutner, PhD1,2, Alison B. Hamilton, PhD, MPH6,7, Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, PhD8,9, and Megan R. Gerber, MD, MPH10,11 1Women’s Health Sciences Division, National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA; 2Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA; 3Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research (CHOIR), VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA; 4VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP), Crescenz VA Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 5School of Social Work, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 6VA Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation and Policy (CSHIIP), VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 7Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 8Dissemination and Training Division, National Center for PTSD, VA Palo Alto Healthcare System, Palo Alto, CA, USA; 9Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA; 10Women’s Health Center, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA; 11Section of General Internal Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA. OBJECTIVES: Screening women for intimate partner vio- lence (IPV) is increasingly expected in primary care, consis- tent with clinical prevention guidelines (e.g., United States Preventive Services Task Force). Yet, little is known about real-world implementation of clinical practices or contex- tual factors impacting IPV screening program success. This study identified successful clinical practices, and barriers to and facilitators of IPV screening program implementa- tion in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). DESIGN: Descriptive, qualitative study of a purposeful sample of 11 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) categorized as early and late adopters of IPV screening programs within women’s health primary care clinics. VAMCs were categorized based on performance measures collected by VHA operations partners. PARTICIPANTS: Thirty-two administrators and clinician key informants (e.g., Women’s Health Medical Directors, IPV Coordinators, and physicians) involved in IPV screen- ing program implementation decisions from six early- and five late-adopting sites nationwide. MAIN MEASURES: Participants reported on IPV screen- ing and response practices, and contextual factors impacting implementation, in individual 1-h semi-struc- tured phone interviews. Transcripts were analyzed using rapid content analysis with key practices and issues syn- thesized in profile summaries. Themes were identified and iteratively revised, utilizing matrices to compare content across early- and late-adopting sites. KEY RESULTS: Five successful clinical practices were identified (use of two specific screening tools for primary IPV screening and secondary risk assessment, multilevel resource provision and community partnerships, co- location of mental health/social work, and patient- centered documentation). Multilevel barriers (time/resource constraints, competing priorities and mounting responsibilities in primary care, lack of policy, inadequate training, and discomfort addressing IPV) and facilitators (engaged IPV champions, internal and exter- nal supports, positive feedback regarding IPV screening practices, and current, national attention to violence against women) were identified. CONCLUSIONS: Findings advance national efforts by highlighting successful clinical practices for IPV screening programs and informing strategies useful for enhancing their implementation within and beyond the VHA, ulti- mately improving services and women’s health. KEY WORDS: evidence-based medicine; healthcare response; intervention; implementation science; qualitative research; women Veterans. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-019-05240-y © Society of General Internal Medicine (This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply) 2019 I ntimate partner violence (IPV) against women is a popula-tion health problem with wide-reaching impact.1–3 In the United States (US), one in three women experiences physical aggression, sexual violence, or stalking by an intimate part- ner.4 The numerous and often debilitating health outcomes from IPV include direct injury and poorer physical and psy- chological health and overall well-being.5–7 Women who experience IPVare frequently seen in primary care (PC), creating opportunity for identification and interven- tion.8, 9 The US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) and recent reviews found evidence that screening paired with Received September 17, 2018 Revised February 27, 2019 Accepted May 23, 2019 J Gen Intern Med 34(11):2435–42 Published online August 16, 2019 2435 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11606-019-05240-y&domain=pdf response interventions can reduce IPV and attendant physical and mental health harms.10–12 Routine screening promotes readiness to disclose and increases access to IPV-related ser- vices.13 Additionally, women who discussed IPV with a pro- vider were four times more likely to use an intervention and 2.6 times more likely to exit the relationship.14 Given the high prevalence of IPV, many women could benefit from effective implementation of healthcare-based IPV screening programs, but there is limited evidence on how to effectively implement screening recommendations in real-world care. IPV is a critical issue for the Veterans Health Administra- tion (VHA), as women Veterans are at higher risk for IPV than women who never served in the military.15 Findings from a national survey of VHA PC patients revealed that nearly one in five women experienced past-year IPV.16 Addi- tionally, non-Veteran women who use VHA PC (i.e., spouses, dependents of service-connected Veterans) are at high risk for IPV.17 In response to these findings, and consistent with USPSTF recommendations,10 the VHA disseminated recom- mendations for IPV screening within PC in 2014.18 Even though the VHA recommends use of a validated IPV screen- ing tool,19 and an on-site IPV Coordinator (IPVC) to assist with implementation and IPV-related care, the uptake of IPV screening program recommendations and best clinical prac- tices throughout this large integrated healthcare system re- mains unknown. As widespread IPV screening is in its infancy, there are lessons to learn from VA Medical Centers’ (VAMC) screening adoption that can inform the scale-up of successful practices within the VHA, and beyond. In this study, we (a) character- ized successful clinical practices of IPV screening programs in the VHA and (b) identified multilevel barriers to and facilita- tors of IPV screening programs. METHODS Design and Participants All study procedures were approved by the VA Boston Institu- tional Review Board. In 2016, 140 VAMCs responded to a national program evaluation conducted by VHA’s leadership regarding IPV-related programming implementation. Women’s health PC staff completed follow-up program evaluation surveys regarding current adoption status that provided the sampling pool for this study. Early-adopting sites were defined as those that reported currently engaging in IPV screening as part of routine care (i.e., screening all female patients of child-bearing age or all female patients at least annually). Late-adopting sites were de- fined as those that reported not currently engaging in IPV screen- ing as routine care (i.e., no screening or screening at provider’s discretion). This categorization resulted in a sampling pool of 25 VAMCs provided by VHA leadership. From this roster, 15 VAMCs were purposively targeted for potential recruitment based on IPV screening adoption status and geographic loca- tion.20 We attempted to recruit 13 of these VAMCs, 2 of which declined to participate. We recruited sites until saturation was reached, totaling 11 VAMCs (6 early- and 5 late-adopting sites). We recruited key informants for individual phone inter- views at each site based on known VHA structures and roles involved in IPV screening programs. A total of 32 key infor- mants were interviewed (74% participation rate), including IPV Coordinators (IPVC; n = 9), Women Veteran Program Managers (WVPM; n = 7), Women’s Health Medical Direc- tors (WHMD; n = 6), Psychologists (n = 4); Social Workers (SW; n = 3), and Women’s Health PCPs (WH PCP) or Nurse Care Managers (n = 3). Table 1 displays positions/roles of key informants. Approach A semi-structured interview guide and codebook were devel- oped based on the integrated-Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARIHS) framework, which emphasizes innovation characteristics, individuals (i.e., recipients in line to adopt the innovation and patients who receive the innovation), and inner and outter contextual factors that inhibit or enable implementation.21 Sample ques- tions included “What is the process of IPV screening and response in your clinic?” and “What have been challenges to integrating IPV screening?” The first author conducted audio recorded interviews, which were transcribed verbatim. Four team members then independently coded the same transcripts using the deductive codebook, convened to discuss and refine codebook definitions, and reached consensus across codes and transcripts through hybrid inductive-deductive rapid content analysis.22 Thereafter, transcripts were independently coded by two team members and coding was discussed until consen- sus was achieved. Using NVivo software,23 team members pulled coded content from all transcripts and created individ- Table 1 Key Informants and Respective Roles (N = 32) Position Acronym Role in VA Women’s Health Medical Director WHMD Internist, family practice physician, or gynecologist Women’s Health Primary Care Physician WH PCP General internist, family practice physician, or nurse practitioner/ physician assistant with credentialing in women's health Women’s Health Nurse Care Manager N/A Registered nurse who assists in managing/coordinating complex care needs of women Veterans Psychologist N/A Psychologists working in a women’s health clinic or directly with a women’s health team Social Worker SW Attached to or working with a women’s health primary care team Women Veterans Program Manager WVPM Oversee provision of care to women Veterans across the VAMC to ensures access and quality (typically an RN, SW, or psychologist) IPV Coordinator IPVC Recommended position at all VAMCs. Typically, a licensed SW responsible for coordinating IPV education and response efforts across a VAMC VAMC, VA Medical Center Iverson et al: Scaling Up IPV Screening Program Implementation JGIM2436 ual site profiles to synthesize findings into themes with exem- plar quotes. From site profiles, we used matrix analysis24 to display themes across all early- and late-adopting sites. RESULTS We identified five successful clinical practices from early adopters, as late adopters were in varying pre- implementation stages. Early-adopting sites reported screen- ing for 1.5 to 3.5 years. We also identified five barriers to and four facilitating factors of implementation from all sites, in- cluding factors that were unique to early- and late-adopting sites. Table 2 displays summarized findings. Successful Clinical Practices Successful clinical practices were defined as feasible, effective procedures and processes that are considered acceptable to providers and patients. The Extended-Hit, Insult, Threaten, Scream (E-HITS) tool (a 5-item IPV screening tool validated for use with female VHA patients)19,25 was routinely administered in all early-adopting sites as a primary means of IPV detection, usually as a clinical reminder. The 3-item risk assessment tool (adapted from the lengthier Danger Assessment),26, 27 administered succeeding positive detection of IPV (IPV+) for further assessment of severe violence was viewed as helpful for assessing risk, triaging, and safety planning. Multilevel resource provision and community partnerships were critical following IPV screening, entailing internal (e.g., referrals to support groups/programs and mental health) and external (e.g., National Domestic Violence Hotline, commu- nity organizations) assistance for women at risk for IPV. Sites relied on community partnerships and programs as supple- mental supports (e.g., in-depth safety planning, legal advice, shelters). An IPVC explained: We have several resources in our office on where they can get help. I’ve never had anybody want to go to a shelter from here, although I am prepared for that. We discuss safety planning and resources. We have a card on where to get help, including shelters and the Do- mestic Violence Hotline. Co-location of social work and/or mental health services enhanced IPV-related care. Participants underscored that Primary Care Mental Health Integration (PCHMI) staff are ideally co-located; their visibility, open access schedules, and expertise ensure timely warm handoffs and instill provider comfort and continuity of care. As expressed by an IPVC, “Because I’m co-located in primary care, it’s such a faster track to therapy if somebody needs that. We don’t necessarily have to refer out or have the Veteran repeat her story.” Patient-centered documentation of IPV-related care (e.g., positive screens, disclosures, and referrals), consisting of conversations with patients about what they are comfortable documenting in their electronic medical records, was a key theme. Such documentation was sensitive to patient safety and preferences. As explained by a SW, “‘Is it safe to document in the record?’ is asked during screening. If it’s not, we do not explicitly document IPV in the patient’s electronic medical record.” Nonetheless, sites acknowledged the need for continued education to sustain patient-centered documentation. Barriers Barriers were defined as short- and long-term challenges to implementation and/or maintenance of IPV screening programs. Time and Resource Constraints. Time-related constraints cited among early- and late-adopting sites included limited time within an appointment to address both medical issues and an IPV+ screen. Resource constraints included insufficient availability of community (e.g., domestic violence agencies) and hospital (e.g., staffing shortages, limited availability of essential staff (e.g., IPVC) supports. A psychologist explained: We’ve had chronic staffing shortages the last couple of years, coinciding with the IPV screening initiative coming from the national program … One of the main concerns is still ‘who will be responsible for following up on positive screens and where?’ and then Table 2 Summary of Primary Findings Successful Clinical Practices • The Extended-Hit, Insult, Threaten, Scream (E-HITS) tool • A 3-item risk assessment following disclo- sures • Multilevel resource provision and community partnerships • Co-location of social work and/or mental health services • Patient-centered documentation Barriers • Time and resource constraints • Competing priorities and mounting responsibilities within primary care • Lack of formal policy or mandate on IPV screening and response procedures • Lack of or inadequate training on successful clinical practices for IPV screening and response • Discomfort around (and avoidance of) discussing IPV Facilitating factors • Engaged and supportive IPV champions • Internal and external supports • Positive feedback regarding IPV screening practices • Recognition of violence against women as a current, national topic Iverson et al: Scaling Up IPV Screening Program ImplementationJGIM 2437 identifying what services to connect people to. There’s infrastructure building and provider education that needs to happen, and there hasn’t been a champion on site with time devoted to putting all those pieces together yet.Unique to late-adopting sites was the in- sufficient time dedicated to the IPVC role, which was a collateral duty to their existing job, with limited or no dedicated time. This severely limited availability for IPV screening program tasks. Competing Priorities and Mounting Responsibilities Within Primary Care. PC was viewed as the “gatekeeper” for new initiatives, and their providers a “catch-all” for any residual needs of patients, especially within women’s health. The numerous clinical reminders and high workload assigned to PC can result in “reminder fatigue” and burnout among providers, which can negatively impact IPV screening uptake and practices. An Associate Chief of SW stated: [Providers] have all these clinical reminders they have to get done and they can’t even get down to the reason for the appointment until these reminders are knocked out of the way, and the more clinical reminders you add to them, … They become desensitized to the purpose behind it.Similarly, integrating IPV screening is some- times viewed as an additional stressor for those who treat complex patient populations within busy PC set- tings. A WHMD highlighted the burden on providers: You have all these screens that have been triggered positive where the provider needs to follow up, but the patient is there about their ankle … Then your 8:30 has arrived, and your 8:00 is in the 8:30 time slot. You live under that tremendous pressure and then you have instant messaging and medical advice line calls and then someone’s walked in pregnant. So I’ve been re- luctant to tell my providers that [IPV screening] is coming.Unlike early adopters, a few late-adopting sites perceived additional burden placed on WH PCPs due to the physical and mental health complexities of the patient population. Being a WH PCP was regarded as more challenging (and with higher turnover rates), compared with non-WH PCPs. Lack of Formal Policy or Mandate on IPV Screening and Response Procedures. Frustration over lags in “forthcoming” directives and national clinical reminders left some sites, especially late-adopting sites, stalled in negotiations with local leadership for resources to implement IPV screening pro- grams. Some late-adopting sites explained that lack of leadership support surrounding the IPV initiative as an imped- iment for pushing IPV screening forward. Sites anticipate that having an official directive or mandate would provide clear expectations for developing protocols and delineating respon- sibilities. PC leadership at late-adopting sites was less recep- tive to the IPV screening initiative coming from SW in the absence of such formal policy. A WVPM stated: VA needs to be more definitive about exactly what they want done and have a clear expectation for doing it. Often they’ll put on initiatives, but there’s no push for it, so two years later we’re still trying to do it and it’s okay because nobody ever gave us a hard date to get it done by.At the same time, a few sites posited that recommendations from agency leadership may under- estimate day-to-day challenges at individual sites. A WHMD expressed concerns that site-specific time and resource realities may not support forthcoming direc- tives: “I think that when these things come down from way up high I’m not certain that the reality of what happens in the clinic day-to-day is taken into consideration.” Lack of or Inadequate Training on Successful Clinical Practices for IPV Screening and Response. Sites discussed inadequate IPV training in providers’ respective professional training programs, as well as ongoing education needed in their current roles to better screen and respond to IPV. A SW reflected: I offered some on the side training with our gynecolo- gists. One of the things that just floored me whenever I was doing this training is that there is no mention of assessment for IPV within the medical school for phy- sicians who are going to be the people examining the general well-being of our patients. They’ve received no training.Sites also relayed instances of staff lacking knowledge of trauma-sensitive care, creating a poten- tially unsafe environment for implementing IPV screening programs. A WVPM discussed the implica- tions of limited training on trauma-informed documen- tation: Trainings cover how to protect the patient’s privacy with documentation, because we’re concerned about partners having access to online patient records. Before implementing this program, we had a doctor insistent on documenting what shelter this woman was at, and of course, the women’s health SW hit the roof and edu- cated them. Iverson et al: Scaling Up IPV Screening Program Implementation JGIM2438 Discomfort Around (and Avoidance of) Discussing IPV. Provider discomfort with IPV was a barrier across disciplines and leadership levels. Effective trainings and awareness-raising activities were helpful in overcoming this barrier at early-adopting sites. Discomfort and avoidance were perceived as more salient or harder to overcome at late- adopting sites, especially among some male decision-makers in PC. An IPVC noted: People around the table were male leaders … They were turned off by IPV screening because it made them evaluate their own behavior and they didn’t like it … They basically brushed [implementation] off. Facilitating Factors Facilitators were defined as attributes that helped get IPV screening programs implemented and/or maintained. Engaged and Supportive IPV Champions. Sites recognized IPV champions’ roles in driving IPV screening program implementation, and in sustaining broader IPV-related activities (e.g., obtaining additional funding for posi- tions, creating IPV work groups, initiating support/ skills groups for IPV+ women). Champions were often IPVCs, WHMDs, WVPMs, or SWs within WHPC. IPVC champions played a more prominent role in im- plementation at early-adopting sites, corresponding with more protected time for the role at these sites. Cham- pions frequently facilitate and accept warm handoffs, provide on-site consultation, and reinforce provider will- ingness to engage in IPV screening practices. They represent well-connected resources and liaisons with na- tional leadership. A psychologist asserted the value of an IPV champion in implementation efforts: Our IPVC is very knowledgeable, approachable, and friendly. She is able to put time and energy into this topic and when she’s present, you see people asking questions and getting involved. She can make relation- ships with people. … She is critical to the success of the program. Internal and External Supports. Early-adopting sites noted several internal and external supports underlying IPV screening implementation success. Along with the presence of an IPV champion, early-adopting sites noted internal support from local leadership as a catalyst for IPV screening program implementation. Additionally, early-adopting sites regarded effective trainings (e.g., trauma-informed screening procedures, general educa- tion, and role-playing) as an ongoing facilitator of IPV screening implementation. External supports included engagement with national IPV and women’s health lead- ership. Specifically, IPVCs and WVPMs consistently liaise with internal and external leadership and staff to communicate program updates, relay bidirectional feed- back, and troubleshoot challenges. An IPVC shared: I think the biggest thing is the collaboration between the people at different sites and national-level people as well. The best thing about the VA is our interconnected- ness and ability to share lessons learned and contribute back to one another … That’s such a motivator. Positive Feedback Regarding IPV Screening Practices. Positive experiences with and feedback about IPV screening and response practices from patients and staff helped to bolster support for the program, especially at early-adopting sites. For example, patients and staff endorse routine IPV screening (often the E- HITS) for its ability to facilitate discussion on IPV subtypes and promote conversations about past or cur- rent relationship abuse/patterns. A WH PCP described the value of screening: “People see they’re getting some relief, they appreciate it, because sometimes they have shame attached to it, and I feel like this means a burden has been taken off them.” A psychologist underscored the value of screening while demonstrating VHA sup- port of this health issue: “What I like is the E-HITS raises those questions and opens up a conversation with the Veteran...and sends the message that we take it seriously and that we’re here to provide support to the extent Veterans want or need.” Recognition of Violence Against Women as a Current, National Topic. Both early- and late-adopting sites reported local impact from the recent increase of national media cov- erage on sexual abuse and IPV against women. Sites reported that this surge in IPV representation on national platforms legitimizes and, in some cases, prioritizes IPV as a relevant health issue to target in female patients. As described by a psychologist: Violence against women is a public health issue. The numbers are staggering and we’re just not doing a lot to really address and take it seriously, and you see that in sexual harassment in our media right now … Most women have known this is going on forever and it’s just getting a moment in the spotlight … There is an uphill battle to keep IPVrelevant and real and at the top of people’s lists. And I think maybe now is a moment, I mean riding the wave of the public discussion.Building on this momentum and keeping IPV initiatives in line with public discussions of violence against women Iverson et al: Scaling Up IPV Screening Program ImplementationJGIM 2439 were described as strategies to facilitate adoption of IPV screening programs. DISCUSSION Clinicians in PC are increasingly called on to screen for IPV, yet little is known about what clinical practices are success- fully implemented in real-world care and what contextual factors impede or facilitate their uptake. This qualitative re- search identified five successful clinical practices and five barriers to and four facilitators of implementing IPV screening programs into WH PC within the VHA, the US’ largest integrated healthcare system. This research is innovative be- cause it is guided by an established implementation frame- work (i-PARIHS),21 enabling identification of clinical prac- tices and contextual factors that inform evidence-based strat- egies for scale-up of IPV screening programs in and beyond the VHA. Our findings regarding successful clinical practices and factors impacting IPV screening program implementation share similarities to previously reported elements of effective IPV screening programs,12 and reinforce VHA recommenda- tions.18 Successful practices include adoption of two evidence-based screening tools (e.g., E-HITS and a 3-item risk assessment).25–28 These findings extend prior quantitative studies that have supported the effectiveness of the E-HITS for identifying IPV+ women and the utility of a subsequent 3-item risk assessment to facilitate triage and intervention.29–31 Con- sistent with i-PARIHS’s focus on the role of innovation char- acteristics and evidence in uptake of new practices, these tools may be candidates for use given their demonstrated effective- ness, feasibility, and acceptability among our participants. Such tools reportedly attenuated provider discomfort and avoidance of discussing IPV, had perceived positive effects on clinical care, and were regarded as facilitators of imple- mentation. Thus, the testimonials provided in this study may help promote uptake of IPV screening in other settings. Key informants also illustrated the importance of multilevel resource provision and community partnerships, and co- located SW or mental health services as fundamental practices/processes for IPV screening and response protocols. These findings reinforce the importance of a systems approach to integrating IPV screening programs into healthcare set- tings.32–34 However, IPVCs reportedly had less (or no) protected time at late-adopting sites, limiting their capacity to cultivate resources, partnerships, and collaboration across set- tings. Dedicated time for IPVCs could enhance implementa- tion of successful clinical practices and reduce barriers related to time constraints and mounting responsibilities within PC. Co-located SW and mental health enabled accessible consul- tation, effective trainings, and easy access for patients to intervention/referral sources.12 In fact, support from mental health, especially PCMHI, was a key factor that differentiated early- and late-adopting sites. Moving forward, PCMHI should be an integral part of IPV screening program imple- mentation, as this care model can assist with multilevel re- sources and community referrals, while providing a pathway for patient-centered interventions for women who experience IPV.35 Notably, our findings uncovered the feasibility of patient- centered documentation from provider and administrator per- spectives, extending prior research on patient preferences.13 Patient-centered documentation includes engaging in transpar- ent conversations with patients about their documentation preferences related to IPV such as obtaining patient consent to have IPV-specific details in their electronic medical record or limiting documentation altogether.13 Such practices lend themselves to enhancing care coordination while empowering patients who have reservations about disclosing and/or seek- ing help due to privacy and safety concerns to access care.36 Given the complexities of documentation and barriers related to time constraints, lack of training, and discomfort with IPV, there is a need for further research regarding patient-centered and trauma-informed documentation practices. The VHA is currently developing templates and guidance on IPV-related documentation, which may serve as models for other health settings. “Reminder fatigue” may inhibit IPV screening, especially in the absence of formal policy from VHA leadership. As observed in this study, strategies to address fatigue may in- clude relaying patients’ and early-adopting sites’ positive re- gard for IPV screening to clinicians and leadership. As dem- onstrated by findings on barriers, some sites may need to overcome male leadership discomfort with, or dismissal of, addressing IPV in a healthcare system that predominantly treats men. Increased awareness of, and education about, IPV, in tandem with public attention to violence against wom- en, may reduce this issue. Finally, the lack of formal policy requiring IPV screening programs was a particularly salient barrier in late-adopting sites. In January 2019, after the com- pletion of this study, the VHA issued a policy directive to this effect.37 The current findings are therefore extremely timely and can help more PC clinics adopt IPV screening programs throughout the VHA and other integrated healthcare systems. A supportive and highly visible IPV champion can break down barriers and foster enabling factors. IPVCs with dedi- cated time for their role could serve as clinical champions as IPV screening programs are scaled up in the VHA. IPVCs serve as internal facilitators who assist with “boots on the ground” efforts while working with national programs for bidirectional feedback and up-to-date policy guidance.38 They liaise with local and national leadership to communicate site- specific challenges to enhance feasibility or acceptability of national guidelines, overcoming a barrier identified in this study. Given the modifiable nature of several identified bar- riers and facilitators, implementation facilitation is a promising strategy to enhance uptake of successful clinical practices found in this study in VHA PC nationwide. Consistent with i-PARIHS,21 implementation facilitation is a multi-faceted Iverson et al: Scaling Up IPV Screening Program Implementation JGIM2440 process of enabling and supporting clinics and facilities, and has been successfully used in PC to overcome barriers and leverage facilitators to foster implementation of evidence- based practices.39, 40 Thus, implementation facilitation could serve as a strategy to achieve successful implementation of IPV screening programs nationally within the VHA. Such efforts are needed to “ride the wave” of national attention to IPVand keep IPV initiatives in line with public discussions of violence against women. Study limitations highlight areas for future research. This study did not systematically collect information on structural factors (e.g., staffing mix) that may impact uptake. This is an important next step for quantitative and mixed method studies. Patient perspectives were not examined, but VHA patient preferences and outcomes with IPV screening and responses practices have been studied previously.13, 36, 41 Nonetheless, patient feedback and quality improvement are important as- pects of implementation success and require future examina- tion.42 This study was limited to IPV screening programs for women who experience IPV. There is also a need to extend this line of research within the VHA to men who experience IPV and individuals who engage in IPV. 43, 44 Conclusion While IPV screening is recommended, many healthcare set- tings continue to struggle with implementation as society begins to more openly discuss abuse and violence against women. This study of IPV screening program implementation in the largest integrated healthcare system in the US provides important insights and clinical practices that can be applied broadly within and outside VHA settings, mitigating identified barriers. Future directions include evaluations of implementation impact (e.g., reach, costs, sustainability) and clinical effective- ness (e.g., disclosure rates, post-screening IPV-related services use, satisfaction) of IPV screening programs in a wider array of PC clinics treating women and men. Combined with other IPVand implementation science literature, these findings pro- vide actionable strategies that can facilitate effective IPV screening and intervention programs within PC settings. As US society grapples with the revelations of the #MeToo movement, and greater disclosures of interpersonal violence and its attendant health effects, it is even more critical to effectively address IPVand to disseminate successful practices across health systems. Acknowledgments: Our special thanks to Rachel M. Maskin for her assistance with data analysis and to the clinicians and ad- ministrators who shared their perspectives for this research. We also thank VHA’s Office of Women’s Health Services and the VHA IPV Assistance Program of Care Management and Social Work Services for providing program evaluation metrics for sampling and recruitment (Drs. Patricia Hayes, Sally Haskell, Galina Portnoy, and LeAnn Bruce). Funding Support: This research was supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) Services (PPO 17-044; PI Iverson). This work was also supported, in part, by Dr. Iverson’s Pres- idential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (USA 14-275) and Drs. Iverson’s and Gutner’s Implementation Research Institute fellowships from NIMH (5R25MH08091607) through HSR&D Services, Quality Enhancement Research Initiative. Corresponding Author: Katherine M. Iverson, PhD; Women’s Health Sciences Division, National Center for PTSDVA Boston Healthcare System, South Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, USA (e-mail: katherine.iverson@va.gov). Compliance with Ethical Standards: Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they do not have a conflict of interest. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the au- thors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Depart- ment of Veterans Affairs or the United States government. REFERENCES 1. Bonomi AE, Thompson RS, Anderson M, et al. Intimate partner violence and women’s physical, mental, and social functioning. 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The National Academies Press. 2011. 35. Iverson KM, Wiltsey-Stirman S, Street AE, et al. Female veterans’ preferences for counseling related to intimate partner violence: Informing patient-centered interventions. General Hospital Psychiatry. 2016;40:33– 38. 36. Dichter ME, Wagner C, Goldberg E, Iverson KM. Intimate Partner Violence Detection and Care in the Veterans Health Administration: Patient and Provider Perspectives. Women’s Health Issues. 2015;25(5):555–560. 37. Department of Veterans Affairs. Intimate Partner Violence Assistance Program, 10P4C - Care Management and Social Work Service. Directive 1198. 2019. 38. Ritchie MJ, Dollar KM, Miller CJ, et al. Using implementation facilitation to improve care in the Veterans Health Administration (Version 2). 2017; https://www.queri.research.va.gov/tools/implementa- tion/Facilitation-Manual.pdf. Accessed 30 July 2018 39. Baskerville NB, Liddy C, Hogg W. Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Practice Facilitation Within Primary Care Settings. The Annals of Family Medicine. 2012;10(1):63–74. 40. Kirchner JE, Ritchie MJ, Pitcock JA, Parker LE, Curran GM, Fortney JC. Outcomes of a partnered facilitation strategy to implement primary care-mental health. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2014;29(Suppl 4):904–912. 41. Dichter ME, Sorrentino AE, Haywood TN, et al. Women’s Healthcare Utilization Following Routine Screening for Past-Year Intimate Partner Violence in the Veterans Health Administration. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2018;33(6):936–941. 42. Proctor E, Silmere H, Raghavan R, et al. Outcomes for implementation research: Conceptual distinctions, measurement challenges, and re- search agenda. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research. 2011;38(2):65–76. 43. Iverson KM, Vogt D, Maskin R., & Smith BR. Intimate partner violence victimization and associated implications for health and functioning among male and female post-9/11 veterans. Medical Care. 2017;55(9):S78-S84. 44. Portnoy GA, Haskell SG, King MW, Masking R, Gerber MR, & Iverson KM. Accuracy and acceptability of a screening tool for identifying intimate partner violence perpetration among women veterans: A pre- implementation evaluation. Women’s Health Issues. 2018;28(5):439–445. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Iverson et al: Scaling Up IPV Screening Program Implementation JGIM2442 http://dx.doi.org/https://www.queri.research.va.gov/tools/implementation/Facilitation-Manual.pdf http://dx.doi.org/https://www.queri.research.va.gov/tools/implementation/Facilitation-Manual.pdf Intimate Partner Violence Screening Programs in the Veterans Health Administration: Informing Scale-up of Successful Practices Abstract Abstract Abstract Abstract Abstract Abstract Abstract METHODS Design and Participants Approach RESULTS Successful Clinical Practices Barriers Facilitating Factors DISCUSSION Conclusion References work_4ezbiswdwvaltiifn3v3mawqzu ---- The Increasing Importance of Systematic Reviews in Clinical Dermatology Research and Publication EDITORIAL © 2006 The Society for Investigative Dermatology www.jidonline.org 2357 The Increasing Importance of Systematic Reviews in Clinical Dermatology Research and Publication The number of published systematic reviews is growing rapidly, and such reviews are receiving increased attention from sci- entists, editors, policy makers, and consumers. Unlike most traditional review articles, quality systematic reviews use an explicit and systematic predefined methodology to minimize bias and to increase the precision of measurements of treatment effects. Yet methodological flaws can exist in systematic reviews that limit their utility. To reduce unnecessary duplication of clinical trials and ensure that scarce resources address the most pressing research needs, institutional review board panels and dermatology journals should consider requiring systematic reviews or reference to existing systematic reviews as a pre- requisite for protocol approval and publication of clinical trials. What are systematic reviews? Systematic reviews differ from traditional narrative expert- opinion reviews in their comprehensive sys- tematic approach to summarizing health-care evidence (Levin, 2001) and are now required by some biomedical journals (for example, The Lancet) for clinical trial publication (Young and Horton, 2005). The systematic approach starts with formulation of a clear question, followed by a thorough search for all relevant evidence, a critical appraisal of that evidence using predeter- mined criteria, quantitative pooling (metaanaly- sis) of similar study results when appropriate, and finally, interpretation of that evidence (Bigby et al., 2003). Authors of systematic reviews con- ducted within the Cochrane Collaboration make a commitment to update the review periodically with the goal of fine-tuning the research in light of any new studies that come along. If performed correctly, these reviews can provide complete, up-to-date, and unbiased measurements of treat- ment effectiveness by using metaanalytical sta- tistics. High-quality systematic reviews may also indicate whether existing evidence is consistent and can be generalized across patient popula- tions or variations in treatment (Collier et al., 2005; Parker et al., 2004). Why might systematic reviews be important? Results of isolated randomized controlled trials are frequently contradicted by subsequent stud- ies (Ioannidis, 2005). Under the most rigorous study design conditions, a well-planned single study, even if prospective and randomized, rarely provides definitive results, and primary studies tend to overestimate treatment effects. A recent study reported that 32% of a set of studies with at least 1,000 citations were either contradicted by or reported stronger effects than subsequent studies (Ioannidis, 2005). Relying on single high-profile clinical trials can therefore be harmful to patients’ health. Well-designed randomized controlled trials are excellent when looking at effectiveness, though many fall short in quality reporting of safety and adverse events associated with an inter- vention. Quality systematic reviews often have increased power and decreased bias as com- pared with the individual studies they include, and the careful pooling of treatment effects can provide the most accurate overall assessment of an intervention. Benefits of systematic reviews in biomedical literature. Systematic reviews may save both lives and resources. In addition to adopt- ing a systematic approach that minimizes bias, systematic reviews of all published and unpublished randomized controlled trials also have the potential through appropriate use of metaanalysis to produce a more precise estimate of treatment effect so that small but clinically important effects become apparent among a group of apparently conflicting sin- gle trials. The human cost of failing to produce such systematic reviews is illustrated by the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (2006) 126, 2357– 2360. doi:10.1038/sj.jid.5700560 2358 Journal of Investigative Dermatology (2006), Volume 126 © 2006 The Society for Investigative Dermatology life-saving potential of a systematic review conducted to examine infant sleeping position and sudden infant death syndrome. Although advice to place infants on their backs to sleep was widely available in the early 1990s, the authors of the sudden infant death syndrome study showed that the mortality benefit of this sleep position would have been apparent if a systematic review had been performed any time after 1970 (Gilbert et al., 2005). Such a review potentially could have saved 60,000 infant lives in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and Australia. Quality systematic reviews also possess the potential to save biomedical resources. Cumulative metaanalytical tech- niques on 64 trials investigating the effectiveness of aprotinin showed that the effectiveness of the drug was apparent after only 12 trials (Fergusson et al., 2005). Thus the systematic review of aprotinin and perioperative bleeding identified 52 unnecessary trials. Had a systematic review been performed after the twelfth study, the treatment effect would have been apparent, duplicate trials would have been avoided, and patients would have experienced the benefit of a useful drug ten years earlier. Antenatal corticosteroid therapy for fetal lung matura- tion reduces mortality, respiratory distress syndrome, and intraventricular hemorrhage in preterm infants (Crowley, 2000). Although corticosteroids are routinely used today to accelerate fetal lung maturity in infants at risk for prema- ture delivery, the medical community did not embrace this treatment unanimously during the 1970s and 1980s despite repeated randomized trials providing evidence supporting their use. A systematic review provided incontrovertible evidence in favor of antenatal corticosteroid therapy and revealed that tens of thousands of premature babies have needed more extensive therapy, suffered, and died unneces- sarily (Crowley, 2000). These are just three examples of the costs of failure to perform systematic, up-to-date reviews of randomized con- trolled trials of health care in areas of medicine outside of dermatology. The question remains, therefore, to what extent such messages apply to dermatology. Systematic reviews in dermatology Risk of melanoma from indoor UV tanning. Systematic reviews may reveal clear outcomes when individual stud- ies report widely varying, and even contrasting, results. This point is illustrated by a recent systematic review performed to examine the risk of malignant melanoma in relation to artificial UV radiation (Gallagher et al., 2005). Because exposure to artificial UV radiation through sunlamp and sunbed use may be intense and intermittent, concern arose that these devices might increase the risk of developing melanoma (Elwood and Jopson, 1997). Studies performed to identify any potential risk of developing melanoma from exposure to sunless tanning devices have, however, includ- ed low numbers of exposed individuals and have reported inconclusive results (Elwood and Jopson, 1997). By com- bining individual study results, Gallagher and colleagues (2005) were able to identify significant increased risk of melanoma in people exposed to artificial tanning devices. Trials of topical immunomodulating medications and the “me-too” phenomenon. Systematic reviews may suppress the “me-too” phenomenon common in today’s industry- driven research environment. New medications are marketed heavily to physicians and consumers. Trials of new pharma- ceutical agents often fail to compare crucial active compara- tors with the study drug. Licensing systems for medicines in Europe and the United States only require new drugs to show efficacy above placebo and vehicle, leading to a large influx of new medications to the market with considerable increas- ing costs to government drug budgets (Morgan et al., 2005). Results from studies lacking comparison with traditional, often cheaper, therapies lead to confusion within the medi- cal community regarding the efficacy of new agents. Simply because a newer medication is superior to a placebo does not mean that it is better than traditional, standard-of-care therapy. To examine the trials used to support the use of a new class of medication for the treatment of atopic derma- titis, a systematic review combined data from randomized controlled trials to determine whether topical pimecrolimus was more effective than other treatments (Ashcroft et al., 2005). Of 11 trials using pimecrolimus, eight compared the drug with vehicle only. Strikingly, none of the trials includ- ed a comparison with what is perhaps the most appropriate active comparator for mild atopic dermatitis, twice-daily 1% hydrocortisone. Mirroring the aprotinin example, the efficacy of pimecrolimus as compared with vehicle at 3 weeks was evident after completion of three trials. Although additional trials are sometimes required to demonstrate efficacy in differ- ent groups, such as adults versus children or different ethnic groups, and government drug administrations may require the repetition of clinical trials, some of the remaining trials could be viewed as unnecessary and a waste of research resources. Further studies are not needed to establish the effectiveness of pimecrolimus as compared with placebo. Limitations of systematic reviews. Like all scientific research methodologies, systematic reviews have limitations. Extensive labor is involved in the creation of a quality sys- tematic review, and the finished product can be cumbersome to read for those not familiar with review methodology. One study reported that the median length of a Cochrane system- atic review was 15 printed pages, and a substantial number exceeded 30 pages (Johansen et al., 2001). Funding for these time-consuming systematic reviews is currently limited, and most are done by volunteers interested in performing them. Access to quality reviews is limited too, as databases of sys- tematic reviews like the Cochrane Database are available online only by subscription in some countries that have not arranged national procurement. The methodology associated with conducting a system- atic review is complex, and expertise is required at each step, from question creation to data collection, analysis and interpretation. Errors can occur at any step in this complex process and potentially can lead to meaningless and misin- terpreted data. Disease- and intervention-definition method- ology used prior to the collection and analysis of data can greatly influence which studies are ultimately included. EDITORIAL © 2006 The Society for Investigative Dermatology www.jidonline.org 2359 EDITORIAL Systematic review questions must be designed carefully so that the greatest number of appropriate trials is included in the final analysis. Therefore, quality control is essential. A common concern expressed by those familiar with systematic reviews is the effect heterogeneity may have on review outcomes. Heterogeneity in a systematic review can be described as a measure of the intervention variability and study variation that exist among included trials. It can be dif- ficult to know when it is appropriate to combine results from included trials. The decision to do so should rest on a solid understanding of trial heterogeneity. A critical eye is needed for the interpretation of the results of a systematic review, one that is better able to focus on the results by looking through sometimes complicated methodology. To be representative of all available evidence, systematic reviews must be periodically updated. Updating has been defined as a discrete event with the aim of searching for and identifying new evidence to incorporate into a previously completed systematic review (Moher and Tsertsvadze, 2006). It is also often difficult to determine when it is appropriate to update a systematic review, as this decision must rest on an analysis of information evolution and the quantity of avail- able studies. The changing biomedical environment and systematic reviews. The number of systematic reviews has grown exponentially since 1975 (Egger et al., 2001), and a grow- ing number of agencies are performing and using systematic reviews (Atkins et al., 2005). Systematic reviews now have an increased presence in policy at the government level, with reviews influencing coverage decisions made by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, consensus conferenc- es, and other policy initiatives (Atkins et al., 2005; Tugwell et al., 2006b; Moynihan, 2004). Through the creation of an Equity Group, the Campbell Collaboration Equity Methods Group and the Cochrane Collaboration Equity Field aim to use systematic reviews to improve health disparities world- wide (Tugwell et al., 2006a). Systematic reviews epitomize evidence-based medicine; they are regarded by some as the pinnacle of the evidence hierarchy (Guyatt et al., 1995) and are more cited than any other study design (Patsopoulos et al., 2005). Weighing the pros and cons: should dermatology jour- nals insist on systematic reviews? Using systematic reviews to link past to present research improves study quality and effectiveness and may save lives and resources, but extensive labor is involved in performing, publishing, and updating a systematic review. This extra work would especially be noticeable in the field of dermatology, where the numbers of systematic reviews published to date are few — only 3% of all Cochrane Reviews from a search of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness were deemed relevant to dermatol- ogy (Parker et al., 2004). The requirement that all new studies be preceded by a systematic review also creates extra work for the journals that must ensure this before publication of new information. Given the paucity of high-quality systematic reviews in dermatology, insisting on systematic reviews could impart an extensive labor requirement on investigators and potentially serve as an impediment to the publication of current ongo- ing studies. Because journal submission and peer and edi- torial review are late steps in the publication process, more efficient policy might involve requiring systematic review for approval at the institutional review board level. Some govern- ment bodies, such as the United Kingdom Medical Research Council, already insist on a systematic review or reference to a published one before considering funding new clinical trials. This requirement puts the proposed research into the context of the existing body of medical evidence and helps to avoid duplicative study. Although systematic reviews are powerful tools, caution must be exercised in the consideration of policy change that could potentially hinder clinically useful research. Insisting that all new studies should be preceded by a systematic review may be a bit drastic for dermatology at this time. Insisting on the need to mention whether or not a system- atic review has been done, and how the existing body of evi- dence dictated the need for a new study, does seem entirely reasonable and achievable, however — a move that could discourage the nth placebo-controlled trial on another “me- too” product. Current publication methodology may lead to selective publication of results that are more favorable to study spon- sors and to publication of trials that deviate from original study protocols (Al-Marzouki et al., 2005; Smith, 2005). A newly proposed system for reporting clinical trials would require the posting of a systematic review on the Internet as well as any subsequent study protocols related to the review (Smith and Roberts, 2006). This system would be freely accessible to patients, researchers, and editors and would (1) force investigators to follow the original trial design, thereby preventing selective publication of results and misleading post hoc analyses; (2) allow for feedback at any stage of the trial; (3) allow research teams contemplat- ing undertaking new trials to see whether their proposed work has already been done; and (4) permit those report- ing completed trials to refer to key ongoing trials. Similarly, more efforts need to be directed at registering all clinical tri- als prospectively in a publicly searchable database such as Current Controlled Trials (http://www.controlled-trials.com) or the Cochrane Skin Group’s trial register (http://www. nottingham.ac.uk/ongoingskintrials/), a free resource that has recently been updated to incorporate the World Health Organization’s latest recommendations for trials registra- tion. The Journal of Investigative Dermatology requires reg- istration of all clinical trials that started enrollment after July 1, 2005 prior to publication consideration (Williams and Stern, 2005). The Journal of Investigative Dermatology fol- lows International Committee of Medical Journal Editors standards and information regarding this policy can be found at the journal's website (http://www.nature.com/jid/ author_instructions.html#clinical-trials-registration). Redundant studies waste valuable resources, including those of the funding body, researchers, and, most importantly, 2360 Journal of Investigative Dermatology (2006), Volume 126 © 2006 The Society for Investigative Dermatology patients, who usually participate in clinical studies for altru- istic reasons. A policy at the journal or institutional review board level requiring any new study to relate its findings to the body of existing evidence should help to define the need for the study and sharpen its methodology. This requirement would help dissuade investigators from performing duplica- tive trials to better ensure that scarce resources available for clinical dermatology research are targeted toward the most urgent research gaps. CONFLICT OF INTEREST The authors state no conflict of interest but are all enthusiastic participants in the Cochrane Collaboration. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported by grant T32 ARO7411 from the US National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA (to S.R.F.); grant K07 CA92550 from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda (to R.P.D.); the University of Colorado Cancer Center; and the United Kingdom National Health Service Research and Development Programme (to H.C.W.). Scott R. Freeman1, Hywel C. Williams2 and Robert P. Dellavalle1,3 1University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, Department of Dermatology Research Laboratories, Aurora, Colorado, USA; 2Centre of Evidence-Based Dermatology, Nottingham University Hospital National Health Service Trust, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom; and 3Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Dermatology Service, Denver, Colorado, USA Correspondence: Dr. Robert P. Dellavalle, Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Dermatology Service, 1055 Clermont Street, #165, Denver, Colorado 80220, USA. E-mail: robert.dellavalle@uchsc.edu REFERENCES Al-Marzouki S, Roberts I, Marshall T, Evans S (2005) The effect of scientific misconduct on the results of clinical trials: a Delphi survey. Contemp Clin Trials 26:331–7 Ashcroft DM, Dimmock P, Garside R, Stein K, Williams HC (2005) Efficacy and tolerability of topical pimecrolimus and tacrolimus in the treatment of atopic dermatitis: meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ 330:516 Atkins D, Fink K, Slutsky J (2005) Better information for better health care: the Evidence-based Practice Center program and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Ann Intern Med 142:1035–41 Bigby M, Williams H (2003) How to critically appraise systematic reviews and meta-analyses. In: Evidence-Based Dermatology. (Bigby M, Williams H, Diepgen T, Herxheimer A, Naldi L, Rzany B eds) BMJ Publishing Group: London, pp 49–55 Collier A, Johnson K, Heilig L, Leonard T, Williams H, Dellavalle RP (2005) A win-win proposition: fostering consumer involvement in the Cochrane Collaboration Skin Group. J Am Acad Dermatol 53:920–1 Crowley P (2000) Prophylactic corticosteroids for preterm birth. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2:CD000065, doi:10.1002/14651858 Egger M, Smith GD, Altman D (eds) (2001) Systematic Reviews in Health Care: Meta-analysis on Context. BMJ Books: London, p 4 Elwood JM, Jopson J (1997) Melanoma and sun exposure: an overview of published studies. 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Journal of Investigative Dermatology (2005) 124, viii–x; doi:10.1111/j.0022– 202X.2005.23665.x Young C, Horton R (2005) Putting clinical trials into context. Lancet 366:107–8 EDITORIAL work_4bxjbfs6orfqlfrfhhc2sh5fw4 ---- From trust in the system to trust in the content Volume 9 | From trust in the system to trust in the content Péter Mezei University of Szeged mezei@juris.u-szeged.hu Andreea Verteș-Olteanu West University of Timișoara andreea.vertes@e-uvt.ro DOI: https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1511 Published: 21 October 2020 Received: 31 August 2020 Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist that have influenced the text. Licence: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (Germany) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en Copyright remains with the author(s). Citation: Mezei, P. & Verteș-Olteanu, A. (2020). From trust in the system to trust in the content. Internet Policy Review, 9(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1511 Keywords: Trust, Internet, Association of Internet Researchers Abstract: The internet is the digital reincarnation of a Greek agora or a Roman forum. It works as a “place” for public and private life. As such, it requires reliable, trustful rules to govern the daily routine of its visitors/users. The governance of the internet has gone through a significant (if not tectonic) change since its standardisation. This is clearly reflected by the changes in the concept of trust as well. Historically, trust reflected the concerns of internet users regarding the intrusion of governments into the neutral functioning of this “place”. As of now, concerns regarding trust are equally present at the macro and micro level. Trust in platforms and in the content made available through the internet is at the centre of disputes nowadays. This editorial intends to provide for a selected introduction of the macro- and micro-level aspects of trust in the system and trust in the content, including content moderation, copyright law, fake news, game-making, hateful materials, leaking, social media and VPNs. Issue 4 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en PAPERS IN THIS SPECIAL ISSUE arrow_downward EDITORIAL: From trust in the system to trust in the content Péter Mezei, University of Szeged Andreea Verteș-Olteanu, West University of Timișoara Expanding the debate about content moderation: scholarly research agendas for the coming policy debates Tarleton Gillespie, Microsoft Research Patricia Aufderheide, American University Elinor Carmi, University of Liverpool Ysabel Gerrard, University of Sheffield Robert Gorwa, University of Oxford Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Queensland University of Technology Sarah T. Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles Aram Sinnreich, American University Sarah Myers West, New York University VPNs as boundary objects of the internet: (mis)trust in the translation(s) Luke Heemsbergen, Deakin University Adam Molnar, University of Waterloo Combating misinformation online: re-imagining social media for policy-making Eleni A. Kyza, Cyprus University of Technology Christiana Varda, Cyprus University of Technology Dionysis Panos, Cyprus University of Technology Melina Karageorgiou, Cyprus University of Technology Nadejda Komendantova, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Serena Coppolino Perfumi, Stockholm University Syed Iftikhar Husain Shah, International Hellenic University Akram Sadat Hosseini, University of Stuttgart Platformisation in game development Aleena Chia, Simon Fraser University Brendan Keogh, Queensland University of Technology Dale Leorke, Tampere University Benjamin Nicoll, Queensland University of Technology Reddit quarantined: can changing platform affordances reduce hateful material online? Simon Copland, Australian National University Trusted commons: why ‘old’ social media matter Maxigas, University of Amsterdam Guillaume Latzko-Toth, Laval University 2 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1512 https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1512 https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1513 https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1514 https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1515 https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1516 https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1517 EDITORIAL From trust in the system to trust in the content Introduction Back in 1996, the cyber libertarian political activist John Perry Barlow published his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. He started his declaration as follows: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereign- ty where we gather” (Barlow, 1996). We shall agree with van Dijck and Rieder that “[w]hile the mythos of cyberspace as a new frontier has long faded, common terms like ‘internet culture’ or even ‘online shopping’ signal that there is some kind of elsewhere in the clouds behind our screens” (van Dijck and Rieder, 2019, p. 3). The internet is such an elsewhere: a digital reincarnation of a Greek agora or a Roman forum. It works as a “place” for public and private discussions, debates, meetings, rendez-vous. It is a marketplace. And such a place requires reliable, trustful rules to govern the daily routine of its visitors/users. What makes Barlow’s declaration a relevant reference point for this editorial is nothing else than to signal that it was a clear warning to the governments of the world that users of the new medium, the internet, do not trust them. Users feared that governments intend to limit the use of the internet just as they posed signifi- cant limitations to the liberties of children for example. He continued: “you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cy- berspace” (Barlow, 1996). The internet has since transformed into a more robust system that can only be analysed in an interdisciplinary way (Consalvo and Ess, 2011). Likewise, trust in the system has transformed into a more complex metaphor: covering not only (dis)trust in governments, but (dis)trust in other users, intermediaries, platforms, data, information and news etc. In sum, trust in the con- tent. The Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) is a leading global organisation to en- hance the interdisciplinary research of internet studies. It organises its annual con- ferences since two decades, and centres these events around a specific topic since 2016. The latest edition of this conference series took place in Brisbane, Australia. The October 2019 event intended to “explore the question of whether we can still have, or how we might regain, trust in the system: in a world of unscrupulous ac- tors and dubious data, how can we know what and whom to trust? Indeed, how might we change the system itself–rethinking, redesigning, rebuilding, repurpos- 3 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu ing it – to provide a more trustworthy experience for a broader, more diverse, more inclusive community of Internet users?” (Association of Internet Researchers, 2019). Hundreds of excellent papers analysed the macro and micro level aspects of trust in the digital environment. Internet Policy Review, a leading open access journal for interdisciplinary internet research, collaborates with AoIR since 2018 to publish hand-picked peer-reviewed articles by participants of AoIR conferences. This special issue is the third in this row (Dutton, 2018; van Dijck and Rieder, 2019), and trust in the system, as a topic, fits perfectly into the mission of the journal: it is inherently interdisciplinary, policy oriented and it is a really hot topic of internet research. This editorial is structured as follows. First, we’ll address trust at a macro level: its meaning and its relevance in our digital society. Second, we’ll introduce three cherry-picked micro level aspects of trust (in the system): fake news, leaking and copyright law. The selection of these aspects is twofold. On the one hand, they meet the scientific interest of the authors of this editorial. On the other hand, this editorial intends to work as an addendum to the papers selected and peer-re- viewed for this special issue. More precisely, the editorial discusses aspects of trust that the selected papers mainly miss to analyse. Third, the editorial ends with the short introduction to the six contributions presented originally at AoIR 2019, and developed later into peer-reviewed articles. Trust Law is a fiction (Fuller, 1967; Del Mar and Twining, 2015). Unlike rules of nature (e.g., gravity, H2O and so forth), laws are created and recreated by humans in order to describe and reflect social realities. Ideally, the final goal of law is to guarantee the functioning of the whole society. Legal concepts reflect physical realities (e.g., ownership is historically bound to tangibles) and metaphysical phenomena (e.g., some countries guarantee ownership interests over intangibles). The legal reflec- tion of these concepts might change from time to time. What is lawful today might become illegal later on and vice versa. Brand new social, economic and technologi- cal challenges lead to regular reformulations of the law. Laws do not only aim to guarantee social stability and reliability, but they shall pursue the goal of benefiting all humans (not to mention others, e.g., animals or the environment in general) rather than discriminating against minorities. The fate of the rules is heavily affected by the fact of whether or not they are accepted and followed by their subjects. The best laws are those that we follow since we under- 4 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 stand and agree with them - we trust in them. Some of the laws are obscure, they are based on flawed policy arguments, outdated or simply unnecessary. Noone de- nies that parents shall be liable for the damages caused by their infant children. It, however, changes from time to time what an infant might be able to do: stealing daddy’s car seems to be physically more troublesome (and hence more control- lable) than texting a bully on a smartphone. Similarly, while the majority of society understands why stealing a car is against the law, a significant part of society thinks it is unfair to prohibit (and also criminalise) the unauthorised downloading of copyrighted contents through P2P file-sharing platforms. If laws regulate against social norms, the acceptance and the following of, as well as the trust in law, erodes or disappears. Metaphors are commonly used in law (Larsson, 2017). They are capable of defining realities (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003, p. 157) and helping “the imaginary become re- al or true” (Wyatt, 2004, p. 244) Metaphors “create cognitive bridges between dis- parate subjects, mapping existing knowledge about a familiar and concrete source domain onto unfamiliar, abstract, or novel concepts” (Gill, 2018, p. 454.), and their main task is to persuade people (Fuller, 1930, p. 380) Metaphors strengthen the ra- tionale of any given rule, or support the understanding of a norm by attaching an already existing expression (often legal terms) to a phenomena, and hence provid- ing existing knowledge to emerging legal questions. As Gill explained, “[t]he metaphors chosen by a court or legislature will effectively determine the validity of certain arguments, delimit the boundaries of acceptable debate, and reshape what we understand to be both ‘logical’ and legal in a given situation” (Gill, 2018, p. 456). Metaphors have a vital role to describe technological challenges, too. This is mainly due to the constant development of technology and the pace of it, as well as to the fact that “the digital” is formless, that is, metaphors are more neces- sary to describe realities than tangible/material/analogue elements of society (Gill, 2018, p. 457). Notable metaphors - including “skeumorphs”, that is the reused versions of old concepts (Larsson, 2011) - in the digital domain of law are for instance cyberspace, information superhighway, singularity, the cloud, transparency, net neutrality, pira- cy, big data, raw data, data mining, harvesting, artificial intelligence, domain (name), platform, (safe) harbour, bulletin board, torrent, search engine, magnet link, swarm, virus, Trojan horse, leak, or - as discussed in this special issue - ‘going dark’ to describe the risks of end to end encryption (Heemsbergen and Molnar, 2020). Metaphors are also used to link new technologies to existing rules (Gill, 2018, p. 457). As Tim Hwang and Karen Levy noted, “[a]s technology advances, law evolves 5 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu (slowly, and somewhat clumsily) to accommodate new technologies and social norms around them. The most typical way this happens is that judges and regula- tors think about whether a new, unregulated technology is sufficiently like an ex- isting thing that we already have rules about—and this is where metaphors and comparisons come in” (Hwang and Levy, 2015). The main purpose of such metaphors in law and technology is to guarantee that the conceptualisation, the regulation, the administration and the use of the new technology goes smoothly. Trust is an important metaphor. In some sense, trust means the freedom of giving up the obligation of experimenting, learning and acting individually. At the same time, it also represents the acceptance of the specialised society, that is, that we are neither able nor obliged to know and do everything on our own; we can rely on others who have the relevant knowledge or who are able to do the given task, and we shall trust in and follow their decisions. Balázs Bodó defines trust on an in- terpersonal level “as the willingness to cooperate with another in the face of un- certainty, contingency, risk, and potential harm” (Bodó, 2020, p. 2.) Trust in the system has its own metaphorical meaning. In conjunction with trust’s metaphorical meaning, it requires internet users to accept and follow the rules of the web, and, for the less e-literates, to stick to the options available online (in- cluding but not limited to platforms). The ‘Barlow fears’ from government misuses gave place to cybersecurity concerns in the early years of the internet. The financial motives of cybercriminals as well as the pure dangers of cybercrime grew along with the economic growth of the inter- net. Frederick Chang noted that “[h]umans must defend machines that are at- tacked by other humans using machines” (Chang, 2012). Cybercrimes and informa- tion security thus evolved together (Bauer and van Eeten, 2009, pp. 707-710). The growing popularity of cyber attacks was mainly due to their cheap, convenient and less risky nature (Jang-Jaccard and Nepal, 2014, p. 973). Viruses, Trojan horses, worms, bots or spyware pose a significant threat to reliability of and trust in the system by, just to name a few, online identity or data thefts, phishing or industrial espionage (Moore, 2010, pp. 104-105). It is, of course, not only illegal financial motives that might threaten the trust in the system. Web 2.0 led to a hyper-atomised internet: the actors and their possibil- ities of data creation, dissemination and access were multiplied and polarised. In- termediaries/platforms emerged and provided the means and space of participato- ry culture (e.g., on YouTube’s role see Burgess and Green, 2018). These platforms turned to be the main engines of the internet economy and platform capitalism. 6 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 They, however, do not intend to solely serve social interests. Corporate financial motives are in the end the drivers of decisions by platform operators. The internet has become the forum of personal opinions, the “elsewhere” of artistic, spiritual and political life. As data has become a leading source of revenue and power, the reliability of data, its creator and disseminator has become a preemi- nent concern. Trust in the system started to include trust in the content, its creator and its disseminator. At the same time, platforms are the new capitalistic enter- prises, with their own values and private norms. Trust in these platforms is the foundation of their reliability and functioning. How they react to social events be- comes crucial. The role that platforms played during the Arab spring, the #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter campaigns; how Twitter labelled President Trump’s tweet as misleading (and how Facebook disagreed with the rival platform for a while) fol- lowing the outrage sparked by the death of George Floyd Jr. (Newton, 2020); or how President Trump proclaimed a regulation to punish social media platforms for such labelling (Heldt, 2020) are excellent examples for the role that platforms play in deteriorating, preserving or strengthening trust in the system and content. The issue of trust in the system is present in the micro-level of the internet, too. This editorial, before turning to the actual papers selected for this special issue, in- tends to highlight the importance and the consequences of (the lack of) trust in three micro-fields of the internet: fake news, leaking and copyright law. Fake news Good and ethical journalism is based on trust, developed from the assumptions that the communicated news reports are true and the information is reliable, accu- rate and trustworthy. The basic responsibility of a journalist is to seek, publish, and, above all, respect the truth. However, in an ever-growing digitalised world, media consumers are involved in an unprecedented transfer of information and, as a result, the trust paradigm is in considerable danger. Truth is being replaced by post-truth, and story news by fake news (Palczewski, 2017). ‘Journalistic deception’ was defined as an act of communicating messages not only by lying, but also by withholding information, so as to lead someone to have a false belief (Elliot and Culver, 1992). However, despite its deeply troubling recent online development, the spread of false news and journalistic deception dates back to antiquity. Mitchell Stephens offers the example of Acta Diurna, a proto- newspaper of 47 AD, where the author of disinformation was none other than Pliny the Elder, the renowned Roman savant, naturalist and natural philosopher 7 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu (Stephens, 2007, p. 57). In 1747, Benjamin Franklin did the same, in an article writ- ten for the London General Advertiser. He published the statement of a young moth- er, Polly Baker, accused of extramarital sex. The speech was supposed to have made such an impression on the jury, that they acquitted her of the charges. Thirty years later, Franklin admitted that he had invented Polly Baker (Kitty, 2005, p. 227). False news existed before the Gutenberg press and flourished afterwards, simply because, just as information wants to be free, so does misinformation. The printing press empowered reformers alongside hawkers, profiteers, and bigots. The inven- tion of the printing press simply shifted the problem of the gatekeepers of truth, aka the information: the old gatekeepers were princes and priests. The new ones were entrepreneurs such as Gutenberg or Caxton (Marantz, 2019). Despite the coining of the term fake news in the mid-2010s, propaganda, misinfor- mation, disinformation, and all types of news hoaxes have for long been present in the history of the world and called bias, spin or lies. They caused, not always di- rectly, international incidents, even wars, such as the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Gleiwitz incident of 1939, Vietnam, the Second Iraqi War (Palczewsi, 2017), and often originate with totalitarian dictatorships, though one can easily spot politically driven hoaxes even in democratic countries, especially when faced with electoral campaigns (e.g., Viktor Orbán in 2018 or Boris Johnson in 2019). In a nutshell, fake news is intentionally fraudulent, aimed to deceive the receiver, often with an underlying objective to achieve a certain material, political, personal, or group gain or simply to entertain or excite. From a theoretical point of view, there are seven identifiable types of fake news: false connection (when headlines or visuals do not support the content), false con- text (when genuine content is shared with false contextual information), manipu- lated content (when genuine information is manipulated to deceive), satire or par- ody (no intention to harm), misleading content (misleading use of information), im- poster content (when genuine sources are impersonated) and fabricated content (content that is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm) (Wardle, 2017). Ad- ditionally, we have Melissa Zimdars’ classification of fake information, which deter- mines which category a website may occupy: fake news, satire, extreme bias, con- spiracy, rumour mill, state news, junk science, hate news, clickbait (Zimdars, 2016). Irrespective of the form, today’s online platforms totally reshaped the spread and potential impact of fake news on people’s lives, behaviour and mentality. It be- came an indispensable element of the digital landscape. Its influence on public opinion is considerably bigger than that of real news stories and the explanation is 8 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 simple and bitter: 1. large dissemination equals authenticity and 2. the influence of lies exceeds that of the truth. “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth” is a manipulation principle misattributed to Nazi politician and Reich Minis- ter of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels (Schultze, Bytwerk, 2012, p. 217), but still ac- curate, irrespective of its true author. Fake news reports are, in the digital age, re- peated, processed, tweeted and propagated through various online channels and end up acquiring the markers of ‘authenticity’ (Palczewsi, 2017). They have a tremendous potential to mobilise people. Furthermore, we must admit that they tend to be more seductive. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, “the champions of truth are hardest to find, not when it is dangerous to tell it, but rather when it is boring” (Nietzsche, 1996). Or, to put it bluntly, “there is nothing as boring as the truth” (Bukowski, 2001). Fake news draws the public’s attention through its attrac- tiveness; it lures the receivers by offering them something that matches their views, beliefs and expectations. The fact that fake news has become a constant element in the media-created landscape is also linked to the fact that not only the media have changed, but also their audiences. The public for news and information is now hyper-atomised, far beyond the traditional media, in the form of billions of one-person audiences that often double as disseminators of the same information (Gross, 2017). We are the furthest away from Bertolt Brecht’s “literature without consequences” (as he per- ceived radio to be: „radio is one-sided when it should have two sides. It is a pure instrument of distribution; it merely hands things out.”), which fails to make con- tact with its audience, and in which the public is, in fact, a mass of people, voice- less and inactive (Brecht, 1979, p. 25). The digital (just like Brecht’s ideal theater) allows for a multi-way conversation, in which the audience creates a liquid com- munication world, as part of the ‘liquid modernity’ described by Zygmunt Bauman. The individuals live fragmented lives, with the institutions and social forms around them constantly changing and providing little in terms of frames of reference and long-term plans (Bauman, 2000). The internet revolution has transformed the consumer of information into a gener- ator of content. This shift has brought along another change as well: as we enter the post-trust era, facts and evidence have been replaced by personal belief and emotion. Consequently, the nature of news, and what people accept as news, is slowly but steadily transforming into an emotion-based market. The truth of the story no longer matters. What matters is that the story falls in line with what a person wants to hear. Fake news no longer means factless, libellous or simply false news, but rather news that is seen to attack a person’s pre-existing beliefs. 9 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu This is the truth of the post-truth era (Rochlin, 2017). This danger goes hand in hand with the audience’s ease to accept, embrace and readily disseminate this new ‘truth’: Nick Rochlin goes on to show that the majori- ty of people don’t read beyond an article’s headline (Rochlin, 2017). Moreover, a study by Maksym Gabielkov and colleagues (2016) showed that 59% of the news articles that are shared on Twitter aren’t even read before they’re shared (Ga- bielkov et al., 2016). Yoonmo Sang and colleagues recently highlighted that “there is a positive correlation between frequency of news use and interest in news and trust in news. (...) Not only do perceptions of trust influence a person’s news con- sumption, studies show it also has an impact on how they interact with it. Based on a large-scale survey on news consumption in 11 countries, (...) showed that those who had low levels of trust in the news media were more likely to share or comment on online news and prefer non-mainstream news sources, such as social media outlets, blogs, and digital native sources, such as The Huffington Post, than people with higher levels of trust in news” (Sang et al., 2020, pp. 4-5). Unlike tradi- tional media sources, the social platforms allow their users to create a bubble of news stories that strike a chord only with their own pre-defined beliefs and opin- ions. And since the majority of users trap themselves in their own bubbles, full of niceties and one-sided points of view, contemporary society is faced with peril of yet ever more rigid beliefs and deep societal fissures. This inclination to select the media outlet which best aligns with their preconceived attitudes is in line with Joseph T. Klapper’s selective exposure theory, which suggests “the individuals’ ten- dency to favour information that reinforces their pre-existing views while avoiding information that is contrary” (Klapper, 1960). When a mismatch of contradictory beliefs occurs, individuals find it ‘inherently dissatisfying’ and so they seek out in- formation that is based on their own beliefs, perspectives and attitudes (Hart et al., 2009). In the age of social platforms, people are no longer inclined towards emphatic receptivity; they are losing their openness and availability to listen to others’ different opinions. The gatekeepers have changed, once more. The agenda setting is no longer in the sole hands of owners, publishers, editors and directors. The digital media are not the gatekeepers of old (Gross, 2017). Groups and individuals, with direct access to audiences, have taken control of the terms of public discussion and their criteria for the selection of information is based entirely upon their own interests and bi- ases. Jürgen Habermas’ public sphere (traditional and bourgeois) is gone. Today’s curators of information are individuals and technology companies. The controller has changed, but the problem remains the same, namely the threat to liberal 10 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 democracy everywhere. While waiting for possible solutions to counterbalance the effects and influences of digital media on our day-to-day existence, negative emo- tions, (political) thoughts and social behaviour, on- and offline, we must acknowl- edge the fact that fake news is already part of our reality, one with which we will have to learn to coexist. Leaking Democracy means (indirect) self-government by the people. For such a system to work, an informed electorate is crucial. Democracy cannot work if those in power manipulate the electorate by withholding information and suppressing criticism. Freedom of expression is intimately linked to political debate and the concept of democracy. Free speech is multifaceted, and includes the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas (Milton, 1918). In a democracy, people need access to information (be it political, social or economic in nature) in order to decide whether their elected officials are acting in the public interest or not. However, far too often, politicians evade such scrutiny, allowing fraud and abuse of power to go unhampered. So we ask ourselves: how far can the freedom of expression go so as not to infringe national interests? In the end, which of the two prevails, the free- dom of the press or national security? Can the “need to know” cross boundaries and break laws? Ever since its foundation, WikiLeaks, a website devoted “to bring- ing important news and information to the public” (according to its own descrip- tion), has become a major source of freedom of knowledge and, due to its alliance with major print publications, a credible source for leaked information. Whistle- blowing platforms (the roots of which are to be found in WikiLeaks) are increasing- ly becoming a common tool in journalism, and are one of the strategies that jour- nalists can adopt in communicating with whistle-blowers in a safer way and to ob- tain data and information without exposing sources to the risk of being identified, tracked, exposed or put in danger (Di Salvo, 2020). Yet, several questions remain, questions of both moral and ethical nature, that deserve close attention: whistle- blowing and leaking obviously come from our desire to know the truth, but does mankind actually deserve full “transparency”? And, in this scenario, are the leakers of information to be perceived as heroes or villains? State secrecy is enshrined in probably all constitutional texts. Etymologically, ‘se- cret’ comes from secretum, that which is separated. This separation is between those-who-know and those-who-do-not-know but suspect something (Horn, 2011). But does secrecy actually threaten democracy? It is the fear brought by the aware- ness of not knowing, rather than the content of the secret itself, which matters and jeopardises liberal democracies. State secrecy is vital for national security, but it 11 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu can also be used to conceal wrongdoing. Are there means to ensure that this pow- er is used responsibly? The problem arises when establishing the instruments that might be used in order to check that such secrets are handled in a responsible manner by those in power. The aim is to ensure that the official justifications for secrecy are sufficiently reasonable and detailed in order to deter overzealous con- cealment. The abuse of secrecy and leaking are nothing new; the phenomenon is merely augmented by the immense dissemination possibilities of the digital age. However, also characteristic for this new era are conspiracy theories, misdirection, power plays, deflection, allegations of fake news, and fears of pervasive govern- ment surveillance (Marcus, 2017), which conclude in any scandalous information and which are then being received by the public with great skepticism. Rahul Sagar, in his book Secrets and leaks: the dilemma of state secrecy, asks himself (and answers) the following question: when can whistle-blowing and leaking be a legitimate means of guarding against the possible harms of executive secrecy? It is important first of all to try and distinguish whistle-blowing from leaking. Whistle-blowing is usually defined as the activity of calling attention to wrongdo- ing, an act intended to call out, but also to halt wrongdoing. It is a distinct act of dissent (Elliston et al., 1985), a special form of dissidence in which “a member or former member of an organization goes outside the organization or outside nor- mal organizational channels to reveal organizational wrongdoing, illegality, or ac- tions that threaten the public” (Petersen and Farrell, 1986, p. 5). It typically in- volves inside informants who want to expose “actual nontrivial wrongdoing” by collaborating with the media (Johnson, 2003, pp. 3-4). The term, coined by US civic activist Ralph Nader in 1971, was meant to avoid the negative connotations asso- ciated with words such as informant, squealer, tattletale, betrayer, traitor, rat, weasel, etcetera. However, whistle-blower is not a universally recognised denomi- nation, easily translatable into other languages. The colloquialism, invoking old- fashioned images of a police officer chasing after a lawbreaker, has evolved to mean someone who speaks up when most people do not. Yet, the difficulty in translating the term into other languages has led to problems regarding the whis- tle-blowers’ public perception. In many EU countries, alternative terms such as “in- formant”, “denunciator” and “snitch” are still commonly used by citizens and the media alike, continuing to cast whistle-blowers in a false or negative light. The following are some of the translations used throughout the EU, negatively conno- tated terms being prevalent: práskač–snitch–negative (Czech), sladrehank–snitch–negative (Danish), vilepuhuja–whistle-blower (“piper”)–nega- tive (Estonian), Nestbeschmutzer–one who dirties their own nest–negative (Ger- 12 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 man), corvo–crow–negative or delatore–leaker–very negative (Italian), chibo / bu- fo–snitch–negative (Portuguese). In contrast, we have the Italian sentinella civi- ca–civic sentinel, and the term introduced by the Romanian legislation in the field, avertizori de integritate–those who give integrity warnings (Worth, 2013, p. 19). Whistle-blowers are “born, not made” and generally driven by moral conviction or moral narcissism (Sagar, 2013). A whistle-blower is usually cast in a positive light. As Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who released the ‘Pentagon Pa- pers’ to the New York Times, puts it this way: “Telling the truth, revealing wrongly kept secrets, can have a surprisingly strong unforeseeable power to help end a wrong and save lives” (Ellsberg, 2002, p. 4) (Thorsen, Sreedharan, and Allan, 2013, p. 102). Most big whistle-blowing stories involve a revelation: fraud, where it may not have been suspected; systematic waste unseen by the public and unnoticed by over- seers; abuse of power that we couldn’t have even imagined (Gessen, 2019). In the book Crisis of Conscience, the author Tom Mueller - a journalist - traces the evolu- tion of the whistle-blower in the American imagination, “from squealer to hero” in roughly half a century. But the repercussions of whistle-blowing, whether in the nineteen-sixties or the two-thousands, as described in the book, are similar: whis- tle-blowers are fired, ostracised, libeled, stripped of security clearances, denounced as anti-American, and threatened with lifetime imprisonment (Mueller, 2019). We have as examples the arrest and incarceration of Bradley/Chelsea Manning (the US soldier who leaked a video of a US Apache helicopter murdering several Afghani citizens and two Reuters news reporters) and the further development of how a leaker’s mental health and sexual orientation can become the focus of the media and public debate. Edward Snowden (NSA administrator and ex-CIA employ- ee who leaked information regarding the agency’s misuse of power by collecting data from several US cellular carriers) was granted temporary asylum, first in Hong Kong, then in Russia, after his global surveillance disclosures ever since 2013, with the US constantly asking for his extradition. Julian Assange, the Australian editor and publisher who founded WikiLeaks in 2006, took refuge in 2012 in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where he remained for almost seven years. In 2019, in addi- tion to other accusations, the US government charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. As of April 2019, he has been incarcerated in a London prison, where he is alledgedly exposed to “psychological torture or other cruel, in- human or degrading treatment or punishment”, according to Nils Melzer, UN rap- porteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punish- ment (Melzer, 2019). Even before the digital age, Deep Throat, the informant be- 13 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu hind the Watergate scandal, and Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Pa- pers, represent two major figures in the US espionage and leaking history, either vilified or heralded for their actions. Europe has its own examples. In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights passed judgment on Heinisch v. Germany (28274/08) and ordered Germany to pay damages of €15,000 to Ms Heinisch for infringing her right to freedom of expres- sion, after the German courts upheld her dismissal without notice on the grounds that she lodged a criminal complaint against her employer. The case of nurse Brigitte Heinisch, fired from her job at a nursing home in 2005 after she exposed poor care of some of the residents, illustrates how Germany’s legal system does not go far enough to protect whistle-blowers. The case did trigger a political dis- cussion in Germany regarding a statutory whistle-blowers’ protection, but although all political parties agreed that whistle-blowing could be a valuable instrument to fight corruption, no actual steps were taken (Thüsing and Forst, 2016, p. 14). In another oft-quoted example, dating back to 2010, an estimated 800 million litres of caustic red sludge poured out of a reservoir at a Hungarian alumina pro- cessing plant, in what is known as Hungary’s worst environmental catastrophe. At least seven people died, hundreds were injured or forced from their homes in sev- eral villages, and tens of millions of euros in private property was destroyed. Some employees at the plant knew about impending problems with the reservoir, but the company’s manager threatened to fire them if they appealed to the authorities. Hungary still lacks an agency where whistle-blowers can report wrongdoing (Worth, 2013, p. 51). Although Romania became one of the first countries in Europe to pass a stand- alone and innovative piece of whistle-blower legislation (2004) and is, therefore, very strong in theory, it is equally weak in practice. In 2009, whistle-blowers re- ported to the National Integrity Council and Transparency International Romania alleged irregularities involving (ironically) four managers of the National Integrity Agency (ANI). Among the allegations was that ANI’s chairman was in a conflict of interest by also owning two private companies. Following the report, two whistle- blowers were dismissed from ANI. One prevailed in a court case and was reinstat- ed, but was later dismissed again (Worth, 2015, p. 52). Despite the specific value of whistle-blowers in exposing and preventing corrup- tion, only four EU countries have legal frameworks that are considered to be ad- vanced: Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia and the United Kingdom (UK), notwith- standing their flaws in application, as seen in the previous example. In order to 14 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 overcome this problem and to guarantee a EU-wide standard for the protection of whistle-blowers, the European Union adopted a regulation for whistle-blower pro- tection in December 2019, the Whistle-blowing Directive or Directive (EU) 2019/ 1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law. The EU member states will be obliged to implement the directive into their own national laws until 2021. Continuing Rahul Sagar’s thought, and as seen in the eye-catching examples men- tioned above, we should also take into account the ‘retaliation’ aspect. Though whistle-blowers act as a sort of institutional ‘fire alarm’, is it reasonable for us to depend only on those whistle-blowers courageous enough to expose themselves to the public, as well as the authorities, and thus subject themselves to various forms of scrutiny (from their employer/‘the state’, the judicial, the media, the pub- lic, etc.)? Therefore, the more realistic scenario is one involving anonymous leak- ers. The difference, thus, between a whistle-blower and a leaker is that the identity of the latter is not revealed. The direct result is that, generally, leakers don’t suffer the kind of reprisals whistle-blowers do. And since some leaks may be vexatious in nature and not necessarily in the public interest, the issue of trust emerges once more. In the practice of leaking, trust appears two times: firstly, associated with (and trig- gered by) the lack of trust in politicians and secondly, the trust in the voluntary disclosure of a whistle-blower whose main motive is altruistic, with the only aim of halting some wrongdoing. The problem with trust is that it is extremely difficult to establish and maintain and perhaps nearly impossible to recover once violated. Leaks nowadays are no longer limited to big stories. They have gradually become an essential element of journalism, especially political and corporate. The strong reliance on anonymous sources has intensified the public mistrust of leaking, as well, corroborated with the fact that, if in the recent past, leaks were just a first step in the long and tiresome process of investigative journalism, it is now part of a hyperactive daily news cycle (Marcus, 2017). Just like in the case of fake news, previously discussed, we obsessively return to the idea that what the public needs is well-trained, deontological journalists, capable of gate-keeping information in order to guarantee the availability of accurate in- formation to the public and to prevent undue harm. To put it briefly, trust in the media is only accomplished when media independence is achieved, meaning free- dom from any external control or the influence of others (political power, sources of information, media owners, internal constraints, financing sources, pressure groups, etc.). Trust requires a moral component - the fiduciary duty - that develops 15 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu between professionals who can provide a social good (in this case, the delivery of information) and members of a society who desire that particular good. Further- more, trust becomes cardinal in this equation when the goods to which we want predictable access (freedom of expression and of information) are increasingly im- portant, as is the case here. And trust is gained when exercising one’s profession with ‘virtue ethics’ (that is morality and fairness, competence, objectivity and accu- racy, lack of bias, etc.) and ‘being Aristotelian’, namely learning to correctly apply Aristotle's Golden Mean or golden middle way (Quinn, 2018). To return to Rahul Sagar’s initial question, there are certain instances in which offi- cials, reporters and publishers should put themselves in harm’s way by infringing the law and disclosing classified information. Sagar envisages five conditions that must be met simultaneously in order to justify such an act. First, the disclosure must reveal the violation of ‘shared interests’ insofar as the executive has exceeded lawful authority or established norms. Second, the evidence for wrong doing should be ‘clear and convincing’. Third, the threat of this wrong doing must be ‘specific and immanent’. Fourth, the official should use the ‘least drastic means’ of revelation by, in the first instance, whistle-blowing within the organization. Finally, the whistle-blower must be willing to disclose her identity. This is essential to ensure that the whistle-blower is not ‘the partisan or the zealot’ acting to further sectional or personal interests. (Sagar, 2013, pp. 127-136) In order to summarise the role and importance of WikiLeaks, and leaking in gener- al, in today’s world, we can look at a brilliant interview given before a live audi- ence in London, in 2011, by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, “the Elvis of cultural theory” in the words of the New York Times. Maybe we learned nothing new, but it’s the same as in that beautiful old fairytale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. We may all know that the emperor is naked, but the moment somebody publicly says, ‘The emperor is naked’, everything changes. This is why, even if we learned nothing new–we did learn many new things–but even if nothing is learned, the forum matters. (…) You [WikiLeaks] are–that’s why it aroused such an explosion of resentment–not only violating the rules, disclosing secrets. Let me call it in the old Marxist way: The bourgeois press today has its own way to be transgressive. Its ideology not only controls what one says, but even how one can violate what one is allowed to say. So you are not just violating the rules. You are changing the very rules how 16 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 we were allowed to violate the rules. This is maybe the most important thing you can do. (Brevini et al, 2013, p. 257) We must learn to accept the constant battle between state secrecy and unautho- rised leaks. The proper security of a country can be guaranteed only with an ade- quate balance between keeping secrets in order to protect the population from various types of threats and uncovering secrets in order to guard against those powers which have acted ultra vires. Copyright law Copyright law perfectly indicates the complexities and fallacies of trust in the sys- tem. This field of law arose at the junction of technological development (the moveable type printing press developed by Gutenberg), the rise of individualism (especially during the Italian renaissance) and the growing social demands for cul- tural expressions. For a long period of time, copyright law has developed at a constant pace, but lim- ited the entering of ‘disseminators’ territory. The ‘read-only’ culture, as coined by Lessig (2008), dominated copyright’s domain until the late 19th and early 20th century. Since then, with the advent of ‘read/write’ culture, the rapid technological developments (especially those related to audio- and audiovisual works, the me- chanical dissemination of contents, e.g., radio, television, and later on digital tech- nologies, especially the internet) as well as society’s instant adherence to the new tools and features, has forced copyright law to face its greatest challenge ever. The trust in the social value and relevance of copyright protection is at stake. Copyright law’s structure, logic, policy considerations, and its exact rules (especially the term of protection, or the balance of exclusive rights and their limitations) are constant- ly questioned. One of the most important reasons for the decrease of trust in these norms is that copyright law is viewed, defined, exercised, enforced etc. in the digital age mostly the same way as in the analogue age. A notable illustration for this is connected to the concept of property and ownership (notions that used to be the least fictional legal concepts). Ownership rights generally exist over tangible goods, however, with the advent of electric, electromagnetic and digital technologies, the need to control intangibles has sharply risen. Some countries, like Austria, do accept own- ership rights over intangible consumables, like electricity. Assets on a bank ac- count might be owned as well. In copyright law, the same question is painfully 17 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu problematic. Owning the tangible copy of a work is as ‘natural’ as owning the ap- ple we purchased at the market. But owning a digital file incorporating 0s and 1s that represent a copyrighted expression is far less settled. This conflict is perfectly evidenced by the tensions surrounding the concept of exhaustion (or first sale doc- trine in the US legal terminology). Exhaustion allows for the resale of lawfully ac- quired copies of protected subject matter - as long as the given copy is tangible (Mezei, 2018, pp. 8-10). Exhaustion itself originates from the late 19th century, and it is inherently connected to tangible objects. With the advent of online dissemina- tion methods and channels and the rise of downloadable copies (e.g., iTunes that had a significant role in this respect), the notion of ‘digital exhaustion’ posed a new challenge to this ‘analogue interpretation’ of exhaustion around the begin- ning of the current Millennium. Many argued that the lawful acquirers of digital copies shall be granted equal ‘rights’ to resell those digital copies to new users (Mezei, 2018; Sganga, 2018). Such a demand has been refused by various court rulings in the European Union and the United States. Such a conclusion might be in line with the words of law, but it completely disregards the ways of digital con- sumption of media. A great example for the growing mistrust in copyright law is related to the arche- type of accessing contents via the internet, namely, hyperlinking. On the one hand, ‘hyperlinks are the synapses connecting different parts of the world wide web. Without hyperlinks, the web would be like a library without a catalogue: full of in- formation, but with no sure means of finding it’ (Collins, 2010, para. 5.42) On the other hand, in terms of copyright law, hyperlinks allow users to communicate or make available to the public copyright protected subject matter. Hyperlinks are therefore double-edged swords: they are inevitable for a properly functioning in- ternet, but they also help people disobey the existing rules and infringe valuable IP rights. The concurring roles of hyperlinks are fairly reflected by Tim Berners-Lee: ‘Myth: »A normal link is an incitement to copy the linked document in a way which infringes copyright«. This is a serious misunderstanding. The ability to refer to a document (or a person or any thing else) is in general a fundamental right of free speech to the same extent that speech is free. Making the reference with a hyper- text link is more efficient but changes nothing else’ (Berners-Lee, 1997, n.p.). The requirements of lawful linking are still not settled (Mezei, 2016; Quintais, 2018; Frosio, 2020). The many options of musical/audiovisual platforms as well as social networking sites, including embedding functions, autoplay features, sharing possibilities, complicate the question further. Indeed, the European Union’s recent copyright reform (namely, Directive 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single 18 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 Market - the CDSM Directive) intended to settle the boundaries of commercial linking activities (while missing to touch upon non-commercial or “private” linking by end users, and hence accepting the permissive approach of Court of Justice of European Union). Article 15 (originally known as Article 11) is, however, coined as “linking tax”. This term perfectly reflects society’s negative attitude towards any plan to regulate the normal flow of information over the internet. More important- ly, Article 15 itself deserves criticism due to the mere fact that it was introduced without any clear empirical evidence to its positive effects. Indeed, recent research indicated that (free) link aggregation is beneficial for the linked site (Roos et al., 2020). Even more worrying, due to the conflicting rulings regarding embedding of images posted on social media platforms, service providers (at least Instagram and Facebook) plan to amend their API terms and conditions to allow users to exclude the ‘embeddability’ of their posts by other users (Lee, 2020). Such private ordering mechanisms would render linking (and the many supportive court rulings) mean- ingless - and once again destroy trust in the system. Another - and maybe the best - example for the significant gap between legal and social norms as well as trust in copyright law is related to P2P file-sharing. Due to various technological developments at the end of the 1990s (e.g., the standardisa- tion of MP3 conversion and the growing internet bandwidth), peer-to-peer ex- change of digital files turned out to be the social default for (hundreds of) millions of internet users globally. Although the excess of negative effects of P2P file-shar- ing on the copyright holders income is questionable, the negative effects them- selves are unquestionable (Danaher and Waldfogel, 2012). The copyright industry (especially the American one), however, reacted with an ‘analogue mind’ to these problems; and intended to destroy the P2P ecosystem (compared to e.g., the Nap- ster 1 and Grokster 2 rulings), which led to the exact opposite result. The reaction of end users was similarly the opposite as expected. Major labels and publishers were not treated to be ‘rights holders’ anymore, but greedy capitalists limiting on- line freedoms of end users. The excessive rulings against private users that or- dered the payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars (e.g., in the Thomas-Ras- set 3 or the Tenenbaum 4 cases); the proceedings against 12 year old children (see the Brianna LaHara ‘incident’) or dead grandmothers only increased the fury of end users, and seriously harmed the legitimacy of copyright law in general, as well as 1. A&M Technology Inc. et al. v Napster Inc. et al., 239 F.3d 1004 (2001). 2. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. et al. v Grokster Ltd. et al., 545 U.S. 913 (2005). 3. Capitol Records Inc. et al. v Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 692 F.3d 899 (2012). 4. Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al. v. Joel Tenenbaum, 660 F.3d 487 (2011). 19 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu the enforcement tools specifically. Indeed, current debates surrounding private ordering mechanisms, that is, enforce- ment by intermediaries, especially automated law enforcement, lead to concerns related to the use of fundamental freedoms (e.g., freedom to receive and impart information; artistic freedom) over the internet. Private ordering might be the most effective solution to tackle online infringements, its excess and the exact methods used raise serious concerns, too; that again led to the depreciation of trust in copyright law. As Sebastian Felix Schwemer noted, “[p]rivatized enforce- ment has generally been associated with a variety of issues related to, for exam- ple, the rule of law, legal certainty, accountability, democracy deficit, presumption of innocence, right to due process, and potentially right to privacy and freedom of speech and communication” (Schwemer, 2019, p. 5). A notable plan to regulate platforms’ liability that fit into the concept of “online content sharing service providers” is to be found in Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive. It requires the clearance of rights related to those protected sub- ject matter that are uploaded to the platforms’ servers by their users [Article 17(1)]; or, alternatively, in the lack of authorisation, it requires the removal (filter- ing) of the contested contents [Article 17(4)]. Whether this solution will be suc- cessful at all, will be seen in the coming years, after the CDSM Directive is imple- mented by the member states of the European Union. It is, however, telling to see that society (fueled by many politicians as well), including scholars, fear wide- spread “censorship” of data online (Senftleben, 2020). Papers In ‘Expanding the debate about content moderation’ (Gillespie et al., 2020), a group of researchers develop their arguments in the form of a roundtable essay. As high- lighted by Tarleton Gillespie and Patricia Aufderheide in the introduction, re- searchers of content moderation have traditionally focussed on high-profile inci- dents, as for instance related to US presidential elections, pornography or hate speech; and/or on US based (but global leader) platforms, for example Facebook or YouTube (see e.g., Jacques et al., 2018). Content moderation is, however, a much broader and deeper concept, and, in reality, it affects all jurisdictions, more than the biggest platforms, and the topics involved are similarly more complex and ex- pansive. This essay offers a great variety of short contributions by Patricia Aufder- heide, Elinor Carmi, Ysabel Gerrard, Tarleton Gillespie, Robert Gorwa, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Sarah T. Roberts, Aram Sinnreich, and Sarah Myers West, ranging from concerns over encryption (a topic further discussed by Heemsbergen 20 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 and Molnar, 2020 in this special issue); the challenges of regulating social media start-ups; the collaboration of platforms regarding content moderation (or “content cartels”); the alleged neutrality of content moderation; algorithmic content moder- ation and the risk of false positives and negatives; the regulatory politics of con- tent moderation or the political consequences of commercial content moderation. The editors agree with the conclusion of the authors: “We need more thorough study of the impact of content moderation on different geographical, political and cultural communities” (Gillespie et al., 2020). One of the most natural reactions of internet users to the challenges posed by massive online surveillance, concerns of privacy and protection of (personal) data over the internet was the general use of encryption services. Measures that intend- ed to strengthen the trust in online solutions cover for instance virtual private net- works (VPNs), switching to Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) and volun- tary data management terms and conditions of online service providers. Luke Heemsbergen and Adam Molnar’s contribution to this special issue, titled ‘VPNs as boundary objects of the internet: (Mis)trust in the translation(s)’ provides for a look in- to how one of the technological solutions to secure internet use is understood by Australians, and how VPN service providers construct their products and their gov- ernance. Heemsbergen and Molnar’s paper combines existing literature on bound- ary objects and internet studies in an empirical way and addresses the political and legal implications of freedoms and controls over how users encounter and ac- quire VPN services, how VPN service providers represent and develop their ser- vices, and how ultimately regulators reflect these social realities. On of the most telling findings of the paper regarding trust in the system is a quote from a site that reviewed VPN services: “[i]t is important to keep in mind that when you are using a VPN, you are effectively transferring trust from your ISP to the VPN provider” (Heemsbergen and Molnar, 2020). The paper ‘Combating misinformation online: re-imagining social media for policy- making’ (Kyza et al., 2020) is part of the interdisciplinary research project “Co-Cre- ating Misinformation-Resilient Societies”, meant to develop online tools and poli- cies to support the civil society and professionals in mitigating the threat of misin- formation on social media. The authors, Eleni Kyza, Christiana Varda, Dionysis Panos, Melina Karageorgiou, Nadya Komendantova, Serena Coppolino Perfumi, Syed Iftikhar Husain Shah and Akram Sadat Hosseini, collected data from 67 par- ticipants (citizens, journalists, and policymakers) based in Austria, Greece and Swe- den, in order to find answers to questions such as what do real-world policy makers identify as challenges to combating misinformation on social media? and which plat- 21 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu form policies are suggested to create a more misinformation-resilient environment on social media? Their analysis resulted in the identification of four important themes, having implications for platform policies and contemporary policymaking: creating a trusted network of experts and collaborators; facilitating the validation of online information; providing access to visualisations of data at different levels of granu- larity, and increasing the transparency and explainability of flagged misinformative content. Platforms and platformisation, especially in the videogame industry, have always been in the frontline of technological progress. In ‘Playing with platforms: game- making under platform governance’ (Chia et al., 2020), the authors - Aleena Chia, Brendan Keogh, Dale Leorke and Benjamin Nicoll - examine this phenomenon through the lens of two platforms: Unity and Twine, which have transformed videogame creation and distribution. Platformisation is neither a singular, monop- olising, or technologically deterministic ‘logic’ of cultural production, nor a ‘one- size-fits-all’ concept for describing current technological transformations in the production, distribution, and consumption of media content. On the contrary, the paper argues that videogame development is undergirded by a plurality of plat- forms and platformisation techniques, some of which counter the top-down vision of platformisation to envision an alternative politics of game-making from the ground-up. The authors have chosen the videogame industry as a key site for analysing the effects of platforms and platformisation on cultural production. Since the mid-2000s, an explosion of different game-making tools, practices, and communities have challenged the conventional formulas of the blockbuster or ‘triple A’ industry. Today, videogame development is just as, if not more, likely to be conducted by a team of a few precarious independent workers as it is by hundreds of full-time employees in a campus-sized studio. The paper provides an ample def- inition of key terms such as ‘platform’ and ‘platformisation’ in order to outline con- ceptual blindspots in the scholarly discussion and deployment of these terms, and suggest how critiques of game-making tools can help illuminate these blindspots. Through the case studies, the authors convincingly illustrate how the narratives of platform capitalism and imperialism do not manifest uniformly and could not be assimilated to an all-encompassing conception of either platforms or platformisa- tion. Next we have Simon Copland’s paper ‘Reddit quarantined: can changing platform af- fordances reduce hateful material online?’ (Copland, 2020), which proposes an ana- lytical reflection on the question: how can a digital platform known as a bastion of free speech, one of the last giants to resist homogeneity (which comes with the in- 22 Internet Policy Review 9(4) | 2020 herent price of having to “stomach” the occasional troll reddit, in the words of Erik Martin, former Reddit CEO) respond to the increasing pressure to regulate abusive language and online behaviour? Reddit was imagined as a place for open and hon- est conversations; however, these days, the ‘trolls’ seem to be winning. According to the ranking service Alexa, in 2020, Reddit occupies the 6th place among US sites (with Google, Youtube and Amazon as the top three). Ever since 2012 (with a total revamp in 2018), Reddit has slowly changed its ‘anything goes’ policy, imple- menting a unique approach - the quarantine function. Quarantined users of the platform cannot generate revenue, and their content does not appear on the front page, nor can be found via search. The function does not ban the content altogeth- er, but simply discourages the spread of abusive material and encourages positive behaviour change. Copland’s paper seizes the opportunity to examine the efficacy of the use of platform bans in limiting hateful content. The author uses two case studies (r/TheRedPill and r/Braincells), data analysis and misogynistic language analysis in order to conclude that the quarantine has mixed results: Reddit indeed saw a drop in hateful activity, but the content and its creators were simply pushed away towards less restrictive (and, therefore, more dangerous) platforms, making it someone else’s problem. Finally, Maxigas and Guillaume Latzko-Toth discuss how commons were replaced by platforms, or, as the authors state it, “digital interactive media based on open protocols and free software got superseded by proprietary applications embedded within platforms” (Maxigas & Latzko-Toth, 2020). Based on desktop research, data collection and interviews, the paper ‘Trusted Commons: why ‘old’ social media matter’ convincingly evidences, how IRC (Internet Relay Chat) survived the emergence of capital-driven platforms, and how it became an example of resistance or recupera- tion against these platforms these days. Based on the multidisciplinary analysis of free software projects, hackerspaces and Anonymous hacktivists’ political move- ment, Maxigas and Latzko-Toth show that the “oldness” of IRC is indeed the source of its users’ trust in this protocol, and will indeed survive proprietary platforms, too. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank Frédéric Dubois and the entire Internet Policy Review team for their tremendous help and support in publishing this special issue. We especially thank the international peer-reviewers for their deep and thorough support to develop the selected papers: Raluca Bercea, Dan-Adrian Cărămidariu, Glen Fuller, Klára Gellén, István Harkai, Aphra Kerr, Katja Lindroos, Norbert 23 Mezei, Verteș-Olteanu Merkovity, Gábor Polyák, João Pedro Quintais, Jonathan Roberge, Nicoleta Rodica Dominte and Yoonmo Sang. We would like to wish all the best for the organising committee as well as all participants of the forthcoming AoIR 2020 conference. We are looking forward to reading the fourth special issue of Internet Policy Review including excellent AoIR papers in 2021. References Association of Internet Researchers. (2019). #AoIR2019 Call for Proposals. Association of Internet Researchers. https://aoir.org/aoir2019/aoir2019cfp/ Barlow, J. P. (1996, February). 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system to trust in the content Introduction Trust Fake news Leaking Copyright law Papers Acknowledgements References Cases work_4iwcmtkoizcurlpl7xlgn4stbi ---- Romeo and Juliet by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (review) Elizabeth E. Tavares Shakespeare Bulletin, Volume 37, Number 1, Spring 2019, pp. 141-145 (Review) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: For additional information about this article Access provided for user 'pkirwan' at 3 Jun 2019 17:43 GMT with no institutional affiliation https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2019.0013 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/725947 https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2019.0013 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/725947 141performance reviews the through-line of the tragedy of Ophelia’s situation: manipulated by her father and his employers; spurned by her lover; said lover eventually murdering said father. Duffin demonstrated an astonishing commitment to the role—even in the display of full-frontal nudity in Act Four. Yet this moment treaded a very fine line between bravery and gratuitousness, given that the display of nudity has so often been used as a short-hand embodiment of Ophelia’s madness in recent productions. One wonders, in any case, when she will get her own turn at Hamlet. Ophelia’s nudity was symptomatic of the ways in which the gender politics of this production aligned with recent worrying trends in pro- ductions of Hamlet. During the nunnery scene, Hamlet pushed Ophelia backwards onto a large table, peeling her legs apart as he knelt between them. There has been a tendency in recent Hamlets to illustrate Ham- let’s behavior towards Ophelia through physical and sexual assault, even though there is no textual basis for this, and performing this scene in this manner felt similarly invasive and unnecessary here. The casting of Negga, a female Ethiopian-Irish actor, in the central masculine role of the West- ern canon, was a significant one, and thus to see tropes of masculinist vio- lence reprised uncritically here was especially disappointing. In the wake of the #WakingTheFeminists movement that has dominated discussions of Irish theater in recent years, not to mention the #MeToo era, it is ever more important that theaters recognize and address the impact of these reproductions of sexual violence. Despite this, Farber’s production at the Gate was symptomatic of how recent Irish Shakespeares have sought to experiment with staging traditions and conventions in both Irish theater and Shakespeare performance, for which it must be commended. n Romeo and Juliet Presented by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival at the Allen Elizabethan Theatre, Ashland, Oregon. June 5–October 12, 2018. Directed by Dámaso Rodríguez. Scenic design by Efren Delgadillo, Jr. Costume design by Leah Piehl. Lighting design by Tom Ontiveros. Wig design by Cherelle D. Guyton. Music composed by Rodolfo Ortega. Dramaturgy by Tiffany Ana López. Movement and intimacy direction by Sarah Lozoff. Fight direction by U. Jonathan Toppo. With William Thomas Hodgson (Romeo), Emily Ota ( Ju- liet), Sara Bruner (Mercutio), Derek Garza (Tybalt), Robin Goodrin Nordli (Nurse), Greg Watanabe (Capulet), Amy Newman (Lady Capulet), Richard Elmore (Montague), Monique Holt (Lady Montague/Apothecary), Michael J. Hume (Friar Laurence), Christiana Clark (Prince Escalus), Armando Mc- 142 shakespeare bulletin Clain (Paris), Julian Remulla (Benvolio), Brent Hinkley (Peter/Friar John), Lauren Modica (Gregory), and others. Elizabeth E. Tavares, Pacific University A set of mobile stranding mirrors whirled and rotated between the acts of Dámaso Rodríguez’s Romeo and Juliet, which played in the outdoor venue at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Moved by the performers, they contributed to the fluidity of the continuous action (overlapping entrances with exits) which operated without pauses or black-outs. Painted grey to match the theatre facade on the one side while on the other were antique mirrors with ornate frames, the mirrors helped to delineate public and private spaces: marking the private dovetailed sonnet Romeo and Juliet shared while the ongoing masque was visible in the spaces between; highlighting Tybalt’s misplaced vengeance when he alerted Lord Capulet to the party crashers; and concretizing the garden wall—the oft-forgot additional obstacle both separating and protecting the eponyms’ first declarations of love. Such moments were indicative of the rest of the production, juxtaposing period concepts and period text with minimalist design to inform contemporary concerns. For example, the rich diversity of the ensemble made the tragedy of the play more poignant than in my own previous experience. The world of this production offered a very full vision of community identity, such as ability and cultural diversity, including at least five women of color and two actors who were differently abled. As Gregory, Lauren Modica, a little person, was fully incorporated into complex and fully choreographed fight scenes (true too of her work in the festival’s recently completed Henriad, reviewed in SB 36.2 and 36.4). Meanwhile, Monique Holt signed all her lines in American Sign Language as Lady Capulet and the Apothecary. As in other ASL-sensitive performances, this can run the risk of siloing off certain characters. Pleasingly, the production thoroughly integrated the ASL-speaker by having all of the characters occasionally sign their dialogue whether or not Holt was onstage. Those occasions were usually moments of frustration, inarticulation, or when a character desired to express the breadth of an emotion. Mercutio and the Prince were both played by women as women, while other characters were played by women as men. The presence of so many different kinds of body in different kinds of role allowed the play to speak to a wide range of human experience. In all other aspects of concept and design, this production refresh- ingly eschewed the premise that relatability can only be cultivated one- 143performance reviews dimensionally; which is to say, by seeing characters that look like oneself. The presentation of the ensemble primed the audience for this particular horizon of expectation: the performance opened with the entire cast en- tering the faux-Elizabethan outdoor playhouse wearing matched white, floor-length hooded cloaks. They each took a line of the prologue rather than invent a figure for its delivery, and then took seats on makeshift benches ringing the stage. At each speaker’s first entrance (that is, when they first spoke), they cast off their cloak rather than coming from off- stage. It is a technique Rodríguez has used before, as in the opening gambit of street carolers communing over a garbage fire to begin Artists Repertory Theatre’s hit production A Civil War Christmas back in 2016. Making explicit that the actors are drawn from a world outside that of the play—contemporary US society—invited audiences to participate in the imaginative construction of the performance experience. In keeping with this overarching aesthetic principle were the hip and coherent choices in material design. Leah Piehl’s costume design was, frankly, delicious, offering a range of Italian Renaissance colors, patterns, and fabrics. All body types received detailed attention aimed at reflecting cuts currently tending on major runways. This meant that the shoes— opting for a chic ankle-cut boot rather than the stereotypical calf-height of Robin Hood and pirate period dramas—were both on-trend and on- period. In so doing, the syncretism of the costuming mirrored a crucial Ensemble in Romeo and Juliet, dir. Dámaso Rodríguez. Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 2018. Photo by Jenny Graham, courtesy of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. 144 shakespeare bulletin sea-change marked by the play, reflecting as it does sixteenth-century England’s preoccupations with the merits of Humanist individualism in the wake of long-term communally-anchored identity. In contrast to these period-sensitive yet individually flattering costume choices were the lighting elements incorporated into the set design by Efren Delgadillo, Jr. and Tom Ontiveros. Like something out of a Dan Flavin art installation, the torches and candelabra used to mark space were made of a translucent plastic. Two windows parallel to the musicians’ loft were tastefully backlit with coordinating colors to mark in whose home, Montague or Capulet, the scene was taking place. They provided visual contrast to the sumptuousness of the costumes, asking playgoers to focus on the bodies in performance rather than their accoutrements. For example, the bed in which Romeo and Juliet exchange lines of carpe diem was not dripping with gauzy lace, but rather its four posts were made of fluorescent tubes of light, giving the scene an intimacy not available under a traditional spotlight. It also provided that moment with a sense of gender-neutrality, as if a bed they both truly shared rather than Romeo’s incursion into Juliet’s childhood room. I was lucky to see the production in early September: a number of per- formances had been cancelled due to the smoke coming from the nearly sixty fires blazing in northern California and Oregon. It was a rare case to see the sensitively lit production under a moonless night, allowing Juliet to speak directly to the open air as she plans to cut Romeo out in little stars. Alongside this environmental literalism was another lighting choice at which I audibly gasped when revealed: a backlit scrim on which was projected a close-up of the moon’s surface was revealed above the balcony for that infamous scene. The exaggerated moon here, with no actual moon to compete with, showcased the same verticality of performance the Rose had been newly available to offer at first performances of this particular play. With three levels of activity available and Friar Laurence ascending on a grassy path by way of a large tomb trap, the scale of the experience of these actors seemed to stretch well outside this western wooden O. The thoughtful coherence of the production’s design was matched by a detailed attention to the script. To my ears, no moments of text, no matter how difficult, were thrown away. For example, at Mercutio’s death, Romeo genuinely didn’t think his friend had been seriously injured when he said “the hurt cannot be much” (3.1.94). This is in stark contrast to a dense performance history of that line being used to comfort Mercutio on death’s door rather than to cultivate Romeo’s naivety and general sense of shock. Likewise, dramaturge Tiffany Ana López opted for the 1599 145performance reviews quarto version of Juliet’s balcony speech, preferring “that which we call by any other word” rather than “name,” commonly used in films, from the 1597 quarto (2.2.44). This seemed to align with a core question of the production suggested by the pre-show preface, in which playgoers were asked to consider how communication, or lack thereof, plays a role in the lovers’ fate. While certainly this textual choice and the inclusion of ASL resonated with that concern, little of the rest of the production was similarly in- vested in developing audiences’ empathy with those society casts as out- siders. There were so many other rich choices that pulled me in different interpretive directions. The oft-cut scene of banter in which Mercutio and the boys are looking for Romeo, while he chooses to hide from them in order to pursue Juliet, posed questions of male camaraderie and ties beyond kinship. Once Mercutio was slain, Romeo wore his friend’s black cape for the rest of play, allowing the prop to accrue new meaning as well as mark the play’s tonal transition into tragedy. While both decisions were thoughtful and fully considered, these emphases were not backed up by anything elsewhere in the production that would support an inter- pretation invested in male bonding. Rather than a mark of incoherence, however, this disconnect between design and script reinforced (perhaps unintentionally) the central concern of the production: two communities, both rich and fully realized, refusing to communicate and so utterly failing those who would be their future. n The Duchess of Malfi Presented by The Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. March 1–August 3, 2018. Directed by Maria Aberg. Designed by Naomi Dawson. Lighting design by Natasha Chivers. Music composed by Orlando Gough and directed by David Ridley. Sound design by Claire Windsor. With Joan Iyiola (The Duchess of Malfi), Alexander Cobb (Ferdinand), Chris New (The Cardinal), Nicolas Tennant (Bosola), Paul Woodson (Antonio), Greg Barnett (Delio), Amanda Hadingue (Cariola), Aretha Ayeh ( Julia), Will Brown (Roderigo/Executioner), Ashley Gayle (Silvio), Richard Hurst (Grisolan/Executioner), Jeff Alexander (Doctor), and others. Meghan C. Andrews, Lycoming College John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is not an inherently happy, crowd- pleasing play. Yet while Maria Aberg’s modern-dress production captured work_4iwqrs2pf5bc5hx2wlsa4ykoky ---- BioMed CentralRetrovirology ss Open AcceReview Raltegravir, elvitegravir, and metoogravir: the birth of "me-too" HIV-1 integrase inhibitors Erik Serrao, Srinivas Odde, Kavya Ramkumar and Nouri Neamati* Address: Department of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, School of Pharmacy, 1985 Zonal Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA Email: Erik Serrao - eserrao@usc.edu; Srinivas Odde - odde@usc.edu; Kavya Ramkumar - ramkumar@usc.edu; Nouri Neamati* - neamati@usc.edu * Corresponding author Abstract Merck's MK-0518, known as raltegravir, has recently become the first FDA-approved HIV-1 integrase (IN) inhibitor and has since risen to blockbuster drug status. Much research has in turn been conducted over the last few years aimed at recreating but optimizing the compound's interactions with the protein. Resulting me-too drugs have shown favorable pharmacokinetic properties and appear drug-like but, as expected, most have a highly similar interaction with IN to that of raltegravir. We propose that, based upon conclusions drawn from our docking studies illustrated herein, most of these me-too MK-0518 analogues may experience a low success rate against raltegravir-resistant HIV strains. As HIV has a very high mutational competence, the development of drugs with new mechanisms of inhibitory action and/or new active substituents may be a more successful route to take in the development of second- and third-generation IN inhibitors. Overview Though many potent inhibitors of the viral life cycle have arisen over recent years, HIV persists as a global pandemic with eradication unlikely in the near future. Over 33 mil- lion people, including 2.5 million children, are living with HIV worldwide as of December, 2007 [1]. Almost 7000 people are newly infected with HIV, and around 6000 die from AIDS, each day. Due to the lack of educa- tion about risky behaviors and the lack of access to treat- ment, low- and middle-income countries remain the largest producers of new HIV infections, with AIDS being the leading cause of death in Sub-Saharan Africa. Five per- cent of all adults are living with HIV or AIDS in this region [1,2]. Worldwide spending on HIV/AIDS research, treat- ment, and prevention has risen from $300 million in 1996 to an estimated $10 billion in 2007, but the global need is projected to be much higher [2,3]. Although novel estimation procedures have contributed to a more accu- rate, reduced 2008 global estimate of those living with HIV and AIDS in comparison to the past few years, this number remains staggering and ever increasing [1,4]. The advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has brought with it a significant decrease in AIDS-related deaths over the last ten years. Prior to the development of raltegravir, HAART had been recom- mended to consist of at least three different drugs target- ing separate stages of the HIV life cycle: two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, plus either a non-nucleo- side reverse transcriptase inhibitor such as efavirenz, or a protease inhibitor [5,6]. Studies have shown that effective administration of these HAART regimens can result in a Published: 5 March 2009 Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 doi:10.1186/1742-4690-6-25 Received: 8 January 2009 Accepted: 5 March 2009 This article is available from: http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 © 2009 Serrao et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Page 1 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=19265512 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 http://www.biomedcentral.com/ http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/charter/ Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 large-scale decrease in plasma levels of viral RNA, as well as a significant increase in CD4 cell count [7-9]. Further- more, HAART has been shown to reduce the incidence of opportunistic infections and HIV-associated cancers, con- tributing to the significantly decreased number of HIV- and AIDS-related deaths each year (and correspondingly contributing to the much increased amount of people liv- ing with the disease each year) [10]. However, HAART reg- imens have been incapable of viral eradication, due in part to the viral establishment of reservoirs within latently infected and resting CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells [11-13]. Also, HAART has frequently led to the emergence of drug resistant viral strains [14,15]. Hence, much innovation is essential for the success of future anti-HIV drug research. An area of much recent progress has been that of HIV-1 IN inhibitor design. IN is an essential enzyme for viral repli- cation, and it has no human homolog [for a recent review, see Reference [16]]. IN catalyzes the insertion of reverse transcribed viral cDNA into the host cell genome via a multi-step process. The first step in integration occurs in the host cell cytosol and is referred to as 3'-processing. During this step, IN cleaves a dinucleotide from each viral DNA terminus at a conserved CA sequence, yielding two reactive 3' hydroxyl groups. Following this processing step, IN associates with a number of viral and cellular pro- teins, forming a pre-integration complex (PIC), and then migrates to the nucleus. Within the nucleus the reactive hydroxyl groups are utilized in nucleophilic attack upon the host cell genome, a process known as strand transfer [17]. IN multimerization is also required for formation of the PIC. As a dimeric IN species is required for 3'-process- ing, the strand transfer step calls for a tetrameric IN arrangement. Proper integration of viral DNA into the host cell genome leads to viral protein expression, matu- ration, and propagation [18]. IN catalysis is vital to proper HIV-1 replication and sustained infection, and potent small-molecule IN inhibitors have been avidly sought over the last ten years as a supplement to HAART and a novel angle of attack against drug resistant viruses. The birth of the diketo acids and the emergence of raltegravir A previous large-scale, random screen of over 250,000 compounds yielded potent inhibitors, and the most active compounds proved to be 4-aryl-2,4-diketobutanoic acids, containing a distinct β-diketo acid (DKA) moiety that was capable of coordinating metal ions within the IN active site [19]. The active DKA containing compounds from this study showed a significant preference for strand transfer inhibition over that of 3'-processing in vitro. For example, the most potent compound, L-731,988, exhibited a 70- fold higher IC50 value of 6 μM for 3'-processing compared to its 80 nM IC50 value for strand transfer inhibition. Importantly, L-731,988 exerted a completely inhibitory effect upon HIV-1 infection in a cell-based assay at a con- centration of 10 μM. In a follow-up study [20], it was found that the DKA and target DNA binding sites on IN overlap and are both distinct from that of the viral DNA, and also that the DKAs bind with a 1000-fold higher affin- ity to IN in complex with 3'-processed viral DNA than to non-complexed IN (10–20 μM versus 100 nM). Simultaneously, a different group discovered and devel- oped potent DKA compounds, leading to both the first inhibitor co-crystallized with IN (5CITEP, Figure 1) and the first clinically tested inhibitor (S-1360, Figure 1). 5CITEP was included in this group's 1999 patent [21], which covered DKAs containing various indole and sub- stituted indole groups. Specifically, 5CITEP possessed a tetrazole group in place of the common DKA carboxylic acid moiety. 5CITEP inhibited IN 3'-processing and strand transfer at IC50 values of 35 μM and 0.65 μM, respectively [22], and it was subsequently reported in complex with IN in the vicinity of the active site residues Asp-64, Asp-116, The structure of diketo acid-based HIV-1 integrase inhibitorsFigure 1 The structure of diketo acid-based HIV-1 integrase inhibitors. Page 2 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 and Glu-152, providing the first crystal structure informa- tion about IN [23]. Further modification led to the inclu- sion of heterocyclic groups in place of the indoles, culminating in the development of multiple nitrogen and oxygen-containing heterocyclic analogs, all of which were covered in a 2000 patent [24]. S-1360, or (Z)-1-[5-(4- fluorobenzyl)furan-2-yl]-3-hydroxy-3-(1H-1,2,4-triazol- 3-yl)propenone, was the most promising of these com- pounds and went on to become the first clinically tested HIV-1 IN inhibitor. It exhibited a 20 nM IC50 for IN inhi- bition in vitro, and it accomplished inhibition of HIV rep- lication in MTT assays with EC50 and CC50 values of 200 nM and 12 μM, respectively [25,26]. Acceptable safety and toxicology profiles were attained in animal models, and Phase I trials showed good pharmacokinetics in a group of 24 healthy HIV-negative humans [25]. However, S-1360 failed efficacy studies due to its reduction in humans at the carbon linked to the triazole heterocycle, yielding an inactive metabolite that was rapidly cleared through glu- curonidation in the non-cytochrome P450 pathway [27], and its development was soon abandoned. The DKA pharmacophore was subsequently transferred to a naphthyridine carboxamide core, conferring similar antiviral activity and strand transfer selectivity [28]. The most active inhibitor from this class, L870,810 (Figure 1), showed very promising activity, with IC50 values as low as 4 nM against multidrug-resistant viruses [29]. L870,810 soon became the second IN inhibitor to enter clinical tri- als. However, liver and kidney toxicity surfaced after long- term treatment in dogs, bringing a premature end to the drug's clinical progress [30]. This relative success with diketo acid structural analogs led to the derivation of a class of N-alkyl hydroxypyrimidinone carboxylic acids, which showed nanomolar activity against HIV-1 IN in enzymatic assays and a good pharmacokinetic profile (modest oral bioavailability, low plasma clearance, and good half-life) in rats [31]. MK-0518, also known as ralte- gravir (Figure 1), emerged as the most promising pyrimid- inone carboxamide derivative and soon became the first IN inhibitor to progress into Phase III clinical trials. Though multiple resistant mutations have surfaced in both treatment-experienced and treatment-naïve patients [32], MK-0518 has exhibited low nanomolar and strand transfer selective in vitro IN inhibition, an IC95 value of 31 nM in the presence of normal human serum (NHS), and synergistic effects in combination with multiple current antiretroviral drugs [15,33]. Raltegravir (a.k.a. Isentress™) became the first FDA approved IN inhibitor in October of 2007 and is currently being administered as a new addi- tion to HAART regimens. Me-too drugs Comparable to every innovation, promising new drugs will be quickly followed into the market by multiple ana- logs, most striking in their similarity to the original. With an average cost of $2 billion to bring a single drug to mar- ket [34] and only one in three drugs producing revenues that match or exceed these average research and develop- ment costs [35], one can imagine the temptation for phar- maceutical companies to forego the pains of innovation and rather simply modify current leads. There have been differences of opinion regarding the value of these so- called "me-too" drugs [36,37]. Some view that me-too products are essential for drug optimization and progress, and that they generate vital marketplace competition, leading to better quality and lower costs. Still others argue that slight structural modifications producing negligible improvements in drug activity are a waste of time and effort, and that the vast amount of money spent on com- petitive advertisement could be invested instead into actual innovation or the development of orphan drugs. One of the clearest examples of me-too product genera- tion can be seen in the statin drug market. There are cur- rently six 3-hydroxymethylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase inhibitors (statins) commercially available. However, there has yet to be a large, randomized trial comparing the clinical effects of equivalent doses of each statin upon pre- vention of vascular disease. The six drugs differ slightly in pharmacokinetics, and knowledge gained throughout their design and development about the health implica- tions of high cholesterol has been beneficial. However, their structures, functions, and clinical effects are highly homologous, and over 90% of physicians have been shown to utilize at most three different statins for all of their incident prescribing [38]. Another obvious instance of me-too production has been the evolution of Astra- Zeneca's Prilosec (omeprazole) to Nexium (esomepra- zole). There are only two differences between the two drugs – Prilosec contains a racemic mixture of the D- and S-isomers of omeprazole while Nexium contains solely the more potent S-isomer, and Nexium is protected by patent and far more expensive than Prilosec. Furthermore, Nexium has been shown in clinical trials to be only mar- ginally more effective than Prilosec in control of stomach acid levels [39]. Though there have been several examples of me-too drugs providing a substantial increase in effica- ciousness or decrease in toxicity – such as derivatives of the anthracycline chemotherapeutic daunorubicin [40] and the beta blocker propanolol [41] – very few FDA approved me-too drugs actually exhibit a significant enhancement of activity in comparison to their predeces- sors. In fact, of the 1035 drugs approved by the FDA between 1989 and 2000, only 361 contained new active substituents, and less than half of these received a priority FDA review due to the low likelihood of providing a sig- nificant advantage over existing treatments [42]. An area in which me-too drug generation has been espe- cially prevalent recently is that of HIV-1 IN inhibitor Page 3 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 design. Although raltegravir has become a modern block- buster anti-HIV drug, multiple viral amino acid mutations have already been identified that confer robust viral resist- ance to the drug [43]. Specifically, mutations causing invulnerability to raltegravir have been shown to contrib- ute to an almost 25% virological failure rate within 48 months of treatment [44]. This viral drug resistance most often results from the substitution of one of three amino acids – Y143, Q148, or N155 – usually in combination with at least one other mutation [44]. The specific substi- tutions of G140S and E92Q are typically associated with N155 and Q148 mutations, and the G140S/Q148H/R double substitution has been shown to result in a >400- fold viral resistance to raltegravir [45]. While the G140S mutation displays only a weak resistance to raltegravir (IC50 = 30 nM), the Q148H IN mutant is strongly resistant (IC50 > 700 nM). Interestingly though, G140S has recently been shown to effectively restore the poor replication abil- ity of Q148H to near WT levels, illustrating its compensa- tory nature [46]. Even with this resistance profile, raltegravir has been the target of an excessive amount of me-too research and development over the last two years. Though, again, there have been historical instances of me- too drugs significantly benefiting patients and instigating medical progress, they have for the most part only bene- fited pharmaceutical companies. Although it is definitely possible that the next blockbuster anti-HIV drug could be a raltegravir lookalike, we hypothesize that raltegravir me- too drugs, targeting a virus that exhibits an extraordinary rate of resistance evolution, will experience a low proba- bility of success in the clinical setting due to viral resist- ance and cross-resistance issues. Me-too or second generation? In contrast to me-too drugs, second generation HIV-1 IN inhibitors benefit patients. In order to be considered a bona fide second generation inhibitor, a compound of interest must meet at least one of three criteria (Figure 2). First, a second generation inhibitor may exhibit a new mode of action and/or contain novel active substitu- ent(s). A second generation inhibitor may also possess significantly improved potency and/or significantly decreased toxicity. Thirdly, a second generation inhibitor may exhibit potency while avoiding cross-resistance from mutants resistant to similar drugs. Obviously, the more criteria a selected drug meets, the more success it will enjoy in the clinical setting and in the global market. A recent example of a second generation drug that has nar- rowly avoided me-too labeling is the protease inhibitor, darunavir. Darunavir is the 10th protease inhibitor to be marketed in the United States, and it was approved by the FDA on June 23, 2006. Darunavir's chemical structure is almost identical to its precursor, amprenavir, in that it simply contains a double-ringed terminal bis-tetrahydro- furan group in place of the single-ringed terminal tetrahy- drofuran on amprenavir. Additionally, darunavir and amprenavir occupy a highly overlapping volume in the protease active site. However, darunavir's two additional oxygen atoms upon its bis-tetrahydrofuran moiety con- tribute to a two order of magnitude increase in binding affinity in comparison to amprenavir, by forming strong hydrogen bonds with the main chain atoms of amino acids Asp-29 and Asp-30 [47]. This tighter binding leads to an increased ability of darunavir to fit within the pro- tease envelope and to exhibit potent activity against even multi-drug resistant viral strains. Darunavir specifically retains nanomolar IC50 values in the presence of muta- tions resistant to ritonavir, nelfinavir, indinavir, saquina- vir, and even amprenavir (mutations at L10F, V32I, M46I, I54M, A71V, and I84V) [48]. So, although darunavir's structural and mechanistic properties are me-too-like, its resistance profile created by its relatively high binding affinity is much different than all preexisting protease inhibitors. It is therefore considered a second generation drug. The structural and mechanistic properties of recent raltegravir me-too compounds are highly analogous, as are the pharmacokinetics. We predict that the resistance profiles will be nearly identical as well, precluding much clinical success. Raltegravir me-too analogs Most of the recent raltegravir me-too drugs comply with the general diketo acid pharmacophore structural require- ments – or a hydrophobic aromatic (usually fluoroben- zyl) component and a variable acidic component linked to either side of a DKA linker (Figure 1). This linker usu- ally consists of a γ-ketone, an enolizable α-ketone, and a carboxylic acid, but the carboxylic acid has been substi- tuted with other acidic (tetrazole and triazole) and basic (pyridine) bioisosters [49]. Whereas the aromatic DKA Requirements for "second generation drug" classificationFigure 2 Requirements for "second generation drug" classifi- cation. Page 4 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 pharmacophore substituent confers strand transfer selec- tivity, the acidic component contributes to 3'-processing inhibitory potency [50,22]. Clinically tested me-too IN drugs MK-2048 Research into second generation DKA inhibitors shortly after the FDA approval of MK-0518 led to the design of a set of tricyclic hydroxypyrroles that mimicked the com- mon DKA metal binding pharmacophore. Optimization of a derived set of 10-hydroxy-7,8-dihydropyrazinopyrrol- opyrazine-1,9-dione compounds resulted in one of the first raltegravir me-too leads, MK-2048 (Figure 1). MK- 2048 has exhibited an IC95 of 40 nM in the presence of 50% NHS, favorable pharmacokinetics, and potent antiretroviral activity against four IN mutants displaying raltegravir resistance [51,52]. GS-9137 (elvitegravir) Early modification of the DKA motif by Japan Tobacco resulted in the design of a group of 4-quinolone-3-glyox- ylic acids [49] that retained the coplanarity of DKA func- tional groups. A potent compound from this original study contained only a β-ketone functional group and a carboxylic acid functional group, which were coplanar, and showed a 1.6 μM IC50 value in a strand transfer assay. Derivatives of this parent compound exhibited up to a 7.2 nM IC50 value in strand transfer assays and a 0.9 nM EC50 in an antiviral assay. This activity proved that a monoketo motif could be an efficacious alternative to the accepted DKA. A 2005 license agreement between Japan Tobacco and Gilead Sciences led to the clinical development of GS- 9137 (a.k.a. elvitegravir) [Figure 1, [43]], a quinolone car- boxylic acid strand-transfer specific inhibitor that dis- played an IC50 of 7 nM against IN and an antiviral EC90 of 1.7 nM in the presence of NHS. In terms of pharmacoki- netics (Additional file 1), in rat and dog elvitegravir dis- played a 34% and 30% bioavailability, a 2.3 h and 5.2 h half-life, and a 8.3 mL/min/kg and 17 mL/min/kg clear- ance, respectively. Interestingly though, its half-life in human was shown to increase from 3 hours when dosed alone to 9 hours when boosted with the protease inhibi- tor, ritonavir [53]. Similarly, its bioavailability increased 20-fold when administered in combination with ritona- vir. These observations back a valid argument that elvite- gravir may become a second-generation IN inhibitor, in that its significantly improved pharmacokinetic profile when boosted may increase patient compliance by allow- ing a simple once daily treatment (raltegravir is adminis- tered twice daily). Similar to raltegravir, though, elvitegravir has been shown to provoke T66I and E92Q viral resistance mutations, as well as substitutions of amino acids flanking raltegravir-induced substitution sites (Q146P and S147G) [54]. GSK-364735 In studies to develop follow-on analogs of S-1360, the two involved groups jointly discovered a novel lead naphthy- ridinone, GSK-364745 (Figure 1). This compound con- tains a hydrophobic fluorobenzyl substituent flexibly linked to a chelatable quinolone region. GSK-364735 inhibited IN in an in vitro strand transfer assay with an IC50 of 8 nM, and it showed an antiviral EC90 value of 40 nM in MT-4 cells in the presence of 20% NHS. Acceptable pharmacokinetics were achieved, with bioavailabilities of 42%, 12%, and 32%; half-lives of 1.5 h, 1.6 h, and 3.9 h; and clearances of 3.2 mL/min/kg, 8.6 mL/min/kg, and 2 mL/min/kg in rat, dog, and rhesus monkey, respectively (Additional file 1). However, when tested against mutant viruses, the compound exhibited greatly decreased activity – 17-fold reduction against T66K, 210-fold reduction against Q148K, 73-fold reduction against Q148R, and 23- fold reduction against N155S [55]. BMS-707035 A pyrimidine carboxamide similar in structure to raltegra- vir was recently propelled into Phase II clinical trials by a separate group. This compound was different from ralte- gravir in that raltegravir's 1,3,4-oxadiazole group was sub- stituted with a cyclic sulfonamide moiety (Figure 1), but its in vitro potency was similar with an IC50 value of 20 nM. However, multiple mutations were almost immedi- ately observed to have occurred in viral response to treat- ment with BMS-707035, which included V75I, Q148R, V151I, and G163R [32]. Unfortunately, the severity of resistance conferred by each of these mutations has not been disclosed, nor have pharmacokinetic properties of the drug. What is known, however, is that the drug did not last long in Phase II trials, and testing was abruptly termi- nated in early 2008 [56]. An explanation of the termina- tion of the trial has not been publicly provided. Novel me-too classes Dihydroxypyrimidine-4-carboxamides Soon after promising clinical data regarding the progress of MK-0518 became available, a novel DKA-related class of IN inhibitory compounds (Figure 3, Additional file 1) was developed through screening of inhibitors of HCV polymerase, which demonstrates a high degree of struc- tural similarity to IN [31]. Specifically, IN and HCV polymerase possess a similar active site amino acid geom- etry, and both utilize two magnesium ions in their cataly- sis. A class of dihydroxypyrimidine carboxamides was derived as HCV polymerase inhibitors from DKAs, and they were found to exhibit improved drug-like properties and correct Mg2+ binding geometry. Most of these com- pounds were inactive against IN, but a substitution of the free carboxylic acid with a benzyl amide yielded com- pound 1, with nanomolar IN inhibitory activity in enzy- matic assays. Compound 1 showed a decent Page 5 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 pharmacokinetic profile, with a bioavailability of 15%, plasma clearance of 5 mL/min/kg, and a half-life of 3 hours. Further structure activity relationship (SAR) studies upon the amide moiety of 1 led to the identification of a superior para-fluorobenzyl substituent (compound 2). Compound 2 exhibited an IC50 of 10 nM in the enzymatic assay, as well as an improved oral bioavailability in rats of 29%. However, both compounds 1 and 2 were inactive in cell-based assays, due to poor solubility, poor cell perme- ability, and significant plasma protein binding [31]. This group pushed on in their search for raltegravir me- too drugs with further SAR studies upon the above N-alkyl hydroxypyrimidinone lead compounds (Figure 3). As a benzyl amide substitution of a free carboxyl instilled nanomolar activity upon said compounds, a library of over 200 different amide modifications was synthesized and screened for inhibitory potency [57]. A 4-fluoro-sub- stituted benzene was shown to be optimal for IN inhibi- tion, with an IC50 value in enzymatic assays of 10 nM. However, though compounds optimized in this fashion were active in the enzymatic assay, they lacked potency in cell based assays. The thiophene ring in the 2-position of the pyrimidine core was shown to have little effect upon the interaction of the compound with IN, and so this posi- tion was chosen for more dramatic changes influencing physiochemical properties of inhibitors. Introduction of a basic group to a 2-benzyl derivative resulted in increased cell permeability and inhibition of viral replication in the presence of fetal bovine serum (FBS) with a CIC95 of 300 nM (compound 3). This compound showed an oral bioa- vailability of 59% and 93%, a half-life of 1.73 h and 6.78 h, and a plasma clearance of 14 mL/min/kg and 0.5 mL/ min/kg in rats and dogs, respectively. However, weak activity in the presence of 50% NHS exposed the mobile nature of chosen 2-position substituents. In response the phenyl group at this position was removed and the NH methylated, to confer reduced lipophilicity (and reduced plasma protein binding) but maintain the presence of the mandatory amino group. Compound 4 was thus born, exhibiting a 95% human plasma protein binding and a 400 nM CIC95 in the presence of 50% NHS. Pharmacoki- netics of compound 4 included an oral bioavailability of 27% and 90%, a half-life of 0.43 h and 6.0 h, and a plasma clearance of 75 mL/min/kg and 2 mL/min/kg in rats and dogs, respectively. Separately, smaller acyclic amines were substituted into the 2 position and similarly assayed for activity [57]. It was found that a dimethylami- nomethyl substituent separated by an sp3-carbon spacer bestowed significant cell based potency, at a CIC95 of 78 nM in 50% NHS (compound 5). In rats, dogs, and mon- keys, compound 5 had a prolonged plasma half-life (2.1, 4.8, and 1.9 h, respectively), moderate to low clearance (16, 1.9, and 15 mL/min/kg, respectively) and moderate to excellent oral bioavailability (28%, 100%, and 61%, respectively) [57]. N-methylpyrimidones To improve cell-based potency and bioavailability of the above molecules, this group began to study the effect of methylation of their N-1 pyrimidine nitrogens (Figure 4, Additional file 1). The rationale for this decision was based upon their discovery that the amine contained in the ring must occupy the benzylic position with respect to the pyrimidine and that small alkyl groups are preferred on the nitrogen of the saturated heterocycle [57]. A methyl group was initially scanned on the pyrrolidine ring, and substitution on position 4 gave the best enzy- matic activity. Substitution of the free hydroxyl group of a resulting trans-4-hydroxy pyrrolidine with a methoxy sub- stituent produced potent activity (compound 6) in both in vitro (IC50 = 180 nM) and cell-based assays (CIC95 = 170 nM in 50% NHS) [58]. From here the group tested other The evolution of dihydroxypyrimidine-4-carboxamidesFigure 3 The evolution of dihydroxypyrimidine-4-carboxam- ides. N N OH OH S O H N 1 2 3 4 5 N N OH OH S O H N F N N OH OH O H N F N N N OH OH O H N F N N N OH OH O H N F N The evolution of N-methylpyrimidonesFigure 4 The evolution of N-methylpyrimidones. N N O OH H N O F N H3CO N N O OH H N O F N F N N O OH H N O F N F F N N O OH H N O F O N N N O OH H N O F N N N N O OH H N O F N H O N N O OH H N O F NH2O N N O OH H N O F NHCH2CH3O N N O OH H N O F NHCH(CH3)2O N N O OH H N O F S O O 6 7 8 9 10 11 1213 1415 Page 6 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 substitutions, of which a fluorine (compound 7 – CIC95 = 250 nM) or a difluoro derivative (compound 8 – CIC95 = 170 nM) were well accepted. Activity was found to be fur- ther augmented by substituting a six-membered derivative in position 2 of the pyrimidine, and the morpholine derivative 9 and piperidine derivative 10 displayed slightly improved cell-based potencies (100 nM and 190 nM CIC95 in 50% NHS, respectively). In terms of pharma- cokinetics, the morpholine derivative 9 was the most ideal candidate for further testing, with bioavailabilities of 92%, 100%, and 53%; half-lives of 1.5 h, 10 h, and 1.4 h; and plasma clearance rates of 22 mL/min/kg, 3 mL/min/ kg, and 14 mL/min/kg in rat, dog, and rhesus monkey, respectively [58]. A further optimization study analyzed the enzymatic and pharmacokinetic implications of a different, tbutyl substi- tution at the C-2 position of the pyrimidine scaffold of the above compounds [Figure 4, [59]]. Further introduction of a benzylamide to the right side of the scaffold proved necessary for activity in serum conditions. Multiple deriv- atives were designed using the N-methyl pyrimidone scaf- fold, including a sulfone (compound 11) and an N- methyl amide (compound 12) that showed CIC95s of 20 nM and 10 nM in 50% NHS, respectively. This encourag- ing data inspired further substitutions of the 2-N-methyl carboxamide, for optimization of pharmacokinetic behavior. An unsubstituted amide 13 exhibited a promis- ing inhibitory profile (IC50 = 20 nM in enzymatic assay, CIC95 = 10 nM in 50% NHS), prompting multiple further substitutions of the N-methyl residue with an N-ethyl (compound 14) and an iN-propyl (compound 15). The pharmacokinetic profiles of 11, 12, and 13 were not opti- mal (Additional file 1), and none of these substitutions were beneficial in this respect. Bioavailability was 17%, 18%, and 23%; half-life was 1.8 h, 1.6 h, and 3.6 h; and plasma clearance was 37 mL/min/kg, 24 mL/min/kg, and 55 mL/min/kg in rat for 11, 12, and 13, respectively [59]. Dihydroxypyrido-pyrazine-1,6-diones Parallel to the above N-methylpyrimidone studies, the same group was working toward optimization and cyclic constraint of the dihydroxypyrimidine-4-carboxamide amide side chain, yielding a novel class of dihydroxypyri- dopyrazine-1,6-dione compounds [Figure 5, [60]]. Coplanarity of the amide carbonyl group in the con- strained ring with respect to the dihydroxypyridinone core and a resulting limitation of flexibility of the 4-fluoroben- zyl side chain (compound 16) were shown through molecular modeling to be essential for inhibitory activity. Compound 16 inhibited IN strand transfer in vitro at an IC50 of 100 nM and HIV replication in cell culture at a CIC95 of 310 nM, with little cytotoxicity. Limited pharma- cokinetic data has been provided for this class of com- pounds, but compound 16 was shown to have a 69% oral bioavailability in rats, and plasma concentrations were maintained between 0.64 and 0.50 μM from the second to the twenty-fourth hour (Additional file 1). There was con- cern about the dihydroxypyrimidone core and its metab- olites irreversibly associating with liver microsomal proteins, but only a non-significant level (<50 pmol equiv/mg/60 min) of interaction was observed [60]. Bicyclic pyrimidones Recently, the aforementioned importance of a β-amino substituent in the 2-position of the pyrimidine scaffold and the beneficial effect of the 1N-methylation were exploited in a systematic constraint of the 1N-methyl on the 1N-methylpyrimidinone scaffold (Figure 6, Addi- tional file 1). With unsubstituted benzylmethylamine derivatives showing nanomolar enzymatic inhibition pro- Dihydroxypyrido-pyrazine-1,6-dione representative exampleFigure 5 Dihydroxypyrido-pyrazine-1,6-dione representative example. N N O OH OH O F 16 The evolution of bicyclic pyrimidonesFigure 6 The evolution of bicyclic pyrimidones. 17 18 N N O OH H N O F N O S N OO 19 20 21 22 N N O OH H N O F N S O O N N O OH H N O F N S N O O N N N O OH H N O F N S N O O N N O OH H N O F N O N O N N O OH H N O F N O N O Page 7 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 files similar to those of derivatives with saturated ring side chains (though little inhibition of viral replication in cell culture), it was decided that the 2- -nitrogen would be modified to optimize physiochemical properties of pyrimidone compounds [61]. For example, introduction of a sulfonamide (compound 17) resulted in a low shift in activity in serum conditions, suggesting an increased level of cell permeability. The (R)-17 enantiomer displayed a 7 nM enzymatic IC50 value, a 31 nM CIC95 in 50% NHS (two-fold more potent than its (S)-17 enantiomer con- temporary), and acceptable pharmacokinetics including a 17% bioavailability and 55 mL/min/kg plasma clearance in rat. Sulfonamide derivatives showed similarly decent profiles (compound 18 = 12 nM IC50 against strand trans- fer, 86 nM CIC95 in cells in 50% NHS, and a 47% bioavail- ability and 48 mL/min/kg plasma clearance in rats). However, an even more significant improvement in potency occurred upon changing the sulfonamide moiety to a tetrasubstituted sulfamide (compound 19). The (R)- 19 enantiomer inhibited IN with an IC50 value and a CIC95 value of 7 nM and 44 nM, respectively, but pharma- cokinetics (9% bioavailability in rhesus monkey) were inadequate. Introduction of a more polar N-methylpiper- azine (compound 20), however, produced a compound whose (S)-20 enantiomer inhibited IN at a CIC95 of 6 nM in cell culture in the presence of 50% NHS. This com- pound was much more stable toward glucuronidation than its sulfamide counterpart, but low bioavailability and high plasma clearance in rats and dogs neutralized its promise. It was hence necessary to make use of other nitrogen functionalizations in order to optimize these pharmacological properties. The substitution of ketoam- ides and enlarged rings (compounds 21 and 22, respec- tively) resulted in potent inhibition of IN in cell based assays and much improved pharmacokinetics. The (S)- enantiomers of both compounds achieved CIC95s of 43 nM and 13 nM in cell culture, respectively, as well as mod- erate pharmacologic properties in rats, dogs, and (com- pound (S)-22 only) monkeys [61]. Pyrrolloquinolones A different group has recently built upon their prior opti- mization of the clinically efficacious L870,810 [62,63] by varying C5 substituents within their compounds' tricyclic scaffolds (Figure 7, Additional file 1). They originally developed the tricyclic scaffold to provide a pre-organ- ized, energetic improvement to L870,810's unfavorable energy consumption upon rotational conversion from free state to bound state, leading to a more soluble and potent compound 23 [62]. In their recent work, C5- amino derivatives were prepared and assayed for improve- ment in strand transfer inhibitory potency and pharma- cokinetics, due to their projected higher stability against hydrolysis than analogous carbamates or sulfamates [64]. The most promising leads turned out to be a C5 sulfona- mide (compound 24), a C5 sulfonylurea (compound 25), and a C5 sultam (compound 26). Compounds 24 and 25 retained potency in the presence of serum albumin and α- 1 acidic glycoproteins, while 26 was negatively affected. Though the sultam 26 showed a lower IC50 than the sul- fonamide 24 and sulfonylurea 25 in enzymatic assays (13 nM as opposed to 28 nM and 62 nM, respectively), it lacked potency in cell culture in 50% NHS (EC50 49 nM as opposed to 11.4 nM and 8.4 nM, respectively). It is impor- tant to note that raltegravir showed an EC50 value of 16 nM in cell culture in the presence of 50% NHS. Com- pound 26 was additionally lacking in bioavailability in both rat (4%) and dog (8%). However, compounds 24 and 25 showed slightly more promising profiles, with bio- availabilities of 15%/13% and 45%/16% and half-lives of 1.1 h/0.9 h and 4.9 h/4.5 h in rat and dog, respectively [64]. This study exemplified the importance of rigidifying inhibitor pharmacophores in terms of conferring favora- ble potency and pharmacokinetic properties. Validation of resistance profiles of me-too raltegravir analogues Though there is minor variation in the in vitro activity of the above me-too IN inhibitors, their structures, mecha- nisms of action, and pharmacokinetics are highly similar. We believe that the development of me-too compounds may yield a relatively low amount of clinical success due to their similarities, and also due to the fact that nearly identical resistance profiles will be evoked by their appli- cation. However, we would like to note that it is definitely possible for a raltegravir me-too analog to evolve into a second-generation IN inhibitor. To further elucidate our viewpoint, we utilized the molecular docking program GOLD version 3.2 to conduct a docking study, using both the X-ray determined structure of 1BL3 IN complexed with an Mg2+ ion, and a collection of significant, above- described me-too compounds (Figure 8); for a detailed The evolution of pyrrolloquinolonesFigure 7 The evolution of pyrrolloquinolones. N N F O N OH S O O N N F O N OH S O O N N N F O OH N S O O N N F O OH NO O 23 2425 26 Page 8 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 procedure, see [65]. We propose that residues essential to the compounds' interaction with IN will obviously be prime candidates for resistance mutation. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the test of time will show that all of these me-too inhibitors will probably exhibit highly sim- ilar resistance profiles. As raltegravir has undergone exten- sive resistance profiling since the inception of its clinical employment (Table 1), we first compared our predicted interaction residues (Figure 8) to these experimental pro- files, as a validation of the reliability of our technique. We found that five of our predicted interaction residues (T66, E92, Y143, Q148, and N155) have been already observed to confer a range of anywhere from 5- to 35-fold resist- ances to raltegravir inhibition of viral replication, respec- tively [66-69]. We also saw that raltegravir makes direct interactions with the three residues encompassing the IN catalytic DDE motif (D64, D116, and E152), including a hydrogen bond with the glutamate. With this technique corroboration in hand, we decided to similarly predict the interaction residues of raltegravir's progenitors and a few me-too analogues, in order to provide evidence for our assertion that these compounds will ultimately experience a low probability of success in viral eradication, due to their generation of identical resistance profiles. As S-1360 was the first clinical IN inhibitor candidate, we thought it would be interesting to evaluate the similarity between its predicted interaction profile with 1BL3 (Figure 8) and that of raltegravir. We found that an identical interaction occurs between the two drugs and IN (D64, T66, D116, Y143, Q148, E152, and N155), but predicted an addi- tional interaction of raltegravir with E92. This observation has been verified in clinical experimental resistance profil- ing, as mutation of E92 has not been observed for S-1360, but the E92Q mutation has conferred up to a 7-fold viral resistance to raltegravir [25,26,70]. We next observed the interaction profile of 1BL3 with L870,810 (Figure 8), as this is the naphthyridine carboxamide compound that directly led to the development of pyrimidinone carboxa- mides. We found that L870,810 and raltegravir similarly interacted with D64, T66, D116, Q148, E152, and N155. However, we saw here that only raltegravir interacted with E92. Though this residue has been observed to be mutated to a glutamine in response to L870,810 treatment, the mutation has conferred at most only a 2-fold resistance to the drug, while the same mutation confers up to a 7-fold resistance to raltegravir (Table 1) [29,71]. The fact that we did not observe a significant interaction between L870,810 and E92 in our docking study further confirms the relatively decreased importance of this residue in viral resistance to the compound. Along the same lines, we did see an interaction of L870,810 with V151, an interaction that was not present in our docking of raltegravir. In clin- ical experimental resistance profiling, the V151I mutation has been observed to confer up to an 18-fold resistance to L870,810, while the same mutation had a negligible effect on viral resistance to raltegravir (Table 1) [29,71]. The highly homologous naphthyridine carboxamide candi- date, L870,812, has shown an interaction profile virtually identical to that of L870,810 in our docking study, and experimental resistances obtained in clinical observation have been identical as well [29,71]. As elvitegravir (GS- 9137) and GSK-364735 have already been shown to exhibit near identical resistance profiles to raltegravir (Table 1) [67,71-73], we next used our docking technique to attempt to effectively predict these interactions (Figure 8). For GSK-364735, we were able to predict the interac- tion with IN residues Y143 and Q148, as well as the three members of the DDE motif. We then predicted that, sim- ilar to raltegravir, elvitegravir interacts with T66, E92, Y143, Q148, and the D116 and E152 of the DDE motif. We also saw that elvitegravir interacts with G140, and the G140S mutation has been shown to be associated with a Docking poses of selected HIV-1 integrase inhibitors upon the 1BL3 IN crystal structureFigure 8 Docking poses of selected HIV-1 integrase inhibitors upon the 1BL3 IN crystal structure. A, MK-0518; B, S- 1360; C, L870,810; D, GSK-364735; E, GS-9137; F, com- pound 2; G, compound 11; H, compound 16; I, compound 17; J, compound 26. A B D FE C H J G I Page 9 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 Page 10 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Table 1: Effect of single mutations on IN sensitivity to clinically tested inhibitors. Mutation S-1360 L870, 810 MK-0518 GS-9137 GSK-364735 T66I ++ + ++ +++ + L68V + + L68I + + V72I + ++ L74M ++++ + + ++ E92Q ++ + ++ +++ ++ Q95K ++ ++ F121Y +++ ++ ++ +++ +++ T124A + + T125K + + + E138K + + + + G140S ++ + ++ P145S ++ + Q146R ++ + +++ + S147G ++ + ++ Q148H +++ +++ ++ Q148R ++++ +++ +++++ ++++ Q148K ++++ +++ ++++ +++++ V15II +++ + ++ S153Y ++ + ++ + N155H ++ +++ +++ N155S +++ ++ ++ +++ E157Q ++ R263K ++ E92Q/N155H ++++ ++++ F121Y/T125K ++ ++++ G140S/Q148H +++++ +++++ V72I/F121Y/T125K/V151I +++++ +++++ Fold change in potency compared to wild type: + <2, ++ 2–10, +++ 11–50, ++++ 51–100, +++++ >100 Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 4-fold viral resistance to the drug, while the same muta- tion confers only a 1.6-fold resistance to raltegravir (Table 1). Again, the fact that we did not observe a significant interaction between raltegravir and G140 in our docking study further confirms the relatively decreased importance of this residue in viral resistance to raltegravir, but rather its nature of compensation for more meaningful muta- tions, such as Q148H. Prediction of future me-too resistance profile similarities With the above data significantly validating the reliability of our docking technique, we moved forward with the prediction of resistance profiles of selected me-too ralte- gravir analogues (Figure 8). Here, we will describe the interactions of one of the most potent (in terms of in vitro IC50 inhibition of IN) compounds from each of the above- described classes of me-too inhibitors with the 1BL3 IN crystal structure. The dihydroxypyrimidine-4-carboxam- ide compound 2 exhibited an IC50 value of 10 nM against IN [31]. However, our predicted interaction profile for this compound shows that it will most likely be ineffective against raltegravir-resistant viruses. We show that com- pound 2 interacts with 1BL3 IN residues D64, T66, E92, D116, Q148, E152, S153, and N155 – virtually the exact binding pocket as raltegravir. The N-methylpyrimidone compound 11 exhibited an IC50 value of 20 nM against IN [58]. Our predicted interaction profile for this compound encompasses the 1BL3 residues D64, T66, E92, D116, G140, Y143, Q148, E152, and N155 – virtually the exact binding pocket as raltegravir. The dihydroxypyrimido- pyrazine-1,6-dione compound 16 had a moderate IC50 value of 100 nM against IN [60]. Our predictive docking procedure calculated an interaction profile including IN residues D64, E92, D116, and Q148. E92Q and Q148R mutations have already been observed to confer 7-fold and 35-fold resistances to raltegravir, respectively. The bicyclic pyrimidone compound 17 has displayed a potent IC50 value of 7 nM against IN in vitro [61]. However, our predicted interaction profile implicates the 1BL3 residues D64, T66, E92, D116, Y143, Q148, and E152 as contact points. This is virtually the same binding pocket as that of raltegravir. Finally, the pyrrolloquinolone compound 26 has exhibited an IC50 value of 13 nM against IN [64]. Again however, we show that this compound will interact with IN in a considerably similar manner to that of ralte- gravir, contacting residues D64, E92, D116, G140, and E152. If our predictions prove to be correct, these candi- date drugs will probably fail to replace raltegravir. Though me-too evolution into a new blockbuster drug is always a possibility, the above IN me-too drugs appear to have a small chance of improving the clinical outlook of HIV patients with raltegravir-resistant viral strains. Conclusion As me-too drugs have been historically shown to be min- imally progressive in terms of improvement of disease prognosis, their lack of utility is exemplified in the case of HIV. A plethora of polymorphic resistance mutations have almost instantly arisen in response to both raltegra- vir and the purported second-generation IN inhibitor, elvitegravir [74]. It is clear to see that the virus is capable of eventually avoiding interaction with many a once potent inhibitor, and attempts at recreating these original interactions will most likely fall victim to the same mode of viral escape. Although some pharmacokinetic proper- ties may be optimized through me-too drug development research, and some profitable drugs may be cleared for marketing, the long term efficacy of most of these drugs will likely be susceptible to the ever present mutational ultra-competence of HIV. As stated earlier, there is a thin line between drug development and me-too spawning. Simple pharmacokinetic improvement can drastically augment the daily lives of patients and the quarterly prof- its of companies, but the simple fact remains that HIV will most likely not be eliminated by a 2% increase in oral bio- availability. Dramatically diverse classes of molecules look to be required for inhibition of viral enzymes in a long term fashion. Thus, in our eyes, the only hope for complete viral eradication is innovation. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors' contributions ES and NN conceived the article. ES wrote the article. SO performed docking studies. KR provided information regarding novel me-too IN inhibitor classes. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript. Additional material References 1. UNAIDS: AIDS epidemic update. 2007 [http://data.unaids.org/ pub/EPISlides/2007/2007_epiupdate_en.pdf]. 2. The Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation: The global HIV/AIDS epi- demic. 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Nakahara K, Wakasa-Morimoto C, Kobayashi M, Miki S, Noshi T, Seki T, Kanamori-Koyama M, Kawuchi S, Suyama A, Fujishita T, Yoshinaga T, Garvey EP, Johns BA, Foster SA, Underwood MR, Sato A, Fujiwara T: Secondary mutations in viruses resistant to HIV-1 inte- Page 13 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=18650513 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=18650513 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=18650513 http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/cder07.htm#AntiviralDrugs http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/cder07.htm#AntiviralDrugs http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=19129221 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=19129221 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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=18625269 Retrovirology 2009, 6:25 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/25 Publish with BioMed Central and every scientist can read your work free of charge "BioMed Central will be the most significant development for disseminating the results of biomedical researc h in our lifetime." Sir Paul Nurse, Cancer Research UK Your research papers will be: available free of charge to the entire biomedical community peer reviewed and published immediately upon acceptance cited in PubMed and archived on PubMed Central yours — you keep the copyright Submit your manuscript here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/publishing_adv.asp BioMedcentral grase inhibitors that restore viral infectivity and replication kinetics. Antiviral Res 2009, 81:2. 74. Rhee SY, Liu TF, Kiuchi M, Zioni R, Gifford RJ, Holmes SP, Shafer RW: Natural variation of HIV-1 group M integrase: Implications for a new class of antiretroviral inhibitors. Retrovirology 2008, 5:74. Page 14 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=18687142 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=18687142 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=18687142 http://www.biomedcentral.com/ http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/publishing_adv.asp http://www.biomedcentral.com/ Abstract Overview The birth of the diketo acids and the emergence of raltegravir Me-too drugs Me-too or second generation? Raltegravir me-too analogs Clinically tested me-too IN drugs MK-2048 GS-9137 (elvitegravir) GSK-364735 BMS-707035 Novel me-too classes Dihydroxypyrimidine-4-carboxamides N-methylpyrimidones Dihydroxypyrido-pyrazine-1,6-diones Bicyclic pyrimidones Pyrrolloquinolones Validation of resistance profiles of me-too raltegravir analogues Prediction of future me-too resistance profile similarities Conclusion Competing interests Authors' contributions Additional material References work_4m5vmpcxw5hozh64kg5s5uobhi ---- Youth, gender, and perceptions of security in Norway Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rady20 International Journal of Adolescence and Youth ISSN: 0267-3843 (Print) 2164-4527 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rady20 Youth, gender, and perceptions of security in Norway Nikolai George Lewis Holm, Linn-Marie Lillehaug Pedersen & Elisabeth Pettersen To cite this article: Nikolai George Lewis Holm, Linn-Marie Lillehaug Pedersen & Elisabeth Pettersen (2019): Youth, gender, and perceptions of security in Norway, International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, DOI: 10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 25 Sep 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 201 View related articles View Crossmark data https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rady20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rady20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060 https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rady20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rady20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-09-25 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-09-25 Youth, gender, and perceptions of security in Norway Nikolai George Lewis Holm , Linn-Marie Lillehaug Pedersen and Elisabeth Pettersen Faculty of Social Sciences, Nord University, Bodø, Norway ABSTRACT This article examines how and where issues of gender emerged in Norwegian youths’ self-defined constructions of security. Previous work has focused on security in relation to generational gaps and gendered perspectives, but there remains a need for further empirical research of an integrated perspective of security, gender and youth. Drawing on data collected from 21 interviews, this study provides insight into how youth understand the concept of security, seeking to isolate how and where gender related issues emerge in those perspectives. The findings of the study indicate that youth definitions of security are broad and cannot sufficiently be described by any one theoretical perspective on security; however, the youth often related their concept of security to how insecurities are experienced by others. Thus, when discussions of gender or other factors of security disparity emerged, they did so with an understanding of their own privileged security perspective. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 7 August 2019 Accepted 14 September 2019 KEYWORDS Youth; young people; insecurity; security; gender Introduction Two historically neglected issues in discussions of security are those of youth and gender. In recogni- tion of the first oversight, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 2250 on 9 December 2015 (UNSC, 2015). Sponsored by Jordan, the resolution was the first ever such statement from the UN on youth peace and security from the international body. Reflecting on the importance of this development, Ahmad Alhendawi, UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, describe it as ‘ . . . a major breakthrough in our collective efforts to change the predominantly negative narrative on youth and recognize the significant role of young people in peacebuilding. Youth have for too long been cast away as either the perpetrators of violence or its victims’ (Alhendawi, 2015). Indeed, society can unfairly label youth as perpetrators of crime, or push their concerns aside in favour of the elder statesmen of the world. Unfortunately, while Resolution 2250 was a breakthrough regarding youth, the text of the document scarcely touched upon the issue of gender. Even when Resolution 2250 did so, it addressed the gender only in the narrow context of sexual violence and ‘gender-sensitive employment’ (UNSC, 2015). As such, it repeated of the shortcomings from UNSC Resolution 1325 (2000) which also adopted a narrow scope, focusing strictly on the role of women in conflict and peacebuilding, failing to embrace broader conceptualizations of gender or aspects of security beyond conflict. Moreover, UNSC 1325 lacked any references to youth beyond the occasional reference to ‘girls’. This was inherently reductive, minimizing the importance of both gender and youth in security to narrow and tokenistic components. As with youth, the absence of gender in discussions of security has not gone unnoticed. Numerous scholars have pointed towards the importance of including gender into security analysis, discourse, and practice (See: Hansen, 2000; Hoogensen & Rottem, 2004; Hudson, 2005). CONTACT Linn-Marie Lillehaug Pedersen linn-marie.l.pedersen@nord.no INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-3269 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3059-0876 http://www.tandfonline.com https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/02673843.2019.1669060&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-09-25 Not only can failing to acknowledge gender perspectives limit the normative potential of analysis, it serves to mute the voices of many members of society from emerging in the greater discourse. This is particularly important when examining issues of crime or insecurity, as studies have indicated that gender reflexive analysis yields significant differences in results (Đurić & Popović- Ćitić, 2013; Franklin & Franklin, 2009; Smith & Torstensson, 1997). For example, Franklin and Franklin (2009) have shown that young women perceive security threats more acutely than their elder counterparts, indicating an interplay between age, gender, and perceptions of insecurity. Similarly, a study by Vornanen, Törrönen, and Niemelä (2009) on youth in Finland indicated that girls and boys tended to define insecurity differently. Girls focused more on social insecurities, whereas boys focused more on threats to integrity. These results demand further empirical investigation on perspectives from youth on issues of gender and security. It is increasingly clear that there is value in not only examining the subject of security in regards to gender and youth independently, but also in combination. This article explores young people’s perspectives on themes of security, with an emphasis on how gender-related security issues emerge in their conceptualizations of security. Drawing on interviews with youth from Norway, it seeks to highlight the scope of how these young people understand the concept of security and how, if at all, their perspectives are influenced by or reflect gendered themes. In doing so, it demonstrates how even youth in one of the world’s safest and wealthiest countries have complex and reflective concerns regarding security and gender, thus highlighting the importance of these issues in any context.1 The first section addresses the challenges of incorporating gender in security analysis. Then, it presents the methodological approaches, a description of the participant group, and relevant study limitations. The following section presents the research findings on youth and their notions of security. Finally, the article discusses and summarizes the findings. The article will thereby demonstrates that not only did participants have varied and nuanced conceptualizations of security, but they construct their notions of security in a way that is conscious of gender disparity and sympathetic in regards to how insecurities are experienced by others. Security and gender Conceptually, security is an inherently contested notion that is subject to many approaches and definitions (Ayoob, 2002; Baldwin, 1997; Blanchard, 2003; Buzan, Wæver, & De Wilde, 1998; Huysmans, 1998; Rothschild, 1995). Realists and neo-realists contend that security is the realm of the state, while proponents of human security argue that security starts at the individual level and extends upwards (Paris, 2001). Alternatively, there are those who argue that security is a socially constructed notion, sometimes deliberately, and a product of our social realities (Balzacq, 2010; Buzan et al., 1998; Huysmans, 2002). Security has been posited by Ken Booth (1991) to be an issue of emancipation. Others build on the work of Giddens and consider a form of ontological security, where actors seek to reconcile risks and uncertainties, positioning security as a sense of stability and continuity (Huysmans, 1998; McSweeney, 1999; Mitzen, 2006). There is no shortage of paths to security analysis, each with their own set of champions and critics; however, this research seeks to understand how individual young people understand security, not to impose an understanding upon them. Strict adherence to any such approach would inherently place restrictions and create limitations in the analysis that could potentially silence informant perspectives. As such, the work adopts a social constructivist perspective on security, while recognizing those same constructivist understandings of security may not apply, or may even be rejected by the participants. Nevertheless, these issues mandate investigation, thus Liotta (2002, pp. 474–475) rightly sug- gests that security fundamentally boils down to three questions: Security from what? Security by whom? Security through which means? However, when gender is incorporated, this picture becomes more complicated. Regarding gendered understandings of securityHoogensen and Rottem (2004, p. 156) suggest that the question ‘security for whom?’ should be added to 2 N. G. L. HOLM ET AL. discussions of security. Security and insecurity may not be experienced equally between groups. Factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, and social position can result in different experiences of security (Fox, Nobles, & Piquero, 2009; Pain, 2001). Studies have shown that women are often the most at risk or most susceptible to insecurities, yet their voices are often excluded from discussions of security (Blanchard, 2003; Hansen, 2000; Woolnough, 2009). That being said, incorporating gender into security analysis means more than simply addressing the needs of women as a matter of rote. Gender conscious analysis requires more than focusing exclusively on women’s issues, while casting aside issues of masculinity and male perspectives (Romaniuk & Wasylciw, 2010). Neither should gender be construed as a polarity or contest between masculinity and femininity, as they can often overlap and blend with one another (Brod & Kaufman, 1994; Hooper, 2012). As noted by Cohn, Hill, and Ruddick (2005, p. 1) that ‘[g]ender is not only about individual identity or what a society teaches us a man or woman, boy or girl should be like. Gender is also a way of structuring relations of power’. The security needs of women, men, and indeed all gender identities are potentially – but not necessarily – very different. Security analyses need to be flexible around that possibility and the power dynamics that shape perspectives. As such, this analysis investigates the scope of youth security perceptions and values while remaining cognizant of the interplay between gender and perceptions of security. It remains open to any definitions or constructions of security, taking care not to impose pre-conceived notions of security upon participants. Neither does it seek to coerce themes of gender out of participants. The aim is to encourages participants to sculpt their own definitions on the range and scope of security across personal, social scales and beyond. Methods This research was conducted as part of a study on youth perspectives on global-to-local security in Norway between January and December of 2017.2 While other parts of the project focused on sense of place and security, this component serves as a deliberate, gender-conscious analysis of a subset of the data collected. The thematic complexity of security and the potential range of responses suggested that qualitative methods – namely, interviews – should be employed to ensure greater detail and context regarding participants’ perspectives (Coffey, Atkinson, & Omarzu, 1997; Rubin & Rubin, 2011; Silverman, 2013). However, interviewing is an interpretive process and it is essential to keep in mind that empirical data collected through interviews is produced and mediated by the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2015). Thus, it is important to be cognizant of how relational factors can influence data production. As the research investigates security perceptions of youth and young adults, it was first necessary to determine a definition of youth relevant to the given context in order to guide recruitment strategies. There is no universal definition of youth across countries or international organizations. UN resolution 2250 defines youth as being from 18 through 29 years of age; however, other UN agencies adopt alternative definitions, such as the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) which defines ‘youth’ as people between the ages of 15 and 24 (UNDESA, 2013; UNSC, 2015). The Norwegian Ministry of Children and Equality has no strict definition of youth, instead reflecting on the economic and social role of individuals (Wolf et al., 2005). Youth is regarded as the age of transition from adolescence to adulthood, where students move to higher education and/or the labour market. In this phase of life, important issues play a role and shape their decisions concerning their future and how they relate to different security related issues, for example income and job security (Walther, 2006). Norway considers factors such as economic participation and consumption, suggesting a general range of individuals between the ages of 12 and 29 being classified as youth (Wolf et al., 2005). With these considerations in mind, the youth who volunteered for interviews ranged from 16 to 24 years of age. Out of the 21 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 3 interviewees, there were 12 males and 9 females participating. Nine of them were under the age of majority, with 12 being 18 years or older. Legal guardians for participants under the age of majority (18 years old) were contacted to obtain written permission to participate in the research. Data collection occurred through face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Given the target group, recruitment began at local educational institutions – specifically, high school and university levels. University participants were recruited through invitations during classes. High school parti- cipants were recruited through contact with teachers and parents. Additional interviews were solicited opportunistically using snowball sampling. Admittedly, this method of recruitment cre- ated a bias in that participants were overly representative of higher educated segments of the population. Interviews followed a basic guide developed by the authors, with the semi-structured approach allowing participants flexibility and space to reflect and define their own personalized security definitions and values. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and anonymized. Participants were ethnic and gender reflective pseudonyms (see Table 1). All interviews were conducted by the authors in a one-on-one setting; however, some early interviews were conducted by two of the authorship team in order to harmonize interviewing strategies. When preparing for the interview process, age, gender, and social position were considered as factors that could potentially affect the relation between the young person and the researcher, and therefore the results of the study (see: Kane & Macaulay, 1993; Longhofer, Floersch, & Hoy, 2012; Padfield & Procter, 1996). For a young person, sitting down in an office with an older researcher or someone of a different gender to discuss potentially sensitive questions might be uncomfortable or intimidating – there is an inherent power imbalance. As such, early stages of interviews were used to acclimatize the interviewee to the setting, procedure, motivation for research, and conveying importance of giving youth opportunities to voice perspectives on security. Interviewees were encouraged to ask questions or bring up any concerns they had. Main interview questions began with questions intended to set the power of definition in the hands of the young people. For example, all interviewees were asked the questions such as ‘what does security mean for you?’ and ‘what does it mean to feel secure?’ as a way of encouraging interviewees to reflect on their conceptual, emotional, and ontological reflections of security. Similarly phrased inquiries into individual conceptualizations of security have successfully elicited unique and personalized definitions in other contexts, for example, Holm’s (2017) study of youth in Liberia, or as in the UN Development Programme‘s (1994) report on human security. In seeking to Table 1. Interview participants pseudonyms, age, and gender. Interview Number and Pseudonym Age Self-Indicated Gender 1 – Heidi 16 F 2 – Inger 16 F 3 – Iselin 17 F 4 – Siv 17 F 5 – Nanna 18 F 6 – Tine 20 F 7 – Turid 20 F 8 – Terese 20 F 9 – Mia 23 F 10 – Anton 16 M 11 – Vidar 16 M 12 – Einar 16 M 13 – Odin 17 M 14 – Joakim 17 M 15 – Rolf 18 M 16 – Bent 20 M 17 – Aksel 21 M 18 – Torvald 21 M 19 – Eirik 22 M 20 – Mats 22 M 21 – Morten 24 M 4 N. G. L. HOLM ET AL. define and scope their notions of security, other questions focused on security perspectives as related to their life, their community, international and global issues as well as other emergent topics based on previous responses. The transcribed interviews were analysed using NVivo. Interviews were coded into predeter- mined and emergent thematic categories generated through multiple readings by the author team. Predetermined categories included gender specific concerns, research question responses by gender, and influences on youth perspective, such as the role of media in feelings of insecurity. Additionally, interviews were coded according to a heuristic framework based on Vornanen et al.’s (2009) ‘Circles of Insecurity’ (see Figure 1). The tool visualizes insecurities in three nested circles, each corresponding to a different level of insecurities: the inner circle relates to a person’s emotions and experiences; the social circle involves a person’s social needs, interactions, and relationships; and the outer circle addresses external realities and uncertainties. It should be noted that while the Vornanen et al. study focused on Finnish youths’ perspectives on insecurity and the study presented here on Norwegian youths’ perspectives, it does not impede the useful- ness of the circles of (in)security as a way of organizing or categorizing participant responses. This framework was selected as it provided an analytically relevant and efficient means for coding and categorizing the data while not imposing any definition of security onto the responses beyond a scoping/ scaling mechanism. Additionally, the framework’s validity for the particular sample group was demon- strated from its previous use on a comparable sample group – that is, youth from a peer-Nordic country Figure 1. Circles of insecurity. Description: Figure 1 illustrates the ‘Circles of Insecurity’ as described by Vornanen (2000) and applied in Vornanen et al. (2009). The figure represents a way of describing and categorizing perceptions, understandings, and experiences of insecurity across three levels: inner, social, and outer. Source: Vornanen et al. (2009): 408.Original (in Finnish): Vornanen 2000: 296. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 5 (Finland). These codes were centred on personal, social, and external (in)securities. It should be men- tioned that in contrast to Vornanen et al, this study asked not ‘what is insecurity?’ but instead, ‘what is security?’ This inversion of the question, as will be discussed, potentially yielded different results. Data presentation This section presents the study results in two segments: firstly, those results that relate to how youth conceptualized and reflected on security in general, non-gendered terms; secondly, those results that illustrate the areas in which gender materialized as relevant to their reflections on security. Additionally, each section is parsed across scopes and scales based on the circles of (in)security tool. General reflections on security The young people who participated in this study expressed a broad range of concerns and conceptualizations regarding security. While some focused on issues of personal safety and others more on issues of internationally security, the general trend was that the youth expressed complex conceptualizations of security that spanned inner, social, and outer circles. In regards to the inner circle of security – feelings of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, or the feeling of being threatened or unsafe – the majority of youth focused most strongly on issues connected to physical or personal safety [1,2,4–6,10–11,14,16–17,19,21], but more universally, the positive emotions generated by feelings of predictability [1–21]. Participants expressed these inner circle securities through both specific and abstract ways. A typical and often repeated concern was personal safety, particularly in regards to traffic [1,4,11,14,16–17,19-20]. Probing about where a sense of security came from revealed more nuance. For example, Anton stated that ‘[it] comes from feeling secure, for example . . . that nothing happens at school. For example, I work with electricity a lot, so that you try to be very careful that you do not get any in you’ [10]. For him, having safe practices and routines he used while going about his day was a source of security. Other participants addressed inner issues indirectly, connecting positive feelings of security and stability as rooted in perceptions of certainty in other circles. Terese pointed to the confidence that she would always have clean water, enough food, and feelings of safety going to bed without locking her door. Mats said ‘[security is] that I am safe. That society enables us to live a life without fear’ [20]. For him, feelings of personal safety were rooted in the nature of the society itself. Participants also indicated perspectives that reflect social circle security concerns. These generally involved feelings of belonging, group membership, relationships with friends and family. Categories that typically emerged were security in relation to feeling of belonging and trust. Eleven interviewees mentioned feelings of belonging in various ways, with 7 referring to families as essential to feelings of security [1,2,4–5,11,13,15] with 6 of them defining friendships as a key factor [2,9,11–13,18]. For example ‘ . . . that I have friends and family and people I am together with every day, that’s what is most important for me. That they are there, together with me, means a lot to my security’ [13]. Odin linked security with his family and friendships, defining the people closest to him as being the most important factors in his security. Vidar also mentioned family and friends, going further and explaining it with respect to his community: That the city is quite all right to live in [is important]. A lot of opportunities for youth, like for example political parties and organizations, so that one can do something on one’s spare time. That is security . . . [11] Included within Vidar’s concept of belonging is the ability to associate freely in one’s spare time in formalized groups. Other participants, like Rolf, addressed feelings of belonging in relation to the experiences of immigrants in his community: I think that I am in another group than many of the others that I go to school with. Those who come from other countries, those who live in [name of the city], go to school and what I am afraid of, or not so afraid, but worried about is that they can group up and split into groups, and that they become against our society, that they will not become part of us. Fall outside [society] . . . [15] 6 N. G. L. HOLM ET AL. While not an immigrant himself, he points to polarization and division in society as a source of insecurity, and the lack of belonging to the majority group as a concern – expressing this with the phrase: ‘Fall outside [society] . . . ’ Both Rolf and Morten reflected on notions of ‘us and them’ in their thoughts around immigration and security. However, Morten, in contrast to Rolf, reflected critically on the concept: ‘We have this concept, them against us [. . .] who are “us” and who are “them”? This is interesting. Is it us against them? Is it Christians against Muslims?’ [21]. Flipping the terms from ‘them against us’ to ‘us against them’ he challenges expectations of who is made insecure by a lack of belonging. He further dwelled on the question of how it must feel to be new in a country and that immigrant culture is pushed aside in favour of the culture in Norway. As he formulates it, ‘ . . . that they can’t keep their own culture one can say’ [21]. Relations between societal groups was also an issue for Mia – a member of a visible minority – who worried about racial tension as a source of insecurity. She noted, ‘I experienced a significant change after the refugee crisis. The atmosphere in society is different. I notice what people write and what they say. It is more racist now than before . . . just a couple of years ago it was better’ [9]. A recurrent topic in many of the interviews was trust in relation to security, with many interviewees mentioning trust in the state institutions such as the police or democracy [2–7,9-10,12–14,16-18]. Trust, or lack of trust, in politicians, authorities, police, military, or the governance system was highlighted when the participants talked about authorities. The young men and women made similar reflections concerning the authorities at a systematic level. The trust in that they ‘work’ for the population, was repeated often. As Anton answered when asked about trust in the Norwegian police: ‘I hope they work for me. There is perhaps a small chance they don’t, but in general, I think that they do. It could be that they also discover things, that for safety [reasons] are important or they have access to all information’ [10]. Trust, particularly connected to the principal of equality before the law and fair rule, was key to security. More specifically, having a belief that the system, or state, is working for the populations’ interest. Interestingly, Nanna was an exception to her peers, recounting an episode that disrupted feelings of trust. She said, ‘I think about this with security that before I trusted the police, and now I am not quite there, now I can’t trust them completely’ [5]. She witnessed police behaviour that ran contrary to her expectations. As a result, she indicated a degree of scepticism regarding trust in treatment before the law or law enforcement. These results echo a study from Saarikkomäki (2018), where Finnish youth relayed higher degrees of trust in police services as a result of perceived professionalism, but also personal experiences and encounters. This is perhaps an indicator of fragility in perceived social circle securities. At the outer circle – those notions that relate to external realities, ranging from war, economic insecurity, crime, or other uncertainties – all participants voiced concerns of some kind [1–21]. In particular, participants’ referenced security issues around social welfare systems, terrorism, and environmental concerns amongst others. Interstate conflict and war was a common theme across interviews [1–7, 9–14, 16–19, 21]; however, while the topic was often raised, it was downplayed in terms of likelihood. For example, despite raising the issue, Vidar was explicit in his lack of fear, saying, ‘I think that there is no danger of attacks against me or Norway today, so I am not afraid of that’ [11]. Numerous participants echoed similar sentiments [1, 3, 6–7, 9–11,13-17,19,21]. Risk of war was not seen as relevant in reality, suggesting that interstate conflict was viewed as a hypothetical concern rather than a real threat. Interestingly, Turid rejected the risk of war on Norwegian territory while simultaneously reflecting upon the role and responsibility of Norway in conflicts in other countries: I am not personally worried about war, no. I feel that we live in a stable area of the world, right? But I do think it is sad if there is war in other parts of the world, and the consequences of war other places [. . .] and then I think that we, who also share part of the responsibility of the conflicts in the world, do not take the responsibility for those parts of [the conflicts]. [7] Her concerns were less about risks for herself and instead about her country’s role contributing to insecurity in other parts of the world. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 7 Awareness of global interconnectedness also surfaced in regards to media consumption and their understandings of security and insecurity. For example, if topics touched on conflict, infor- mants referred to reading in newspapers or the internet, either tangentially or as the main point of their remarks. Odin and Siv put it thusly: I read newspapers. I think about the security as the global market [. . .] that is what makes us connected with the rest of the world and that we can live so well and safe here. So, military security is important. [13] I think about Putin, and Trump and that guy in North Korea [. . .] I don’t remember his name, but other places with violence, but it doesn’t concern me every much in my everyday life really, only when I watch news. [4] Both participants acknowledged the role of media in shaping their views of security, but to different degrees. Odin noted how media has informed his understanding of the interconnected nature of security; however, Siv perceived the issue of violence as something she considers only when watching the news, almost distant to her reality. Over all, participants generally expressed feelings of sympathy with those experiencing insecurity more than they felt it in their own personal experience. These responses represent a description of the interviewees’ general understanding of security. The next section presents the ways in which gender or gendered issues emerged during the interview process. Gender and reflections on security Areas where gender emerged as relevant to conceptualizations of security spanned inner, social, and outer circles of security. Many interviewees raised and connected the topic of gender to a number of security related issues, producing some clear examples of where they identified gendered issues [3–5,7,9,12,15,19,21]; however, the majority of interviewees did not [1–2,6,8,10- 11,13-14,16–18,20]. Those with gender-cognizant perspectives expressed views typical to contem- porary discussions of gender, but some produced more unique and surprising reflections. Discussions of inner circle themes were generally devoid of gendered aspects, except in two cases. Iselin and Einar described a concern for inner circle insecurities experienced by men: namely, higher male suicide rates and expectations of masculinity. Iselin noted the gendered nature of this problem as follows: There are many in our age group that commit suicide, and this I think really is a big threat. There are many whom we don’t know how they are doing [. . .]. Yes, boys, it is difficult for them to ask for help, but I feel that boys have such high pressure on them. They are supposed to be so tough and not show any emotions [3] She expressed concerns that society encouraged young men to repress emotions and avoid expression of feelings or insecurities. Einar expressed a similar sentiment: There are higher suicide rates for men, because they feel that they can’t talk with other men about feelings and such things as an example because one has to be so big and strong, right? And not be able to have feelings. So I feel that just by having people around me that I trust really makes feel more safe [12] Both informants connected the issue of suicide rates for men and boys to issues of emotional expression, the lack of social support, and the presence of social pressures. Moreover, both participants pointed towards social expectations of masculinity as contributing to the suicide rates in men and boys. Einar went further, addressing body image and stereotypes as they applied to young men, recounting the expectation that men ‘ . . . should be big and strong, and not only strong, but physically fit and not in a bad shape. But, I feel that this is a problem in society that will come to change in the future’ [12]. The notion of not being allowed to have feelings is clearly part of the inner circle as it focuses on emotions like fear or anxiety; however, the topic represents an issue that bridges both inner and middle circles in that it combines issues of insecurity and emotion with having appropriate social supports and relationships. 8 N. G. L. HOLM ET AL. Interestingly, few other distinctions or reflections emerged in regards to the inner circle of security and gender. All informants appeared to exhibit similar range of thoughts on inner circle issues. Specifically, participants’ personal feelings of security were usually connected to an onto- logical sense of security that emerges from issues linked better to social and outer circles. At the social circle, significantly more interviewees pointed to problems with gendered themes. Two participants noted that gender stereotypes and expectations a common concern relating to bullying and social pressure [3, 12]. Another participant, Morten, had concerns about local politics being a boys club. He said, ‘[t]he first thing I heard when I came here to [the city] was about [this kind of] camaraderie. So, this affects the trust [one has] to the politicians governing fairly, so one has to watch out for that’ [21]. Morten continued, expressing concern for gender imbalances in the system, which he viewed as a threat to democracy and social relations, saying, ‘I think that democracy is important and that, yes, inequality is really what weakens democracy and then it is too late. We have to ensure that it is not just rich men governing here. These are things I think about when I think about security’ [21]. Morten’s comments show concern about the political system and gender equality in relation to security. He presented an argument that exclusion and discrimination of women and others with political capital weakens the trust people have in institutions, which in turn affects the notion of society being secure. Inequality and discrimination was also an issue for Turid, who reflected on its economic manifestation: ‘When there is . . . inequality, it is the women that are effected the most here in Norway. More women work part-time, and there is not equal payment and such things, yeah so . . . It is important with a gender perspective on security I think’ [7]. She viewed the tendency of many women to work part time or in jobs that are paid less as issues of discrimination in the Norwegian labour market and therefore of security. Mia raised another social circle insecurity, expressing a concern relating to immigration and social integration. Specifically, that gendered security disparities in other countries could poten- tially be reproduced in Norway. She expressed concern for immigrant girls who might still be exposed to insecurity: It is really important that the security for girls and women improve, that we [in our community] look after that immigrant girls are treated well and that they receive good schooling. Now it isn’t easy for the boys either, but girls are exposed to so much in the world. Safety for girls is important. It is important for security. Girls are exposed. It worries me and girls have to think about this every weekend and every day. [9] She was impacted by what she perceived as a higher risk of victimization for women and girls from other countries. She later extended those concerns to all Norwegian girls, noting that many girls make routinized safety considerations that do not exist in the same way for men and boys. Nanna also pointed towards other countries in terms of social circle insecurities, such as women’s integration in society and access to education. A number of participants discussed gender disparity in outer circle such as climate change, conflict, and sexual violence [4–5,7,9,15,21]. Turid expressed a concern that ‘ . . . it is women and children that suffer most due to climate change and things like that. So, they are often more affected by [insecurities]’ [7]. Women and children, from her perspective, bore the brunt of down- turns in security conditions. However, she also reflected on the gender specific risks to both men and women in certain circumstances, continuing, ‘ . . . in traditional conflicts, it is often the men that fight and die, but then women are also exposed. Rape and such. They lose their husbands who provide income as well’ [7]. Also addressing sexual violence, Mia reflected on how the issue influenced how she thought about other countries and the risks of travel: ‘I would certainly not travel to Dubai on vacation [. . .] where you are put in jail if you are raped’ [9]. Similar to Turid and Mia, Terese also discussed sexual violence, but at the same time expressed a feeling of safety in her community. She noted feeling safe when she is ‘[. . .] able to walk home in the middle of the night without being worried that someone will attack me or abuse me’ [8]. Terese focused on the feeling of safety in the environment where she lives made her feel physically secure, where by contrast, Turid and Mia noted that other women are exposed to serious existential risks. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 9 The complex nature of sexual violence, security, and gender disparity was raised by Rolf, although he struggled to resolve certain aspects of the issue: I think that rape of young girls, and that one talks about this, this is security we can say. There is talk about what one can do to avoid this, and it is not the girls’ fault. There is also talk about who [rapes] [. . .] One has to be realistic. Girls can think a bit about what they wear. That can be a security measure, but I am not saying that it is their [the girls’] fault.[15] He discussed rape and issue of victim blaming, first taking a clear stand about the crime not being the victim’s fault; however, he also uses words like ‘realistic’ and ‘security measure’ arguing that there are practical sides to this debate that the victims can consider, namely how they dress. Rolf was alone amongst male participants to reflect on female specific issues. Discussion In general descriptive terms, the interviewees had broad definitions of security which generally transected different circles of security. In their initial responses regarding definitions of security or what contributed to feeling secure, most youth focused primarily on outer circle issues, while a smaller share described a combination of both the outer and middle circles, with only two constructing definitions of security as something transected all three levels of the circle. The interviewees tended to focus on factors in which they have little direct control over, such as conflict, job security, the welfare system, environmental issues and war, to mention some. Interestingly, most informants described their notions of security in line of external realities, or the outer circle of Vornanen et al.’s (2009) model was a somewhat surprising result. Expectations based on the Finnish study suggested that middle and inner circle insecurities would emerge in youth descriptions of security, but that did not manifest in these qualitative interviews. While it is speculative, perhaps this difference could be explained by the nature of the question – that is, asking youth to define their concept of ‘security’ rather than their experiences of ‘insecurity’. Alternatively, the use of face-to-face interview methods made it challenging for these young participants to feel comfortable discussing certain inner circle security issues like personal fears, anxiety, and self-esteem. As a result, external or social insecurities emerged rather than more personal inner circle issues. In relation to theoretical approaches to security studies, interviewee perspectives crossed between different schools of thought. For example, a recurring references to inner circle issues, such as feeling safe and being able to ‘live a life without fear’ [20] indicate security as a sense of stability and continuity in line with an ontological concept of security. These feelings of security were bound (by some informants) to social circle issues like family and friends as a source of stability. Connections between inner and social circles are reminiscent of human security construc- tions of security, where security is understood both for the individual and the aggregate in relation to one another. Moreover, informant responses dealing with education, safety, and housing amongst others are often connected to the notion of human security. That being said, issues of equality and the social constraints on women in other countries suggest constructions inline with emancipatory security – youth perceive security as being connected to freedoms as opposed to control measures. Other reflections from youth on issues of belonging and in/out groups are reminiscent of the concept of societal security concept from the Copenhagen School, where identity and social belonging are key (see: Buzan, 2008; McSweeney, 1996; Wæver, Buzan, Kelstrup, & Lemaitre, 1993). Interestingly, some of the participants also defined security in tradi- tional, realist terms, pointing towards security of the state. This emphasis was another key difference from Vornanen et al.’s study; however, this possibly emerged as a result from the charged political atmosphere at the time and the ubiquitous media coverage of USA/North Korea relations. Regardless, these observations indicates that security is understood by youth as inherently complex, with no singular theory sufficiently reflecting the diversity and complexity of 10 N. G. L. HOLM ET AL. these individual perspectives; however, the main similarity could be the desire for predictability and an ontological sense of security. While there were parallels between interviewees’ initial constructions in terms of the scope of security, unique issues emerged when analysing the data for gendered issues. While the scope of security was broad for all informants regardless of gender, the emphasis placed on those themes appeared to shift scales between genders. Male interviewees touched on all circles in terms of scope, they emphasized their outer circle security concerns whilst minimizing inner circle discus- sions. Specifically, human security issues like experiencing personal violence and realist notions of interstate conflict and state based security were typical for the young men during the interview process. Female participants, by contrast, often weighed in on concerns across all circles in a balanced way, often connecting issues between circles. Thus, while the scope of personal constructions and definitions were similar, indications of differences in weight and focus were noted between participants of different genders; however, this is largely anecdotal given the small- N nature of the study. Other interesting findings were identified in those places where gender emerged as security theme in itself; although, it should be noted that only a handful of our interviewees connected issues of security in terms of gender at all. It is worth noting that only one male and one female interviewee reflected on security issues that directly affected a gender other than their own: Rolf when reflecting on violence against women, and Iselin when expressing concerns around male suicide. This was somewhat unexpected, given the timing of the interviews overlapped with the emergence of the #metoo across the media. Regarding inner circle concerns, gender emerged in some participants’ constructions of security in relation to insecurities of self and feelings of inadequacy in relation to gender norms and expectations. Feelings of inadequacy in this regard were simultaneously tied to social circle insecurities – that is, bullying and a lack of social supports. Iselin and Einar both constructed very similar accounts to how these interrelated insecurities manifested for both young men and young women. Other social circle concerns raised by interviewees focused more strictly on women and insecurities that disproportionately affect women. When other social circle security issues were raised, they were presented in terms of gender disparity. More specifically, some interviewees pointed to economic and political inequality as areas where gender security disparity existed in Norway. Interestingly, many interviewees framed their security concepts not in terms of how it impacted themselves, but in relation to how insecurity was experienced by others. It was in this way that gender usually emerged. Concern for the security of others emerged at all three circles; the inner circle where Iselin addressed high suicide rates among men; the middle circle where Vidar, Rolf and Mia reflect upon immigrants’ situation in Norway; the outer circle where Turid discussed conse- quences of war in other countries, especially women and girls, and Rolf about sexual violence. Similarly, Morten’s reflections on unequal access to the political sphere – dominated by ‘rich men’ as he put it – showed an understanding of the insecurities of others. Regarding violence, almost all participants expressed that they had little fear of experiencing such problems in Norway; however, they often drew on examples of how others experienced such insecurities abroad. This is reminis- cent of Hoogensen and Rottem (2004, p. 156) argument that one asks the question ‘security for whom’ whenever discussing security. And the youth in this study repeatedly expressed concerns of security on behalf of others, as well as themselves. This is perhaps due to the sample reflecting a somewhat privileged group within global society, but worth noting as they were explicitly conscious of how others might have different experiences. Outer circle securities were an area in which this reflection on security from afar was most evident, in particular with regards to the issue of sexual violence. Rolf and Mia’s comments highlight how security issues are understood differently based on perspective. Mia talks about avoiding certain vacation destinations out of concern for her security as a woman, while Rolf raised the issue of men as the perpetrators of rape. While his comments on the issue reflected INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 11 the gendered nature sexual violence, his framing of it is somewhat indicative of his distance from the issue as understood and experienced by his female peers. Specifically, his remarks that women and girls should take precautions contrasted with Turid and Mia, who indicated that taking such precautions was already a fact of life for many women. Even though he clearly states it is not the victims fault, he suggests that women can take security measures. He struggles to resolve his understanding of the moral principle against victim blaming, despite it clearly contrasting with his position – thus, he makes assumptions regarding safety strategies. Similarly, Rolf’s recognition of insecurity for women runs is in a way parallel to Turid’s reflection on Norway’s role creating insecurities abroad – that is, security is both individual and collective. Overall, the common thread between interviews was the way in which youth attempted to understand security via the insecurity of others. However, whether with Mia’s point on women in developing countries, Morten’s reflection on women in politics, or Iselin’s reflection on social pressure and male suicide, the youth were often empathetic and included a recognition of their own privileged position. They repeatedly defined and scoped their understandings of security cognizant of the fact that while they may have secure lives, this is a privilege not afforded to everyone, especially in terms of gender. Concluding remarks The aim of this research has been to explore how youth understand and relate to the concept of security, highlighting areas in which gender emerges thematically across interviewees’ self-defined conceptualizations of security. The results of this study highlight how the security concerns of Norwegian youth are broad, yet are characterized a high degree of nuance and empathy, particu- larly in regards to how others experience insecurity. Participants in this study were able to craft definitions and scope of security as they understood it, expressing a high degree of ontological security. That being said, they pointed out that other persons may not exist in the same state of privilege. Several participants’ highlighted gender as one of the main lines where these security disparities occur, pointing to issues like male suicide, women’s political empowerment, and gender pay disparities. In terms of theory, the interviewees at times meandered, through realist, emanci- patory, ontological, and human security perspectives. Thus, the use of Vornanan et al.’s circles of insecurity proved to be a helpful heuristic tool in breaking down the results; however, participant responses rarely held themselves to one layer, instead broaching all three circles, sometimes simultaneously. These qualitative explorations of individual youths’ perspective of security high- light the importance of in depth and detailed considerations when seeking to involve youth in the pursuit of security. The results of this study illustrate that youth perspectives on security are rich and worthy of deeper exploration and recognition. Future research could include a quantitative study to identify any differ- ences in the perception of insecurities along gender lines, or a more specific study on how youth understand the security or insecurity as a sympathetic response to the experiences of others. Similarly, further investigation into the role of other non-national identities such as sexual orientation or visible minority status could provide greater insight into minority youth relations to experiences of security. Notes 1. Norway continually ranks among the safest and most developed countries in the world according to numerous indexes. See, for example, the Human Development Reports (UNDP, 2018), or the Global Peace Index (IEP, 2018). 2. Results from the primary study are available within the Norwegian language document (Holm & Pettersen, 2018). 12 N. G. L. HOLM ET AL. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Notes on contributors Nikolai George Lewis Holm PhD in sociology. Faculty of Social Sciences, Nord University. Linn-Marie Lillehaug Pedersen PhD fellow in sociology. Faculty of Social Sciences, Nord University. Elisabeth Pettersen is an Associate Professor. Faculty of Social Sciences, Nord University. 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HOLM ET AL. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/youth/fact-sheets/youth-definition.pdf http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/trends Abstract Introduction Security and gender Methods Data presentation General reflections on security Gender and reflections on security Discussion Concluding remarks Notes Disclosure statement Notes on contributors ORCID References work_4na6ibgi4vahzo7fjpxqhxiblu ---- ASEAS 12(2) | 167 Machinery of Male Violence: Embodied Properties and Chronic Crisis amongst Partners in Vietnam Helle Rydstrom ► Rydstrom, H. (2019). Machinery of male violence: Embodied properties and chronic crisis amongst partners in Vietnam. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 12(2), 167-185. This article takes the notion of crisis as a helpful analytical entry point to unfold the tem- poralities and modalities of the machinery of violence as manifested in men’s abuse of their female partners in Vietnam. Based on ethnographic research I conducted over the years, the article argues that some types of crises might be episodic, and thus a bracket- ing of daily life, while others, such as intimate partner violence, might settle as a crisis of chronicity; as a condition of prolonged difficulties and pain that surreptitiously becomes a new ‘normal’. The machinery of violence, the article shows, refers to processes of symbolic and material transformations of a targeted woman, shaped in accordance with a perpetra- tor’s essentialist imaginations about her embodied properties (e.g., gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, and bodyableness). Such violence is invigorated by a patrilineal organization of society and a systemic permissiveness to male-to-female abuse. A battered woman is con- fined to an interregnum; a space in which the laws of protection do not apply and male violence is perpetrated with impunity. Yet, men’s violence against their female partners also is combatted and resisted in Vietnamese society. Keywords: Body; Gender; Intimate Partner Violence; Masculinity; Vietnam  INTRODUCTION In brutally crossing boundaries, the forces of violence are not unlike machinery. The ubiquitous ways in which violence inflicts damage upon those it is imposed resembles the menacing drive of a persisting engine. Yet, this is machinery without any ontological status because violence, as Hannah Arendt (1970) has reminded us, has no essence. Violence emerges as an instrumental means that needs justification through the ends it pursues, because the application of vio- lent techniques “like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength” (Arendt, 1970, p. 46; see also, Schmidt & Schroder, 2001). The repertoires and techniques of abuse applied in direct violent encoun- ters differ in character. The tools of violence are designed as the result of fantasies about a target’s embodied properties including gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, class, and bodyableness. In this article, I focus on men’s violence against their female partners, as a gendered and sexualized machinery of male violence.1 I am considering how a 1 During various periods of anthropological fieldwork conducted in Vietnam, I have collected eth- Aktuelle Südostasienforschung  Current Research on Southeast Asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. A SE A S- 00 20 168 | ASEAS 12(2) Machinery of Male Violence number of body typologies come into play when a woman or anybody else is violated as vehicles for processes of transformation of the phenomenological human body into an object of abuse; into dehumanized naked corporeality (Agamben, 1998, 2005; Mbembe, 2003; Rydstrom, 2012, 2015).2 The World Health Organization (WHO) (2017) estimates that 35% of all women across the globe have experienced physical and/or sexual violence and intimate partner or non-partner sexual violence. 30% of this violence is perpetrated by an intimate male partner, while 38% of all murders of women are committed by a partner (see also, True, 2012).3 In times of war, conflict, and catastrophes, intimate partner violence might be fueled, while violence against the female population in public spheres might increase.4 In obscuring the line between natality and mortality, violence exacerbates pre- cariousness and insecurity. Violence ruins the foundation of lifeworlds (Stoler, 2013) by impairing the possibility for a return to how life used to be; hampering agency (Das & Kleinman, 2000; Kleinman, 2000); and imprinting a “poisonous knowledge” (Das, 2000, 2007) about the realities and perils of harm. The rupturing powers of violence provoke a state of crisis for the survivor, her household, and by extension for society at large (see United Nations Vietnam, 2012; World Health Organization, 2017). Crisis is a notion that provides a helpful analytical entry to unfold the modal- ities and temporalities of the machinery of violence, as manifested in men’s violence against their female partners and the ruination it impacts on lifeworlds. While some types of crises are episodic and thus reduced to a bracketing of daily life, other types of crises grow into a more permanent condition (Rydstrom, 2019). Men’s violence against their female partners epitomizes how a specific type of crisis can transmute into a “crisis of chronicity” (Vigh, 2008), which, however, can be challenged and even curbed (Roitman, 2014). nographic data on gendered and sexualized violence by unravelling the hierarchies, privileges, and pow- ers with which gender based violence is imbued. Thus, from 1994 to 1995, I carried out fieldwork in a northern rural commune, which I call Thinh Tri, to study gender socialization. When conducting a second round of fieldwork in Thinh Tri from 2000 to 2001, I focused on violence and sexuality from an inter- generational perspective. In 2004, 2006, 2012-2013, and 2016, I carried out fieldwork in the larger region of Hanoi and in a northern semi-rural area, which I refer to as Quang Vinh, to study gender and harm. From 2004 to 2011, I was the Swedish coordinator of the Rural Families in Transitional Vietnam project under the frame of which data were collected in 1,100 households in the North, Center, and South of Viet- nam. In 2015, I conducted fieldwork in coastal Vietnam in a community, which I call Long Lanh, to study climate disasters, gender and violence. In 2018 and 2019, I carried out fieldwork to examine the gendering of labor and harm in the industrial zones of northern Vietnam. All names of persons and communities are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of those involved in my research. 2 “The term ‘violence against women’”, the United Nations (UN) (1993) Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women reads, “means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”. 3 “Violence”, according to the World Health Organization (2002, p. 5), “is the intentional use of physi- cal force or power, threatened or actual, against … another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, mal-development or deprivation.” 4 “Intimate Partner Violence” (IPV) is a term which avoids any a priori gender categorization of per- petrator and victim in defining IPV as “an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors” (World Health Organization, 2017). ASEAS 12(2) | 169 Helle Rydstrom To explore the ways in which the machinery of male violence is intrinsically gendered and sexualized, I consider various components that together provide the conditions which allow for the perpetuation of men’s violence against their female partners. Hence, I will first, outline how violence manipulates the human body; sec- ond, introduce figures and debates on male-to-female violence in the Vietnamese context; third, address a masculinized organization of social life as a framework for male powers, privileges, and abuse; and last, highlight how men’s violence against women and girls in the Vietnamese context is rejected and combatted. DEHUMANIZED BODIES Men’s violence against their female partners is shaped through a perpetrator’s essentialist and stereotypical fantasies about a woman’s embodied properties (e.g., gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, and bodyableness) (Rydstrom, 2012, 2015). The processes through which human beings are reduced to an object of abuse, a naked corporeality, or what Giorgio Agamben (1998) has conceptualized as “bare life”, are tied to the ways in which a sov- ereign power takes biological life as its target, as corporeality upon which violence and death can be enacted (see also, Foucault, 1978; Mbembe, 2003). How lives are attempted to be laid bare by the means of violence, I argue, refer to symbolic and tangible processes of transformation undergone by the abused body (Rydstrom, 2012, 2015, 2017). Violence is a direct attack on the physical and mental integrity of the phenomeno- logical body; the first body typology, which is the foundation for our being-in-the-world and how we sense, feel, perceive, think, experience, and remember (Bourdieu, 1992; Grosz, 1994; Merleau-Ponty, 1996; Rydstrom, 2015). This body incorporates our life story and memories, including “poisonous knowledge” about pain and agony (Das, 1997, 2000; Scarry, 1985; Valéry, 1990). The surface of the human body materializes as a second body typology, as corporeality that meets the ‘outside world’. This body is ren- dered intelligible and categorized by others due to its physical appearance, properties, and qualities (Merleau-Ponty, 1996; Rydstrom, 2015; Valéry, 1990). It emerges as a site upon which discursive socio-cultural powers operate in accordance with ideas about gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, class, and bodyableness to establish ideas about priv- ileges, hierarchies, and rights (Foucault, 1978; Grosz, 1994; Rydstrom, 2015). The violated body is a third body typology, which concerns the ways in which the infliction of violence involves “thingification” (Barad, 2003) of the phenomenological body through the design of abusive techniques and repertoires of abuse. This body is wrought physically, mentally, and ethically as a result of the destructive ways in which a perpetrator transgresses the boundaries of the body and mind. Stereotypical and essentialist imaginations lie behind the dehumanization of the person upon whom the violence is perpetrated (Agamben, 1998; Butler, 2010; Rydstrom, 2015). The body of fantasies refers to a fourth body typology which appears as the vector of a “field of immanence of desire” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2002, p. 154). Such desires are modelled in accordance with fantasies about superiority over the bodies of others due to their gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, class, and bodyableness. This body typology con- cerns the ways in which the distribution and projection of imaginations, including those which are profoundly violent, inform differentiated and specialized forms of harm (Braidotti, 1994; Deleuze & Guattari, 2002; Rydstrom, 2015). 170 | ASEAS 12(2) Machinery of Male Violence These symbolic and corporeal body typologies are intimately intertwined with one another as volatile and dynamic processes that come into play when human bod- ies are subjected to the intrusive and destructive powers of a machinery of violence (Rydstrom, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2019). These processes result in the configuration of the emblematic figure which Agamben (1998) has conceptualized as homo sacer. Banned from society by a sovereign power, homo sacer is included by exclusion, captured in a space of impunity where it is “permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life [i.e. homo sacer]—that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed—is the life that has been captured in this sphere” (Agamben, 1998, p. 83; italics removed). Manipulated by techniques of violence, an abused woman is caught in a “zone of exception”; a space in which the rule of law does not apply and impunity prevails (Agamben, 1998; Mbembe, 2003; Rydstrom, 2012, 2015, 2017). Here, female life is defined by a machinery of male violence, which truncates the possibili- ties for agency and the potentialities for positive change (Vigh, 2008). CRISIS OF CHRONICITY As decisive moments, which forcefully can differentiate, select, and separate, crises can be seen as “conditions that make outcomes unpredictable” (Habermas, 1992/1976, p. 1). The term crisis is a Latinized form of the Greek krisis, which refers to “a turning point in a disease” (etymonline.com, n.d.; Merriam-Webster Dictionary, n.d.). For this reason, a crisis tends to be associated with a figurative purification, catharsis, under- stood in terms of an avenue to a new beginning (Endres & Six-Hohenbalken, 2014; Vigh, 2008; Walby, 2015). A crisis could lead to renewal, but it might as well open to a path fraught with difficulties and suffering (see, etymonline.com, n.d.; Merriam- Webster Dictionary, n.d.). In disrupting coherency and augmenting uncertainty for future prospects (Habermas, 1992), a crisis could swiftly change from a state of emergency (Benjamin, 1999/1968) into a condition of ahistorical permanence (Bhabha, 1994). An episodic interaction of sudden harm might lead to repeated abuse (Das, 2000; True, 2012). Repeated intimate partner violence can over time transmute into a banality of daily life (Arendt, 1970; Rydstrom, 2017), and in doing so morph from a momentary crisis into a crisis of chronicity (Vigh, 2008). Such a crisis is characterized by stillness in the sense that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 275-276). Approaching crisis as a chronic condition might appear as if it neither had a beginning nor an end (Roitman, 2014) as if freed “from its tem- poral confines” (Vigh, 2008, p. 9). A crisis determined by a machinery of male violence precisely is characterized by not appearing as coming to a closure anytime soon. Temporality needs to be approached as a subjective phenomenon to capture the modalities and intensities by which specific types of crises are composed. In some tempo-spatial pockets, a crisis might pass quickly, while in others it might compartmentalize as a permanent situ- ation, as if separated from predominant understandings of the progression of time. Repeated violence can create a parallel crisis universe, a zone of alternative tempi and speeds in which time seems to have stopped and the horizon been blurred. That is an ASEAS 12(2) | 171 Helle Rydstrom interregnum, an ahistorical permanence (Gramsci, 1971), in which there is no return to how life used to be prior to the violence and a violence-free life seems out of reach (Rydstrom, 2015, 2017, 2019). REITERATED VIOLENCE Gathering around small plastic tables squeezed into the shade of a cluster of trees for protection against the blistering morning sun, a group of men from Long Lanh in central coastal Vietnam were sharing their experiences of intimate partner violence. Several of the men told how they used to be abusive against their female partners and how they eventually had ended their violent behavior. One of the men, Van, suddenly stated that “women also beat men” (phự nũ cũng đánh đàn ông chứ). This was not the first time that a man in the Vietnamese context had let me (a female researcher) know that not only men but also women are violent.5 Violence is harmful to anyone and abuse against boys and men renders the risk of being overlooked if gendered violence is equalized with women. The comment, however, does not reflect the realities on the ground in Vietnam, or anywhere else, but rather appears as a way of dealing with a legally, morally, and emotionally loaded problem (Kimmel, 2002). Joan Kelly and Michael Johnson (2008) thus have observed that “when advocates for men claim that domestic violence is perpetrated equally by men and women … they are describing situational couple violence, not coercive con- trolling violence” (p. 481). Kelly and Johnson (2008) have defined “coercive controlling violence”, which is in the fore of my discussion, as various combinations of physical intimidation, asserting male privilege, coercion, and threats, emotional abuse, iso- lation, use of children, economic abuse as well as belittling, denying, and blaming a partner. The symmetry argument, reflected in Van’s comment, has been rebutted by figures on gender-based violence provided by various international organizations. According to the WHO (2017), statistics on male intimate partner violence vary from 23.2% in high-income countries to 24.6% in the Western Pacific, 37% in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and 37.7% in Southeast Asia. Mirroring such num- bers, a study conducted by United Nations Women Vietnam (2012) shows that 34% of ever-partnered women in the Vietnamese context reported “lifetime experience of physical and/or sexual violence, with 9% experiencing physical and/or sexual violence in the last 12 months” (p. 13). These startlingly high numbers indicate that men’s violence against their female partners is a problem of “pandemic” proportions (United Nations, 2018; United Nations Women, 2018), and the most prevalent human rights violation experienced by women and girls in the world today (United Nations Statistics Division, 2015; United Nations Population Fund, 2019). According to a study carried out by Kathryn Yount et al. (2016) in northern Vietnam on intimate partner violence, 36.6% out of 522 interviewed men (18-51 years) reported that they had perpetrated some form of abuse, especially physical violence against their wife. A minority of respondents, only 0.2% of the interviewed men, said 5 The comment resonates with the symmetry debate which erupted in the 1990s, when men’s organi- zations, especially in the USA, claimed that despite statistics intimate partner violence is experienced in equal proportions by both women and men (Kimmel, 2002). 172 | ASEAS 12(2) Machinery of Male Violence that they had perpetrated sexual violence against their wife. In the same study, 12% out of 533 interviewed married women (18-51 years), however, reported that they had experienced sexual violence committed by their husband.6 Discrepancies in men’s and women’s reporting of sexual violence resemble earlier findings in Vietnam, according to which sexual violence “was seen as a problem to be tolerated by female focus groups, while the male groups did not consider it to be a serious issue” (World Bank 1999, p. 2). Hence, the conviction rate of men who have perpetrated violence against their female partners is remarkably low. While about 43% of violent crimes are referred to the police, only 12% of reported cases result in criminal charges, and as few as 1% of reported cases of men’s violence against women lead to conviction (Duvvury, Carney, & Minh/United Nations Women, 2012; Khuyên, 2016).7 Such findings epitomize how violence against women has become an inte- grated, and in that sense ordinary dimension of female life, which holds power to turn life into a chronic crisis defined by insecurity and danger (Arendt, 1970; Rydstrom, 2003b, 2017, 2019; Vigh, 2008). In the Vietnamese context, men’s violence against their female partners frequently has been associated with Vietnam’s opening into the global economy; with the intro- duction of the Đổi Mới (renovation) policy in 1986 (Le, 1992, p. 263; Ljunggren, 1993). In the wake of the Đổi Mới policy in December 1995, the Vietnamese government launched Resolution 87 as a means to eliminate any “social evils” (tệ nạn xã hội); a label which refers both to illicit activities as well as morally condemned behaviors such as domestic violence, gambling, and drug addiction (Koh, 2001; Marr, 1981; Nguyen-vo, 2008; Rydstrom, 2006; Vijeyarasa, 2010). Jayne Werner (2008) has dis- cussed how social issues with the introduction of the Đổi Mới policy increasingly have been defined as household problems and individual concerns. Well-socialized citizens would promote “equality of men and women” (nam nữ bình đẳng) (Hoang, 2002) and engage in the building of a “happy and harmonious family life” (gia đình hạnh phúc hòa thuận) which would not suffer from any conflicts or crises (Drummond & Rydstrom, 2004; Leskhowich, 2008; Rydstrom, 2003a, 2003b, 2009, 2017). SILENCING MEN’S VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN International attention to men’s violence against women, as highlighted by the United Nations General Assembly’s Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (launched in 1993) and the Beijing Declaration (adopted in 1995 by the Fourth World Conference on Women, see United Nations, 1995), provide the backdrop for debates on men’s violence against women in Vietnam. Prior to the intro- duction of the Đổi Mới policy, men’s violence against women was not recognized as a problem (Khuat, 2004). The tendency to silence men’s violence against women thus prompted Le Thi Quy (1992), an official voice of the National Women’s Union (Hội Phụ Nữ),8 to introduce the term “family violence” (bạo lực gia đình) and to explain the 6 For a definition of sexual violence, see World Health Organization (2017). 7 See also, General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2010; Schuler, Lenzi, Hoang, Vu, Yount, & Trang, 2014; Vietnam Women’s Union, 2017; Yount et al., 2016. 8 As one of the mass organizations, the Union is responsible for identifying women-specific problems in the household and in society at large (Endres, 1999; Rydstrom, 2016; Waibel & Glück, 2013). ASEAS 12(2) | 173 Helle Rydstrom visible as well as invisible harm violence inflicts upon women (see also, Pistor & Le, 2014). Following Le Thi Quy (1992), Le Thi Nham Tuyet and Ho Thi Phuong Tien (1996) highlighted the invisible features of male-to-female violence, while Doan Bao Chau (1998) drew attention to a public neglect of the silent female suffering caused by men’s physical and sexual abuse (see also Le, 1998). Thus, these voices identified how corporeal properties of gender and sexuality in intersection with other parameters such as age inform male violence. The study Gender-Based Violence: The Case of Vietnam (World Bank, 1999) provided an early empirical overview of the prevalence of men’s abuse of women in Vietnam, and even indicated that the onus for male-to-female violence tended to be placed on the abused woman. In 2010, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25), the General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO) pub- lished the large-scaled national study, Keeping Silent is Dying: Results from the National Study on Domestic Violence against Women in Viet Nam, which offered novel quantita- tive as well as qualitative insights into the ways in which men’s violence against their female partners harmed women, ruined their lifeworlds, limited their participation in social and economic life, and sometimes even cost them their lives. The study indi- cates that women who have been subjected to a male partner’s violence feel ashamed and worried about “losing face” (mất mặt) because of what they see as an inability to manage their family and marriage well. They would thus remain silent about the abuse and “endure the suffering” (chịu đau khổ). Sexually abused women even stated that there would be no solutions to end such abuse because of a wife’s assumed obli- gation to satisfy her husband sexually. Some women, though, told in the report that they had encouraged their husband to consult sex workers and thereby transfer the problem to another realm (General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2010, p. 92; see also Horton & Rydstrom, 2011).9 Vietnam’s #MeToo movement has evolved as an attempt to interrupt the machinery of male violence and, in doing so, even the crisis of chronicity in which an abused woman is caught. The movement in Vietnam corresponds with a current global social media movement, which efficiently has drawn public attention to men’s sexual abuse of women, called for recognition of the harm such violence inflicts upon women, and for legal punishment of sexual violence perpetrators. Under the hashtag #ngungimlang/#ngừngimlặng (stop staying silent), the tendency to mute and neglect men’s violence against women has been critically debated on social media. In addition, female survivors of sexual violence have shared their testimonies on being sexually abused in the domain of the home or at the workplace (see also “Phong trào #MeToo liệu”, 2018; “#MeToo, Vietnam”, 2018; “Vietnam’s #MeToo Movement Begins”, 2018). FROM LAWS TO PRACTICES While an elaborated legislation on the prevention of violence is in place in Vietnam (Schuler et al., 2014; Yount et al., 2016), the law does not necessarily prevent violence taking place at home. The gap between the letter of the law to prevent and combat violence against women and the implementation of the law was epitomized at the 9 These comments accord with my own data from Vietnam. 174 | ASEAS 12(2) Machinery of Male Violence Smiling Tears (Nước Mắt Cười) exhibition held in Hanoi in 2012 (“Everyday Items Used for”, 2012). Focus at the exhibition was on men’s violence against their female partners, and the explicitness of the exhibition was horrifying. Tools used by men to maltreat and injure their female partners were on display, including a saucepan and batons. In addition to these instruments of brutality, female survivors of partner vio- lence shared their experiences of being abused and even told about the energy they had been able to muster to leave an abusive partner and terminate a life impaired by a crisis of chronicity encroached by a gendered and sexualized machinery of male violence (see also, Kwiatkowski, 2008, 2011; Rydstrom, 2003b, 2006, 2017). According to the Keeping Silent is Dying report (General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2010) it is of paramount importance to strengthen the enforcement and implemen- tation of existing policies and legal frameworks related to violence prevention and response through enhancing the capacities of duty bearers (the National Assembly, the Government of Viet Nam and mass organizations) at all levels and developing structured multi-sectoral coordination mechanisms to improve the coherence of policies, laws and programs related to violence (p. 111). Vietnam ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1982 and both the Penal Code of 1999 (No. 15/1999/ QH10) as well as the Law on Marriage and Family of 2000 stipulate that the use of violence is prohibited. According to the Civil Code of 2005 (No. 33-2005-QH11) (National Assembly of Vietnam, 2005), the civil rights of a person entitles that per- son to request the court or other relevant agencies to protect them (Art. 9). In 2006, the National Assembly debated the draft law on preventing domestic violence, which was passed in 2007 as the Law on Domestic Violence Prevention and Control (No. 02/2007/QH12) (National Assembly of Vietnam, 2007). With the new law an impor- tant step was taken in the prevention and combat of violence in the household, and beyond. While the law does not call for criminal sanctions, it does encourage civil solutions, including reconciliation with the aid of third party mediators such as kin, health care clinics, or local reconciliation units; fines; prohibition orders; and the re-education of male perpetrators (see also, Duvvury, Carney, & Minh/United Nations Women, 2012; Kwiatkowski, 2008, 2011; Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2018; Rydstrom, 2017, 2019). SCALES OF HARM When domestic violence breaches the criminal law, Article 104 under the Penal Code of 1999 (No. 15/1999/QH10) may apply (see also, United Nations Women, Vietnam, 2012). The seriousness of violence is defined in accordance with a number of stip- ulated infirmity rates required for an action to be a criminal act.10 Regarding the seriousness of abuse, Article 104 (Penal Code) (National Assembly of Vietnam, 1999) clarifies that 10 For details on the infirmity rate, see National Assembly of Vietnam (1999). ASEAS 12(2) | 175 Helle Rydstrom those who intentionally injure or causes harm to the health of other per- sons with an infirmity rate of between 11% and 30% …11, shall be sentenced to non-custodial reform for up to three years or between six months and three years of imprisonment. The infirmity rate is determined by a medical examiner who issues a certificate to verify the level of harm. Such a document, however, does not always come without a cost. Those women who cannot afford a certificate or those who find unauthorized fees unacceptable will not be able to obtain the needed certificate (Borgstrom, 2012; General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2010; Hakkarainen, 2014; Vian, Brinkerhoff, Feeley, Salomon, & Vien, 2012). The infirmity rate sheds light on how the gravity of men’s violence against women is understood legally at a systemic level and even how a culture of impunity is facil- itated. When female bodies are manipulated from phenomenological fellow human beings into objects of abuse, into naked life, by the aid of repertoires and techniques of abuse, local authorities are in charge of determining the scale of harm. Serious cases of male-to-female violence are those which lead to hospitalization and/or have lethal consequences, according to a representative from the women’s union from the northern Quang Vinh area. Local women’s union units, health care clinics, and rec- onciliation units might dismiss a case of violence because the damage is determined to fall under the 11% infirmity limit. As it is both tedious and costly in terms of time, money, and dignity to approach relevant agencies to pursue a legal procedure, much abuse is never registered, thus not recognized, but rendered silent as an individu- alized problem and a chronic crisis to endure (General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2010; Nguyen, 2011; Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2018; Rydstrom, 2003b, 2017; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2011). The power to define violence can in itself be seen as a kind of harm, as a violence which “is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances” (Galtung, 1969, p. 171). As a nexus of various societal inequalities (Farmer, 2004), this kind of violence is symbolically shaped and operates through- out the societal system as systemic harm (Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2018). Systemic harm fosters a machinery of male violence through larger socio-economic, cultural, and political structures as these serve to establish a political discourse of permissiveness and a culture of impunity (Derrida, 1990; Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2018). Systemic harm is intertwined with men’s violence against women on the ground, as two types of vio- lence in a socio-cultural continuum of harm. These types of violence capitalize upon and might even galvanize one another as “rebounding violence”, which thus refers to a dialectical relation between these two levels of violence and how they perpetually interact with and inform one another (Bloch, 1992; Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2018). These dynamics of violence condition the production and reproduction of gender-based abuse as a justified practice, which is reduced to a banal dimension of the ordinary (Arendt, 1970). 11 That is, “or under 11% but in one of the following circumstances”. These include, amongst others, using weapons, causing harm to more than one person, causing minor permanent damage to the victims, committing the crime more than once or against children, pregnant women, and other people considered to be weak, or against parents. For details, see National Assembly of Vietnam (1999). 176 | ASEAS 12(2) Machinery of Male Violence PATRILINY, MASCULINITY, AND VIOLENCE Patriliny informs social organization in the household and by extension society at large (King & Stone, 2010; Sandgren, 2009). In addition to a gender perspective, which provides a lens for critical assessments of how socio-cultural logics produce particu- lar images, narratives, and practices with regard to men and women, the machinery of male violence encourages a focus on masculinity (Bourdieu, 2001; Butler, 2004; Schrock & Schwalbe, 2009). Even though not all men agree with an influential type of masculinity, they are under pressure to conform to influential ideas about men, male- ness, and masculinity as are women to assumptions about women, femaleness, and femininity (Connell, 1987; Hearn, 1998; Horton, 2014; Horton & Rydstrom, 2011). The patrilineal and heterosexual family remains common in Vietnamese society despite an increase in same-sex partnerships, single-headed households, and co-hab- itation prior to marriage (Braemer, 2014; Horton, 2014; Newton, 2012; Nguyen, 2015; Rydstrom 2016). The “pillar of the house” (trụ cột gia đình; literally the pillar of the family) is a role which the most senior male (in terms of age and status) of a house- hold is supposed to hold. The continuation of the patrilineage is considered critical and male progeny therefore valued. As “inside lineage” (họ nội), sons enjoy privileges and powers which daughters do not. Descent traced along the male line means that daughters come to stand in a position of exteriority to the patrilineage as “outside lineage” (họ ngoại) (Rydstrom, 2003a, 2003b; Bourdieu, 2001; Sandgren, 2009). A dichotomic and ontological way of rendering men and women meaning- ful prevails in Vietnamese society, meaning that men generally are associated with masculinity and women with femininity. Considered as the result of the merging of “physiology” (sinh ly ́ ho ̣c), “psychology” (tâm lý), and a person’s “character” (tính cách), male bodies are understood as being related to the forces of Dương (Yang in Chinese) and female bodies with the forces of Âm (Yin in Chinese). The forces of Dương would make a man “hot” (nóng; also meaning bad tempered), while a female body would be “cold” (lạnh) due to the forces of Âm (see also, Sandgren, 2009). “Hot” bodies are associated with active and centripetal energies, or masculinity, and “cold” bodies with passive and centrifugal energies, or femininity. These two forces of the phenomenological body would ideally complement one another and ensure harmony in the household and by extension in society (Jamieson, 1993; Leshkowich, 2008; Ngo, 2004). Women’s inferior position is expected to be balanced through a sociality of femininity that is called tình cảm (sentiments/emotions/feelings) and the various qualities of which it is composed, including “respect” (kính), “self-denial” (nhường), “endurance” (chịu), and “holding back oneself ” (nhịn). Even though, tình cảm also is appreciated in men, tình cảm is associated with female capacities thanks to which they can verify their “good morality” (đạo đức tốt) and navigate the asymmetrical reciprocity inherent to the patriliny.12 The qualities associated with tình cảm ideally stimulate the fostering of “happy and harmonious family life” (gia đình hạnh phúc hòa thuận) (Rydstrom, 2003b, 2009, 2010, 2017). 12 Such a gendered asymmetrical reciprocity, furthermore, is illustrated by Confucian dictums such as the Four Virtues (Tứ đức), which dictate female behavior beyond tình cảm (Ngo, 2004). For a discussion of gen- dered asymmetrical reciprocity, see also Young (1997). ASEAS 12(2) | 177 Helle Rydstrom An official representative of the women’s union in Quang Vinh, for example, emphasized that women need to be aware of the social hierarchies and behave accord- ingly.13 In daily life, women are expected to navigate a patrilineal hierarchy and manage ideals regarding family happiness by practicing tình cảm. This capacity is recognized as a critical means by which women can attempt to prevent the “rice” from “boiling” (sôi); or more precisely hinder a male partner from being “enraged”/“mad” (nổi khùng) and maybe even from becoming violent (Rydstrom, 2003b, 2009, 2010, 2017). HIERARCHIES, ENERGIES, AND POWERS Composed of gendered energies, the phenomenological body interlocks with a patriliny, which creates “openings towards violence [and] towards misogyny” (Connell, 1987, pp. 185-186). This was illustrated by a Thinh Tri Health Care Clinic worker in northern Vietnam, who explained that “due to their hot character and hard work it is normal that men get angry”. “Hot characters” contain “hot” blood which produc- es “strength” (mạnh mẽ) and “energy” (năng lượng) in men and boys. This does not only mean that they might be aggressive but even could “explode” (hăng lên) (see also, Dao, Hoang, & Kanthoul, 2012; General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2010; Horton & Rydstrom, 2011; Martin, 2013; Pells, Wilson, & Nguyen, 2016; Yount et al., 2016). In a similar vein, a Thinh Tri nurse explained that “women should hold back themselves and … not explode”. If women were exploding, a conflict could easily escalate, and women are therefore expected to remain calm, or stay cool, if a partner becomes hot tempered. Not all women, however, are willing to cool down a “hot” partner by “enduring suffering”. Bian, a young woman in her early twenties from northern Quang Vinh, for example, related how throughout her childhood she had witnessed violent encounters between her parents, thus remembering that, my father had extramarital affairs and my mother knew about it. When she complained, my father beat her. He did so instead of explaining and talking with her. But women talk too much. For instance, my mother brought up his extramarital affairs even if we were having a good time. Women often criticize [their husband]”. Even though Bian emphasized that she finds men’s violence against women unac- ceptable, she also held her mother accountable for the repeated incidents of violence between her parents. Placing the responsibility for the violence to which women are subjected on the abused woman is not uncommon, as indicated by a male interviewee in the Keeping Silent is Dying study, who suggested that “women are often mean and often fuss about small things. That is why violence occurs. The main cause of conflict in the family is women” (General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2010, p. 76). What is criticized as a woman’s “grumbling”/“complaning” (càm ràm) attitude frequently is referred to as a reason for men’s violence against their female partners. In this vein, Hiep from northern Vietnam stated that women do not understand their husband 13 This statement resembles the Confucian dictum “Showing respect for the superior and self-denial for the inferior” (Biết kính trên nhường dưới). 178 | ASEAS 12(2) Machinery of Male Violence because they “have big mouths and talk too much” (see also, Dao et al., 2012; Horton & Rydstrom, 2011; Rydstrom, 2003b, 2006, 2010; Trinh, 2008; Yount et al., 2016). Women who do not act with tình cảm tend to be looked down upon as incapable of balancing a “hot” partner by “cooling” him down appropriately. Such assumed femi- nine ‘flaws’ are frequently taken as justification for a man’s beating of his wife by men, women, and even by official representatives. Thus, a woman who “grumbles/com- plains” would often be condemned in the Vietnamese context for her lack of ability to stimulate harmony in the household by showing tình cảm appropriately (Rydstrom, 2003a, 2003b, 2017; see also, Kwiatkowski, 2008, 2011; Yount & Krause, 2017). Oanh, a woman in her late thirties who lives in central coastal Long Lanh, recalled an incident of abuse which she at the same time minimized by saying, “I was beaten once by my husband because I complained. It was not a big thing. He was drunk and hot-tempered and then he beat me”. Oanh’s comment illuminates how a man’s vio- lence against his female partner is downplayed and thereby serves to surreptitiously transform abuse into a common and even expected male practice. Giang, who also lives in Long Lanh and is about twice as old as Oanh, related in a similar vein how she had begun to “grumble/complain” due to the extramarital affairs of her husband and how the confrontations had resulted in him abusing her. On these occasions, Giang would flee to her parent’s place together with the couple’s children, but she would always return. After a particularly terrifying incident of abuse, Giang and her children, however, left and stayed to reside with her parents (Rydstrom, 2019). Uyen, who lives in the same community as Oanh and Giang, belongs to the same age bracket as Oanh. Independently of Oanh and Giang, Uyen reiterated ideas about how women’s behavior fuels conflict and violence in a marriage. She thus explained that her husband’s violence had been spurred by what she saw as her “grumbling/ complaining” behavior and “provoking” (khiêu khích) attitude (Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2018; Rydstrom, 2017, 2019). After getting married, Uyen’s husband became violent, and she was, as she remembered, “hit many times”. Also, Uyen would escape her hus- band’s violence by fleeing to her parents’ home where she would find safety. Uyen, however, was determined to divorce her abusive husband and therefore gathered information from the authorities about how to initiate a divorce process. The divorce plans, though, were put to rest due to the advice of close kin and neighbors, who suggested that she should not leave her husband but rather stay for the sake of their children. Blaming the survivor of violence for the abuse appears as a strategy, albeit self-destructive, which is employed by women to cope with the forces of a machinery of male violence and the ways in which it determines life as a chronic crisis. CRISIS OF CHRONICITY INTERRUPTED While men’s violence against women in the Vietnamese context has mainly been restricted to the realm of the household, recent reports indicate a surge in the abuse of women in public spaces. Recordings shared on social media have caused alarm in Vietnamese society, including a clip which showed how a woman was beaten by her husband in central Hanoi, in close proximity to a cafeteria, and another one from the International Airport in Hanoi, which displayed how two men attacked a young woman on Vietnamese Women’s Day (20 October). Another video clip showed how ASEAS 12(2) | 179 Helle Rydstrom a mixed group of young boys and girls were beating up girls on the streets in the province of Nghe An and in Ho Chi Minh City (i.e., former Saigon). Hoang Giang Son of the Institute for Studies of Society, Economy, and Environment (iSEE), a Hanoi- based NGO, concluded in connection with these incidents that “violence against humans, particularly against women, is escalating in our society” (Khuyên, 2016). Conveying footage of male-to-female violence to a global audience through social media platforms elucidates how secondary virtual types of abuse and humiliation can be added to first grade direct physical violence. Social media, however, at the same time has become an important means for international and national agencies as well as NGOs devoted to prevent men’s violence against women in the domestic and public spheres. Social media offer a platform from which agencies and organizations can provide information to abused women to break their isolation and escape a crisis of chronicity. Organizations and agencies such as the Vietnam Women’s Union have set up hotlines and platforms such as the Facebook page called “Families without Violence” (Gia đình Không Bạo lực) to reach out to women to inform them about anti-violence legislation, rights, and programs aimed at combatting men’s violence against women (Domestic Violence in Vietnam, 2016; see also, Rydstrom, 2017, 2019). As part of the international November campaign “Say NO – UniTE to End Violence against Women” launched by the UN Women, various activities have been initiated in Vietnam to mark opposition to men’s violence against women. In 2016, for example, Vietnamese NGOs and institutes dedicated to mobilizing resistance against male-to-female violence organized events, lectures, and meetings as part of the national campaign “Say No to Violence” (Nói Không với Bạo lực). The “Say NO – UniTE to End Violence against Women” annual campaign has gained traction and broad public support in Vietnamese society. Many women – and men – wear clothes in the campaign’s signature color orange when attending demonstrations and activi- ties to end men’s violence against women during the campaign month. The following year, in 2017, in connection with the UN Women “Say NO – UniTE to End Violence against Women” campaign, a large event called “Zumba Festival: Love’s Steps” was held in the Thong Nhat Park in Hanoi. Thousands of girls and women participated in the demonstration, which encouraged female survivors to voice their experiences of male violence as a way of ending the silencing of male-to-female abuse.14 Such initiatives have become recurrent annual activities, as illustrated by the #HearMeToo campaign of 2018 (Doan, 2018). In response to the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence Campaign 2018, the UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE Orange the World Campaign, the UN Women, and the UN’s Gender Thematic Group, social media and videos were used to disseminate information across the country about men’s violence against women. A national workshop on gender-based violence prevention and Safe City models was organized by the UN Women and the Department of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA) in Ho Chi Minh City to develop strategies aimed at tackling the problem of men’s violence against women in 14 The Zumba event was launched by the Center for Studies and Applied Sciences in Gender, Family, Women, and Adolescents (CSAGA) in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Department of Gender Equality under the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), and Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union in Hanoi amongst others. Even international NGOs and agencies supported the initiative (Dance Campaign aims to Stop, 2017, December 3). 180 | ASEAS 12(2) Machinery of Male Violence the home as well as in urban spaces. The workshop selected “Safer Cities for Women and Girls” as the action theme of the Vietnam Women’s Union for the year of 2019, which might imply that the movement is driven by women located in the cities. While the majority of Vietnamese women live in the countryside, bridging between experiences from urban and rural spaces plays an important role in promulgating the impact and success of the anti-violence campaigns (United Nations Women, 2018). CONCLUSIONS Masculinized social structures and the ways in which these create a framework for the production of systemic harm are reciprocally connected with male-to-female violence perpetrated on the ground. In a patrilineally organized universe, where women are rendered inferior and men superior, the machinery of male violence is enforced to multiply strength in highly gendered and sexualized ways (Arendt, 1970). The design of repertoires, techniques, and tools implemented by men to harm a female partner is inseparable from masculinized hierarchies, privileges, and powers, as configured in the Vietnamese context. The violence imposed by a man upon his female partner is shaped in specific encounters, I have argued, when a perpetrator’s essentialist and stereotypical fantasies about a woman’s embodied properties (i.e., gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, class, and bodyableness) degrade the female phenomenological body into a corporeal object of abuse through processes of transformation between the first, second, third, and fourth body typologies. The male machinery of violence attempts to reduce the female body into “naked life” as the result of a process of what I have referred to as “thingification”. A battered woman is in this sense dehumanized and constrained to a “zone of excep- tion” (Agamben, 1998) where the laws of protection do not apply and male violence is perpetrated with impunity (Mbembe, 2003; Rydstrom, 2012, 2015, 2017). Repeated violence inflicted by a man upon his female partner confines life to a tempo-spatial “interregnum” (Gramsci, 1971); into a “crisis of chronicity” (Vigh, 2008), which impedes agency and the possibilities for positive change. A “poisonous knowledge” about the realities of violence and the perils of harm thus holds power to ruin the very foundation of the lifeworld of an abused woman (Stoler, 2013). Yet, women do not passively comply with a violent male partner. As I have discussed, abused women resist and counter the violence to which they are subjected and the pain and damage they have experienced. Vietnamese agencies as well as national and international organizations offer support to abused women and raise public aware- ness about a severe and dehumanizing problem that has been, and even continues to be, silenced. In dealing directly with the ways in which a gendered and sexualized machinery of male violence manufactures a crisis of chronicity, organizational initia- tives can provide critical support to abused women. Empowered women – anywhere in the world – might be able to eschew the stillness imbued in a crisis of chronicity defined by male violence. “Making time moving again” means to turn a crisis of per- manency into a bracket which eventually could provide a path to positive change; a catharsis that might lead to healing and renewal beyond a life framed by a harmful machinery of male violence. 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Men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence in Vietnam: Gendered social learning and the challenges of masculinity. Men and Masculinities, 19(1), 64-84 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Helle Rydstrom is a professor at the Department of Gender Studies, Lund University, Sweden, specialized in the anthropology of gender in Asia. Her research examines the ways in which gender informs violence, (in)security, and precariousness in social life and in sites of conflict and war, on the one hand, and how gendered power relations and hierarchies frame sociali- zation, sexuality, and education, on the other. She recently edited a volume (with Catarina Kinnvall) Climate Hazards, Disasters, and Gender Ramifications (Routledge, 2019). ► Contact: helle.rydstrom@genus.lu.se ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The projects for this article have been generously funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), and the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond). I greatly appreciate the support offered on various occasions in connection with the conduction of these research projects by Dinh Hoai, Ho Ha, Hoang N. An, Luong A. Ngoc, Ngo Huong, Nguyen Hanh, Nguyen Mai, Nguyen H. Minh, Nguyen T. T. Huong, Pham Hoan, Thanh B. Xuan, Tran T. C. Nhung, and Tran T. K. Thuan. My gratitude goes to those who have shared their experiences with me, but who cannot be mentioned for anonymity reasons. Ongoing communication with Don Kulick, Nguyen-vo Thu-huong, Nguyen T. T. Huong, Jeff Hearn, and members of The Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies Theme on CRISIS, which I am coordinating, has been inspiring for my analysis. Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments and to the editors of this special issue for all their work. work_4uy42xk7ezgvjexxapls3mzn3i ---- Miranda, 18 | 2019 Miranda Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone / Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English- speaking world  18 | 2019 Guerre en poésie, poésie en guerre In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko John S. Bak Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/18160 DOI: 10.4000/miranda.18160 ISSN: 2108-6559 Publisher Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès Electronic reference John S. Bak, “In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko”, Miranda [Online], 18 | 2019, Online since 17 April 2019, connection on 16 February 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/ 18160 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.18160 This text was automatically generated on 16 February 2021. Miranda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. http://journals.openedition.org http://journals.openedition.org http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/18160 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko John S. Bak Introduction to Mark SaFranko and to the Ariel Project Fig. 1 Mark SaFranko Credits: Projet ARIEL 1 Born 23 December 1950 in Trenton, New Jersey, Mark SaFranko is one of the last Renaissance men. Writer, painter, musician, SaFranko is also a playwright, whose one- act and full-length plays date from the early 1990s to 2018 and have been produced at home in New York and Connecticut, as well as abroad in Londonderry (Northern In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko Miranda, 18 | 2019 1 Ireland) and Cork (Eire). In 1992, his one-act play The Bitch-Goddess was selected Best Play of the Village Gate One-Act Festival in New York. 2 SaFranko is currently in Nancy, France, where he is writer-in-residence at the Université de Lorraine as part of its ARIEL project for 2018-19. ARIEL, the acronym for “Author in International Residence in Lorraine,” offers a four-month residence to an international artist who conducts master classes with university students and interacts with the general public by giving readings and occasional lectures. The program, run by the university’s UFR ALL-Nancy and IUT Nancy-Charlemagne, was created to bridge the artistic gap between university and general publics, to showcase Lorraine’s cultural heritage, and to support the Grand Est Region’s efforts to diversify its international interests. 3 The ARIEL project carries three main goals: creativity and reflection on the creative process, translation, and mediatization. The following interview, which took place in Nancy on 26 November 2018, was intended to address all three project goals with respect to Mark SaFranko’s career in the American and international theatre. 4 For more information on the ARIEL PROJECT: http://residence-ariel.fr/ In Interview with Mark SaFranko John S. Bak: Being of man of many talents, where does playwriting fit into the hierarchy of what you see as your main artistic focus? Can you talk about your formal training in the theatre and how it prepared you to become a playwright? Mark SaFranko: There was no formal training. My training consisted of spending time in the theatre, watching and studying plays, reading plays and trying to figure out what makes them work. I regard writing for the theatre as an essential part of the fabric of my entire writing life. It’s just another thread, so to speak. J.B.: Your plays have been produced both in America and abroad, sometimes in translation. Could you talk for a few minutes about your international experiences? Do you find that European audiences respond to your work differently than American audiences and, if so, why is that the case? SaFranko: I actually haven’t ever seen one of my plays produced on foreign soil, so I’m not at all certain how European audiences responded. The reviews of the productions have been positive, I can say that. J.B.: Have you worked closely with your foreign translators? What were the major obstacles you encountered in the translating process? Were they more linguistic- or culture-based hurdles? SaFranko: The single instance of one of my plays being translated was Seedy, or Minable, into French. The play remains unproduced either in the U.S. or in Europe, but it was published in France. I had no contact whatsoever with the translator, which is highly unusual in my experiences with translators. J.B.: Your plays are frequently situated in the East of the U.S., often New York City. And yet, the West coast is referenced, usually Hollywood, which leaves the impression that you find that there exists an antithetical relationship between film-culture Los Angeles and theatre- culture New York (or even fake versus real). Both Sharon Striker in The Promise and Eddie Tilsen in Seedy, for instance, refer to film casting directors as looking at “strips of raw meat” when they select actors for roles. Many are the names of serious writers who have been In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko Miranda, 18 | 2019 2 http://residence-ariel.fr/ seduced by Hollywood’s allure. Do you see yourself as being strictly a playwright, or would you accept scriptwriting offers were Hollywood to come calling? SaFranko: Of course the money of a screenwriting gig would be too tempting to turn down. I’ve written several spec scripts based on my own work, but none has been produced, which is not an unusual occurrence in the film world. I’m fond of saying that when you insert an electrical plug on a film set it costs a million dollars, and therein lies the rub. The money involved in film production makes a finished product mostly a fantasy. As far as the antithetical relationship is concerned, it’s been my observation that in the past New York actors liked to think that doing “pure” theatre was somehow superior to falling for the allure of Hollywood, but I’m not sure that’s still the case. The boundaries between the worlds have grown more muddled, especially since “stars” are often needed to make New York theatre productions stay afloat and turn a profit. J.B.: Hungry actors and actresses populate your plays, willing to do near anything to get a part, like Wendy in The Promise or Eddie in Seedy. Both Eddie and Sharon hound talent agents, like Harvey Gillman in The Promise, and the message that comes across is that actors are “cold” until they get a part, and then they need to stay “hot” and in the limelight, no matter what it takes. Is this your experience with the theatre? SaFranko: My experience is that most actors stay cold! The truth is that very, very, very few actors ever get to a significant place in either theatre or film. It’s about as brutal a business as there is. And when you think about it, the barriers to entry are few. You don’t have to play an instrument, you don’t have to write something, you don’t have to be able to paint a picture. All you have to do is say the lines that someone else wrote, and you’re an actor. So anyone can do it. This generates a lot of hope on the part of the dreamers and wannabes. And once you do it, you have to hope that you’re well connected, or look good in front of the camera, or have a certain charisma that makes people want to look at you. And that you are very, very lucky. J.B.: Prostitution is a common theme in your plays, the way we all sell ourselves to make ends meet, whether it is the exotic dancer Tracy Sinnett (Esmeralda) with Eddie in Seedy or Edwin Reaves with John Campbell and his company in Incident in the Combat Zone, or the actors Eddie and Sharon just discussed. Life is learning about the limits and consequences, to ourselves and others, of our self-prostitution, no? SaFranko: I think that since we are all victims to at least some extent, it’s a matter of learning how to reconcile oneself to the form of prostitution we’re trapped in. J.B.: Because self-prostitution intimates self-preservation in your plays, and the stage or screen are often the media in which this financial transaction takes place, false appearances becomes a key theme in your work. As Eddie says about Tracy/Esmeralda: “It’s hard to tell with you what’s real and what’s not” when she is no longer wearing her wig. Acting is about appearances, of course, but are we all just play-acting in life in order to survive? SaFranko: I think yes, to a greater or lesser degree. It’s unavoidable. I think it’s why it so often happens that we don’t know who is lying right next to us in bed, so to speak. J.B.: You are a painter as well as a playwright, and art figures at times in your plays, as in Seedy, for instance, where Eddie points out the original Fischls, Dalis, and Saint Johns to Tracy/Esmeralda: “Some collection, huh? Hank’s ‘investments.’” Since your plays are often In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko Miranda, 18 | 2019 3 about power struggles, and money nearly always plays a part in that equation, what is your take on the marriage of art and money? SaFranko: On one level it’s complicated, and on another it’s quite simple. Very few artists make money at their profession. We all want it, we all need it, but the rewards go to only a small percentage of the people working at it. Nowadays, it seems to me that genuine art is further and further removed from what is commercially successful, especially in the U.S. Anything that doesn’t earn significantly–regardless of its artistic worth–is considered beneath contempt and will have a very difficult time finding an audience. J.B.: Because money is such a major concern with your characters, some for survival and others for excessive pleasure, your plays contain frequent attacks on hypocrisy, often against conservative “family values” that are false fronts for greed. As Jean Simonsen admits in Incident in the Combat Zone: “All of you at the top, you’re all the same aren’t you? And all this ridiculous propaganda about country, and family values, and touching one another’s lives, it’s all just trash, just a pile of lies.....” Can you elaborate on this, since playwriting is itself inherently hypocritical? I mean, it offers up pretense as reality, and pursues artistic results, but still desires box-office success? SaFranko: Well, you’ve found me out! And yes, you are correct: we can uncover hypocrisy in ourselves at practically every turn. J.B.: Fame is another common theme in your plays, from Wendy to Eddie to the Suspect in Interrogation # 2, who says: “We have no identity without fame.” This last play was written in 2002, before the likes of a Kim Kardashian or a YouTuber, who today seek out fame at nearly any cost. Is celebrity an American phenomenon, or least different from other cultural notions of fame, and who is ultimately responsible for this mad push, the individual him- or herself, the media machine, the consumer? SaFranko: It looks to me that the mad pursuit of celebrity is a peculiarly American disease. Not that it probably doesn’t exist elsewhere, but it seems particularly rabid in the U.S. Why? What this signifies is a profound emptiness in the psyche and soul of the American. What else but a void would account for such a powerful urge to be seen and known? When you think about it, it’s extraordinarily sad. And the disease has progressed to the point where some skill or talent isn’t even required for notoriety. I mean, look at who many of the most famous people in the world are. J.B.: One of the recurrent messages in your plays is honor thy benefactor, a common theme in Georgian theatre. The idea is that, in the entertainment business at least, it is all about being loyal to and paying back those who have lent you a helping hand. As Eddie says of Hank’s generosity: “Payback, he said, for helping him out way back when. That’s the way this business is supposed to work for people with any kind of memory.” Eddie utters something similar in Seedy, Reaves confesses it to John and to Jean in Incident in the Combat Zone, and we find Harvey saying it to Wendy in The Promise. And yet, Eddie won’t show Tracy the grace that Hank showed him when he was down and out. Does this justify his murder in the end the play, a sort of instant karma or poetic justice? SaFranko: I would say probably yes. J.B.: Let’s talk a bit about your philosophy of life. In your play The Promise, the pro/ antagonist Harvey says, “You know when free will operates? In–what’s the word?– retrospect. That’s when. In re–tro–spect. The free-will fairytale has caused more unnecessary guilt than any other idea in the history of the world.” Is this your philosophical musing or just a casual line spoken by an opportunist? SaFranko: You know, it is actually largely what I believe, I suppose. I’m something of a determinist. Once character is set, do we have much choice about anything? How does the cliché go? Character is destiny. In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko Miranda, 18 | 2019 4 J.B.: I’d like now to turn to the relationships between genders in your play, surely one of their dominant themes. You have two strippers, Esmeralda (Tracy Sinnett) in Seedy and Wendy La Brava (Josie Kamenitski) in The Promise. Many of your female characters, from Wendy to Tracy to the Suspect’s victim, bear tattoos and piercings. And many of your male characters are openly misogynistic and see women as sexed or sexual objects, such as Jack and Paul in The Bitch-Goddess, who are both relentless in their criticism of Irene as a former partner. Even the Suspect in Interrogation # 2 says bluntly: “I wouldn't fuck her with your dick.” Would you care to elaborate? SaFranko: Well, this is the characters speaking, not me. Many men have this outlook on women, though not often to such an extreme. I happen to be honest enough to record those words and thoughts–not that I’m looking for credit. As far as the body markings are concerned, it makes for a dramatic sight on stage, doesn’t it? J.B.: And yet, despite your male characters’ rather abusive views about women, you are critical of predatory sexuality, as seen with Harvey in The Promise. Written in 2002, The Promise is certainly relevant today, nonethemore given that the lead character’s name is Harvey, an eerie premonition of Harvey Weinstein. However, in spite of Harvey’s obvious despicable treatment of his female clientele, it is Wendy who says: “Sometimes people have to be used on the way up, but that’s just the way it is.....” Do you see the couch audition culture of Hollywood as a simple quid pro quo, given the “glut” of actors and the “damn few parts” available for them all? SaFranko: I think many actors–especially attractive women–would agree with your assessment. J.B.: Is gender equality possible then, at least in the entertainment business? Or is infidelity, another recurrent theme in your plays, unavoidable? I mean, the list of the unfaithful in your plays runs long. Harvey cheats on his wife and lies to her in The Promise, just like Eddie in Seedy: “Well, with the wife and kid gone, what’s to stop me?” The character Ferdy Venturi lived up “in the Valley before his wife caught him with the neighbor’s daughter and kicked him out.” John Campbell cheats on his wife with young boys in Incident in the Combat Zone. Even Irene is far from the perfect partner for either Jack Royko (any reference to Mike?) or Paul Tenucci in The Bitch-Goddess. Is fidelity, like the stage itself, an illusion? SaFranko: I would think so. But people are wired differently. Some people are made for fidelity. However, when a person becomes more and more famous, or rich, or prominent, perhaps fidelity is difficult because the opportunities for extracurricular activity increase exponentially. J.B.: In The Promise and in No…?, you seem to be searching for gender complicity to the sexual problem confronting Americans (and even the French) that differentiates mutual desire from sexual harassment or abuse. Again, given the #MeToo movement, was No…? your response to the many accusations sweeping through various male-dominated industries and was it, perhaps, even influenced by David Mamet’s Oleanna, a similar response nearly three decades earlier? Are you taking sides in the debate or do you just want to show how all incidents have two perspectives, and that both genders need to see things from the other’s side? After all, even Eddie is propositioned in Seedy: “Merle Moonaker wanted to get into our pants, see? And he looked into my eyes, and he knew right away he wasn’t getting my cock–no way–see what I mean? That’s what it really was.” For you, it is not simply a female issue, but one that affects all who must bow to power, though surely women have historically been more abused than men, no? SaFranko: While I did see Oleanna many years ago, the play was not at all in my mind when I wrote No...? It was inspired by a different experience altogether, and I did want to show that such incidents can have different perspectives, though by no means always. Because absolutely, women have been more abused than men. In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko Miranda, 18 | 2019 5 J.B.: Your plays often paint a fine line between sexual consent and rape, as with John and Liz in No…?, and, to a certain extent, with Eddie and Tracy/Esmeralda in Seedy and John Campbell and his young trade Brent in Incident in the Combat Zone. Rape, power, money and business are all uncomfortably intertwined here. As Reaves tells Campbell, “I made it clear to my contact at The Times that we would consider substantially cutting our advertising, if not pulling it altogether. And why strain a mutually profitable relationship?” Is America ultimately responsible for the current gender war being waged because it has always equated sex, power and money in the workplace? Or are individuals alone to blame for not keeping it in their pants? Or, again, are we all complicit? SaFranko: That’s an incredibly complex question. And I don’t know the answer to it. I will say, however, that another old saw applies here as well: absolute power corrupts absolutely, I believe it goes. J.B.: Let’s lighten up the discussion a bit now. Humor in your plays often serves a dual function: to coax a laugh out of the audience and to carry a fairly dark double entendre, such as with the naked John Campbell running down the streets in Incident in the Combat Zone and being told “And the people who called the police couldn’t tell you from Adam.” Or again, with Paul Tenucci in The Bitch-Goddess turning away from his wife Irene’s casket and saying “Goodnight, Irene, I’ll see you tomorrow,” a close echo of the refrain from the popular Lead Belly song “Goodnight, Irene” (1933) about the singer’s distraught past with his faithless love Irene and his desire to get even with her in his dreams. Do you see yourself as a writer of dark comedies, social dramas or human tragedies? SaFranko: That’s a very good question, and I realize now that you’ve made me think about it that much of the humor in my writing surfaces in my plays. Is it intentional? I don’t know. But I would say that humor notwithstanding, I’m probably a writer of human tragedies. J.B.: Finally, as you know, I’m a big Tennessee Williams fan, and I noticed in your plays many references to his life and work. Your plays are often cut into scenes, as were a few of his, mostly notably The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. There is also a specific reference to Streetcar and an “inconsistent Southern accent” in The Promise and the allusion to the “kindness of strangers” in Seedy. In her long monologue at the opening of scene seven of The Promise, Sharon muses: “Many talented people have been rejected, I remind myself of that every single morning when I wake up alone in my bed out in Jersey. Think of them: Van Gogh. Strindberg. Tennessee Williams in his later years.” Could you discuss a bit your interests in Williams and in his work? SaFranko: Well, it began when I played Stanley in Streetcar back in 1971 on a college stage. I was twenty years old at the time. The play had a strong effect on me, and I got interested in Williams as an artist, and, as you know, there was a lot to become acquainted with. I became a particular fan, ironically, of several of his early short stories. Streetcar remains a favorite, as well as the story and screenplay of One Arm. I’m also fond of Kingdom of Earth, The Red Devil Battery Sign, Suddenly Last Summer and many of the one-acts. And I also love the novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. He left quite a legacy. J.B.: Thank you so much, Mark, for our talk. I think it is safe to say that I, and all the readers, have learned a lot about your artistic vision and your theatrical talents to project that vision on the stage. I wish you the best in all your future playwriting endeavors. In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko Miranda, 18 | 2019 6 ABSTRACTS Interview with Mark SaFranko, writer in residence in Nancy for the Projet ARIEL. Entretien avec l’auteur Mark SaFranko en résidence à Nancy dans le cadre du Projet ARIEL. INDEX Mots-clés: acteurs/actrices, argent, The Bitch Goddess culture du monde du cinéma/théâtre, gloire, humour, Incident in the Combat Zone, inégalités de genres, Interrogation # 2, The Promise, prostitution, public, Seedy, traduction Subjects: Theater Keywords: Actors/actresses, audiences, The Bitch Goddess, fame, film/theatre culture, humor, gender inequalities, Incident in the Combat Zone, Interrogation # 2, money, The Promise, prostitution, Seedy, translation AUTHOR JOHN S. BAK Professeur Université de Lorraine john.bak@univ-lorraine.fr In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko Miranda, 18 | 2019 7 mailto:john.bak@univ-lorraine.fr In Interview with American Playwright Mark SaFranko work_4v64risoxbfndbwr6qx2ritj7a ---- A systematic review of qualitative studies of adults’ experiences of being assessed for psychological therapies Health Expectations. 2019;1–16. | 1wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hex Received: 4 April 2018 | Revised: 8 September 2018 | Accepted: 3 October 2018 DOI: 10.1111/hex.12844 R E V I E W A R T I C L E A systematic review of qualitative studies of adults’ experiences of being assessed for psychological therapies Angela Sweeney PhD1 | Sarah Clement PhD2 | Kate Gribble BSc3 | Elizabeth Jackson PGDip4 | Sarah Carr PhD5 | Jocelyn Catty DPhil6 | Steve Gillard PhD1 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2019 The Authors. Health Expectations published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1Population Health Research Institute, St Georges, University of London, London, UK 2Freelance Researcher, London, UK 3Child, Community and Educational Psychology, Exeter University, Exeter, UK 4SGUL Library, St Georges, University of London, London, UK 5School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK 6Department of Education and Training, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK Correspondence Angela Sweeney, Population Health Research Institute, St Georges, University of London, London, UK. Email: asweeney@sgul.ac.uk Funding information Research Trainees Coordinating Centre, Grant/Award Number: PDF-2013-06-045; National Institute for Health Research Abstract Objective: To synthesize the qualitative literature on adults’ experiences of psycho- logical therapy assessments. The review was led by people with experience of under- going assessments, with high levels of client involvement throughout. Search strategy: A comprehensive search of electronic databases was undertaken, with additional search strategies employed to locate further literature. Inclusion criteria: Studies were included that qualitatively explored the experiences of people aged 16+ who had been assessed for psychological therapy services. Assessments could be structured or unstructured. Qualitative was defined as any analysed account of people’s experiences, including qualitative survey data. Data extraction and synthesis: Literature quality was appraised using the Critical Appraisal Skills Program checklist, modified to include client involvement and inter- sectionalities. Following data extraction, thematic synthesis was used to synthesize findings across studies. Results: Of 12 743 titles were screened, with 13 studies relevant to the review. Themes and sub themes were identified at three stages of the assessment process: the journey to the assessment, at the assessment, and after the assessment. Findings highlighted the emotional impact of assessments, collaboration, intersectionalities, rights, pathologization, socioeconomic restrictions, and information and support needs. Implications and limitations were indicated. Discussion and conclusions: Findings were situated within the trauma- informed (TIA) literature. Trauma- informed assessment principles, including collaborative assess- ments, may be fruitful means of improving people’s experiences. Whilst the benefits of collaboration appear self- evident, explicitly collaborative approaches were not the norm, nor were studies conducted independently. Further service user research is needed. A greater understanding of the experience of minority groups is also needed. K E Y W O R D S CBT, client experience, client involvement, counselling, IAPT, psychological therapy assessments, psychotherapy, qualitative research, service user experience, service user involvement, systematic review, thematic synthesis www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hex http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6020-7490 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ mailto:asweeney@sgul.ac.uk 2 | SWEENEY Et al. 1 | I N T R O D U C T I O N In England, large numbers of adults access psychological therapies, with the use of such therapies having risen steadily since 2000.1 Nearly one million people are assessed annually in England through the National Health Service (NHS) Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme alone2 (IAPT is an English NHS therapy programme delivered through local services and free at the point of delivery). This figure is set to rise to 1.5 million by 2020.3 This indicates that huge num- bers of people in England are assessed for psychological therapies every year, with an upward trajectory. Note that we are using the term “psy- chological therapies” to refer to various talk- based therapies including counselling, psychotherapies, cognitive behavioural therapy. Prior to delivering a psychological therapy, an assessment is un- dertaken during which assessors establish service suitability and eligi- bility, considering whether and how psychological therapy might help. Approaches vary from unstructured history gathering or storytelling methods4 to structured assessments of symptoms,5 or some combina- tion of both. Assessments can take place many months before therapy begins or seamlessly lead into therapy. Whilst people within IAPT typ- ically receive a single brief telephone assessment, beyond IAPT, as- sessments can be one- off information gathering exercises or multiple sessions which aim to have therapeutic impact.6 The ways in which practitioners conduct assessments are influ- enced by factors such as service cultures; bureaucratic requirements; personal skills and qualities; early training; theoretical orientation; practical experience; client factors; therapeutic alliance; and how these meld within specific assessments.7,8 Thus, whilst there are broad approaches to assessment, individual encounters are inevita- bly intuitive, idiosyncratic and vary from assessor to assessor and encounter to encounter.8 There is some evidence that psychological therapies can cause long- term harm9 and that people who identify as LGBT and/or as black and minority ethnic are more likely to report harms.10 Hardy and colleagues found that a clear assessment, amongst other fac- tors, fostered engagement and helped mitigate against potential long- term harms.11 There is a growing international literature on trauma- informed approaches (TIAs). Such approaches understand the role of violence and trauma in the lives of many who seek psychological support; en- sure that systems and practitioners are sensitized to this and do not (re)traumatize; and are strengths based, understanding that people are attempting to survive.12 Trauma- informed assessments aim to be informed by cultural, religious, gender, language, socioeconomic, age and disability awareness; focus on therapeutic alliance and col- laboration; and have clear and transparent processes.13 Assessors ensure questions are necessary, make sensitive and carefully timed and paced trauma enquiries, do not ask for trauma details, support grounding and focus on immediate safety.13-16 This TIA literature will be used to inform an understanding of people’s experiences of psy- chological assessments. Despite an established culture of service user involvement in mental health, psychological therapies lack almost any client involvement. Developing an involvement culture could enable ser- vices to enhance ethical practice, minimize harms and reduce drop- outs.17 However, Trivedi argues that psychological therapies are often resistant to client involvement, for instance, arguing that feed- back is “transference,” that people have an “axe to grind,” are too vul- nerable to be involved or are unable to comment dispassionately.17 We will consider client involvement levels in our review papers. The purpose of this review was to synthesize qualitative research ex- ploring adults’ experiences of undergoing psychological therapy assess- ments to develop a rich and comprehensive understanding that increases best practice knowledge. The review is being conducted as part of a wider study investigating assessment processes for talking therapies (APTT). 2 | M E T H O D S This study had four main phases: (a) formulation of the protocol; (b) systematic searching and selection of literature; (c) data extraction and quality assessment; and (d) data synthesis. 2.1 | Formulating the protocol A Service User Advisory Group (SUAG) established the review priori- ties including focus, literature types and key terms. A draft protocol was discussed and revised in a SUAG subgroup. The SUAG, a Clinician Advisory Group and a research librarian, reviewed the protocol, lead- ing to revisions. Search terms were further revised following piloting. 2.1.1 | Inclusion and exclusion criteria Studies that met the following criteria were included: • Population: adults aged 16+ who have been assessed for a psycho- logical therapy service for their mental health. • Phenomena: explores an aspect of people’s experiences of being assessed using structured or unstructured approaches. Assessment was defined as a process. • Study type: any analysed account of people’s experiences, including qualitative components of broader studies and qualitative survey data. Exclusion criteria were (a) people aged 15 or under; (b) studies where it was not possible to disaggregate clients’ and other’s views; (c) social or cognitive assessments; (d) conference proceedings/abstracts; and (e) publications not in English. There were no restrictions by date or setting. 2.2 | Systematic searching and selection of literature 2.2.1 | Search strategy Four electronic databases were searched in January 2015, updated on August 2017: CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), EMBASE, PsycINFO and MEDLINE. Search terms | 3SWEENEY Et al. were applied using free text and subject headings (see Table S1 for final search strategy and Table S2 for an example). In consultation with Advisory Groups, additional literature searching included (a) WorldCat Dissertation and Theses, and OpenGrey, searched in February 2015, updated in August 2017; (b) a call for literature was placed in a national service user/survivor organization newsletter; (c) forward and backward citation track- ing of included papers and some relevant excluded papers; (d) four journal indexes were searched: Psychological Assessment; Journal of Counseling Psychology; International Journal of Mental Health; and Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice; (e) where possible, lead authors of included papers were asked for relevant literature; and (f) requests to advisory groups and key ex- perts. This enabled us to identify literature beyond peer- reviewed journals.18 2.2.2 | Screening and selection of studies Two authors screened retrieved records from the 2015 peer- reviewed database searches for potential inclusion KG and SC. Each author screened 50% of records (n = 3957 records per screener), with 4% (n = 358) of records double screened. A Kappa calcula- tion on the results of double screening found that the strength of agreement between screeners was poor (unweighted κ = 0.074; 95% CI = 0- 0.469). A third screener AS reviewed the records that each screener had identified as potentially relevant. SC then rescreened all references as there was strong agreement between AS and SC had extensive experience in systematic reviews. The full texts of identi- fied studies were assessed for eligibility by two people AS/SC. In the 2017 update search, SC screened titles/abstracts and AS and SC assessed studies for eligibility based on the full texts. Discrepancies were discussed and resolved with an arbiter SG. For the grey literature, one author screened the retrieved titles SC, located and read full copies of texts and arrived at a list of po- tential titles. A second author then reviewed the full texts for their possible inclusion AS. There were no discrepancies. 2.3 | Data extraction and quality appraisal 2.3.1 | Data extraction Data extraction was discussed in a SUAG sub group and piloted. A standard data extraction form, used by AS, extracted basic infor- mation such as country, methods, participant socio- demographics and assessment form (see Table S3). First authors were contacted (where possible) for clarifications and to describe client involvement. Extraction of study findings is described under Data Synthesis. 2.3.2 | Quality appraisal We piloted three quality appraisal approaches19,20 including a be- spoke approach used in EPPI- Centre reviews (these build on the quality assessment frameworks of previous EPPI reviews).21-24 Like Malpass and colleagues, we concluded that the CASP included a range of issues whilst remaining manageable.25 To ensure the review was client focused, we modified the CASP to include intersectionali- ties and client involvement (see Table S4). Feder et al26 piloted four approaches to scoring the CASP and found a simple unweighted score was most effective, and so we also adopted this approach. Our aim was not to exclude papers based on quality as there is a lack of consensus over quality appraisal meth- ods, and poor or limited reporting does not necessarily equate to unreliable findings.25 Instead, we aimed to gain some understanding of the strength of the evidence base and have reported the overall quality of the body of literature, rather than individual scores. 2.4 | Data synthesis Literature was analysed using thematic synthesis.27 First, literature was read and extensive notes were taken, with the whole text con- sidered data. From this, a draft coding frame was created, discussed by the SUAG and applied using Microsoft Excel. The coding frame contained descriptive and analytical themes, subtheme, linkages across the data and indicative quotes and was refined and expanded as coding continued. Findings were discussed in a reflexive data workshop with SUAG members.28 3 | R E S U LT S 3.1 | Description of included studies Searching identified 12 743 references, with 13 studies relevant to the review—see Figure 1, PRISMA diagram, for the flow of papers through the review. There were two PhD theses, six reports and five peer- reviewed papers. Nine studies were from the UK, with one each from the Netherlands, United States, Canada and Israel (Table 1). Five studies explored IAPT (described in the Introduction); this involves a tele- phone assessment followed by allocation to therapy (if eligible), typi- cally a short course of CBT. All but one study was published in or after 2005 with six studies published in 2015- 2017. One study used a sur- vey alone and five studies used semi- structured interviewing alone. The remainder used interviews along with one other method (survey, focus group, audio- recording or written account of the assessment). Ethnicity was not reported in four studies, and the majority of par- ticipants were white in all but two remaining studies. Overall, more women were included than men. Sexual orientation was described in two studies, with around half of people identifying as heterosexual in one study and around three quarters in the second. 3.2 | Quality of included studies Quality appraisal scores ranged from 5 to 11 (maximum 12) with a mean of 8. Reports tended to score higher than peer- reviewed pa- pers, perhaps related to journal word space restrictions.29 Studies were strong on the appropriateness of design (eg, recruitment), 4 | SWEENEY Et al. basic reporting (eg, aims) and value. Around half the studies in- volved service users/clients in the research process (7/13) and/or considered issues relating to intersectionalities (5/13). Few studies fully reported ethical issues (3/13) or critically examined research relationships (1/13); all that had were led by or had high levels of client involvement. Notably, three studies were conducted by clini- cal researchers employed at the sites being explored and one by a researcher employed by the service under study. 3.3 | Findings The results are clustered around three elements of the assessment process: the journey to the assessment, at the assessment and after the assessment, with a number of themes and sub themes identi- fied at each point—Table 2 provides an overview. Quotes directly from research participants are differentiated in the text from author quotes by the use of italics. Table S5 gives a fuller overview of the findings through further exemplar quotations. The SUAG drew strong parallels between the preliminary results, their personal experiences and the findings of broader survivor- led studies.30 There were occasional points of divergence, most notably around experiences of post- assessment feedback. During the data workshop, the group again felt that the findings reflected their expe- riences, identifying areas of importance and implications which have informed the discussion. 4 | T H E J O U R N E Y T O T H E A S S E S S M E N T 4.1 | Distress and desperation The drugs and psychiatrist were not working – I was des- perate (Morris) People’s reasons for seeking assessments were predominantly captured in four papers,31-34 often conveying a sense of despera- tion and crisis. Morris summarized people’s reasons as a triangula- tion between (a) current life events (such as divorce); (b) past events and behaviours (eg, childhood sexual abuse/self- harm); and (c) cur- rent feelings and behaviours (eg, anger/eating problems).31 Women often tolerated enormous amounts of distress before seeking help.31 Despite this, some, men and women, questioned the legitimacy of their right to support or attention31,35,36 and felt grateful to receive a service.31,37 FIGURE 1 Prisma diagram showing flow of studies through the review 10 991 records found through peer reviewed electronic database searching 7441 records clearly lacked relevance 82 full text articles assessed for eligibility 77 articles excluded: 3: not mental health 57: not talking therapy assessment 9: not qualitative 4: ineligible study type 2: not service users 2: could not be retrieved 5 studies met inclusion criteria 1752 records identified through non-peer review electronic database searches 7523 records screened (after duplicates removed) Additional articles double screened and judged to meet the inclusion criteria: 4: contact with experts/advisory groups 1: forward/backward citation tracking 2: contact with included authors 1: call for literature 13 studies included in qualitative synthesis: 5: peer reviewed 2: theses 6: reports | 5SWEENEY Et al. 4.2 | Seeking a new approach I was tired of being locked up (McDonagh) Many people had tried different approaches to easing their dis- tress, including traditional psychological and talking therapies, men- tal health services, alternative therapies and self- help. People using specialist services (for women or people diagnosed with personality disorder) often reported negative contacts with psychiatry which motivated them to seek a new approach.31-33,36 For some using spe- cialist personality disorder services, the service was considered a “last resort” as all prior attempts to engage with mental health ser- vices had been unsuccessful.32 4.3 | Gatekeeping [It is] discouraging when it takes courage to ask for help and you are forced to ask again and again (Hamilton) Whilst approaching a therapy service often took courage,31,35,37 Hann found that people with poor assessment experiences had often struggled with convoluted referrals.38 GPs were important gatekeep- ers and could be a barrier to referral if they lacked knowledge about local services.35,37-39 For some in contact with mental health services or with negative experiences of psychiatry, self- referral was an import- ant way of bypassing medical establishments.31 4.4 | A difficult wait When patients are most in need and have the least support (Hamilton) Anticipating the assessment was often highly emotional: people described feeling nervous; daunted; scared; relieved; desperate; fright- ened of rejection; concerned about the legitimacy of their claim to sup- port; hopeless, “it’s this or nothing”; hopeful of being “cured”; and eager to begin.31,32,34,38 There was a sense that therapy is “a restricted commodity”,31 particularly in the context of UK funding cuts.38 Consequently, people appreciated short waits between referral and assess- ment.31,35,37,38 For others, having their hopes raised and then waiting for an assessment—sometimes extensively—at a time of intense distress were very difficult32,37-39 and caused some to drop out of the process. There was a need for basic contacts (for instance, a letter confirming a waiting list place) and support, although not everyone wanted interim support.32,35,37-39 The length of the wait was easier to bear if people had been experi- encing difficulties for a long time, or were waiting for a therapist of their choice (eg, a black female therapist).31 5 | AT T H E A S S E S S M E N T 5.1 | I wanted to know that I could share an aspect of myself (McDonagh) Fundamental to assessments is that the client shares something of themselves with the assessor, often relating to difficult and painful experiences. This re- quires support, a sense of trust and safety, and, at times, a shared identity, and can cause additional trauma or spark the beginnings of catharsis. 5.1.1 | Traumatic, cathartic You start talking….it’s amazing how much emotion is just bubbling under the surface (Morris) Undergoing an assessment was often an emotional experience. Whilst this could be cathartic and validating, sparking new insights,31,34,36 it could also be painful and traumatic, raising difficult and painful issues without sufficient support.32 A significant determining factor appeared to be the degree of collaboration: explicitly collaborative assessments conducted across multiple sessions were often experienced as empowering,34,36 whilst assessments with multiple sessions that were done to a person were more often experienced as traumatic32; this was in the context of the latter often being a “last resort”.32 Positive assessments could inspire hope and be a catalyst for change,31,34,36 providing a foundation and direction for therapy.34 Good outcomes were sometimes traceable to assessments.31 5.1.2 | Opening up, closing down You’ve got to watch what you say. You definitely don’t want to show extreme signs of anger or suicidal thoughts. (Danna) Danna described participants’, “ambivalence … between feeling compelled to share difficult aspects of themselves … but simulta- neously heeding the natural tendency to protect oneself due to the implicit vulnerability that opening oneself up to others entails”.34 A participant who had previously been hospitalized following an assess- ment was “definitely guarded”.34 Similarly, Morris found that whilst some women opened up, for others it was important to establish a therapeutic relationship first; she describes one woman disclosing ex- periences of childhood sexual abuse in the assessment but waiting a year to disclose bulimia because this was experienced as so shameful.31 5.1.3 | Validation, pathologization l did not want my lesbianism looked on as pathology. Did not want to be blamed for violence done to me (McDonagh) 6 | SWEENEY Et al. TABLE 1 Overview of studies included in the synthesis Lead author Year Country Article type Service Assessment (purpose, assessor and procedures) Study aims Data collection and analysis Participants (assesses only): numbers, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and age Client involvement in the research processa Barber 2017 UK Independent report Sutton Uplift: an IAPT, well- being, primary care management and secondary mental health care assessment service To establish service eligibility. The assessment could have been in any one of the four Sutton Uplift services. Procedures and assessors not described To explore how Sutton Uplift is perceived by people who have been offered or used the service with a particular focus on access, and the support offered or received and its impact Survey. Semi- structured interviews. Focus groups. Co- produced thematic- based analysis 128 people surveyed, 29 people interviewed. Survey: most female (n = 86), white British (n = 90) and aged 36- 45 (n = 36) or 46- 55 (n = 26) (range 18+). Sexual orientation not stated Research led by service users/ clients Bryant 2007 UK Independent report Statutory and non- statutory psychological therapies in Leeds To establish service eligibility. Procedures and assessors not described To explore service users views about accessing psychological therapy services in Leeds, UK, with a particular focus on pathways, information, choice, and understanding and expectations of therapy Semi- structured interviews. Framework approach 20 participants. Roughly half female, majority white British, majority 31- 45 (n = 7) and 46- 59 (n = 6) (range 18+). Sexual orientation not stated Research team included a service user/client researcher and service user/client consultants Cape 2005 UK Peer reviewed Routine clinical assessment letters including one psychology outpatient department Purpose of assessment unclear. 19 people assessed by a psychologist, 13 by a psychiatrist (data relating to psychologists included in synthesis). Procedures not described. To explore people’s immediate reactions to the routine clinical assessment letters sent by their psychiatrists and psychologists to their GP/other referring professionals Semi- structured interviews. Thematic analysis 32 participants. Half female, majority white except 2 African Caribbean and 1 mixed heritage. Age ranged from 20 to 62 (median 35). Sexual orientation not stated None apparent Crawford 2007 UK Independent report Specialist services for people diagnosed with personality disorder (data relating to two therapy services included in synthesis) To establish service eligibility. One service used multiple meetings and forms; a second service used two meetings and a computer assessment. Assessors not described The qualitative component aimed to explore individuals’ experiences with a particular focus on identifying factors that influence perceptions of service quality and outcomes, and decisions to engage with or withdraw from services. Semi- structured interviews. Focus groups. Framework analysis 108 service user participants plus 15 ex- service users. 70% female; 71% white British, 18% white other and 11% BME. Age and sexual orientation not stated. Qualitative study was led and conducted by service user/ client researchers Danna 2011 United States PhD thesis University counselling centre Purpose not clear. Collaborative psychological assessments (or therapeutic assessment) including computer testing and feedback conducted by trainee psychologists. To understand client and therapist experiences of collaborative assessment with in order to improve practice. Semi- structured interviews (including videoed extracts of the assessment). Written description of assessment experiences. Grounded theory. 5 participants. 4 male, all white, age ranged from 20 to 50 (median and mean 31). None apparent De Saeger 2016 The Netherlands Peer reviewed Clinic for people diagnosed with personality disorder Purpose unclear. Collaborative therapeutic assessment: four sessions including psychological testing (eg, Rorschach) followed by written and face- to- face feedback. Assessors not described. To elucidate and explain largely favourable process outcome results in an RCT, to generate hypotheses about the effective ingredients of therapeutic assessments from service users’ perspectives and to tighten the conceptual understanding of therapeutic assessment. Semi- structured interviews. Modified consensual qualitative research 10 participants. 4 female, mean age 47.3 (SD = 11). Ethnicity and sexual orientation not stated. None apparent Fornells- Ambrojo 2017 UK Peer reviewed Routine Outcome Measures (ROMs) in IAPT- SMI (severe mental illness) demonstration site Purpose and assessors unclear. Use of ROMs at baseline only included in data synthesis. To explore service user perceptions of Routine Outcome Measurement (ROM) focusing particularly on satisfaction and experience. Survey. thematic analysis 257 participants. Half female, 56% from BME communities, mean age 37 (SD = 11.9, range 17- 68). Sexual orientation not stated. None apparent Hamilton 2011 UK Independent report IAPT To establish service eligibility. Assessors and procedures unclear. To evaluate London IAPT services with a particular focus on understanding service user satisfaction. Survey. Semi- structured interviews. Focus groups. Thematic analysis? 116 people surveyed, 19 focus group participants, 20 interview participants. Survey and interviews: around three quarters female, 60% white British, age range 19- 69 (survey mean age = 37; interviews mean age = 41). Sexual orientation not stated. High levels of service user/client involvement (Continues) | 7SWEENEY Et al. TABLE 1 Overview of studies included in the synthesis Lead author Year Country Article type Service Assessment (purpose, assessor and procedures) Study aims Data collection and analysis Participants (assesses only): numbers, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and age Client involvement in the research processa Barber 2017 UK Independent report Sutton Uplift: an IAPT, well- being, primary care management and secondary mental health care assessment service To establish service eligibility. The assessment could have been in any one of the four Sutton Uplift services. Procedures and assessors not described To explore how Sutton Uplift is perceived by people who have been offered or used the service with a particular focus on access, and the support offered or received and its impact Survey. Semi- structured interviews. Focus groups. Co- produced thematic- based analysis 128 people surveyed, 29 people interviewed. Survey: most female (n = 86), white British (n = 90) and aged 36- 45 (n = 36) or 46- 55 (n = 26) (range 18+). Sexual orientation not stated Research led by service users/ clients Bryant 2007 UK Independent report Statutory and non- statutory psychological therapies in Leeds To establish service eligibility. Procedures and assessors not described To explore service users views about accessing psychological therapy services in Leeds, UK, with a particular focus on pathways, information, choice, and understanding and expectations of therapy Semi- structured interviews. Framework approach 20 participants. Roughly half female, majority white British, majority 31- 45 (n = 7) and 46- 59 (n = 6) (range 18+). Sexual orientation not stated Research team included a service user/client researcher and service user/client consultants Cape 2005 UK Peer reviewed Routine clinical assessment letters including one psychology outpatient department Purpose of assessment unclear. 19 people assessed by a psychologist, 13 by a psychiatrist (data relating to psychologists included in synthesis). Procedures not described. To explore people’s immediate reactions to the routine clinical assessment letters sent by their psychiatrists and psychologists to their GP/other referring professionals Semi- structured interviews. Thematic analysis 32 participants. Half female, majority white except 2 African Caribbean and 1 mixed heritage. Age ranged from 20 to 62 (median 35). Sexual orientation not stated None apparent Crawford 2007 UK Independent report Specialist services for people diagnosed with personality disorder (data relating to two therapy services included in synthesis) To establish service eligibility. One service used multiple meetings and forms; a second service used two meetings and a computer assessment. Assessors not described The qualitative component aimed to explore individuals’ experiences with a particular focus on identifying factors that influence perceptions of service quality and outcomes, and decisions to engage with or withdraw from services. Semi- structured interviews. Focus groups. Framework analysis 108 service user participants plus 15 ex- service users. 70% female; 71% white British, 18% white other and 11% BME. Age and sexual orientation not stated. Qualitative study was led and conducted by service user/ client researchers Danna 2011 United States PhD thesis University counselling centre Purpose not clear. Collaborative psychological assessments (or therapeutic assessment) including computer testing and feedback conducted by trainee psychologists. To understand client and therapist experiences of collaborative assessment with in order to improve practice. Semi- structured interviews (including videoed extracts of the assessment). Written description of assessment experiences. Grounded theory. 5 participants. 4 male, all white, age ranged from 20 to 50 (median and mean 31). None apparent De Saeger 2016 The Netherlands Peer reviewed Clinic for people diagnosed with personality disorder Purpose unclear. Collaborative therapeutic assessment: four sessions including psychological testing (eg, Rorschach) followed by written and face- to- face feedback. Assessors not described. To elucidate and explain largely favourable process outcome results in an RCT, to generate hypotheses about the effective ingredients of therapeutic assessments from service users’ perspectives and to tighten the conceptual understanding of therapeutic assessment. Semi- structured interviews. Modified consensual qualitative research 10 participants. 4 female, mean age 47.3 (SD = 11). Ethnicity and sexual orientation not stated. None apparent Fornells- Ambrojo 2017 UK Peer reviewed Routine Outcome Measures (ROMs) in IAPT- SMI (severe mental illness) demonstration site Purpose and assessors unclear. Use of ROMs at baseline only included in data synthesis. To explore service user perceptions of Routine Outcome Measurement (ROM) focusing particularly on satisfaction and experience. Survey. thematic analysis 257 participants. Half female, 56% from BME communities, mean age 37 (SD = 11.9, range 17- 68). Sexual orientation not stated. None apparent Hamilton 2011 UK Independent report IAPT To establish service eligibility. Assessors and procedures unclear. To evaluate London IAPT services with a particular focus on understanding service user satisfaction. Survey. Semi- structured interviews. Focus groups. Thematic analysis? 116 people surveyed, 19 focus group participants, 20 interview participants. Survey and interviews: around three quarters female, 60% white British, age range 19- 69 (survey mean age = 37; interviews mean age = 41). Sexual orientation not stated. High levels of service user/client involvement (Continues) 8 | SWEENEY Et al. Feeling believed and heard had a validating impact,31,36,38 whilst feeling unheard was at times experienced as a betrayal.39 For some using women’s and “personality disorder” services, feeling validated or pathol- ogized was entwined with previous experiences of psychiatry.31-33,36 McDonagh found that most “traditional [non- feminist] therapists denied the women’s histories of sexual abuse, failed to ask about sexual abuse … failed to incorporate such information into assess- ments when it was provided… [and] tended to pathologise the ef- fects of the sexual abuse”.33 Consequently, some women sought women’s/feminist therapy that would “see beyond psychiatric diag- noses to the person and their life experiences underneath”.31 When women felt that therapy services were becoming medical, they could lose trust; for instance, one woman who was asked for her psychia- trist’s details felt pathologized and disengaged shortly after starting therapy.31 Similarly, Bryant found that some people selected a ser- vice because it could respond to a particular issue (eg, sexual abuse, addiction) or because female counsellors were available (preferred by a minority of both women and men).35 In their analysis, Lavie- Ajayi found that the client’s (Sima’s) com- plex ecological accounts of her difficulties were ignored in favour of the therapist’s (Rivka’s) individualist interpretation.40 Sima “tried to balance the expectation to be a ‘good client’ and not challenge the medical internal discourse while retaining her right not to accept the treatment recommendations”. Post- assessment she asserted: Instead of insisting and … get locked on psychiatric med- ication, one could think beyond that … if she had helped me to solve the problem at my workplace, she would have cured me. 5.1.4 | Social identity Understanding my background in order to understand me (Morris) Lead author Year Country Article type Service Assessment (purpose, assessor and procedures) Study aims Data collection and analysis Participants (assesses only): numbers, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and age Client involvement in the research processa Hann 2015 UK Independent report IAPT Varies by service, not always clear. To understand the views of people who completed, did not engage with or discontin- ued therapy with a particular focus on effectiveness, satisfaction and recommendations. Survey. Semi- structured interviews. Thematic analysis 305 people surveyed (241 IAPT service users, 64 non- service users). 61 people interviewed. Survey: three quarters white and female, mean age 40 (range 16- 76). Interviews: two- thirds female, three quarters white, mean age 41 (range 20- 76). Sexual orientation not stated. Research team included three service user/client researchers and two mainstream researchers Lavie- Ajayi 2017 Israel Peer reviewed Psychotherapy in a community mental health centre To establish service eligibility. Interview by a therapist/ senior clinical psychologist To explore, through discourse analysis, the tension between hegemonic and critical discourses in the clinical interaction within a single assessment encounter between a therapist and service user. Audiotaped intake. Semi- structured interviews. Critical discourse analysis One female participant, Mizrahi (Jew of North African/Asian origin), aged 53. Sexual orientation not stated. None apparent McDonagh 1997 Canada PhD thesis Traditional (including psychiatric, psychoanalysis) and feminist therapy Not clear, varies by service. Data synthesis includes data relating to psychological therapy (including psychoanalysis, psychotherapy etc.) To explore women’s subjective experiences of therapy for survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Survey. Semi- structured interviews. Thematic analysis? 92 women survivors of CSA surveyed, 11 women CSA survivors interviewed. Survey: half heterosexual, 90% white, median age 36 (range = 19- 58). Interviews: half heterosexual, majority white, median age 37 (range 19- 52). Researcher identifies as having personal experience of the topic Marshall 2016 UK Peer reviewed IAPT To establish service eligibility. Assessors and procedures unclear. To explore people’s reasons for not attending therapy. Semi- structured interviews. Thematic analysis using data mapping sheets 14 participants, 10 female. Age range 18- 64. Ethnicity and sexual orientation not stated. Minimal Morris 2005 UK Report Individual or group psychoanalytic psychotherapy at a women’s therapy centre To assess service eligibility and whether group or individual therapy more appropriate through an interview. Assessors are therapists in the centre To highlight women’s needs, assess whether psychoanalytical psychotherapy helped them to progress in their lives and identify possible gaps in service provision with a view to improving future women’s experiences. Semi- structured interviews. Framework analysis 47 women interviewed. 26 white British, 35 heterosexual, majority aged 30- 39 (n = 21) (range = 25- 66). Research led by a service user/ client researcher aClarified through email communication with study authors where possible. TABLE 1 (Continued) | 9SWEENEY Et al. Through their analysis, Lavie- Ajayi concluded that gender, ethnicity and class had affected the assessment encounter between Sima and Rivka.40 Morris also found that social identity shaped assessments: being assessed by someone with a shared cultural background and/or language meant women could be understood in their own words and contexts.31 5.1.5 | Staff impact I felt that someone understood and cared (Fornells-Ambrojo) Morris found that therapists were typically described in two ways, “those who appeared friendly, welcoming and encouraging and those who were perceived as … cold, neutral or very quiet”.31 People who found the assessment difficult typically had a neutral or quiet therapist. Where this occurred, the person sometimes went on to dislike their therapist or group, often disengaging after a few sessions. Conversely, experiencing kindness could be “heart- warming”,36 creating a sense of hope,37 with the manner of giving feedback either opening or closing opportunities for self- reflection.34 Staff could also be experienced as patronizing, or failing to respond to people as individual’s, preventing engagement.39 McDonagh found that women who sought feminist therapy were more likely to interview their prospective therapists, ef- fectively assessing their assessor.33 Receptionists also impacted on people’s experiences, Hamilton concluding, Reception staff are vital to creating a positive atmosphere in the service. We had reports of friendly, helpful and effi- cient staff, but we also heard about staff who were snappy and unfriendly. People talked about the courage involved in coming to the IAPT service. What might seem like a small gesture on the part of individual staff members may have a huge impact on whether patients feel relaxed in attending the service. (37) Lead author Year Country Article type Service Assessment (purpose, assessor and procedures) Study aims Data collection and analysis Participants (assesses only): numbers, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and age Client involvement in the research processa Hann 2015 UK Independent report IAPT Varies by service, not always clear. To understand the views of people who completed, did not engage with or discontin- ued therapy with a particular focus on effectiveness, satisfaction and recommendations. Survey. Semi- structured interviews. Thematic analysis 305 people surveyed (241 IAPT service users, 64 non- service users). 61 people interviewed. Survey: three quarters white and female, mean age 40 (range 16- 76). Interviews: two- thirds female, three quarters white, mean age 41 (range 20- 76). Sexual orientation not stated. Research team included three service user/client researchers and two mainstream researchers Lavie- Ajayi 2017 Israel Peer reviewed Psychotherapy in a community mental health centre To establish service eligibility. Interview by a therapist/ senior clinical psychologist To explore, through discourse analysis, the tension between hegemonic and critical discourses in the clinical interaction within a single assessment encounter between a therapist and service user. Audiotaped intake. Semi- structured interviews. Critical discourse analysis One female participant, Mizrahi (Jew of North African/Asian origin), aged 53. Sexual orientation not stated. None apparent McDonagh 1997 Canada PhD thesis Traditional (including psychiatric, psychoanalysis) and feminist therapy Not clear, varies by service. Data synthesis includes data relating to psychological therapy (including psychoanalysis, psychotherapy etc.) To explore women’s subjective experiences of therapy for survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Survey. Semi- structured interviews. Thematic analysis? 92 women survivors of CSA surveyed, 11 women CSA survivors interviewed. Survey: half heterosexual, 90% white, median age 36 (range = 19- 58). Interviews: half heterosexual, majority white, median age 37 (range 19- 52). Researcher identifies as having personal experience of the topic Marshall 2016 UK Peer reviewed IAPT To establish service eligibility. Assessors and procedures unclear. To explore people’s reasons for not attending therapy. Semi- structured interviews. Thematic analysis using data mapping sheets 14 participants, 10 female. Age range 18- 64. Ethnicity and sexual orientation not stated. Minimal Morris 2005 UK Report Individual or group psychoanalytic psychotherapy at a women’s therapy centre To assess service eligibility and whether group or individual therapy more appropriate through an interview. Assessors are therapists in the centre To highlight women’s needs, assess whether psychoanalytical psychotherapy helped them to progress in their lives and identify possible gaps in service provision with a view to improving future women’s experiences. Semi- structured interviews. Framework analysis 47 women interviewed. 26 white British, 35 heterosexual, majority aged 30- 39 (n = 21) (range = 25- 66). Research led by a service user/ client researcher aClarified through email communication with study authors where possible. TABLE 1 (Continued) 10 | SWEENEY Et al. TABLE 2 Overview of people’s experiences of being assessed for psychological therapies Phase of the assessment process Theme, illustrative quote and summary of content Sub theme, illustrative quote and summary of content JOURNEY TO THE ASSESSMENT Distress and desperation “The drugs and psychiatrist were not working – I was desperate” (Morris) D esperation and crisis underpinning help- seeking; legitimacy of claim to support; gratitude - Seeking a new approach “I was tired of being locked up” (McDonagh) T rying to ease one’s distress; failure of other approaches; assessment as a last resort - Gatekeeping “[ It is] discouraging when it takes courage to ask for help and you are forced to ask again and again” (Hamilton) C ourage to seek therapy; barriers to referral; importance of self- referral - A difficult wait “ When patients are most in need and have the least support” (Hamilton) A nticipating the assessment; therapy as a restricted commodity; waiting; information and support needs - AT THE ASSESSMENT “I wanted to know that I could share an aspect of myself” (McDonagh) Feeling safe to share parts of yourself; beginnings Traumatic, cathartic “ You start talking….it’s amazing how much emotion is just bubbling under the surface” (Morris) D istress and catharsis; the importance of collaboration; a catalyst for change Opening up, closing down “ You’ve got to watch what you say. You definitely don’t want to show extreme signs of anger or suicidal thoughts” (Danna) O pening up and holding back; the importance of therapeutic relationships Validation, pathologization “l did not want my lesbianism looked on as pathology. Did not want to be blamed for violence done to me” (McDonagh) Feeling believed; being pathologized; the role of specialist services Social identity “ Understanding my background in order to understand me” (Morris) T he impact of social identity; sharing language, sharing backgrounds Staff impact “I felt that someone understood and cared” (Fornells- Ambrojo) Assessor qualities; assessing the assessor; receptionists Assessment techniques “I t is difficult and pointless to quantify how I am feeling” (Fornells- Ambrojo) Positive, negative and ambivalent experiences of techniques “I didn’t know what rights I had” (McDonagh) Rights, information and agency Information giving and gathering “I didn’t know what would happen at all” (Marshall) I nformation giving and gathering; exercising agency, informa- tion needs; information exchange Authority and agency “ The interviewer kept insisting that I answer the questions even though I clearly said I felt uncomfortable” (Hann) Assessor as powerful agent; collaborative assessments (Continues) | 11SWEENEY Et al. 5.1.6 | Assessment techniques It is difficult and pointless to quantify how I am feeling (Fornells-Ambrojo) Techniques—ranging from Rorshach to symptom measures— were often experienced positively, helping people express them- selves (particularly where spoken communication was difficult); gain clarity around feelings; positively reframe issues; and open space for thinking and reflection.34,36,41 Where people were ambivalent or disliked techniques, it was typically because they were lengthy, challenging, upsetting, inflexible or difficult to engage with.31-33,39,40 Some were sceptical about computer judgements and preferred to talk, “I mean, it’s like, I could have told you that”.34 Whilst partici- pants in De Seager were positive about testing, one of the only neg- ative comments across the study was a person wondering “why all these tests”.36 5.2 | I didn’t know what rights I had (McDonagh) There is an inherent, typically unacknowledged power imbalance be- tween clients and assessors. Whilst there are individual differences in the extent to which people wish to exercise agency and choice, people nonetheless have basic rights and information needs that are not always met. 5.2.1 | Authority and agency The interviewer kept insisting that I answer the questions even though I clearly said I felt uncomfortable (Hann) Assessors were often experienced as the people with “authority” who “know best”.31 Whilst this could be positive, resulting in direc- tion from an expert about whether and which therapy to try,31,37 for others it compromised agency. For instance, Sima (Lavie- Ajayi) had to navigate a difficult path through her assessment without overtly challenging Rivka’s discourse.40 Conversely, explicitly collaborative assessments were typically valued, engendering a sense of equality or involvement which enhanced agency.34,36 5.2.2 | Information giving and gathering I didn’t know what would happen at all (Marshall) The provision of information can be one- way, or “more akin to a dialogue than to unilateral information gathering”.36 The extent to which clients exercised agency varied: whilst some were happy to be guided by the therapist,31,37 others asked questions,31,33 or wanted to but felt unable.31 Information needs included: alternative local ther- apy services; practicalities; and details of the therapeutic process.35 Phase of the assessment process Theme, illustrative quote and summary of content Sub theme, illustrative quote and summary of content AFTER THE ASSESSMENT Another difficult wait “The coming weeks could not come fast enough” (Danna) Ready for therapy; the pain of waiting - Receiving feedback “I don’t want to be an ignorant patient” (Cape) Prerequisite for therapeutic alliance; mixed experiences of written feedback - Making choices “You get what you are given” (Bryant) L ack of informed choice over therapy or therapist; trusting the assessor; choice and socioeconomics Assessor-therapist continuity “I’ m not a particularly open person. So for me to do what I did in the first interview, and to have to do that all over again…. I thought that I had started therapy” (Morris) L ack of advance warning; familiarization and consist- ency; continuity and socioeconomics Not going on to therapy “I just needed an answer as to what to do… I just felt absolutely worthless.” (Bryant) The pain of rejection; dropping out TABLE 2 (Continued) 12 | SWEENEY Et al. Lacking information created uncertainty39 and could reinforce a sense of secrecy surrounding therapy35 and feel damaging.31 In particular, not being informed about the “rules of therapy” at the assessment (such as the use of silences) could cause people to subsequently disengage.35 Further, it could mean that boundary breaches were not recognized, compromising rights: I wish I had known more because my first therapist over- stepped my boundaries and I didn’t know what rights I had. (33) Conversely, sharing good, clear information was valued,33,35,37 re- sulting in people feeling better prepared and able to exercise choice.35 6 | A F T E R T H E A S S E S S M E N T 6.1 | Another difficult wait? The coming weeks could not come fast enough (Danna) Whilst some people left the assessment hopeful and “Willing to go through the fire”,34 often with the understanding that therapy would be a difficult process, others felt “opened up” and had a potentially dif- ficult wait for therapy.36 6.2 | Receiving feedback I don’t want to be an ignorant patient (Cape) Some studies described the impact of receiving face- to- face or written feedback about the assessment and its outcomes. Face- to- face feedback created opportunities to challenge misinterpretations and for many was a prerequisite for a trusting relationship.34,42 Whilst written feedback could mean people felt listened to, understood and validated,36,42 or made their problems feel contained and manageable, for others it was intensely distressing.42 6.3 | Making choices You get what you are given (Bryant) There were few opportunities to discuss therapy options35 and little choice about which therapy or therapist people received post- assessment.31,35,37,39 Some accepted this, trusting their referrer or assessor, or feeling grateful to receive any service, whilst others felt disappointed and unable to make informed choices.31,35,37 Barber re- ported that one person felt that being assigned to the wrong service post- assessment was a “waste of money, time, resources … putting people to the right service is fundamental”.43 People with means were able to exercise choice, selecting their therapist privately.33 6.4 | Assessor - therapist continuity I’m not a particularly open person. So for me to do what I did in the first interview, and to have to do that all over again…. I thought that I had started therapy (Morris) Many were unaware that their assessor would not be their thera- pist, and this could be upsetting. People who had the same assessor and therapist valued the familiarization and consistency.34,37 This issue was avoided where people had the means to purchase therapy.33 6.5 | Not going on to therapy I just needed an answer as to what to do… I just felt abso- lutely worthless. (Bryant) Bryant explored the experiences of four people who were “willing to go through the fire” but were not offered therapy.35 All had long- term mental health service contact histories. None understood why they were declined therapy and none appeared to have received infor- mation about alternative services. People consequently felt powerless; angry; frustrated; rejected; bewildered; disappointed; hopeless; and worthless. Marshall explored the experiences of 14 people who disen- gaged from IAPT, finding that lengthy waits without support, rigid assessments, a lack of information about therapy, patronizing com- munication styles and a lack of individualized approaches were all contributory factors.39 Whilst many who had taken the decision to have an assessment had therefore decided to accept therapy once offered,31 others de- cided not to proceed with therapy. Reasons for declining included because people had needed help urgently; were no longer well enough to engage in therapy; or had found alternative support.35,38 7 | D I S C U S S I O N This review synthesizes qualitative research on people’s experiences of being assessed for psychological therapies; the findings can use- fully inform best practice around assessments and can also be un- derstood through trauma- informed (TIA) principles. In fully understanding people’s experiences, a process- based conceptualization was adopted, rather than seeing assessments as one- off encounters. This process arguably begins when people are finding the courage to seek an assessment and ends when people are waiting—typically without support—for therapy to begin, or at- tempting to recover from a rejection. This mirrors the conceptualiza- tion adopted in the TIA literature and proposed elsewhere44,45 and enables a greater understanding of the ways in which assessments impact people’s experiences. | 13SWEENEY Et al. The extent of collaboration, along with therapeutic alliance,46 can determine whether clients have positive assessment experi- ences that are empowering, facilitate change and promote agency and hope, or negative experiences that incite distress, powerless- ness and hopelessness. Collaboration is also a fundamental principle of TIAs, meaning that the inherent power imbalance between staff and clients is understood, with relationships based on mutuality, re- spect, trust, connection and hope.12 Trauma- informed assessments are shared, collaborative processes which seek to discuss and clarify connections, sequences, coping adaptations and strengths.14 It is possible that such assessments could reduce dropout and improve experience through creating a high- quality initial encounter, with further research warranted. Whilst the need for collaboration may seem self- evident, explicitly collaborative assessments were not the norm. Moreover, across psychiatric services, service users typically feel that they are done to, rather than with.47 Whilst collaborative assessments may be an important exam- ple of good practice, the collaborative assessment studies we re- viewed were conducted by clinicians employed in those services.28 Consequently, independent service user research is needed as it is uniquely positioned to understand client experience.48 There is also a danger that therapist- led research could interpret client’s experiences through a therapeutic, rather than research lens; this could, for instance, result in experiences being dismissed as trans- ference, or for what they reveal about a person’s psyche, rather than what they reveal about a service.17 Referring to client involvement, Trivedi writes, getting service users to identify for themselves the rea- sons why they might have dropped out and then working with them to address the issues could help make services more ‘user- friendly’ with a subsequent fall in dropout rates. (17) Seeking, waiting for, undergoing and moving on from an assess- ment can be intensely distressing, and the desperation underpin- ning help- seeking, as well as the potentially negative impacts of assessments, should not be underestimated. Within this, the tension between “opening up,” often to persuade an assessor that you de- serve therapy, and being “guarded,” for instance to protect oneself from overwhelm, can be understood as rational struggles. In line with TIAs, assessors must carefully manage disclosures and attend to emotional safety.15 Waiting for an assessment, or for therapy to begin, was particularly difficult for people in intense distress and could cause people to disengage. Services should consider the pos- sibilities for rapid assessment and interim support, as well as sup- port where therapy is not offered (potentially as simple as onward referrals). Our review also points to the vital role of women’s therapy ser- vices, particularly for women who have experienced gender- based violence and/or who self- identify as lesbian. In a climate of fund- ing uncertainty, particularly in the UK, this finding is notable.49 We also found that where people had experienced coercive psychiatry, assessments that felt medicalizing prevented engagement. As a min- imum, assessors should explain why they are requesting informa- tion, consistent with TIAs.14 Beyond this, whilst there clearly needs to be a fit between the frameworks of understanding held by the client, the assessor and the subsequent therapist, in practice this fit is often restricted to those with socioeconomic means, with UK NHS clients sometimes feeling “you get what you’re given.” Our review also highlighted the link between information and rights, with people having clear information needs at each point of the assessment process. Yet there was a sense that traditional psy- chotherapies in particular can be secretive, with unspoken “rules”.17 Disclosing these rules within the assessment process enables in- formed choice, can prevent disengagement, and empowers people to understand rule breaches, particularly pertinent in the light of the #MeToo movement (a social media campaign raising awareness about the prevalence of sexual violence and harassment50). Ideally, people undergoing assessment would be informed of an indepen- dent person or organization that they could contact to discuss concerns.51 Whilst there is an inherent difficulty in building therapeutic alliance within one- off encounters, we nonetheless found that people were less likely to disengage if their assessor demon- strated warmth, kindness and collaboration. Receptionists also impacted on people’s experiences. Within TIAs, it is understood that all staff, including clinical, domestic and administrative, shape people’s experiences and consequently all staff receive TIA training.12 7.1 | Study limitations and further research Methodological limitations include that some review work, including the thematic synthesis, was conducted by one reviewer. However, the review had high levels of service user involvement throughout which can enhance quality.52 The emerging synthesis was discussed with the SUAG using reflexive techniques to understand the inter- play between our experiences and data interpretations. As thematic synthesis is inherently subjective,53 others may have arrived at dif- ferent analytical accounts. Quality appraisal found that intersectionalities, ethics and re- search relationships were explored infrequently. Consequently, we are unable to report the experiences of people from minority com- munities. Future research should employ a critical understanding of research relationships, including the experiences of diverse popula- tions. Given the unique importance of women’s services, future re- search should also consider experiences within services accessed by social identity (eg, for people who identify as LGBTQ) or experience (eg, sexual violence survivors). The majority of studies (8/13) had not been peer reviewed. This may be because collaborative and service user- led research has not historically entered mainstream journals, only recently gaining recognition as a valid form of enquiry.54 Interestingly, non- peer- reviewed literature typically scored higher in the quality assessment. 14 | SWEENEY Et al. The majority of papers were from the UK which has the NHS and IAPT programme. This has shaped our findings, for instance around socioeconomic access to services. Future reviews should include literature beyond English language, search a broader range of data- bases and conduct wider literature calls. Descriptions of the assessment process are variable, with the majority of studies not reporting the specialty or approach of the assessor/service, the assessment form, its duration, and trauma enquiries and disclosures. This makes it difficult to connect client experience to therapy modalities and the technical question of how assessments are conducted, limiting the inferences that can be drawn and highlighting a need for further research. Finally, we did not explore assessors’ experiences. Further re- search investigating assessments as a dyadic interplay between two actors would enable a fuller account of assessment processes. 8 | C O N C L U S I O N S This review aimed to understand adults’ experiences of undergo- ing psychological assessment. The findings were understood within TIAs, including those relating to the emotional impact of assess- ments, information and support needs, rights, pathologization, soci- oeconomic restrictions, intersectionalities and collaboration. Whilst the need for collaboration may appear self- evident, explicitly col- laborative assessments were not the norm and independent service user research is needed. Given the focus of this review, our gaps in understanding and the quality of papers, future research directions have been suggested, emphasizing the importance of understand- ing the assessment from dyadic and multiple perspectives, including that of minority groups. A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S Angela Sweeney is funded by a National Institute for Health Research Post- Doctoral Fellowship. This paper presents inde- pendent research partially funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. The authors would like to thank Judith Scammel (SGUL librarian) for her support and expertise in con- ducting the review and Dr Sarah White for her assistance in the kappa calculation. Dr Sweeney would also like to thank the Advisory Groups for their contribution to the APTT research pro- gramme (understanding and improving Assessment Processes for Talking Therapies) which this paper is a part of: Vanessa Anenden, Katie Bogart, Dr Sarah Carr (co- author), Dr Jocelyn Catty (co- author), Professor David Clark, Dr Sarah Clement (co- author), Alison Faulkner, Sarah Gibson, Mary Ion, Dr Jayasree Kalathil, Steve Keeble, Dr Angela Kennedy, Dr Gemma Kothari and Lana Samuels. Special thanks go to Sarah Clement, Lana Samuels and Alison Faulkner for their pertinent and insightful feedback in a data workshop. C O N F L I C T O F I N T E R E S T The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. A U T H O R C O N T R I B U T I O N S AS, SCl, SCa, JC, SG involved in protocol development. EJ, SCl, KG, AS involved in data searching and screening. AS involved in data ex- traction and quality appraisal. AS, SCl and SCa involved in data syn- thesis. AS, SCl, KG, EJ, SC, JC and SG involved in writing. O R C I D Angela Sweeney http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6020-7490 R E F E R E N C E S 1. NHS Digital. Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey: Survey of men- tal health and wellbeing, England, 2014. 29th September 2016. https://digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB21748. Accessed April 3rd, 2018. 2. NHS Digital. Psychological Therapies: Annual report on the use of IAPT services – England, 2016-7. 30th November 2017. http://www. digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB30157. Accessed April 3rd, 2018. 3. NHS England. Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. 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S U P P O R T I N G I N F O R M AT I O N Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end of the article. How to cite this article: Sweeney A, Clement S, Gribble K, et al. A systematic review of qualitative studies of adults’ experiences of being assessed for psychological therapies. Health Expect. 2019;00:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.12844 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/counseling-keys/201710/if-your-therapist-harasses-you-metoo https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/counseling-keys/201710/if-your-therapist-harasses-you-metoo https://www.nsun.org.uk/on-power-and-privacy https://www.nsun.org.uk/on-power-and-privacy https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.12844 work_4varfg7cxjgdna4u2szpmtjube ---- 1 Resisting Popular Feminisms: Gender, Sexuality and the Lure of the Modern Abstract This article tracks discursive and political use of gender and sexual equality in nationalist and popular accounts of feminism, focusing on the ways in which such discourses produce a particular linking of time and space in the articulation of ‘the Modern’ in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. It further explores the increasing popularity of feminism in some media and celebrity contexts that have historically been so hostile to it, asking for care in tracking how and under what conditions feminism is cited as “universally desirable” in light of this history. I suggest that feminism is partly reframed in this way insofar as it is newly sutured to femininity rather than masculinity, but also to singular rather than multiple or intersectional understandings of women’s oppression. A related claim of this article is that this shift of affective association with feminism is only possible when that singular cause of gender oppression is firmly understood as sexual oppression. I will be suggesting that if feminism is understood primarily or even only a fight against sexual oppression by men or heterosexuals against women or homosexuals then the oppositional gendered roles that allow for its tethering to nationalism remain intact yet simultaneously obscured. In conclusion the article calls for an appreciation of feminism as a minority pursuit attentive to multiple power relations and histories. 2 Introduction Those of us who inhabit the contested terrain of European feminist theory and politics are used to feminism being rejected or transformed in ways we are not in control of. We are used to feminism being cast as anachronistic, and its subjects being proposed as anti-male or masculine; and we are used to the paradoxical claiming of feminism for conservative ends, particularly as part of nationalist and militarist projects. This article tracks discursive and political use of gender and sexual equality in nationalist and popular accounts of feminism, focusing on the ways in which such discourses produce a particular linking of time and space in the articulation of “the Modern” in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. Claims that particular nations or subjects are Modern increasingly rely on propositions of gender or sexual equality as either imminent or having already arrived (Duggan 2003). Gender and sexual rights claims are thus consistently articulated with this “right to be Modern” at their heart, such that their pitch for the space and time of modernity is made with particular affective strength, as Leticia Sabsay (2016) has suggested. This article further explores the increasing popularity of feminism in media and celebrity contexts that have historically been so hostile to it, asking for care in tracking how and under what conditions feminism can be cited as universally desirable. A tentative argument is that feminism can only be framed as desirable to the extent that it has moved away from its association with both masculinity and intersectionality, to the extent then that it can be sutured to femininity and singular understandings of women’s oppression. A related claim is that this shift of affective association with feminism is only possible when that singular cause of gender oppression is firmly understood as sexual oppression. I will be suggesting that if feminism is 3 understood primarily a fight against sexual oppression by men or heterosexuals against women or homosexuals then the oppositional gendered roles that allow for its tethering to nationalism remain intact yet simultaneously obscured. Whether freed from gendered and sexual oppression or continuing to be subject to it, women and men remain recognizably women and men: the universal appeal of feminism requires this clarity. While feminism is not only or indeed primarily marked by an increased appeal of course – indeed anti-feminism is as virulent as it ever has been (or worse) in many contexts in Europe and globally – I believe that where it is cited in those terms it is worth exploring the conditions and implications of that appeal because of what it tells us about current conditions of gendered power and authority. The article begins with a reminder of some of the different ways in which gender and sexual equality discourses can be put to work in securing a fantasy global landscape of uneven freedoms within a nationalist framework. As a range of feminist, queer and critical race theorists have shown, these discourses frequently rely on gendered, sexual and racial norms, even while appearing to challenge them. It focuses on the temporal and affective features of these geo- political fantasies and explores some of their most pernicious effects. My argument then shifts to explore several cultural examples that reframe feminism as desirable rather than anachronistic, with particular attention to the role of representations of femininity in launching and securing this appeal. Foregrounding the ways in which this universality relies on single-issue sexual politics, I query this popularity as a sign of success from a feminist perspective interested in both the exclusionary histories of such politics, and the importance of focusing on overlap and displacement within fields of power relations. 4 The Lure of the Modern Participants in feminist theory and politics have acclimatized to the cultural and political heralding of postfeminism as signaling both feminism’s successes, but also the dwindling necessity of its aggression. Embracing the pleasures of femininity can thus be reframed as active not passive: actively inheriting past gains and actively inhabiting a confidently gendered womanhood (Gill 2003). Angela McRobbie (2009) discusses this cultural movement in terms of its generational myopias and representational limits, while Nancy Fraser (2013) and Sylvia Walby (1997) focus on the problems of a post-feminist ethos that lends itself to feminine surfaces over material and economic depths. While I am suspicious of forms of feminist critique that tell a singular history of loss of politicization and superficiality among the next generation (since its heroine never has to change her political mind), I agree that in many different post- feminist moves, feminism can easily be relegated to the past and her subjects stereotyped as anachronistic in themselves. I am similarly exorcised by the multiple ways in which feminism can be folded into a progress narrative charting a relentless move away from inequality, since it is usually accompanied by claims that such inequality has been (almost) surpassed, and rarely takes account of enduring operations of power or critiques of the basis on which such equality is evaluated. As Anne Phillips (2007) has argued in the context of debates that pit multiculturalism against feminism, mainstreaming of feminist values may be a real achievement, but gains in one place can easily come to stand as evidence of continued backwardness in others, in ways that contribute to the failure to recognize inequalities in places deemed modern or progressive in gendered 5 terms. In the process, feminism is appealing to the extent that it signals an embrace of modernity in a narrow mode, as Biljana Kašić (2004) has argued in the case of Croatia and Maria do Mar Pereira (2014) has shown in the context of Portugal. Importantly, such narratives and cartographies of progress suggest that feminism is envisaged more as a catalyst than a consistent presence, ideally displaced with the entry to modernity, an unfortunate part of the now-to-be- transcended past. Crucially, for Phillips (2007), simplistic progress narratives of gender and sexual equality also pit members of cultures and nations not understood as developed against one another. For transnational feminist geographer Uma Narayan (1997), this dynamic is not a one-way street, of course. A refusal of the Modern can be claimed as a core part of postcolonial nation- building, such that women continue to be expected to inhabit gender and sexual norms as part of proving national ethnic and religious commitment, as she argues with respect to contemporary India. The central role that women play as reproducers of nation is one reason why their perceived freedom is so crucial in discursive as well as material terms as a marker of national development and modernity. Postcolonial feminist work on nationalism and gender equality has long highlighted the importance of the promotion of racialised gender roles as part of a colonial civilizing mission, across multiple geographical sites (e.g. McClintock, Mufti, and Shoat 1997). Native colonized “others” are always framed as unruly and in need of governance, such that part of entering into Modern colonial or postcolonial recognition involves mimicking white gendered and sexual norms and cultures of respectability. As Merl Storr (1997) has so persuasively argued in respect of sexual governance, colonial regulation requires imposing rigid gender 6 classifications as a marker of civilisation, and within this schema only certain kinds of (feminine, but also white) womanhood will do. In other words, it is not just any kind of sexual and gendered difference or equality that signals the Modern, but those borne out of fantasies of violent racial superiority. For Gayatri Spivak (1988), such discourses of colonial and postcolonial modernity are not merely static representations of geo-political power relations. They precipitate and justify a range of interventions through the active grammar of white men saving brown women from brown men. For Spivak as for others, the fantasy of white, Western rescue of passive brown female victims of unconscionable brown patriarchs is a key mode through which colonial violence is displaced and refashioned as ethical (see also Young 2003). Racism, we might say, has long been brought to life by discourses of gendered and sexual care. As M. Jacqui Alexander (1994) has noted, this colonial grammar can be adjusted to fit neoliberal versions of these relations very easily, displacing the devastating effects of structural adjustment and the development of tourist economies in poor countries such as Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas, and placing new demands on female subjects to be appropriately reproductive and respectable as part of postcolonial national resistance movements. And we are at this point very familiar with the citation of gender and sexual equality as Modern and desirable as a basis for nationalist, militarist intervention that masks capital and corporate interests in maintaining regional unrest and uneven financial development (Al- Ali and Pratt 2009; Enloe 1989). As with earlier colonial narratives, so too gender and sexual “rescue” (framed as humanitarian) enacts racialised violence through this displacement. In an important intervention in the feminist work on (post)colonial inheritance, Kalpana Wilson (2013) highlights that recipients of 7 aid or development may now be encouraged to respond to these narratives through embodying agency rather passivity, chiming with the broader postfeminist concern about “empowerment” as a new form of subordination. With such discursive closure, women will be positioned – politically and critically – as de facto heterosexual in many contexts. In this light, it can be a pertinent intervention in itself to challenge that presumption, both as a way of interrupting the relationship between heteronormativity and nationalist or colonialist projects, but also to make visible queer lives. Yet as a range of commentators have elucidated, gay and lesbian equality is also folded into the question of the Modern. Lisa Duggan’s (2003) foundational work on homonormativity explored ways in which gay and lesbian lives of a particular kind (monogamous, coupled, white) have become central rather than peripheral to a contemporary US national fantasy of tolerance and (post)modernity. And Jasbir K Puar’s (2006) coining of the term “homonationalism” has highlighted the ways in which the “good gay” is frequently pitted against the “bad queer” as part of consolidating the figure of the perverse Islamic or African/Caribbean other so central to US domestic and foreign policy post- 9/11. As queer geographers Jon Binnie and David Bell (2000) have argued, while “homosexual” subjects have only recently been included as potential representatives of the modern nation, their status as ambivalent subjects of modernity actually has a long history. For Duggan and Puar, indeed, the “homo” in “homonormativity” and “homonationalism” is contingent, tolerated only insofar as it can be tethered to the broader project of maintaining sexual and gendered binaries in a racialised neoliberal geopolitics. The inclusion of gay and lesbian subjects is predicated on gender difference remaining clearly defined and homosexual identity being 8 framed through respectability, as Gayle Rubin (1984) insistent many years ago. And as Patricia Hill Collins (1998) sets out, sexual difference and the couple form as the basis of family have a racist colonial history bound up with heterogendered norms. Small wonder then, that trans* challenges to gender binaries are met with such hostility, despite (or perhaps because of) the fantasy of gender equality as having been achieved. Such challenges figure this equality as taking place between men and women, and not beyond their potent symbolics, of course. In turn, as Alyosxa Tudor (2017) has pertinently noted, without a clear intersectional, transnational approach to these heteronormative, colonial narratives, a space is cleared for conservative trans-nationalisms as well. As a short concluding note to this section, we should also be clear that none of the above mobilisations of gender or sexuality within coloniality or the framing of the Modern through sexual, gendered and raced respectability remains uncontested. It would be easy, perhaps, to look at the continued take-up of gender and sexual equality as part of a global corporate agenda, with its familiar racist history and impact, and think of feminist and queer social movements as having failed. Yet, as Bice Maiguashca (2014) insists, social movements for equality are continuously adapting to challenge as well as conform in their own right. Very recently, we have seen the Women’s Marches across Europe and globally to protest President Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, and the call for a Global Women’s Strike in response to his administration’s racism, misogyny and homophobia. Activists for international and intersectional sexual rights such as Sonia Corrêa (2010) consistently struggle against the problems of ongoing co-optation of sexual rights gains, as well as the dangerous exclusions that such approaches can reproduce. And as Cynthia Cockburn’s 9 (2007) remarkable book on women’s anti-war activism transnationally affirms, while both gendered and sexual rights remain key to nationalist or militarist agendas, such efforts are also continuously resisted. Feminist But Feminine Thus far I have been tracing the importance of an approach that historicises the difficult relationship among gender and sexual equality and their entanglement in histories of colonial and postcolonial nation building and militarism. These are important discussions that highlight how gender and sexual equality work discursively both within and outside feminism, and at different scales, in order to reproduce the hierarchies necessary to justify enacting power and authority over another, or of one geo-political site over another. Yet to return to a point I made at the outset of this article, the question of “gender equality” as the basis of modernity at once relies upon and challenges existing gender roles, and “femininity” in particular remains unattainable for the majority of subjects in this (post)colonial minefield. The colonial construction of gender, race and sexuality mean that black and brown women are always ambivalently placed in relation to femininity. They are by turns hyper feminine in terms of presumed passivity in relationship to a patriarchy they need rescuing from, and hyper masculine in their refusal to meet the terms of white, (post)colonial femininity. The racialised and colonized woman can never actually represent gender, only its modification, excess or failure (Lewis 1996). Importantly too, those (post)colonial heroines of gender equality are also uneasily located at the threshold of ideal femininity. Pushing for rescue of more passive others, arguing for their right to enter the Modern through freedom from gender oppression of the worst order, those 10 advocates risk taking up a masculinist position in relationship to those they seek to save. This is one reason why it has been important that feminism and gender equality are held apart: since feminism itself is characterized as un-feminine, it constitutes an unstable ground from which to make gender equality claims that leave a gender binary intact. Thus we might say that both the rescuer and the rescued loiter on the edges of a femininity appropriate to heteronormative modernity, and both need to relinquish perverse sexual and gendered respectability in order be allowed contingent access to that subject position (Puri 2006). The conventional heroine of an apolitical postfeminism makes this dynamic plain, as she has been characterized by an excess of emancipated, feminine affect, and is as startlingly white as she is finally free of feminist repression (Gill 2003). It has been my argument thus far that holding feminism and femininity in tension is part of how the gendered and sexual alibis underpinning nationalism and the temporality of the Modern continue to function. But in the last several years, there seems to have been a cultural shift that accompanies these more familiar dynamics. This shift emerges out of a cultural and political arena of representation that is keen to claim feminism as universally desirable, a perfect accessory for the here and now rather than an embarrassing relic to be buried in the closet. Importantly for my argument here, this about turn in representation relies on the suturing of oppositional gender roles – and in particular femininity – to feminism, in a conscious inversion of relationship. As I will suggest below, this realignment is dependent on femininity remaining a binary proposition within which “gender equality” remains resolutely heteronormative, a proposition that is also key for its broad appeal. Let us look then at a couple of recent examples of 11 the ways in which feminism can be claimed as the new, caring position to take up if one is to be properly ethical and political, in contrast to feminism’s prior (and dominant) representation as marginal or old-fashioned. The few cases I analyse here are selected as good examples of the trend I am identifying, though they should not be thought of as representative of culture overall. My reasons for considering them significant rest on their presentation of feminism as a self- evident, benign good, a feature I want to explore as an important aspect of contemporary depoliticisation of feminist politics. In 2014, Marie-Claire led with a special section headed “10 Signs That You’re a Feminist,” (http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a9142/10- signs-feminist/ Feb 21, 2014) ironically yet surely integrating feminism into the lifestyle concerns that are the hallmark of women’s fashion magazines. In the same year, Elle UK launched its “Inaugural Feminist Issue,” (http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/december-feminism-issue-cover-emma- watson-elle).with the actor Emma Watson as its covergirl, following her speech at the UN on gender equality. Both fashion magazines sought to give feminism the makeover she deserved, emphasizing the empowered contemporary woman’s embrace of femininity and romance in familiar vein. But there was also an important difference too, in the attempt to suture femininity and feminism. Marie-Claire’s title was followed with the subtitle “Hate to break it to you, F-word haters, but you’re probably more of a feminist than you think,” which retains the original grammar of distance represented by the phrase “I’m not a feminist, but…” only now with a rapprochement after the pause. The acceptability of those “10 Signs…” was underwritten by Beyonce’s endorsement underneath; her hype- feminine lacey attire captioned with her determination not to be a domestic http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a9142/10-signs-feminist/ http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a9142/10-signs-feminist/ http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/december-feminism-issue-cover-emma-watson-elle http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/december-feminism-issue-cover-emma-watson-elle 12 drudge (Fig 1). Elle’s special issue claimed Emma Watson as the “fresh face” of feminism, referencing once more the assumption that feminism needs the kind of overhaul only a women’s magazine can provide, but branding itself more than capable of that contemporary update. These magazines signal a dual update then, in relationship to our discussion thus far. Femininity is rendered a hallmark of rather than a bar to feminism: indeed we can now see that it has been lurking under the surface waiting to be appreciated as feminism’s glasses are whipped off and its hair shaken out to reveal the shining beauty underneath. So too this femininity is not necessarily white, as the centrality of Beyonce’s hyper-feminine image suggests (Fig 1), as long as it is coded in familiar ways: here through a predictable reference to sharing of childcare, and a celebration of racial difference as another feature of empowered femininity. A recent exception can be found in Teen Vogue in which young black American feminists talk about their struggles with feminism and racism (yet even here, representations are of black feminism aligned rather than in tension with femininity – see https://www.teenvogue.com/story/black-feminists). Elle combined its feminism issue with a line of “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” t-shirts (http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/buy-elle-whistles- fawcwett-feminism-unisex-tshirt), donating the proceeds to The Fawcett Society feminist campaigning group who coined the wearable phrase in the UK. What was so extraordinary about this campaign was the number of women and men in the public eye that they managed to persuade to wear and be photographed wearing one. Any lingering sign of embarrassment in actor Benjamin Cumberbatch’s or Labour politician Ed Miliband’s strained smiles appear to reference the subsequent scandal about whether the t-shirts had been produced 13 under exploitative labour conditions in Mauritius or not, rather than any ambivalence about feminist nomenclature. Rosie Boycott broke the story for the Mail on Sunday in her piece “Scandal of the 62p-an-hour T-shirts: Shame on the Feminists Who Betrayed the Cause,” in November 2014, which was then refuted by Chris Johnston in his article for The Guardian “Feminist T-shirts Made in Ethical Conditions, Says Fawcett Society,” also in November. Disconcertingly, the campaign was marked by general concern about our then Prime Minister David Cameron’s refusal to wear one – and one should perhaps be grateful for small mercies – prompting a somewhat surreal set of broadsheet and tabloid interrogations as to why he should be squeamish about embracing this affirmative identity. My own allegiances lie with Homa Khaleeli, writing for The Guardian on 27 October 2014, who insists that “given Cameron’s record so far, one thing is clear: this is not what a feminist looks like.” It is easy enough to be straightforwardly cynical of such cultural voracity as just the next marketing ploy to sell magazines (like everything else, it turns out that anti-feminism has a shelf life), but this fashionable feminist visibility has also been shared by the broadsheets, in which the question of feminism and who it includes has become consistent copy. While the debates are diverse, including arguments about trans* inclusion and intersectionality, the majority position is a feminism that departs from seeing women as victims rather than agents of others’ authority, and as rooted in an analysis of women’s oppression as centred 14 in sexual violence or patriarchal control. Heterosexual gender binaries are crucial to sustaining this analysis of women’s oppression, and, as many have noted, this is also an arena of thinking and politics necessarily resistant to its easy reproduction of colonial and anti-migration discourse (Agustin 2007; Andrijasevic 2014). It chimes with the cultural claiming of “femininity as feminism” precisely because of its singular focus on relationships between men 15 and women; oppositional though perhaps in flux, but most importantly fully relational. So at the same time as we are seeing resistance to contemporary nationalisms in the form of the Global Women’s Strike, which foregrounded the importance of connecting economic, racist and sexist power relations, a parallel investment in a universally appealling feminism that can be claimed from a familiar hetero-gendered location has considerable purchase. Let me provide some further context for this argument about the appeal of what I term sexual violence feminism, precisely in terms of its paradoxical confirmation of oppositional gendering. In the last few years, the UK has been beset with sexual violence scandals in which a whole slate of ageing celebrities have been accused, tried and found guilty of sexual abuse starting in the 1970s. These relentless and ongoing revelations have implicated other national institutions such as the BBC, the NHS (particularly mental health services), social services (particularly child protection), the civil service and government. The picture is one of rampant violence and misogyny that was overlooked and minimised at the time it took place, taking decades to emerge as those abused found the courage to speak out (again). Importantly, these transgressions are often presented as uniquely horrific, as though we could not expect anything else of the 1970s, and as though such abuses would not and could not happen today. The irony is glaring, of course, given that this progress narrative both writes out any feminist activism at the time, and erases the fact of rape and sexual violence’s grotesque under-reporting and under-prosecution in the present. See http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/cps_vawg_report_2014.pdf for Crown Prosecution Service statistics relating to increased reporting but decreased convictions for rape of women and girls in the UK, which suggest that http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/cps_vawg_report_2014.pdf 16 recognition of women’s experience of sexual violence is getting worse rather than better. This article is, indeed, being completed at the moment in which accusations of sexual harassment and rape against Harvey Weinstein and other celebrities and politicians in the US and globally have been met with women’s insistence that sexual violence marks their everyday experience as women in the “Me Too” campaigns (see: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/women-worldwide-use- hashtag-metoo-against-sexual-harassment). Feminist groups that focus on sexual violence (such as UK Feminista) are thus caught in the curious temporal plays underpinning fantasies of gender and sexual equality as almost if not quite yet achieved. Their cultural popularity reflects an investment in precisely the temporal distinction they want to challenge: their activism is a sign of living in times where women will no longer put up with sexual violence, as well as a sign of its continued cultural and social prevalence. Thus “sexual violence feminism” can ironically enough be framed as the one kind of feminism that everyone can agree on: one that identifies sexual and gender-based violence as the basis of gender oppression, while simultaneously positioning widespread sexual violence as part of the actual or (soon to be) past. As suggested, this is an oddly reassuring feminism that can confirm (as much as it challenges the consequences of) sexual difference, operating as the oppressive alternate side of the celebration of those differences in declarations of feminism as newly feminine. It is a performative feminism too, in that to embrace it is to make sexual violence passé in the moment of the claiming of its contemporary importance. Up until Trump, perhaps, men (no matter how they actually acted) would not want to appear to embrace the negatives of sexual difference represented by sexual violence – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/women-worldwide-use-hashtag-metoo-against-sexual-harassment https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/women-worldwide-use-hashtag-metoo-against-sexual-harassment 17 precisely in order to inhabit the Modern. And insofar as the positive version of this binary and fatalistic story also reifies gender difference through suturing femininity and feminism, there do not even need to be outward changes in gender representation to signal such a political and affective shift. Post-Trump, it will no doubt be even easier to claim feminism; on the basis that one is after all not that much of a violent, pussy-grabbing misogynist. To return to the popularity of “looking like a feminist,” then, to don the t- shirt might thus be said to be a way of marking oneself out as “not one of those old misogynists,” and to signal a break with anti-feminism (which would now be cast as both old-fashioned and pro-sexual violence; as though Trump were part of the past and not the terrifying present). But to take up this position is also to take up a pro-censorship and anti-prostitution position that has long characterised such forms of feminism. Again, this is uncontroversial for celebrities and politicians whose careers can be decimated with the smallest whiff of sexual scandal. But in the process, both sexual violence feminism itself and those who celebrate its new openness, rewrite history in yet another way, by simplifying the complex debates over the nature of sexual violence, the significance of porn, or the character of sex work, that have been central to feminism since its inception (Duggan 2006). So too the intersectional critiques of this strand of feminism – as perpetuating racial and classed stereotypes in their preference for marches in poor neighborhoods, or as ignoring the complex modes of oppression and freedom that different women and men face – are positioned as diluting a clear agenda in ways that tell a simple story of prior solidarity upset by successive desires for representation. Julie Burchill’s piece for The Spectator takes this familiar line, casting “intersectionality” as erasing 18 socialist feminism’s proper politics (http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/02/dont-you-dare-tell-me-to-check-my- privilege/). Nancy Fraser’s Fortunes of Feminism (2013) enacts a similar temporality, casting a politics of diversity as the main catalyst for fragmentation of an otherwise, and previously, united and effective feminist movement. That this movement was always multiple, and always thronging with people who did not see themselves recognized in singular accounts of feminist aims, is conveniently forgotten in such accounts. The subject of feminism, when oppression is understood as rooted in experience of sexual violence, is most often imagined as straightforwardly female too. Anti-porn and anti-sexual violence feminisms thus privilege “women born as women” over the experiences of a range of subjects targeted by masculine violence or objectification. The “Me Too” campaigns referenced earlier repeats this presumption, with challenges to a broader coalition of voices of those facing harassment in the face of masculinist dominance – cis-women, trans* men and women, gender non-conforming subjects, effeminate men and queers of a variety of stripes, all men, women trans* and queer subjects of color – in preference to a privileging of sexual and gender violence as the preserve of women who have always lived as such. The opportunities for coalition and solidarity in the face of sexual and gendered violence are thus displaced in favour of gender-opposed understandings of personal and political subjection. Understanding sexual and gendered violence as primarily experienced through a binary between men and women fits neatly – as it has done for over one hundred and fifty years – with the progress narratives of modernity and democracy that mark other contexts and cultures as uniquely patriarchal through their failures to place sexual violence in their own pasts, 19 even when – or most especially when – this failure might be said to mark all states and cultures. The opportunities for an integrated, intersectional account of how violence works to position a broad range of subjects as outside heteronormative authority are briefly raised, only to be dismissed as part of a lamentable fragmentation that dilutes feminist politics and experience. The reliance on gendered difference at the moment of reimagining feminism as universal does other work too. It naturalizes economic relations between women and men at precisely the point of heightened European austerity. Across Europe, the cuts in public funding are felt more keenly by women, who are both poorer earners in public sector work and who are already subject to the pay gap (Brah, Szeman and Gedalof 2015). Women are the ones called on to pick up the slack when social resources are withdrawn, and this is often referred to as “re-traditionalisation”: the turning back to older gender relations within kinship and community ties, as part of how economic downturns are managed, and as part of how women continue to be constituted as a reserve army of labour. The repeated – not so much precarious, but fundamentally temporary – nature of women’s access to the labour market has always required naturalization in order not to appear as it is: a privileging of a white, male breadwinner model that represents racialised, patriarchal and state interests. A discourse of re-traditionalisation risks participating in the same game, then, by reading current manipulation of gender norms as a return, a failure of the present to move beyond its unequal past, rather than as an enduring condition of gendered discourse. The desire to include women as full and equal participants in the public sphere (or to present them as already such participants) is necessarily contradicted by the creation of conditions that 20 prevent them from being able to participate. It is these conditions – lower pay, lack of care provision, presumption of women as carers – as well as a continued failure to see these as naturalized aspects of cultural and economic heteronormativity – that underwrite the expectation that women will inevitably pick up the slack. This is, to my mind then, less a paradox or temporal lag, than the precise mode through which enduring inequality is naturalized and displaced. One reason why I think it is so important to track the appeal of a “universal feminism” that sutures feminism and femininity in some instance of contemporary representation, then, is that the citation of gender inequality’s temporality allows for a reinstantiation of gender difference, all the while appearing to challenge the limits such binarism represents. In other words, I want to propose that the linking of feminism and femininity domesticates the former, reifies heteronormative oppositions between men and women, and positions sexual violence as well as unequal domestic labour in (our Western) past (even when it remains very clearly present). Importantly, it is this made- over feminist subject who continues to do the rescue work in relation to those female subjects imagined as hyper-terrorised: the cut; the veiled; the temporally stymied. Only this time our feminist heroine does not have to give up her femininity or her victimhood; she can be both victim and agent. While appealing in a range of ways, this complicated reinstantiation of gender binaries in (post)colonial discourse is one powerful mode through which gender inequality is currently perpetuated. Concluding Dilemmas 21 The shame of wearing the “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” t-shirt did not derive from the mismatch between claiming feminism and doing no work towards the alleviation of gender inequality. It arose from being implicated in the global economic inequality that produced the t-shirts themselves, as though there were no relationship between these issues. On the one hand, we would want to encourage a take-up of feminism in the world, expecting surely that it will not necessarily mirror one’s own concerns. On the other hand, when “feminism” functions specifically as a trope through which ongoing intersectional gender inequality is managed or even ensured rather than alleviated, we face particular political and ethical dilemmas. If “feminism” is a reassuring part of national heteronormative pride in an era of cynical wars, displacement and anti- immigration feeling and legislation, what are the possible next steps for feminists concerned to reside in a progressive Europe? I want to propose two temporary responses: uncoupling feminism and gender/sexual politics; and insisting on feminism as a minority pursuit. In the first case, I have been experimenting for some time now with ways of disarticulating feminism from her presumed feminist subject. In “Affective Solidarity” (Hemmings 2012) I was interested in thinking about disappointment and unease with gender roles as a basis for solidarity, irrespective of what happens next in terms of politicization, repression or even hostility to feminism. I took this from the ways in which I share an affective critique of the limits of gender roles with my mum, even though she would never call herself a feminist. I was trying to think through a feminism that allows for both me and my mum, that would refuse to start from the assumption that I hold the upper hand, or assume that my identification as a feminist means I am more likely to challenge 22 gendered or sexual norms than she is. In fact, now I reflect on these questions anew, my feminist identity has often meant I have hidden continued gender inequality in my own practices, since I am more ashamed of them than a non- feminist might be. The concept of “affective solidarity” was intended to open up a feminism that contains feminist subjects and non-feminist subjects, starting from the appreciation of different locations within knowledge and politics and the recognition of the importance of dissonance whether or not it leads to a particular identity. Importantly, I do not think this vision is an entirely open one. It cannot contain anti-feminism, for example, even as it can contain subjects other than feminists. In this reflection I have been strongly influenced by my reading of Emma Goldman, whose role in a rethinking of the temporalities of feminism I have been grappling with over the last decade. Goldman was an anarchist activist (1969-1940) who centered questions of sexual oppression in her analysis of authority, and who linked that oppression to nationalist, militarist and capitalist interests (Goldman 1908). For Goldman, the sexual freedom necessary for revolution could not be articulated through the narrowness of feminist aims for “equality” with the most privileged (1910). Indeed, Goldman strongly dis- identified from feminism, and I resist the feminist critical desire to reclaim her as a feminist despite her outspoken refusal to be so characterized. For me, it is more important for a contemporary feminism that Goldman did not – ever – exit the scene of gender and sexual politics: quite the opposite, she fought tooth and nail throughout her life to improve conditions for women. For Goldman, though, women and men needed first to focus on their internal demons in order to effect real and lasting change, taking responsibility for and struggling with their own 23 conservative as well as radical desires in relation to others. In other words, while we might say that contemporary invocation of feminism is a mode through which inequality is secured; for Goldman, distance from feminism was a way to wrestle with deep gendered and sexual demons. Goldman’s prioritization of sexual freedom as a key to revolution challenged the complementarity of gender relations that privileges male authority while keeping it hidden. For Goldman, only the resignification of female capacity – as active, desiring and vital – would challenge a public/private divide that for her under-wrote all other social inequalities. We have much to learn from Goldman, I think, about the importance of going beyond gender ascriptions even as we resist the characterization of women as inferior to men. Importantly, too, for Goldman, this project of gender transformation was the only way to challenge nationalism and racism, both of which she understood as emerging from and reproducing narrow kinship investments (between 1927 and 1930). Consideration of both Goldman and my mum both point me towards the significance of thinking about feminism as a minority pursuit. Their shared grammar of dis-identification is the norm rather than the exception. One might say, indeed, that one thing that could be said to unite women across generations is their consistent rejection of and dis-identification from feminism. As a political movement and set of theories that (ambivalently and imperfectly) challenge the roots of femininity and gender relations as heterosexist, classist and racist, perhaps we should not expect feminism to be universally embraced. To do so may precisely be to undermine its critical capacity, may precisely blunt the ability to say: “you are wearing a t-shirt you have no right to, since you have evidenced no interest in analysing or transforming the horrors of contemporary 24 gender.” One might add (and here we do of course have to wonder who is speaking) “Your continued wearing of this t-shirt in the face of this disinterest demonstrates your interest in maintaining the gender, sexual and racial inequalities you want to claim are already in the past.” Goldman was not afraid of judgment, and neither should we be, particularly not now when the relationship between feminism and racism/nationalism is so complicated and intense. So my second tactic might be to reclaim being a feminist as the very definition of a minority pursuit, one involving judgments of and struggles over the terms femininity and feminism, as well as their relationship to one another from an intersectional and historically attuned perspective. 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This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Cambridge University Press, 2019 The final definitive version in the online edition of the journal article at Cambridge Journals Online is available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X18001010 The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail repository@westminster.ac.uk https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X18001010 http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/ repository@westminster.ac.uk 1 Making a Difference Toward a Feminist Democratic Theory in the Digital Age Hans Asenbaum, University of Westminster Pre-edited version accepted for publication in Politics & Gender on 18th November 2018 Abstract: This essay asks how the democratic ideal of inclusion can be achieved in societies marked by power asymmetries along the lines of identity categories such as gender and race. It revisits debates of difference democracy of the 1990's, which promoted inclusion through a politics of presence of marginalized social groups. This strategy inevitably entails essentializing tenden- cies, confining the democratic subject within its physically embodied identity. Difference demo- crats did not take notice of the parallel emerging discourse on cyberfeminism exploring novel iden- tity configurations on the internet. This essay augments the politics of presence with digital identity reconfigurations. Neither difference democrats nor cyberfeminists distinguished between various participatory sites. Drawing on conceptions of participatory spaces from development studies and deliberative democracy, this essay generates a typology differentiating between empowered spaces such as parliaments, invited spaces such as citizens' assemblies, and claimed spaces of social move- ments. The democratic functions these spaces fulfil are best facilitated by three different modes of identity performance: identity continuation, identity negation, and identity exploration. A plurali- zation of participatory sites and modes of identity performance facilitates inclusion while tackling the essentializing tendencies in difference democracy. Introduction The profound changes in current societies are, among others, marked by two intertwined trends, the intensification of citizens’ participation in politics and the increasing digitization of everyday life. Political apathy today is counteracted by intensified political participation in social movements, citizens initiatives and unconventional forms of engagement such as flash mobs and occupations (della Porta and Rucht 2013). Simultaneously, governments are developing new participatory for- mats such as citizens’ assemblies, referendums, and participatory budgets (Smith 2009). The digit- ization of everyday life affecting the dynamics of work, love, family, and politics amplifies this trend. Social media that accompany our every step through the smart devices in our pockets increase participatory possibilities and extend communicative networks (Castells 2012). The #MeToo de- bate, in which a social media hashtag connected a global bottom up campaign challenging patriar- chal structures, provides a recent example. Both these trends of increased participation and digitization are situated in a context of power asymmetries along social identity markers of gender, class, race, sexuality, able-bodiedness, etc. 2 Such inequalities, perceptible by hard indicators such as income and soft indicators such as respect, result in the exclusion of marginalized groups from and within democratic participation. Thus, dem- ocratic theory with its ideal of equality faces the challenge of conceptualizing inclusion in digitized participatory societies marked by structural power asymmetries. Contemporary feminist theory has extensive expertise regarding the exclusion of marginalized groups. However, feminism and democracy are two concepts mostly discussed in isolation from each other. While the core ideas of equal rights and social status of the sexes and equal rights and influence of all citizens in political decision-making share a lot of common ground, democratic theory has been reluctant to acknowledge feminist thought. This neglect is regrettable as feminist debates offer crucial insights, particularly when taking the emancipation of the sexes as a starting point and conceptualizing feminism as a broad movement against identity-based discrimination. In the groundbreaking essay “Feminism and Democracy” the leading democratic theorist Carole Pate- man (1989) was the first to articulates a vision of democracy that “extends beyond the state to the organization of society… Democratic ideals and politics have to be put into practice in the kitchen, the nursery, and the bedroom” (220, 222). The great potential of combining feminist and democratic theory was explored for a short period of time in the 1990s by so called “difference democrats” (e.g. Mansbridge 1993; Phillips 1993; Young 1997). Their rich discussions promoted inclusion in democracy through a performa- tive politics of presence. Mirror or special representation through quotas were advanced to include marginalized groups into the public sphere. Difference democrats themselves, however, exten- sively discussed a dilemma inevitably accompanying this strategy. The organic body of the indi- vidual democratic subject became not only the intended site of resistance to domination but also a site of confinement. Claiming identity through physical presence entails essentialist tendencies, reinforces stereotypical thinking, and traps the individual in its body, impeding the possibility of identity change. Difference democrats’ discussions in the 1990s did not take notice of the parallel emerging discourse about novel identity configurations on the internet. Cyberfeminist thought in media, com- munication, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) developed a different understanding of democratic subjectivity (e.g. Haraway [1985] 1991; Turkle 1984). In contrast with the physically embodied subject with its stable identity markers, the reconfigurations of the organic body through technology allowed for novel cyborgian corporealities. While sharing the idea of inclusion through embodied presence with difference democrats, cyberfeminists redefine presence through new modes of digital embodiment, anonymity, and identity play. 3 This essay deepens difference democratic thought by incorporating cyberfeminist insight. It augments the politics of presence with a notion of digital presence to answer the question: How can inclusion be advanced in societies marked by identity-based power asymmetries? Both differ- ence democratic and cyberfeminist thought contributes to inclusion in democracy, but their focus on one type of identity performance only limits their scope. Moreover, they both neglect to differ- entiate between participatory sites and their respective functions in democracy. In contrast, I pro- pose that the essentializing tendencies in difference democracy can be tackled by expanding the array of identity performances. This can be achieved through a pluralization of participatory sites and their respective democratic functions. Social movement activists, for example, fulfil different democratic functions than parliamentary legislators and thus best contribute to inclusion through different identity performances. The solution to the difference democrats’ essentializing dilemma can be found in difference democracy itself. It is its core value of pluralism that leads the way out. To achieve this differentiation, I further develop the debates on difference democracy and cyberfeminism with the concept of participatory spaces generated in feminist development studies (Brock, Cornwall, and Gaventa 2001) and deliberative democratic theory (Dryzek 2009), distin- guishing empowered spaces such as parliaments, invited spaces such as citizens’ assemblies, and claimed spaces such as social movement organizations. I propose a typology, which outlines which digital identity performance (identity continuation, identity negation, identity exploration) in which participatory space (empowered, invited, claimed) best contributes to which democratic function (accountability, equality, freedom). This typology might be of use to democracy scholars, activists, and state agents to think more adequately about the variability of identity performances and dem- ocratic functions of different participatory spaces. The main purpose of this article is thus to investigate the positive contributions new means of performing identity through online media can make to participatory democracy. When raising this question, the negative effects of digital communication must not be overlooked, however. Exten- sive empirical literature illustrates how online communication is frequently marked by group po- larization, fraud, cyberbullying, and hate speech (e.g. Sunstein 2017). The digital divide and digital inequalities, moreover, exclude large numbers of citizens from participation altogether (Campos- Castillo 2015). For a critical feminist inquiry, it is imperative to ask, how these challenges interact with new participatory spaces on the internet. Do digital participatory spaces exacerbate or mitigate discrimination, exclusion and deception as widely observed in everyday online communication? To move toward a new feminist democratic theory in the digital age, this essay first revisits difference democracy and the notion of inclusion through physically embodied presence. It then moves on to cyberfeminist thought on digital reconfigurations of democratic subjectivity. Drawing on the concept of participatory spaces, the third section develops a typology showing how different 4 modes of identity performance in different participatory spaces fulfil different democratic func- tions. This typology is illustrated by a review of empirical studies on online participation. Difference democracy: A feminist challenge to democratic theory Rather than a coherent model of democracy, what came to be termed “difference democracy” (Dryzek 2000, 57) is a diverse feminist discourse in democratic theory promoting inclusion in par- ticipatory processes in the context of structural inequalities. Jane Mansbridge’s Beyond Adversary Democracy (1983) played a crucial role in setting the agenda. Her empirical investigation evi- denced participatory inequalities along the lines of gender, race, and class in a New England Town Hall meeting and in a case of workplace democracy, illustrating how members of marginalized groups spoke less and felt less influential. The agenda set forth by Mansbridge critically resonated with conceptions of deliberative de- mocracy emerging at this time. While sharing the goal of inclusion with deliberative democrats, difference democrats charged the original conceptions of deliberation with androcentrism and Eu- rocentrism. Generated by white, male academics, the universalizing conception of rational knowledge is deeply rooted in Western Enlightenment thinking. The focus on dispassionate, fact- oriented discussion with the force of the better argument contributing to consensus-finding tends to silence marginalized social groups. This results in internal exclusion – the devaluation of content uttered by those with low identity-related social status (Young 2000). In her seminal essay “Against Deliberation” Lynn Sanders argues: “[T]aking deliberation as a signal of democratic practice par- adoxically works undemocratically, discrediting on seemingly democratic grounds the views of those who are less likely to present their arguments in ways that we recognize as characteristically deliberative. In our political culture, these citizens are likely to be those who are already un- derrepresented in formal political institutions and who are systematically materially disadvantaged, namely women; racial minorities, especially Blacks; and poorer people” (Sanders 1997, 384).1 The problem of internal exclusion has been evidenced in a wide array of empirical work since Mansbridge’s (1983) study. The extensive experimental work of Christopher Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg (2014) documented in The Silent Sex finds that overall women speak less in delibera- tive settings. Edana Beauvais (2017) finds not only that women and ethnic minorities speak less, but also are audience members more easily swayed by comments made by men. The gender gap in classical forms of political participation such as voting has closed recently in Western societies (Nancy Burns et al. 2018). Upon closer examination, however, inequality persists. A recent study of 18 Western countries finds that while women vote and petition at higher rates than men, they are less likely to participate in civil society initiatives and collective action. These patterns point to internal exclusion: women participate less in face-to-face deliberative settings because they feel 5 unwanted or intimidated (Coffé and Bolzendahl 2010). This is also mirrored in a dramatic gender gap in political ambition to engage in politics among youth (Fox and Lawless 2014). To tackle the problem of internal exclusion, difference democrats promote diversity as a re- source for deliberation. Iris Marion Young, for example, observes the emergence of a heterogene- ous public in contrast to Habermas’ universal public sphere. Here Red and Black Power, LGBTIQ, and women’s movements articulate diversity. “In this vision the good society does not eliminate or transcend group difference. Rather, there is equality among socially and culturally differentiated groups, who mutually respect one another and affirm one another in their differences” (Young 1990, 163). Difference is not perceived as obstacle, but as resource for deliberation enabling mutual growth (Young 1997b). In the same vein, Nancy Fraser (1990) observes the formation of subaltern counterpublics by marginalized social groups as safe spaces to develop counter discourses that challenge hegemonic narratives. Beyond diversifying politics through social movements, many difference democrats call for extending the scope of participatory democracy. According to Carole Gould (1996), the best way of facilitating presence for marginalized groups is by creating self-managed participatory assem- blies in the workplace and education. Others focus on inclusion in parliamentary institutions. Anne Phillips (1995) argues that the notion of diversity has always been a core concept in the liberal, pluralist tradition. However, pluralism was only applied to ideas and not to identities. While liber- alism declares individuals equal in value and rights, it overlooks structural inequalities along iden- tity cleavages. According to Phillips, the composition of parliamentary bodies does not only need to reflect a pluralism of ideas but also a pluralism of identities. Physically embodied presence as political claim In difference democratic debates, the corporeal identity of marginalized subjects functions as visi- ble claim for inclusion. Phillips (1995) argues that the liberal politics of ideas, which only pays attention to content and neglects identities, is now challenged by a politics of presence. Giving preference to Hanna Pitkin’s concept of “standing for” rather than “acting for,” Phillips contends that only by claiming presence in public assemblies such as parliaments and activist meetings can marginalized groups draw attention to their particular experiences. Similarly, Mansbridge argues: “Even when the descriptive legislator is silent, his or her mere physical presence reminds the other legislators of the perspectives and interests of the group of which he or she is a descriptive member” (2005, 626). It is thus the visibility of the physical body that articulates a political claim. According to many difference democrats, political claim-making through embodied presence is valid because different bodies represent different social positionalities. Since men and women, heterosexual and LGBTIQ, black and white people are forced into different social positions, they 6 also bring different qualities to the public. The presence of women in political decision-making processes is often advocated by pointing to specific womanly qualities stemming from particular socialization. According to this argument, women’s experience of mothering contributes to a caring and nurturing orientation. Mansbridge (1993, 345) argues that empathy, sensitivity, and intuition as female characteristics are constitutive for democratically organized communities, which rely on social connections of trust, love and duty. Some difference feminists interpret this as a superior culture of women who excel at persuading, listening, asking questions, moderating, and integrating (Mansbridge 1991, 126-128). And Gould draws parallels between female nurturing and the redis- tributive functions of the state: “I also believe that the typical concern for providing for the specific needs of others associated with mothering or parenting… can usefully be imported into the larger democratic community” (1993, 405). To facilitate access of marginalized groups to political institutions, many difference democrats advocate quotas. While Mansbridge (1999; 2005) and Phillips (1991; 1995) favor descriptive or mirror representation, Young (1990; 1997a; 2000) calls for special representation of groups who suffer from the long-term effects of historic oppression. According to Young, the current system of party representation needs to be supplemented by a structure of self-organized associations of marginalized groups wielding veto power in decisions of their direct concern. These measures need to be accompanied by affirmative action in education and employment. The dilemma of difference While difference democrats’ discussions about identity, inequality, and inclusion provide an inval- uable contribution to democratic theory, their argument is also haunted by an inherent conundrum. Difference democrats themselves have repeatedly pointed out a paradox: The politics of presence furthers inclusion through visibility of marginalized groups, however, it simultaneously reinforces dominant modes of identity construction (Mansbridge 1993, 371; 1999, 637; 2005; Phillips 1991, 72; Young 1990, 172; 1994; 1997a, 350; 1997b, 386). Young calls this the dilemma of difference. If black people are supposed to speak for black people by virtue of their corporeal attributes, the identity of the individual is fixed in accordance with the associated group identity, personal pref- erences are undermined, and stereotypes are activated. According to Young: “The unifying process required by group representation inappropriately freezes fluid relational identities into a unity, and can recreate oppressive segregation” (Young 1997a, 350). Similarly, Mansbridge elaborates: “Es- sentialist beliefs reinforce stereotypes, trap the individuals in the group in the images traditionally held of the group, make it hard for those individuals to treat their identities flexibly and performa- tively, de-emphasize lines of division within groups to the advantage of dominant groups within the group, and harden lines of division between groups” (Mansbridge 2005, 623). 7 Social movements promoting the affirmation of group difference might be successful in rein- terpreting their identities in positive terms, but in doing so they also affirm identity confinements. Labels such as “woman,” “gay,” “lesbian,” “black,” “Asian,” “Jew” always demarcate definitions, which limit individual self-expression and identity exploration. These confinements become even more problematic considering intersectionality and uneven power relations in the process of iden- tity construction. The notion “woman,” for example, is mostly created by white, heterosexual, able- bodied women with higher incomes and thus rarely reflect the experience of LBTIQ, black, disa- bled, and poor women (Fraser 1996, 200). Young’s criticism of “cultural imperialism” imprisoning members of marginalized groups in their bodies marked as deviant Other (Young 1990, 123) thus partly also applies for positive reinterpretations of these identities. The new prison might benefit from an improved image, but it is a prison nevertheless. Cyberfeminism: Materializing difference through the digital Difference democrats’ discussions in the 1990’s did not take notice of the parallel emerging dis- course about novel identity configurations on the internet, which promises to shed new light on the dilemma of difference. In the 1980’s, feminist scholars started exploring new modes of digital communication (e.g. Haraway [1985] 1991; Turkle 1984). These discussions came to be identified with the term “cyberfeminism.” Cyberfeminist discourses, on the one hand, promoted diversity through the digital performance of marginalized identities in digital counterpublics – very much in line with the ideals of difference democracy. On the other, they explored the liberating effects of anonymity (Author 2108). What emerges in cyberfeminist thought are conceptions of digital pres- ence, which allow for a re-reading of difference democracy. Cyberfeminism as movement extends beyond academia and fuses discussions from three sources: feminist scholarship, digital art projects such as the Old Boys Network (www.obn.org) and SubRosa (cyberfeminism.net), and online women’s empowerment projects including peer-sup- port groups (Fernandez and Wilding 2002). The equal importance of feminist scholarship and em- powered practice for cyberfeminism as a movement, is also exhibited in the fact that the term “cyberfeminism” was simultaneously coined in 1991 by the British cultural theorist Sadie Plant and the Australian art collective VNS Matrix (Volkart 2004, 97). The roots of cyberfeminist dis- course go further back than the emergence of the term, however. Rise of the cyborg Before the term cyberfeminism was coined, scholars such as Donna Haraway and Sherry Turkle laid the ground for later work on digital presence. In “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Haraway ([1985] 1991) starts from the same point of critique as Young (1990) and other difference democrats: “Gen- der, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience 8 of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism” (155). Like Young (1990), Haraway points to the construction of binary categories such as male/female, civi- lized/primitive, and mind/body defining one element as inferior to the other. However, unlike Young’s difference as resource for deliberation aiming at equalizing the value of both elements, Haraway proposes the metaphor of the cyborg as monstrous hybrid breaking out of this dichoto- mous thinking altogether. By reconfiguring human/machine, animal/human, and physical/non- physical, the cyborg does not, however, merge these binaries into a new unity, a dialectical synthe- sis, but rather leaves the riddle unsolved. The irony of the cyborg is constituted by its plurality dissolving unity into contradiction. Haraway encourages giving up the struggle for clearly demar- cated identities and indulging in the pleasures of the cyborg – the pleasures of disorientation. Bi- nary gender codes are reconfigured into “partial, contradictory, permanently unclosed construc- tions of personal and collective selves” (Haraway [1985] 1991, 157). Haraway’s cyborg dream leaves the figure of the cyborg itself mainly obscure. What cyborgs could be in current societies is made comprehensible in Sherry Turkle’s Second Self (1984) – albeit without using the term “cyborg.” In her psychological ethnography of user interaction with com- puters, Turkle explores human/machine hybridity: “We search for a link between who we are and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our own creations, we might become” (2). Computers simultaneously appear as objects – as tools used by human subjects – and as thinking subjects, which call upon their users. Humans can employ computers as tools to create their own individual worlds. As soon as humans enter these worlds, however, they are affected by them. Humans are subjected as “com- puters enter into the development of personality, of identity, and even of sexuality” (ibid., 6). The hybridization of human/machine emerges in a move of reciprocal affectivity. On the one hand, users humanize computers as “friends” that “are stupid” at times or need to “rest for a while.” On the other, users reimagine themselves in technological terms as they might not “function well” or conceptualize their forgetfulness as information being “erased from the hard drive” (ibid., 7). According to Turkle, computers function as mirrors for the individual self. The metaphor of Narcissus, which has been misinterpreted in the past, helps to understand this mirror function. Nar- cissus did not fall in love with himself out of vanity, but seeing his reflection in the water he per- ceived himself as someone else, thus falling in love with the self as other. Computers provide mir- rors to see the self as reconfigured other. It objectifies the self, resulting in a representational object vis-à-vis the self. This objectified other/self does not serve vain self-love, but the anxious search for the self, as reassurance of our own existence, stability, and unity. Turkle aptly captures Hara- way’s complex notion of the disorientation of the cyborg: “Where we once were rational animals, now we are feeling computers, emotional machines. But we have no way to really put these terms 9 together. The hard-to-live-with, self-contradictory notion of the emotional machine captures the fact that what we live now is a new and deeply felt tension” (ibid., 326). Identity play in a world beyond zeros and ones These theories of the cyborg as a subject formation that disrupts modern identity categories is put into relation with online communication in Sadie Plant’s book Zeros + Ones (1997). Plant attests the disorder of binary identity codes rooted in Western thinking that was also criticized by Haraway and Young. This identity disruption is amplified by new possibilities of anonymous communication and identity play online. Plant illustrates this reconfiguration of gender identities along the compu- tational logic of zeros and ones. While in traditional Western thought, the phallic 1 is associated with presence, power, and masculinity, women are associated with the 0 as absence, passivity, powerlessness, a nothing, a gap, a hole. In this metaphor, men are everything and women nothing, an image corroborated by the division of global wealth and political power. The computer disrupts this binary logic, however, and turns the established binary upside down. In original computer punch cards the 0 constitutes the something and the 1 the nothing: “No longer a world of ones and not-ones, or something and nothing, thing and gap, but rather not-holes and holes, not-nothing and nothing, gap and not-gap” (ibid., 57). Plant’s narrative of the history of computing relocates the focus to the forgotten contributions of women, such as Ada Lovelace whose work in the 1840s foresaw the potentials of computing beyond mere calculation (also cf. Evans 2018). Women mostly, however, executed repetitive work to fulfil plans developed by men. When weaving was automated through punch cards as an early form of computational automation, women moved to the industrial assembly lines and functioned as gearwheels along with industrial machines. Today it is women in the Global South, mainly in Asia, who assemble computers for use in the West. Plant describes an intimate relationship between women and machines both abused as tools of men. She invokes the many popular fictional narra- tives of robots, often designed as women and thus connoted with the idea of sexual objectification, who rebel against their human, male creators. Plant’s Zeros + Ones has been highly influential in early cyberfeminist writing. Both Danet (1998) and Sick (2004), for example, explain online avatars as masquerade disrupting traditional gender identities and Volkart (2004) describes the cyberfeminist subject as unruly cyborg, revolting against male domination. Plant’s book has, however, rightfully been criticized for its techno-deter- minism and its essentialist reproduction of stereotypical gender roles, although reinterpreting them in positive terms (Wajcman 2004, 73) much like some difference democrats. Recent cyberfeminist work turns to the corporeal configurations of the cyborg and investigates digital presence. The collected volume Cyberfeminism 2.0 (Gajjala and Oh 2012), for examples, 10 examines digital space as marked by patriarchal and capitalist inequalities that are contested by feminist presence. In “Developing a Corporeal Cyberfeminism” Brophy (2010) attempts to “reha- bilitate” cyberfeminism through the concept of liminality. Drawing on Elizabeth Grosz’s (2001) “in-betweenness” she explains new subject constitutions through the digital as a change in the per- ception of reality both online and offline. In a similar vein, Jessie Daniels’ “Rethinking Cyberfem- inism(s)” (2009) draws attention to re-embodiment on the internet. Through examples such as web- sites that facilitate peer advise on transsexual body transformation she illustrates how the partici- patory possibilities of online engagement are used in subaltern counterpublics to construct alterna- tive body images. This can be read as an emancipatory move of marginalized groups to take control of the construction of their own body and challenge hegemonic body images. In a circular process, images of the physical body are replicated online and then in turn affect the perception of the body offline and can even entail physical body transformation. Thus, while early cyberfeminist writing of Haraway, Turkle, and Plant focuses on ephemeral- ity and identity play, current cyberfeminists situate themselves much closer to difference demo- crats’ politics of presence by focusing on analog/digital identity continuities, thus paying closer attention to the limits of identity play and its stereotyping effects (Nakamura 2002), while still attesting possibilities for transformation. They, moreover, take the notion of the cyborg further by applying it not only to online identities like Plant but by grasping the offline reconfigurations of embodiment through a digitally altered perspective on the self. Toward a feminist democratic theory in the digital age While there is some agreement about the importance of identity and the inclusion of marginalized groups between difference democrats and cyberfeminists, their conceptions of identity differ quite significantly. Table 1 summarizes similarities and differences. Table 1: Comparison between Difference Democracy and Cyberfeminism Difference Democracy Cyberfeminism Political goal Inclusion Inclusion Space of political interaction Analog face-to-face Cyberspace, liminal space Mode of presence Physical presence Digital presence Identity performance Stable Mutable Both difference democrats and cyberfeminists contest gendered power asymmetries by focus- ing on particular modes of identity performances. Cyberfeminist perspectives allow for the 11 conceptualization of a politics of presence online. The difference democratic notion of physical presence can thus be supplemented with a cyberfeminist notion of digital presence. This sheds new light on the dilemma of difference. The essentializing tendencies in difference democratic thought can be countered by opening up possibilities of exploring multiple identity configurations in the liminal spaces between and beyond online and offline. Cyberfeminists draw attention to the value of anonymity. This does not merely entail hiding identity, which has rightfully been criticized as contributing to the invisibility and further marginalization of disadvantaged groups (Kolko 2000). Rather, anonymity consists as much of identity creation as of identity negation and thus constitutes a specific type of identity performance (Author 2018). As the rest of the paper will demonstrate, promoting diversity is possible through digital corporealities that continue as well as discontinue physically embodied identities. Thus, a cyberfeminist notion of digital presence can supplement difference democrats’ politics of presence and contribute to the overarching goal of inclusion. Difference democrats developed their accounts of inclusion in relation to three types of polit- ical institutions in society: representative state institutions, citizens’ participatory institutions, and social movements’ organizations. They, however, did not differentiate the mode of identity perfor- mance for these three types, proposing continuous identity performances for all of them instead. In contrast, I argue that different institutions fulfil different democratic functions which are best fa- cilitated by different modes of identity performance. To generate this differentiation, I draw on the concept of participatory spaces emerging in feminist development studies (Brock, Cornwall, and Gaventa 2001; Cornwall 2002; 2004; Gaventa 2006; Cornwall and Coelho 2007) and deliberative democratic theory (Dryzek 2009).2 Discussions about participatory spaces distinguish empowered spaces such as parliaments, invited spaces such as citizens’ assemblies, and claimed spaces such as social movement organi- zations. This differentiation enables us to grasp political participation in three different academic fields: First, the study of parliamentary deliberation gives insight into legislative decision-making processes (Bächtiger et al. 2005). Second, the study of democratic innovations is rich in empirical findings on participatory designs such as mini-publics, town meetings, participatory budgets, peti- tions, referendums, and consultations (Smith 2009). Third, the study of social movements and col- lective action has recently employed democratic theory to understand internal decision making where “forms of power intervene in the communicative arenas that social movements build and inhabit” (della Porta and Rucht 2013, 4; also cf. Polletta 2002). The concept of empowered, invited, and claimed spaces allows for thinking these three types of participatory arrangements together. The crucial differentiation between these spaces is informed by the social positionality of the cre- ators of the respective space and the actors within them. In short, it is determined by the question: Who created the space for whom? Empowered spaces are created by the state and facilitate the 12 interaction of state actors; invited spaces are created by the state for citizens; and claimed spaces are created by citizens for their own interaction. The metaphor of the space serves to translate the notion of physical relationality into social relationality: “Thinking about participation as a spatial practice highlights the relations of power and constructions of citizenship that permeate any site for public engagement” (Cornwall 2004, 1). Furthermore, space as a relational concept makes imagining a discursive power architecture possi- ble. Participatory interfaces are to be carefully constructed to challenge asymmetrical power rela- tions inscribed in societies. In line with difference democrats’ pursuit of inclusion, Andrea Corn- wall (2002) argues: “Some participatory approaches explicitly seek to disrupt the order of hierar- chical institutions, creating new and different spaces in which different rules of the game offer otherwise silenced actors a chance to speak and be heard” (7). At the same time, however, partici- patory design can function as a tool of political elites to coopt participants (Font et al. 2017). The differentiation between types of spaces contributes to finding new answers to the question of inclusion in unequal digitized societies. Looking at political engagement on the internet, each type of participatory space with its different actors contributes to a different democratic function through different modes of identity performance as illustrated in Table 2. All of these identity per- formances and their respective democratic functions serve the overarching goal of inclusion. Table 2: Typology of identity performances in participatory spaces on the internet Empowered spaces Invited spaces Claimed spaces Actors State agents State agents, citizens Citizens Identity performance Identity continuation Identity negation Identity exploration Democratic function Accountability Equality Freedom Empowered spaces such as parliaments need to fulfil the democratic function of accountability to create a strong link between citizens and their representatives (Dryzek 2009, 1386). The dialog- ical process of giving and holding to account includes various ideas of various constituencies into the democratic system. Accountability is facilitated by identity continuation – the performative enactment of physically embodied identity as advocated by difference democrats. As a communi- cator in empowered spaces, the democratic subject acts as a representative of the social group it is associated with by virtue of the identity markers inscribed in its body and performed through socio- cultural codes of clothing, body language, etc. In regard to online communication, such continuous identity performances are possible through the digital replication of analog identity performances. 13 Invited spaces are designed to facilitate inclusive dialogue and are oriented toward the ideal of freedom from domination (Smith 2009, 22). In contrast with both empowered and claimed space, invited spaces generate short-lived encounters between citizens and between citizens and state agents. They call for short term solutions to problems of internal exclusion (Young 2000). Digitally enabled identity negation corresponds to this logic. It reduces stable identity markers to a minimum such as individual pseudonyms, the collective moniker “anonymous” or no identifiers at all. This does not do away with identity, it rather facilitates identity expression. Diversity is claimed lin- guistically rather than visually. Identity boundaries are, however, destabilized (Author 2018). Claimed spaces, finally, flourish on identity exploration to facilitate expressive freedom, as suggested by cyberfeminists. Claimed spaces on the internet allow for the visual enactment of identity through avatars, pictures, videos, emoticons and other digital reifications of corporeality. This identity exploration of the individual serves the freedom to rediscover and playfully express the multifaceted self. It thus contributes to inclusion of various aspects of identity into the demo- cratic system. Identity exploration corresponds with social movements’ need to communicate with the public. To be heard in a competitive media environment, they need to form colorful and inno- vative collective identities and engage in carnivalesque forms of protest. The typology presented in Table 2 is not rigid. While the mode of identity performance and the respective function are indeed closely linked, the type of participatory space in which they might occur needs to be treated more flexibly. Accountability through identity continuation, for example, can be important in invited spaces as well just as identity negation and equality might be vital in claimed spaces. The following review of empirical work on the subject, however, will demonstrate that the respective identity performances and its functions mostly occur in the partic- ipatory spaces indicated in Table 2. It shows how these democratic functions come into play and what designers of participatory spaces need to take into account in order to best facilitate them. Empowered spaces on the internet: Accountability through identity continuation Empowered spaces as democratic forums legitimized by the citizenry to make political decisions on their behalf are increasing their online presence (Stanyer 2008). New digital modes of identity construction are used by governmental actors to fulfil their function as representatives of their re- spective constituencies. In practical terms, this means that representatives carefully select and cu- rate images and text including biographies and information on current activities. These visual and textual self-portraits replicate representatives’ analog identities. In a study on US Members of Con- gress, Gulati (2004) explains: “the images and symbols that members of Congress include on their Web sites are meant, at the very least, to be consistent with the impression of themselves that they are trying make with a constituent during a face-to-face meeting” (25). This is corroborated by 14 Stanyer (2008) in a study on US and UK legislators, who “…will seek to project the same identity (they will not appear as someone else) and emphasize the same qualities” (419). These continuous identity performances serve the democratic function of accountability con- necting representatives to their constituencies. Only through identity continuation can representa- tives be held accountable. Thus, one of the prime goals of digital government policies is to increase transparency. Not only does this enhance public scrutiny of governmental activities, it also strengthens the bond of constituents with their representatives: “While transparency of parliamen- tary procedures including committee deliberations, parliamentary debates, MP [Member of Parlia- ment] voting records and MP absenteeism is clearly important for public accountability, transpar- ency of actual MP characteristics (that is, personal and contact information) can likewise enhance the quality of governance by increasing public awareness, legitimacy, and trust in both Parliament and individual MPs” (Joshi and Rosenfield 2013, 528). Setälä and Grönlund (2006) go beyond the notion of transparency and claim that legislators’ digitized identity performances facilitate publicity. Unlike transparency, which describes the mere possibility of public scrutiny, publicity facilitated by representatives’ websites strengthens interac- tivity. The act of holding representatives accountable is a two-way conversation which also com- prises civic feedback. This input function of accountability allows for the inclusion of public opin- ion in governmental decision-making. While the possibilities for public feedback to legislators’ have been significantly increased through new media, several studies show that most of represent- atives’ websites grossly neglect the opportunity for interactivity (e.g. Jackson and Lilleker 2009). Representatives’ websites are rather used for one-way communication and identity construc- tion contributing to difference democrats’ ideal of embodied diversity. A recent study finds that 61% of parliamentary websites worldwide display photos of legislators, 67% indicate their sex, and 44% their age (Joshi and Rosenfield 2013). These numbers are higher in wealthier nations such as the US where 100% of the websites of Members of Congress contain information on education and experience, 78% on local roots, and 90% on family relations. Representatives’’ official gov- ernmental websites are complemented by their social media presence. The compilation of several identity performances on various web domains has been theorized as “networked self” in the work of feminist media scholars (Cohen 2012; Papacharissi 2011). Empirically, 21% of legislators worldwide were found to use social media (Joshi and Rosenfield 2013). Legislators’ social media presence also entail a gendered aspect. While only 19.4% of UK MPs are women, 29.4% of MPs actively engaging on Twitter are women (Jackson and Lilleker 2011) giving some credibility to the cyberfeminist thesis of women’s empowerment through online engagement. 15 Invited spaces on the internet: Equality through identity negation Invited spaces such as citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgets are increasingly replicated online or make use of hybrid online/offline engagement (Smith 2009, 142-160). Whereas in em- powered spaces only state agents interact and the democratic function of accountability links them to the citizenry, invited spaces serve as an interface between citizens and state representatives, be this directly through the digital interaction of citizens with state agents or indirectly through gov- ernmental engagement with the discursive output of these spaces (Peixoto and Fox 2016). Invited spaces online are carefully designed to afford inclusive processes of citizens’ partici- pation, with the literature focusing on design feature such as facilitation, co-temporality (a-/syn- chronicity), and identifiability (Davies and Chandler 2012). The latter feature proves especially significant. Unlike their analog counterparts, online spaces provide the opportunity for the temporal negation of physically embodied identity. This potentially counters prejudice and discrimination that are prevalent in face-to-face encounters. It levels the playing field and promotes meritocracy. In 2000, for example, the UK parliament in cooperation with the Hansard Society organized an online consultation process entitled Womenspeak. The online forum invited both MPs and vic- tims of domestic violence to discuss their personal experiences under self-selected pseudonyms. The crucial role of avoiding identification is pointed out by Margarete Morgan, an MP taking part in the process: “The anonymity offered by the technology enabled women to tell their stories, often for the first time, without fear of identification and to receive support and advice without fear of reprisal” (cited in Smith 2009, 154). Coleman (2004) finds that 85% of participants in Womenspeak reported to perceive the online forum as a safe space: “Had the participants been invited to attend Parliament to tell their stories and express their views, few would have gone. Parliament is an intimidating place and most women would not want their names recorded as witnesses” (6). This case illustrates difference democrats’ counterpublics as enclave deliberation of disadvantaged groups (Fraser 1990). At the same time, it exemplifies a cyberfeminist practice of peer support. At the end of the process, several participants posted enthusiastic comments such as: “It was brilliant; I felt really close to the participants during the consultation as if I were part of a giant support network” (cited in Coleman 2004, 8). While this example aptly illustrates the inclusive function of identity negation in invited spaces online, it is possible that this is only due to the particularly vulnerable position of participants. Other examples, however, show that temporal identity negation can contribute to equality in other contexts as well. An experiment on a political discussion forum to debate the upcoming South Korean national election in 2004 found that participants who had to reveal their gender, age, and region engaged less frequently than those who stayed anonymous. The authors of the study explain: 16 “Physical appearance or social status (perceived) in face-to-face interactions often function as ‘gates’ that control human interaction. Anonymity in computer-mediated communication frees in- teraction participants from potentially feeling socially inferior to their counterparts and, thus, fa- cilitates expression for everyone” (Rhee and Kim 2009, 225). This feeling of inferiority can further be explained by the “chilling effect.” The feeling of being observed and judged by others leads to inhibition and stifles free expression. This chilling effect observed on social media where users self-censor due to government surveillance (Stoycheff 2016) also comes to bear in invited spaces on the internet, where participants potentially feel judged by their gender, race or other identity markers. Anonymity can thus work against the chilling effect and alleviate peer pressure and concerns about surveillance. A study comparing anonymous and identified online petitioning found that the willingness to sign petitions drops by 8.5% if identifi- cation is required (La Raja 2011). Other studies show that when given the choice, large shares of online petition signers opt for anonymity (Berg 2017; Schmidt and Johnsen 2014). Similarly, par- ticipation numbers dropped drastically in the online participatory budgeting process in the German city of Gütersloh when mandatory identification was introduced. While in 2011 with the option of anonymity 1.7% of population took part, this number decreased to 0.4% in the consecutive year where identification was required (Ruesch and Märker 2012). The effect of diminished participation through enforced identification comes along with sig- nificant gender differences: The study on online petitions found that while men are hardly affected by required identification, engagement of female participants drops significantly. The author rea- sons that women are more heavily affected by peer pressure: “While women now vote at equal rates to men, their participation remains unequal with respect to… other forms of participation. Disclosure policies appear to depress this participation even more” (La Raja 2011, 21). Claimed spaces on the internet: Freedom through identity exploration Claimed spaces on the internet are either created as alternative media or occupy commercial space on corporate social media such as Facebook or Instagram. They make use of opportunities for digital identity change, which is not a serious endeavor but a playful undertaking. The carni- valesque act of masking constitutes a transformative practice of challenging the stability of identity (Bakhtin 1968). Today carnivalesque protest with its roots in European medieval Mardi Gras, which often entailed the mockery of ruling authorities and the playful inversion of social hierar- chies, meet the possibilities of online identity play described by cyberfeminists. Both cyberfeminist practice and carnivalesque protest are aptly illustrated by the New York art collective Guerilla Girls. Their public interventions in the disguise of gorillas dating back to 1985 have made use of digital media in recent years. Digital identity performances extend the 17 analog possibilities of roleplay through digital images and videos of gorilla performances enacting aggressiveness and masculinity. Particularly, the breakaway-group Guerilla Girls Broadband have created a subversive online presence. On their website, users can join by virtually dressing up as gorillas. Core members of Guerilla Girls Broadband themselves take on the identities of female artists who have not gained the deserved appreciation in the male dominated art business. A “car- tography of choice” maps abortion clinics and emails can be sent to “bad bosses” anonymously to address sexual harassment, unequal pay or other work-related grievances (Stein 2011). Digital identity play has also become an important part of the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Established in 1991, this campaign has recently spread to Second Life, a virtual online environment for social roleplaying. Here feminist activists set up virtual dis- cussion events, meetings, and exhibitions around the topic of gendered violence. Participants de- sign female avatars with black eyes, bruises, and bleeding wounds to create awareness (Motter 2011). Protest avatars were also used in the Euro Mayday Netparades in 2004 and 2005. The annual Euro Mayday Parade draws attention to current precariousness of work, which especially affect women. On the website of the Mayday Netparade users could create their individual protest avatars as part of a diverse collective. According to a study by Mattoni and Doerr (2007), women, who are often underrepresented in the imagery of traditional Labor Day parades, took center stage online as “the parade’s visual icons of protests positively underlined diversity and differences as an asset of the collective struggle” (132). Other examples illustrate the relevance of racial and queer identity performances in claimed spaces on the internet. In 2004, a queer community established itself in the virtual roleplay fantasy game World of Warcraft. The fact that the 5,000 users of the community created 15,000 characters, including the practice of gender swapping, indicates playful identity exploration. Due to its global scope, this community also included participants from countries where homosexual practices are banned. Apart from political discussions on LGBTIQ issues, the community organized virtual Pride parades. Unlike the above examples were analog political protest was taken online, members of the LGBTIQ movement on World of Warcraft organized offline meetings after their online en- counter (McKenna, Gardner, and Myers 2011). The digital enactment of difference is also evident in what became to be known as Habbo raids. In 2006 users of the imageboard 4chan charged mod- erators of Habbo Hotel – an online roleplay platform mostly used by white, US American teenagers – with discriminating against black avatars. 4chan users created a coordinated online swarm of black, male avatars in black suits with black sunglasses and big afros, which blocked entrances to facilities in the virtual hotel setting. When other users attempted to enter the virtual pool, the raiders exclaimed: “Pool’s closed due to AIDS!” mocking racial prejudice (Author 2017). 18 Identity exploration in claimed spaces on the internet does not require an entire virtual world with fully animated avatars like in the cases cited so far. Rather, social media provide tools for the everyday practice of identity play as part of political engagement. Gerbaudo (2015) demonstrates how users change their social media profile pictures for flags, logos or portraits of others or they decorate their own pictures with ribbons or color filters. In the so called “Arab Spring,” for exam- ple, thousands of social media users changed their profile picture for the image of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old blogger killed by police in Alexandria. The strategy of difference enabled by online identity exploration thus also entails aspects of performing solidarity. At the same time, however, the carnivalesque construction of digital identities is also employed for discrimination and hate speech. In the so called “Gamer gate affair” twitter trolls using images of anime girls as profile pictures attacked feminists criticizing misogynist depiction of women in computer games, includ- ing death and rape threats (Author 2017). Another example is the online presence of the Ku Klux Klan who uses their website to visually construct a masculinist, heteronormative, and racially “pure” self-image (Schmitz 2016). Conclusion This essay set out to find new ways of furthering inclusion in democratic societies marked by iden- tity related power asymmetries. It aims at contributing to the ideal of inclusion promoted by differ- ence democrats while counteracting the essentializing tendencies inherent in their politics of pres- ence. While the essentializing effects of the politics of presence themselves cannot be eliminated, they can be alleviated by a pluralization of alternative modes of identity performances. The multi- plicity of identities which contribute to diversity as core value of democracy calls for the plurali- zation of institutional arrangements, which facilitate such diverse identity expression. The typology presented here to account for such plural identity performances might appear as rigid. While the link between identity performances and their respective democratic function in- deed proofs strong, the link with the respective space appears weaker. Examples illustrate that these identity performances with their respective function can work in other types of spaces as well. Koop and Marland (2012), for example, find that at least to a certain extent identity exploration is possible for representatives as they emphasize different aspects of themselves in different media. And some of my own work explores modes of identity negation in claimed spaces created by the hacktivist collective Anonymous (Author 2017). The purpose of this paper is not to regulate identity performances and confine them to partic- ular spaces. Rather than closing doors, I aim to open them and allow for new thinking. The goal is to draw attention to the diversity of modes of identity performances that are not mutually exclusive but can and must function alongside each other to fulfil a variety of democratic functions. This 19 essay is a call for diversifying the types of participatory spaces and modes of identity performances as part of a pluralist democratic society. It is thus diversity – the core value of difference democracy – that leads the way out of the dilemma of difference. The essentializing tendencies of difference democracy are best countered by pluralizing participatory spaces and the variety of identity perfor- mances within them. This argument needs, however, to be evaluated against the background of the perils of online communication such as group polarization, discrimination, and digital inequalities. Exclusion from online participation along gender, race, class, age, and geographic divides leaves these new possi- bilities of engagement out of reach for many. The factual increase in participatory possibilities, thus also widens gaps in political engagement. It is, however, important to note that these gaps are narrowing and are even overcome in the case of gender in the US, (Campos-Castillo 2015). As for all of these challenges, they often pose new threats to democracy. The wide spread of online com- munication is, however, a new emerging reality that needs to be faced. This reality brings both opportunities, which are the subject of this article, and challenges. Both are unavoidable and need to be dealt with with the greatest possible awareness, to which this article is a contribution. The important question at this point is whether and to which extent participatory spaces on the internet exhibit negative effects observed in everyday communication. Group polarization de- scribed by Sunstein (2017) as a process in which communication among like-minded participants leads to more extreme positions has not been reported in any of the cases discussed above. The same applies for lying and fraud. It appears that design features of participatory spaces such as moderation and the awareness of their participants mitigates negative behavior exhibited else- where. This observation, however, does not apply for discrimination. As the examples of the Gamergate and the KKK online illustrate, some claimed spaces are created to pursue exclusionary purposes. This appears as trade-off coming along with freedom of expression. In short, anti-dem- ocratic tendencies exhibited in online communication are rather less pronounces in participatory spaces, who through their design and participants’ awareness appear to discourage such behavior. Discussions of difference democracy have long quietened down. But marginalized identities still account for modes of exclusion as recent studies show (Beauvais 2017; Karpowitz and Mendelberg 2014). This becomes even more evident in the face of new media’s challenges such as cyberbullying and opportunities such as #MeToo. 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Oxford: Oxford University Press. 26 1 This criticism has been responded to in various accounts of deliberative democracy with relaxations of consensus requirements and explanations of rationality as intersubjective for example by Dryzek (2000). Here this criticism merely functions to explain the starting point of debates around difference democracy. 2 While the literature in development studies speaks of closed, invited and claimed spaces, Dryzek speaks of empow- ered and public spaces. Closed and empowered spaces refer to state institutions. Public spaces encompass both claimed and invited spaces. I bring these two terminologies together, because they supplement each other. On the one hand, Dryzek’s terminology lacks a differentiation between invited and claimed spaces and collapses them into public spaces. On the other, the terminology of development studies is not consistent. The attributes “claimed” and “invited” describe how participants get access to the respective participatory space. The term “closed” does not describe modes of access but appears to deny access altogether.” The term empowered,” however, explains that participant in state institutions get access via modes of empowerment, either through elections or appointment. While these processes are highly exclusive, they are not entirely closed. work_4wmp3cy2hvflxdat4xcapanf6q ---- PERSPECTIVE Revisiting perceptions and evolving culture: a community dialogue on women in polar research Sandra Starkweather a, M. Seagb, O. Leec & A. Poped aCooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA; bScott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; cInternational Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA; dInternational Arctic Science Committee, Akureyri, Iceland ABSTRACT Women have made outstanding contributions to polar research in recent decades, though full engagement may be hindered by persistent inequities, including notably the prevalence of workplace harassment. Remote field settings, such as those pervasive in polar research, have been identified as particularly susceptible to cultures of harassment. It was therefore timely at the Polar 2018 Open Science Conference in Davos, Switzerland, to convene a discussion focused on women’s perspectives and experiences. A panel discussion—“From Entering the Field to Taking the Helm: Perspectives of Women in Polar Research”—took place on 20 June 2018 and featured five women undertaking work from marine biotechnology to organizational leadership, across career levels. Over 300 conference attendees joined the lunchtime panel. The panellists’ perspectives on historical barriers, current challenges and future prospects revealed that while challenges persist, experiences vary greatly. Audience engagement underscored the need to sustain dialogue at polar meetings, to bring visibility to the statistics related to workplace harassment and to encourage polar science organizations to assume leadership on promoting equitable workplace culture. KEYWORDS Gender; equity; harassment; culture; science; Open Science Conference ABBREVIATIONS IASC: International Arctic Science Committee; SCAR: Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Background Women’s participation in polar research has grown steadily as cultural and institutional barriers to their participation have decreased (Rosner 2009; Hulbe et al. 2010; Carey et al. 2016). However, in spite of decades of progress, including women’s ascension to leadership at key institutions, challenges persist. The high prestige of work associated with remote field sites, long vessel cruises and sustained studies within northern communities has often been accompanied by high barriers to female participation. Twentieth- century policies barring women from polar field sites (Seag 2017) have left a legacy of field cultures centred around masculine norms (Rosner 2009; Glasberg 2012; Carey et al. 2016). Today, as hard barriers are falling, these norms need revisiting, and expected codes of conduct in field sites must be clearly articulated and enforced (Starkweather et al. 2017). A growing body of evidence, including the SAFE study (Clancy et al. 2014), has recently underscored the much more damaging impact of harassment directed disproportionally at women participating in fieldwork, ranging from the rare but most explicit forms of violence to subtle but more pervasive gender harassment. Polar research is not immune to these threats to safety and inclusivity (Bell & Koenig 2017; Waldman 2018). Recently, Nelson et al. (2017) have documented the prevalence of career exits due to negative experi- ences with scientific field programmes, particularly those that do not enforce codes of conduct. Other scholars have emphasized that female scientists can fail to achieve the “visibility” of male peers, even when their work is equally impactful (e.g., Oreskes 1996). The combined effects of these stressors may account for a greater portion of the so-called “leaky pipeline” effect (Goulden et al. 2011), describing the progressive loss of female talent from the science labour pool, than has been previously understood (SRT 2018). Last month, the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released the results of a sweeping, multi-year study on harassment in the sciences (NASEM 2018). Their study found that between 20% and 50% of female students in US science, engineering and medicine reported having experienced harassing behaviour perpetrated by staff or faculty; more than 50% of faculty also said they had experienced harassment. LGBTQ women and women of colour were more likely than their straight, white counterparts to have been harassed, and women of colour were more likely to report feeling unsafe because of their gender. The study also recog- nized a problematic dearth of data. CONTACT Sandra Starkweather sandy.starkweather@noaa.gov Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, UCB 216, Boulder, CO 80309, USA POLAR RESEARCH 2018, VOL. 37, 1529529 https://doi.org/10.1080/17518369.2018.1529529 © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7369-1891 http://www.tandfonline.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/17518369.2018.1529529&domain=pdf This dearth of data is true in the polar regions too, but the recent work of Nash et al. (2018) provides an important first look. Their survey of researchers in the Australian Antarctic Program revealed that 64% of female participants experienced harassment, and, like the SAFE study, found that these incidents go largely unreported. Meanwhile, media reports con- cerning female geologists working under the US Antarctic Program (Scoles 2018) put a harrowing face on how such harassment can proceed unchecked in remote and isolated locations. Data from non- Western countries and data on Arctic research are even scarcer. Given these facts, a fresh round of examinations of polar work cultures is called for. The International Polar Year 2007–09 opened many doors to researchers from around the world (Krupnik et al. 2011), including women, so it was timely at the Polar 2018 Open Science Conference for a discussion focused on women’s experiences in polar research. The panel discussion—“From Entering the Field to Taking the Helm: Perspectives of Women in Polar Research”—took place on 20 June and featured five women in disciplines ranging from marine biotechnology to organizational leadership to history of science. While the “Taking the Helm” event centred on the perspectives of women, it was impor- tant to the organizers to avoid essentializing “women” and further to recognize that gender is non- binary. Further, it was important to recognize that many intersecting identities can result in overlapping challenges that require specific attention. Panellists represented plural intersecting factors spanning career levels, research discipline, professional roles and national and ethnic identities. From the event The event drew more than 300 participants represent- ing 32 countries, who engaged in a vibrant, interactive dialogue with the panellists following interview ques- tions by independent journalist Hannah Hoag. Hoag’s questions explored aspects of the panellists’ experiences including: landmark achievements; challenges related to retention, mentoring and the #metoo movement in science; and redefining leadership. Hoag introduced the discussion by acknowledging her surprise at the relatively recent history of women’s inroads to polar work and the leading achievements of some of the panellists. HongKum Lee, a former director of the Korean Polar Research Institute, was among the first women to assume the leadership of any polar institute. During her tenure as director (2007–2013), she oversaw the completion of Korea’s first research icebreaker, Aaron, and the Jang- Bogo Antarctic Research Station in Terra Nova Bay. Lee noted that her position empowered her to budget for appropriately sized field equipment for female participants—a key safety advancement. Susan Barr, IASC’s first female leader, characterized her field experiences as overwhelmingly positive, even as she was blazing trails. While taking on a role that required extensive fieldwork in Svalbard did expose her to improperly sized equipment and scepticism related to her abilities to operate firearms or outboard motors, she met these hurdles with a sense of humour. Morgan Seag, a doctoral candidate in geo- graphy studying women’s advancements into Antarctic research, shared that her work was inspired by senior female researchers like these “who changed my conception of what my future could look like. I had assumed that my sixties and seventies would involve hammocks and grandbabies—these powerful women [in Antarctica] showed me how narrow that idea was. I could [like them] be camping on the ice sheet, making discoveries.” Seag went on to observe that the Antarctic culture for female researchers is still mixed in spite of these pioneers’ contributions. In response to an audience question about sexualization of women in the field, she noted the enduring pre- valence of comparing and “rating” female field team members on their attractiveness across field sites on the continent. Challenges are by no means limited to field sites. Arctic researcher Colleen Strawhacker, an archaeolo- gist who works with Indigenous communities in both Alaska and the American South-west, recounted her own experiences with bullying during proposal pre- paration at the hands of senior male investigators, which caused her to note: “You can either fight for a seat at the table or build your own table. Both are exhausting.” While she stood her ground against the bullying behaviour, she fears the type of retaliation that could await her through anonymous community processes like proposal or publication review. These anxieties were echoed by an audience member who had taken similar positions. These and other challenges prompted Hoag to turn to the panellists for their ideas about how to move forward. Chandy Nath, the new executive director of SCAR, shared her view that “we need to reimagine what leadership looks like”. She and others acknowledged that there can be an unconscious image in our heads when we think about polar research, i.e., the frosty beard, and that it takes delib- erate efforts to broaden that view. Or as others have noted: “If you aren’t being consciously inclusive, you are likely being unconsciously exclusive.” All panel- lists agreed that early career researchers should not let perceptions about barriers stand in their way. Audience questions honed in on and amplified those sentiments of the panellists focused on barriers and challenges. Multiple audience comments also focused on the low numbers of men present in the audience, who accounted for about 5% of the 2 S. STARKWEATHER ET AL. participants. Even if stemming from positive inten- tions, such as to allow women to have their own space, a lack of male participation in these conversa- tions was viewed as particularly problematic related to the road towards creating more inclusive polar research cultures. The event generated a strong response across social media platforms, where hundreds—both inside and outside the room—participated in the virtual conversa- tion following the hashtag #PolarWomen2018, even- tually reaching a social media audience of more than 800 000 Panellists’ perspectives were augmented through the development of an Instagram effort elicit- ing input through a series of questions. The Instagram account has grown a steady following from zero to over 600 followers in 10 weeks. The resulting Women in Polar Science compilation, which currently numbers 50 profiles, continues to enrich our understanding of the plurality of experiences and achievements of women in polar research, and highlights the potentials and aspirations of a generation of women poised to impact the world. Reflected in these profiles are the joys of collegiality and accomplishment in positive work envir- onments; the importance of believing in yourself, fol- lowing your instincts, supporting colleagues and not letting biases stand in your way; and a clear love of polar environments and people. Moving forward The innovations required to address the next genera- tion of polar research questions surpass the bounds of the physical, chemical or biological sciences alone. Future challenges will require systems thinking, inclusive collaboration and the dismantling of socially enmeshed barriers to progress. What better way to prepare a generation of scientists to meet the chal- lenges posed by rapid ecological change, much- needed interdisciplinary work and the paradigmatic shift towards knowledge co-production than through raising cultural awareness and equity within our own ranks? The overwhelmingly strong presence of early career researchers at the event suggests that there will be a continued demand to sustain inclusivity dialogues; some senior researchers were dismayed that “we still need to have these conversations”. These types of generational differences may reflect shifting norms, or they may reflect a subtler selection bias whereby certain types of adaptive strategies, nat- ural to some and quite foreign to others, improve survivorship in research settings (e.g., McNutt 2017; Willenbring 2018). As Cheryl Rosa of the US Arctic Research Commission notes in her Instagram profile, “[i]t would be nice not to need any strategy” to succeed as a woman in polar research. Will the future impact of women in polar research be limited by their ability to strategize around gender barriers? Or is our community willing to evolve culturally, to dismantle those barriers and broaden our image of who con- tributes to scientific excellence and how? The answer lies in part with our institutions, includ- ing international science bodies like IASC and SCAR. Cultural shifts take time and deliberate remedies. The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study recognized that solutions to harassment in the geosciences will require a “system wide change to the culture and climate”. System-wide change of this type starts with dialogue, an important objective of the “Taking the Helm” event. Yet without stronger partici- pation from male colleagues, system-wide change will not advance. IASC executive secretary Allen Pope, a co- organizer for the event, asked on Twitter: “Do we have sufficient ‘buy-in’ to the staggering statistics about har- assment to make a change?” Each of us who has per- sonally experienced such harassment might reflect on the value of sharing these experiences more openly to build such buy-in. Further, we need to promote the types of culture and climate surveys that reveal the experiences of researchers in our proximal settings, including those who wish to remain anonymous. Polar institutions like IASC and SCAR could play key roles in supporting surveys to establish a baseline of experiences against which we could formulate remedies and measure progress. In the meantime, it is imperative that organizations like the Forum of Arctic Research Operators and the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs continue to grow a role for them- selves in preventing and responding to sexual harass- ment in polar field settings. A beneficial starting point, as raised through the social media commentary, would be to help make acceptable norms of behaviour well understood and enforced. Indigenous participants were notably under- represented at Polar 2018 for a variety of reasons and absent from the panel itself. Strawhacker chal- lenged the audience to investigate why these meetings are not more relevant for, or accessible to, Indigenous communities. Returning to the starting premise that intersectionality provides a valuable frame for cul- tural examination, co-organizer Renuka Badhe, of the European Polar Board, noted during closing remarks at the event that there are many other min- oritized groups who would benefit from an expand- ing dialogue about inclusivity in polar research. Organizations like IASC and SCAR should consider ways to better integrate inclusivity dialogues into their meeting programmes, encouraging all attendees to participate, and to develop and enforce codes of conduct for their own organizations. If there was a unifying aspect of the “Taking the Helm” event, it was a shared aspiration to see a future for polar research that is ever more diverse, respectful and inclusive for all, one that supports a POLAR RESEARCH 3 vibrant community of researchers through all career stages and enables them to rise to the height of their potential. Our collective efforts to better understand polar regions are impaired when we are not inclu- sive, and, at this critical time, we can’t afford that. Let’s work together to evolve a more positive work culture for all so that the adaptive strategies that women, people of colour and others have developed to cope with discrimination can become a thing of the past. Acknowledgements We would like to thank our sponsors for their support of the “Taking the Helm” event: Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, Arctic Research Consortium of the USA, IASC, International Association of Cryospheric Sciences, International Glaciological Society, Ocean Expeditions, Ltd., Tinker Muse Prize, USA Arctic Research Commission and an Anonymous Private Donor. We would also like to thank our moderator, panellists and volunteer coordinator Meredith LaValley. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. ORCID Sandra Starkweather http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7369- 1891 References Bell R.E. & Koenig L.S. 2017. Harassment in science is real. Science 358, 1223. Carey M., Jackson M., Antonello A. & Rushing J. 2016. Glaciers, gender, and science: a feminist glaciology fra- mework for global environmental change research. Progress in Human Geography 40, 770–793. Clancy K., Nelson R., Rutherford J. & Hinde K. 2014. 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STARKWEATHER ET AL. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102172 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102172 https://www.outsideonline.com/2300656/harassment-problem-scientific-dream-jobs?utm_content=bufferf4f3d%26utm_medium=social%26utm_source=twitter%26utm_campaign=tweet https://www.outsideonline.com/2300656/harassment-problem-scientific-dream-jobs?utm_content=bufferf4f3d%26utm_medium=social%26utm_source=twitter%26utm_campaign=tweet https://www.outsideonline.com/2300656/harassment-problem-scientific-dream-jobs?utm_content=bufferf4f3d%26utm_medium=social%26utm_source=twitter%26utm_campaign=tweet https://www.outsideonline.com/2300656/harassment-problem-scientific-dream-jobs?utm_content=bufferf4f3d%26utm_medium=social%26utm_source=twitter%26utm_campaign=tweet https://www.outsideonline.com/2300656/harassment-problem-scientific-dream-jobs?utm_content=bufferf4f3d%26utm_medium=social%26utm_source=twitter%26utm_campaign=tweet https://science.house.gov/legislation/hearings/subcommittee-research-and-technology-hearing-review-sexual-harassment-and https://science.house.gov/legislation/hearings/subcommittee-research-and-technology-hearing-review-sexual-harassment-and https://science.house.gov/legislation/hearings/subcommittee-research-and-technology-hearing-review-sexual-harassment-and https://science.house.gov/legislation/hearings/subcommittee-research-and-technology-hearing-review-sexual-harassment-and http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/boston-university-rejects-geologist-david-marchant-s-appeal-termination http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/boston-university-rejects-geologist-david-marchant-s-appeal-termination http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/boston-university-rejects-geologist-david-marchant-s-appeal-termination https://speakingofgeoscience.org/2018/06/29/the-elephant-in-the-women-in-science-room/ https://speakingofgeoscience.org/2018/06/29/the-elephant-in-the-women-in-science-room/ https://speakingofgeoscience.org/2018/06/29/the-elephant-in-the-women-in-science-room/ work_4wnrfvhllfbjxc2g5bydvuifoe ---- wp-p1m-39.ebi.ac.uk Params is empty 404 sys_1000 exception wp-p1m-39.ebi.ac.uk no 217539058 Params is empty 217539058 exception Params is empty 2021/04/06-01:56:08 if (typeof jQuery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/1.14.8/js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,String.fromCharCode(60)).replace(/\]/g,String.fromCharCode(62))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} Page not available Reason: The web page address (URL) that you used may be incorrect. 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Find a specific article by its citation (journal, date, volume, first page, author or article title). http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/ work_4xa5ekckl5eh3bs3tkodzofg7u ---- Partha Kar: To tackle racism, the NHS needs policies with teeth THE BOTTOM LINE Partha Kar: To tackle racism, the NHS needs policies with teeth Partha Kar consultant in diabetes and endocrinology I had to read through the email a few times to digest what a consultant had written to me. “Conflating covid with institutional racism amongst your friends and colleagues is utterly shameful,” it said. “Nobody knows the genetics of covid, but you see fit to suggest that its predilection for BAME [black and minority ethnic people] is down to racism. Your views nauseate me—there is no room for them in today’s NHS.” The email was in response to my column in May for The BMJ,1 in which I discussed whether racism was a factor in the increased mortality rate from covid-19 among people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Subsequently, further investigations and a report from Public Health England2 have established that racism and discrimination may have contributed to the increased risk of death from covid-19 among ethnic minority groups. Yet, for the consultant who sent me that email, it was hurtful to even suggest that there may be racism in the NHS. The incident made me reflect on a wider problem—and an analogy with sexism. When the MeToo movement began, many men responded indignantly: “We can’t all be tarred with this brush,” “I have many women friends,” or “I’m a very liberal man.” They missed the point that the movement wasn’t about them. It was about being quiet, listening to the examples raised, and reflecting that there may be many colleagues whose views you have not picked up on, not acted on, or ignored. It was about being vocal against the issue when observed. About being allies for women facing sexism and trying to bring an end to such a culture. Racism in the NHS is not much different. You indeed may not be racist, but to then suggest that no one else is, and to be indignant at the notion of the NHS having a race bias, may simply reflect your ignorance or the bubble you inhabit, where people don’t make any judgments based on colour. However, it’s this sort of ignorance from well meaning individuals, more than the views of outright racists, that propagates the problem. Such views mean that, when people see something that jars, they remain silent or try to explain it away with some “scientific” reasoning: cue the debate about vitamin D and that being the sole reason for greater mortality in the BAME population, rather than acknowledging the existence of discrimination and racism. If you can’t even accept that there could be a problem—that there could be racism and discrimination in the amazing NHS—why would you want to try to solve it? At an individual level, it’s time to be antiracist, to speak up, and to be allies. At a policy level, it’s time for the NHS to start affirmative action. It needs to introduce something like the Rooney Rule, a US National Football League policy that requires teams to interview ethnic minority candidates for head coaching jobs and other senior roles. So far in the NHS, all attempts at cajoling or nudging have achieved little beyond tokenism. Data in the 2019 Workforce Race Equality Standard showed that white applicants were still “1.46 times more likely to be appointed from shortlisting compared to BME applicants.”3 How many more reports or data do we need before we realise that simply “shining light on the data” makes no difference without targets and penalties to improve things? We do know that the NHS responds to targets and associated penalties: look at the four hour target or waiting times for cancer treatment. Another big step would be to ditch terms such as B(A)ME, which turn discrimination into a simplistic discussion about white and non-white communities. The issues influencing differences in attainment and socioeconomic deprivation are fundamentally different for someone who is black than for someone who is Indian, just as they’re different for someone from Bangladesh than for someone from China. There is no better or more opportune moment to shift the dial from conversations and cajoling to clearer data collection, open access to data based on area and authority, and a commitment to a concept similar to the Rooney Rule. The “Seacole Statute” has a ring to it, and it would be a way to pay homage to a titan and pioneer in the world of fighting for equality in healthcare. It’s certainly worth thinking about. Competing interests: www.bmj.com/about-bmj/freelance-contributors. Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed. 1 Kar P.ParthaKar:Covid-19andethnicity-whyareallourangelswhite?BMJ 2020;369:m1804. doi: 10.1136/bmj.m1804 pmid: 32371436 2 Public Health England. Beyond the data: Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups. Jun 2020. https://assets.publishing.ser- vice.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_da- ta/file/892376/COVID_stakeholder_engagement_synthesis_beyond_the_da- ta.pdf. 3 NHS. NHS workforce race equality standard. Feb 2020. https://www.eng- land.nhs.uk/about/equality/equality-hub/equality-standard/workforce-race- equality-standard-2019-report/. 1the bmj | BMJ 2020;369:m2583 | doi: 10.1136/bmj.m2583 VIEWS AND REVIEWS Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust drparthakar@gmail.com Follow Partha on Twitter: @parthaskar Cite this as: BMJ 2020;369:m2583 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2583 Published: 30 June 2020 o n 5 A p ril 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://w w w .b m j.co m / B M J: first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m j.m 2 5 8 3 o n 3 0 Ju n e 2 0 2 0 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/freelance-contributors https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892376/COVID_stakeholder_engagement_synthesis_beyond_the_data.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892376/COVID_stakeholder_engagement_synthesis_beyond_the_data.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892376/COVID_stakeholder_engagement_synthesis_beyond_the_data.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892376/COVID_stakeholder_engagement_synthesis_beyond_the_data.pdf https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/equality/equality-hub/equality-standard/workforce-race-equality-standard-2019-report/ https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/equality/equality-hub/equality-standard/workforce-race-equality-standard-2019-report/ https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/equality/equality-hub/equality-standard/workforce-race-equality-standard-2019-report/ https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1136/bmj.m2583&domain=pdf&date_stamp=30-6-2020 mailto:drparthakar@gmail.com https://twitter.com/parthaskar http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2583 http://www.bmj.com/ work_4y7bajqytfh73hx464dwpgxsri ---- ‘Sex Is Not Just about Ovaries.’ Youth Participatory Research on Sexuality Education in The Netherlands International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Article ‘Sex Is Not Just about Ovaries.’ Youth Participatory Research on Sexuality Education in The Netherlands Marianne Cense * , Steven de Grauw and Manouk Vermeulen Research Department, Rutgers Netherlands, 3506 GA Utrecht, The Netherlands; stevendegrauw@gmail.com (S.d.G.); m.vermeulen@rutgers.nl (M.V.) * Correspondence: m.cense@rutgers.nl Received: 13 October 2020; Accepted: 17 November 2020; Published: 19 November 2020 ����������������� Abstract: Young people are not satisfied with the sexuality education they receive in Dutch high schools. They rate their sexuality education as mediocre (5.8 on a scale of one to ten). In cooperation with 17 young peer researchers, we explored what good sexuality education looks like from the point of view of young people. The peer researchers collected data in their own high school, using mixed methods, starting with individual interviews, followed by focus group discussions and Photovoice sessions to get more in-depth views on topics, class atmosphere, and teacher skills. In total, 300 pupils aged 12–18 participated in the research. Our findings demonstrate that young people want more sexuality education, during their whole school career. They want sexuality education to move beyond biological functions, sexually transmitted diseases, and reproduction into issues like dating, online behavior, sexual pleasure, relationships, and sexual coercion. Moreover, pupils want sexual diversity integrated and normalized in all content. One of the main issues is that sexuality education should be given in a safe class atmosphere, which demands sensitivity from the teacher. In addition to the findings of the study, this article reflects on the steps to be taken to realize the changes desired by young people. Keywords: sexuality education; sexuality; sexual agency; youth; student voice; youth participatory action research; The Netherlands 1. Introduction Although the Netherlands is seen as a forerunner when it comes to sexuality education [1,2], Dutch high school pupils think the sexuality education they receive can be improved. Young people rated the information they received in school as mediocre (5.8 on a scale of one to ten), as shown by the Dutch survey Sex under the age of 25 [3]. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth-rated it even lower with a 5.2. From the survey, we cannot distinguish the reasons for these low ratings, but they clearly raise concerns about the current practice of sexuality education in the Netherlands. This is reflected in an inquiry by the Dutch Inspectorate of Education in 2016 [4], which showed that sexuality education at schools was dependent on the teacher and not delivered on a structural basis, but randomly. What is considered sexuality education varies across countries and programs? Often, sexuality education is shaped by a narrow understanding of sexuality, focusing on sexual contacts, sexual anatomy, reproduction, birth control, and disease prevention [5]. Our interpretation of sexuality education is based on the World Health Organization European Expert Group on Sexuality Education [6], looking at sexuality education as a lifelong learning process of acquiring information and of forming attitudes, beliefs, and values about relationships, intimacy, and identity. Sexuality education has been mandatory in Dutch primary and secondary schools since 2012. However, the national education curriculum merely says that schools must pay attention to sexual diversity and sexuality, without giving any guidelines on content, frequency, or number of classes. The Dutch constitutional Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587; doi:10.3390/ijerph17228587 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph http://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3051-2934 http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/22/8587?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17228587 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 2 of 15 principle of freedom of education creates a barrier for a nationwide implementation of sexuality education, as Dutch schools are free to determine the amount of time, the approach, and the methods they use. Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is characterized by a positive approach to sexuality that accepts sexual feelings, desire, and pleasure as essential components of young people’s sexuality [5,6]. A comprehensive approach puts sexuality in a wider perspective of personal growth, development, and building up mutually consensual (sexual) contacts and relationships [5]. Dutch evidence-based, comprehensive sexuality education methods are available for use in- and outside of biology, but the implementation of these methods highly depends on contextual factors, such as teacher training, school policy, governing body support, and student response [7]. At present, sexuality education is predominantly taught within a biology framework, linking sexuality to puberty, sexual reproduction, prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and unintended pregnancies [8]. Consequently, Dutch pupils often only receive sexuality education from 13 to 15 years as many pupils quit biology in senior grades. Sexuality education has frequently been criticized for its failure to meet the needs and hold the interest of young people [9–12]. This should not be a surprise, as increased efforts to provide young people with sexuality education often emerge from moral panic around higher rates of teenage pregnancy, STDs, or sexting, with the aim to control young people’s sexualities, displaying coherent medical and moral values [13]. Allen’s study amongst young people aged 16–19 in New Zealand showed that content that does not address the questions and issues young people deem important may be dismissed as irrelevant [10]. One of the main issues Allen found was that the content of many sexuality education programs is very protective and directed towards risk management, offering young people very limited space for sexual agency, which does not register with their own sense of self and entitlement and even disempowers them. Scholars also pointed out that many sexuality education materials and practices are not tailored to fit the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) youth [14–17]. The higher rates of dissatisfaction with sexuality education amongst young people who differ from cultural ‘normalcy’, for instance, by being non-heterosexual, can be explained by the link between sexuality education and the dominant sexual culture. Sexuality education runs the risk of reproducing and reinforcing social inequalities and injustice, as it reflects the values, ideas, and stereotypes of the dominant culture [18,19]. Sexuality education may easily reproduce existing sexist, racist, and classist notions of sexuality, thereby ‘projecting a particular message and vision of who and how teens are and should be’ [18] (p. 61). This plays out not only on heteronormativity, but also on gender inequality, classism, and racism [20–23] and secularism/religious diversity [24–26]. Another field of concern that is illuminated by many scholars is the lack of a safe class atmosphere during sexuality education [15,20,27–29]. Sexuality is not just the subject of sexuality education; it is present all the time within and outside classrooms. The school is a space where sexuality is played out [28,29]. Krebbekx’ ethnographic study of sexuality education practices in Dutch schools shows how sexuality education classes can be used by young people to reproduce existing popularity hierarchies in class and how the probing by teachers to open up about their experiences can lead to bullying or publicly ’outing’ someone as sexually active [28]. Clearly, creating a safe atmosphere is closely linked to teachers’ pedagogic strategies, which is an area that arises in several studies on what young people voice as a concern in how sexuality education is delivered [10–15,30]. A meta-analysis of qualitative studies on sexuality education in ten countries illuminated three main problems [31]. The studies originated from the UK, Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Iran, Brazil, and Sweden. Firstly, schools take insufficient account of the ‘specialness’ of sex as a topic: ‘[S]ex is a potent subject that can arouse strong emotions, reactions, and feelings ( . . . ) yet the prevailing approach within schools appears to be to deny that there is anything exceptional about the topic and to attempt to teach sexuality education in the same way as other subjects’ [31] (p. 4). Secondly, the study suggests that schools struggle to accept that some young people are sexually active, leading to sexuality education content that is out of touch with the lives of sexually active young Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 3 of 15 people. Finally, the evidence indicates that young people dislike having their own teachers deliver sexuality education. Other studies illuminating young people’s perspective put emphasis on the desire for different content in sexuality education: Young people want less information about biological aspects of sexuality, and more explicit and accurate information about gender and sexual diversity, violence in relationships, intimacy, sexual pleasure, and love [10,32]. Studies also highlight that young people not only want classroom-based sexuality education, but also online sexuality education programs, with practical, age-appropriate content in the age range from primary school through to university [33,34]. As sexuality education, sexual culture, and the sexual practices of youth are strongly embedded in the cultural context, we cannot simply transfer the findings of international studies to the Netherlands. This paper explores what good sexuality education looks like from the point of view of Dutch young people. 2. Materials and Methods 2.1. Study Design To reveal young people’s perspectives on sexuality education, we chose a participatory approach. Working with young people as peer researchers allowed us to reveal the pupils’ perspective on classroom practices of sexuality education from an insiders’ perspective. The insider status of peer researchers increased access to study informants and empowered young people [35,36]. The literature suggests that peer researchers may establish a strong rapport with informants leading to a greater depth of the data and improved research of sensitive topics such as sexual health [35,37,38]. Studies show that with appropriate and adequate resources (time, financial investment), peer interviewing produces a positive, capacity building experience for peer-interviewers, participants, and researchers [35,38]. This study addresses four main research questions: (1) What does good sexuality education look like from the pupils’ point of view? (sub-questions: What content, what is needed to feel comfortable, when/by whom, and how should sexuality education be delivered?) (2) What do pupils value in the sexuality education they receive(d) during high school? (3) What elements are seen as problematic or missing? (4) Are there differences between pupils’ needs and wishes, related to differences in gender, sexual, cultural, and religious identities or level of education? As the peer researchers participating in our study were young and had not yet received any scientific education, we had to choose methods that fitted their skills. As inexperienced social researchers can lack skills in effective probing techniques, we asked the peer researchers to carry out short semi-structured interviews to explore the range of issues connected to how pupils experienced sexuality education at school. Subsequently, the issues raised were analyzed and explored more in-depth in Focus Group Discussions (FGD). FGD prove to be an effective method to explore the perceptions, ideas, opinions, and thoughts of participants [39]. As a third method, Photovoice sessions, were included to create a more open space for pupils to reflect on how sexuality education could be. Photovoice is a qualitative research method by which participants take photographs in response to a research question. The photographs are then analyzed by the same participants who work in small groups to identify common themes [40]. A review of the literature shows that Photovoice contributes to an enhanced understanding of community assets and needs and to the empowerment of participants [41]. Table 1 shows how the three methods contributed to the research questions and what questions were asked. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 4 of 15 Table 1. Aims and questions per research method. Method Aim Questions Semi-structured Interviews Contributes to research question 2, 3, and 4 by exploring: • The level of felt importance of sexuality education; • The aspects pupils are satisfied with and the aspects they find problematic in the sexuality education they received. • Do you think it is important that you are taught about relationships and sexuality? • Have you already had sexuality education in high school? • When did you have sexuality education in high school? • What was it about? Are those the things it should be about? Did you miss things? • What did you like about the lesson(s)? • What would you change about the lesson(s)? Focus Group Discussions Contributes to research question 1, 2, 3, and 4 by exploring more in-depth: • Whether they feel sexuality education is relevant and important to young people; • The experiences of participants with sexuality education at school; • The topics pupils find important to be addressed; • When, by whom, and by which methods sexuality education should be taught; • The conditions that are needed to create a safe atmosphere. • How do you experience sexuality education at school? • Is the content of sexuality education relevant to your life? • What makes it relevant, and what doesn’t? • What topics do you find important in sexuality education? • How should sexuality education lessons be taught? • What conditions are needed to make you feel safe when you are taught about relationships and sex? • In which grade(s) do you think sexuality education should be given? • Who should be teaching sexuality education? Photovoice Sessions Contributes to research question 1 by exploring in a visual way: What good sexuality education looks like, in the eyes of pupils What does good sexuality education look like? 2.2. Recruitment of the Peer Researchers In the preparation phase, we discussed with teachers and pupils how pupils could be motivated to join the research team. The best option was to offer the research project as an assignment in the last year of high school where each pupil had to conduct a small-scale study (‘Profielwerkstuk’ in Dutch). Pupils are free to choose their own subjects for this study. Our aim was to recruit around 20 peer researchers, working together in teams of three to four peer researchers per school. We recruited peer researchers by publishing a call for co-researchers on different websites aimed at high school pupils, young people in general and LGBTQ youth. We conducted the research with 17 peer researchers, aged between 16 and 18 years old, based at six schools, spread throughout the country. We strived to recruit peer researchers of different genders, sexual orientations, and cultural backgrounds, but succeeded only partly, with only four male and 13 female peer researchers, three peer researchers identifying as LGBTQ, and three people having a migrant background. Table 2 presents the gender and team division of the peer researchers who participated in this study. Three groups consisted of two peer researchers, one with three participants and two with four participants. The numbering of the schools corresponds with the schools in Table 3. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 5 of 15 Table 2. Gender and division in teams of peer researchers (n = 17). School Girls (n = 13) Boys (n = 4) Other (n = 0) Total (n = 17) 1 3 3 2 2 2 3 2 2 4 2 2 4 5 2 2 4 6 2 2 Table 3. School locations, education types, religious affiliation, the composition of the school population, and sexuality education programs. School Location Education Type Religious Affiliation Composition School Population Sex Education Methods 1 Boxtel (rural) HAVO/VWO (middle and higher level) Roman Catholic Mainly white Biology textbooks 2 Rotterdam (urban) Gymnasium (Higher level) Christian Mainly white Biology textbooks 3 Hengelo (rural) HAVO/VWO (middle and higher level) Public Mainly white Biology textbooks 4 Almere (urban) VMBO/HAVO/VWO (all levels) Christian Multicultural Biology textbooks 5 Althorn (rural) HAVO/VWO (middle and higher level) Roman Catholic Multicultural Biology textbooks, Gender and Sexuality Alliance 6 Breda (urban) VMBO/HAVO/VWO (all levels) Public Multicultural Biology textbooks; method Long Live Love As the schools were connected to the peer researchers, we did not explicitly select the schools participating in our research. Fortunately, the schools were in different parts of the Netherlands, in urban and rural environments, and located at different levels of education. Table 3 presents the school locations, education types, religious affiliation, composition of the school population, and sexuality education methods used per school. 2.3. Capacity Building and Coaching of Peer Researchers Building upon the Explore toolkit developed by Rutgers and IPPF [42] on meaningful youth participation in research, two two-day capacity building trainings were organized during residential weekends. The first training was aimed to provide the peer researchers with enough tools to collect data at their schools. The first residential weekend also allowed the young researchers to meet each other, learn about the objectives of the research project, and reflect on their own norms and values regarding sexuality. The capacity training involved sessions on qualitative research techniques (how to conduct interviews and FGD, how to ask open questions) and on ethics. During the weekend, the peer researchers tested and adapted the interview topic list. After the weekend, a research supervisor was allocated to each team of peer researchers. This supervisor actively supported the peer researchers, gave feedback on their data collection, and arranged debriefings to discuss any difficulties. The supervisor also supported on a practical level by leading FGD and Photovoice assignments. The second two-day capacity training took place after the data collection and before the data was analyzed. The training was dedicated to a preliminary analysis of the research findings and a joint reflection on the research process and experiences of peer researchers. 2.4. Data Collection The peer researchers recruited participants at their own high school. They were explicitly instructed to recruit pupils of all ages, levels of education, genders, sexual orientations, and cultural backgrounds. This resulted in a diverse group of 300 pupils, aged 12–18, at various levels of education (see Table 4). Participants were asked what cultural group they felt they belonged to (see Figure 1). Around a quarter considered themselves culturally as non-Dutch (i.e., having a migrant background and adhering to the cultural values associated with this background). For ethical reasons, the peer researchers were asked not to inquire about someone’s sexual orientation: This could potentially feel unsafe for the participants, and they might not have been ‘out’ in the school environment. As for the Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 6 of 15 representation of diverse backgrounds, we succeeded in including a broad group of pupils in our research and believe the age and gender division in our sample reflect parts of the diversity of young Dutch people. However, we did include relatively many participants attending the middle and higher levels (theory-based) of Dutch secondary education. Table 4. Participant characteristics (n = 300). Participants. Girls (n = 156) Boys (n = 144) Other (n = 0) Educational Level Educational Level Practice-Based Theory-Based Practice-Based Theory-Based Total Peer researchers 0 13 0 4 17 Participants interviews 26 71 32 67 196 Participants FGD 3 23 8 8 42 Photovoice participants 8 12 12 13 45 Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, x 6 of 15 Table 4. Participant characteristics (n = 300). Participants. Girls (n = 156) Boys (n = 144) Other (n = 0) Educational Level Educational Level Practice-Based Theory-Based Practice-Based Theory-Based Total Peer researchers 0 13 0 4 17 Participants interviews 26 71 32 67 196 Participants FGD 3 23 8 8 42 Photovoice participants 8 12 12 13 45 Figure 1. Cultural belonging participants. The peer researchers started their data collection with short interviews. To ensure consistency of the collected data, we asked the peer researchers to fill out an online questionnaire in Google Forms, while carrying out the ten-minute interviews that they would directly submit after the interview. As such, we were able to monitor the progress made and the results obtained. They also recorded the interviews, which were transcribed afterward. The interviews turned out to be manageable for the peer researchers. However, some interviews were limited in-depth, which might have been caused by a lack of confidence of some peer researchers to use probing questions, but it may also reflect the discomfort of participants on being interviewed on this topic individually. After the interview phase, the peer researchers organized nine FGD, and in two schools also three Photovoice sessions. To promote social safety for participants, we worked with small, gender-specific groups (four to six participants). At one school, we also conducted an FGD with the members of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA), consisting of pupils striving to achieve a safe climate at school for people of all gender and sexual identities. The FGD and Photovoice sessions were led by senior researchers. After the data collection of the peer researchers, the senior researchers conducted another six Photovoice assignments at a seventh school, with a very multicultural school population, with the aim to increase the cultural diversity of our sample. All FGD and Photovoice sessions were recorded and transcribed. The FGD lasted between 30 and 60 min, and the Photovoice sessions between 60 and 120 min. These methods held a higher threshold for recruiting participants. Compared to the interviews, however, the participants of the FGD were more candid and shared personal experiences more openly, and data from FGD and Photovoice assignments transpired to be the most important source of information during analysis. 2.5. Data Analysis As data analysis is a delicate and lengthy process, only a partial analysis could be achieved by the peer researchers in the limited time they had available. After the second weekend, dedicated to the analysis and writing a research report, the peer researchers analyzed their own data and wrote their report on the needs and wishes of pupils of their own school. The senior researchers analyzed Figure 1. Cultural belonging participants. The peer researchers started their data collection with short interviews. To ensure consistency of the collected data, we asked the peer researchers to fill out an online questionnaire in Google Forms, while carrying out the ten-minute interviews that they would directly submit after the interview. As such, we were able to monitor the progress made and the results obtained. They also recorded the interviews, which were transcribed afterward. The interviews turned out to be manageable for the peer researchers. However, some interviews were limited in-depth, which might have been caused by a lack of confidence of some peer researchers to use probing questions, but it may also reflect the discomfort of participants on being interviewed on this topic individually. After the interview phase, the peer researchers organized nine FGD, and in two schools also three Photovoice sessions. To promote social safety for participants, we worked with small, gender-specific groups (four to six participants). At one school, we also conducted an FGD with the members of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA), consisting of pupils striving to achieve a safe climate at school for people of all gender and sexual identities. The FGD and Photovoice sessions were led by senior researchers. After the data collection of the peer researchers, the senior researchers conducted another six Photovoice assignments at a seventh school, with a very multicultural school population, with the aim to increase the cultural diversity of our sample. All FGD and Photovoice sessions were recorded and transcribed. The FGD lasted between 30 and 60 min, and the Photovoice sessions between 60 and 120 min. These methods held a higher threshold for recruiting participants. Compared to the interviews, however, the participants of the FGD were more candid and shared personal experiences more openly, and data from FGD and Photovoice assignments transpired to be the most important source of information during analysis. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 7 of 15 2.5. Data Analysis As data analysis is a delicate and lengthy process, only a partial analysis could be achieved by the peer researchers in the limited time they had available. After the second weekend, dedicated to the analysis and writing a research report, the peer researchers analyzed their own data and wrote their report on the needs and wishes of pupils of their own school. The senior researchers analyzed the data of all six schools and the data from the additional seventh school. For this analysis, the qualitative software MaxQDA (VERBI GmbH, Berlin, Germany) was used. The method used was a thematic analysis [43]. The first author analyzed the first ten transcripts and drafted a preliminary coding scheme. The second author examined the same ten transcripts using the codebook. The first and second authors then discussed discrepancies in their conceptualizations and amended the coding scheme accordingly. The authors then separately coded all the remaining transcripts. The codes were compared and sorted into new categories. These categories were assigned to themes. When complete, the authors met to resolve any discrepancies, so that all applied codes, categories, and themes were mutually agreed upon. The interviews yielded codes on three main themes: Experienced importance of sexuality education; desired content of sexuality education; conditions for a safe atmosphere. The interviews gave a good impression of the perception of sexuality education to a wide range of pupils. The FGD generated much more details on how participants experienced current sexuality education practices, in what kind of situations they felt uncomfortable, what subjects they missed and how they felt sexuality education should be improved. This led to new codes under the same three main themes and added, for instance, much more codes on teacher skills under conditions for the safe atmosphere. Another main code was added, which was ‘methods to be used in sexuality education’. The discussions during the Photovoice sessions yielded mainly codes about the desired content of sexuality education and about methods. The Photovoice sessions added an extra source, which were visual images (see Figures 2 and 3 for examples). Sometimes these pictures were plain photographs of contraception, condoms, a #MeToo poster, a rainbow flag, or a baby growing inside a belly, illustrating subjects that participants felt should be covered in sexuality education. In other cases, the explanation given by the participant revealed not just a subject, but another aspect of what she or he felt sexuality education should be about, like this girl explaining one of her pictures: “This is a picture of a chair in an abortion clinic. Every woman must be able to make her own choice. That should be part of sexuality education too.” The explanations are given and discussions in the Photovoice groups were coded in the same way as the FGD. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, x 7 of 15 the data of all six schools and the data from the additional seventh school. For this analysis, the qualitative software MaxQDA (VERBI GmbH, Berlin, Germany) was used. The method used was a thematic analysis [43]. The first author analyzed the first ten transcripts and drafted a preliminary coding scheme. The second author examined the same ten transcripts using the codebook. The first and second authors then discussed discrepancies in their conceptualizations and amended the coding scheme accordingly. The authors then separately coded all the remaining transcripts. The codes were compared and sorted into new categories. These categories were assigned to themes. When complete, the authors met to resolve any discrepancies, so that all applied codes, categories, and themes were mutually agreed upon. The interviews yielded codes on three main themes: Experienced importance of sexuality education; desired content of sexuality education; conditions for a safe atmosphere. The interviews gave a good impression of the perception of sexuality education to a wide range of pupils. The FGD generated much more details on how participants experienced current sexuality education practices, in what kind of situations they felt uncomfortable, what subjects they missed and how they felt sexuality education should be improved. This led to new codes under the same three main themes and added, for instance, much more codes on teacher skills under conditions for the safe atmosphere. Another main code was added, which was ‘methods to be used in sexuality education’. The discussions during the Photovoice sessions yielded mainly codes about the desired content of sexuality education and about methods. The Photovoice sessions added an extra source, which were visual images (see Figures 2 and 3 for examples). Sometimes these pictures were plain photographs of contraception, condoms, a #MeToo poster, a rainbow flag, or a baby growing inside a belly, illustrating subjects that participants felt should be covered in sexuality education. In other cases, the explanation given by the participant revealed not just a subject, but another aspect of what she or he felt sexuality education should be about, like this girl explaining one of her pictures: “This is a picture of a chair in an abortion clinic. Every woman must be able to make her own choice. That should be part of sexuality education too.” The explanations are given and discussions in the Photovoice groups were coded in the same way as the FGD. Figure 2. Photovoice pictures selection of a subgroup. (text saying: there are nicer ways of getting sexuality education, like watching movies). Figure 2. Photovoice pictures selection of a subgroup. (text saying: there are nicer ways of getting sexuality education, like watching movies). Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 8 of 15Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, x 8 of 15 Figure 3. Photovoice pictures of another subgroup. 2.6. Ethics The research was conducted according to Dutch legal and ethical guidelines for responsible research, including voluntary participation, safeguards against participant identity disclosure, and respect for participants [44]. We explicitly asked the co-researchers and participants for their written consent, and naturally, participation was voluntary. Parent/guardian consent, however, was not necessary to obtain as the study was conducted within the school context, as part of the school curriculum. The confidentiality of participants was strictly safeguarded. To ensure that peer researchers could protect themselves and knew how to ensure the safety and confidentiality of their participants, we trained them on ethical principles during the first residential weekend. To illustrate, we taught the peer researchers how to create a safe atmosphere and find a place for the interview where nobody could listen in. They were also trained not to disclose any information and use only anonymized information in their report. Each group of peer researchers was assigned one of the professional researchers for support and guidance. Some studies reported special ethical challenges related to peer research [38]. Participating as a peer researcher can cause distress to the young people involved when they hear about problems or sexual trauma. Their involvement in a study on sexuality may also impact their social position. Bailey et al. [45] demonstrate in their systematic review that the benefits of participating for peer researchers outweigh the challenges, including greater confidence, new skills, and having their voice heard. 3. Results 3.1. Young People Express a Strong Need for More Sexuality Education during Their Whole School Career Most research participants voiced they want sexuality education at high school to be given more attention. The few participants who did not value sexuality education at school argued that they already know all there is to know, they do not need to know because they are not sexually active, or they feel too uncomfortable during sexuality education lessons. Clearly, younger participants (12–14 years old) had weaker ideas about sexuality education compared to participants aged 15 and older. “Well, you should know about it, because it is part of life. So, it is useful to get some information.” Many participants underlined that sexuality education prepares them to make good decisions in the future. “So you know what to expect, what are sensible choices and what are not.” Others stressed that sexuality education is relevant for their lives at this moment, as relationships and sexuality are very important issues to them. They emphasized the importance of continuity in sexuality education when they grow Figure 3. Photovoice pictures of another subgroup. 2.6. Ethics The research was conducted according to Dutch legal and ethical guidelines for responsible research, including voluntary participation, safeguards against participant identity disclosure, and respect for participants [44]. We explicitly asked the co-researchers and participants for their written consent, and naturally, participation was voluntary. Parent/guardian consent, however, was not necessary to obtain as the study was conducted within the school context, as part of the school curriculum. The confidentiality of participants was strictly safeguarded. To ensure that peer researchers could protect themselves and knew how to ensure the safety and confidentiality of their participants, we trained them on ethical principles during the first residential weekend. To illustrate, we taught the peer researchers how to create a safe atmosphere and find a place for the interview where nobody could listen in. They were also trained not to disclose any information and use only anonymized information in their report. Each group of peer researchers was assigned one of the professional researchers for support and guidance. Some studies reported special ethical challenges related to peer research [38]. Participating as a peer researcher can cause distress to the young people involved when they hear about problems or sexual trauma. Their involvement in a study on sexuality may also impact their social position. Bailey et al. [45] demonstrate in their systematic review that the benefits of participating for peer researchers outweigh the challenges, including greater confidence, new skills, and having their voice heard. 3. Results 3.1. Young People Express a Strong Need for More Sexuality Education during Their Whole School Career Most research participants voiced they want sexuality education at high school to be given more attention. The few participants who did not value sexuality education at school argued that they already know all there is to know, they do not need to know because they are not sexually active, or they feel too uncomfortable during sexuality education lessons. Clearly, younger participants (12–14 years old) had weaker ideas about sexuality education compared to participants aged 15 and older. “Well, you should know about it, because it is part of life. So, it is useful to get some information.” Many participants underlined that sexuality education prepares them to make good decisions in the future. “So you know what to expect, what are sensible choices and what are not.” Others stressed that sexuality education is relevant for their lives at this moment, as relationships and sexuality are very Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 9 of 15 important issues to them. They emphasized the importance of continuity in sexuality education when they grow older and have more sexual experiences. “I have the idea our teachers think you should know it all when you are 16. But that is not true for everyone. If you are 16, you don’t know all the implications. They throw you in at the deep end. Go discover it yourself, we won’t help you anymore.” Most participants indicated sexuality education should be given throughout their school careers, starting from elementary school. “By repeating more often and more frequently, it becomes a more normal thing to talk about from childhood onwards.” Other reasons why they found sex education at school important, is that not everybody gets good information at home, and some participants argued that it’s hard to find proper and reliable information on the internet. And proper information is needed to empower young people to make their own decisions: “There are families where contraception is taboo. But well, you should be able to think for yourself, without your mother deciding everything for you.” Other studies among young people conform to a strong need for school-based sexuality education [30–32]. However, the specific demand to extend sexuality education to senior classes does not explicitly emerge from other studies, probably because it is more common in other countries that sexuality education is (still) taught to young people aged over 15 years. 3.2. Sexuality Education Should Cover More Issues Although almost every participant received some information about sexuality at school, this information in most cases only concerning contraception, reproduction, and STDs/HIV, usually provided in biology. Participants argued they want more sex-positive education. “Now it is quite negative, while sex can be good too. They just tell you half the story. When nobody tells you how it should be, how can you recognize being in a bad relationship? So, I feel both sides have to be told.” Female pleasure should be getting more attention, as a girl clarifies: “It is important that sexuality education makes clear that girls need to have pleasure too, so boys do not feel sex is just for them. Boys need to know about vaginas, you know, about the most sensitive part, the clitoris.” Participants particularly missed education about subjects that are relevant for them at present, not in the future, about feelings, relationships, dating, sexual harassment, communication, and online and offline sexual behavior. “Sexuality education is focused too much on ovaries and too little on how it feels, or what you like. Or on how do you talk about sex together?” Participants also missed information on how to deal with problems and conflicts: where to get a Sexually Transmitted Infection test, how does a pregnancy test work, where to turn to when you need an abortion, how to find help after sexual violence? They wanted concrete scripts for situations they encounter: “When you do not want to have sex . . . How do you say that? And how can you be clear you want to move forward?” Both girls and boys disclosed that gendered social norms influence their self-esteem and their sexual agency. Girls protested the double standard and want to have this addressed in sexuality education. “I think it is so wrong . . . the difference people make between girls and boys . . . when a girl has sex once, she is a slut, but when a boy has sex ten times, he is the hero for all the boys..“ In one of the focus groups, boys discussed the shaming and blaming of girls sending sexy selfies: “I do understand why some girls are called a slut, if you see the selfies they post.. they just want attention.” Another boy responded: “If a boy sends a dickpic, do you think he is a whore too?” The answer of the group: “No, no, he is just a fool.” Another area where gendered norms play out are uncertainties about their bodies. Participants argue sexuality education can play a role in diminishing uncertainties: “Many boys and girls are insecure about things that are very normal. It is important to talk about this, to know that it is not crazy. That sex is not shameful. Relationships are also important to talk about. Just to break the taboo.” Participants also emphasized that it is important to know that everybody develops physically and emotionally at their own pace. “So, you don’t need to be ashamed if you are late having sex or getting your period. We need more diversified examples. Different stories. To learn that development is not one-dimensional. Everybody is different.” Moreover, especially girls wanted to know more about their rights: “It is good to know when you are entitled to say no, to know your rights, especially around #MeToo. When can you stop and say ‘this is it! These are my rights. I do not want this!’” Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 10 of 15 When it comes to sexual and gender diversity, many participants reported that it is often dealt with in a very limited way. “Yes, they do admit it exists, but we don’t talk about it. We don’t really address it. I feel it should be dealt with differently. Not just mentioning that bisexual, gay, and transgender people exist, but also mention heterosexuality ( . . . ) So not to pretend heterosexuality is the norm. Just talk about all sexualities.” Participants wanted sexual diversity integrated into the whole area of sexuality education, not isolated as a single issue. They want to have a more comprehensive approach to sexuality education, including subjects like sexual orientation and gender identity, consent and coercion, online sexual behavior and sexual pleasure. This is in line with findings in other countries of the needs of young people regarding the content of school-based sexuality education [10–15]. Studies also confirm that current Dutch sexuality education fails to address the social norms that limit young people in their sexual development and relationships and reproduce inequalities [17,28]. 3.3. Sexuality Education Requires a Safe Atmosphere and a Self-Confident and Sensitive Teacher According to the participants in our study, sexuality education can only succeed if there is a safe atmosphere in the classroom. If they felt uncomfortable, they would not talk about sexuality. “Just a nice atmosphere in which you can feel comfortable. So, you don’t have to be afraid to show who you are. That you can just be yourself.” Participants thought differently about sharing personal experiences. Some participants did not want to share anything personal, while others very much want to. “I do want sexuality education, but if you have no questions or you don’t want to talk in a small group, I feel it should be not mandatory, you know like ‘you have to talk about it’.“ Participants shared stories about friends being bullied after sharing personal information. “Of course people are allowed to make jokes, but not nasty jokes . . . like they do about homosexuality or racist jokes . . . ” Participants argued they need teachers to be sensitive to this risk of exposure and bullying and not to expect them to open up in front of a whole class about their own experiences. The possibility to ask questions anonymously, working with available stories (in films, or written), and working in small groups helped to increase safety. Many pupils liked their own teacher (biology, social science, or mentor) to teach sexuality education as they were familiar with him or her. Some participants preferred having a different expert teaching sexuality education because it felt too intimate to share sexual content with their own teacher. Ultimately, it depended on the competence of the teachers. Participants mentioned four competencies of teachers that are crucial. First, teachers should be at ease with giving sexuality education. “A teacher should be self-confident in teaching sexuality education. Not someone who hesitates all the time and obviously feels shy. Then I think ‘never mind’ . . . ” Second, teachers should encourage young people to form their own judgment. For instance, when discussing porn, a participant warned about moral judgments: “Of course, porn is exaggerated. But you must be careful not to pressure people how sex ought to be. That is up to the person themselves. Maybe there are women who like anal sex, who knows? So, it is not right if a teacher says that porn is not realistic, and women do not want to be treated that way. It makes no sense to start about different sexualities, hetero, gay, bi, to make people accept each other, and then continue that certain forms of sex are not OK. What you should say is that porn gives an idealized image of breasts, vulva, large penis, that does not match reality.” Third, teachers should take young people and sexuality education seriously. Participants explained that a teacher must find a delicate balance between seriousness and humor. “The atmosphere should not be too tense, because nobody will interact, but it should also not be too treated like a laughing matter, because people will not feel safe to open up.” Fourth, pupils want a teacher they can trust, someone they can turn to if something bothers them. It does not matter to most participants whether the teacher is young or old, a man or a woman. Mentors were often referred to as good teachers, because they are a little closer to young people. The finding that it is not the gender or age of the teacher that matters, but their competence to talk openly, be trustworthy, and facilitate meaningful discussion, corresponds with findings by other scholars [11,12]. One of the main issues Pound, Langford, and Campbell [31] found was that young people felt sexuality was dealt with too casually. This need for sensitivity to the ‘specialness’ of sexuality is mirrored in the urge for a safe atmosphere. However, unlike the young people in the ten countries included in the meta-analysis of Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 11 of 15 Pound, Langford, and Campbell [31], Dutch young people obviously do not feel that teachers neglect or deny the fact that they are sexually active. Probably this is connected to the Dutch dominant cultural logic, which accepts adolescent sexuality [2]. In fact, young people voiced that the lack of sexuality education in senior grades gave the impression that they were supposed to know everything at the age of 16 and be self-sufficient and agentic in their sexual experiences. 3.4. Young People Want Diverse Teaching Methods Participants expressed their need for diverse sexuality education teaching methods in the classroom: Discussions, practical assignments, tips, movies, and games. They did not want to listen to lengthy explanations from their teacher but wanted to work through more interactive methods. “For instance about STDs, you can also make small groups and each group gets the assignment to explain about one STD, how can you get infected, is it a bacterium or a virus, how is it treated, what are the consequences, etc. Then you get more interaction between pupils and not just your teacher talking all the time.” Participants had different ideas about splitting the class into separate boys’ and girls’ groups. Some argued it would create more safety to ask delicate questions when you have separate boys’ and girls’ groups, where others felt it should be mixed so you can learn about the other sex as well. “Just together, because you also have to know how the other sex feels about things. Recently there was a boy who asked me, how many times do you have your period, four times a year? I thought ‘really!’” Participants also stressed the importance of hearing people with different opinions. “It is good to get out of your comfort zone and hear people who are looking from another perspective, to understand their views.” According to our participants, guest speakers and ‘experience experts’ are a good addition to the lessons of a teacher. “Especially about things that are not accepted by society. Then you have a very quick tendency to judge because you feel it’s not normal. But if there is a guest speaker who has experienced it themselves, then you know someone, and you feel much more respect for such a person.” Participants wanted variation in the lessons and methods, to get the opportunity to form their own ideas and points of view on socially sensitive topics, such as abortion, sexting, and sexual violence. This finding corresponds with the recommendations by other scholars to provide multiple stories in sexuality education, to enable young people to form their own views and identities and learn to navigate conflicts [30,46,47]. Naezer [47] (p. 720) concludes from her study of Dutch youth, ‘Finding people who are able and willing to confirm the “normalcy” of certain feelings, experiences and identifications requires the availability of a multitude of perspectives, a requirement that is absent from Dutch sex educational policies.’ 4. Discussion In this section, we will reflect on the main findings and make suggestions for the steps to be taken to realize the changes in sexuality education desired by young people. Firstly, Dutch youth participating in our study clearly voice the need for more lessons of sexuality education, delivered throughout their whole school careers, starting from elementary school and continuing as they grow older and start having romantic relationships and sexual experiences. This is a clear message to developers of school curricula and teachers to expand the amount of time spent on sexuality education and ensure that it does not stop when pupils are 15 years old. Currently, the debate about sexuality education in the Netherlands has a strong focus on what age to start with sexuality education. Less attention is paid to the age at which to end sexuality education. Our study underlines the importance of continuing sexuality education after the age of 15. Secondly, our study clearly illuminates the need for a truly comprehensive and sex-positive sexuality education. Young people miss information on sexual consent and sexual coercion, sexual diversity, sexual pleasure, relationships, dating, online and offline communication, and sex in the media. “Sex is more than biology”, as one of our participants voiced. Although this has been voiced by many young people over the past years, the sexuality education that is taught at many Dutch schools still has a very limited scope. A possible way forward could be to integrate comprehensive sexuality education into a broader curriculum than biology, for instance, in civic Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 12 of 15 education, social sciences, or ‘citizenship competences’, as a relatively new course taught in Dutch schools. Citizenship competences are defined as the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and reflection needed by young people to fulfill social tasks that are part of daily life in a democratic and multicultural society [48]. This study demonstrates that many young people experience tension, which arises from the collision between their needs and feelings and what they perceive as social norms regarding good decision-making, heterosexuality, and gender roles. Sexuality education will benefit from broadening the scope beyond lessons on individual decision-making to address norms collectively and offer learning opportunities and reflectivity [46,49]. Thirdly, one of the most crucial conditions for good sexuality education, is a safe class atmosphere, which enables young people to feel comfortable and relates to the issues presented. This means teachers must be aware and sensitive regarding the social dynamics going on during sexuality education, and outside of the classroom. Teachers should be aware that sexuality is enacted through collective practices, which brings about social effects of popularity, ethnicity, and gender [28]. For instance, by being aware of the kind of questions that can be asked publicly, and the ones that cannot, by giving space for anonymous questions, by carefully structuring lessons, and by using methods that support social safety. A safe space is especially important for young people fearing social stigma or judgments, like LGBTQ youth. As teachers are also immersed in a dominant heteronormative culture, they need to reflect on their own assumptions and prejudices. Research indicates that teachers might unintendedly reinforce stereotypes and contribute to inequality [28,50]. Methods used to address homophobia may be contra-productive when LGBTQ people are positioned as ‘different’ and vulnerable, and by doing so, could reinforce the presumption of heterosexuality. Classroom discussions of homosexuality might encourage controversy [51] and can even initiate hate speech [52]. Teachers need education and training to update their knowledge on young people’s varying sexual identities, relationships, and sexual cultures. They need to be aware of various ways of promoting inclusivity, such as by using inclusive terminology (for instance, using partner instead of boy- or girlfriend, avoiding using sex synonymously with sexual intercourse) and resources that represent sexual diversities [29]. Fourthly, the need for diversity and interactivity in teaching methods requires an innovative approach. In its Guidance, UNESCO promotes a learner-centered approach to sexuality education and encourages collaborative learning strategies [53]. When sexuality education aims to empower youth, rather than diminish health risks, teaching methods will become an important object of scrutiny [54]. Empowering methods need to put young people at the center and be sensitive to (the heterogeneity of) their concerns, realities, suggestions, interests, and resistance [55]. Moreover, methods should include supporting young people’s own ways of knowledge building and learning strategies [56]. Developing sexuality education that builds on young peoples’ active participation will ensure content that is much more relevant to their lives, and additionally, it will always be up to date in language, dating trends, and technological developments. This study has some limitations. The main limitation is that we were unable to explore whether differences between pupils’ needs and wishes were related to differences in sexual, gender, cultural, and religious identities. As we did not gather much information on the sexual orientation and ethnic background of participants, we cannot make proper distinctions based on these categories within our group. Ethically, this was information that could not be obtained using face-to-face research methods among pupils in a school context. A recommendation for future research would be to combine face-to-face methods with more anonymous data collection methods. 5. Conclusions This study explored what sexuality education should be like, from the perspective of Dutch young people, aged 12–18. Seventeen young peer researchers collected data at their own high school, among 300 participants. Our study endorses that the benefits of participatory research outweigh the challenges [45] both for the quality and reach of the study as for the development of the peer researchers. The findings of our study demonstrate that most young people want more lessons, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587 13 of 15 and more comprehensive sexuality education than they currently receive. They want sexuality education to move beyond biology and focus on matters that are relevant in their actual lives, such as dating, online behavior, sexual pleasure, relationships, and sexual coercion. Moreover, they want sexual diversity integrated and normalized in all sexuality education content, instead of treated as a separate issue. One of their main issues is that sexuality education should be taught in a safe class atmosphere, which requires a teacher who is sensitive enough to know which questions can be answered publicly, and which cannot, and who takes young people seriously and encourages them to form their own judgments. The future challenge for developers of sexuality education and teachers is to move away from considering the teacher as an expert transferring knowledge towards a participatory, learner-centered approach. The role of the teacher will change into a facilitator of learning and empowerment by encouraging young people to discover different sexual cultures and identities, exchange knowledge, and take a stance. An active role of young people will ensure that the content of sexuality education is more relevant to young peoples’ lives and provide more opportunities to develop their sexual agency. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, M.C., M.V. and S.d.G.; methodology, M.C. and S.d.G.; software, M.C. and S.d.G.; validation, M.C. and S.d.G.; formal analysis, M.C. and S.d.G.; investigation, M.C. and S.d.G.; resources, M.C., M.V. and S.d.G.; data curation, M.C.; writing—original draft preparation, M.C.; writing—review and editing, M.C. and S.d.G.; visualization, M.C.; supervision, M.C.; project administration, M.C.; funding acquisition, M.C. 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Introduction Materials and Methods Study Design Recruitment of the Peer Researchers Capacity Building and Coaching of Peer Researchers Data Collection Data Analysis Ethics Results Young People Express a Strong Need for More Sexuality Education during Their Whole School Career Sexuality Education Should Cover More Issues Sexuality Education Requires a Safe Atmosphere and a Self-Confident and Sensitive Teacher Young People Want Diverse Teaching Methods Discussion Conclusions References work_4yvilboqdjfsnb7kavul2lgene ---- Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction of Phallic Space Vol.:(0123456789) Int J Semiot Law (2020) 33:433–449 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09716-7 1 3 Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction of Phallic Space Dany Nobus1 Published online: 12 May 2020 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract This paper examines how the signifier of ‘toxic masculinity’ operates in the con- temporary psycho-social landscape of embodied power relations. It is argued that toxic masculinity is a symbolic response to the deep sense of anger people experi- ence owing to the persistent disturbance of reason that characterizes the radically incongruous Thirdspace in which we live. To those who feel disoriented and lost, toxic masculinity is both an imagined cause and a projected solution to the endemic sense of dislocation. As an index of repressive power, self-serving discipline and ruthless ambition, toxic masculinity is held fully responsible by angry ‘outsiders’ for the ongoing disturbance of reason, whilst the very attribution of the cause of this disturbance to a gendered position of traditional embodied authority simultane- ously serves the purpose of changing the hybridity of Thirdspace into more conven- tional figurations of social imbalance. This explanatory model, which draws both on Edward W. Soja’s reflections on the changing spatialities of the human lifeworld and Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the (re-)production of (phallic) space, is further employed to address the questions as to why patriarchy persists and whether alterna- tive constellations of governance are feasible. Keywords Anger · Masculinity · Thirdspace · Hybridity · Patriarchy 1 Introduction Once upon a time, a long time ago, so long ago that I cannot even pinpoint exactly when, it would have been unequivocally complimentary for a man to be called a man. Nowadays, being called a man is an insult at best and a derogation at worst. A man is someone who talks in manspeak (usually characterised by an extended series of guttural sounds), who also performs manspeaking, i.e. who unashamedly * Dany Nobus dany.nobus@brunel.ac.uk 1 Division of Psychology, College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, London, UK http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11196-020-09716-7&domain=pdf 434 D. Nobus 1 3 contributes to a conversation amongst women without waiting until he is being spo- ken to, and who consistently engages in the discursive evil of mansplaining. At the risk of over-simplifying the picture, a 21st century man (not the schizoid type King Crimson were singing about back in 1969, but the ‘normal’ variety) is unmannerly, self-absorbed, authoritarian, reactionary, disrespectful, bigoted, secretly hoping for the return of page 3 in The Sun newspaper, misogynistic, sex-starved, loud-mouthed, sleazy, ignorant, lazy, arrogant, proud about his beer-belly, physically and emotion- ally abusive, power-hungry, potentially violent towards everyone apart from himself and his man-mates down the pub, and utterly risible without he himself knowing it. Maybe I am exaggerating, maybe I am painting a caricature, maybe I am just disgruntled about the fact that I was once called out on twitter in a faux apologetic meme as a ‘man with a manly view’. Fact of the matter is that in times of #MeToo campaigns, when white male billionaire besuited businessmen are ruling the world, white male Etonians and Harrovians are enjoying themselves tearing apart economic treaties, and other not-so-white right-wing male populists have no shame in justify- ing extra-judicial killings, it is not very nice to be called a man with a manly view. Two decades into the 21st century, (white) masculinity has become a bottomless repository for all that is repulsive in the late capitalist Western world, and the signi- fier has acquired such a high degree of ‘toxicity’ that ‘toxic masculinity’ is almost tautological. In addition, this toxicity is not merely associated with the hegemonic social status of masculinity [9, pp. 183–188], but is meant to capture its very exist- ence as a residual product of patriarchy. However, within the space of this paper I shall not offer a detailed psychoanalytic interpretation of how ‘men with manly views’ have come to represent the foul faces of all types of social inequality, nor of how this ‘crisis of masculinity’ is deeply affecting scores of young men in search of an identity. Man though allegedly I am, I remain unsure I would be able to ‘pull it off’ without having recourse to an extensive discussion of how sexual identity poli- tics interact with symbolic and other capital in the wake of a global economic crisis, which would require more than a few pages in an academic journal. Likewise, I shall resist the temptation to critically deconstruct the prevailing meanings of (white) masculinity in contemporary discursive practices, because my own (self-identified or attributed) manhood, not to mention the fact that I can easily be perceived as writ- ing from a white, male privileged position of social and intellectual authority, would make the exercise inherently suspect and thus largely futile. If there is any percent- age to be found in a careful dissection of the semantic field in which contemporary masculinity is embedded, the task would have to befall someone whose wardrobe does not contain male sartorial paraphernalia, and who is therefore high above sus- picion, lest the outcome be regarded as but an insidious attempt at rehabilitating the tarnished image of man, or resolving the sorry state of ‘masculinity in crisis’. Lofty as these aims would have been—some abandoned owing to a lack of space, others discarded owing to an accidental chromosomal excess—I shall restrict myself, here, to some brief (psychoanalytic) reflections on how the signifier of ‘toxic masculinity’ operates in the contemporary psycho-social landscape of embodied power relations, and on how this prevalent paradigm of modern masculinity connects with contem- porary debates on (the future of) patriarchy. Indeed, I believe that contemporary allegations of toxic masculinity are characteristic of a broader social force-field, in 435 1 3 Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction… which toxicity is the new name for a reprehensible amalgamation of moral corrup- tion, systemic exploitation and limitless egomania. It is not only worth investigating, then, how this name circulates and what purpose it serves, but also how it impacts upon those who employ it and those who receive it—as an allegation of perfidy and prodigality, or as a concept of gendered selfhood. 2 A Brief Anatomy of Anger By contrast with the last decade of the 20th century, which has been dubbed ‘the age of anxiety’ [10], the still relatively young 21st century could be characterised as the ‘age of anger’. All around the world, people young and old are angry, and whereas the majority vents it via social media, peaceful protests, school strikes, public inquir- ies and critical social movements such as Extinction Rebellion, Global Action for Trans Equality (GATE) and the Swarm Collective, on an almost daily basis it is also manifested in formal complaints, road- and other types of rage, seditious torchlight parades, hate crime and often barbaric, physical interpersonal violence.1 For all his emphasis on the death drive [12] and the irreducible discontents in civilization [16], Freud had almost nothing to say about anger. For sure, aggressivity intermittently appeared on his radar, yet this manifestation of the drive must not be confused with the passion or the emotion of anger, as an explosive interior affec- tive state [50, p. 75]. Aggressivity may be motivated by factors other than anger— amongst the cardinal sins, lust, envy and greed would probably be the most likely candidates—and anger does not de facto result in aggressivity, especially if the latter term is restricted to instances of hostile or violent behaviour towards others. Perhaps it is testament to Freud’s general disregard of anger, or maybe even his visceral fear of it, that his most evocative riff on the subject appeared in an essay on a 16th cen- tury statue of a prophet whose historical existence remains disputed. First published anonymously, and allegedly only by virtue of the fact that its methodology bore some resemblance to psychoanalysis, Freud’s reading of the Moses of Michelangelo stands out for its persistent refusal to acknowledge the grandiose marble sculpture in San Pietro in Vincoli as a representation of a man filled with wrath (Zorn), who is on the verge of smashing the Tables.2 Angry as he may have been at the sight of his apostate people cavorting around the Golden Calf, Freud’s Moses is a figure whose respect for the divine laws allows him to freeze his fury and keep his passions in 1 In London, stabbings have become so common that the traumatic impact of yet another young life wasted is almost instantly erased by the shock of a new lethal incident. It is important to note, in this respect, that the seemingly unstoppable surge of knife-crime on the streets of London is not just another epiphenomenon of inner city racism, or a symptom of unemployed metropolitan youth culture. It is indissociably linked to desperate expressions of masculinity amongst the city’s socially deprived young men, paired with a search for identity, a desire for community and an urge to be appreciated for personal accomplishments. 2 On the historical circumstances surrounding the publication of the paper, whose authorship was only known to the members of the ‘secret committee’ [25, 49] until it was reprinted in Freud’s Gesammelte Schriften in 1924, see [29, pp. 363–367] and [19, pp. 314–317]. For critical and occasionally angry anal- yses of Freud’s reading, see for example [1, 3, 30, 36, 42]. 436 D. Nobus 1 3 check, to the benefit of all mankind [15, pp. 229–230]. Contrary to what the Old Testament suggests, Freud does not make Moses literally break the law in anger when he observes how the people at the foot of Mount Sinai have already broken the law in their shameless worship of a secular idol. As if to suggest that Moses would never be driven to enact what his people have already performed metaphorically in his absence, Freud argues that Moses is capable of saving the law despite his anger, and that the preservation of the law saves him and his people from further wrongdo- ings. Anger, it is opined here, proceeds from the disintegration of law and order, the fading of a given set of established principles, or the disruption of an accepted mode of thinking, the more so as this ‘sense of reason’ is attached to someone’s psycho- social sense of identity. Where anger erupts, only the maintenance, or the reinstate- ment of a stabilizing structuring force may reduce its own destructive potential. It is Moses’ unwavering loyalty to the word of God that stops him from giving free rein to the fury provoked by the idolatrous Israelites. Freud’s subversive interpretation of Michelangelo’s Moses, as a seethingly angry man who remains nonetheless committed to self-restraint, echoes the enduringly captivating observations on anger by the Roman philosopher Seneca. Purportedly written in response to a request from his older brother Novatus, Seneca’s De Ira [45] takes its point of departure from the central Stoic premise that human beings need to submit voluntarily to the law of Nature, the supreme sovereign authority which is governed by virtue. As an unruly passion, anger emanates from a mis-inter- pretation or mis-judgement of reality—in modern therapeutic parlance, we might call it a ‘cognitive distortion’—and to mitigate its harmful effects it is better to pre- vent it from occurring altogether, yet when it does erupt it should be restrained by the power of reason. Although Freud is unlikely to have agreed with the Stoics that human nature is intrinsically virtuous, Seneca’s idea that anger is not a key compo- nent of the basic human emotional repertoire but a secondary ‘re-action’, and his proposed antagonism between anger and reason, definitely resonate with Freud’s comments on ‘frozen wrath’ in the Moses of Michelangelo [15, p. 229]. Seneca goes on to assert that ‘babies and the aged and the sick [infantes senesque et aegri]’ are ‘most inclined to anger [iracundissimi]’, and that ‘everything weak is by nature given to complaint [invalidum omne natura querulum est]’ [45, p. 26]. He does not explain why this would be the case, but the Stoic celebration of reason and lucid tranquillity makes it easy to infer that it may have something to do with their being more at the mercy of ‘unreason’, or less recognised as reasonable human beings. Anger thus originates in a disturbance of reason, and only by virtue of reason shall it be contained. When I was outed on twitter as a ‘man with a manly view’, some- one was probably angry at me, because something I had said or done had driven them out of their comfort zone. I am reluctant to claim that they mis-perceived their immediate social reality, but somehow their reason was being suspended in favour of an unruly passion. If so many people are angry these days, I would venture the hypothesis that it is because they experience the world in which they live as what Baudrillard would have designated, back in the early 1980s, as a pure simulacrum [2, p. 6]. Social insti- tutions have no relation to reality anymore, at least if reality is defined as the norma- tive primary task they are expected to fulfil. Neoliberal rationalities have infiltrated 437 1 3 Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction… each and every aspect of the social sphere, to the point where everything we see and hear seems to have lost its intrinsic value—reduced to the status of an exchangeable commodity in the endless proliferation of late capitalism.3 Health care provision is no longer tailored to patient needs, let alone to the development of a personalised treatment programme, but to Key Performance Indicators, Measures of Success and case management protocols.4 In the UK, public universities are now also accounta- ble to the Competition and Markets Authority, because they are effectively selling an educational service to potential ‘partners in learning’, formerly known as students, who are being readied for the job-market. British vice-chancellors brazenly state that their universities are addressing the skills-gap and preparing the workforce of the future, yet over the past decade the proportion of students disclosing a mental health problem to their institutions has quintupled [47]. To address the issue, the Office for Students (the new ‘independent’ regulator of English universities) called for an investigation by inviting universities to submit competitive project bids to a so- called ‘Catalyst Fund’. The consortium of ‘educational service providers’ winning the competition were given funds for a project on ‘Addressing Barriers to Student Success’ [28, 41]. The UK acknowledges that there is a student mental health cri- sis, and so to tackle the problem they are considering ‘grading’ universities on their capability to deliver enhanced well-being outcomes. I honestly could not make this up, and if it were not so deeply tragic, I would definitely regard it as a tasteless joke.5 In the all-encompassing whirlwind of consumerism, people feel crushed, helpless and out of control, and so politicians deviously take advantage of this widespread feeling of dislocation by speaking to their despair, selling them greatness, health, freedom and independence. Virtual space, hyper-reality and post-truth are the new norm. And since the boundaries between inside and outside, public and private, fantasy and reality, sincerity and deception, right and wrong have simultaneously become blurred or abolished, new forms of exploitation and abuse are legion, or the old forms have found themselves new playgrounds. Drawing on Edward W. Soja’s meticulous dissection of post-modern geographies, I would say that people in the Western world now live in a radically incongruous Thirdspace. According to Soja, Thirdspace is where everything comes together: ‘subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the knowable and the unimaginable, the repetitive and the differential, structure and agency, mind and body, consciousness and the unconscious, the disciplined and the transdisciplinary, everyday life and unending history’ [46, pp. 56–57]. Almost twenty-five years after these words were first written, some additional confluences of conventional dichotomies could probably be added to the list: left and right, East and West, selfhood and otherness, meaning and nonsense, analogue and digital, 3 For an excellent explication of how the steady neoliberal infiltration of the public sphere has effectively led to the imperilment of democracy, see [8]. 4 For the unintended repercussions of performance metrics in medicine and public health care, which are commonly justified with reference to accountability and transparency, see [40, pp. 116–123]. 5 In case it is not entirely clear from my description, I shall state it categorically and unequivocally: I am angry too. 438 D. Nobus 1 3 high art and popular culture, masculinity and femininity. Insofar as reason relies (or used to rely) on discernment, differentiation and discretion, reason is disturbed. Yet I would consider 21st century Thirdspace to be radically incongruous, because the complete hybridity of our lifeworld—internal as well as external—also coincides, as Homi Bhabha argued in his seminal work on the location of culture and in other texts [4, 43, p. 211], with new structures of authority, much less visible than those of yore, which would have been embodied by priests, teachers, medical doctors and law enforcers, but all the more controlling for that. Insofar as contemporary rea- son is disturbed on account of the intrinsic hybridity of the Thirdspace, the distur- bance is counter-balanced and confounded by a socio-political sphere of continuous surveillance, which is materialised in omnipresent CCTV cameras (no one knows whether they really work, because functionality has long since been abandoned as a key deterrent, and defective cameras are much more cost-effective than fully oper- ational ones) and so-called ‘low emission zones’ (a clever ecological euphemism for the presence of punitive speed control cameras in densely populated areas), but which is much more insidiously enforced through virtual user engagement metrics and countless anonymous policies ranging from ‘Quality and Standards’ to ‘Health and Safety’, and from ‘Equality and Diversity’ to ‘Prevent’ and ‘Dignity at Work’.6 I therefore disagree with psychoanalytic theorists who have claimed that we live under the spell of a collapse of the (symbolic) paternal function, resulting in relent- less injunctions to enjoy (more) [51, p. 334, 37, 39, 48]. Cultural goods have no doubt become more diverse over the past twenty-five years or so, and corporate institutions have done their best to create increasingly wider ranges of products— from the Coca-Cola Life to the tall-double-decaf-hazelnut-latte-with-soy-milk-and- marshmallows-to-take-away—allegedly because they care about customers’ ‘special needs’, but in reality because they only really care about themselves. Some would say that the enjoyment that can be derived from the diversity and availability of these cultural goods is endless—the quantity of enjoyment is directly proportional, then, to the size of the commodity spectrum—yet I cannot help but think that every source of enjoyment also includes its own source of dissatisfaction, and that the more complicated the source of enjoyment is the more extensive the sources of dis- satisfaction associated with it must be. There are only so many things one can be dissatisfied about when drinking an ordinary black filter coffee—it is presumably either too weak or too strong—but I really do not want to think about all the things the consumer of the aforementioned coffee-monstrosity could possibly be disgrun- tled about. If a command to enjoy is pervading the 21st century, it may perhaps be ascertained in this super-abundance of cultural goods and corporate slogans to 6 To give but one example of how anonymous policies may be used to police civil liberties, the Uni- versity of Reading recently warned its third-year politics undergraduates not to access an essay by the renowned political theorist Norman Geras, which had been listed as ‘essential reading’ on their module outline, on any personal devices, and to read it only in a ‘secure setting’, lest they put themselves at risk of being in breach of the UK government’s Prevent Strategy, which is designed to identify and report instances of political extremism giving reason for concern as potentially leading to radicalisation [44]. On the ubiquitous monitoring of individual behaviour in cyberspace, see the landmark tome by Zuboff [52]. 439 1 3 Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction… ‘enjoy more’, but I do not believe it is at all present on a social level. The aforemen- tioned examples of increased surveillance and policing may serve to illustrate this. Because reason is disturbed rather than collapsing, anger rather than anxiety ensues. For if anxiety, in one of Freud’s many and often mutually incompatible statements on the matter, is tantamount to a transformation of free-floating libido [17, pp. 392–411], i.e. psychic sexual energy which is no longer attached or attach- able to a concrete object, then the radically incongruous Thirdspace does not put its inhabitants’ libido in an object-less state. Much like reason itself, the object(s) to which libido is attached are volatile, inchoate, transient—always in flux, but never completely absent. If anything, people in the industrialised world must live with an excess of readily available objects, none of which particularly stable or solid, each and every one of which no more than a momentary occurrence in time and space. Yet the more we believe that the objects to which we attach our libido and, by exten- sion, our identities will offer lasting pleasure, the more we mis-judge the ‘reality’ of Thirdspace and the angrier we become. In this case too, Seneca was right. 3 Masculinity and Phallic Space Up until now, I have argued that anger is rooted in a disturbance of reason. In a radically incongruous Thirdspace, this disturbance is exacerbated by the fact that the state of hybridity in which reason finds itself is complemented by a pervasive, yet largely invisible structure of authority. If we accept that form not only follows libido, as Sylvia Lavin once cogently argued [34], but that libido also follows form, i.e. that the distribution of psychic sexual energy is a reflection of the shape of the environment in which it operates, the all but universal state of anger in which the contemporary world is thrown correlates with the inherent volatility of the object in Thirdspace, the more so as citizens mis-represent the reality of this object to them- selves and others as a safe and secure investment. In this febrile and forever chang- ing state of affairs, toxic masculinity is both an imagined cause and a projected solu- tion to the endemic sense of dislocation—at least to those who feel disoriented and lost, the disenfranchised and the dispossessed, the disinherited and the disenchanted. As an index of repressive power, self-serving discipline and ruthless ambition, toxic masculinity is held fully responsible by the angry disillusioned ‘weaklings’ for the ongoing disturbance of reason, whilst the very attribution of the cause of this dis- turbance to a gendered position of traditional embodied authority also serves the purpose of changing the hybridity of Thirdspace into more conventional figurations of social imbalance. Undeservedly ignored and sometimes only discarded for its Christian overtones by secular psychoanalysts, the work of René Girard, and especially his mimetic scapegoat theory [24], may provide valuable additional insights here. Expressed in a Girardian key, the radically incongruous Thirdspace, which is characterised by uncontrolled hybridity and an inescapable inceptive disturbance of reason, repre- sents a fundamental ‘mimetic crisis’, generally as well as individually, in the private as well as in the public sphere, socially as well as psychically. The contemporary state of reason is in crisis, because some of the most important distinctions upon 440 D. Nobus 1 3 which its exercise rests—those between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, mean- ing and nonsense, value and worthlessness—are constantly amalgamated in a para- consistent discursive logic. The crisis is mimetic, because at its most profound level it affects and disrupts human desire, which is according to Girard always taken up in a dual process of imitative mediation: externally, the imitator and the model iden- tify with regard to an object of desire; internally, they enter into a state of rivalry which may become so violent that the very object of desire is eclipsed by it [22]. In order to resolve this mimetic crisis, people living through it have recourse to the identification and exposure of a scapegoat: a person or group in an outsider position, and therefore easily blamed for breaking societal rules, is accused of causing the crisis, which allows the rivalrous parties to bury the hatchet and reunite in a col- lective battle against the culprit [23, pp. 78–79]. Girard himself acknowledged that there is a distinct echo in all of this of Freud’s infamous myth of the murder of the primal father [14, pp. 141–142], yet the principle accords more directly with Freud’s observations on social cohesion and interpersonal violence in Civilization and its Discontents, in which he wrote: ‘It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness’ [16, p. 114]. Girard’s theory is appealing not only because it documents psycho-social forces that resonate with our contemporary living conditions, as a world-in-anger, but also because its proposed mechanism of the scapegoat, as the common solution to the mimetic crisis, chimes with the way in which this 21st century world-in-anger responds to its own internal and external dissociations. On at least three points, how- ever, do we need to consider a modification to Girard’s mimetic scapegoat theory if we are to employ it as an explanation for the emergence of toxic masculinity as an essential component of the endemic mimetic crisis of the radically incongruous Thirdspace in which we live. First, the relationship between insider and outsider, inasmuch as this dichotomy is still valid and detectable in the hybrid Thirdspace, needs to be reversed. In Girard’s model, the generalised mimetic crisis emboldens those in a social majority position to reassemble, close the ranks and collaborate against a culpable outsider. In our current socio-political climate, it is the self-identi- fied or exposed outsiders, or at least those who feel they have somehow lost out and are in a position of secondariness, who reconvene, forge new bonds of solidarity, and join forces against a blameworthy insider. Second, although the scapegoat is still routinely identified as a concrete person or group, it is much more common for the answerable agency to be an abstract concept or principle, which is subsequently saturated with a broad range of physical and other attributes. If sovereign toxic mas- culinity is to blame for the mimetic crisis of Thirdspace, this attribution applies less to a person or group of people than to a certain quiddity that is indicative of a series of cultural representations and a reprehensible ideology. Third, in Girard’s mimetic scapegoat theory, which was originally developed in relation to the fictional space of Western literature but which subsequently gained momentum as a comprehensive account of human social relations, the question concerning the validity of the attri- bution is rarely posed, but always resolved, if only because the newly found consen- sus amongst the insiders suffices for the verdict to be passed. In our contemporary Thirdspace, where fake news rules and post-truth is a dominant value, the issue as 441 1 3 Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction… to whether the attribution is valid is always posed, yet rarely resolved, neither by the outsiders who claim to have witnessed it and have been on its receiving end, nor by the allegedly guilty insiders who have been operating under its aegis—although the latter may of course always protest that one cannot prove a negative. It is undoubt- edly the case that toxic masculinity exists, in all its abusive realities, and that it has persisted since the halcyon days of the paterfamilias, yet the consensus of the vic- timised outsiders no longer suffices to validate its occurrence, the less so as the dis- tinction between scientific proof and hazy speculation has become putty in the hands of the ruling elite. As such, in the era of the radically incongruous Thirdspace, and the anger result- ing from the disturbance of reason and the mimetic crisis, toxic masculinity is one way for the outsiders to close the infernal cycle of commodification in which they have been bound up. Apart from generating structure where there was only chaos and disruption, order where there was only dissipation and fluidity, the attribution of toxic masculinity, which may or may not coincide with a material reality of exploita- tion and abuse, acts as an organising signifier of power, against which the powerless, or the temporarily disempowered outsiders, may vent their anger, and through which they can experience a new sense of community, identity and belonging. In its most elementary form, this attribution reintroduces the most conventional psycho-social spatial arrangement, in which power is transacted between a dominant and a submis- sive force, to render intelligible and (at least temporarily) suspend the disturbance of reason. In their Hegelian designations, the forces operate as ‘master’ (Herrschaft) and ‘servant’ (Knechtschaft) [26, p. 113], which has the distinct disadvantage that they may easily be confused with, or constrained to largely outdated social identities. Pace the lingering associations with a certain eroto-sexual practice, there is noth- ing wrong in employing the terms domination and submission; after all, given the fact that the attribution originates in the outsiders cum oppressed, unjustifiable and non-consensual domination is very much what is being indicted. However, maybe there is yet another way of articulating the terms of this super-imposed force-field, which would have the added benefit of literally staging the spatial re-distributions of power I am trying to articulate here. It is to say that the dominant is constituted by arrectness (verticality, raised, upright and straight) and the submissive by decu- bitus (horizontality, lying down, recumbent, supine). Between these two, often vis- ibly recognisable positions in a concrete spatial arrangement, power is transacted from (masculine) emission to (feminine) receptivity, with the caveat that the conven- tional association of emission with arrectness and receptivity with decubitus may be confounded by other than purely physical variables, such as the explicitly agreed or implicitly adopted flow of speech.7 7 In a thought-provoking essay on the typical spatial arrangements of the psychoanalytic setting, Diana Fuss and Joel Sanders have taken issue with Luce Irigaray’s famous critique of the ‘scene of analysis’ as an orthogonal pairing of an erect psychoanalyst and a prone patient [27], by arguing that Freud always opens ‘himself to the risk of feminization’ in that he assumes ‘the role of an orifice, a listening ear, while the patient becomes a mouth, an oral transmitter’ [18, p. 130]. 442 D. Nobus 1 3 In any case, as an attributed signifier of (abusive) power, toxic masculinity pri- marily functions as a linguistic tool for resolving the mimetic crisis in the radically incongruous Thirdspace, whereby the outsiders’ anger stemming from the distur- bance of reason is not so much tempered, but re-centred on an object that is pur- portedly more stable and less transient, owing to the prolonged if deplorable his- tory of abusive power-relations from which it emanates. Taking account of the three modifications to Girard’s theory of mimetic scapegoating I mentioned above, toxic masculinity is thus an attempt on behalf of the disenfranchised to restore order, which implies that it is simultaneously an indictment and a reproduction of tradi- tional patriarchy, and all the ills and evils it carries along. Using the terminology of Henri Lefebvre’s seminal 1974 volume The Production of Space, the attribution of toxic masculinity to the identified disturber of reason exposes as well as reproduces phallic space, which in its most rudimentary appearance involves the distribution of power between powerful arrectness (masculine emission) and powerless decubitus (feminine receptivity). For Lefebvre, phallic space “symbolizes force, male fertility, masculine violence… [but] phallic brutality does not remain abstract, for it is the brutality of political power, of the means of constraint: police, army, bureaucracy” [35, p. 287]. Assuming that my analysis is persuasive, or at least sufficiently plausi- ble for it to be considered worthy of further consideration, at least two key questions remain. Why does our contemporary anger attach itself to a symbolic, yet generic figuration of reprehensible masculinity? And even more importantly, how could we conceive of an alternative to phallic space, and under which conditions would this alternative constitute, if not a reasonable prophylactic strategy for the eruption of a new mimetic crisis, perhaps a feasible therapeutic solution to the sense of angry dislocation it elicits? Writing in the aftermath of the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider dared to ask the impossible question: Why does patriarchy persist, in spite of decade-long widespread campaigns for social equal- ity and women’s rights? Although they occasionally conflate patriarchy with hier- archy, and power with authority, their answer is that—over and above the fact that a notable sub-section of the population, namely those men-in-power, evidently benefit from the advantages it bestows upon them—patriarchy fulfils an important psycho- logical function: Patriarchy’s persistence is tied not only to a struggle for power and a contest between different frameworks for living or systems of belief, but also to the tension between our desire for love and our desire to avoid the pain of loss. With its gender binary and hierarchy creating impediments to relational pres- ence and integrity, patriarchy becomes a bastion against the pain of loss. The catch is: it requires a sacrifice of love [21, p. 135]. Deeply influenced by John Bowlby’s theory of attachment and loss [5–7], Gilligan and Snider argue that the socio-political restoration and preservation of patriarchy provides relief from the psychological anguish that is associated with the intrinsic vulnerabilities of love. In Freudian terms, allowing oneself to (be in) love requires a certain relinquishment of self-love, and thus the acceptance that a quantum of nar- cissism will need to be given up in favour of the reorientation of the libido towards 443 1 3 Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction… the external object of love [13, pp. 112–113]. Being in love makes us more vul- nerable, vulnerability is tantamount to a reduction of self-love, the resulting experi- ence of loss is painful, and the foundation of patriarchy, which entails a gendering of social imbalances of power, attenuates the affective impact of loss, presumably because it exchanges the human experience of love, and all the emotional quandaries it generates, for a loveless system of domination and submission. There is a lot to be said in favour of this perspective, yet I am not convinced that patriarchy, which is but another word for toxic masculinity here, effectively dampens down the psychological pain of loss. For one, the ‘therapeutic’ function of patriarchy may easily be undone by the new plethora of losses it generates in the oppressed, amongst which the loss of a voice may very well be the most impor- tant one. In addition, patriarchy is also crucially conditioned by its own structures of love—the unconditional love of the leader, ruler or sovereign—which undoubt- edly induces other experiences of vulnerability and pain. I do think that Gilligan and Snider hit the proverbial nail when they aver that patriarchy fulfils an impor- tant psychological function, and that precisely because of this it is likely to persist. Yet instead of designating this psychological function as ‘therapeutic’, insofar as it would alleviate pain, I am more inclined to say it is ‘prophylactic’, inasmuch as it prevents human desire, which is also driven by loss, from becoming extinguished and therefore lost in and of itself in the overwhelming plenitude of commodified objects, which may also include identity—as the final frontier of mass-market com- modification. Echoing Todd McGowan’s compelling argument that capitalism con- tinues to dominate—despite the numerous inequalities it creates and despite its vocal opponents—because it mimics the structure of human desire [38], which is mired in a ruthless dynamic of incomplete satisfaction and an equally tenacious anticipation of self-fulfilment, I would propose that toxic masculinity continues to rule, because its fundamental mechanism of domination (arrectness) and submission (decubitus) captures another feature of human desire—the fact that it cannot operate without alienation, i.e. without its having been forced into a state of compulsory disposses- sion. In other words, the relentless return of toxic masculinity, in its simultaneous attribution as a possible cause of the disorder of reason and as the reproduction of phallic space, reinstates and confirms the structure of human desire as a force flow- ing from loss. By contrast with Gilligan and Snider, I would argue, then, that patri- archy persists not because it mitigates (the pain of) loss, but because it renders (the pain of) loss possible, which is in itself a necessary precondition for human desire to operate. As to the second question, which raises the complex issue of a feasible alterna- tive, I remain far less optimistic than Gilligan and Snider, who continue to believe in the revolutionary power of social protest: We see movements fuelled by the anger of hope: the hope that things will in fact change, that the ruptures in democracy can be repaired, that relation- ship—however tenuous its hold, however beset by appeals to masculine honor and feminine goodness—does not give way to dominance and submission, violence and silence. These are movements inspired by the conviction that as humans we are capable of reconciliation, that the moral arc of the universe 444 D. Nobus 1 3 bends toward justice, and that in the end the anger of hope will win out over the anger of despair [21, p. 137]. In not sharing these words, heartfelt and inspiring as they may be, I fully accept that someone out there might go on to expose me again as a man with a manly view, the more so as the authors of the cited volume are women and I, at least for the time being, remain just an average man, although probably one who will be perceived as writing from a high-status position of academic prestige. However, Gilligan and Snider’s message of love and hope occurs to me as a flagrant contradiction of their own observational premises: patriarchy persists despite social protest, and the intrin- sic vulnerabilities of love prompt the preservation of patriarchy. Why would the new waves of protest, which are purportedly animated by the anger of hope, be more effective in the abolition of patriarchy than all the ones that have gone before? Why would the new restorative relationships of justice and reconciliation no longer entail painful experiences of loss, and why would the latter be less intractable than those that gave rise to a renewed call for ‘therapeutic’ patriarchy? When it comes to thinking about effective ways for disposing of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, I am much more on Lacan’s side when, in a chaotic exchange with students and agitators at the newly established experimental University of Vin- cennes in December 1969, he proclaimed: ‘What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a master. You will get one’ [33, p. 207]. The discourse of the master, which is consist- ent with the discourse of domination and submission, and the distribution of libido in a phallic space, is inescapable, for the pure and simple reason that it is the dis- course of the human unconscious, and as such the fundamental discourse of human desire. This does not imply that other discourses are de facto excluded, and Lacan himself identified at least three alternative discursive structures [33, pp. 11–24], yet these other discourses only ever operate with reference and in opposition to the dis- course of the master, which reigns supreme.8 When, in 1974, Lefebvre unfolded his theory of the (re-)production of phallic space, he at one stage played with the idea of an alternative arrangement of spatial coordinates: ‘Is a final metamorphosis called for that will reverse all earlier ones, destroying phallic space and replacing it with a ‘uterine’ space? We can be sure, at any rate, that this in itself will not ensure the invention of a truly appropriated space, or that of an architecture of joy and enjoy- ment’ [35, p. 410]. For Lefebvre, the mode of production of goods and services within space, of which the capitalist modality is but one example, is in fact easier to transform than the production of space itself, because the latter would require a modification of the controlling agencies and parameters of space, and thus a shift from the relentless (re-)production of things towards the intractable (re-)production of the environment in which these things are produced, which is much more difficult to contemplate, at least in terms of socio-economic and political action. Because 8 Lacan’s discourse theory is generally restricted to the four interrelated discourses (of the master, the university, the analyst and the hysteric) he formalised during his seminar of 1969–’70 [33]. However, during a lecture in Milan on 12 May 1972, he coined a fifth discourse, termed the discourse of the capi- talist, which potentially allows for an additional three ‘social bonds’, if the same principle of the ‘quarter turn’, as outlined in his 1969–’70 seminar, is implemented [32, p. 32]. 445 1 3 Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction… his intellectual agenda is firmly set on ideological matters, Lefebvre does not con- sider the extent to which the transformation of phallic space may only be achievable through psychological means, as a mental transformation of the structure of human desire, yet even then it remains to be seen what could be achieved at this level and whether a permanent transformation of the discourse of the master, phallic space and toxic masculinity is at all realistic. For all its ostensible duplication of arrect- ness and decubitus, the discourse of psychoanalysis, which Lacan conceived as the exact opposite of the master’s discourse [33, pp. 35–36], initiates an alternative, generative space for speech and a potential re-restructuring of desire, yet this does not necessarily imply that the discourse of the master will completely disintegrate. Maybe the best we can hope for is that, with or without psychoanalysis, authority and hierarchy no longer by definition lead to (an abuse of) power, that domination and submission are incorporated in a more flexible distribution of libido, and that masculinity’s obstinate odium of toxicity is in itself recuperated within the conflu- ence of discursive categories. Unlike Gilligan and Snider, and much like Lacan and Lefebvre, I therefore do not believe that the question as to why patriarchy persists will one day become obsolete, because (as I have endeavoured to argue) it constitutes the most basic, necessary and sufficient condition for human desire to emerge and sustain itself. At the same time, however, I can envisage a psycho-social constellation in which the conventional forms of patriarchy are balanced against other, alternative configurations of power and less rigid spatial arrangements. I am not advocating, here, a serious reconsid- eration of the radically incongruous Thirdspace and all its hybridities, because the Thirdspace cannot be disjointed from patriarchy, much less so as it proliferates in its appropriation of the object-world as a series of transient, inchoate commodities. What I have in mind is the invention of new, more open and more accessible spaces for human speech, where (much like in psychoanalysis) the lack and the losses that preside over desire can be re-configured into what Jill Gentile has called a ‘feminine law’ [20], i.e. a generative, emancipatory structure that activates the crucial ‘space between’ positions of power, divisions of labour, mechanisms of (in)equality, gender dichotomies etc. In its most radical sense, it would involve the creation of spaces in which priority is given to the voice of desire. 4 Conclusion At this stage, the reader undoubtedly expects me to provide a neat synthesis of the argument I have tried to develop. If I shall refrain from doing so, it is not because I deliberately want to disturb the reader’s own sense of reason and potentially attract a new wave of anger, but because I believe that this type of standard, conceptual sum- mary at the end of an academic paper is too facile a conclusion, which is in this case also neither necessary nor warranted given the subtleties and complexities of the symbolic circulation of toxic masculinity I have endeavoured to articulate. Instead, and at the risk of overstating my case, I would like to add two further points to my argument. The first is that over the past couple of years, and especially since the arrival of a certain blatantly misogynistic and excessively self-absorbed 446 D. Nobus 1 3 man in the most powerful house on the planet, masculinity has acquired strong con- notations of perversion, and that the very notion of toxicity, which to many is an undeniable and intrinsic feature of masculinity, resonates with the terminology of perversion, as it is used in common parlance and in ‘urban dictionaries’: behaviour which deviates from socio-cultural norms of acceptability, especially in terms of sexual conduct. Indeed, it is interesting to observe in this respect how concepts and ideas of perversion have recently shifted from all (sexual) behaviours falling outside the conventional framework of (genital) hetero-normativity to (sexual) behaviours falling firmly within the traditional standards of (sexual) identity. Although the term ‘perversion’ has long since been replaced with ‘paraphilia’ in the official psychiatric nomenclature, it has almost invariably been linked to ‘disorders’ of human sexual behaviour, either because the object of sexual attraction was considered ‘abnormal’ and/or ‘illegal’ (say, a child or a non-human animal), or because the sexual activity contravened ethico-legal principles of public decency and consent. In recent times, however, we have witnessed a progressive contraction of these paraphilias of sexual orientation and behaviour, including in the psychiatric textbooks, and this has ush- ered in—although in this case outside the medical discourse and primarily within the common discursive practices of Western socio-cultural understanding—newly recognized perversions (or paraphilias) of sexual identity. This first shift, from per- verse orientation and behaviour towards perverse identity, has thereby generated a second transposition, from perversion being defined as what exceeds or transgresses an established (sexual) norm to its being situated within a certain (sexual) norm, notably that of the stereotypical distribution of gender roles, the standard or ‘nor- mal’ adoption of sexual identity, and the ‘garden variety’ of identity politics, with all the instances of abusive normativity and sexualised power imbalances this norm entails. Whereas the masculine man was once the epitome of sexual normality, he and his accoutrements have more and more become the emblems of sexual abnor- mality—perversion or toxicity, depending on the discursive context. Without wanting to assay or judge the validity of this dual change in 21st century sexual identity politics, I think it has left an indelible mark on the lived experience of young men growing up in the radically incongruous Thirdspace of ubiquitous hybridisation and pervasive covert surveillance. For sure, the troubles facing con- temporary male youth are not entirely new. Before the turn of the last century, the American journalist Susan Faludi already drew attention to the state of (American) male youth in crisis [11]. More than twenty years ago, Faludi already concluded that the prevailing paradigm of modern masculinity obstructs rather than enables young men in finding an adequate solution to the social contradictions they experi- ence on a daily basis. On the one hand, young boys are still expected to take control and be strong, yet at the same time they realise that the world in which they live no longer values honesty, mutual respect, loyalty and integrity. If anything, Faludi’s assessment, which came quite a few years before the rise of Islamic terror, mass migration and male toxicity, was deeply premonitory of a social crisis of male sex- ual identity that has continued to aggravate and expand. The disenfranchised of our current mimetic crisis may be angry, and anger may result in a steady (re-)produc- tion of phallic space, yet the unequivocal meanings of predatory power associated with modern masculine sexual identity have no doubt also led to new sources of 447 1 3 Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction… disturbance amongst young men, which perhaps more often than not have found their expression in academic underachievement, hate crime and social delinquency [31]. If masculinity is toxic, there is no reason to believe that its toxicity is not felt by men themselves, or that men are not affected in their own way by how the signi- fiers of male entitlement and privilege are circulating and structuring our contem- porary lifeworld. Let this not be an afterthought, but perhaps a starting-point for a detailed consideration of how toxic masculinity also shapes, and not necessarily in a good way, those of us citizens who tend to identify or be identified as male, without therefore attaching much weight to the signifier of masculinity, and who occasion- ally feel they must express a bit of a view. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com- mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. 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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/11/17/brex-n17.html https://www.ippr.org/research/publications/not-by-degrees https://www.ippr.org/research/publications/not-by-degrees Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction of Phallic Space Abstract 1 Introduction 2 A Brief Anatomy of Anger 3 Masculinity and Phallic Space 4 Conclusion References work_52j6sqaeqnfxdja3znjgppbtme ---- 06_juuni_EA_2007_reklaamitu.indd 428 Reformid Eesti tervishoius – edulugu ja õppetunnid Väino Sinisalu – EA peatoimetaja Käesoleva aasta aprillis-mais toimus kaks esin- duslikku tervishoiureforme käsitlevat konverentsi: 26. aprillil korraldas haigekassa konverentsi teemal “15 aastat ravikindlustussüsteemi Eestis” ja 10. mail TÜ Kliinikum kevadkonverentsi teemal „Arengu - kavad Eesti meditsiinis 2000–2015”. Eesti Arst teeb kokkuvõtte konverentsidel kõneldust. Mär tsist 1992 rakendus Vabariigi Valitsuse otsus, mis kinnitas haigekassa põhimääruse ja ravikindlustusmakse tasumise korra. Sellega käivitus Eestis kindlustusmeditsiin. Nagu meenutas haigekassa konverentsil Georg Männik, kes Eesti üleminekuaastatel töötas mitmel juhitaval kohal Ter vishoiuministeeriumis, arenes idee kindlustusmeditsiini rakendamiseks samal ajal nõukogude aja lõpul küpsenud isemajandava Eesti (IME) kontseptsiooniga. Kindlustusmeditsiini põhi- mõtete kujundamisel oli eeskujuks Skandinaavia maades töötav sotsiaalse ravikindlustuse süsteem. Eesmärgiks oli kujundada Eestis majanduslikult isereguleeruv tervishoiusüsteem ja rakendada turumajandussuhteid tervishoius. Peamiseks finants- allikaks kavandati kohustuslik tervisekindlustusmaks, mida maksavad tööandjad. Nähti ka ette, et selle maksu arvel makstakse töövõimetushüvitisi. Pikkade arutelude tulemusena fikseeriti, et kohustuslik tervise- kindlustusmaks moodustab 13% tööandja poolt väljamakstavast töötasust. Samal konverentsil andis haigekassa juhatuse esimees Hannes Danilov ülevaate haigekassa arengust 15 aasta jooksul. Algul asutati 22 iseseisvat haigekassat, mis kogusid oma piirkonnast ravikindlustusmaksu ning tasusid teenusepõhiselt raviasutustele. 1994. a loodi keskhaigekassa, mis hakkas maksu koguma ja jagas seda maakondlikele kassadele pearaha alusel. 1999. a alates hakkas ravikindlustusmaks laekuma sotsiaalmaksu osana maksuametisse. Avalik-õiguslik Eesti Haigekassa loodi 2001. a, algul oli sel seitse, 2004. aastast neli piirkond- likku osakonda. Haigekassa organisatsioonilised muudatused võimaldasid järjest vähendada selle tegevuskulusid ja 2006. a moodustasid kogu süs- teemi tegevuskulud 1% haigekassa kogueelarvest. Samal ajal kogu riigi tugevnemise ja majanduse edenemisega paranes järjest sotsiaalmaksu lae- kumine ning kasvas oluliselt haigekassa eelarve: 2001. a oli see 4,5 miljardit, 2006. a - 8,9 miljardit krooni. Siiski on Eesti riigi kulutused tervishoiule tervikuna teiste euroliidu maadega võrreldes oluli- selt väiksemad, moodustades eri aastati keskmiselt 5,1–5,3% SKTst. Haigekassasse laekuvast rahast kaeti tervishoiukulud 2005. a 67% ulatuses, ini- meste omaosalus oli 20%, keskvalitus kattis 9% ja kohalik omavalitsus 1% tervishoiu kogukuludest. Aastate jooksul on paranenud inimeste tervise- kindlustatus (2001. a 93,5%; 2006. a 95,3% elanikest), kuid siiski on kindlustamata üle 5% Eesti rahvastikust. Haigekassa on regulaarselt korraldanud rahvastiku rahulolu-uuringuid. Arstiabi kättesaadavusega on viimaste aastate küsitluste põhjal rahul üle 50% elanikest (2002. a 50%; 2006. a 53%). Enam ollakse rahul osutatava abi kvaliteediga (2003. a 59%; 2006. a 66%). H. Danilov tõi ka välja meie sotsiaalse ravi- kindlustuse süsteemi tugevad küljed: 1) rahavoog tervisehoiusektoris on nähtav, rahaallikad läbi- paistvad ning laekumused stabiilsed; 2) tagatud on teenuseosutajate sõltumatus ja haigekassa suhtleb nendega lepingusüsteemi kaudu. Need põhimõtted sätestas 2002. aastast kehtiv tervishoiu- teenuste korraldamise seadus. Samuti on tagatud Eesti Arst 2007; 86 (6): 428–432 429429429 tervishoiukulude jälgimise võimalus nii töövõtjate kui ka tööandjate poolt. Selle süsteemi rakenda- misega kaasnevad paratamatult ka probleemid: süsteemi suured halduskulud, kulude keerukas ohja- mine. Süsteem tervikuna peab suutma hinnata raha laekumist ja nõudlust teenuste järele vähemalt 3–4 aastat ette. Omaette küsimus on, kuidas tasustada teenuseid, kui need ületavad lepingumahu. Praegu tasustatakse neid koefitsiendiga 0,3. Haigekassa konverentsil esines põhjaliku ette- kandega „Euroopa tervishoiu finantseerimise süsteemid – võimalused ja väljakutsed Eesti regionaalses kontekstis” Joseph Kutzin, WHO Euroopa regiooni nõunik. Tema hinnangul on Eesti ravikindlustuse ülesehitus ja toimimine positiivseks kogemuseks kogu regioonis. Seda iseloomustab vajadusele vastav ja pidev areng, tervishoiu ümber- korralduste vastavus finantseerimise võimalustele ning see, et inimeste omaosalus tervishoiukulude katmisel jääb väiksemaks, kui võiks eeldada ühiskondlikust kogutoodangust tervishoiule eral- datud osa põhjal. Eesti Haigekassa tulemusele orienteeritud mudel on eeskujuks teistele maadele ravikindlustussüsteemide arendamisel. WHO on seisukohal, et tervishoiu rahastamise süsteemid peaksid tagama 1) võrdsed võimalused ja kohustused nii panustajatele kui ka teenuse saajatele; 2) elanike kaitse tervisega seotud finantsriskide eest; 3) olema läbipaistvad ja tagama tervishoiusüsteemi efektiivse toimimise ning 4) rahastamissüsteemi haldamise kulutõhususe. WHO Euroopa regioonis on riikide kaupa tervis- hoiu ja kogu avaliku sektori rahastamises küllaltki suured erinevused. Fiskaalpoliitilisest seisukohast on riikidel erinevad prioriteedid, Eestis on riigi osa avaliku sektori, sealhulgas tervishoiukulutuste kat- misel teiste Euroopa riikidega võrreldes suhteliselt väike: J. Kutzini järgi on Eesti selles osas „väike riik” ja võrreldav Venemaa ja Ukrainaga. Eesti eraldab rahvuslikust kogutoodangust tervis- hoiule (SKT) ligi 5%, samal ajal arenenud Euroopa riikides on see riigiti 6–8,5%. Selle tulemusel on Eesti inimeste omaosalus tervishoiukulude katmisel suhteliselt suur ning see on aastate jooksul kasva- nud. Nii oli 1996. a inimeste omaosalus 11,5% kogu tervishoiu kuludest; 2003. a juba 20,3%. Siiski toob J. Kutzin huvitava tähelepaneku: kui üldine seaduspärasus on, mida väiksema osa SKTst eraldavad riigid tervishoiule, seda suurem on inimeste omaosalus, siis arvestades Eesti suhtelist eraldust SKTst, on omaosaluse protsent eeldatust väiksem (Poolas on eraldis SKTst sama mis Eestil, kuid omaosalus on 30%, Eestis 20%). J. Kutzini arvates peaks Eesti tulevikus oma ravikindlustussüsteemi arendamisel silmas pidama järgmist: arvestades demograafilisi protsesse tulevikus – rahvastiku vananemist ja seega ka maksumaksjate arvu vähenemist –, tuleb edaspidi ravikindlustust planeerides leida sellele ka teisi rahastamisallikaid, et tagada mittepanustajatele kindlustatus tervisehäirete korral. Samuti peab riik leidma võimaluse kindlustada ka see osa rahvas- tikust (6%), kes on seni kindlustamata. Otsekohe tuleb rakendada meetmeid HIV-nakkuse leviku tõkestamiseks, et vältida tulevikus veelgi suuremaid kulutusi. Samuti tuleb leida võimalusi krooniliselt haigete inimeste finantsiliseks toetamiseks, et vältida nende langemist vaesusse, ja vähendada vaesema elanikkonna suhtelist omaosalust terviseteenuste eest tasumisel. Ravikindlustussüsteemi arendamise kõrval oli Eesti tervishoiusüsteemi ümberkorraldamisel teiseks tähtsaks sammuks perearstisüsteemi loomine ja arendamine. Sellest rääkis haigekassa konverentsil prof Heidi-Ingrid Maaroos. Eestis on peremeditsiini loomisel lähtutud Euroo- pas rakendatud põhimõtetest: üldine (kõiki elanikke haarav) järjepidev, koordineeritud ja kogukonnale suunatud süsteem. Meil alustati 1991. a jaoskonna- arstidele perearstiks ümberõppe kursustega ja ka õpetajate koolitusega. Tartu Ülikoolis asus 1992. a tööle peremeditsiini õppetool, samal aastal asutati ka Eesti Perearstide Selts. Perearsti eriala põhimäärus anti välja 1993. a ja arstlike erialade nimekirja lisandus eriala perearst. Alates 1993. a on avatud peremeditsiini residen- 430 tuur. Esmatasandi arstiabi reguleerib 2001. a vastu võetud tervishoiuteenuste korraldamise seadus. Peremeditsiini eesmärk on tagada kättesaadav arstiabi kõigis vanuses inimestele, lahendada nende kõige sagedasemad terviseprobleemid, rakendades selleks mitmesuguseid laboratoorseid ja instrumentaalseid uurimismeetodeid. Pere- arstide nimistud haaravad praegu kõigis vanuses inimesi, ka vastusündinute osakaal perearstide nimistutes on suurenenud (1999. a oli perearstide hoole all 56% vastsündinutest, 2002. a 83%). H-I. Maaroos refereeris 2003. a tehtud uuringut, mille järgi enamiku sagedasemaid terviseprobleeme lahendab perearst: esmatasandil lahendatakse 88% hingamiselundite haigustega, 54% südame- vereringehäiretega, 42% luu-lihaskonna ja sidekoe haigustega seotud juhtudest. Regulaarselt on tehtud haigete esmatasandi arsti- abiga rahulolu uuringuid. Nende alusel võib väita, et inimesed on perearstisüsteemi omaks võtnud ja enamasti sellega rahul. Võrreldes endise jaoskonna- arstide süsteemiga arvab 86% vastanutest, et perearstide ravimeetodid on muutunud ajakoha- semaks. 75% hindab uurimisvõimalusi paremaks ja 75% on veendunud, et perearstid tegelevad varasemast enam paljude terviseprobleemidega. Perearstiabi kättesaadavus on paranenud: 2004. a pääses 60% abivajajatest samal päeval arsti juurde, 31% pidi 3–4 päeva ootama. Kasva- nud on rahulolu perearstidega: 2003. a oli sellega rahul või üldiselt rahul 88%, 2005. a 91% vasta- nuist. Siiski on abiga rahulolu piirkonniti erinev: kui 2002. a oli 96% Lõuna-Eesti elanikest rahul esmatasandi arstiabiga, siis Tallinnas oli sellega rahul vaid 71% vastanutest. Teistes piirkondades kõikus rahulolijate hulk 87–88% piires. Võrreldes 1998. aastaga oli kõigis piirkondades elanike rahulolu kasvanud ligi 10% võrra. Praeguseks on esmatasandi nimistute piirarv 840, meil on 1025 sertifitseeritud perearsti, neist 844 on nimistu omanikud. Välismaal töötas 2007. a 21 nimistu-omanikku, keda asendasid asendusarstid. Residentuuri, mis kestab 3 aastat, on lõpetanud praeguseks 88 perearsti, doktorikraad on 7 pere- arstil. Meie esmatasandi arstiabi on arendatud kompleksselt: tagatud on spetsialistide koolitamine, kehtib kindel ja arusaadav perearstide rahastamis- süsteem. Kõrvuti perearstide õpetamisega tehakse ülikoolis ka sellealast teadustööd. Tulevikus on H-I. Maaroosi hinnangul vaja residentuuri lõpeta- nud perearste enam motiveerida töötama Eestis, suurendada residentuurikohtade arvu 25ni ja kaasata praktiseerivaid arste teadusprojektidesse senisest enam. Kõrge hinnangu Eesti perearstisüsteemile andis oma ettekandes prof Rifat Atun Londonist. Ta nimetas perearstisüsteemi arengut Eesti edulooks ning näitas südame-veresoonkonnahaiguste ja astmahaigete käsitluse näidete toel, et selle raken- damisel on paranenud abi kvaliteet, vähenenud on vajadus haigete hospitaliseerimiseks ja kasutusel on tänapäevased tõenduspõhised ravimeetodid. Uue finantseerimissüsteemi juurutamine, mille järgi raviasutustele tasuti tehtud töö eest, ja esma- tasandi arstiabi areng tingisid ümberkorraldusi ka haiglate töös. Selle tulemusena vähenes hospita- liseeritute arv ja haiglad pidid oma töös lähtuma haigekassa lepingute mahtudest. Üle lepingu mahu ravitud haigusjuhud jäid enamasti tasustamata. Oluliseks meditsiinikorralduse instrumendiks sai hinnakiri. Viimane soosis eelkõige uuringuid ja operatsioone, tasu voodipäeva eest oli suhteliselt väike. Finantsraskustesse jäid väiksemad haiglad, kus tehti vähem uuringuid ja protseduure. Arusaadavalt pälvisid need ümberkorraldused suurt kriitikat ja ka teenuste hinnad polnud sageli vastavuses tehtava töö kulukuse ja mahuga. Kujunes ka omamoodi nähtus, mida nimetati võidurelvastumiseks – raviasustused püüdsid hankida võimalikult rohkem aparatuuri, et saada mahukamaid haigekassa lepinguid. Alati ei toonud see endaga kaasa paremat kvaliteeti. Oluliselt vähenes haiglate voodifond ja vähenes ravil viibimise kestus. Kõikidele raskustele ja mitte alati adekvaatsetele otsustele vaatamata arenes Eesti tervishoid jõud- salt edasi: kasutusele võeti moodne tehnoloogia 431431431 ja ravidiagnostilised meetodid, moderniseeriti raviasutuste olmetingimusi. Kahjuks sai see teoks osaliselt ka personali madalate töötasude ja suure psühhoemotsionaalse stressi arvel. Aastaks 2000 oli areng jõudnud sellesse etappi, et oli vaja hakata ümber korraldama eriarstiabi ja planeerima investeeringuid haiglahoonetesse. Kogemusi ja saavutusi selles vallas kajastas kliini- kumi konverents. Ülevaatega eriarstiabi reformimiseks ja haiglavõrgu ümberkorraldusest esines Tarmo Bakler. Esimeseks sammuks sellel teel oli Skandinaavia maade spetsialistide koostatud “Hospital Master Plan” (HMP), mis esitas vastavad soovitused kuni aastani 2015. Nad lähtusid Rootsi ja Norra koge- mustest ning demograafilistest suundumustest Eestis. HMP soovitas luua Eestis 4 tervishoiupiirkonda, kus tegutsevad keskhaiglad: Ida- ja Lääne-Tallinnas, Pärnus ning Kohtla-Järvel/Jõhvis. Üldhaiglad paik- neksid Järvamaal, Läänemaal, Rakveres, Narvas, Kuressaares, Viljandis, Võrus. Lisaks soovitati välja arendada 2 regionaalhaiglat Tallinnas ja Tartus, kus osutatakse spetsialiseeritud abi kõigil eriala- del. Haiglate paiknemisel lähtuti nende kaugusest abivajajatest, kes peaks vajadusel haiglasse jõudma vähemalt 1 tunni jooksul. HMP sai ka kohati terava kriitika osaliseks, kuna seal ei arvestatud juba välja- kujunenud regionaalsete tõmbekeskuste olemasolu ega paljusid regionaalarengu asjaolusid. Siiski kiitis valitsus 2000. a mais HMP heaks ning tervisehoiu- teenuste korraldamise seaduses 2001. aastast olid määratletud ka haiglaliigid. HMP soovituste kohaselt loodi Tallinnas 2 keskhaiglat, Ida-Virumaa seni tegutsenud haiglad liideti, alustati TÜ Kliinikumi ja regionaalhaigla arengukavade koostamist ning viidi lõpule Pärnu Haigla ehitus. Edasise arutelu tulemusena otsustati säilitada Valga ja Hiiumaa haigla üldhaiglatena ning omaette haiglaliigina peaksid eksisteerima kohalikud haiglad, kus on 24tunnine arstivalve. Valitsuse määrusega kinnitati aprillis 2003 haiglavõrgu arengukava ja seda täiendati 2004. a. Selle kohaselt on Eestis 3 regionaalhaiglat: Põhja-Eesti regionaalhaigla, TÜ Kliinikum, Tal- linna Lastehaigla; 4 keskhaiglat: Ida-Tallinna Keskhaigla, Lääne-Tallinna Keskhaigla, Ida-Viru Keskhaigla ja Pärnu Haigla. Üldhaiglad on Jär- vamaa, Läänemaa, Rakvere, Narva, Kuressaare, Viljandi, Võru, Valga ja Hiiumaa haigla. Kohali- kud haiglad on Jõgeval (alates 2007. a) ning tulevikus ka Põlvas ja Raplas. Kokku peaks Eestis olema 3600 haiglavoodit. Sotsiaalministeeriumi 2006. a hinnangul on akuut- ravi haiglate investeerimisvajadus lähiaastatel 9,7 miljardit krooni, mis katab nii uute ehituste kui ka vanade renoveerimisvajaduse. Akuutravi haiglate ümberkorraldus eeldab samal ajal hooldus- ja järelravivõrgu arendamist. Seda on võimalik teha seniste haiglate baasil. T. Bakler rõhutas, et praegu on olemas metoo- dika haiglate tegevuse ja investeerimisvajaduste hindamiseks. Arengukavade koostamine annab täpsemad raamid ümberkorralduste elluviimiseks ja erinevate osapoolte arvamusavalduste konso- lideerimiseks, samuti aitab kaitsta riiklikul tasandil tervishoiusüsteemi huve ning investeerimistaotlusi. Konverentsil esitatud ettekannetest koorus ka mõte, et arengukavad ei saa olla dogmad ja olude muutu- misel (arstide nappus, elanikkonna vananemine ja migratsioon) tuleb ka seal teha korrektiive. Urmas Lepner analüüsis kirurgilise ravi mahtusid Eesti eri haiglates. Eesti 8 üldhaigla teeninduspiirkond on vähem kui 40 000 elanikku. Sellest piirkonda teenindava haigla erakorraline töö on vägagi napi mahuga: 24 tunni jooksul on EMOs keskmiselt 13 haiget, neist 3 hospitaliseeritakse. Nädalas tehakse keskmiselt 2 erakorralist operatsiooni: ägeda apenditsiidi tõttu kord nädalas, ägeda koletsüstiidi tõttu kord 10 päeva jooksul, seedetrakti verejooksuga haiget ravitakse 1 korral 3 nädala jooksul. Kindlasti on selline töömaht väike, et tagada arstide professionaalsete oskuste säilimist ja ravikvaliteeti, tööjõu ja aparatuuri rakendamise kulutõhusus on väike. Need andmed on kindlasti heaks aluseks edasise tegevuse planeerimisel. 432 Üldhaiglate probleeme vaagis konverentsil Võru haigla peaarst Rein Kermes. Arengukava on aluseks, millele tuginedes haigla koostab oma arengukava ja edasise tegevusprogrammi, millega on seotud varustatus tööjõu ja aparatuuriga, inves- teeringud hoonetesse jm. Haiglajuhid eeldavad, et arengukava kinnitades võtab riik ka endale kohustuse toetada selle elluviimist. Paraku aga on Lõuna-Eesti, Valga ja Põlva haigla funktsionaalsed arengukavad esitatud Sotsiaalministeeriumile juba juulis 2006, kuid seni ei ole neid ilmselt läbi loetud ega nende suhtes seisukohta võetud. See jätab aga need asutused ebamäärasesse olukorda. R. Kermes rõhutas (ilmselt on see kõigi üldhaiglate juhtide seisukoht), et kui haiglate arengukava kehtib, tuleb ka kõiges selle järgi talitada. Kui olemasolev kava ei sobi, tuleb sellest ka selgelt kõigile asjaosalistele teada anda ja selle kehtivus lõpetada. Viimasel juhul tuleb esitada uus arengukava, et asjaosalised saaksid end uute oludega kohandada. Nagu rõhutas Urmas Siigur, ei esitata kliinikumi konverentsil õigeid või valesid arvamusi, kõigil on oma arvamus. Korraldajad olid palunud esinema ka staažika arsti, haiglajuhi ja tervishoiukorraldaja Peeter Mardna. Tema esitas oma ar vamused ja hinnangud seni tehtud ümberkorralduste kohta. Üld- hinnanguna arvas ta, et meie meditsiinil on läinud häbematult hästi eeskätt tänu meedikutele, kes on osanud oma tööd hästi teha. Kindla materiaalse aluse meie meditsiinisüsteemile andis kindlustus- meditsiini juurutamine. Olulisemaks valearvestuseks tervishoiu arengu kavandamisel osutus P. Mardna hinnangul 1990ndatel vastuvõtu vähendamine arstiteaduskonda. Asjaomased instantsid ei arves- tanud arstiteaduskonna dekaani Ants Peetsalu argumenteeritud väiteid, et selline vastuvõetute arvu vähendamine maksab end hiljem arstide puudusena teravalt kätte. Positiivsete arengusuundade kõrval, mida võimaldas meditsiinitehnika areng ja kitsam spetsialiseerumine, on negatiivne see, et kannatab arsti-patsiendi usalduslik suhe. Tervishoiutöötaja muutumine teenindajaks ja raviprotsessi vaatlemine tervishoiuteenusena ei jäta arstile piisavalt aega ega motivatsiooni tegeleda patsiendi kui haige ini- mesega, selle all kannatab kindlasti ravitulemus. Seniseid ümberkorraldusi Eesti tervishoius ei saa vaadelda mustvalges spektris. Edusammude kõrval on valearvestusi, möödalaskmisi ja puu- dulikke lahendusi. Peamine õppetund on see, et ajad ja olud muutuvad kiiresti, nendega tuleb kohaneda. Lahenduste leidmine on võimalik vaid kõigi asja osaliste koostöös ja see peab põhinema olemasoleva olukorral kainel ja objektiivsel ana- lüüsil. eestiarst@eestiarst.ee work_56btkfrcnjg7rdip57vsm4yzei ---- Blending integrated knowledge translation with global health governance: an approach for advancing action on a wicked problem REVIEW Open Access Blending integrated knowledge translation with global health governance: an approach for advancing action on a wicked problem Katrina Marie Plamondon1,3* and Julia Pemberton2 Abstract Background: The persistence of health inequities is a wicked problem for which there is strong evidence of causal roots in the maldistribution of power, resources and money within and between countries. Though the evidence is clear, the solutions are far from straightforward. Integrated knowledge translation (IKT) ought to be well suited for designing evidence-informed solutions, yet current frameworks are limited in their capacity to navigate complexity. Global health governance (GHG) also ought to be well suited to advance action, but a lack of accountability, inclusion and integration of evidence gives rise to politically driven action. Recognising a persistent struggle for meaningful action, we invite contemplation about how blending IKT with GHG could leverage the strengths of both processes to advance health equity. Discussion: Action on root causes of health inequities implicates disruption of structures and systems that shape how society is organised. This infinitely complex work demands sophisticated examination of drivers and disrupters of inequities and a vast imagination for who (and what) should be engaged. Yet, underlying tendencies toward reductionism seem to drive superficial responses. Where IKT models lack consideration of issues of power and provide little direction for how to support cohesive efforts toward a common goal, recent calls from the field of GHG may provide insight into these issues. Additionally, though GHG is criticised for its lack of attention to using evidence, IKT offers approaches and strategies for collaborative processes of generating and refining knowledge. Contemplating the inclusion of governance in IKT requires re-examining roles, responsibilities, power and voice in processes of connecting knowledge with action. We argue for expanding IKT models to include GHG as a means of considering the complexity of issues and opening new possibilities for evidence-informed action on wicked problems. Conclusion: Integrated learning between these two fields, adopting principles of GHG alongside the strategies of IKT, is a promising opportunity to strengthen leadership for health equity action. Keywords: Integrated knowledge translation, global health governance, health equity, health inequities, knowledge-to-action, wicked problems, complexity * Correspondence: katrina.plamondon@ubc.ca 1University of British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, Canada 3Interior Health, 505 Doyle Avenue, Kelowna, BC, Canada Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Plamondon and Pemberton Health Research Policy and Systems (2019) 17:24 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-019-0424-3 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1186/s12961-019-0424-3&domain=pdf http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2817-0621 mailto:katrina.plamondon@ubc.ca http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Background Problems described as ‘wicked’ earn the label from their in- herent resistance to resolve; they are convoluted, reactive problems entangled in competing social interests and values [1, 2]. The persistence of health inequities [3, 4] is a wicked problem [5] shaped by systems of power [5–10] and the social and structural determinants of health [11–13]. Robust evidence provides clear insights into their socio-political, economic and historic causes [14], and offers actionable policy solutions [15–18], making the persistence of health inequities a knowledge-to-action problem. However, efforts to advance evidence-informed action unfold in the same systems of social and political power that disproportionately advantage the already privi- leged and are generative of health inequities’ wicked na- ture. Additionally, despite recognition of their wickedness, attempts to respond often reduce health inequities into component parts, examining ‘symptoms’ rather than causes [19–21] in ways that ‘fit’ with dominant political ideologies [22–24]. These factors fuel the wickedness and tenacity of health inequities. The purpose of this review article is to explore the complementarities of two promising approaches of ap- plied research and practice that might support meaning- ful processes for advancing evidence-informed health equity action. It began with informal conversation about our experiences as doctoral students doing research for health equity, where we found ourselves grappling with contradictions and tensions within our field. Though we witnessed a broad commitment to ‘good’ equity intentions, we simultaneously observed processes and leadership that contradicted the evidence on causes and applauded super- ficial responses to health inequities. Critically examining how to move beyond good intentions for health equity became central to both of us in our doctoral research, with Katrina focusing on integrated knowledge translation (IKT) and Julia on global health governance (GHG). As our dialogue became more purposeful and structured, we discovered that the challenges we encountered in our respective fields were met by strengths in the other. Adopting an intentionally optimistic lens, we explored how these fields might complement each other and, through deeper attentiveness to issues of political power, could collectively contribute to more productive health equity action. We understand both IKT and GHG to be primarily con- cerned with processes. IKT brings together people who do and use research as equal contributors to processes of col- laboratively identifying and responding to knowledge-to-ac- tion challenges [25–28]. Ideally, GHG brings cross-sector actors together to deliberate and guide mechanisms for resolving complex global issues through intentional collab- oration [29, 30]. Both are promising, yet the strengths of each mirror weaknesses in the other. Poor governance suffers from accountability and administrative failures, and a lack of strategy for integrating evidence-informed, con- textual and tacit knowledges [31–33]. Emerging from health systems settings with clearly defined and con- tained contexts (e.g. clinical practice sites), IKT suffers a lack of attention to power dynamics and complexity in decision-making [27], making it difficult to apply to ‘wicked’ knowledge-to-action problems. Further, despite much inter- est in both IKT and GHG within the field of health equity, their respective bodies of literature are disconnected. In this article, we draw on Freire and Shor’s metaphor of a ‘dialogic table’ [34], inviting contemplation of how blending IKT approaches with GHG principles could support meaningful health equity action. Below, we lay a foundation for deeper, critically reflective consider- ation of the complementarities of IKT and GHG. We are inspired by the potential of critical pedagogy as an epistemological guide for ‘how’ we (society, scientists, practitioners, decision-makers, etc.) might collectively inspire transformative possibilities. In their reflective con- versation about learning, Freire and Shor described a ‘dia- logic table’ as an enabler of transformative co-learning. They suggested an “object to be known is put on the table between subjects…[who] meet around it and through it for mutual inquiry” ([34], p. 14). The “object to be known” in this dialogue is evidence-informed health equity action. The ‘subjects of knowing’, each with their own insights, knowledges (e.g. tacit, institutional, professional knowl- edges), evidences and epistemologies, are people situated within the fields of IKT and GHG. We set this dialogic table by discussing the wickedness of health inequities, the strengths and limitations of IKT and GHG, and how to leverage their mutually beneficial characteristics. Unpacking the wickedness of health inequities Health inequities are systematic differences in health rooted in socioeconomic and political injustices [14]. The WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health de- scribed health inequities as avoidable, arising from “…the conditions of daily life in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age” shaped by social, political and economic forces, and requiring response from the “whole of govern- ment” [14]. Evidence shows that the greater the gap be- tween a population’s richest and poorest, the greater the differences in health between them [3, 35, 36]. Unequal and unfair systems of power between and within nation states are widely recognised as driving forces in the cre- ation of structures that disproportionately advantage some lives at the cost of others [8, 14, 37]. Though the evidence about causal roots is clear, and a robust suite of tested pol- icy recommendations widely available [15–18], the imple- mentation of policy solutions is far from straightforward. Calls for social policy reform to improve health have been documented for more than 160 years [38, 39], revealing Plamondon and Pemberton Health Research Policy and Systems (2019) 17:24 Page 2 of 10 deep resistance to resolve. Indeed, the causes of health inequities are tenacious because they are rooted socio-pol- itical systems and structures designed to reinforce the sta- tus quo of power distribution, locally and globally. Connecting knowledge to action on root causes of health inequities implicates a reconstruction of the sys- tems and structures that shape how society is organised. This infinitely complex work demands sophisticated examination of drivers and disrupters of inequities and a vast imagination for who (and what) should be engaged. This work is challenging for many reasons, not the least of which is a fundamental clash between health inequities’ inherent complexity and the dominant lens through which the world is observed and responded to in the field of health and science generally. This lens involves linear, reductionist and hierarchical assumptions (Table 1) stemming from seventeenth-century mechanistic suppositions about reality [20]. A repercussion of these assumptions is a persistent Western habit of understanding “the world as a collection of separable and thus independent units and assumes linear cause-and-effect relationships between these units, and that these relationships are reversible” ([21], p. 3). When these as- sumptions are at play, our collective capacity to recognise the depth and tenacity of root causes remains elusive. Lending to a particularly narrowed and superficial lens through which the social determinants of health [20] and health inequities are framed [24, 40], mechanistic assump- tions effectively mask complex mechanisms that entrench inequities. Rather than focusing on the intersecting nature of the social determination of health [41], efforts to advance health equity under these assumptions place inordinate at- tention on behavioural interventions and insufficient atten- tion on structural causes [42, 43]. For example, even when there is agreement about causes, public health efforts tend to focus on interventions that place responsibility for health on individual behaviours [23, 44]. Despite the recognised value of upstream and structural interventions, research shows a predominantly downstream focus in policy and public health efforts [24, 45–48]. Behavioural interventions for healthy eating, for example, distract attention away from complex issues of affordability and accessibility, whereas a more structural intervention might involve advocacy to ad- vance socially protective policy for living wages. Further, the role of power in establishing systematic ad- vantage and disadvantage, recognised as a pivotal driver of health inequities [14], is only occasionally acknowledged and infrequently used to guide study goals and objectives [40]. Decades of dominant neoliberal ideology [47] have contributed to policy environments incompatible with the kinds of social protection known to mitigate health inequi- ties [47, 49, 50]. Compounding these incompatibilities is a preoccupation with individualism and bio-behaviourism in health sciences that conflicts with the best available evi- dence and often distracts attention from where it might be most productive [24, 40, 51, 52]. Whether inadvertent or strategic, the absence of power analysis in efforts to ad- vance health equity action can undermine possibilities of uprooting the tenacious systems of power that lead to inequities. The fields of GHG and IKT span practice, policy and re- search outside the confines of a particular topic. Both fields bring something important to the table in response to health inequities. Further, because of their relational nature, they both offer platforms for the kind of dialogue necessary to challenge reductionism and mitigate power imbalances. Greater integration across disciplines interested in health equity is recognised as necessary evidence-informed action for health equity [53, 54]. If there is indeed desire and cap- acity to begin unravelling equity-harming structures, power and policy environments, then there is an urgent need to understand how to mobilise knowledge into action – both in terms of increasing the application of existing knowledge and informing emerging research. Unpacking these influ- ences could provide a useful means of deconstructing underlying assumptions that lend themselves to consistent failures to advance health equity. Table 1 Mechanistic assumptions and their application to social determinants of healtha Assumption Description How the assumption circumvents complexity of health inequities Reductionism Assumes the whole system can be understood by identifying, describing and analysing all of its constituent parts Breaks social determinants of health into separate, distinct factors (rather than a set of complex intersecting factors) Draws attention to symptoms or expressions of root causes that are more immediately visible (e.g. considering ‘race’ a determinant of health instead of ‘racism’) Linearity Assumes that (1) output changes proportionally with input, and (2) the effect of combined inputs can be understood and predicted by dissecting the input–output relationships of individual components, or a direct summative and predictive cumulation of constituent parts Simplifies interconnectedness Justifies use of proxy indicators that reflect symptoms rather than causes of health inequities (e.g. monitoring maternal and child mortality rates as indicators of equity) Hierarchy Assumes central power and control, which diffuses systematically from proximal to more distal parts Places responsibility for acting on health within individuals or groups, rather than society Legitimises a focus on health damaging behaviours rather than health damaging conditions, systems or structures aAdapted from Jayasinghe, 2011 [20] Plamondon and Pemberton Health Research Policy and Systems (2019) 17:24 Page 3 of 10 What does IKT bring to the table? Efforts to respond to health inequities include explicit calls for connecting research to action [14, 55]. These calls align with the growing recognition of the import- ance of knowledge translation (KT) [56–59]. IKT offers strategies for bringing diverse perspectives together to understand and respond to problems through processes of knowledge generation and refinement [25–27]. Inherently relational [60], IKT is non-linear and challenges trad- itional notions of the dispassionate, objective ‘expert re- searcher’ [61] whose work, once released into the world through scholarly publication, carries de facto impact. It involves participatory, inclusive processes where people who ‘use’ research work alongside people who ‘do’ re- search [62]. Recognising a ‘social contract’ between society and science, IKT brings stakeholders into a social process of problem solving through research [63] emphasising knowledge co-production in partnership [27]. By virtue of this collaborative approach to knowledge production, re- finement and use, an IKT approach necessitates dialogue and trust building [64–66]. These characteristics are well suited to overcoming mechanistic assumptions by foster- ing ‘change from within’; however, the application of IKT to wicked problems is constrained by underlying assump- tions that limit the scope and scale of contexts for which it was originally envisioned. Frameworks for IKT consistently describe it as a way of collaboratively leveraging the research processes as a means for generating context-sensitive, complexity-embracing, real-life solutions grounded in evidence. Among evolving models for IKT are encouraging innovations, such as the use of critical realism and arts in KT [67], systems thinking [68], and even reflexive frameworks for equity-focused KT [69]. Common among these models is a recognition that “both communities [of knowledge users and producers] hold distinct norms and values but they also bring valuable knowledge to the problem; and the work of knowledge gener- ation is done collaboratively” ([27], p. 620). A distinguishing feature of IKT is, however, that “knowledge users usually have the authority to invoke change in the practice or policy setting” [27]. This presumes that knowledge users are indi- vidual ‘stakeholders’ who represent particular portfolios within a health system or community setting. When the context and knowledge-to-action problem implicates social organisation and structure, however, the idea of including everyone, or even of finding just one set of stakeholders who may have authority to invoke change over some aspect of policy or practice relevant to health equity can be para- lysing. The need for engaging people who can be part of decision-making mechanisms that lead to action opens a question of governance. Although IKT models demonstrate promise for micro- (e.g. clinical practice unit) and meso- (e.g. health sys- tems) contexts [70], their utility is limited when applied to the multiple, complex actors that contribute to shap- ing political, social and cultural environments that either drive, do nothing or disrupt wicked problems like health inequities. This is, in part, due to the difficulty of navi- gating meaningful engagement within the vastness of potential actors to include. Rather than focusing stake- holder analysis [71] in a defined setting, the range of po- tential actors implicated in wicked problems extends to networks of knowledge producers and knowledge users, many of which are not single entities, but conglomerates that also produce multiple competing interests and values. Identifying the ‘right’ actors to engage could become in and of itself a wicked problem, resistant to resolve and surely beyond the scope of any individual study or programme of research. Further, these models lack direc- tion for how to achieve cohesiveness toward a common goal. Additionally, despite a need for evidence-informed policy and practice for health [14, 17], there are few exam- ples of using IKT approaches to respond to wicked prob- lems. These features that constrain the application of IKT in the face of wicked problems could be redressed through adoption of the principles of GHG, particularly its mecha- nisms of legitimacy and collaboration between multi-sector transnational actors, with an emphasis on civil society. What does GHG bring to the table? As a reaction to the intensifying wickedness of health prob- lems that defy state borders, governance processes consist of stakeholders working through formal international insti- tutions both within and across borders. Heavily influenced by major globalisation events such as HIV/AIDS and SARS, current mechanisms and processes for GHG stem from the disciplines of political science, health economics and health policy [72, 73]. In the absence of a singular global government, GHG platforms convene a plurality of major actors to define shared values, establish standards and regulatory frameworks, set priorities, mobilise and align resources, and promote research. GHG often requires individual governments to forgo aspects of their individual sovereignty in order to collaborate and participate with international agencies such as WHO [74]. For example, the WHO International Health Regulations establishes stan- dards for how individual countries respond to international health risks [75]. These regulations refer to the need for the Director-General of WHO to consider scientific evi- dence, but do not provide recommendations for how this evidence could inform decision-making. Ultimately, GHG is a polycentric system that provides a mechanism for collective decision-making for improved health through the interplay of different institutional forms and actors at different levels in pursuit of common goals [29, 73, 76]. The imperfect decision-making pro- cesses of GHG are, however, embedded in historical and socio-political contexts of colonialism and heavily Plamondon and Pemberton Health Research Policy and Systems (2019) 17:24 Page 4 of 10 influenced by power relationships, values, norms, organ- isational structures and resources. GHG is political; it can serve to reinforce or challenge existing institutional exclu- sion and power inequalities and has direct impacts on health system equity whereby the decisions made through GHG processes shape who accesses benefits and whose voices are heard [77]. Continued processes of globalisation and increasing influence of private sector actors in global health bring new layers of political power to the govern- ance scene [78], while innovations in technology, data, communications and networks open possibilities for reim- agining the mechanisms and processes relied upon post World War II [79]. The time is ripe for reimagining how GHG might better support collective responses to global problems. At the turn of the twenty-first century, health sectors worldwide were acutely aware of their limited capacity to deal with emerging challenges in isolation. Global vulnerability to pandemics, climate change and political instability all contribute to a growing recognition of a need for multi-sectorial action and broad public and pri- vate partnerships at national and international levels [74]. Further, civil society and political leaders are chal- lenging notions of an isolated, technocratic health sector and call for more unified attention to issues of equity and human rights [73]. Society writ large voiced a desire to be part of the political sphere that shapes their life circumstances, opportunities and experiences of health and healthcare. In response to a confluence of heightened awareness of the globalised nature of health issues and growing demand for collective responses, complex net- works of international agencies and philanthropic founda- tions collaborated to set global targets for progress toward a more equitable word through the Millennium Develop- ment Goals and the more recent Sustainable Development Goals [33, 80]. These and other examples of governance for health equity (e.g. the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health) are key demonstrations of the kinds of platforms and mechanisms GHG offers. Import- antly, these mechanisms also demonstrate how the legacy of colonialism contributes to health equity failures. Global health crises exemplify how health equity is tied up to socio-political and economic contexts, including the histories of colonisation. The 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic is an important example of the consequences of govern- ance failures. As outbreaks emerged, the world witnessed vulnerabilities and fragmentation in public service sectors that became determinants of who lived and who died – revealing intense inequities between and within countries [81–83]. Leaders in health systems and governments alike recognised the need for strong global institutions, mecha- nisms and funding for development of global public goods that contribute to resolving global health threats. In the case of the Ebola crisis, GHG leadership (e.g. WHO) failed to respond in a timely manner, which lead to other key ac- tors stepping up to fill the leadership gap. The response was openly criticised as “too little too late” to halt an epi- demic reflective of the “pathology of society and the global and political architecture” [84]. Like many contemporary GHG challenges, this crisis unfolded through the legacy of colonialism [85] that holds the roots of inequities in place. By revealing the differential value placed on human life globally, these failures illuminated the tenacious nature of health inequities and the lack of political will to uproot their causes. While GHG provides a platform for responding to wicked problems through global collaboration, cooperation and leadership among a diverse set of actors, GHG deliver- ables still lack strategies to ensure evidence- [86] and equity-informed [87] policy, practice and decision-making. The 2014 Lancet–University of Oslo Commission on Glo- bal Governance for Health also pushed for evidence- and equity-informed GHG, recommending mandatory health equity impact assessments for all global institutions and strengthened sanctions against non-state actors for rights violations [88]. Surprisingly, there are few examples of looking to IKT to support processes for the same [89]. Shared governance and public dialogue about our social and economic architecture is needed [90], where public moral norms can be re-constructed and internalised (e.g. recreating constructs of health equity as a public good). IKT approaches and strategies could support this kind of dialogue in engaged, inclusive ways that support connect- ing this kind of evidence and other knowledges with ac- tion. In Table 2, we offer an overview of recognized steps in the knowledge-to-action cycle [25] alongside comple- mentary GHG processes and mechanisms. This blended IKT–GHG approach, done alongside a critical examination of power, presents a promising pathway toward health equity action. Additional ‘objects’ of consideration on this dialogic table In addition to our interest in leveraging the relational-dia- logic nature of GHG and IKT to counter reductionism and mitigate power imbalances, we propose placing a few add- itional objects on this dialogic table, namely accountability, leadership and inclusion. It is beyond the scope of this dis- cussion to resolve the intricacies of any of these issues, but we hope that they serve as sparks for continued dia- logue and reflection. In GHG, the lack of accountability of major global health organisations (i.e. WHO), and its rela- tionship to systems of power, has been a significant chal- lenge [74]. Unclear accountabilities, particularly for leadership, can play a role in legitimising investments in research, IKT, or policy in ways that overlook evidence about causal roots or reinforce inequitable power dy- namics. Without frank acknowledgement of the legacies Plamondon and Pemberton Health Research Policy and Systems (2019) 17:24 Page 5 of 10 of colonisation, and particularly at a time when neo- liberal reason and monetisation of socio-political pro- cesses undermine democratic governance [85, 91], it is insufficient to assume health equity is the responsibility of governments, government agencies or civil society, nor of international institutions, such as WHO or United Nations, whose political leverage falls under the shadow of powerful financial bodies such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and, more recently, influential and well-endowed philan- thropic foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [78, 79]. Neither can the roles, responsibilities Table 2 Blending processes and mechanisms for a blended integrated knowledge translation (IKT) – global health governance (GHG) approach Moments in the IKT cycle Complementary GHG processes and mechanisms Examining Power in an IKT–GHG Approach Identify problem and identify, review, select knowledge ↓ Adapt knowledge to local context ↓ Governance bodies that work together to identify problems and knowledge Consideration of the composition of non-traditional actors, such as civil society and private sector, in governance bodies Guidance for meaningful engagement between actors, particularly in shared governance models Promising example: GAVI mitigates known global power imbalances through the composition of their Board, which includes 9 neutral individuals who speak to public interests, 5 government representatives each from donor and recipient countries, 1 expert in research and technology, 1 industry representative each from the global South and global North, 1 civil society representative, and 1 representative each from WHO, UNICEF, World Bank and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Taking steps to balance power between global North and global South Promoting transparency and accountability in decision-making about the composition of governance bodies Attentiveness to how particular ways of framing health and governance influences how a ‘problem’ is being understood Attentiveness to how historical conditions and power dynamics privilege particular assumptions Assess barriers to knowledge use ↓ Select, tailor, implement interventions ↓ Guidance on how to resolve discrepant norms and values between engaged actors Guidance on how to ensure legitimacy of leadership Guidance on how political will and power influence this process Platforms for coordinating global-level responses to wicked problems Promising example: The Lancet Commission on GHG offered specific recommendations for governance mechanisms and processes, with detailed calls to make the examination of issues of power an explicit responsibility of GHG. They called for attention to democratic deficit, institutional and structural inflexibility, strengthened accountability, identification and involvement of missing institutions and voices, and to create a policy space for health. Their report offers specific guidance on how to do so. Among the Commission’s recommendations were specific mechanisms, including a proposed UN Multi-stakeholder Platform on Global Governance for Health Attentiveness to how historical conditions and power dynamics give rise to inequities in inclusion and voice Exploration of how processes of historical exclusion (e.g. due to race, class, gender, Indigeneity, etc.) can be mitigated Monitor knowledge use ↓ Evaluate outcomes ↓ Sustain knowledge use Generation and maintenance of mechanisms provide infrastructure for monitoring and evaluation Norms and expectations for transparency in decision-making Promising example: Two advisory bodies, the Technical Review Panel and a Technical Evaluation Reference Group, provide independent audit and monitoring of programmes funded by the GFATM. Their reports highlight lessons learned from funding requests and reviews, including perspectives of applicants, technical partners, the Secretariat and the Board. They consist of external experts in HIV, TB and malaria as well as experts in human rights, gender, health systems and sustainable financing. Their reports are made publicly available through the GFATM website Attentiveness to who decides what knowledge count as legitimate Attentiveness to who decides what outcomes count as legitimate Consideration of who owns knowledge, with efforts to promote publicly owned and accessible data Attentiveness to equitable distribution of resources and benefits Plamondon and Pemberton Health Research Policy and Systems (2019) 17:24 Page 6 of 10 and accountabilities of ‘researchers’ and ‘research users’ in IKT be simply assumed because they agree to work together. These are critical considerations in moving toward evidence-informed, equitable governance for health equity action. Systems for enabling accountability and transparency must be agreed to, which raises questions of meaningful participation and responsibility [30]. Despite intense im- balances in power and interests, the challenge for GHG and IKT strategists alike will be to engage a plurality of actors in ways that enable collective agreement on a com- mon goal. Accountability extends to issues of inclusion and exclusion and how power is distributed. Though in- clusion is widely recognised as important for GHG and KT, how to achieve it is elusive. Global events exemplify ways in which civil society is pushing back on systems of exclusion, voicing a desire to transform what are, in es- sence, governance processes. Responses to global health issues evolve in politicised systems that exclude the voices of those most burdened by health inequities [92]. The Idle-No-More [93], Occupy [94], Black Lives Matter [95] and the more recent #metoo movements share a common outcry for justice and equity in society, pointing to the in- equities generated by power and policy structures that sys- tematically privilege the wealthy and White. Collectively, these movements reflect a growing public demand for pol- itics of inclusion where government and non-government actors are held accountable for the consequences of their action (or inaction). They are demonstrative of how intri- cately tied up health inequities are in complex, competing systems of power within which there is a need for critical analysis and mitigation. Further, the likelihood of understanding complexity be- comes much greater by directly fostering balanced repre- sentation that includes a pluralism of voices. On a larger scale, this is reflected in the evolution of the major GHG players in the world. Historically, WHO and the World Bank have been primarily responsible for GHG, but given the significant frustration with each of these institutions’ poor GHG, two new organisations have risen, namely The Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and Malaria (GFATM) and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI); what separates these two institutions from their counter parts are their commitment to GHG. These commitments include a wider, more inclusive, Board of Governors (civil society, the private sector, and philanthropic organisations), as well as providing clear and transpar- ent (i.e. publicly available) decision-making regarding funding decisions and priority-setting processes. Both organisations rely on external review for their ac- countability for decision-making processes like fund- ing decisions. We believe that theory and practice in both IKT and GHG would benefit from these new exam- ples of creating organisations that work toward governance models based on inclusion, voice, transpar- ency and accountability. Without clear leadership and a commitment to accountability through transparency by all global health actors, the current response to health inequi- ties will be ad hoc and exclusive of these civil society voices, as well as highly fragmented with little to no for- mal mandate between the players. Importantly, the re- sponse would be at risk of remaining distracted by the tendency to focus on symptoms rather than causes. As the field of IKT evolves, so too do opportunities for theory and practice refinement. Governance processes could enhance current IKT frameworks to open consider- ations of how to weave evidence into decision-making while acknowledging conflicting norms and values within the political sphere under which it operates. Using shared health governance theory to drive this examination can contribute to more transparent and equity-centred ap- proaches to understanding how these norms and values shape health problems [90]. Expanding IKT models to in- clude governance would require re-examining legitimacy, transparency, power and inclusion in the process of con- necting knowledge with action. This broader conceptual- isation extends the application of IKT into a complex public sphere, across domains and outside the control or context of any one institution or set of actors. We are much more likely to approach understanding complexity through systems of inclusion that directly engage multiple socio-political arenas. Systems of inclusion can be expli- citly addressed by adopting principles of GHG alongside the strategies of IKT. Exploring a blended IKT–GHG approach could extend insights from the success of IKT in clinical and health sys- tems settings [70, 96] to wicked problems. This approach could illuminate new ways of thinking about how we might influence the trajectory of wicked problems to fair, equit- able governance informed by high quality, rigorous and relevant research. In the example we offer here, of moving toward health equity, IKT implicates an all-of-society ap- proach because the root causes involve all of society. IKT models already acknowledge the process of connecting knowledge with action as inherently social, but this is often used as a way to describe the processes involved in well-defined settings. Wicked problems are not confined to singular contexts. Although attending to social processes are important, they need to be considered in the broader sphere of how society is organised. This means thinking about and connecting the best available knowledge about a wicked problem to evidence-informed action as a ‘public good’, wherein the process is integrated as part of the social fabric around which communities are organised. We be- lieve broadening the application of approaches to IKT across multiple layers of complex social interactions can support evidence-informed influence and, again, GHG can support the achievement of coherency in doing so. Plamondon and Pemberton Health Research Policy and Systems (2019) 17:24 Page 7 of 10 Conclusion In this article, we set a dialogic table to explore how blending principles of GHG with IKT strategies could le- verage the strengths of both, enhancing the possibility for effective and evidence-informed answers to wicked problems. We situated this table in a global political economy that unfairly distributes power, resources and money. By focusing on explicit examination of power and overcoming mechanistic assumptions that draw at- tention away from the root causes of health inequities, there is tremendous potential to be leveraged in a com- bined IKT and GHG approach. Such an approach would require leadership from academic, policy and civil society arenas wherein existing GHG platforms explicitly embrace a commitment to connecting knowledge (evidence about causes) with action. We encourage those pursuing an IKT–GHG approach to engage in bold and inclusive dia- logue about how socio-political histories (e.g. colonisation) are at play in the ways they frame or respond to health in- equities. In contemplating governance-focused IKT, actors involved in advancing health equity can take promising steps toward inclusion of a broad spectrum of actors and a pathway for stimulating the collective agency needed to affect change on this wicked problem. Abbreviations GHG: global health governance; IKT: integrated knowledge translation; KT: knowledge translation Acknowledgements We wish to acknowledge the mentorship, encouragement and scholarly guidance we receive from our supervisory committees as doctoral candidates. For KP, at the University of British Columbia, this includes Dr Joan Bottorff, Dr Susana Caxaj, Dr Ian Graham, and Dr Michael Burgess. For JP, at McMaster University, this includes Dr Lisa Schwartz, Dr Susan Jack, Dr Claudia Emmerson, and Dr Brian Cameron. Funding This paper was commissioned by the Integrated Knowledge Translation Network (IKTRN). The IKTRN brings together knowledge users and researchers to advance the science and practice of IKT and train the next generation of IKT researchers. Honorariums were provided for completed papers. The IKTRN is funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Foundation Grant (FDN#143247). Further, the article emerged from the doctoral dissertation work of both authors. KP’s doctoral studies are funded through a Banting and Best Canada Research Scholar award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. JP’s doctoral studies are funded through Banting and Best Canada Research Scholar and the Douglas Kinsella Award in Bioethics from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Availability of data and materials Not applicable. Authors’ contributions KP provided coordination and leadership for the preparation of the manuscript. The content for this debate article was generated through a series of conversations to which KP and JP contributed equally. Both authors brought a strong grounding research and science related to health equity. KP provided more content related to integrated knowledge translation, JP provided more content related to governance. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript. Authors’ information KP is a Regional Practice Leader for Research & Knowledge Translation at Interior Health. In her role, she supports IKT through teaching, mentoring, consulting, and leading IKT and equity-centred research. Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applicable. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Author details 1University of British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, Canada. 2McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, Canada. 3Interior Health, 505 Doyle Avenue, Kelowna, BC, Canada. Received: 14 November 2018 Accepted: 6 February 2019 References 1. Rittel HWJ, Webber MM. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sci. 1973;4:155–69. 2. Waddock S. The wicked problems of global sustainability need wicked (good) leaders and wicked (good) collaboraative solutions. J Manag Glob Sustain. 2013;1:91–111. 3. Labonte R, Schrecker T. The state of global health in a radically unequal world: Patterns and prospects. In: Benatar SR, Brock G, editors. Global Health and Global Health Ethics. 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Plamondon and Pemberton Health Research Policy and Systems (2019) 17:24 Page 10 of 10 http://www.who.int/ihr/9789241596664/en/ https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-10-28 https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-10-28 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0665-0 http://www.searo.who.int/entity/partnerships/topics/donors_ghp_h8/en http://www.searo.who.int/entity/partnerships/topics/donors_ghp_h8/en https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h376 https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2014.14387 https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2014.14387 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-016-0224-2 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-016-0224-2 https://doi.org/10.1177/0020731415606554 http://www.ccghr.ca/resources/principles-global-health-research/ http://www.ccghr.ca/resources/principles-global-health-research/ https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61617-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61617-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-018-0123-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-018-0123-y https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v1i1.107 https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v1i1.107 https://doi.org/10.1111/tsq.12021 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-016-1533-0 Abstract Background Discussion Conclusion Background Unpacking the wickedness of health inequities What does IKT bring to the table? What does GHG bring to the table? Additional ‘objects’ of consideration on this dialogic table Conclusion Abbreviations Acknowledgements Funding Availability of data and materials Authors’ contributions Authors’ information Ethics approval and consent to participate Consent for publication Competing interests Publisher’s Note Author details References work_5an55zb3prhklm5sxh4oe4ilpe ---- How Does Sexual Harassment Influence the Female Employee’s Negative Response in a Deluxe Hotel? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Article How Does Sexual Harassment Influence the Female Employee’s Negative Response in a Deluxe Hotel? Hyo Sun Jung 1 and Hye Hyun Yoon 2,* 1 Center for Converging Humanities, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 02447, Korea; chefcook@khu.ac.kr 2 Department of Culinary Arts and Food Service Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 02447, Korea * Correspondence: hhyun@khu.ac.kr Received: 23 November 2020; Accepted: 17 December 2020; Published: 19 December 2020 ����������������� Abstract: Today, organizations face risky legal and financial consequences stemming from a single sexual harassment event. The purpose of this study was to verify that the sexual harassment, as perceived by female employees, significantly affects their levels of psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior to investigate the moderating role of organizational silence and psychological detachment in the causal relationship. First, this study found that perceived sexual harassment has a negative impact on the female employees’ psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior. This study’s results also demonstrated that psychological distress has a positive impact on workplace deviant behavior. Additionally, the influence of perceived sexual harassment on psychological distress increased when the employees’ psychological detachment was weak. Finally, limitations and future research directions are also discussed. Keywords: sexual harassment; psychological distress; deviant behavior; organizational silence; psychological detachment; female employee; deluxe hotel 1. Introduction Sexual harassment, which is one symptom of social discrimination that occurs when a person becomes subject of unwanted sexual debate, gesture, or action, is presently a critical problem and at the center of attention throughout many organizational environments [1]. The current #MeToo movement raised the public’s awareness of the problem of sexual harassment that women experience within organizations. The movement not only captured the possibility of sexual harassment’s omnipresence within daily workplace functions but also made it clear that people should not be silenced [2]. Today, organizations face risky legal and financial consequences stemming from a single sexual harassment event [3]. Although research on workplace sexual harassment is closely related to psychological health disorders, current longitudinal research on this relationship is scarce. In particular, people working in an environment that involves strong social interaction and stress, such as deluxe hotels, are exposed to excessive psychological distress [4,5]. Due to this type of stressful working environment [6], circumstances of workplace harassment inside such organizations are often specifically silenced [7,8]. For this reason, creating an environment in deluxe hotels where sexual harassment does not occur is a very important factor that can determine the success or failure of the organization. Despite this importance, there is scarce prior study related to this issue. Therefore, this study examines whether the perception of sexual harassment among female employees causes psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior, as well as investigates the moderating role of organizational silence and psychological detachment in the causal relationship (Figure 1). Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 ; doi:10.3390/ijerph17249537 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph http://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3512-5597 http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/24/9537 ?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17249537 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 2 of 13Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, x 2 of 14 Figure 1. A proposed model of sexual harassment, psychological distress, workplace deviant behavior, organizational silence, and psychological detachment. 2. Literature Review and Conceptual Model 2.1. Sexual Harassment in the Hospitality Sector Although there is an insufficient amount of academic research regarding sexual harassment in the hospitality industry, the topic has long been a subject of interest within the industry and by researchers. According to Eller [9], the extent of sexual harassment in the hotel industry is not completely clear, as hotel employees experience relatively more cases of sexual harassment than other general workers, with most of the harassment coming from coworkers. Gilbert et al. [10] stated that, among diverse types of harassment, sexual harassment can have a fatal impact on the victim, decrease the individual’s morale, and seriously affect their efficiency. They argued that the problem of sexual harassment is particularly important in the hospitality industry and that the issue should be clearly discussed throughout hiring procedures. In a study that investigated restaurant employees, Weber et al. [11] argue that it is reasonable to say that sexual harassment is more widespread in the restaurant industry because circumstances that can be regarded as sexual harassment in other industries are often not treated as sexual harassment in the restaurant industry. Theocharous and Philaretou [12] believe that many cases of sexual harassment remain unreported in the hospitality industry. According to their study, sexual harassment not only causes direct financial threat and loss to the victims, female employees, but also seriously damages their future career, such as delaying promotion and loss of income. Yusuf and Anuar [13] suggest that inhumane relationships with coworkers or supervisors, as well as aggressive words from them, are the most frequently observed conflict in the hotel industry. Vettori and Nicolaides [14] introduced the peril of sexual harassment in the hospitality industry and suggested policies that managers should provide to maintain a safe and ethical working environment. Li et al. [7] cited that employees’ perceived sexual harassment negatively influences their customer-oriented service behavior and its influence increases when the interpersonal relationship is sensitive. Figure 1. A proposed model of sexual harassment, psychological distress, workplace deviant behavior, organizational silence, and psychological detachment. 2. Literature Review and Conceptual Model 2.1. Sexual Harassment in the Hospitality Sector Although there is an insufficient amount of academic research regarding sexual harassment in the hospitality industry, the topic has long been a subject of interest within the industry and by researchers. According to Eller [9], the extent of sexual harassment in the hotel industry is not completely clear, as hotel employees experience relatively more cases of sexual harassment than other general workers, with most of the harassment coming from coworkers. Gilbert et al. [10] stated that, among diverse types of harassment, sexual harassment can have a fatal impact on the victim, decrease the individual’s morale, and seriously affect their efficiency. They argued that the problem of sexual harassment is particularly important in the hospitality industry and that the issue should be clearly discussed throughout hiring procedures. In a study that investigated restaurant employees, Weber et al. [11] argue that it is reasonable to say that sexual harassment is more widespread in the restaurant industry because circumstances that can be regarded as sexual harassment in other industries are often not treated as sexual harassment in the restaurant industry. Theocharous and Philaretou [12] believe that many cases of sexual harassment remain unreported in the hospitality industry. According to their study, sexual harassment not only causes direct financial threat and loss to the victims, female employees, but also seriously damages their future career, such as delaying promotion and loss of income. Yusuf and Anuar [13] suggest that inhumane relationships with coworkers or supervisors, as well as aggressive words from them, are the most frequently observed conflict in the hotel industry. Vettori and Nicolaides [14] introduced the peril of sexual harassment in the hospitality industry and suggested policies that managers should provide to maintain a safe and ethical working environment. Li et al. [7] cited that employees’ perceived sexual harassment negatively influences their customer-oriented service behavior and its influence increases when the interpersonal relationship is sensitive. 2.2. Model Development and Hypotheses 2.2.1. Relationship between Sexual Harassment and Psychological Distress Sexual harassment is unwanted sex-related behavior inside an organization, which makes the victim feel offended, exceeds the individual’s coping resource, and/or threatens the individual’s Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 3 of 13 well-being [15]. Here, not only is unwanted physical behavior included but also unwelcomed verbal and nonverbal sexual behavior [16]. Psychological distress refers to a psychological condition that is characterized by negative thoughts and feelings related to anxiety, fear, or depression [17]. Many studies exist that investigate perceived sexual harassment in organizations and psychological distress. Richman et al. [18] displayed that sexual harassment can exceed the coping resource of the subject of harassment and cause negative psychological behavior. Willness et al. [19] reported that sexual harassment occurring within an organization can damage physical and psychological health as well as cause posttraumatic stress disorder. Among the studies related to sexual harassment and psychological distress, Nielsen and Einarsen (2012) stated that sexual harassment perceived in an organization contributes to the psychological distress of female employees and further argue that organizational measures on this issue can relieve the mental distress. Nielsen et al. [20] showed that all types of harassment occurring in the workplace, including sexual harassment, increase the members’ psychological distress. In a study that used college students as the sample population, McGinnley et al. [21] demonstrated that psychological distress increases as a result of sexual harassment and that the experience is highly likely to keep affecting the victim into the future. Kim et al. [22] reported that sexual harassment experienced by female soldiers in the army negatively impacts their mental health and its influence persisted for a considerable amount of time after their discharge from duty. Wolff et al. [23] explained that sexual harassment can pose a negative influence on health and showed that sexual harassment also positively affects the symptoms of psychological distress, such as depression and anger. O’Neil et al. [24] argued that sexual harassment and other types of sexual violence that occur inside the workplace provide psychological stress to the victims even after removal of the threat. Martinko et al. [25] also suggested abusive supervising as a cause of psychological distress among subordinate employees. Based on these prior studies and further empirical evidence, this study proposes that sexual harassment increases employees’ psychological distress as follows: Hypothesis 1 (H1). Perception of sexual harassment positively influences employees’ psychological distress. 2.2.2. Relationship between Psychological Distress and Workplace Deviant Behavior Deviant behavior is voluntary action that violates serious organizational norms by which well-being and performance of both the organization and its members are threatened [26]. Spector and Fox [27] stated that because work-related pain or stress causes negative emotion, it induces the members to commit actions that harm the organization itself. Omar et al. [28] said that stress experienced inside an organization, including negative emotions, such as frustration and irritation, positively affects the members’ deviant behavior. Many studies demonstrated that psychological pain, or stress experienced in a work environment, is the major cause of diverse types of deviant behavior [29,30]. Nasurdin et al. [31] reported that strong psychological distress increases the possibility that employees become tense, take impulsive action, and show less tolerance towards other people, which is a demonstrated form of deviation. Similarly, Vigoda [32] argued that work-related pain induces employees’ aggressive behavior. Saleem et al. [33] explained how psychological distress coming from abusive supervisors makes the employees leave the organization. Roxana [34] described how stress factors in workplace are controlled by the environment inside the organization and that the pain or stress linked to the members’ behavior acts against the organization. Aube et al. [35] suggested that psychological well-being, which is an opposite concept of psychological distress, decreases the employees’ counterproductive behavior and that existence of the counterproductive behavior can damage the employees’ psychological health. Therefore, this study assumes the following: Hypothesis 2 (H2). Employees’ psychological distress positively influences their workplace deviant behavior. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 4 of 13 2.2.3. Relationship between Sexual Harassment and Workplace Deviant Behavior Appelbaum et al. [36] stated several reasons why a member of an organization deviates and that sexual harassment is one of the important causes of such behavior. Popovich and Warren [3] argued that sexual harassment and organizational counterproductive behavior is an inseparable relationship, and that sexual harassment is the most fundamental motivation for inducing counterproductive behavior in an organization. Ahmad and Omar [37] reported that rude physical contact from a boss, which is not sexual harassment, increases the possibility that the employee acts in a manner that does harm to the organization. Tangem [38] cited sexual harassment as one of the most important reasons for unproductive workplace behavior and that it causes the strongest counterproductive behavior among female employees. Solakoglu et al. [39] explained that the experience of sexual abuse is strongly related to the possibility of being involved in most types of the deviant behaviors. Zhu et al. [40] demonstrated that sexual harassment in workplace has a strong and positive relationship with deviation in the workplace and further argued that the relationship strengthens when depression occurs. Similarly, Merkin and Shah [41] found that respondents who experienced sexual harassment had a higher turnover intention and rate of absenteeism compared to the respondents without such an experience. Salman et al. [42] suggested that sexual harassment and turnover intention are closely related. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 3 (H3). Perceptions of sexual harassment positively influence workplace deviant behavior. 2.2.4. Moderating Role of Organizational Silence and Psychological Detachment Organizational silence makes some employees extremely indifferent and unconcerned. Therefore, indifferent employees mean those who are uninterested in their work, employer, or quality of the work [43,44]. Psychological detachment refers to the work-related experience of when the individual is psychologically “switched off” [45]. No prior study investigates organizational silence and psychological detachment as a variable that moderates negative influence from perceived sexual harassment on employees. Among the studies related to the moderating role of organizational silence, Fernando and Prasad [2] described the harmful effect of a silencing atmosphere with evidence that the silencing organizational atmosphere, which makes victims unable to reveal their dissatisfaction, prevents the sexual harassment from being expressed outside of the organization. Elçi et al. [46] showed that organizational silence, or the atmosphere that allows harassment, increases employee turnover intention. Jain [47] investigated factors that cause silence from an aspect of interpersonal relationship and reported that the silence increases when a vertical hierarchical relationship with a supervisor continues. Zahed [48] argued that social harassment that employees experience from coworkers or a supervisor in an organization causes employee silence within the organization. Huang et al. [49] also explained how a negative relationship with an impersonal and rude supervisor is one of the important causes of employee silence. Mao et al. [50] demonstrated that organizational silence caused low performance and low organizational citizenship behavior, which eventually made highly unproductive behavior predictable. Based on these results, this study assumed that the negative effect of the employees’ perceived sexual harassment on their psychological distress and counterproductive behavior increases when it is accompanied by organizational silence. Hypothesis 4 (H4). Organizational silence moderates the effect of sexual harassment on psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior. Among the studies related to the moderating role of psychological detachment, Vogel and Mitchell [51] argued that the positive influence of a supervisor’s abusive behavior on turnover intention, not the perceived sexual harassment, decreases as a result of employee psychological detachment. Burris et al. [52] reported that psychological detachment from the organization diminishes the possibility of leaving the organization. Sonnentag et al. [53] explained that psychological detachment Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 5 of 13 experienced in an organization is important because it induces low levels of psychological fatigue and creates time for recovery. Safstrom and Hartig [54] found that psychological detachment plays an intervening role between work requirement and life satisfaction. Chen et al. [55] cited psychological detachment as a negative influence on counterproductive behavior and mediates the influence of work demand on counterproductive behavior. Tong et al. [56] demonstrated that psychological detachment experienced inside an organization becomes one of the stress factors that negatively influences employees’ counterproductive behavior and reduces the harmful effect of psychological stress factors on employees’ performance and well-being. Empirical evidence proves that increased experience of psychological detachment diminishes stress response, such as job burnout [57]. Based on these results, this study assumed that the effect of employees’ perceived sexual harassment on psychological distress and deviant behavior decreases when there is appropriate psychological detachment. Hypothesis 5 (H5). Psychological detachment moderates the effect of sexual harassment on psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior. 3. Research Methodology 3.1. Sample and Data Collection The sample for this study consisted of female employees working in deluxe hotels (five-star hotels) located in Seoul, South Korea. Among 22 deluxe hotels located in Seoul, the researcher chose 10 of the hotels that agreed to participate in the survey. The sample was restricted to female employees working in the food and beverage department because many previous studies reported that women are relatively more exposed to sexual harassment situations than men. After the researcher provided sufficient explanation of the purpose and methodology of the study, the subjects, who voluntarily decided to participate in the survey, wrote answers to the questionnaire on a separately prepared space. The researcher reminded responders that the collected data will be used for research purposes only and that it will remain confidential. For even distribution of the extracted samples among the hotels, 50 copies of the questionnaire were distributed to each of the 10 hotels, utilizing the convenience sampling method. At each meeting, the participants received a five-dollar coffee coupon for completing the survey. A total of 350 questionnaires were distributed, among which 312 copies were received. We conducted final analysis on 295 responses (84.29%). Prior to the main analysis, the researcher implemented data screening and analyzed descriptive statistics to verify whether the normality assumption was satisfied. The mean age of the employees was 29.47 (±6.24) years, and 47.7% were between 21 and 29 years old. Additionally, their education levels were found as primarily college (45.3%) and university degree (52.7%), and 62.4% worked in a deluxe hotel for less than 10 years. In addition, job position was indicated as part-time employee (21.8%) and full-time employee (78.2%). 3.2. Instrument Development The questionnaire consisted of six parts. The first part contained questions about the participants’ demographic information (e.g., age, education, and tenure. The second part requested employees to rate their overall perception of sexual harassment. To measure employees’ perceptions of sexual harassment, this study utilized an adapted multi-item scales by Fitzgerald et al. [58] and a modified set from Li et al. [7]. To measure each item, the researcher utilized 6 items and a 7-point scale: “How much do you agree or disagree with these statements?” (1: strongly disagree to 7: strongly agree). The third and fourth parts of the survey focused on employees’ psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior. The researcher used 4 items based on those developed by Kessler et al. [59] and Birkeland et al. [60] to measure employees’ psychological distress, while measuring workplace deviant behavior with 4 items developed by Bennett and Robinson [61]. In addition, the researcher measured organizational silence, which was used as a moderating variable in this study, with four questions based on Dasci and Cemaloglu [62]. The researcher measured the employees’ psychological Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 6 of 13 detachment with four items based on those developed by Sonnentag and Bayer [45] and Sonnentag and Kruel [63]. For all measurement items, the questionnaire, originally written in English by Brislin [64], was translated into Korean, and two bilingual experts reverse-translated the questionnaire into English. Afterward, they examined whether the meaning of the measurement questions differed between the two language versions three times. Then, the researcher implemented the main survey after checking for any ambiguity in the survey questions through a preliminary test. 3.3. Data Analysis We utilized the SPSS program (Version16, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) for demographic analysis, reliability analysis, and correlation analysis of the measurement items. In order to examine the validity of the measurement items, the researcher employed the AMOS program. The SPSS program analyzed the demographic characteristics of the respondent, descriptive statistics, reliability, and correlation. The researcher then applied the two-step approach using AMOS, first assessing the fitness of the measurement model, then the entire model was considered [65]. Next, the researcher conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the validity of the measurement item, with the structural equation modeling (SEM) used to check the hypothesis. A multi-group analysis (MGA) tested the moderating role of organizational silence and psychological detachment. 4. Results 4.1. Measurement Model In the analysis results, the Skewness ranged between −0.525 and +0.414, and the Kutosis ranged between −0.203 and −0.759, which implies that the normality is satisfied. All measurement items had a Z-score between −3 and +3, indicating the absence of a univariate outlier problem. Kline [66] and Hair et al. [67] reported that Skewness and Kutosis ranging between −3 and +3 allows normal distribution. Therefore, it is proof that the probability of a univariate outlier in this study data is minimal [68]. This study identified convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nominal validity to verify the validity of the measurement items. We examined convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity to verify construct validity (Tables 1 and 2). Additionally, we conducted CFA, which is a method of analyzing the structural effectiveness of the collected measurement variables before investigating the causal relationship of a developed theoretical model. As shown in Table 1, Cronbach’s alpha ranged between 0.93 and 0.96, and CCR exceeded 0.80 in all cases, indicating satisfaction of the approval criteria [69,70]. Furthermore, the standardized coefficient of all measurement items was over 0.80, and the result was significant at 0.001 level [71]. The overall fitness of the model was excellent (χ2 = 424.72; df = 220; χ2/df = 2.01; GFI = 0.89; CFI = 0.98). The square root of the coefficient of all measurement items (0.06~0.66) was smaller than AVE (0.79~0.85). AVE showed a higher value than ASV and MSV, thus confirming discriminant validity. Table 1. Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis. Construct Standardized Estimate t-Value Corrected Item-Total Correlation CCR a Cronbach’s Alpha Sexual harassment 0.93 SH1 0.89 Fixed *** 0.84 0.96 SH2 0.92 25.09 0.89 SH3 0.92 25.05 0.86 SH4 0.90 24.01 0.87 SH5 0.92 24.41 0.90 SH6 0.89 22.39 0.87 Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 7 of 13 Table 1. Cont. Construct Standardized Estimate t-Value Corrected Item-Total Correlation CCR a Cronbach’s Alpha Psychological distress 0.87 PS1 0.87 fixed 0.82 0.93 PS2 0.94 23.51 0.89 PS3 0.90 21.62 0.87 PS4 0.84 19.09 0.79 Workplace deviant behavior 0.91 WDB1 0.90 fixed 0.87 0.95 WDB2 0.91 25.12 0.89 WDB3 0.94 27.51 0.92 WDB4 0.92 25.76 0.89 WDB5 0.87 22.70 0.86 Organizational silence 0.92 OS1 0.94 fixed 0.90 0.95 OS2 0.95 34.31 0.92 OS3 0.93 31.72 0.91 OS4 0.83 22.02 0.80 Psychological detachment 0.89 PD1 0.93 fixed 0.89 0.95 PD2 0.94 29.63 0.90 PD3 0.95 30.54 0.91 PD4 0.86 23.30 0.83 Note: a CCR = composite construct reliability; Standardized estimate = β-value; χ2 = 424.72 (df = 220) p < 0.001; χ2/df = 1.93; Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) = 0.89; Normed Fit Index (NFI) = 0.95; Tucker Lewis Index (TLI) = 0.97; Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.98; Incremental Fit Index (IFI) = 0.98; Root Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.06; Root Mean Square Residual (RMR) = 0.08; *** p <.001. Table 2. Correlation analysis and discriminant validity tests. Construct 1 2 3 4 5 AVE ASV MSV Mean ± SD 1. Sexual harassment 1 0.04 0.13 0.06 0.10 0.82 0.16 0.26 3.24 ± 1.37 2. Psychological distress 0.20 1 0.05 0.51 0.01 0.79 0.27 0.71 2.61 ± 1.41 3. Workplace deviantbehavior 0.37 0.23 1 0.16 0.10 0.83 0.15 0.26 3.65 ± 1.47 4. Organizational silence 0.25 0.66 0.40 1 0.06 0.83 0.25 0.71 2.81 ± 1.38 5. Psychological detachment −0.32 −0.01 −0.32 −0.25 1 0.85 0.12 0.16 3.95 ± 1.52 Note: AVE = Average variance extracted; ASV = Average shared variance; MSV = Maximum shared variance; Boldface type are significant at p < 0.05; Italic type are presented in squared correlation; SD = Standard Deviation; All items were measured on a 7-point Likert scale from 1-strongly disagree to 7-strongly agree. 4.2. Structural Equation Modeling We analyzed the relationship among the variables assumed in this study using SEM. Table 3 presents the standardized path coefficient of the relationship of the structural equation model and t-value [67,72]. The structural model fit was good (χ2 = 210.66; df = 87; χ2/df = 2.42; GFI = 0.91; NFI = 0.96; CFI = 0.98; RMR = 0.08; RMSEA = 0.07). Hypothesis 1, which assumed positive relationship between the perceived sexual harassment and psychological distress, was supported (β = 0.26; t = 4.30; p < 0.001). Hypothesis 3 was also supported, as the perceived sexual harassment showed positive impact on workplace deviant behavior (β = 0.48; t = 8.56; p < 0.001). Hypothesis 2, which assumed that psychological distress gives positive influence on workplace deviant behavior, was supported as well (β = 0.18; t = 3.41; p < 0.001). This result demonstrates that people who perceived sexual harassment inside an organization show psychological distress, which consequently increases the possibility of employee action that does harm to the organization. In consideration of Hypotheses 1 and 3, the researcher additionally tested the indirect effects of perceived sexual harassment on workplace Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 8 of 13 deviant behavior by the Bootstrap and Sobel test. In the test results, the perceived sexual harassment showed a partial mediating effect on workplace deviant behavior through psychological distress (Point estimate = 0.05, p < 0.05, Z–score = 2.87). The result proves the importance of the role that psychological distress plays in the impact of perceived sexual harassment on workplace deviant behavior. Furthermore, we conducted multi-group analysis to examine whether the atmosphere of organizational silence and psychological detachment reduces the negative influence of the perceived sexual harassment. When using organizational silence as a moderating variable, no moderating role of organizational silence was observed in the causal relationship between sexual harassment and psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior. Therefore, Hypothesis 4 was rejected (Table 4). However, the influence of perceived sexual harassment on psychological distress showed different results in the case of psychological detachment. The weaker the psychological detachment was, the stronger the influence of the perceived sexual harassment on psychological distress. Therefore, Hypothesis 5 was partially supported (Table 5). Table 3. Structural estimates model. Hypothesized Path (Stated as Alternative Hypothesis) Standardized Coefficients t-Value Results H1(+) Sexual harassment → Psychological distress +0.26 +4.30 *** Supported H2(+) Psychological distress → Workplace deviant behavior +0.18 +3.41 *** Supported H3(+) Sexual harassment → Workplace deviant behavior +0.48 +8.56 *** Supported Goodness-of-fit statistics χ2(df = 87) = 210.66 (p < 0.001) χ2/df = 2.42 GFI = 0.91 NFI = 0.96 CFI = 0.98 RMR = 0.08 RMSEA = 0.07 Note: (1) GFI = Goodness of Fit Index; NFI = Normed Fit Index; CFI = Comparative Fit Index; RMR = Root Mean Square Residual; RMSEA = Root Mean Square Error of Approximation; *** p < 0.001. (2) Mediating role of psychological distress. Indirect effect: Sexual harassment→psychological distress → Workplace deviant behavior Point estimate: +0.05 *; bias-corrected bootstrap 95% CI: 0.02(LL); 0.01(UL) Aroian version of the Sobel test: Z = 2.87 *. Table 4. Moderating effects of organizational silence. High− Organizational Silence (n = 152) Low− organizational silence (n = 143) Unconstrained Model Chi-Square (df = 174) Constrained Model Chi-Square (df = 275) ∆χ2 (df = 1) Standardized Coefficients t-Value Standardized Coefficients t-Value Sexual harassment → Psychological distress 0.12 1.45 ns −0.08 −1.01 ns 312.47 314.89 2.42 ns Sexual harassment → Workplace deviant behavior 0.43 5.76 *** 0.43 5.07 *** 312.47 313.10 0.63 ns Note: χ2/df = 1.79; GFI = 0.89; NFI = 0.93; TLI = 0.96; CFI = 0.97; IFI = 0.97; RMSEA = 0.05; *** p < 0.001; ns Not significant. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 9 of 13 Table 5. Moderating effects of employees’ psychological detachment. High− Psychological Detachment (n = 135) Low− Psychological Detachment (n = 160) Unconstrained Model Chi-Square (df = 174) Constrained Model Chi-Square (df = 175) ∆χ2 (df = 1) Standardized Coefficients t-Value Standardized Coefficients t-Value Sexual harassment → Psychological distress 0.19 2.32 * 0.57 7.19 *** 287.47 311.37 23.90 * Sexual harassment → Workplace deviant behavior 0.30 6.08 *** 0.29 2.99 *** 287.47 287.58 0.11 ns Note: χ2/df = 1.65; GFI = 0.89; NFI = 0.94; TLI = 0.97; CFI = 0.97; IFI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.04; * p < 0.05, *** p < 0.001, ns Not significant. 5. Discussion and Implications 5.1. Discussion and Theoretical Implications This study examined the effect of sexual harassment perceived by female employees in deluxe hotels on their psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior, as well as investigated the moderating effect of organizational silence and psychological detachment that diminishes its negative influence. First, this study found that perceived sexual harassment has a negative impact on the female employees’ psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior. This result is consistent with the existing literature [3,19,24,40]. It implies that employees undergo psychological distress when they experience sexual harassment inside an organization, which further increases the possibility of conducting deviant behavior within the workplace. This study’s results also demonstrated that psychological distress has a positive impact on workplace deviant behavior, confirming the outcome of earlier studies [28,31]. The employees who underwent psychological distress were more likely to voluntarily exhibit behaviors contrary to those benefiting the organization. Furthermore, the influence of perceived sexual harassment on psychological distress increased when the employees’ psychological detachment was weak [51,52]. This result implies that psychological detachment, where work-related experience is switched off, relieves the negative influence of sexual harassment. This study systematically examined sexual harassment that female employees in deluxe hotels perceive and investigated the organic causal relationship between psychological distress and deviant behavior. The purpose was to provide a theoretical base for research on sexual harassment in deluxe hotels. Although relevant studies used general companies as a sample, there is a limited number of sexual harassment-related studies that investigate psychological distress or deviant behavior among female employees in deluxe hotels. In this context, this study has significant meaning as an early-stage study that examines the variable of sexual harassment, which exerts absolute influence on the psychological distress and negative deviant behavior from diverse aspects. In particular, employees working in deluxe hotels have intense psychological distress due to interaction with diverse members of the organization. The emotional pain and deviant behavior experienced by employees is of central importance because they are factors that determine a hotel’s competitiveness and job effectiveness. Thus far, however, organizations continue to consider sexual harassment as the deviant behavior of certain individuals with personal problems. With consideration of the current situation, this study has a significant meaning for the observation of the negative influence of sexual harassment. This study also has significant meaning as early research on new variables that can relieve the negative influence of sexual harassment by examining the moderating role of organizational silence and psychological detachment, which have not been examined thus far. Unethical behavior that occurs in a workplace, such as sexual harassment, is an important problem that not only decreases the quality of life of an individual employee but also is directly connected to organizational performance. In regard to this point, this study provides the following practical Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 9537 10 of 13 implications. An organization should recognize the harmful impact of sexual harassment and make arduous efforts to prevent and solve the problem. The study showed that psychological distress increased, and deviant behavior is largely affected when employees perceived sexual harassment in an organization. For effective management of sexual harassment at an organization level, employers should provide victim-oriented policies so that victims can report an event and testify without fear of retaliation from assailants, including supervisors and coworkers. All institutionalized factors that can cause sexual harassment in an organization’s work environment should be sought out and removed. Through an internal report system, these behaviors should be criminalized, and strict guidelines put in place. Specific guidelines include the following: establishing clear standards that show an example of sexual harassment, flagging the danger of sexual harassment with a prevention videos or promotion program, and creating a department in charge of managing a sexual harassment problem. Considering that psychological detachment can relieve the negative influence of sexual harassment to a certain point, organizations need to provide employees with an opportunity for psychological detachment that focuses on a recharging and recovering experience. With a chance to recharge personal resources, the victim will be able to escape from the psychological distress that results from sexual harassment. Instead of simply being away from the work environment, or not performing work, subjective factors are needed that can make the individual feel that they are able to detach from the environment itself [73]. Organizations should encourage not only psychological detachment in the employee’s personal life outside of the workplace, such as taking leave or a vacation, but also psychological detachment and recovery in work-related spaces inside the organization, such as break times and lunch [74]. Based on these results, the researcher, with a long-term perspective, expects this study to contribute to discovering ways to establish practical policies in deluxe hotels regarding sexual harassment. 5.2. Limitations and Future Research This study has several limitations. First, this study’s results come from a sample that consisted of Korean employees, which poses a restriction on the generalization of the study’s results. Second, the self-report method was used to measure the perception of sexual harassment, psychological distress, workplace deviant behavior, and organizational silence, and psychological detachment, which could have made the subjects respond in a manner they believed to be desirable. Therefore, more objective measurement tools should be chosen in future studies. Third, workplace deviant behavior was used as a final dependent variable in this study. In the future, variables that reflect the organizational performance should be employed. Fourth, although organizational silence and psychological detachment were moderating variables in this study, exploration of new variables that can moderate the negative influence of sexual harassment is also necessary. Additional research that investigates the relationship between diverse independent variables that can affect the organizational environment where sexual harassment can occur, and the dependent variables are necessary in the future. Author Contributions: H.S.J. and H.H.Y. contributed equally to this work. All the authors contributed to the conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, writing of the original draft, and review and editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Funding: For Hyo Sun Jung, this work was supported by a grant from KyungHee University in 2019 (KHU-20201212). Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. References 1. Burn, S.M. The psychology of sexual harassment. Teach. Psychol. 2019, 46, 96–103. [CrossRef] 2. Fernando, D.; Prasad, A. Sex-based harassment and organizational silencing: How women are led to reluctant acquiescence in academia. Hum. Relat. 2019, 72, 1565–1591. [CrossRef] 3. Popovich, P.M.; Warren, M.A. The role of power in sexual harassment as a counterproductive behavior in organizations. Hum. Resour. Manag. Rev. 2010, 20, 45–53. 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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2009.06.005 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs3030418 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25379246 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01890 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29163274 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/apps.12187 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15324834basp1704_2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0033291702006074 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124849 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.3.349 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13594320500513939 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.103.3.411 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.2.351 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454899 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.71.2.219 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02723327 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.83.4.577 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.12.3.204 http://creativecommons.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Introduction Literature Review and Conceptual Model Sexual Harassment in the Hospitality Sector Model Development and Hypotheses Relationship between Sexual Harassment and Psychological Distress Relationship between Psychological Distress and Workplace Deviant Behavior Relationship between Sexual Harassment and Workplace Deviant Behavior Moderating Role of Organizational Silence and Psychological Detachment Research Methodology Sample and Data Collection Instrument Development Data Analysis Results Measurement Model Structural Equation Modeling Discussion and Implications Discussion and Theoretical Implications Limitations and Future Research References work_5bfmdslhljc75ons4fywjg45q4 ---- DOI: 10.4119/ijcv-3776 IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Sexual Violence Victimization among Undergraduates at a Chilean University Laura Saldarriagai laura-ssr@hotmail.com Carolina Rochaii carocha@uc.cl Diego Castroii drcastro1@uc.cl Gloria Jiménez-Moyaii gjimenezm@uc.cl Héctor Carvachoii hectorcarvacho@gmail.com Gerd Bohneri gerd.bohner@uni-bielefeld.de i Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Germany ii Department of Psychology, Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Vol. 14(1)/2020 The IJCV provides a forum for scientific exchange and public dissemination of up-to-date scien - tific knowledge on conflict and violence. The IJCV is independent, peer reviewed, open access, and included in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) as well as other rele - vant databases (e.g., SCOPUS, EBSCO, ProQuest, DNB). The topics on which we concentrate—conflict and violence—have always been central to various disciplines. Consequently, the journal encompasses contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including criminology, economics, education, ethnology, his- tory, political science, psychology, social anthropology, sociology, the study of reli- gions, and urban studies. All articles are gathered in yearly volumes, identified by a DOI with article-wise pagi- nation. For more information please visit www.ijcv.or g Suggested Citation: APA: Saldarriaga, L., Rocha, C., Castro, D., Jiménez-Moya, G., Carvacho, H., & Bohner, G. (2020). Sexual violence victimization among undergraduates at a Chilean university. International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 14(1), 1-14. doi: 10.4119/ijcv-3776 Harvard: Saldarriaga, Laura, Rocha, Carolina, Castro, Diego, Jiménez-Moya, Gloria, Carvacho, Héctor, Bohner, Gerd. 2020. Sexual Violence Victimization among Under- graduates at a Chilean University. International Journal of Conflict and Violence 14(1): 1-14. doi: 10.4119/ijcv-3776 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution—NoDerivatives License. ISSN: 1864–1385 mailto:laura-ssr@hotmail.com http://www.ijcv.org/ mailto:gerd.bohner@uni-bielefeld.de mailto:hectorcarvacho@gmail.com mailto:gjimenezm@uc.cl mailto:drcastro1@uc.cl mailto:carocha@uc.cl IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 1 Sexual Violence Victimization among Undergraduates at a Chilean University Laura Saldarriagai Carolina Rochaii Diego Castroii Gloria Jiménez-Moyaii Héctor Carvachoii Gerd Bohneri i Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Germany ii Department of Psychology, Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile As part of a campus-wide prevention program, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) implemented a cross-sequential survey on sexual violence. In this article, we report data from the first wave (2018; N = 2,046) from three cohorts of undergraduates (Year 1, n = 792; Year 2, n = 601; Year 3, n = 653). We found an overall twelve-month prevalence for victimization experiences of 18.7 percent (4.3 percent by force or threat of force; 12.9 percent while unable to resist; 7.1 percent by verbal pressure; multiple responses allowed). Women (22.9 per - cent) were victimized more frequently than men (9.7 percent). Among women, victimization rates were highest for Year 1 students (25.7 percent), intermediate for Year 2 (22.3%), and lowest for Year 3 (19.8 percent). Only 10.9 percent of reported incidents happened in a university context. In most cases, perpetrators were male (88.9 per - cent) and known to the victim (72.1 percent); 24.4 percent were partners, 35.5 percent were friends. We present additional data on risk factors and attitudinal correlates. We also discuss our findings in relation to previous re - search suggesting higher prevalence rates at Chilean universities, considering differences in methodology and implications for future research. Keywords: Chile, prevention, rape, sexual violence, undergraduates Over the last decades, numerous scandals and debates have brought to light issues related to sexual violence, revealing a discouraging panorama.* In particular the #MeToo movement, launched in 2017 with a state- ment from US actress Alyssa Milano, has spurred one of the most important debates about sexual violence. Milano’s aim was to encourage women (and men) around the world to disclose their experiences with sexual violence, in order to communicate the mag- * This research was conducted by Laura Saldarriaga in par- tial fulfilment of the requirements of a PhD degree in psy- chology, which was supervised by Gerd Bohner. nitude of the problem (Khomami 2017). The move- ment’s repercussions were diverse, with consequences on many levels in different countries. In Sweden, for example, it prompted the introduction of new sexual assault legislation, under which engaging in sexual acts without clear affirmative consent (either verbal or non-verbal) constitutes a crime, even in the absence of evidence of physical coercion (BBC News 2018). In Chile, the #MeToo movement overlapped with the emergence of a strong feminist movement, whose ac- tions included large-scale strikes, occupations of pub- lic buildings, and protests against sexual harassment IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 2 and discrimination within the country’s universities (Bartlett 2018; Jiménez-Moya, Manzi, and Cheyre 2018; Sepúlveda-Garrido 2018). Despite persistent eco- nomic and social inequalities between men and wo- men in Chile, important changes are taking place. A growing interest in and commitment to scientific re- search on sexual violence is becoming apparent, which places Chile ahead of other Latin American countries in this regard. A systematic review of sexual violence research in Chile (Schuster and Krahé 2019) identified twenty- eight studies on the prevalence of sexual aggression victimization among women and men. The reported prevalence rates varied greatly across samples, which may be attributed to differences in definitions, meas- urement instruments, and time period assessed. Inter- estingly, however, even studies with similar defini- tions of sexual violence, with similar samples (univer- sity students between 18 and 30 years of age), and ad - dressing identical time periods yielded very different prevalence rates (Lehrer et al. 2007; Lehrer, Lehrer, and Koss 2013; Schuster et al. 2016). For example, Schuster and colleagues found much higher preval- ence rates of sexual violence victimization over a twelve-month period (33.4 percent for women, 41.5 percent for men) as well as since the age of 14 1 (51.9 percent for women, 48 percent for men), than the rates found by Lehrer and colleagues (17 percent over the last twelve months and 31 percent since the age of 14 among women; 20 percent since the age of 14 among men). One possible explanation for these discrepancies may lie in the number of items used to assess victim- ization (Bolen and Scannapieco 1999; Cook et al. 2011; de Graaf and De Haas 2018; Fisher 2009). Lehrer and colleagues (2007) used five comprehensive items as- sessing attempted rape, rape using three different co- ercive strategies (physical force, verbal pressure, tak- ing advantage of the victim being unable to resist), and unwanted sexual contact (such as touching or kissing). For example, one item read “Someone forced me to have sex using physical force”, with response options “yes” and “no.” By contrast, Schuster and col- leagues (2016) used thirty-six highly specific items 1 Fourteen years is the legal age of consent for heterosexual activities in Chile. that combined three coercive strategies (use or threat of force, verbal pressure, exploitation of an incapacit- ated state), three relationship constellations (partner, acquaintance, stranger), and four specific sexual acts (touching, attempted intercourse, completed inter- course, other). Specifically, after a lead-in that spe- cified the coercion strategy (“Has a man ever made you – or tried to make you – have sexual contact with him against your will by threatening to use force or by harming you?”), several items specified both the relationship constellation and the specific sexual act (“My current or former partner in a steady relation- ship … to engage in sexual touching”) with response options “never”, “once”, “twice”, and “three or more times.” We will return to the implications of this huge discrepancy in item number and specificity in the dis- cussion section. 1 Research Questions and Hypotheses The present study represents the first wave of data collection (April 2018) within a five-year cross-sequen- tial panel survey on sexual violence at Pontificia Uni- versidad Católica de Chile (PUC) in Santiago. It will establish a baseline for the evaluation of future inter- ventions (which are not the subject of the present contribution). For present purposes, the main research questions concerned (1) assessing sexual violence vic- timization experiences among PUC undergraduates in a differentiated yet economical form, and (2) examin- ing how these experiences correlate with other vari- ables that potentially represent risk factors for or con- sequences of victimization. Although many analyses were exploratory, we did have a-priori hypotheses re- garding some correlations, which are outlined below where applicable. Established risk factors for sexual violence victimiza- tion addressed in the survey include the age of onset of sexual activity, the number of previous sexual part- ners (Krahé 2009; Leenaars, Dane, and Marini 2008; Mandoki and Burkhart 1989), and short-term mating orientation, which includes a preference for uncom- mitted sexual encounters (Perilloux, Duntley, and Buss 2011). All of these variables affect the likelihood of getting into high-risk social situations and exposure to potential perpetrators. Thus we hypothesized victim- ization to be positively correlated with number of IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 3 partners and short-term mating orientation, and neg- atively correlated with age of onset. Also, based on the majority of prior prevalence studies, we hypothe- sized that female students would report higher vic- timization rates than male students. We also considered a number of possible conse- quences deriving from sexual violence victimization. Thus, we hypothesized that victimization would be re- lated to increased fear of being victimized, and would negatively impact life in general, academic life, and self-assessed health. Such consequences of victimiza- tion have been frequently described (for example, Krug et al. 2002). Additionally, we examined how attitudinal variables might affect the perception of victimization experi- ences. Previous research has shown effects of ambiva- lent sexism and sexual aggression myths on the per- ception of a victimization experience (LeMaire, Os- wald, and Russell 2016). Ambivalent sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996) encompasses both hostile attitudes toward women and benevolent attitudes toward women, which may subjectively appear positive but also rein- force gender inequality (“women are good mothers”) (Jost and Kay 2005). Sexual aggression myths, which are prejudiced beliefs about sexual violence victimiza- tion (Burt 1980; Lonsway and Fitzgerald 1994; Gerger et al. 2007), have a wide range of negative conse- quences for victims of sexual violence, as they deny, downplay, or justify sexually aggressive behavior (Bohner et al. 2009). Indeed, the endorsement of sex- ual aggression myths may reduce the likelihood that a victim identifies their own victimization experience as rape, and the same has been demonstrated in relation to benevolent sexism (LeMaire, Oswald, and Russell 2016). We therefore hypothesized that both sexist atti- tudes and the acceptance of sexual aggression myths would be related to a perception that the conse- quences of victimization experiences are less negative. Further, we assessed two related general inter-group attitude variables, namely right-wing authoritarianism (RWA, Altemeyer 1998) and social dominance orienta- tion (SDO, Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, and Malle 1994). These are positively related to a wide range of unfavorable attitudes toward members of disadvan- taged groups, including sexism and homophobia (Ku- gler, Jost, and Noorbaloochi 2014; Süssenbach and Bohner 2011). It therefore seemed plausible that both RWA and SDO would also be related to a perception that the consequences of victimization experiences are less negative, which we explored in the current study. 2 Method The survey was conducted in April 2018, approxi- mately six weeks into the Chilean academic year, which starts in March. It assessed victimization, per- petration, bystander experiences, and related issues, such as knowledge, risk factors, attitudes, and beliefs regarding sexual violence. All undergraduate students at the university were invited by e-mail to participate. They were fully informed about the purpose of the survey, accessed through the online platform Ques- tionPro. Students who completed the survey were en- tered in a raffle of 150 gift cards worth 30,000 Chilean pesos (about 40 euros). To preserve respondents’ anonymity, the e-mail addresses are kept separate and are not accessible to researchers analyzing the data. After completing the survey, respondents re- ceived a debriefing message that included information on support for victims and bystanders of sexual vio- lence. All procedures were approved by PUC’s rele- vant ethics committee. 2.1 Respondents 2,046 undergraduate students took part in the survey. 2 They were from three cohorts (Year 1 = 792, Year 2 = 601, Year 3 = 653), and were between the ages of 18 and 51 years (M = 19.87, SD = 2.24, 95 percent between 18 and 23) 67.3 percent identified as female, 32.2 per- cent as male, and 0.5 percent as non-binary. 87.2 per- cent identified as heterosexual, 4.5 percent as lesbian or gay, 5.7 percent as bisexual, and 2.5 percent re- ported other sexual orientations. 98.4 percent of the respondents had Chilean nationality and 78.2 percent were still living with their parents. 2 In 2018, the total number of undergraduates enrolled at PUC was 26,197 (53.4 percent female). Of these, 5,306 were in Year 1, 4,820 in Year 2, and 4,346 in Year 3. IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 4 2.2 Materials 2.2.1 Victimization Experiences To avoid overburdening respondents with a long list of items, we adapted the SAV-S (Krahé and Berger 2013), which was also used by Schuster and colleagues (2016), condensing the specific information from their thirty-six items into three main items, each address- ing one coercive strategy. We did not at this stage provide specific items for each combination of rela- tionship constellation and sexual act within each co- ercive strategy. Otherwise, we used the same Spanish wording as Schuster and colleagues (2016).3 Respon- dents who reported at least one victimization experi- ence in the three main items were asked to give addi- tional details.4 The English wording of the victimization measure read as follows (Spanish text available from the first author): Please tell us if, during the last twelve months, one or several person/s has/have had sexual contact with you or attempted to do so (for example kissing, touching, co- itus, oral sex) against your will or without your consent by … (i) … threatening to use force or hurting you (for ex- ample, causing you pain because you were held or threatened). (ii) … taking advantage of you being unable to resist (for example, after you had consumed a lot of alcohol or drugs). (iii) … verbally pressuring you (for example, threatening to end the relationship or questioning your sexual com- petence). For each item there were three response options: “never,” “once,” and “more than once.” Respondents who reported at least one relevant experience were then asked further questions relating to the (latest) incident; all others moved on to the items described in the next section. For victims, eighteen items were used to assess details including the number of perpe- trators (“one,” “two,” or “more than two”); perpetrator gender (“male” or “female”); whether the victim al- ready knew the perpetrator (“yes” or “no”); what rela- 3 The authors would like to thank Isabell Schuster for pro- viding access to her materials. 4 In addition to the instruments reported in this section, the survey contained questions on well-being, management of stress, empathy, self-esteem, recognition and attiitudes con- doning sexually aggressive behavior, consent, and bystander behavior. These issues are outside of the scope of the present article. Unless stated otherwise, response options of scales were from 1 = “totally disagree” to 5 = “totally agree.” tionship the perpetrator had to the victim (for exam- ple partner, friend, university member); the level of ac- quaintance (1 = “not close at all” to 5 = “very close”); whether the incident occurred within a university context (for example on campus, during a student party, during a class assignment or excursion, “yes” or “no”); whether the respondent had told anybody about the incident (“yes,” “no,” or “prefer not to say”); if not, why not (twelve possible reasons such as “I didn’t think it was something serious” could be select- ed; see Table 1); for those who told someone about the incident, how the support received was perceived (1 = “not satisfactory at all” to 5 = “very satisfactory”); whether victim or perpetrator had consumed drugs or alcohol (“me,” “the other person,” “both,” “nobody”); how serious the incident was for the respondent (1 = “not serious at all” to 5 = “very serious”); whether it had negative consequences on the respondent’s (aca- demic) life (1 = “not at all” to 5 = “very much”); whether the respondent had thought of leaving the university (“yes” or “no”); and whether the respondent had received psychological help related to the inci- dent (“yes” or “no”). 2.2.2 Knowledge about and Satisfaction with University Policies and Protocols To assess how well students were informed about and satisfied with PUC policies relating to sexual violence, ten items addressed respondents’ familiarity with specific action protocols and university contact points, whether they knew whom to contact accord- ing to the circumstances (for example if the perpetra- tor was a fellow student, if the incident happened on campus, if the perpetrator was a professor), and how satisfied they were with support offered by the uni- versity. Internal consistency of the policy satisfaction scale was very high (Cronbach’s α = .90). 2.2.3 Sexual Experience Three items addressing sexual experience were adapted from Schuster and colleagues (2016): “Have you ever had sexual intercourse?” (“yes,” “no,” “do not wish to answer”); “At which age did you have your first sexual intercourse?” (drop-down list with options starting at “under 14” and increasing in one-year steps); and “With how many persons have you had IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 5 sexual intercourse during the past 12 months?” (“none,” “one,” “two,” “three,” “four,” “5 to 10,” “11 to 20,” “21 to 100,” “more than 100”). 2.2.4 Fear of Victimization On the basis of work by Ferraro (1996) and Merrill (2014), we formulated three items to measure fear of victimization (for example “I fear that a fellow student might sexually assault me”), and three items to mea- sure avoidance behaviors related to this fear (for ex- ample, “How often have you done the following? … Take different paths or routes on campus to avoid be- ing sexually assaulted”; 1 = “never or almost never” to 5 = “always or almost always”). These six items were adapted to the PUC context by incorporating key ele- ments that had come up in pilot discussions with stu- dents. Internal consistency for this scale was good (α = .84). 2.2.5 Short-Term Mating Orientation To assess short-term mating orientation, we selected two items from a measure by Jackson and Kirkpatrick (2007): “I can easily imagine myself being comfortable and enjoying ‘casual’ sex with different partners” and “I could easily imagine myself enjoying one night of sex with someone I would never see again”. Internal consistency for this scale was good (α = .84). 2.2.6 Health To explore the possibility that victimization experi- ences might affect respondents’ health status, two items addressing self-assessed health were taken from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health Related Quality of Life Measure (CDC HRQOL-14, 2000, cited in Khan et al. 2014): “How would you describe your physical health?” and “How would you describe your state of mind?” (1 = “poor” to 5 = “excellent”). Internal consistency for the health condition scale was modest (α = .59). 2.2.7 Ambivalent Sexism To assess ambivalent sexism, six items from the Span- ish Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Mladinic et al. 1998) were selected on the basis of their factor loadings in a Chilean sample (Jiménez-Moya, Manzi, and Cheyre 2018). Three items each represented hostile sexism (for example, “Women exaggerate problems at work”) and benevolent sexism (for example, “Women should be cherished and protected by men”). Internal consis- tency for this scale was acceptable (α = .78). 2.2.8 Sexual Aggression Myths On the basis of expert analysis, six items from the Ac- ceptance of Modern Myths about Sexual Aggression scale (Gerger et al. 2007; Spanish version by Megías et al. 2011), were selected and adapted for use with a Chilean sample (for example, “Many women tend to exaggerate the problem of male violence”). Internal consistency for this scale was good (α = .81). 2.2.9 Conservative Attitudes Two items from the SDO7 scale (Ho et al. 2012; for ex- ample, “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups”) and two items from the RWA scale (Funke 2005; for example, “What our country really needs instead of more ‘civil rights’ is a good stiff dose of law and order”) were translated and adapted on the basis of their adequacy for the Chilean context and their fit within the survey, as previous research had shown that they were strongly linked to hostile be- havior. Internal consistencies for these scales were ac- ceptable (α = .70 for SDO and α = .67 for RWA). 3. Results 3.1 Prevalence Rates Overall, 18.7 percent of respondents reported at least one experience of nonconsensual sexual contact over the previous twelve months (4.3 percent by force or threat of force; 12.9 percent while unable to resist; 7.1 percent by verbal pressure; multiple answers were possible). Responses for the three coercive strategies were positively intercorrelated (rs ranging from .20 to .30; Cronbach’s alpha = .46). Women (22.9 percent) were victimized more frequently than men (9.7 per- cent). Taking sexual orientation into account, victim- ization was lowest for heterosexual men (8.2 percent), followed by homosexual women (15.2 percent) and homosexual men (17.0 percent). Among the group of males, the highest victimization rate was reported by bisexuals (19.2 percent). Heterosexual (22.6 percent) and bisexual women (30.6 percent) reported the high- est rates of victimization. IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 6 Among women, victimization rates were highest for Year 1 students (25.7 percent), intermediate for Year 2 (22.3 percent), and lowest for Year 3 (19.8 percent). This is a significant linear decrease from Y1 to Y3, χ2(1, N = 1367) = 4.71, p = .03. Among the men, no comparable trend emerged. In most cases, the perpetrators were male (88.9 per- cent) and known to the victim (72.1 percent); 24.4 per- cent were partners, and 35.5 percent were friends. In 57.1 percent of cases, both parties had consumed alco- hol, in 6.4 percent only the victim, and in 6.9 percent only the perpetrator. In 12.3 percent of the cases both parties had consumed other drugs, in 2.9 percent only the victim, and in 13.7 percent only the perpetrator. Alcohol or drugs were almost always involved when the victim was unable to resist (93.9 percent) but less frequently when the perpetrator used (threat of) force (51.2 percent) or verbal pressure (46.7 percent). When intoxication was involved (vs. not involved), the victim was less likely to know the perpetrator (66.7 percent vs. 89.0 percent). Only 10.8 percent of the reported cases occurred in a university context. Of interest, in- toxication was involved more frequently in university contexts (97.5 percent) than in other contexts (71.7 percent). At least 18.1 percent of reported perpetrators were university members,5 of whom 92 percent were fellow undergraduates. 3.2 Consequences of Victimization Although more than half of the victims (53.1 percent) rated the incident as at least “somewhat” severe, many did not perceive major negative consequences (see also Figure 1). A majority reported that the inci- dent had little or no impact on their personal life (57.7 percent) or on their academic life (81.2 percent) (Points 1 and 2 on a scale from 1 = “not at all” to 5 = “very much”). 16.2 percent of the victims reported having received psychological help and 19 percent had thought about leaving the university. 58.8 percent of the victims reported having told someone about the incident. In a majority of cases, they talked about the incident with friends (51.2 percent) and/or fellow students (31.4 percent), and the support received was 5 The item format with exclusive response options did not allow us to distinguish if perpetrators reported as friends, family members, etc. might also have been university mem- bers. rated as “rather satisfactory” in most cases. Very few victims had reported the incident to the police (2.4 percent) or to the university (2.9 percent), and those who had done so rated the support received as rather unsatisfactory. Figure 2 shows in detail whom victims told about the incident, and the associated level of satisfaction with the support received. The most common reasons for not reporting the in- cident were “I didn’t think it was something serious” (51.6 percent), “I didn’t know with whom or how I could talk about what happened” (39.8 percent), and “I couldn’t decide if it was appropriate or not” (39.1 percent). All reasons and their respective percentages are listed in Table 1. An exploratory analysis showed that respondents who had talked about the incident reported more severe consequences (M = 2.29) than did respondents who had not talked about it (M = 2.01), t(315.82) = 2.85, p = .005. Further, respondents who had experienced sexual violence (M = 2.80) were less satisfied with PUC policies on sexual violence than those who had not (M = 3.01), t(535.93) = -4.18, p < .001. We will return to these findings in the discus- sion. 3.2 Correlation and Regression Analyses on Risk Factors and Consequences In bivariate correlation analyses (see Table 2), the number of sex partners, short-term mating orienta- tion, age of onset of sexual activity, and the fact of be- ing sexually active were identified as significant corre- lates of sexual violence victimization, supporting our hypotheses regarding risk factors. Furthermore, as hy- pothesized, self-assessed health was negatively corre- lated, and reported fear of victimization was posi- tively correlated with victimization experiences. Atti- tudinal factors, such as sexist attitudes, acceptance of sexual aggression myths, and conservative attitudes, were all negatively correlated with victimization. As can be seen in Table 2, although significant, all of these correlations were small in magnitude. IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 7 Figure 1: Consequences of victimization by type of coercion Note: Percentage of victims by type of coercion who (i) rated the incident as at least “somewhat” severe (Points 3 to 5 on a scale from 1 = “not severe” to 5 = “very severe”), (ii) said the incident affected their personal lives at least “somewhat” (Points 3 to 5 on a scale from 1 = “not at all” to 5 = “very much”), (iii) said the incident negatively affected their academic lives at least “somewhat” (Points 3 to 5 on a scale from 1 = “not at all” to 5 = “very much ”), (iv) had thought of leaving the university (“yes” in a yes/no answer format), (v) or received psychological help (“yes” in a yes/no answer format). Type of coercion did not significantly affect the reporting of consequences. Figure 2: Communication of the incident and satisfaction with support Note: Percentage of victims who are not satisfied (darker bars) and at least somewhat satisfied (lighter bars) with the sup - port offered. The number of victims telling the incident to each specific target is shown in parentheses. For example, 195 victims told friends about the incident, and over 80 percent of these found the support given at least “somewhat” satisfac - tory (Points 3 to 5 on a scale from 1 = “not at all satisfactory” to 5 = “very satisfactory”). IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 8 Table 1: Reasons for not reporting sexual violence victimization Reason Percentage of vic- tims reporting this reason for not telling anybody I didn’t think it was something serious 51.6% I didn’t know with whom or how I could talk about what happened 39.8% I couldn’t decide if it was appropriate or not 39.1% I have/had an intimate or close relationship with the person responsible 38.3% The person responsible was somebody I liked/like 35.9% I felt that I provoked what happened to me 33.6% I am/was worried about what other people would think if I reported 32.8% I didn’t/don’t think that the perpetrator/s would suffer any kind of consequences 21.1% What happened to me was something common and accepted among my acquaintances 19.5% I didn’t/don’t think that I would receive the support I needed 15.6% I didn’t/don’t think that other people would believe me 11.7% The person responsible was in a powerful position and could have retaliated afterwards 3.9% Note: The reasons offered were based on previous research (Vanselow 2009; Woodzicka and LaFrance 2001). Table 2: Correlates of victimization Correlation with victimization Potential risk factors Number of sex partners .202** Short-term mating orientation .119** Being sexually active .063** Age of onset of sexual activity -.059* Potential consequences Health status -.119* Fear of victimization .225** Attitude variables Ambivalent sexist attitudes -.112** Acceptance of modern myths about sexual aggression -.096** Right-wing authoritarianism -.077** Social dominance orientation -.058** Note: ** p < .01 (2-tailed); * p < .05 (2-tailed). IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 9 We also conducted a multiple regression analysis with victimization as the dependent variable and the following predictors: respondent gender and age, number of sex partners, short-term mating orienta- tion, and age of onset of sexual activity (the main risk factors), as well as sexism, sexual aggression myths, RWA, and SDO (the attitudinal variables). This analy- sis yielded an overall R2 of .073, p < .001; in the same analysis, respondent gender (β = .15, p < .001), number of sex partners (β = .18, p < .001), and short-term mat- ing orientation (β = .06, p = .030) remained significant individual predictors, all other p > .30. Further significant negative correlations were found between the perceived consequences of victimization on the one hand, and ambivalent sexism, acceptance of sexual aggression myths, and conservative attitudes on the other (see Table 3). This means that, as hypoth- esized, respondents endorsing those attitudes were less likely to perceive experiences of sexual violence as having a severe impact on victims’ lives. Again, al- though significant, all correlations were small. A mul- tiple regression analysis that included all of the pre- dictors listed in Table 3 as well as respondent gender and age yielded an overall R2 of .121, p < .001; in the same analysis, respondent gender (β = .23, p < .001) and age (β = .14, p = .005) were significant individual predictors, but none of the attitudinal variables (all p > .08). 4 Discussion The purpose of the survey was to assess rates of prevalence of sexual violence victimization among un- dergraduates at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) and to identify correlates in terms of risk factors and personal consequences. We were also in- terested in attitudinal correlates that had been previ- ously identified as noteworthy with regard to sexual violence victimization and the perception of its conse- quences. Our analyses will support the planning of preventive measures at PUC. In general, the findings of our survey are compatible with previous research. Regarding prevalence, the re- sults resemble those obtained among students in Chile using shorter instruments (Lehrer et al. 2007), but differ considerably from the rates obtained by Schuster and colleagues (2016). As stated in the intro- duction, Schuster and colleagues used a much longer questionnaire, which could explain the very high rates of victimization reported in their study. Studies that have analyzed victimization rates in re- lation to questionnaire length usually report a positive correlation between the two variables (Bolen and Scannapieco 1999; de Graaf and De Haas 2018; Fisher 2009). It has been argued that instruments with multi- ple behaviorally specific items, such as the SAV-S, which yield the highest prevalence rates, are also the most valid (Cook et al. 2011). This may be true to the extent that such instruments are better at cueing spe- cific memories of incidents that a respondent may otherwise not have recalled or not labeled as sexual violence. However, we should also consider the possi- bility that a long, multi-item instrument may increase the reporting of false positives, as the content may subtly provide normative information about its topic (Schwarz 2007). Thus, a respondent going through thirty-six items that repeatedly ask if they have been sexually assaulted (combining three coercive strate- gies, three victim/perpetrator constellations, and four Table 3: Correlates of the consequences of victimization Correlation with perceived consequencesa Ambivalent sexist attitudes -.165** Acceptance of modern myths about sexual aggression -.167** RWA -.171** SDO -.189** Note: a Perceived severity of the incident, negative consequences on personal life, and negative consequences on academic life averaged into one scale (Cronbach’s α = .81). ** p < .01 (2-tailed). IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 10 sexual acts) may get the impression that it is norma- tively expected to have had such experiences – why else would such similar questions be asked over and over again? This could conceivably lead a respondent to tick a positive response option once or twice to comply with the perceived norm. Given that the true answer to each specific item is more likely to be “no” than “yes,” even random errors in responding (inad- vertently ticking the wrong response category) would systematically increase the number of false positives. In light of these considerations, we kept the number of items asking about whether the respondent had been victimized to three, but otherwise used the wording of the SAV-S. Nonetheless, the question of optimal questionnaire length and specificity needs further research. Our data also revealed important differences to the results of Schuster and colleagues (2016) regarding gender differences in victimization. Whereas they sur- prisingly found higher twelve-month prevalence rates for men (41.5 percent) than women (33.4 percent), in our study more than twice as many women (22.9 per- cent) than men (9.7 percent) reported victimization. Our finding is in line with previous studies also re- porting higher prevalence rates among females in stu- dent samples (Cantor et al. 2015). This highlights the gendered nature of sexual violence, which is widely recognized. The World Health Organization (2013) de- scribes sexual violence as a major public health prob- lem that violates the rights of women, limits their par- ticipation in society, and damages their health and well-being. Nevertheless, male college students also report relatively high rates of victimization (Cantor et al. 2015). This could also be observed in our findings. The most commonly reported coercive strategy was taking advantage of the victim being unable to resist, often facilitated by the use of alcohol or drugs. The use of these substances has been outlined as an im- portant risk factor (Abbey et al. 2004; Krahé and Berger, 2013), and this was also observed in our data: In most of the victimization cases reported, alcohol (and drugs to a lesser degree) was used by both victim and perpetrator. The role of intoxication was particu- larly pronounced for assaults in a university setting, those perpetrated by strangers, and those where the perpetrator(s) took advantage of the victim’s inability to resist. This points to the possibility that such inci- dents happened at parties or student gatherings, which are also the scenarios where sexual advances (especially from men toward women) are encouraged. As we hypothesized, significant correlations with health status (negative) and fear of victimization (pos- itive) point to consequences of victimization. These re- sults are in line with extensive literature (see Krug et al. 2002 for a review). Correlation and regression analyses also supported our hypotheses regarding risk factors for sexual victimization. Specifically, we identi- fied the number of sexual partners, the age of onset of sexual activity, being sexually active, and a short-term mating orientation as predictors of victimization. All these factors are associated with frequent sexual in- teractions, which increase the probability of encoun- tering a sexually coercive person and thus the risk of being victimized (see also Perilloux, Duntley, and Buss 2011). It should be noted, however, that in our data only respondent gender, number of sexual partners, and short-term mating orientation remained signifi- cant individual predictors when the other variables and age were controlled for in a multiple regression analysis. Certain groups were identified as being more vul- nerable than others. Specifically people with a sexual interest in men (heterosexual and bisexual women, bi- sexual and homosexual men) appear to be at higher risk than those with no such interest (homosexual women and heterosexual men). This suggests that prejudiced expectations and gender stereotypes might encourage coercive behaviors among men, and that men are more likely to misinterpret, disregard, or ig- nore cues regarding (non)consent in sexual interac- tions. According to Reed, Gupta, and Silverman (2014), regardless of the victim’s gender, male-perpe- trated sexual violence appears to be linked to gender norms that promote male dominance and control (for a multi-country study supporting this, see Fulu et al. 2013). Previous research has also shown a link be- tween acceptance of sexual aggression myths, tradi- tional gender roles, and hypermasculinity on the one hand, and sexual violence perpetration on the other hand (for a review, see Greathouse et al. 2015). One possible protective factor that emerged is the fact of being at university. The significant drop in IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 11 women’s reported victimization from Year 1 (where most of the reported experiences would have hap- pened before entering university) to Year 3 suggests that the university might be a safer environment than where students came from. But other factors could also explain the reported decrease in victimization. The change could reflect maturation and growth, rather than merely the fact of being at the university. Another consideration inconsistent with the idea of the university being a protective environment is that some activities commonly taking place in university contexts (such as parties, student gatherings) are also known as settings where sexual violence is more likely. In any case, it is inadvisable to draw definite conclusions from a trend based only on the first wave of a panel survey. Future waves, and the possibility of analyzing longitudinal data, should bring greater clar- ity. Negative correlations were observed between am- bivalent sexist attitudes, acceptance of modern myths about sexual aggression, RWA, and SDO on the one hand, and victimization experiences on the other. It is possible that victimization experiences change attitu- dinal dispositions toward sexual violence and may also decrease unfavorable group-related attitudes. The fact of being directly confronted with sexual violence, which is very often counter-stereotypical (for example the perpetrator is not a stranger and the coercive strategy is not physical force), reduces rape-related stereotypes (see Bohner 1998). Conversely, students who have never experienced sexual violence may be more likely to enjoy the “illusion of invulnerability” that comes with high levels of rape myth acceptance and, to a lesser extent, conservative attitudes (Bohner, Siebler, and Raaijmakers 1999; Bohner et al. 1993). This highlights the importance of communicating vic- timization experiences, in order to give people a sense of how widespread sexual violence really is and what it actually looks like. However, further research is needed to replicate the correlations discussed here, given that their magnitude was small and regression analysis showed that they may be explained by inter- correlations with other variables such as sexual expe- rience, gender, or age. The attitudinal variables were also negatively corre- lated with perceived consequences of victimization, where they jointly (but not individually) predicted a small proportion of variance. Victims who scored higher on sexist attitudes, acceptance of sexual ag- gression myths, RWA, and SDO reported that they perceived the consequences of victimization as less se- vere. The endorsement of such attitudes appears to normalize coercive behaviors, reducing the willingness to acknowledge their severity (Papendick and Bohner 2017). This complements results by LeMaire and col- leagues (2016), who found that endorsement of benev- olent sexism and sexual aggression myths reduces the likelihood that a person will label their victimization experience as rape. Our results point to the possibility that this link between attitudes and labeling a victim- ization experience as rape might be mediated by a vic- tim’s perception of the consequences associated with that experience as less severe. Nonetheless, further re- search is needed to explore the underlying causal process. Our results highlight the relevance of identifying factors that may lead victims to underestimate the personal consequences of sexual violence, which seems to occur frequently. Although most victims of sexual violence in our sample reported that the inci- dent did not have much impact on their personal life, we also found that sexual violence experiences were associated with judgments of poorer health and an in- creased fear of victimization. We suspect that atti- tudes that legitimate sexual violence and, more gener- ally, conservative attitudes may prevent respondents from consciously linking their experiences of sexual violence with negative consequences, even though these consequences exist. Furthermore, the perceived consequences of the in- cident seem to have an effect on the willingness of the victim to talk about it, as respondents who perceived milder consequences were less likely to talk about the incident to others. Indeed, the most common reason for not reporting a victimization experience was thinking that it was not something serious. Most victims preferred to talk about the incident with friends or family, rather than reporting it to uni- versity or public authorities. It should be of special in - terest for PUC that out of the minority (2.9 percent) who reported a victimization experience to the univer- sity, more than two-thirds were dissatisfied with the IJCV: Vol. 14(1)/2020 Saldarriaga, Rocha, Castro, Jiménez-Moya, Carvacho, Bohner : Sexual Violence Victimization 12 support received. One reason for this high level of dis- satisfaction could be that university policies were in their first year of implementation when the data were collected, and may have been limited in their effec- tiveness. Additionally, during data collection, the local feminist movement, in which many female students were participating, was asserting that Chilean univer- sities’ efforts to address sexual violence within their institutions were inadequate. This perception may have been especially salient to victims who had had direct experience of the existing institutional support. However, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the satisfaction data, as our data also show that the less severe assault cases were shared mostly with friends, whereas only the more severe cases were re- ported to authorities, and talking to friends may gen- erally be a more gratifying experience than talking to strangers. Further data on this issue should be gath- ered in future waves of the panel survey; also, in- depth interviews with service users may provide a clearer picture of future needs. 4.1 Strengths and Limitations One major strength of the current study is that it was possible to invite all undergraduates at PUC to partic- ipate, and a substantial proportion did so (more than 14 percent of students in Years 1 to 3). As the first analysis in a five-year cross-sequential study, it marks the starting point of the largest assessment of sexual violence ever conducted in the Chilean university con- text. We note that female students appear to be over-rep- resented in the sample. The same may be true for peo- ple who have been victimized: the topic of the survey may have attracted students who felt a need to report their own experience. Another obvious limitation at the current stage is that only cross-sectional, correla- tional data are available, which means that any causal interpretations must be treated with caution. Also, considerations of research economy demanded that many constructs be assessed with very short versions of existing instruments, which means that reliability may have been compromised. On the other hand, the adequate participation rate suggests that the survey instrument was not too large. 4.2 Open Questions and Outlook As discussed above, one tricky issue that merits fur- ther attention is the optimal length and specificity of the victimization part of the survey. This issue needs to be addressed in order to explain the diverging find- ings for Chilean prevalence rates (especially between the present study and Schuster et al. 2016). New theo- rizing and specific methodological studies will be needed to tackle the question of potential under- and over-reporting. 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Of Beauties, Beaus and Beasts: Study- ing Women’s and Men’s Actual and Imagined Experiences of Sexual and Gender Harassment. Ph.D. diss., Bielefeld University. Woodzicka, Julie A., and Marianne LaFrance. 2001. Real Ver- sus Imagined Gender Harassment. Journal of Social Issues 57 (1): 15–30. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00199 World Health Organization. 2013. Global and Regional Esti- mates of Violence against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-partner Sex- ual Violence. Geneva, WHO Press. https://apps.who.int/ iris/bitstream/handle/10665/85239/9789241564625_en- g.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/85239/9789241564625_eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/85239/9789241564625_eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/85239/9789241564625_eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/85239/9789241564625_eng.pdf https://www.latercera.com/tendencias/noticia/metoo-ano-despues/327541/ https://www.latercera.com/tendencias/noticia/metoo-ano-despues/327541/ https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=akron1404217382&disposition=attachment https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=akron1404217382&disposition=attachment https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=akron1404217382&disposition=attachment work_5cyl2nhz7ja7nn3cefm2yxhoki ---- Medical trainees want benefit of doubt when reporting harassment © 2018 Joule Inc. or its licensors CMAJ | MARCH 26, 2018 | VOLUME 190 | ISSUE 12 E373 A n online survey is shining a spot-light on pervasive sexual harass-ment in acad em ia , incl u d ing Canadian medical education. Medical trainees are urging schools to overhaul complaints processes that give benefit of the doubt to alleged predators at the expense of victims coming forward. The anonymous, crowdsourced survey has amassed more than 2400 entries since December 2017, detailing a wide range of abuse, from lewd comments to groping to rape. The stories are unverified and stripped of most identifying details, but institutions and departments are named, including sev- eral Canadian medical schools. Respondents describe how “powerful older men are gatekeepers to vulnerable younger women, use their power for sexual predation, and are then protected by other senior men and women,” writes Karen Kelsky, a former anthropology professor at the University of Oregon and University of Illinois, who created the survey. “Women of color are doubly vulnerable and doubly bullied when they seek redress.” In many cases, respondents didn’t report abuse for fear of reprisal. It’s a story that’s “disturbing and, unfor- tunately, all too common,” says Dr. Melanie Bechard, president of Resident Doctors of Canada. In a 2014 review, the organization found that 45%–93% of residents experi- enced some form of harassment or intimi- dation during training, with 25%–60% experiencing sexual harassment. Medical students report similar experi- ences. In a 2017 survey conducted by the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, nearly 60% of final-year medical students said they were mistreated dur- ing training. Of those students, almost 90% said they were mistreated by faculty. More than 80% never officially reported the mistreatment, and less than 36% of those who did complain were satisfied with the response. Medical trainees are urging schools to believe reports of abuse are true unless proven otherwise. “The burden of proof should not be solely on the complainant,” says Bechard. “Some may say it’s intimi- dating that one’s entire personal [or] pro- fessional career could be devastated by claims of sexual harassment, but it’s also intimidating to work in an environment where sexual harassment has no prospect for repercussions.” False accusations are uncommon and trainees have a lot to lose by reporting abuse, she adds. “Learners can see their future careers easily destroyed as a con- sequence of speaking out.” Stephanie Smith, vice-president of stu- dent affairs for the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, says the #MeToo move- ment has been a reminder about the importance of believing and supporting victims. “We need to create a culture where it is safe for people to come forward and not be worried about feeling like they have to prove themselves.” Smith says medical schools have improved tools for reporting abuse and supports for trainees over the last decade. “There are resources there. The next level is ensuring people feel safe to access them.” Some schools developed anonymous complaints processes after realizing train- ees were unwilling to flag abuse if they had to identify themselves. The University of Ottawa’s faculty of medicine saw an uptick in complaints after introducing an anony- NEWS Medical trainees want benefit of doubt when reporting harassment n Cite as: CMAJ 2018 March 26;190:E373-4. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.109-5579 Posted on cmajnews.com on Mar. 7, 2018. Power imbalances in medical training enable abuse and make it difficult to report, say trainee groups. gi la xi a/ iS to ck https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S9KShDLvU7C-KkgEevYTHXr3F6InTenrBsS9yk-8C5M/htmlview?sle=true https://theprofessorisin.com/2017/12/01/a-crowdsourced-survey-of-sexual-harassment-in-the-academy/ https://theprofessorisin.com/2017/12/01/a-crowdsourced-survey-of-sexual-harassment-in-the-academy/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4563615/ https://afmc.ca/sites/default/files/documents/en/Publications/2017_GQ_National_Report_en.pdf N EW S E374 CMAJ | MARCH 26, 2018 | VOLUME 190 | ISSUE 12 mous reporting option, says Dr. Sharon Whiting, interim vice-dean of faculty affairs. However, the school’s response may be limited when complaints are anon- ymous. “We will investigate the incident, but we won’t have any way of going back to that individual to say what was done,” Whiting explains. Other schools still require complain- ants to identify themselves. “Disciplinary investigations of a person subject to anon- ymous complaints would violate due pro- c e s s r e q u i r e m e n t s , ” s a y s D r . D a v i d Eidelman, vice-principal of health affairs and dean of the faculty of medicine at McGill University. At McGill, complaints are “treated as confidential insofar as possi- ble,” he says, but getting students to trust the process remains a challenge. In some cases, the pressure for infor- mation makes an already vulnerable situa- tion more difficult. A resident at the North- ern Ontario School of Medicine recently told the CBC she was suspended after reporting sexual harassment by a faculty leader because she refused to disclose his identity unless the school appointed a third-party investigator. Dr. Ana Safavi said she wants to be certain there is a “transparent and fair process in place for everybody before I give any information.” She told the CBC the school initially agreed to appoint an investigator, but “then they went back on that promise.” Bechard says third-party investiga- tions may represent a viable option for balancing the rights of both the accuser and the accused. “The ability for objective review of allegations of sexual harass- ment would be helpful, while allowing for the anonymity of the complainant.” The potential fallout from reporting harassment outlives training, she adds. Abusive supervising physicians “often remain senior colleagues throughout a resident’s medical career.” Smith notes that even anonymous com- plaints may be traced back if the abuse was targeted. Trainees known to have com- plained may also carry the label of trouble- maker into their careers. “We have to sup- port victims of sexual harassment, or any kind of harassment, from marginalization and retaliation,” Smith says. “The school can only protect you so far.” Lauren Vogel, CMAJ work_5etrwwoyn5dlfgv34fctbv2f2u ---- wp-p1m-38.ebi.ac.uk Params is empty 404 sys_1000 exception wp-p1m-38.ebi.ac.uk no 217542618 Params is empty 217542618 exception Params is empty 2021/04/06-01:56:12 if (typeof jQuery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/1.14.8/js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,String.fromCharCode(60)).replace(/\]/g,String.fromCharCode(62))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} Page not available Reason: The web page address (URL) that you used may be incorrect. Message ID: 217542618 (wp-p1m-38.ebi.ac.uk) Time: 2021/04/06 01:56:12 If you need further help, please send an email to PMC. Include the information from the box above in your message. Otherwise, click on one of the following links to continue using PMC: Search the complete PMC archive. Browse the contents of a specific journal in PMC. Find a specific article by its citation (journal, date, volume, first page, author or article title). http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/ work_5fzqoygot5fehetdcfkzlapu7e ---- Deadly exceptionalisms, or, would you rather be crushed by a moral superpower or a military superpower? lable at ScienceDirect Political Geography 64 (2018) 83e91 Contents lists avai Political Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo Deadly exceptionalisms, or, would you rather be crushed by a moral superpower or a military superpower? David Jansson Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Box 513, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 18 December 2017 Accepted 22 December 2017 Available online 5 January 2018 Keywords: Exceptionalism Nationalism Ideology Racism U.S. Sweden E-mail address: dj28@cornell.edu. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.12.007 0962-6298/© 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier L a b s t r a c t In this essay, I consider the ways in which nationalism in both the U.S. and Sweden relies on notions of exceptionalism, and I discuss what this means materially for their own populations and for the world. The analysis consists of two lines of attack against both these assumptions of exceptionalism e one focusing on psychological processes and the other political economy processes. I examine the historical development of the ideas of U.S. and Swedish exceptionalism, and consider the roles of ignorance, denial, and projection in maintaining these problematic ideas. Through the use of a materialist definition of racism, I show how the nationalist ideology of exceptionalism in these two cases harms the well-being of their own citizens as well as citizens of other states. I argue that a combination of the psychological and political economy approaches are necessary if we are to both understand the power and impact of exceptionalism as a nationalist ideology and to be able to effectively work against their tendency to “crush” marginalized groups. © 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Introduction In this essay, I consider the ways in which nationalism in both the U.S. and Sweden relies on notions of exceptionalism, and I discuss what this means materially for their own populations and for the world. The analysis consists of two lines of attack against both these assumptions of exceptionalism, where I review the processes at work behind the production of exceptionalism, the Others which are involved in the construction of these national identities, and the material forms of racism that haunt both the U.S. and Sweden and betray their claims to exceptionalism. I argue that we need to combine a psychological analysis with a political economy analysis if we are to understand the power and impact of exceptionalism as a nationalist ideology. While the majority of the academic literature on national exceptionalism focuses specifically on “American exceptionalism”, in an important sense, assumptions of national exceptionalism are in fact an inherent element of the ideology of nationalism. As Tom Nairn (1981) argues, “nationalism” is composed of two elements: nationalism and nationalism, the former referring to the general ideology of the naturalness of nations and the ideal of the nation- state (where each nation has its own state), the latter emphasizing td. This is an open access article u the uniqueness of each nation, the qualities that make each nation special. There is hardly a nation on Earth that doesn't think of itself as exceptional in some way. Indeed, when Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front in France, was recently caught plagiarizing a speech by one of her political rivals (Breeden, 2017), it was revealed that the sections that she plagiarized articulated specifically some of the ways in which she understands France as special or exceptional. But while most nations can make a claim to being “exceptional” in some way, in the political geography and international relations literature, “exceptionalism” is primarily associated with the U.S. This is not inevitable; for example, K.J. Holsti (2011) considers excep- tionalism to be a type of foreign policy, one that is both rare and not limited to the experience of the U.S. But “American exceptionalism” is the default “exceptionalism” in the academic literature, and it is with this version of exceptionalism that we begin. “American exceptionalism” as a nationalist ideology While the usage of the term “exceptional” as a characteristic of the U.S., as a set of governing institutions or as a people, was un- common until the 1930s, the belief that “America” is exceptional in various ways has had “tremendous staying power” (Roberts & Di Cuirci, 2013: ix), emerging even before there was a United States and still thriving in the 21st century. Starting in the 20th century, “American exceptionalism” came to be understood as consisting of nder the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ mailto:dj28@cornell.edu http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.12.007&domain=pdf www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09626298 http://www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.12.007 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.12.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.12.007 D. Jansson / Political Geography 64 (2018) 83e9184 two elements, exemplary and missionary (Restad, 2015). The U.S. (I prefer to avoid using “America” as much as possible, since there are “Americas” beyond the U.S., and furthermore, my focus is on “America” as an idea or ideology) is thus exceptional as an example for others to follow (I would call this “passive exceptionalism”), or, as exceptional, it has a responsibility to reshape the world in its image (missionary or “aggressive exceptionalism”). Another common di- chotomy in the literature relates to whether scholars conceptualize exceptionalism as simply an objective reference to difference (that is, what makes the U.S. different from other countries (e.g. Lipset, 1996; Lockhart, 2003)), or whether exceptionalism is meant to convey a normative claim of superiority (why the U.S. is better than other countries (see, e.g., Kattenburg, 1980; much of Samuel Hun- tington's work)). There is a symptomatic elision between these two perspectives, as Restad (2015: 17) points out: “the very idea of an objective e as opposed to ideational e definition of exceptionalism is nonsensical. Why use the term “exceptional” if one does not mean normatively superior? American exceptionalism cannot simply mean different, because all nations are different.” The nonsensical nature of the conceptualization of “American exceptionalism” (and “exceptionalism” in general) is a hint that what is at work here is ideology e and in particular, the ideology of nationalism. Natalie Koch (2017: 145) is correct in seeing “the normatively-laden idea of American exceptionalism as a staple of the country's nationalist ideology”. The literature on exceptionalism is impossible to under- stand without reference to both ideological nationalism and meth- odological nationalism e both of which contribute to a state-centric analysis and an inclination to “buy” the nationalist narrative of exceptionalism. So how can we work around these problems of ideology and methodology? Restad, for example, productively focuses on excep- tionalism as a belief system. She considers the belief in American exceptionalism to be a foundational element of the (dominant) national identity in the U.S. This identity consists of three main ideas: first, the U.S. is distinct from the Old World, not only different but better, and this superiority is crucial because it underpins the second idea, which is that the U.S. has a special and unique role to play in world history. The third idea is that the U.S. will resist the laws of history by remaining a superpower indefinitely, in contrast to the ultimate downfall of all previous world powers. These three ideas are interconnected, and the last idea suggests that there may be an underlying anxiety surrounding the maintenance of the U.S.'s superpower status, as a future decline of the U.S. would undermine all three elements of the belief in its exceptionalism. We can fruit- fully connect Restad's analysis with Holsti's (2011) typology of exceptionalism as a type of foreign policy, in particular with regard to Holsti's claim that exceptionalist states understand the world as hostile to their interests, indeed that such states need external en- emies, even if they have to be fabricated. These ideas support the argument that a psychological perspective on the idea of “American exceptionalism” (and exceptionalisms in general) is critical to un- derstanding the function of this nationalist ideology. So in the next section I will show how a psychological analysis can be applied. The psychology of exceptionalism The importance of the psychological approach is actually hinted at from the beginning of the idea of “American exceptionalism”, which is typically traced back to John Winthrop's characterization of the Massachusetts Bay colony in the early 1600s as a “city upon a hill”. The reference is to Jesus's call for his people to be a light in the darkness in the New Testament (Matthew 5:14). The verse actually reads: “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid” (Di Cuirci, 2013: vii, my emphasis). As Di Cuirci points out, this is a double-edged message: the city on the hill is, because of its geographical position, both a beacon to the world and vulnerable to hostile agents from this world. Thus, at the heart of this particular notion of U.S. exceptionalism lies a fundamental psychological tension: this new nation serves as a beacon of hope, a superior people working on behalf of God, but that beacon is vulnerable to attempts to both hinder its message and topple its physical embodiment. I would argue that this sense of threat to the security of the nation is intimately bound to the sense of excep- tionalist superiority that is part of the ideology of U.S. exception- alism. The idea is that “we” are always under threat precisely because we are exceptional. As Holsti (2011: 384) puts it, excep- tionalist states “portray themselves as innocent victims. They are never the sources of international insecurity, but only the targets of malign forces ….They are exceptional, in part, because they are morally clean as the objects of others' hatreds”, and it is this moral cleanliness that is insufferable for the malign forces that would destroy the city upon a hill. This perceived vulnerability generates fear, but interestingly in the U.S. case, it is not only (or perhaps even primarily) external malign forces that frightened the citizens of the North American colonies; it was internal forces that dramatically affected the col- lective psyche of the European settlers. Robert Parkinson (2016a), for example, argues that the writers of the Declaration of Inde- pendence were motivated more by “racial fear and exclusion” than by concern for “inalienable rights”. In Parkinson's analysis of the era of independence, the European settlers felt severely threatened by the possibility of uprisings of the enslaved as well as attacks by the Native American nations. These fears were immortalized in the language of the Declaration, which cited the twin threats of “do- mestic insurrections” and “merciless Indian savages” (Parkinson, 2016b). One can simply not ignore the psychological dynamics that were present during the origination of the idea of “America” and the founding of the “exceptionalist” U.S. state. So while I clearly argue for the relevance of a psychological understanding of exceptionalism, I would part with Restad when she gives causal power to U.S. national identity (and by extension the belief in exceptionalism) to shape U.S. foreign policy. The psy- chological approach is particularly important with regard to the public consumption of the narrative of exceptionalism, but I wish to refrain from giving these dynamics too much credit for the deter- mination of foreign policy. Instead, I think we need to complement the psychological approach with a political economy perspective if we want to be able to evaluate the material drivers of U.S. foreign policy. For help here we can turn to an analysis by John Agnew in this journal from 1983. The political economy of exceptionalism Giving causal explanatory force to the ideology of American exceptionalism on U.S. foreign policy is, for Agnew (1983: 164), to accept the transcendental idealism of the exceptionalists, “to abandon any pretense at history and instead engage in a propa- ganda exercise”. In other words, it is to mistake the rhetoric for the reality. Doing history instead of propaganda means taking a polit- ical economy perspective. But Agnew certainly does not ignore the discursive aspects of U.S. exceptionalism, as one of the first ques- tions that he takes up is that of the origins of the assumptions of exceptionalism. According to Jack Greene (1993), there was a rather widespread hope in the 17th and 18th centuries that “America” would represent the regeneration of European civilization, a reference to the exemplary or passive form of exceptionalism, where “America” constitutes a model for the world to follow. What made it possible for the idea of “America” to hold this position was its newness; as James Robertson (1980: 26), describing one of the major nationalist myths, puts it: “Americans are a new people, D. Jansson / Political Geography 64 (2018) 83e91 85 formed out of a migration of people seeking freedom in a new world”. So this idea of newness is key, and we might say that the discourse of newness propels the U.S. from passive to aggressive exceptionalism, from exemplary to missionary (while not exactly replacing the exemplary). To quote Robertson (1980: 26) again, The American sense of uniqueness has come also from the belief that the mission of its people was to create a nation where a nation did not exist. Nationalism included expansion, but it was expansion into the wildernessdinto a wilderness which was part of the nation and at the same time had to become part of the nation. So Americans were crusaders, bringing civilization and freedom to the wilderness. In order to realize its destiny, the U.S. had to expand its territory. At least, that is the ideological interpretation. But Agnew does not stop there, since a political economy approach requires attention to factors that provide the material impetus for state expansion. For even if political leaders in the U.S. have often explained the state's aggressive exceptionalism as an inevitable outgrowth of its divinely-ordained passive exceptionalism, political-economic in- terests have always lurked in the shadows, preferably unnamed, though occasionally admitted to openly. So while the Secretary of the Treasury might claim in 1847 that the country's past expansion was guided by a “higher than any earthly power”, a power which “still guards and directs our destiny, impels us onward, and has selected our great and happy country as a model and ultimate centre of attraction for all the nations of the world” (Agnew, 1983: 153), President McKinley could admit in the late 1800s, discussing the need for the U.S. to control the Philippines, that “we could not turn them over to France or Germanydour commercial rivals in the Orientdthat would be bad business and discreditable” (Agnew, 1983: 154, my emphasis). Agnew traces the transition in U.S. foreign policy from its early colonialism to imperialism, which represents a shift from territorial expansion (in North America and abroad) to a focus on getting the upper hand in the web of inter- national networks and relations in the global capitalist economy. And here is where we find more explanatory power for the un- derstanding of the pattern of U.S. interventions around the world. Indeed, Roberts (2013: xxviii) even argues that the “early excep- tionalism of America meant the unique opportunities of its re- sources” rather than referring to a characteristic of the people who lived there (whether indigenous or European) – according to this view, a materialist perspective on “American exceptionalism” is actually endogenous to the very concept. The rapid industrialization of the U.S. after the Civil War brought an increasing reliance on globally-sourced inputs and global mar- kets for U.S. products. “Wracked by economic panics, recessions, depressions, and booms, the U.S. capitalist economy had no choice but to become global” (Mitchell, 2017: 270). While I do not have room for a thorough review of the political economy of U.S. foreign policy, there are various sources that provide this perspective (Agnew, 1983; Domosh, 2006; Mitchell, 2017; Smith, 2003). The reader may now justifiably wonder how I would reconcile the psychological approach for which I argued earlier with the political economy approach described here. I do believe that both perspectives are necessary, but they operate at different levels and interpellate different agents. The psychological approach is particularly necessary to understand how, and why, U.S. excep- tionalism is communicated to ourselves and to others, and to appreciate why certain discourses and narratives resonate with (certain segments of) the (heterogeneous) general population. The psychological approach thus helps us to understand the public reception of the ideology of American exceptionalism (and nationalism generally) as well as its ongoing reproduction. The political economy approach, on the other hand, provides better (though not necessarily exclusive) explanatory power for the pattern of U.S. foreign policy and international “interventions” (a euphemism for military actions such as invasion). The psycholog- ical perspective is not irrelevant for the understanding of the decision-making of political and economic leaders, but I would argue that its effect on the actual conduct of foreign policy is less than many believe. In other words, political economy shapes the overall contours of foreign policy while psychology illuminates the processes of its justification. This is clearly an oversimplification but it expresses the general point I am trying to make. One practical problem with this analysis, though, is that in mainstream scholarship as well as in the public discourse, it is considered rather unseemly to state that U.S. foreign policy is based to a large degree on the advancement of U.S. corporations in the global economy. The historian David Potter (1954: 134) perhaps unwittingly provides some support for this assertion, when he writes that “we have been historically correct in supposing that we had a revolutionary message to offer but we have been mistaken in our concept of what that message was. We supposed that our revelation was “democracy revolutionizing the world”, but in reality it was “abundance revolutionizing the world”. The reference to abundance connects to the political-economic foundation of U.S. foreign policy, but the language with which Potter expresses this idea is still trapped by the ideology of exceptionalism. A more candid formulation of the reality behind the rhetoric was offered in 1948 by U.S. diplomat George Kennan, who when dis- cussing the strategic position of the U.S. after World War II, had this to say in a previously classified memo: “We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population.” The challenge facing the U.S. leadership then, was “to devise a pattern of relationships that will permit us to maintain this disparity” (Robinson, 1996: 1). Kennan can say this for internal consumption, but publicly the justification of U.S. foreign policy is typically done with reference to the exalted ideals the U.S. is supposed to stand for. While the control of resources is a fundamental drive behind U.S. foreign policy, it is the advancement of freedom, democracy, respect for the rule of law, and universal human rights that always gets top billing when selling U.S. interventions. To a significant extent, then, the ideology of U.S. exceptionalism is built upon a denial of the materialist basis of U.S. foreign policy, and thus we come back to psychology. We will return to this and related problems for a clear- eyed discussion of the nationalist ideology in the U.S. later, but having now sketched out the dynamics of a “psycho-political economy” approach to the understanding of the ideology of U.S. exceptionalism, we now turn to the case of “Swedish exception- alism” to see how well this perspective holds up in another context. Swedish exceptionalism and the folkhem Compared to the long history of the idea of “American excep- tionalism”, the origins of a belief in “Swedish exceptionalism” are more recent. When John Winthrop was writing about “America” being a city on a hill in the 1600s, the Swedish state was at the height of its power, having established a regional empire including parts of what are today Norway, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, and Denmark. Not to be outdone by the other European empires, it also actively sought to establish colonies abroad, and during John Winthrop's life Sweden had, for a few years, a colony called New Sweden on the Delaware River, as well as small colonies in the Caribbean and in West Africa (Naum and Nordin, 2013; Weiss, 2016). (Added to this history of external expansionism is the (ongoing) internal colonialism of S�apmi e the territory of the indigenous Sami people.) The loss of Finland to Russia in 1809 marked the definitive end of Sweden's expansionist history, and D. Jansson / Political Geography 64 (2018) 83e9186 Sweden experienced widespread poverty for much of the 1800s into the early 1900s, which was the primary reason behind the emigration of millions of Swedes to the U.S. during this period. While we can say that, during the era of colonialism, the Swedish leadership was certainly influenced by the missionary discourse that sought to justify the establishment of empires and the spread of European civilization, there was, in this regard, nothing excep- tional about Sweden as a European empire. Rather, “Swedish exceptionalism” is grounded primarily in the idea that the country is a “moral superpower”, and this reputation has its seeds in the establishment of the welfare state (sometimes referred to as the “Swedish model”) from the 1930s onward. Scholars tend to consider the publication of Marcus Childs' 1936 book Sweden: The Middle Way as an originator of the idea of Swe- den as an exemplary state. For a world on the cusp of a second devastating world war in a generation, Childs portrays the Swedish welfare state as an effective compromise between communism (or socialism) and capitalism, a “middle way”. Thus from a political economy perspective, the Swedish model e which is included in a “Scandinavian model” for some observers (Musial, 2002) e repre- sents the ultimate compromise between social democracy and global capitalism. The Swedish model protected the interests of Swedish workers through centrally-negotiated, industry-wide col- lective bargaining agreements, while at the same time providing advantageous conditions for Swedish and global corporations (Lundberg & Tyd�en, 2007). And in an era where we are allegedly experiencing the “end of history”, it might be hard to appreciate how urgent such questions would have felt for people in the 1930s (see, e.g., Greif, 2015). After dealing with war and depression many people had serious doubts about the viability of any of the existing models, and along comes Sweden with what appeared to some to be a new, rational, and stable solution to the eternal tensions between labor and capital: a strong, centralized (capitalist) state with a comprehensive welfare system. As Winston Churchill put it in a message accepting the 1953 Nobel Prize for literature, the world “looks with admiration … to Scandinavia where … countries, without sacrificing their sovereignty, live united in their thought, in their economic practice and in their healthy way of life. From such fountains new and brighter opportunities may come to all mankind” (Musial, 2002: 11). So this marks the beginning of an exemplary Swedish exceptionalism, with a strong external component e it was the views of people outside Sweden that originally established the idea of Swedish exceptionalism (Ruth, 1984), whereas in the U.S. it was a combination of external and internal perspectives that gave birth to that country's exceptionalism. In fact, as Arne Ruth (1984: 65) points out, this international attention sometimes made Swedish politicians uncomfortable: during World War II, the Swedish intellectual Gunnar Myrdal noted that Swedish officials visiting the U.S. “went to a great deal of trouble to refute the image of Sweden as a real-life utopia, pointing out, among other things, that very many Swedes were still extremely poor by American standards”. But if it was initially international observers who artic- ulated the notion of Swedish exceptionalism, this idea was adopted fairly quickly by Swedish elites and the general public alike, such that over time “the collective sense of being exceptional” consti- tuted a mythology that was “the very backbone of the national consciousness” (Ruth, 1984: 92). In terms of the defining characteristics of Swedish exception- alism, we have already pointed to the social democratic welfare state and the idea of the Swedish model as the mythology's key early components. Gradually other characteristics were merged into the mythology. For example, the fact that, since 1809, the country had been officially neutral and successfully avoided (active) participation in war contributed further to the idea of Sweden as a peaceful state that respected international law and human rights, even though the country has been neutral more in rhetoric than in reality (e.g., Holmstr€om, 2011). Other components of the more contemporary version of Swedish exceptionalism relate to the perceived stability of its political system, an official emphasis on economic and gender equality, and a general anti-racist attitude in society. Finally, there is a critical underlying factor supporting the rele- vance of Sweden's exemplary exceptionalism, and one that connects to the ideology of “American exceptionalism”: the idea of “newness”. As seen in the above quote from Robinson, it was the idea of the newness of America that made it possible for Europeans in both North America and Europe to project their grandest hopes onto this space. There is an interesting parallel here to the Swedish case, because the original foundation of Swedish exceptionalism, the folkhem, is notable for its discursive newness. Folkhem literally means “people's home”, although that term fails to capture the nuances associated with the concept. The term folkhem most typi- cally refers to the Swedish welfare state, but I consider folkhem as consisting of five interconnected projects: 1) an ideological project (promoting equality, solidarity and collectivism); 2) a state-building project (the creation of a strong, centralized welfare state); 3) an economic project (an attempt to provide economic security against the disruption caused by industrialization); 4) a social project (freeing individuals from their historical dependence on the family and other (local) social bonds e this has been referred to as “Swedish state-individualism”; see Berggren & Tr€agårdh, 2006); and 5) a nationalist project (an attempt to create a modern (and gendered) Swedish nationality, as imagined by experts and tech- nocrats). The link to modernity here is very powerful, Swedish identity is nothing if it is not modern, and new. The folkhem was in part about creating a new Swedish nation. As Jan Larsson (1994: 167, my translation) writes: The folkhem was not only a question of building the country. It was also a question about shaping the modern human. So- phisticated techniques of domination [h€arskartekniker] were introduced in order to implement the modern “system change”. The new modernity demanded that society's organization went through an institutional renewal as well as a break with tradi- tions that stood in the way of a modernization of Sweden and the creation of the new human. The power of tradition also constituted an obstacle for the scientific standardization of techniques that had the capacity to “l€agga livet till r€atta” and mold the new community around “the good life” for all. L€agga livet till r€atta is a difficult phrase to translate. The closest we can come in English is probably “make life right”, in the sense that it refers to the project whereby “social engineers” and planners would scientifically discover and devise the most efficient and best ways to do things, particularly in the sphere of reproduction. It is important to appreciate the enormity of the folkhem and its asso- ciated projects, as it was about nothing less than the creation of a new, modern nation. While Sweden was not alone in this regard among Western countries (Greif, 2015), the Swedish state was able to capitalize on its history of professional administration to suc- cessfully realize the folkhem's projects. However, in contrast to the U.S., the important role of the idea of newness did not compel an expansionary period for the Swedish state, as its modern borders had long since stabilized and its small size did not present an op- portunity for expansion. The psychology and political economy of Swedish exceptionalism So newness is a key element of the supposed exceptionalism of both Sweden and the U.S. But what we also see in my conceptu- alization of the folkhem are the connections to the psychological D. Jansson / Political Geography 64 (2018) 83e91 87 and political economy perspectives discussed earlier. The folkhem is in part a project involving the creation (we might say engineering) of a new, modern, Swedish subjectivity. It is in some respects a utopian nation-building project that seeks to shape how Swedes both behave and think (Hirdman, 2010). This nexus of attitude and agency was in the minds of some international observers when they praised the “Swedish model”. Some commentators, on the other hand, associated Sweden's exceptionalism with the state's efforts to navigate the global political economy of industrial capi- talism. A major priority of the folkhem was to soften the disruptive capacity of capitalism while assuring its continued reproduction. I claim that this fateful compromise of the folkhem with capitalism is also what incapacitates the contemporary Swedish state as capi- talism matures into what we now call “globalization”, but I do not have the space here to develop that argument. Suffice it to say, both the psychological and political economy perspectives are necessary for a nuanced understanding of the folkhem, both as practiced in Sweden and as understood by Swedish citizens and international observers. If we come back to the concepts of exemplary or passive exceptionalism and missionary or aggressive exceptionalism, we can see that the initial understanding of Swedish exceptionalism clearly resided in the notion of Sweden as a model that other countries could emulate if they would so choose. But would it not be a stretch to say that Sweden's expression of exceptionalism mirrors that of the U.S. also in the case of the missionary or aggressive aspect? Sweden's foreign policy has by necessity not been charac- terized by anything close to the aggressiveness of the U.S. in the international arena. There is, however, an interesting strand of Swedish exceptionalism that positions Sweden as a small state that can have an disproportionately large impact on the world due to its agitation for and promotion of human rights in global organizations and its reputation as a “moral superpower”. For example, the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme once wrote: “As a small state we have as our goal a world in which the principles of sovereignty and non intervention are fully respected. This has also made it possible for Sweden, albeit to a modest extent, to build bridges between South and North in a period marked by crisis and the risk of po- larization” (Ruth, 1984: 73). The political economy perspective is actually relevant here, because as a small country with a limited domestic market, Sweden's high-tech economy is very dependent upon global trade. Indeed, the government's foreign policy state- ment of 1976, stressed “the importance of Sweden's commercial and industrial relations with the developing nations, thus giving further cause for the suspicion, sometimes voiced by Sweden's industrial competitors, that the rhetoric of international solidarity is only the pursuit of commerce by other means” (Ruth, 1984: 74). Hence the cognitive dissonance of the country that embraces a “feminist foreign policy” (Barry, 2017) while at the same time cultivating and maintaining relationships with patriarchal dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia (Sweden's “most important export market in the Middle East” according to Business Sweden).1 As Aftonbladet polit- ical columnist Katrine Marçal (2015) writes (my translation): There is a hypocrisy inbuilt in Swedish social democracy. In its relationship to the world and its image of itself and Sweden internationally. On the one hand, Sweden wants to be the “world's conscience.” … A “moral superpower” ….On the other hand, Swedish social democracy has constructed a welfare state that is built on exports. Swedish products that need to be sold. To the world. A world that does not only consist of rainbows and 1 https://www.businesssweden.se/Export/marknader/mellanostern/ Saudiarabien/. gummi bears, but also dictators ….Money that Swedish com- panies earn goes toward fair wages to Swedish workers as well as taxes to the Swedish state. That's the way you finance a welfare state ….It's just that the concept “export” also includes “weapons exports”. I would argue the term “hypocrisy” does not quite capture the full truth of the incongruity that Marçal describes here, because different social agents have different relationships to the material realities of the relations between Sweden and the rest of the world, and to the processes that built the folkhem. Indeed, a similar point can be made about U.S. exceptionalism. For some, the problem is ignorance of these material realities. For others, it is denial. In both the U.S. and Swedish examples, the political-economic realities reveal the disconnect between the exceptionalist rhetoric and the “deadly” reality. In the following section, we will thus consider some of these questions of ignorance, denial, and hypocrisy. Deadly exceptionalisms Here we will review in some degree of detail the processes that produce these ideologies of exceptionalism and the blind spots that facilitate their longevity. We will also ask the question: In what ways are U.S. and Swedish exceptionalisms deadly? The deadliness of American exceptionalism The term “deadly exceptionalisms” is not intended as a rhetor- ical flourish. I refer specifically to mortality and more generally to diminished life chances and degradation of material living stan- dards, and I would also include under this umbrella any harm to psychological well-being. In this analysis, I employ a materialist definition of racism. In the next section I will look at the mecha- nisms by which U.S. exceptionalism increases the fatality and harms the living standards of certain populations inside and outside the borders of the U.S. Historical ignorance, repression, and denial, and the deaths of external others One central contributor to this problem of deadly exceptionalism is that the understanding of the country's history is undermined by the nationalist ideology's warping of the version of U.S. history that is taught in schools (Loewen, 1995). This produces an ignorance of key aspects of U.S. history that would offer a divergent picture of the country's history than that of a beacon for freedom and human rights for all (see, e.g., Zinn, 1995). In some cases, the problem is the ignorance of, for example, the original presence and then genocide of the indigenous population, or the brutal reality of slavery. But in those cases where there is indeed adequate knowledge and awareness of genocide and slavery, one can seek refuge in the sanctity and security of the privileged American exceptionalist national identity. As Kemmelmeier and Winter (2008: 862) write, “Darker aspects of American history, such as the enslavement of Black Americans or the genocide of Native Americans, are virtually never viewed as relevant to the essence of what it means to be an Americandan identity that is inherently good”. An additional alternative is, of course, (for the majority white population) to live in denial and repress these uncomfortable and inconvenient facts. Consider the fact that “America” is supposed to be exceptional because it represents from the very beginning a break from historical oppressions and a new freedom for its people, at the same time that it is built upon the twin horrors of slavery and genocide (not to mention the relegation of women to second-class status, as well as http://www.businesssweden.se/Export/marknader/mellanostern/Saudiarabien/ http://www.businesssweden.se/Export/marknader/mellanostern/Saudiarabien/ D. Jansson / Political Geography 64 (2018) 83e9188 the reservation of democratic rights to the property-owning class). I would suggest that the experiences of genocide and slavery amount to a considerable trauma for the collective psyche of the nation. Repression and denial of this trauma lead to a state of ignorant innocence that enables the foreign policy establishment to so successfully flag “American exceptionalism” as it formulates and justifies U.S. actions in the global arena. This kind of deadliness effects people who are U.S. citizens (through institutional racism, police brutality, job discrimination, and so on), but “American exceptionalism” is also deadly for people outside the U.S. (as in the case of the untold number of civilians who have been killed over the years in U.S. bombing raids). Part of the reason for this is, again, ignorance e ignorance of geography in general and specifically of the actions of the U.S. internationally. The irony about the mainstream reaction to the allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is that the U.S. has been meddling in foreign elections for decades. The list of “in- terventions” in the affairs of other countries by the U.S. just since 1945 is very long e Blum (2000) lists dozens of such interventions, by the CIA or the U.S. military, ranging from interference in elections to outright invasion. There is very little awareness of many of these events among U.S. citizens and scarcely any reporting. To some extent the reaction to accusations of Russian meddling is hypocrisy, but at the same time it is difficult to argue that people are being hypocritical when they are not even aware that their own country has done such things. What explains this ignorance? As noted above, it is in part due to an education system that ignores much of these interventions, and paints the ones that are covered in the most positive terms possible (Loewen, 1995). It is also partly a problem of “fake news”. I agree with Donald Trump that something like fake news is a problem (see e.g. Hedges, 2016), but of course I do not define it in the same way, because Trump's definition does not seem to have anything to do with the veracity of news reporting. The problem is that the mainstream media in the U.S. has for a long time been quite protective of “state secrets” and international “in- terventions” by declining to report on certain activities or hiding their true nature when they are mentioned. A classic account of this foreign policy subservience of the media can be found in Herman and Chomsky (1988) where the authors introduce a “propaganda model” that is based on a political economy perspective. Ignorance of the interference of the U.S. in the democratic institutions of other countries, not to mention more heinous crimes such as “secret” bombings in places like Cambodia, undermines the ability of U.S. citizens to demand accountability for past actions and more re- straint in the state's future actions. As a result, more civilians die. This is not to say that there is no opposition to such actions by the U.S. state abroad, but it is certainly difficult to question the notion of “American exceptionalism” or the assumption of the foundational goodness of the U.S. So when Trump (of all people) replied “What, you think our country's so innocent?” to a question about Vladimir Putin being “a killer”, the mainstream media and the political establishment professed to being shocked and insulted (e.g., The New York Times, 2017). It is perhaps telling that the obituary of historian Marilyn Young, a “feminist, antiwar historian who challenged conventional interpretations of American foreign policy” (Roberts, 2017), was titled “Historian Who Challenged U.S. Foreign Policy” e as if challenging U.S. foreign policy was note- worthy and unusual enough to be the headline of one's death notice. So there is a significant challenge to those who would seek to make U.S. exceptionalism less deadly. Spatial projection and the deaths of internal Others A psychological alternative to repression and denial is to project traumas such as slavery onto others. Much of my own work has focused on what we can call the spatial projection involved in in- ternal orientalism in the U.S., where the idea of racism is projected onto “the South” and thus confined there in the national imagi- nation (Jansson, 2003, 2010). I call this discourse that creates a moral landscape of uneven racism “southering” e racism is un- derstood as being an inherent part of the social fabric in “the South” in a way that does not apply for the rest of the country (Jansson, 2017). Southering makes an important contribution to the repro- duction of U.S. exceptionalism, in part through the way it un- derstands the region as a stage for the (internal) practice of the state's exceptionalism (Jansson, 2007) e the cure for the region's problems is to make “the South” more like “America”. The importance of southering is not only that it helps us to deny the horrors of the past, but also that it blinds us to the horrors of the present. For example, racial segregation is in many parts of the North worse than it is in the South (Allen & Turner, 2012; Sugrue, 1996; Theoharis and Woodard, 2003). Overall in the U.S., African Americans, Latin@s and Native Americans live shorter lives and are less healthy than whites (Kolata, 2017; Smith, 2017). In order to sidestep the discourse of southering it is useful to have a materialist, rather than a discursive, definition of racism. Ruth Gilmore (2007: 28) defines racism as “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” This kind of definition foregrounds the material conditions of the lives of individuals and allows for comparisons across group categories, in a way that does not start from assumptions about place or region. So U.S. exceptionalism is “deadly” due to its contribution to group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death, thanks in part to the denial and ignorance it facilitates. Sweden's deadly exceptionalism Let's now move to the Swedish case e surely Swedish excep- tionalism must be free of much of what I am critiquing in U.S. exceptionalism? The answer to that question is clearly “no” when approached from a materialist perspective. The “deadliness” of Sweden's exceptionalism is obviously much more limited than that of the U.S., given the small size of the country and its two-century long lack of (direct military) involvement in foreign wars. Even so, we can identify similar kinds of problems with the nationalist ideology of exceptionalism as found in the U.S. case. Historical ignorance, projection, and the deaths of internal and external Others We saw above the problems with denial and the production of an ignorant innocence, and there seems to be a general agreement that most Swedes have very poor knowledge of the era of Swedish empire and the country's involvement in colonialism (e.g. Weiss, 2016). (This is consistent with my own experience teaching polit- ical geography at the university level in Sweden.) Whether this will change as a result of some excellent recent scholarship remains to be seen. Past studies of colonialism have been criticized in recent years for whitewashing Sweden's colonial experience, romanti- cizing this era in Swedish history and emphasizing the contribution of Swedish “adventurers” (Fur, 2013). It is indeed fitting that Fur (2013: 17) characterizes the relationship between colonialism and Swedish history as “unthinkable connections”; a major obstacle to an increase in the level of knowledge and understanding of Swe- den's colonialism is the very self-image of Swedes as a humani- tarian superpower. Even an otherwise clear-eyed observer such as Arne Ruth (1984: 72) can write that Sweden has “no colonial past”. A colonialist history fits very uncomfortably with the modern Swedish identity produced by the folkhem. Indeed, according to one study of history textbooks used in Swedish high schools, Sweden is D. Jansson / Political Geography 64 (2018) 83e91 89 portrayed as best in the world in terms of freedom, peace, gender equality, welfare and democracy (Danielsson Malmros, 2012). This historical ignorance makes it difficult for white Swedish citizens to appreciate the capacity for their society to participate in problem- atic activities in the present. A case in point is the Swedish gov- ernment's ongoing repression of the Sami, in part through legal challenges to their internationally-recognized rights as an indige- nous people. At the same time, I would hesitate to claim that Swedish colonialism constitutes a trauma for the collective psyche in quite the same way that slavery and genocide do in the U.S., as in Sweden there appears to be less general awareness of this aspect of their history. But I am clearly arguing here in support of a psy- chological approach to understanding Swedish exceptionalism. This leads us to the more “deadly” aspects of Swedish excep- tionalism, in the sense that I suggested above that it is especially white Swedes who are subject to this ignorant innocence. There is not space here to summarize the many excellent studies of racism in Sweden; some focus more on the discursive aspects of racism (Hirvonen, 2013; Hübinette, 2012; Hübinette & Lundstr€om, 2011; Yngvesson, 2015) while others approach racism from a more materialist perspective (Ald�en & Hammarstedt, 2014; Arora- Jonsson, 2017; Dahlstedt & Hertzberg, 2007; Schierup & Ålund, 2011; Schierup, A ̊ lund, & Kings, 2014).2 It is abundantly clear that Sweden is profoundly immersed in racism, a fact that, while it certainly does not make Sweden unique, still betrays the excep- tionalist idea of Sweden as an explicitly anti-racist society. One's life chances in Sweden are to a significant extent determined by corporeal appearance and place of origin (or the place of origin of one's parents). The job market is particularly closed to “Swedes of color” and recent immigrants or refugees from (e.g.) Africa and the Middle East, even when such individuals are highly educated with impressive credentials (Alatalo & Ostapenko, 2014; Blomqvist, 2015, p. 28; Goks€or, 2015, p. 9). Many Swedes of color speak of the difficulty of living in a country where one is constantly reminded (due to one's “deviant” skin color) that one does not really belong here (Kalonaityt�e, Kawesa, & Tedros, 2007; Sawyer, 2002; Yngvesson, 2015), at least not on the same level as white Swedes. Research on the materialistic outcomes of racism is somewhat hampered by the fact that the Swedish government does not collect ethnic or racial data in its surveys (as in, e.g., the U.S.), but satisfies itself with geographical information (i.e., country of origin). This data can still be useful to the extent that geography can be associated with ethnic/racial classifications, but it is not perfect. In fact, based on my own discussion with anti-racist and post- colonial researchers in Sweden, it is clear that there is a fairly heated debate regarding the wisdom of advocating for the collec- tion of ethnic/racial data. But existing studies (such as those cited above) clearly show the presence of discrimination in the job and housing markets, and also with regard to scores for secondary school students (Hinnerich, H€oglin, & Johannesson, 2011). Add to this the violent attacks on refugees, immigrants of color, Muslims, and Swedes of color that have been occurring lately in Sweden. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that “Sweden is burning”, given the large number of fires that have been set at already occupied or soon-to-be occupied refugee housing (Majlard, 2016a, p. 16). Swedish children and teachers of color have been targeted for murder by a white Swedish terrorist (Bilefsky, 2015), and the country has an active Nazi movement that regularly attacks Swedes of color and anti-racist marchers (Majlard, 2016b, p. 15). “Afro-Swedes” are especially vulnerable, having experienced a 24 2 I do not want to overemphasize the distinction between “discursive” and “materialist” as there is not necessarily a clear line between these two perspectives in actual research. percent increase in hate crimes since 2008 according to one report (Kushkush, 2016). And with regard to the issue of gender, in spite of the country's international reputation as an advocate for women's rights, Sweden falls short on many quantitative measures of gender equality. Amanda Lundeteg, the director of a non-profit that works on improving gender equality in private industry, notes that in Serbia about 17% of corporate CEOs are women. In Sweden the figure is 6% (Johansson, 2016, p. 24). She also notes that there are still significant wage gaps between men and women in Sweden. And the over- whelming response of Swedish women to the #metoo campaign has revealed that many, many Swedish men do not really take the issue of gender equality very seriously at all (see Nordberg, 2017). As in the U.S., spatial projection plays a role in assisting the reproduction of ignorance and denial of social problems such as racism and sexism. Madeleine Eriksson (2008; 2010) has written about internal orientalism in Sweden, which represents the north of the country alternatively as either an empty wilderness that has resources that the metropolitan south needs to exploit, or as a place where white, male Swedes are the opposite of sophisticated urban Swedes in the South e they are sexist, racist against their Sami neighbors, backwards, violent, lazy, etc. We can also identify a kind of spatial projection that portrays the most southern part of Sweden as “where the racists are”, as Allan Pred (2000) pointed out in his book Even in Sweden. This projection leads white Swedes to the convenient belief that “only the physical violence and fascist sym- bolics of skinheads and right-wing extremist groups have racist consequences” (Pred, 2004:. 188). These varieties of internal orien- talism help reproduce the Swedish exceptionalist ideology that hides the long history of national racism and racialized thinking in Sweden, from Carl von Linn�e (Linneaus) in the 18th century to the State Institute for Racial Biology at Uppsala university in the 20th century, to today's still racialized imagined community of the nation. At the same time, it is important to point out that there is an exclusionary dynamic in Sweden that is not exclusively about race, ethnicity, or gender. For example, it is not only Swedes of color who face higher unemployment rates; even white Swedes who received advanced degrees at prestigious universities outside of Sweden are often at a disadvantage in the job market (Blomqvist, 2015, p. 28). Corporeal appearance is not the only important factor in defining in- groups and out-groups in Sweden, even if it is a central one. I find it justified to call Sweden an “insider society”, where “outsiderness” is determined by a range of factors. There are various mechanisms by which the insiders ensure that only “people like them” are admitted to the in-group. The problem is particularly evident in Swedish academia, which is characterized by a system of formal hiring pro- cedures that would seemingly discourage “inbreeding” in the constitution of the tenured faculty in Swedish academic de- partments, only to find that inbreeding is rather the norm than the exception (Alvesson & Rothstein, 2011; Kalantari, 2011). Indeed, certain universities have even repeatedly violated the law so as to ensure that they can hire internal candidates without open competition ( Eliasson, 2017 ). It is difficult to reconcile the extent of the insider society in Sweden with the country's reputation for tolerance and openness, but I would argue that this exclusionary dynamic can be connected back to the folkhem, to the extent that one of the primary goals of the folkhem was to provide different kinds of trygghet for the population. Trygghet can be translated as “security”, but the nuances of this term are difficult to capture in translation. It relates to economic security, bodily security, and not least, psychological security. Psychological security is understood as being “guaranteed” in part by homogeneity, and thus there is an intense fear of difference in Swedish society (which is not helped by the fact that the folkhem can actually never really deliver on its promise of trygghet). And while difference is not only measured D. Jansson / Political Geography 64 (2018) 83e9190 through racial/ethnic and gender elements (i.e., as inhering in the body), these are certainly the most important exclusionary factors in contemporary Sweden. This ignorance, denial and projection have direct consequences for the material and psychological well-being of internal Others in Sweden. External Others are also at risk. The ideology of Swedish exceptionalism is based in part on the assumption that Sweden works for international peace and human rights. But a key contra- diction to this belief is presented by the Swedish weapons industry. Sweden is the third-ranked country in the world, behind Israel and Russia, in terms of arms exports per capita, and ranks around 11th to 13th in terms of the total value of exports (Jackson, 2014). About 30,000 people are employed in the Swedish weapons industry (Sullivan, 2014). The arms industry overall is very corrupt, and Sweden has had serious problems with corruption in it own arms sales (Braw, 2015). Sweden previously had a successful land mine industry, and mines made in Sweden (or manufactured elsewhere using Swedish explosives) have been responsible for killing an un- known number of people around the world (Physicians for Human Rights, 1993). No less than Desmond Tutu (2017, p. 8) has criticized Sweden for not addressing the contradictions of a public stand for peace at the same time that the government assists Swedish cor- porations with the goal of selling weapons systems abroad e often through questionable methods. As indicated earlier in Katrine Mar- çal's comments, the realities of the global political economy provide incentives for economic gain that are difficult to resist, even for the vaunted Swedish folkhem with its feminist foreign policy. To return to the question posed in the title of this essay, it surely matters little to the victims of U.S. or Swedish fighter jets, bombs, or land mines that the manufacturer of their particular vector of death is globally hailed by some as a great economic/cultural/military superpower or a moral superpower. Just as it matters little to those in the U.S. and Sweden who face discrimination and premature death that they theoretically have access to the “American dream” or the Swedish folkhem. To be “crushed” is a fate that is hardly ameliorated by the national or international reputation of one's state as a superior model for the world to follow. Concluding comments I have argued here that exceptionalism needs to be understood as an outgrowth of the ideology of nationalism, that the idea itself is an ideology that acts to obscure the ways in which the states in question harm people inside and outside their borders. A combi- nation of psychological and political economy approaches illumi- nates the roles of various actors within the nationalist ideology of exceptionalism, from the general public to the political and corporate leadership. I should emphasize that the shortcomings I have criticized in the U.S. and Sweden are by no means unique to these countries. As a citizen of both these states, and a scholar, I feel a particular re- sponsibility to both raise political awareness of these problems and offer theorizations of these phenomena that facilitate their analysis. I certainly do not mean to shrug off the very real achievements of both countries, but we still need to be able to critically assess even those achievements that are held most dearly. For example, I would argue that the great success of the Swedish welfare state in raising living standards has resulted in the attainment of a “hyper- legitimacy” for the Swedish state. Thus in Sweden, the problem is not a lack of legitimacy of the state but rather an excess of legiti- macy. There are certainly exceptions to this, but the hyper- legitimacy of the state feeds directly into Swedish exceptionalism and makes it harder to deal with various problems that directly impinge upon democracy, human rights, and welfare in the coun- try. The idea is that because Sweden has great rules on paper, we can conclude that problems like corruption are minimal at best, when in fact they are much deeper than the country's leaders want to admit. In contrast, in the U.S. there is absolutely no foreseeable risk that the state will become hyperlegitimate, rather the problem is more the reverse, such that some things would improve if state intervention in certain areas within the country would be seen as more legitimate than it currently is. It is indeed difficult to strike the right balance in a political system. It may in fact be impossible. This is especially true because we have no strictly political systems, but instead a global political- economic system. It is also true because the entities that inhabit the world political-economic system are human beings, which means that our psychological processes are also key factors in reproducing our local and global injustices. This is why I do not believe in “the revolution”. And yet, the survival of our species is entirely dependent on the realization of multiple revolutions (cf. Tazzioli, 2017). My message is this: “The revolution” is impossible, and we will die without revolutions. This is our human paradox. Declarations of interest None. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Phil Steinberg and the editors at Political Geography for inviting me to give the Political Geography plenary address at the Nordic Geographers Meeting in Stockholm, June 2017. 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Introduction “American exceptionalism” as a nationalist ideology The psychology of exceptionalism The political economy of exceptionalism Swedish exceptionalism and the folkhem The psychology and political economy of Swedish exceptionalism Deadly exceptionalisms The deadliness of American exceptionalism Historical ignorance, repression, and denial, and the deaths of external others Spatial projection and the deaths of internal Others Sweden's deadly exceptionalism Historical ignorance, projection, and the deaths of internal and external Others Concluding comments Declarations of interest Acknowledgements References work_5iujwnqwxfdyvkzlb2hcpvbah4 ---- ASEAS 12(2) | 135 Durable Violence in Southeast Asia: Machinery and Scale Ario Seto, Gunnar Stange, & Susanne Schröter ► Seto, A., Stange, G., & Schröter, S. (2019). Durable violence in Southeast Asia: Machinery and scale. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 12(2), 135-148. On 9 October 2013, the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed the declaration, “On the Elimination of Violence against Women and Elimination of Violence against Children in ASEAN”, which was followed by a Regional Plan of Action (RPA) issued in February 2016. The action’s very first step is to “develop ASEAN Guidelines on non-violent approaches to the nurture, care, and development of children in all settings” (ASEAN, 2017, p. 20). The prevention program is crafted as a framework for ASEAN nations to support the implementation of one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals which “promises to strive for a better world that is just, equitable and inclusive” (ASEAN, 2017, p. 20). Such norms have gained urgency as, despite their progress in the development of institutional dem- ocratic practices as a means to provide security, Southeast Asian nations are struggling to counter the cycle of violence. A year before the RPA’s publication, for example, the Indonesia Ulama Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia) expressed its concern that the Indonesian government has failed to ensure non-violent content even in its high-school education programs, citing an example of a text- book, “Religious Teaching and Personality”, which justifies Muslims killing the “unbeliever” (Susanto, 2015). Another alarming example relates to gender-based violence (GBV) with “14 percent of all women between the ages of 15 and 49 reported being raped” (The Asia Foundation, 2017, p. 3) in Timor-Leste. True (2017) finds that GBV in Asia has become a persistent form of violence because of its entanglement with “the national or subnational context,” whereby struc- tural gender inequality is embedded in the “inequality of access to resources or to public space and voice, legal discrimination in civil and family status, and societal attitudes that condone violence against women” (p. 221). This conflicting illustration marks a call to investigate the durability of ram- pant violence in Southeast Asia, where violence has become a mundane reality (Arendt, 1970) of everyday life. To view violence as a prolonged and intergener- ational reality that goes beyond a single disruption or some narrow temporality provides another method to observe the cycle of violence and how it emerges as a common practice. The normalcy or banality of violence could lead to a “crisis of chronicity” (Vigh, 2008), which endorses asymmetrical social relation- ships, orders, and power, and denies every notion of democratic life (see also Arendt, 1970). Against this background, everyday violence hinders the realiza- tion of ASEAN’s (2017), above-referenced goal to create a “just, equitable and inclusive” (p. 20) world. One of the weaknesses in explaining such chronicity is, as the expert on security in Southeast Asia, Sidney Jones, observes in the Editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. A SE A S- 00 18 136 | ASEAS 12(2) Editorial: Durable Violence in Southeast Asia context of Indonesia, that activists, academics, and politicians deliver “time frames [of observation which] are too short” (Stange, 2019, p. 270). Responding to the shreds of evidence of chronic violence in Southeast Asia, this issue aims to survey how violence becomes self-generating or autopoietic. To look at how such mundane violence could be addressed, we invited scholars who have been continuously studying the durability of violence in their area of regional expertise to contribute to this issue. The six research articles and one interview article in this issue represent extensive discussions of lingering violence in Southeast Asia. Peter Kreuzer’s (2019) study on the deadly use of violence by the police in the Philippines shows that although the act has taken the spotlight under President Duterte’s war on drugs campaign, it is not a new phenomenon since criminal enforcement in the country has a long history of extrajudicial (deadly) use of violence by the police. Helle Rydstrom (2019) presents a study of chronic violence against women in Vietnam, which has endured for gen- erations to the point that members of society have begun to consider such abuse “normal”. Observing Islamic fundamentalist social media influencers in Indonesia, Ario Seto (2019) argues that violent behavior is not simply sparked by discontent but is fostered by online and offline sociability of othering and bigotry. Lúcio Sousa’s (2019) study on the emergence of lia-na’in (master of words) as peacemakers in Timor-Leste describes how the state has turned to tradition and spirituality to mitigate centuries of violence while sourcing legitimacy to incite secu- rity and stability. Amporn Marddent’s (2019) work highlights how Muslim women in Thailand’s Deep South have become peacemakers, while they nonetheless face the challenge of recognition, as, first, their Salafi belief has been stereotyped as being inherently violent, and, second, as women’s voices are not considered to be repre- sentative in a patriarchal society. In the research workshop section, Gunnar Stange, Patrick Sakdapolrak, Kwanchit Sasiwongsaroj, and Matthias Kourek (2019) report an imbalance in academic research in the field of forced migration studies in Southeast Asia that could signify indifference towards how internally displaced populations are treated and further victimized in structural violence. The issue, furthermore, features an interview by Gunnar Stange (2019) with the Jakarta based political analyst, Sidney Jones, on violence, religious extremism, and conflict dynamics in contemporary Indonesia. As a long-term observer of Indonesian politics, she warns of the dangers of “intolerant above-ground, non-clandestine organizations” (Stange, 2019, p. 270) for Indonesian democracy. Although all the presented cases of violence are rooted in the region’s heteroge- neous colonial history, the contributors to this issue highlight how contemporary violence is augmented and amplified by post-independence socio-political dynamics. By doing so, the articles reveal that historically prolonged violence, or what we call the durability of rampant violence, is subdued by the dimensions of machinery and scale. The machinery could be “actors” (Kreuzer, 2019; Rydstrom, 2019; Seto, 2019; Sousa, 2019) or “the autopoietic of violence”, which hinder peace or keep non-violent struggles from emerging (Marddent, 2019; Rydstrom, 2019; Sousa, 2019). The articles provide a common argument that violence becomes durable because the machinery is able to preserve it at different scales and in different arenas: across national and subnational geography (Kreuzer, 2019; Marddent, 2019; Seto 2019; Sousa, 2019), in private and public sphere (Marddent, 2019; Rydstrom, 2019; Seto, 2019), and in legal ASEAS 12(2) | 137 Ario Seto, Gunnar Stange, & Susanne Schröter and illegal practices (Kreuzer, 2019; Marddent, 2019). In articulating how its machin- ery and scale operate, this issue discusses violence in four constellations of practices and discourses: (1) when violent actors operate beyond the state’s governmentality; (2) when violence is framed within an institutionalizing discourse; (3) when vio- lence functions to delineate, or, on the contrary, strengthen, borders, and legitimizes respective claims; and (4) when violence hinders the establishment of non-violent discourses. Besides these four constellations, some articles in this issue also advise that the media has played a role in influencing both the scale of violence and how vio- lence is observed. Before we discuss how the machinery and scale of violence operate corresponding with these constellations, we will look at the importance and the cur- rent need for deeper analysis of violence in Southeast Asia in the next section. NORMALCY AND CHRONICITY OF VIOLENCE Even democratic states with their established legal arms to steward order are not violence-proof. Della Porta’s (1995) rigorous study of social movements in Italy and Germany in the 1960s shows that violence is part of a repertoire of political action and cannot be isolated to a certain ideology; actors socialized in non-violent environ- ments can still fall into violence. Violence emerges in expressions that also advocate equal rights and peace, including left-wing movements. She contends that radical groups took advantage of the available resources in their environment to strengthen or reinforce their militancy, their decision to emphasize violence can be considered a rational choice. […] But the choice of radicalization was also a contingent development, for it depended on the supply of resources available to each particular movement’s organization: not surprisingly, the organizations that became most violent were those that lacked resources giving them access to the system (della Porta, 1995, p. 198). She has also recently warned that “the availability (or lack) of material and sym- bolic resources affects the choice of radical repertoire” (della Porta, 2018, p. 464). Her work in connecting violence as radical acts to resource tapping and repertoire is helpful in invigorating observations of how violence becomes a durable problem and takes place in precipitating events and endures from time to time, including in various democratic realities. The six articles in this issue correspondingly deliver similar observations about how the problem of resources and repertoires provides the texture of the violence currently enduring in Southeast Asia. However, we would like to extend the thesis. We propose that in some conditions, rather than sealing off the emergence of vio- lence, the opening to democracy and the emerging economic stability have offered new arenas of resource tapping and have allowed engineered violent confrontations to manifest out of cleavages that were tempered by previous authoritarian rule (e.g., Stange & Patock, 2010). In this context, resources play a role not because of their scarcity, but because of their availability. The growth of ethnocentric paramilitary groups and radical Islamists in Southeast Asia (Hadiz, 2016; Wilson, 2010) are two fitting examples of such violence, particularly when violence has become a common 138 | ASEAS 12(2) Editorial: Durable Violence in Southeast Asia repertoire of action, which both the state and non-state actors engage to secure their political power as a means to accrue available resources. In this setting, evolving violence cannot be confined simply by empowering the state’s agency of policing to maintain order, since, in some cases, the state and state actors are part of the com- peting groups seeking to secure the resource (e.g., Böhmelt, Bove, & Gleditsch, 2019; UNHCR, 2018). The normalcy and chronicity of violence are sustained by the emerging ideol- ogy of development, through which the state regularly imposes indisputable secu- rity to maintain order to create political stability. Located between China and India, Southeast Asia is home to the world’s fastest-growing economies, such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines, and Indonesia (OECD, 2019). A consequence of such economic development has been the introduction of cultural policies that are imagined to ensure national security and productivity, such as Vietnam’s Đổi Mới (renovation) policy, Indonesia’s Pembangunan (development) credo, and Thailand’s National Culture Act. In these policies, economic development has become a prom- inent orientation, if not an ideology, for state actors to incite expeditious stability rather than creating a laborious public sphere. The cultural program therefore often asserts nationalist sentiments and unity as the moral resources of stability and the nation’s betterment. This is where violence as a repertoire comes into play, as the state enacts strong policing to maintain order. In nonaggressive circumstances, power organizes people to internalize certain norms, such as how to be submissive to the government in the name of national unity, which is also enforced by the law and institutions of justice. Any dissatisfaction, then, is suppressed within normalcy or, as Foucault (1978) describes it, “a normalizing society is the historical outcome of a technology of power centered on life” (p. 144). Such developments provide a new opportunity to investigate the ‘old’ violence beyond its colonial history (e.g., van Klinken, 2007; Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004). We believe that most cases of violence discussed in the articles of this issue render a postcolonial problem. However, we would like to add complexity by arguing that these nation-states have the agency to come to terms with their colonial pasts, practices, and repertoires of violence. Take the Philippines as an example: Boyce (1993, p. 131) examines that development strategies crafted during the Marcos era were unsustainable and created larger social gaps, such as landlordism as a product of problematic land rights, which are prone to armed violence conducted by local entrepreneurs. In Indonesia, Suharto’s developmentalist regime imposed a military approach to suppress discontent in Aceh, Papua, and East Timor (McGibbon, 2004). Investigating the state’s relation and response to durable violence, then, involves a deeper view of how these policies influence the local historical contexts and current political contestation or discontent. Van Klinken (2007) argues that such examina- tions not only require continuous observation of political dynamics, but also cultural changes. Assessing the communal violence in the Moluccas in the early 2000s, he exemplifies that violence and conflicts in the Global South appear to be different than their counterparts in the Global North where the presence of the state and policing mechanism is more pronounced. Van Klinken (2007, pp. 9-10) warns that violence is not simply ideologically driven, but that contesting actors are entangled in “a struggle for power in a political system structured along lines of personal relationships rather ASEAS 12(2) | 139 Ario Seto, Gunnar Stange, & Susanne Schröter than formal rules” (p. 136). They are entangled in a historical patron-client loyalty rather than emancipatory expression, where they act opportunistically, rely on rum- ors rather than verified news, and have – to some degree – a relationship with state institutions. In such settings, violence becomes a lateral common reality for fostering state-building, as violence remains a powerful repertoire, both as the language of contestation and as that of the traditional relationships that configure social rela- tions between actors and interest groups in Southeast Asian countries. Accordingly, violence transcends the emergence of the modern state. These actors also under- stand the notion of crisis differently than those in Western states. As van Klinken (2007) describes, “even in the midst of such security crises, many people were still conducting politics as usual, albeit in crisis mode and of a kind considered patently abnormal in the West” (p. 10). Veena Das (2004) shares a similar observation in her study on the Indian state and extraordinary events, such as periods of communal violence. She finds that although violence as an event has ceased, the language of violence transcends the episode into the quotidian everyday life, while on the other hand, everyday life encounters provide the texture of violence. Das (2004), therefore, calls attention to the normalcy of vio- lence as a durable reality. The presence of violence in everyday life is not simply a mat- ter of practice, but also a subject of institutionalization. Based on their research on Hindu-Muslim violence and riots in a slum in Mumbai, Chatterji, and Mehta (2007) argue that the experience of violence as a “normalcy” is formed through patterns of state and institutional governance. This includes, among other practices, establish- ing government commissions to investigate the riots, the documentation of the riots in official narratives, the remaking of slum spaces, crafting redevelopment programs, and inviting other non-governmental actors, such as NGOs and civil society organi- zation, to participate in these processes. With the rising complexity of rehabilitating everyday life, members of the community eventually lose their agency, which leads to another form of structural violence. While strong administrative states, such as those in the Global North, are trained to confine violence, ASEAN states’ historical approach to violence appears to be rather one of indifference in the six cases pre- sented here. Thus, when violence becomes an intergenerational reality, the question remains: How do Southeast Asians manage to live with it? VIOLENT ACTORS AND THE STATE The conditions of abnormality and normalcy have been important dimensions for discussions of violence since they have been related to how the state, regime, or authoritative class governs or controls the population. While modern states are expected to regulate the control of law and order, it is never the case that it has the full control of order (e.g., Tilly, 2003) and engenders a situation where the state confines its power to governmentality or to the authoritative legitimation of control (Foucault, 1991). Foucault (1991) asserts that, through its government, the administrative state takes on a posture of “apparatuses of security” (p. 102), which control social and political institutions to establish order and to avoid violence. Yet, the rise of democ- racy and the administrative state does not eliminate violence. On the other hand, Mbembe (2003) and Rojas-Perez (2017) underscore that the reign of governmentality 140 | ASEAS 12(2) Editorial: Durable Violence in Southeast Asia has consolidated power, which shapes “necropolitics” – the use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how some must die (Mbembe, 2003) – where the state dominates individuals’ legitimate decision-making. In a totalitarian state, the state’s control of its citizens’ lives is utterly decisive, whereby those deemed to threaten the state’s policy or ideology will be systemati- cally incarcerated and their living conditions reduced to “bare life” (Agamben, 2005). In other state formations, state control takes shape in the state’s power to cancel a person’s citizenship, and, thus, their administrative identity, to marginalize minori- ties to those deemed to be unfit for the majority, such as LGBTQ+ groups in many countries. At large, Bourdieu (1992) contends that, when violence is suspended, the relationship between the state and its citizens, or between the ruling class and the commons, remains volatile since the latter is organized within a cultural arrange- ment – “pact of symbolic nonaggression” (p. 145) – or dominated and legitimized by the first through “symbolic violence” (pp. 145, 167). The contributions to this special issue provide evidence that extend these mentioned studies, showing how violence is durable because of its scaling ability to transcend the state-citizen boundary through which the actors involved have the capacity to operate beyond the state or the state’s legal system. There are some pat- terns in how this could be observed. The first relates to cases in which the actors represent the state, or are part of the state machinery, and obtain the legal justifica- tion to define the action as the “zone of exception” (Agamben 2003). An exemplary case in this regard is Kreuzer’s (2019) article, which depicts how the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) have the authority to shoot and kill suspected drug dealers and users as well as other crime suspects. Although the state has denounced extrajudicial killings, President Duterte’s drug war campaign and the 2016 Davao City bombing created the opportunity for the president to issue Proclamation No. 55 and Memorandum Order No. 3 released on 7 September 2016 on “violence suppression” leading to the legal approval of the use of deadly force in cases of suspected crime (Kerrigan, 2017, p. 423). The availability of legal sources to prevent, or, on the contrary, to endure violence is decisive in shaping the actions of violent actors in the zone of exception. Marddent (2019) provides a case where violence endures in Thailand’s Deep South because the non-violence values of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, which are being practiced by various actors including the state itself, is not accom- modated in the new security policy. Although the state recognizes the role of UNSCR 1325 as a guideline to enforce peacebuilding, the military – as an element of the state – seems to be indifferent, upholding its own prescription of security, which centers on the use of force and, ultimately, the use of violence as a means of conflict management. The second pattern of beyondness appears when attempts to counter violence are problematic because the actions are considered social practices and the violent situation is not recognized as an abnormality. Rydstrom’s (2019) work, for example, problematizes how violence against women in Vietnam is a chronic practice that is justified by a cultural understanding of men’s “hot temper”, even though the state has clearly stated its intent to eradicate the “social evil”. Similarly, Seto (2019) concludes that online hate speech and othering messages produced by Indonesian Islamic fun- damentalists are difficult to counter since the prosecution of religiously justified ASEAS 12(2) | 141 Ario Seto, Gunnar Stange, & Susanne Schröter expressions such as those would be considered “anti-Islam” by the masses. One of the consequences of the conditions in which violence could operate beyond the state is that the state has lost, to some degree, its legitimacy to govern. With the enduring rampant violence and public distrust of the state apparatus in Timor-Leste, Sousa (2019) exemplifies that, instead of applying formal legal procedures, customary law might help to foster the emergence of a non-violent environment. In such an example, the state apparatus does not have the power to follow up the legal case, for example against a cattle thief, as his ethnographic description shows. Even when the state is present and equipped with institutions to counter violence, violence might emerge as unintended consequences beyond its control. The contribution of Stange et al. (2019) highlights that, although internal displacement represents by far a larger challenge than cross-border displacement in Southeast Asia, scholarly attention in the past five years has mainly focused on the latter. Protracted crises as well as reoc- curring natural disasters in the region, and their oftentimes short-lived repeated presence in the media, might just be another example of how structural violence can become a “normalcy”. The cases in this issue do not imply that violent actors are above the law, but prob- lematize how state action is bounded by normative orders beyond the state’s author- ity to govern. In this context, although the work of Foucault (1991) and Mbembe (2003) are helpful in identifying how the state responds to violence, the contribu- tions exemplify that there are practices, or enduring mechanisms, such as the public acceptance of violence or discrepancy in terms of how victims are treated, that oper- ate beyond the state. Sousa’s (2019) work in this issue provides a critical case whereby the state, incapable of establishing an effective politics of reconciliation, has turned to the ritual of the sacred world to achieve legitimacy for its peacebuilding. VIOLENCE FRAMED WITHIN AN INSTITUTIONALIZING DISCOURSE The aforementioned enduring mechanism is related to how violence can become an everyday life normalcy, if not ritualized. Kreuzer (2019) shows that police officers’ deadly use of force in election years seems to decline because they are busy prevent- ing election violence. Ironically, it is through these elections that politicians who support, or are reluctant to end, the use of deadly force are elected. The relationship between violence and political cycles also emerges in Sousa’s (2019) work. His case shows an example of how, after centuries of violence and obscure frictions between political factions, the legal discourse of peacebuilding might disappear from the rep- ertoire of peacebuilding entirely. The difficulty associated with fostering non-violence is, in some cases, the result of the embeddedness of violence in the regularizing practice. Rydstrom (2019) describes that even Vietnamese women, who are within the same cohort group of the victims, do not perceive male violence against women as an anomaly. Rydstrom’s (2019) interlocutors explained that physical abuse against women is normalized within the male-female cosmology where women are expected to show feminine qualities of calm and indulgence to the adversity. Expressing an objection to domes- tic abuse could lead to a condition where society, even the same gender group, blames the victim. In one case, she exemplifies the experience of a victim who is blamed by 142 | ASEAS 12(2) Editorial: Durable Violence in Southeast Asia other women for inciting marital violence, as she had complained about her husband and was thereby perceived to have provoked him. Similarly, Seto (2019) shows that Islamic-fundamentalist violence in public space is a stick-and-carrot action to solicit religious obedience from fellow Muslims, who are rather relaxed in practicing Islam. In Thailand, Marddent (2019) depicts that bureaucratic complexity has been una- ble to change the military understanding of security. In this notion of physical and armed “security”, peace has been confined to the presence and absence of gunshots, instead of order and non-violence. On the other hand, from the perspective of the dissidents, the regularizing practice of violence is embedded in the actualization of identity, as violence is perceived to be a necessary performance to counter the Buddhist central government’s oppressive assimilation policy. Scheper-Hughes (2008) suggests that these cycles of violence represent a “contin- uum of violence”, which denotes the interconnectedness of all forms of violence and can also lead to the emergence of “extraordinary violence that is authorized, public, visible, and rewarded” (p. 81). In this continuum, the affected societies understand the normalcy of violence within a register of institutionalizing discourses: violence is placed within rudimentary notions of security (Marddent, 2019), armed encounters (Kreuzer, 2019), displacement (Stange et.al, 2019), forces of cosmology (Dương-Âm, Yang and Yin in Chinese, Rydstrom, 2019), and within the religious discipline neces- sary to prevent evil (Seto, 2019). Accordingly, the emergence of a new order that could establish non-violent val- ues would first need to contest these discourses. Marddent (2019) exemplifies that while the state has failed in securing the ecology of non-violence, grassroots women’s movements rely on Salafi discourses to provide applicable methods of peace. Yet, they remain at the periphery of peacebuilding efforts since Salafism is generally viewed as a violent discourse. Her case is therefore indicative of a stuck-in-the moment episode, in which peacebuilding actors struggle to gain recognition of their value in the nego- tiations. This presents a double-edged problem. First, the common perspective is that Islamic communities in Thailand’s Deep South, which includes the peacebuilding actors, are the usual suspects in the region’s uprising. The recognition of Salafi actors as peacemakers will tarnish this common knowledge and alter the historical record that the Thai Muslim community is a violent rebellious group – a political stance that is problematic for the Thai government and its military, whose memory glorifies the fallen soldiers in the region. Moreover, international NGOs in the region would also need to shift their understanding beyond global notions of Salafism as a threat to democracy if Salafi actors are to be welcomed into the peacebuilding discourse. Second, if Muslim women’s voices are to be included, they would first need to be accepted within the patriarchal society. An exemplary disruptive method to end the cycle of violence emerges from Sousa’s (2019) work in Timor-Leste. Since the nation has been in a constant state of violence stemming from 400 years of Portuguese colonialization, 25 years of Indonesian occupation, and early-independence civil conflicts, political elites have partly delegitimized politicians’ historical accounts and have turned towards rural- based narratives. In this peacebuilding endeavor, the traditional leader lia na`in plays the role as the personification of peacebuilding to deliver an oral history of the young nation. In that way, the political elites are also able to present a party that is less ASEAS 12(2) | 143 Ario Seto, Gunnar Stange, & Susanne Schröter entangled with the nation’s violent history. Yet, he posits this new development care- fully against the background of concerns about whether the lia na`in’s presence in state ceremonies has become a performative ritual (spiritual discourse), rather than an institutionalization of reconciliation. BORDERS AND CLAIMS The two previous constellations, namely the matters of beyondness and institu- tionalizing discourse, are related to the borders of social boundaries. As mentioned earlier, democratic opening and economic growth are often viewed as factors that help to secure development. As economic growth persists regardless of the lingering violence, there is no urgency from the state to provide comprehensive non-violent solutions to overcome discontent. This problem is well annunciated in the articles where violence takes place between those juxtaposed in social boundaries, such as the relationship between center and periphery (Marddent, 2019), against a minor- ity or marginalized group (Marddent, 2019; Rydstrom, 2019), and political groups (Kreuzer, 2019; Seto, 2019; Sousa, 2019). In these boundaries, violence takes place because a group of actors can initiate claims to denounce the recognition toward others. Claims are important to frame the act of violence. Seto’s (2019) article shows that declarations of war could be enacted by fundamentalist Muslims upholding a physical “jihad” ideology, which is perceived as their operable definition of war against fellow citizens who deviate from scriptural religious norms. The insurgen- cies in Thailand’s Deep South also exemplify similar patterns; while the locals view their actions as political expressions of social justice and identity, the center views the actions as violent contestations of national integrity. Even in a country where its political geography and ethnic diversity are relatively small, such as Timor-Leste, violence could emerge among groups with virtual rather than actual distinctions as Sousa (2019) exemplifies with the conflicts between East Timorese Westerners and East Timorese Easterners. Every state-building project offers an arena for the struggle of recognition. Accordingly, any democratic opening provides the affordance for the ontological problem of conflict. Anthony Giddens (1987) examines the nation-state as a “bordered power con- tainer”, the boundaries of which mark not only administrative provisions but also entails the authority to govern power which includes the capacity for waging war, extracting resources, policing deviance, maintaining legitimacy, and pacifying the state. Such a view of power is, however, a slippery slope since the nation is a top- down bracket of diversity. Thus, the nation has an enduring tension between identity and discontent. In this setting, claims of justified violence are used to enact iden- tity with which the declaration of conflict or war, as a claim of defending something rightful, has become a legal justification rather than an action of total control which exerts power as Giddens (1987) had hoped. Such conflicts also render the tensions between the center and the periphery. This can range from the belief that the central government is failing to recognize the periphery’s needs or to ensure the equal distribution of wealth or power, as the contributions by Marddent (2019) and Sousa (2019) show. It is often the case that the center simply views violence as a problem of identity, rather than of social justice. In 144 | ASEAS 12(2) Editorial: Durable Violence in Southeast Asia such cases, the center only appraises social issues under the guise of whether they might hamper economic development. To note, although not discussed in this issue, such chronic violence also can be found in Indonesia’s Papua provinces and in the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar. Prolonged conflicts preserve contentious politics where the conflicts also show how violence can become a currency (e.g., Liow, 2016; McCargo, 2014). While the centers urge national stability to create an environment conducive to economic development, resistance and liberation movements in the periphery view that it is only from severe violence that they can create leverage for their demands. The reaction to this is often a military solution that will only increase the severity of violence (Marddent, 2019). When claims of a right to violence cannot be broken, it risks prolonging the act of violence in other forms of violence. Kreuzer’s (2019) research finds that the lethality levels of police departments’ use of deadly force were evident during the pre-Duterte period as well as during his presidency. Yet, through his rhetoric on the war on drugs, Duterte has gained a certain political spotlight, which helped him win the cam- paign (Curato, 2017). From her interviews, Marddent (2019) found that local Malay Muslims view armed violence as a “security industry.” This is exemplified in this issue’s interview with Sidney Jones (Stange, 2019) and her criticism of the Indonesian government’s single-sided development approach to conflict management in Papua, which she contends has led to a deep entrenchment of structural violence in the region. Such settings provide violent actors with the possibility to control the scale and spatiality of violence. The risk, then, is a rollback of the pro-democratic progress that can be observed in Southeast Asia in recent years. At the same time, such processes of accumulation have convoluted the goal of enacting violence. Along the course of prolonged violence, actions follow various tra- jectories and goals are adjusted. In such settings, violence becomes a practice rather than deviant behavior, posing the risk of becoming a collective mundane experience as previously discussed. This view is an invitation to contest Riches’ (1986) argu- ment, which laments that violent actors always have choices, as they have chosen the conduct for they have calculated that it would be advantageous in dealing with the opponent. Emerging nation-states have been pacified by the opening of democracy. Yet, there are practices that are retained within their political regularities that pre- vent the total emergence of a non-violent environment. PEACEBUILDING AND ITS DISCOURSES OF ORIGIN The durability of violence impacts the creation of non-violent initiatives. When the state and its legal system displays its weakness in delivering non-violent spaces, non-violent spaces might emerge unexpectedly from below as the contributions by Rydstrom (2019), Marddent (2019), and Sousa (2019) show. Rydstrom (2019) under- lines that there is a connection between the effective local movement of “Say No to Violence” (Nói Không với Bạo lực) in Vietnam to the larger global initiative of “Say NO – UniTE to End Violence against Women” sponsored by the UN. In the case of peace- building in Thailand’s Deep South, Marddent (2019) depicts that Salafism, as a global religious discourse, has played a role in inciting one of the most effective approaches to peacebuilding. She acknowledges that Salafi actors have initiated education circles ASEAS 12(2) | 145 Ario Seto, Gunnar Stange, & Susanne Schröter to teach “spiritual healing” in mainstreaming life-security discourses. Spirituality also appears in Sousa’s (2019) work. While the Timorese doubt the state’s historical nar- rative because of its victors’ bias, it turns to the lia-na’in, the guardian of the sacred houses in the mountains, as a source of legitimacy in recounting the history of the nation, even though the latter hardly appeared as an authority on the national scale in the history of Timor-Leste. These three anthropological works advise that peacebuilding requires a convinc- ing discourse of origin. In Marddent’s (2019) and Sousa’s (2019) cases, spirituality becomes convincing because the people have witnessed that the “rational” govern- mental approach to violence has not been working for decades. And when it does work, it simply delivers the status quo. Marddent’s (2019) interlocutors believe that the Islamic notion of patience (sabr) provides a practice that is helpful for ending the cycle of violence because it is a practice to find inner peace. In Timor-Leste, lia na`in’s blessing is viewed as a spiritual union of the nation and its ancestors and “represents a unity between the people and the politicians as the personification of the state in the post-conflict nation” (Sousa, 2019 p. 218). In these cases, the spirit overcomes political differences. While Malay Muslims in Thailand and the Timorese seek out non-violent practices through their cosmologies, Vietnamese women did the oppo- site as their cosmology normalizes violence against women. In search of security, they sourced their narrative from global awareness movements. The effort to end violence against women became a convincing public discourse not simply because local women had demanded it, but because it found support in massive efforts from local organizations and NGOs along with the global #MeToo movement to recognize the problem (Rydstrom, 2019). Different from the previously mentioned discourses of peacebuilding, the work of Stange et al. (2019) shows that those who are displaced by natural disasters often only gain national, and not international, attention because natural disasters are often considered a national problem with the victims ‘only’ internally displaced. By con- trast, refugees classified as asylum seekers and stateless persons gain more academic attention because their mobility concerns at least two states. MEDIA Most of the articles in this issue address the role that media has played in the creation of violence and non-violent initiatives. As mentioned earlier, the national awareness to end abuse against women in Vietnam has seized on the crucial momentum of the #MeToo movement (Rydstrom, 2019). Sousa (2019) also notes that media has a cer- tain interest in covering official ceremonies, such as with Dada Ikas (withdrawing the oath) and Loke Dalan (opening the way), when lia na`in are present. On the contrary, Seto (2019) presents a case that digital media becomes a useful scape for Indonesian Islamic fundamentalists to encroach on public space and to gain new followers. It is exactly because of the circulation of problematic online content, such as bigotry and hate speech, that the Islamists could defeat the Christian incumbent in Jakarta’s Gubernatorial election, even though the latter was predicted to win. The outstanding work of Kreuzer (2019) in this issue demonstrates that the role of media is not confined to the representation of actors, but as the source of verifiable 146 | ASEAS 12(2) Editorial: Durable Violence in Southeast Asia quantitative data. Since the state does not provide credible data, he mined reports of the use of deadly force by police from various news sites. With such a rich data set, he imposes that violence should be measured to observe its intensity and its lethality. In one of his findings, he exemplifies that “given a large number of armed encounters, the absence or extraordinarily low numbers of killed or wounded police-officers, sig- nals [actually] excessive violence” (Kreuzer, 2019, p. 153). CONCLUSION Throughout the articles in this issue, we seek to reconstruct the current contours of violence in Southeast Asia. The articles in these issues advise that durable vio- lence operates through machinery, may that be through the state apparatus (Kreuzer, 2019; Marddent, 2019), (legal) discourse (Kreuzer, 2019; Marddent, 2019; Stange et al., 2019), cultural praxis (Rydstrom, 2019), or unresolved frictions of civil groups (Seto, 2019; Sousa, 2019). These machineries operate in certain constellations through which violence could be reproduced as repertoires and a problem of resources. Thus, violence could be studied through inquiries that focus on: (1) questions of how vio- lence creates new opportunities in institutionalizing movements and networks; (2) how violence is institutionalized; (3) the transferability of ideologies and violent dis- courses across spatial and temporal boundaries; (4) the weakness of civil society; (5) the ambiguous role of the state; and (6) the precarious transformations that transpire when political orders are being contested. It is against the background of durability that questions about the scale and transferability of violence emerges, which requires investigations of the steward- ship of local culture, institution, and power. This issue, therefore, seeks to initiate a discussion of how violence operates on different scales through possible machinery. Violence in this context is not simply an outcome of tension but a mechanism that actors and organizations deploy to stabilize their struggles, which eventually makes peacebuilding or democratic projects volatile.  REFERENCES Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Arendt, H. (1970). On violence. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company. Association of Southeast Asian Nations. (2016). ASEAN regional plan of action on elimination of vio- lence against children. Retrieved from https://asean.org/?static_post=asean-regional-plan-action- elimination-violence-children-asean-rpa-evac Böhmelt, T., Bove, V., & Gleditsch, K. S. (2019). Blame the victims? Refugees, state capacity, and non-state actor violence. Journal of Peace Research, 56(1), 73–87. Bourdieu, P. (1992). Language, gender, and symbolic violence. In P. Bourdieu, & J. D. Wacquant (Eds.), Invi- tation to reflexive sociology (pp. 140-173). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Boyce, J.K. (1993). The political economy of growth and impoverishment in the Marcos Era. Honolulu: Univer- sity of Hawaii Press. Chatterji, R., & Mehta, D. (2007). Living with violence: An anthropology of events and everyday life. New Delhi: Routledge. ASEAS 12(2) | 147 Ario Seto, Gunnar Stange, & Susanne Schröter Curato, N. (2017). Flirting with authoritarian fantasies? Rodrigo Duterte and the new terms of Philippine populism. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 47(1), 142-153. Das, V. (2004). The signature of the state: The paradox of illegibility. In V. Das, & D. Poole (Eds.), Anthropo- logy in the margins of the state (pp. 225-52). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. della Porta, D. (2018). Radicalization: A relational perspective. Annual Review of Political Science (21), 461- 474. della Porta, D. (1995). Social movements, political violence, and the state: A comparative analysis of Italy and Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (pp. 87–104). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Giddens, A. (1987). The nation-state and violence. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hadiz, V.R. (2016). Islamic populism in Indonesia and the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerrigan, H. (2017). Historic documents of 2016. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Kreuzer, P. (2019). Police use of deadly force in the Philippines: Comparing levels and patterns before and since Duterte. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 12(2), 149-166. Liow, J.C. (2016). Religion and nationalism in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marddent, A. (2019). Religious discourse and gender security in southern Thailand. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 12(2), 225-247. Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11-40. McCargo, D. (2014). Southern Thailand: From conflict to negotiations. Lowy Institute for International Policy. Retrieved from http://www.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/mccargo_southern-thailand_0_0.pdf McGibbon, R. (2004). Secessionist challenges in Aceh and Papua: Is special autonomy the solution? Washing- ton: East-West Center. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2019). Economic outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India 2019. Towards smart urban transportation. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/deve- lopment/asia-pacific/01_SAEO2019_Overview_WEB.pdf Rojas-Perez, I. (2017). Mourning remains: State atrocity, exhumations, and governing the disappeared in Peru’s postwar Andes. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Rydstrom, H. (2019). Machinery of male violence: Embodied properties and chronic crisis amongst part- ners in Vietnam. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 12(2), 167-185. Scheper-Hughes, N. (2008). Whose violence? Death in America – A California triptych. Social Anthropology, 16(1), 77-82. Scheper-Hughes, N., & Bourgois, P. (2004). Introduction: Making sense of violence. In N. Scheper-Hughes, & P. Bourgois (Eds.), Violence in war and peace (pp.1–32). Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Seto, A. (2019). Islamist buzzers: Message flooding, offline outreach, and astroturfing. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 12(2), 187-208. Sousa, L. (2019). State appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in Timor-Leste. Austrian Jour- nal of South-East Asian Studies, 12(2), 209-223. Stange, G., Sakdapolrak, P., Sasiwongsaroj, K., & Kourek, M. (2019). Forced migration in Southeast Asia – A brief overview of current research. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 12(2), 249-265. Stange, G., & Patock, R. (2010). From Rebels to Rulers and Legislators: The Political Transformation of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Indonesia. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 29(1), 95–120. Susanto, A. (2015, April 2 ). Buku teroris: awas, buku ajarkan bunuh-membunuh ini beredar ke SMA Situ- bondo. Solopos.com. Retrived from http://disq.us/t/3j0rh8n The Asia Foundation. (2017). The state of conflict and violence in Asia. Retrieved from https://asiafoundati- on.org/publication/state-conflict-violence-asia/ Tilly, C. (2003). The politics of collective violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 148 | ASEAS 12(2) Editorial: Durable Violence in Southeast Asia True, J. (2017). Conflict in Asia and the role of gender-based violence. In The Asia Foundation (ed.), The Sta- te of Conflict and Violence in Asia (pp. 230-236). Retrieved from https://asiafoundation.org/publication/ state-conflict-violence-asia/ United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2018). Rohingya emergency. Retrieved from http:// www.unhcr.org/rohingya-emergency.html van Klinken, G. (2007). Communal Violence and Democratization in Indonesia: Small town wars. Abingdon: Routledge. Vigh, H. (2008). Crisis and chronicity: Anthropological perspectives on continuous conflict and decline. Ethnos, 73(1), 5-24. Wilson,  I. (2010). The rise and fall of political gangsters in Indonesian democracy. In E. Aspinall, & M. Mietzner (Eds.), Problems of democratization in Indonesia: Elections, institutions and society (pp. 199–218). Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.  ABOUT THE AUTHORS Ario Seto is a postdoctoral researcher and media anthropologist at the Collaborative Research Center “Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes,” Goethe University Frankfurt, Ger- many. His recent book Netizenship: Activism and Online Community Transformation in Indone- sia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) details the disciplining practices and ethics in shaping militant netizens. ► Contact: seto@em.uni-frankfurt.de Gunnar Stange is a post-doctoral researcher in the research group Population Geography and Demography at the Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria. His research interests include peace and conflict studies, development studies, and forced migration studies. His regional focus is on Southeast Asia. ► Contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at Susanne Schröter is a professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, and founder as well as director of the Frankfurt Re- search Center on Global Islam. She is also a principal investigator at the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”. Her research interests include political Islam, Islamic extremism, the transformation of gender orders, and religious, political, and ethnic conflicts. ► Contact: s.schroeter@em.uni-frankfurt.de ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This issue was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) as part of the funding for the Collaborative Research Center 1095 “Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes”, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. The editors would like to thank Macario Lacbawan Jr., Janine Murphy, Katja Rieck, Karl Valent, the editorial board of ASEAS as well as the anonymous reviewers for their highly valuable contributions to this issue. work_5j4cyrxokbaivfqgmbcdggsop4 ---- Welcome | EQUELLA guest EQUELLA Welcome No institutions exist on this server Administer server Thank you for using EQUELLA Home | Privacy | Credits RSSTwitter© 2015 Pearson work_5j6eymenxff4zd2dblrz3tfcea ----                City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Gill, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-2715-1867 (2018). Not all creatives are created equal. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(8), pp. 526-527. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0392-6 This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/21281/ Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0392-6 Copyright and reuse: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ publications@city.ac.uk City Research Online http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ mailto:publications@city.ac.uk Subject codes Scientific community and society / Social sciences / Psychology / Human behaviour [URI /706/689/477/2811] Scientific community and society / Scientific community / Publishing / Media [URI /706/648/479/305] Scientific community and society / Social sciences / Sociology [URI /706/689/523] Scientific community and society / Social sciences / Society [URI /706/689/522] Scientific community and society / Scientific community / Culture / Arts [URI /706/648/126/30] Scientific community and society / Social sciences / Culture / Arts [URI /706/689/126/30] Standfirst Revelations of sexual harassment, sexism and unequal pay in film and broadcasting have called ‘time’s up’ on the myths of egalitarianism that circulate about the creative sector, argues Rosalind Gill. Pull out comment Arguably…inequality in our cultural industries is even more troubling than in other fields Our cultural fields are not as equal as they think For people interested in equality, diversity and social justice in the workplace, the cultural and creative industries present a curious paradox. On one hand, much evidence indicates that fields such as advertising, architecture and design, broadcasting, film and new media are sites of stark and persistent inequalities, in which women, people from black and minority ethnic (BAME) groups and from poorer backgrounds are often under-represented, paid less and concentrated in less highly valued areas compared with men, white people and those from more privileged socioeconomic groups. Yet on the other hand, these same fields are deeply invested in egalitarian values, are hostile to hierarchies, and present themselves as open, tolerant and based on democratic and meritocratic principles. As I was told on numerous occasions doing fieldwork among media workers: ‘it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, black or white, gay or straight, as long as you’re creative’. What recent scandals have shown, however—from ‘MeToo’ to the BBC’s record of unequally rewarding male and female talent—is that it clearly does matter and, moreover, that our ‘creative’ fields are no better (and possibly a lot worse) than other fields such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), where gender inequality is better recognised and where programmes are in place to challenge it. Focussing on gender, and taking the film industry as an example, it is evident that almost whatever indicator is examined—from pay, to seniority, to security of tenure—women fare significantly less well than men. There are, of course, exceptions but the data is compelling. There is horizontal segregation, with women concentrated in some roles (make-up and wardrobe, for example) and men in others (sound and lighting). But there is also vertical segregation, which becomes stark at the top in key creative roles. For nearly twenty years, a California-based research team lead by Martha Lauzen has tracked the employment of women behind the scenes in the top-grossing 250 films produced in Hollywood. The Celluloid Ceiling report for 2017 (https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp- content/uploads/2017/01/2016_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf) revealed that women made up only 17% of directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers, a drop of 2% from the previous year. In terms of directors, women were only 7%, again representing a reduction from the previous year, and thus contesting optimistic accounts that things are slowly getting better. Expressed differently, 92% of the 250 top Hollywood films were directed only by men. The picture in the UK is similar, and further highlights the inverse relationship between a film’s budget and the likelihood of a woman being employed in any of the key creative positions. These figures are sobering in their own right, representing a great loss of talent and potential, particularly considering that women and men graduate from film school in equal numbers and express similar desires for their working lives afterward graduation. However, it is also disturbing for another reason: namely that film is a storytelling medium that shapes which narratives and whose narratives and voices we see and hear. Arguably, for this reason, inequality in our cultural industries is even more troubling than in other fields. https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2016_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2016_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf Researchers have become more adept at measuring the impact that employment inequality can have on the nature or content of films, from the famous ‘Bechdel Test’—in which films were evaluated on whether they had more than one female character who spoke to another woman about something other than a man—to sophisticated measures of the screen time or speaking time of female and male characters. There is clear evidence that female actors and characters are less disadvantaged in films with female creatives behind the camera. Similarly, research from Directors UK in 2016 (https://d29dqxe14uxvcr.cloudfront.net/generic_file_content_rows/file_1s/000/002/703/o riginal/Cut_Out_of_The_Picture_-_Report.pdf?1462534821) shows there are ‘symbiotic’ benefits in that female creatives tend to be more likely to hire women than male creatives. Why, though, is inequality so entrenched in our creative professions—from art and architecture to publishing, film and television? The conventional explanation is that motherhood is the issue. As industry bodies such as Skillset note, our societies are not set up for people who may need to work round the clock at times, then have no work at all for several months; nurseries are not open for someone who needs to leave for a shoot at 4AM. Yet these factors also affect men who become fathers, but who rarely pay a penalty in this way. Moreover, such an argument does not account for the large number of women in arts and media professions who do not have children but are still under-represented in positions of authority. Another potential explanation focuses on the informality of many of the ‘employers’ in these fields—film, for example, is organised around project teams that are often pulled together at short notice. In this context, ‘homophilly’—appointing in one’s own image— comes to the fore, as well as falling back on one’s ‘contacts’, who are also likely to be ‘people like you’. Unconscious bias clearly plays into this, especially in the context of hiring practices that do not depend on a formal record of achievement (e.g. qualifications, resumé) and are more likely based on by word of mouth judgments (e.g. ‘he’s good to work with’ versus ‘she can be difficult’). Deborah Jones and Judith Pringle have coined the term ‘unmanageable inequalities’ to talk about forms of inequality that exist and are reproduced outside the formal apparatuses (e.g. Equal Opportunities legislation) that have been put in place to deal with fairness in the workplace. https://d29dqxe14uxvcr.cloudfront.net/generic_file_content_rows/file_1s/000/002/703/original/Cut_Out_of_The_Picture_-_Report.pdf?1462534821 https://d29dqxe14uxvcr.cloudfront.net/generic_file_content_rows/file_1s/000/002/703/original/Cut_Out_of_The_Picture_-_Report.pdf?1462534821 It may be also that the myth of egalitarianism, to which people in cultural and creative fields are so attached, is itself part of the problem, because it obscures inequalities or presents them as the outcome of differential individual merit. During the 2000s it seemed as if inequalities had become not just unmanageable but also unspeakable, producing strange affective dissonances for me as a researcher as I was told again and again how open, equal and diverse workplaces were, even when this contradicted the evidence of both my own eyes and reliable data. One of the most surreal experiences was being told how ‘multi-culti’ the staff of a large new media company was, while surveying a large open-plan space filled almost exclusively with white people. As my interviews attest, a profound investment in meritocracy can, and does, sit alongside acknowledgements that other factors are in fact crucial to success (eg, ‘it’s all down to who you know’). For women I interviewed, chosing not to talk about inequality was sometimes a strategic decision; I was told ‘you don’t talk about gender if you want to get on’. In this sense, ‘MeToo’, ‘TimesUp’ and the eloquent activism of Carrie Gracie and others in exposing the ‘secretive’ pay culture of the BBC, offers hope in breaking the silence and challenging the myth of egalitarianism in our creative professions. For it is only when we begin to acknowledge how unequal our cultural industries are that we can truly start to work on challenging this. Rosalind Gill is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, Department of Sociology, City University of London, London EC1V 0HB. Email Rosalind.Gill.2@city.ac.uk Competing interests The author declares no competing interests. mailto:Rosalind.Gill.2@city.ac.uk work_5nzod3kj5rhuvgp3vc3ea4c33m ---- 317 om a sil m ag a Eesti Arst 2020; 99(5):317–319 Mesenteriaalveeni tromboos Liina Uudam – TÜ Kliinikumi radioloogiakliinik H a i g U sJU H T 23aastane naine pöördus erakorraliseks konsultatsiooniks perearsti poole. Prob- leemiks oli 6 päeva kestnud kõhuvalu, mis oli kahel v iimasel päeval ägenenud. Valu oli olnud pidev, öine uni oli häiritud. Iivel- dust, oksendamist ega palavikku ei olnud esi nenud. Ur i neer i m isega probleeme ei olnud. Kõht oli käinud läbi viimati eelmisel päeval, väljaheite vär v us ega konsistents ei olnud muutunud. Perearsti vastuvõtul kaebas patsient valu naba ümbruses kesk- kõhus, aeg-ajalt tundis valu ka vasakul ja paremal pool kõhus. Patsient ol i sisenenud arsti v ast uvõ- t u r uu m i kõht u k i n n i hoides ja k üü r us. Palpatoorselt esines tal terav valu McBurney punkti kohal, lisaks kerge lihaste kaitse- pi nge nabapi i rkon na s. Perea rst suu na s patsiendi erakorralise meditsiini osakonda (EMO) lisauuringuteks ja apenditsiidi välis- tamiseks. Patsient oli umbes ühe aasta jooksul kasutanud rasestumisvastase vahendina Nuvaringi, muid ravimeid igapäevaselt ta ei tar v itanud. A nam neesis oli tal alates lapsepõlvest rauavaegusaneemia ja sellega seoses soov itatud võtta rauapreparaate, kuid patsient neid ei tar vitanud. Ravimi- allergiat patsient eitas ja operatsioone tal ei olnud tehtud. Suitsetanud oli ta umbes 7 pak kaastat ( kuni 10 sigaretti päevas), alkoholi tarvitanud maksimaalselt pokaal veini päevas. EMOs objektiivse leiu kirjeldus: patsient teadv usel, kontaktne, rahuldavas üldsei- sundis. Hemodünaamiliselt stabiilne, süda- metöö normofrekventne. Saturatsioon 99%. Palav ik uvaba. Kõht pehme, palpatoorne valulikkus üla- ja alakõhus paremal. Peri- toneaalärritusnähte ei ole. Verea n a lüü sides ol i m i k rot süt aa r ne hüpokroomne aneemia hemoglobiinisisal- dusega 112 g/ l, C-reaktiivse valgu sisaldus suurenenud väärtuseni 23 mg/ l. Muus osas kõrvalekaldeid laboratoorsetes analüüsides pöördumise päeval ei leitud. Apenditsiidi kahtluse tõttu tehti ultra- heli- ( UH ) uuring kõhukoopast, kus paren- hümatoossed elundid olid iseärasusteta. Pilt 1. Nabast allpool paremal oli alumise õõnesveeni ees (pildil tähistatud ristikestega) paksuseinaline tubulaarne struktuur, mille läbimõõt on 0,88 cm ning mis on kas ebatüüpilise asukohaga paksenenud seinaga ussripik või veen, milles on tromb. + + 318 om a sil m ag a Eesti Arst 2020; 99(5):317–319 Kõhu koopa s ol id nor m a a l se suu r u seg a ja tavapärase rasv väratiga lümf isõlmed. P a r e m a l a l a kõhu s ol i ve id i v ab a ve d e - likku. Nabast allpool paremal oli alumise õõnesveeni ees paksuseinaline tubulaarne struktuur läbimõõduga 0,88 cm (v t pilt 1), mis UH-anduriga ei olnud kokku surutav ja millel motoorika puudus. Piirkond oli anduriga vajutades valulik. Sellel tubulaarsel struktuuril polnud algusosa ega lõpposa visualiseeritav, sest jäi osaliselt soolegaasi varju. Ultraheliuuringu alusel jäi kahtlus kas ebat üüpil ise asu kohaga apend itsiid i või veenitromboosi suhtes. Leiu täpsusta m isek s tehti K T-uuring kontrastainega parenhümatoosses faasis, kus v isualiseerus v. mesenterica superior ( V MS), mis omakorda jagunes kaheks ja mille parempoolses harus oli tromb, mis ulatus VMS-ni (v t pilt 2 ja 3). Tromboseerunud veeni ümber oli rasv- k ude i n f i ltreer it ud. V MSi v asa k poolsed harud kontrasteerusid tavapäraselt. Väikses vaagnas oli vähest vaba vedelikku, muus osas oli leid iseärasusteta. Patsient hospitaliseeriti erakorraliselt sisehaiguste osakonda esmase ägeda mesen- teriaalveeni-tromboosi ( MV T ) tõttu ja tal alustati antikoagulantravi. Kirurgilist ravi patsient ei vajanud. Täiendavalt võeti analüüsid kaasasün- dinud ja pärilikele trombofiiliate võima- lu s e h i nd a m i s e k s . E si ne s v ä he ne v ab a S-valgu sisalduse vähenemine, mis võis olla mõjutat ud kombi neer it ud hor monaa lse rasestumisvastase vahendi kasutamisest ja kasvajaantigeeni CA 15-3 sisalduse suure- nemine seoses suitsetamisega. Perekonnas polnud tromboose olnud. Geenianalüüsis leiti heterosügootsena protrombiini geenis c.*97G>A (vana n imet usega c.20210G>A) mutatsioon ja metüleentetrahüdrofolaadi reduktaasi ( MTHFR) geenis heterosügoot- sena c.665C>T (vana nimetusega 677C>T ) mu u t u s . P r o t r o m b i i n i ge e n i mu u t u s e suhtes heterosügootidel on veenitromboosi risk suurenenud 2 kuni 5 korda võrreldes tavarahvastikuga. Leitud MTHFR genotüüp on s eot ud M T H FR en s üü m i a k t i i v s u s e vähenemisega, mis võib põhjustada kerget hüperhomotsüstei neem iat. JA K 2 geen is muutust p.V617F ei detekteeritud. Ku n a 3-k uu möödu m i sel a nt i koag u- lantravi alustamisest patsiendil kaebused puudusid ja kordus-UH-uuringul mesente- riaalveresoonte oletatavas lokalisatsioonis valendikku täitvaid trombimasse nähtavale ei tulnud, lõpetati antikoagulantravi. Kirjeldatud juhtumi puhul olid veeni- tromboosi riskiteguriteks kombineeritud hormonaalse rasestumisvastase vahendi k a s u t a m i n e , s u i t s e t a m i n e (u m b e s 7 pak kaastat) ja geneetiline eelsoodumus. Patsiendil soovitati loobuda suitsetamisest ja pöörduda günekoloogi vastuvõtule, et valida sobilik rasestumisvastane vahend. Endoskoopi l i s tes t uu r i ng utes t keeldu s p at sie nt kor du v a lt . So ov it at u d jä lg id a B12-vitamiini, foolhappe ja homotsüsteiini sisaldust seerumis. Edaspidi on näidustatud tromboosi profülaktika pikema immobilisat- Pilt 2. Tärniga (*) on märgistatud v. me- senterica superior’i (VMS) tromboseerunud osa ja VMSi mittekontrasteeruvad harud. Noolega on märgistatud VMSi kontrastee- ruv osa. Pilt 3. Tärniga (*) on märgistatud v. mesenterica superior (VMS), mille valendikus on hüpodensne tromb. * * * ** 319 om a sil m ag a Eesti Arst 2020; 99(5):317–319 siooni (nt haiglaravi, rohkem kui 4tunnised lennureisid) ajal. a R U T E l U Me s e nte r i a a l ve e n i t r omb o o s on h a r v a e s i n e v, k u i d p o t e n t s i a a l s e l t e l u o h t l i k haigus. Ägeda mesenteriaalveeni-tromboosi tõt t u verevool aeglust ub ja suurenenud venoosne rõhk võib põhjustada sooleseina turset ja submukoosset hemorraagiat. Kui sooleseina venoosne äravool on täielikult takistatud, tekib sooleinfarkt. Sagedasimad MVT teket soodustavad tegurid on hiljutine kõhupiirkonna operatsioon, infektsioon, trombofiilia ja pahaloomulised haigused (v t tabel 1). KT-uuring kontrastainega on mesente- riaalveeni tromboosi diagnostiline valik- meetod, sest sellega on võimalik visualisee- rida veenisisest täitumisdefekti ja hinnata, k a s on tek k i nud soolesei n a i sheem ia le v i itav leid, nä itek s soolesei na pa k sene- mine, pneumatoos ja õhk portaalveenides. A nt i ko a g u l a nt r a v i kohe ne a lu s t a m i ne parandab elulemust (1). Antikoagulantraviga rekanaliseeruvad tromboseerunud mesen- teriaalveenid enamikul juhtudel ( kuni üle 80%) (2). Kirurgiline rav i on vajalik, kui on tekkinud sooleinfarkt, perforatsioon ja peritoniit. Kirjeldatud patsiendil ei tekkinud sooleinfarkti, kuna venoosne äravool toimus osaliselt kollateraalide kaudu VMSi, mille valendik oli hargnemise kohal vaid osaliselt tromboseerunud. TÄ N U AVA L D U S Tänan nõuannete eest Ingrid L auri, Pilvi Ilvest ja Tiina Kahret. K I R JA N D U S 1. Singal AK, Kamath PS, Tefferi A. Mesenteric venous thrombosis. Mayo Clin Proc Mayo Clin 2013;88:285 –94. 2. Condat B, Pessione F, Denninger HM, Hillaire S, Valla D. Recent por tal or mesenteric venous thrombosis: increased recogni- tion and frequent recanalization on anticoagulant therapy. Hepatology 2000;32:466 –70. Tabel 1. Mesenteriaalveeni tromboosi põhjused (1) Trombofiilia Pärilik - C- või S-valgu puudulikkus - Leideni V faktori mutatsioon - Antitrombiini puudulikkus - Protrombiini geeni mutatsioon (c.20210G>A) - Metüleentetrahüdrofolaadi reduktaasi (MTHFR) geeni mutatsioon Omandatud - Hematoloogilised põhjused Polütsüteemia Müelofibroos Trombotsüteemia JAK2 geeni mutatsioon Antifosfolipiidantikehade sündroom Paroksüsmaalne öine hemoglobinuuria - Mittehematoloogilised põhjused Pahaloomulised haigused Kombineeritud hormonaalsed rasestumisvastased vahendid Rasedus Nefrootiline sündroom Hüperhomotsüsteineemia Lokaalsed tegurid, mis põhjustavad veresooneseina kahjustust - Põletikulised haigused Pankreatiit Põletikuline soolehaigus Divertikuliit Peritoniit Apenditsiit - Intra-abdominaalsed operatsioonid - Kõhupiirkonna trauma Staas - Kongestiivne splenomegaalia - Tsirroos - Kongestiivne südamepuudulikkus Idiopaatiline work_5ns2nmeptfdtrkw5tdrrj7qkmu ---- What Zombie Feminist Bouffons Can Offer Applied Theatre: Seduction and Provocation in Death Married My Daughter All Rights Reserved ©, 2019 Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales au Canada Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. 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Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 20:56 Theatre Research in Canada Recherches théâtrales au Canada What Zombie Feminist Bouffons Can Offer Applied Theatre: Seduction and Provocation in Death Married My Daughter Yasmine Kandil et Michelle MacArthur Volume 39, numéro 2, 2018 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1058044ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1058044ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama, University of Toronto ISSN 1196-1198 (imprimé) 1913-9101 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Kandil, Y. & MacArthur, M. (2018). What Zombie Feminist Bouffons Can Offer Applied Theatre: Seduction and Provocation in Death Married My Daughter. Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales au Canada, 39(2). https://doi.org/10.7202/1058044ar Résumé de l'article Partant d’une déclaration par Adrian Jackson, chercheur en théâtre appliqué, selon laquelle un mélange de séduction et de provocation est essentiel au succès du théâtre d’intervention authentique, Yasmine Kandil et Michelle MacArthur cherchent au-delà du théâtre-forum traditionnel un modèle pour cette pratique. Dans leur analyse de la pièce bouffonne Death Married My Daughter de Danya Buonastella et Nina Gilmour, Kandil et MacArthur se servent de recherches en théâtre appliqué et en études féministes pour se demander à quoi peut ressembler l’engagement et l’intervention du public en cette époque troublée qui est la nôtre. Le jeu bouffon employé par les interprètes leur permettrait de séduire et de provoquer l’auditoire, de faire ressentir de l’empathie pour les personnages, d’exposer la présence d’idéologies néolibérales et postféministes dans le quotidien des femmes et de faire participer le public à un projet de changement sociopolitique. Kandil et MacArthur font valoir que les praticiens du théâtre appliqué pourraient tirer des leçons du théâtre qui n’appelle pas à l’intervention directe dans l’action sur scène mais qui oblige tout de même son auditoire à sortir de son rôle confortable et passif d’observateur. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/tric/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1058044ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1058044ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/tric/2018-v39-n2-tric04442/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/tric/ ARTICLES 156 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC What Zombie Feminist Bouffons Can Offer Applied Theatre: Seduction and Provocation in Death Married My Daughter YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR Starting from applied theatre scholar Adrian Jackson’s assertion that a combination of seduction and provocation is crucial to the success of authentic intervention in theatre for social change, this article looks outside of traditional Forum Theatre for a model of this practice. Using Danya Buonastella and Nina Gilmour’s bouffon clown show Death Married My Daughter as its case study, this article draws on scholarship in the areas of applied theatre and feminist theory to examine what audience engagement and intervention might look like in the unsettling times in which we live. The performers’ use of bouffon seduces and provokes their audience in order to elicit empa- thy for the characters, expose the presence of neoliberal and postfeminist ideologies in women’s lives, and implicate their audience in a project of socio-political change. The article concludes by suggesting what applied theatre practitioners could learn from theatre that does not require direct intervention in the action on stage but nevertheless pushes the audience out of a com- fortable, passive spectatorship. Partant d’une déclaration par Adrian Jackson, chercheur en théâtre appliqué, selon laquelle un mélange de séduction et de provocation est essentiel au succès du théâtre d’intervention authen- tique, Yasmine Kandil et Michelle MacArthur cherchent au-delà du théâtre-forum traditionnel un modèle pour cette pratique. Dans leur analyse de la pièce bouffonne Death Married My Daughter de Danya Buonastella et Nina Gilmour, Kandil et MacArthur se servent de recherches en théâtre appliqué et en études féministes pour se demander à quoi peut ressembler l’engagement et l’in- tervention du public en cette époque troublée qui est la nôtre. Le jeu bouffon employé par les interprètes leur permettrait de séduire et de provoquer l’auditoire, de faire ressentir de l’empathie pour les personnages, d’exposer la présence d’idéologies néolibérales et postféministes dans le quotidien des femmes et de faire participer le public à un projet de changement sociopolitique. Kandil et MacArthur font valoir que les praticiens du théâtre appliqué pourraient tirer des leçons du théâtre qui n’appelle pas à l’intervention directe dans l’action sur scène mais qui oblige tout de même son auditoire à sortir de son rôle confortable et passif d’observateur. S YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 157TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 156-173 • Zombie Feminist Bouffons “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.” —Desdemona, Death Married My Daughter While Desdemona’s conclusion at the end of Death Married My Daughter might sound famil- iar to audience members versed in second wave radical feminism, Valerie Solanas’s famed 1967 SCUM Manifesto (for Society for Cutting Up Men) takes on new meaning when recited within the context of young performers Danya Buonastella and Nina Gilmour’s bouffon clown show. Set in present day, Death Married My Daughter finds Desdemona and Ophelia returning from the afterlife to settle old scores. It is hard to ignore their physical appearance: two women who seem to be disfigured in some way, crawling across the stage for their entrance. They are missing teeth, and their hair is a jumbled mess (the performers wear several wigs that are mangled to create the effect of looking decrepit). Their clothes are torn and worn out. They look as though they have been plucked from the earth, where they had been rotting for hundreds of years; they are effectively zombie incarnations of their Shakespearean selves. Using parody, mockery, and other techniques of bouffon clown, these two women take the audience on a wild journey denouncing men, patriarchy, and the sexist world that has permitted their tormentors (Othello and Hamlet) to become the heroes of their respective tragedies. Premiering in 2013 at the Toronto Fringe Festival and touring Ontario in the years that followed, Death Married My Daughter reacts to the swelling conservative sentiment of the 2010s and invokes the spirit of social-political movements from decades earlier. Calling itself a “catharsis,” the show enlists its audience’s help in seeking justice and relief for its Shakespearean heroines and toppling the structural causes of their oppression. In a promo- tional YouTube video for a 2013 performance in Hamilton, Ontario, the clowns ask, “Why should Hamiltonians come to see us? Well, if you care about humanity, about time and place, about women and men—and Desdemona and Ophelia of course—you must come!” Though defying generic confines, in its appeal to empathy, its performance strategies, and its call to action, Death Married My Daughter recalls practices of both applied theatre and feminist theatre. Yet, as a show produced by emerging artists during “a new moment in political life” marked by “waves of misogyny, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and xenophobic nationalism,” its employment of these practices is markedly distinct (Gill, “The Affective” 608-09). Members of a generation described by Rosalind Gill as “young women raised on stories of ‘girl power,’ ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’” (609), Buonastella and Gilmour use their art to work through the contradictions pervading these “dangerous and fright- ening times” (608), when the gains of social justice movements are increasingly eroded by neoliberal economics and conservative politics, and when messages of empowerment circu- late alongside oppressive discourses and policies. In this article we examine the production through the intersecting scholarship of applied theatre and feminist theory, two approaches to engaging with theatre for social change that we believe are vital in addressing the times we live in at present. We argue that while Death Married My Daughter does not conform to the typical makings of an applied theatre production, it serves as a model for how theatre YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 158 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC of this kind can do the work of social change, specifically through the show’s realization of Adrian Jackson’s concept of seduction and provocation. Using bouffon clown to draw the audience’s empathy before rousing their discontent, the play exposes the harmful inter- twining of postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies in women’s lives and positions feminist collective action as an antidote. After establishing the importance of applied theatre and feminist theory to the immediacy of this work, we examine how Buonastella and Gilmour skillfully use mockery, parody, and irony to implement Jackson’s notions of seduction and provocation. We conclude by suggesting that tackling issues in a playful, unapologetic manner (essentially invoking the method of bouffon) might offer a new passage for applied theatre makers to master the skill proposed by Jackson, and in so doing, present a method of active engagement with the audience. Where Applied Theatre and Feminist Theory Intersect The practice of applied theatre has a long history of creating opportunities for theatre prac- titioners, consumers of the theatre, non-theatre folk, and community members to come together to dialogue, respond to an issue, celebrate an event or a group of people, or become informed about a topic of importance to those performing or those witnessing the perfor- mance (audiences). A great power of this practice is its ability to connect people who might have never come together otherwise and who might have never thought to encounter the arts in this manner. James Thompson addresses this practice’s potential for social change, in particular when it involves marginalized communities: Applied Theatre is a participatory theatre created by people who would not usually make theatre. It is, I would hope, a practice by, with and for the excluded and mar- ginalised. It is, at its best, a theatre that translates and adapts to the unfamiliar. It is a theatre wedded to vital issues and one that values debate. In circumstances where celebratory escapism is dominant, it can be the theatre of serious enquiry. (15-16) One of the most prolific genres of applied theatre is Theatre of the Oppressed, cre- ated by Brazilian director Augusto Boal (1979), and based on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968). As a practice, Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is concerned with bringing to the surface dynamics of oppression that exist in participants’ lives but that they have stopped questioning or felt too powerless to fight back against. Both TO and its central technique Forum Theatre have been widely used around the world to challenge injustice by awakening people’s spirits to resist oppression. As applied theatre scholar Ann Elizabeth Armstrong points out, in its commitment to social justice and implicit “understanding that oppression can be transformed and that victimhood is not inevitable” (179) TO shares common ground with feminist theory. Gesturing to the rich history of theatre for social change work by feminist practitioners and scholars, Armstrong argues that “[t]he work of feminism and TO relies upon the analysis of contradiction, a Marxist dialectical process in which transformation occurs through struggle and conflict” (178). Both TO and feminist theory offer important tools to examine oppressive dynamics and move toward transformation through collective action. Indeed, in this “new moment in YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 159TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 156-173 • Zombie Feminist Bouffons political life” (Gill, “The Affective” 608), TO’s emphasis on mobilizing groups of “spect-ac- tors” offers an antidote to the individualizing forces of neoliberalism, while feminist theory offers a way to analyze and challenge the gendered power dynamics that emerge from this paradigm. As feminist scholars such as Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff have pointed out, neoliberalism is not just a political-economic theory—broadly defined as “a mode of political and economic rationality characterized by privatization, deregulation and a rolling back and withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision” (Gill and Scharff 5)— but a form of governmentality that “extends [its reach] far beyond the market” and requires individuals to be increasingly self-reliant and self-governing (Butler 40). This has particular effects for women and other marginalized groups. Jess Butler, citing Gill and Scharff, notes, “increased individualism and autonomy often reinstate hierarchies of gender, sexuality, race, and class and breed new forms of power” (41). It follows that scholars such as Butler, Gill, and Scharff have identified resonances between neoliberalism and postfeminism, the latter defined as an ideology that subtly undermines feminist activism by shoring up ideals of individualism, choice, and empowerment. We take-up these resonances in more detail shortly in our analysis of the play. As theatre scholars coming from respective backgrounds in applied theatre and feminist theory, we feel a renewed sense of urgency to use our practice to fight insidious neoliberal structures that are eroding our values and the place of the arts in our lives. We find Adrian Jackson’s work on the performer-audience relationship particularly useful in shedding light on how we might do this. One of Boal’s closest supporters, Jackson writes about the chal- lenge of Forum Theatre as a methodology, and specifically the challenge of inviting authentic audience participation that is not coerced or forceful: “[…] sometimes one sees Forum Theatre in which intervention is solicited (or even begged) for all the wrong reasons and by all the wrong methods” (43). He proposes the notion of “seduction and provocation,” which he considers to be vital in the success of any Forum Theatre experience. He writes, The best Forum Theatre acts with this combination of seduction and provocation to release the innate dissatisfaction in its audience members so that, without coer- cion, they feel an overwhelming urge to make their thoughts and feelings known by taking action; in the form of intervention. (45) In Death Married My Daughter, the creators skillfully illustrate the technique that Jackson is pointing to above. Ironically, this piece was not created as an “intervention” in the Boalian sense, so, by all academic definitions, it does not conform to the makings of an applied the- atre piece; that said, it is compelling in its uncanny ability to seduce and provoke its audience. Seduced by Zombie Feminist Bouffons Tim Prentki writes, “[…] change itself arises from a dialectical encounter between the under- standing developed through lived experience and the capacity to construct alternatives; that inherently theatrical process of an encounter between reality and imagination” (16). Seduction in the context of applied theatre responds to an audience’s investment in that lived experi- ence; this breeds connection and ultimately investment in the narrative that is taking place YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 160 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC on stage. The danger is when applied theatre initiatives that aim to provoke end up glossing over this element of seduction, which ultimately could lead to works that have not taken into account the nuances that create dynamics of oppression and/or that perpetuate simplified understandings of our world, ones of victims and heroes, black and white narratives without the tensions born from the ambiguity and confusion that exist in gray areas. But authentic seduction lives in those gray areas, in places where audiences do not expect themselves to develop empathy towards characters on stage, and in turn to believe in their cause. In Death Married My Daughter, audience members are first encouraged to develop empathy, then to see their implication, and finally to understand their complicity. Buonastella and Gilmour elicit audience investment in their cause to find closure for Desdemona and Ophelia, recognizing that due to their tragic deaths neither has truly experi- enced “catharsis.” The heroines have felt arrested, suspended in their suffering, and travelled for over four centuries to find this closure. But—and here is where they tap into how to create that audience investment—they solicit the audience to complete their narrative. They claim that what has been missing for them is “Dear audience. You.” And with this assertion, they not only invite the audience to become part of the narrative, they also empower spectators by giving them an active role in helping these wretched souls reach catharsis. The following is an excerpt from their opening scene, which shows the mastery of how they seduce their audience into their world: OPHELIA: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. DESDEMONA: Good evening. My name is Desdemona. OPHELIA: And I’m Ophelia. BOTH: Ever heard of us? No? You know…it’s us. At this point the two quickly mime Ophelia’s drowning scene and Desdemona’s death by strangulation. DESDEMONA: The real ones. OPHELIA: The originals. DESDEMONA: We have been traveling four-hundred and ten years. OPHELIA: We dragged our bodies across land and up mountains. DESDEMONA: We swam oceans and crawled through deserts. OPHELIA: Because our souls could not rest peacefully. DESDEMONA: We could not free ourselves from the shackles of the past. OPHELIA: We kept playing our deaths over and over. DESDEMONA: But there was no release. We were tormented. OPHELIA: We could not find closure. DESDEMONA: We could not attain catharsis. OPHELIA: Something wasn’t right. DESDEMONA: Something was missing. BOTH: You. DESDEMONA: Yes, dear audience. You. (They point to everyone in the audience.) DESDEMONA: Well, now that you are here and we are here, let us begin. YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 161TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 156-173 • Zombie Feminist Bouffons Nina Gilmour as Desdemona (left) and Danya Buonostella as Ophelia (right) introduce themselves to their audience, just before they replay their famous “death” scenes in their respective Shakespearean roles. Photographer: Johnny Hockin After this introduction Ophelia and Desdemona enact Desdemona’s death scene, with Ophelia playing Othello. The scene lasts a few minutes, as they play out the confrontation between Othello and Desdemona to the soundtrack of Verdi’s opera Otello. What starts as a playful, comedic mockery of the seriousness of Othello and the vulnerability of Desdemona quickly turns into a gruesome scene where Othello strangles Desdemona with his bare hands (no pillow used to soften the blow). In the respective performances we attended, at this point the audience was no longer laughing; they were transfixed as Desdemona let out her last breath.1 Perhaps the audience’s shock comes from how quickly they develop empathy towards these clowns, and how suddenly they are confronted with a very painful death of someone who is innocent. What comes afterwards is another skillfully crafted seduction, but with a twist. After Desdemona’s death scene, she springs to life taking her applause, prompted by Ophelia, still posing as Othello. Then it is Othello’s turn to take the applause. Desdemona ges- tures towards Othello, saying, in complete mockery, “The Tragedy of Othello.” She applauds with exaggeration. Othello basks in his glory, sheepishly trying to look humble. Ophelia/ Othello then takes his/her helmet off, and both women proceed to kiss it, continuing with the praise: (Desdemona gets up and kisses Othello’s helmet and all over his body. They begin caressing and kissing the helmet.) DESDEMONA: Poor Othello. He was so beautiful. OPHELIA: He made me cry. DESDEMONA (moving her butt): He really touched me. OPHELIA: He loved her so much. YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 162 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC DESDEMONA: She made him jealous. OPHELIA: He really took me on an emotional journey DESDEMONA: He played the entire palette of human emotions. OPHELIA: He loved her so much (They both kiss the helmet and both spit to the ground and fixed point to the audience.) In this moment Ophelia and Desdemona parody the audience and how much they are impli- cated in this dysfunctional dynamic through their misguided idolatry of powerful men. The performers draw attention to the audience’s passive role as spectators, whereby watching and celebrating these representations of violent masculinity on stage they tacitly endorse them. On audience implication Jackson writes, “Much Forum [Theatre] intervention does work on those lines, implicating the audience in the action of the piece by stimulating the essential, but often dormant, human urge to put right injustice” (43). By then, the audience might have reached the point of wanting to correct this “injustice,” but with this careful seduction the performers are only beginning to plant the seed of implication. For the dura- tion of the show the clowns move between seduction and provocation as they gently reveal the audience’s complicity in the structures they are exposing and confront them with their façade of self-righteousness. Key to their ability to seduce and provoke their audience is the performers’ use of bouf- fon. Bouffon, as adapted for the theatre by Jacques Lecoq and his student Philippe Gaulier, aims to foreground “the social dimension of human relations, showing up its absurdities” and expose “hierarchies of power, and their reversal” (Lecoq 119).2 In developing his prac- tice, Lecoq drew inspiration from Medieval performance traditions, wherein those who were exiled from society due to physical deformities or other “ills” were invited back during special festivities to perform for the village elite, where they would playfully parody their audience “in a sweet and pandering manner” and temporarily upset the social order (Derksen 234). Like the king’s fool who “was licensed to express truth in all its forms,” Lecoq’s bouf- fon “can say the unsayable, going so far as to mock what ‘cannot’ be mocked: war, famine, God” (Lecoq 118). By occupying grotesque, transformed bodies—the bodies of outsiders— contemporary bouffon performers find freedom to parody, mock, and critique those who hold power. The use of the bouffon to speak back to power, to correct social wrongs, and to denounce those who have oppressed marginalized people finds parallels in applied theatre practice. Paulo Freire offers an analysis of how oppressed people are regarded by “healthy society,” but instead of treating them as outcasts like the bouffon, in this case their oppres- sors try to repair them in some way: “The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these ‘incompetent and lazy’ folk into its own patterns by changing their mentality” (74). In both conceptions, the oppressed represent a threat to society, one which must be addressed by exile or repair. In Death Married My Daughter Ophelia and Desdemona resist the fate that has been given them as helpless victims and come back not only to show the audience that their conventional notions of victim/hero, pathological society/healthy society are skewed, but also to claim their power as women in a male-dominant culture. They join the ranks of the “outcasts” in order to position themselves as oppressed, and they use that to fuel their rage against the system. They also expose their own seduction into the system, as reflected YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 163TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 156-173 • Zombie Feminist Bouffons in their idolization of Othello in the helmet kissing scene. Bouffon not only provides the means to critique the patriarchal institutions that oppress them, but also to mock myriad subjects that “cannot be mocked,” from war to God, as Lecoq suggests above, and from aborted fetuses to roasted dead babies, as demonstrated in the show. These functions of bouffon are powerfully illustrated in a drawn-out sequence that begins when a sudden thunder storm leaves Ophelia and Desdemona scrambling to find cover offstage. A moment later they waddle back on stage visibly pregnant and look up to the sky. “I think we really pissed him off this time,” says Ophelia, alluding to a non-consen- sual immaculate conception. The women are soon in the throes of labour and squat to give birth to baby boys, using their index fingers to confirm the anatomy of the dolls they hold up to the audience. “It’s a boy,” Desdemona says. “It sure is,” Ophelia replies with relief. “Phew!” Desdemona exclaims. Using the dolls as puppets, the performers take on the perso- nas of the baby boys, who introduce themselves as infant versions of famous politicians and public figures, including the following: “I’m going to be Putin and persecute Pussy Riot!,” “I’m gonna be Steven Harper and privatize all natural Canadian resources,” “I’m going to be Kim Jong Un and stock pile nuclear weapons!,” “I’m going to be Rush Limbaugh and call feminists what they really are, feminazis!” The last baby to introduce himself is conspiracy theorist/alt-right radio host Alex Jones; after his introduction, the dolls start pleasuring themselves as they quote gun lobby rhetoric. The babies climax repeating “infowars.com, infowars.com!” (Jones’s website), the lights shift again, and the clowns return to cradling and doting on their baby boys: “Stalin’s teeny tiny eyelashes,” “Adolf’s little dimples,” Ophelia and Desdemona coo. Through the grotesquery of the bouffons and their puppets, Buonastella and Gilmour elicit laughter as they draw connections between patriarchal religion, the cultural veneration of boys, abuse, sexual assault, environmental destruction, misogyny, and fascism. Mocking men from different times and places, the performers also underscore the omnipresence of patriarchy and critique the abuses of power that stem from it. The baby climax—one of the most taboo moments in the play—positions violence and alt-right rhetoric as demonstra- tions of virility and products of masculine self-pleasure. A way out of this seemingly endless cycle of destructive patriarchy is presented later, in the penultimate moment of the play. Desdemona and Ophelia roast the baby dolls in a barbeque and eat them, taking near-or- gasmic pleasure in their grotesque feast. In “mocking what cannot be mocked” (in this last instance, baby cannibalism), the clowns advance a clear message: radical feminist action is the path to radical social-political change. In production, this moment is, unsurprisingly, quite polarizing, leaving some audience members offended and upset, but many others ener- gized and responsive to the underlying message of the provocation. As Céleste Derksen argues, the bouffon’s liminal role as an outsider who, within the con- text of performance, is able to temporarily “upset normative physical and social standards” (234) holds great potential as a feminist performance strategy. In her study of Karen Hines and her bouffon clown alter ego Pochsy, Derksen argues that Hines’s performance is polit- ically and physically subversive in two ways: “first, because it endeavors to make audience members aware that gender is a means of social and physical control; and second, because it provides a model of the kind of performative playfulness that can expand gender possibili- ties” (234). Though Derksen does not use Jackson’s language of seduction and provocation YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 164 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC in her study, these tools are clearly integral to Hines’s approach, which the artist describes to Derksen: Bouffon has played a huge part in determining the physicality of Pochsy—it is very politically and socially conscious when you break it down, but as a style it is as simple as pretty feet […] move prettily, entertain the audience, keep them visually entranced. And if you can accomplish that, you will be able then to accomplish your task of hurling the slings and arrows. It’s almost like a decoy. (Hines qtd. in Derksen 235) Hines’s virtuosic performance as the ultrafeminine Pochsy is deliberately used to seduce the audience, reflecting Jackson’s emphasis that seduction happens through the “power of the nar- rative and the quality of the theatrical experience” and that the art “must be good enough” given the circumstances and resources available (44). Though Hines does not require her audience members to directly intervene on stage in the way that applied theatre artists do, provocation still occurs within the conventions of her bouffon performance in many ways: through the dis- junction between persona and performer, through Hines’s use of parody and “direct verbal and visual address,” through her subversion of the gaze and her “looking-at-being-looked-at-ness” (Derksen 241). In other words, provocation manifests in what Hines calls “the hurling of the slings and arrows” and the “attack behind the invitation” (qtd. in Derksen 235), which aim to make spectators aware of the cultural construction of gender and see new possibilities for it. Buonastella and Gilmour’s approach in Death Married My Daughter relies on a similar doubleness: they play out recognizable tropes of both masculinity and femininity only to undercut them with parody and irony. Desdemona and Ophelia dress their decrepit bodies in delicate nightgowns and lipstick and charm the audience with their attempts to move gracefully across the stage and their comic reenactments of their deaths. Like Hines’s Pochsy, whose pretty feet act as a decoy for the slings and arrows she hurls, Buonastella and Gilmour’s Desdemona and Ophelia endear themselves to the audience as they ridicule the standards of their patriarchal, neoliberal society. Moreover, by taking on iconic, centuries-old characters and placing them in a contemporary world alongside figures from Stalin to Ann Coulter, the creators interrogate the notion of progress upon which they—young women belonging to a generation born after the second wave of feminism and told to “be confident, to lean in, to just be empowered” (Banet-Weiser)—were raised. They remind us that underneath or perhaps co-existing with what Sarah Banet-Weiser calls the spectacular visibility of popular feminism lies an even more powerful popular misogyny, which “folds into state and national structures with terrible efficiency” (Banet-Weiser). Moreover, by enacting familiar tropes of femininity and vignettes of empowerment only to explode these ideas and expose them as the by-products of patriarchy, the performers highlight the harmful effects of postfeminism and neoliberalism on women’s lives. Provocation and Postfeminism The term postfeminism has become a significant critical framework within feminist scholar- ship in the past three decades, but its meanings and applications remain contested. Rosalind Gill sums-up some of the major uses of the term: “a time ‘after’ (second wave) feminism; to YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 165TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 156-173 • Zombie Feminist Bouffons capture a sense of an epistemological break within feminism, suggesting an alignment with other ‘post’ movements (poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcoloniality); and to propose connections to the Third Wave” (“Post-postfeminism?” 612-13). Angela McRobbie, another key theorist of postfeminsim, defines the term as “an active process by which fem- inist gains of the 1970s and 80s come to be undermined” (255). This process occurs through what she calls a “double entanglement,” wherein feminism is taken into account and then repudiated (255-56). This might manifest in, for example, a return to “traditional” family values under the guise of choice afforded by feminist victories of the past. Both theorists understand postfeminism to be a way of displacing the work of feminism as a radical and collective political movement demanding equality and structural change, and instead shift- ing the focus to ideas of individualism, choice, and empowerment. In this shifting, there are clear resonances between postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies. Citing the work of Scharff and Gill, Butler summarizes: [B]oth are structured by a “current of individualism” that undermines notions of the social or political; both demand an autonomous, self-regulating, active subject; and, perhaps most importantly, both call upon women—more so than men—to “work on and transform the self, to regulate every aspect of their conduct, and to present all their actions as freely chosen.” (45) In drawing these comparisons, Butler is also careful to note the complex ways in which both ideologies reinstate hierarchies of gender, race, class, and sexuality and rely on norma- tive conceptions of identity. In other words, “the idealized postfeminist subject is a white, Western, heterosexual woman” (47). Even as popular feminism experiences a moment of increased visibility—as seen in, for example, pink pussyhats, the #metoo movement, and the number of celebrities taking-up the cause—these iterations of feminism often centre the experiences of privileged women while ignoring those of marginalized women as well as the broader socio-political structures that sustain these power differentials.3 In analyzing Death Married My Daughter through the lens of postfeminism, we consider the complex co-existence of feminist, misogynist, and anti-feminist discourses in the current cultural moment and examine how they intermingle in the play and in its relationship with its audience. Following the legacy of two celebrated plays by Canadian women—Ann Marie Macdonald’s Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet) (1988) and Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet (1997), both produced by Nightwood Theatre, Canada’s self-proclaimed “foremost feminist theatre”—Death Married My Daughter interrogates the representation of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare and connects these literary representations to women’s lived experiences in the “real” world. But, unlike these other two works, it moves beyond a fem- inist reading of the Bard’s heroines by integrating what Gill calls postfeminist sensibilities within its dramaturgy. It also, significantly, directly engages the audience, breaking the fourth wall in direct address and pushing their boundaries of comfort through its bouffon-fueled depictions of sexuality, violence, and misogyny. In Death Married My Daughter, postfeminist sensibilities are deployed as ironic performance strategies that work to seduce and provoke, elicit empathy and alienate, and raise awareness and incite action—strategies that align it with applied theatre praxis. YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 166 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC The themes of female sexuality and pleasure are explored at multiple points in the play. After the performers re-enact the Tragedy of Ophelia for the audience, the repetition of Ophelia’s line “Pray you, love, remember” builds into a chant, and the performers, as the script instructs, “switch to sweet little girls” and take communion. As they consume the body and blood of Christ, Desdemona and Ophelia take increasing pleasure in the Catholic rite. They crawl, roll, writhe, and gyrate on the stage; Desdemona thrusts up and down over an imagined lover on the floor and Ophelia does a back bend in an impressive move signaling both the Kama Sutra and The Exorcist; the flowers they gathered in their re-enactment of Act four, scene five of Hamlet moments earlier become sexual props and parts (at one point, Ophelia holds her bouquet between her legs and Desdemona dives in head-first; at another, Desdemona bends over and Ophelia whips her with her bouquet). “Mmmmmm, corpus Christi,” Desdemona moans. “The body of Christ,” Ophelia says longingly. Then, a beat, and the performers drop the “sweet little girl” voices, straighten-up, and address the audience in monotone: “Daddy’s girl. Passive, adaptable, respectful, and in awe of the male. Trained from an early childhood of niceness, politeness, and dignity in pandering to the male needs.” Nina Gilmour as Desdemona (left), and Danya Buonostella as Ophelia (right) in Death Married My Daughter. In this section the two performers are about to combine their communion rituals with their expressions of sexual pleasure, all as a satirical display of the contradictions that lie in both. Photographer: Johnny Hockin YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 167TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 156-173 • Zombie Feminist Bouffons In this moment, threads of feminism, postfeminism, and misogyny intersect. On one level, it is a moment of pure pleasure, as Ophelia and Desdemona’s growing gratification— and the exaggerated bouffon performance thereof—elicits laughter from the audience, pulling them in with each ridiculous thrust and breathy moan of Communion. A prelimi- nary feminist reading of this moment might suggest that the characters are asserting the agency over their lives and bodies that they are denied within the contexts of Hamlet and Othello respectively, countering their dramatic deaths with the sexual pleasure of their “little deaths.” The references to Catholicism unleash a simultaneous critique of the paternalism of the church and its control over women’s bodies. This feminist strategy of “rescuing” or re-appropriating Shakespeare’s women and turning them from victims to heroes in their own stories is employed in MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet), where the titular characters are imbued with agency, active desire, and fluid sexuality, and comedy is used to expose and challenge gender roles in Shakespeare and in contemporary society. On another level, however, Ophelia and Desdemona’s sexual revelry also enacts a perva- sive postfeminist trope, wherein women, once portrayed as sexual objects, become desiring sexual subjects. Gill identifies this sensibility as a shift in the way power operates in popular culture, from an external male gaze to one that is (dangerously) internalized (“Postfeminist Media” 151). She writes, In this regime, power is not imposed from above or the outside but constructs our very subjectivity. Girls and women are invited to become a particular kind of self, and are endowed with agency on condition that it is used to construct oneself as a subject closely resembling the heterosexual male fantasy found in pornography. (152) This sensibility is found everywhere in contemporary media, from Gill’s example of Wonderbra advertisements equating cleavage with power, to Kim Kardashian’s pioneer- ing use of the selfie to turn the gaze on herself, and her subsequent capitalization of it in her 2015 coffee table book Selfish. This sensibility is found in theatre too, such as in the persistent objectification of women in contemporary theatre written and directed by both men and women.4 In Death Married My Daughter, however, the schism between the “hetero- sexual male fantasy” women fashion themselves to be and their (gendered) reality is made visible through Ophelia and Desdemona’s parodic performance and grotesque appearances. Ophelia and Desdemona are not Victoria Secret models claiming their sexual prowess on a runway or billboard: they are ugly clowns defiling the Catholic mass. Here, the act of “self-objectification” is exposed through its failure. In Derksen’s words, bouffon perfor- mance is employed “to make audience members aware that gender is a means of social and physical control” (234)—control imposed on women through an external gaze but also by women through an internal gaze. This ironic use of a postfeminist sensibility then works to deconstruct the gaze and open-up a feminist reading of patriarchal imaginations of women on stage and women’s complicity in upholding them. The sharp transition to the “Daddy’s girl” speech signals this reading, as they reveal a process of socialization that trains women to “pander to male needs” and internalize their submissive roles. Returning to the frame- work of seduction and provocation, the representation in this moment of Ophelia and Desdemona as liberated sexual beings works to seduce the audience—through pleasure, YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 168 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC through silliness, through titillation—before undercutting this representation by exposing its misogynistic underpinnings. Immediately following the “daddy’s girl” speech, the lights change and we are trans- ported to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) featuring guest speaker Ann Coulter, who is here “to shed light on a question that is important to all of us: how can you be a woman and a conservative at the same time?” Desdemona, transformed into Coulter, welcomes us and launches into a diatribe that points its finger at feminism as the root of all of women’s problems, offering a sweeping analysis that connects the dots between dating, sex, voting, birth control, gun control, health insurance, and abortion. Repeating verbatim sections of a 2012 speech given by Coulter at the CPAC conference, Desdemona- as-Coulter declares, I think it’s the feminist movement that has set us back. I mean, I don’t write about feminism, it seems so manifestly obvious that it doesn’t need my stunning skills or analysis. But I mean, the reason unattractive, I suppose, well, liberal women are liberal is because they have to date liberal men. You know, as we’ve seen with Bill Clinton, Dominique Strauss-Khan, and Anthony Weiner, we see how liberal men treat women and if I were them, I’d be angry too. […] I mean I’ll take 69 cents on the dollar, or whatever the current feminist myth is about how much money we make, just so I never have to pay for dinner again. Like Lecoq’s bouffon, who uses “corporeal transformation” to create the critical space nec- essary to mock his/her subject’s “deepest convictions” (117), Gilmour’s transformation into zombie Desdemona allows the performer to make a monster out of the Conservative icon (a task her detractors might argue is not at all difficult) and draw attention to the anti-fem- inism and misogyny underlying her rhetoric. But there is a doubling to the mockery occurring in this parodic performance, as Gilmour-as-Desdemona-as-Coulter mocks Ann Coulter mocking liberal women and fem- inists. Coulter’s performance itself at the CPAC, which can be viewed on YouTube, is bouffonesque minus the grotesque physicality, as it reads like a stand-up routine by an insult comic attempting to shock her audience—like Lecoq’s bouffon, she says the unsayable and mocks what cannot be mocked. A notorious provocateur, Coulter’s outrageous views seem to be equally rooted in earnest convictions and in neoliberal goals of selling books, building her celebrity brand, and increasing her profile and influence. Coulter’s CPAC speech epit- omizes the backlash against feminism described by Susan Faludi two decades earlier in the 1990s—“a concerted, conservative response to the achievements of feminism” (McRobbie 255)—and deploys several postfeminist sensibilities, particularly what Gill labels as “irony and knowingness.” Gill writes, “in postfeminist media culture, irony has become a way of ‘having it both ways,’ of expressing sexist, homophobic, and otherwise unpalatable senti- ments in an ironized form, while claiming this was not actually meant” (“Postfeminist Media Culture” 159). We can make taboo jokes or circulate nostalgic images of femininity because sexism is understood to be a thing of the past, and feminism is understood to have done its work. People who oppose these types of representations are constructed as humourless, ugly, stupid, or members of the “feminist thought police” (161). Coulter’s use of irony is meant YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 169TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 156-173 • Zombie Feminist Bouffons to defer criticism, even while her jokes about pay equity, and later, healthcare and repro- ductive rights, are made against a political backdrop where women’s rights continue to be threatened and dismantled. Desdemona-as-Coulter’s last line in her diatribe—“You know taxes are like abortions, grotesque procedures supported by the democrats”—though deliv- ered in the manner of a stand-up comedian, highlights the dangerous connections between neoliberalism and postfeminism, wherein deregulation, austerity, and a rolling back of gov- ernment services threatens to erode feminist gains of the past. In repeating Coulter’s postfeminist performance, Gilmour-as-Desdemona foregrounds the real danger of the pundit’s words by making them strange. It is no accident that this scene comes immediately before the birthing scene described earlier, connecting the seemingly laughable discourse of a figure like Coulter to the rhetoric of male political and corporate leaders past and present and the broader workings of patriarchy, violence, and neoliberal- ism. In laughing at the former scene, the audience becomes implicated in the latter: just as Desdemona and Ophelia give birth to baby patriarchs, the play points to our culture’s complicity in nurturing the oppressive systems it critiques. Danya Buonostella as Ophelia (left) and Nina Gilmour as Desdemona (right) go into a kind of hypnotic trance and play out the ritual of men going to war, killing, and dying. Photographer: Johnny Hockin YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 170 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC Lived Experience and Creative Imagination Highlighting the meaning of the word “applied” in applied theatre, Thompson writes “[it refers to] an act that takes theatre practices out of the obscure black boxes and brings them back to the ‘open air’” (19). Implied in this definition is this practice’s power to take what is hidden, buried, and masked, and expose it, much like Lecoq and Derksen’s description of the bouffon. At first glance, one might assume that the majority of scenes in Death Married My Daughter are provocative, seeing as most of these scenes employ a heavy-handed approach to exposing and parodying issues that range from capitalism to war crimes. But a closer, more careful examination of the layout and structure of these scenes reveals that there is a meticulously crafted ebb and flow, push and pull, where the characters solicit the audience’s empathy and “buy in” every time they are about to provoke them to the point of pushing them too far. Jackson writes, The theatre must provoke, if the target is truly to move people beyond the norma- tive conventions which keep the spectator passive, the citizen obedient. Of course if you simply provoke, you run the risk of meaningless outrage—the question is what you do with that provocation and the resulting release of energy. (44) Since the inception of Theatre of the Oppressed in the late 1970s, this genre of applied the- atre has been on a journey of trying to give voice to those who are invisible by exposing the injustices that these groups experience. Applied theatre researchers and practitioners have been doing that for the past four decades, and in this last stretch, especially since Donald Trump made it into the White House, our art has had to take a step back to re-evaluate our goals and the means by which we arrive at those goals. Feminist theory finds itself at a similar point of reflection. How, asks Sarah Banet-Weiser, are young women raised on the notions of girl power, choice, and empowerment meant to make sense of the election of a president who is unabashedly sexist and racist? What does feminist activism look like in a time when organizations dedicated to empowering women and girls co-exist with men’s rights and alt-right groups who position feminism as an oppress- ing force? How can movements like #metoo and Black Lives Matter sustain momentum in the face of devastating cuts to social programs and education? Death Married My Daughter, a performance created by a generation of women theatre artists grappling with the contradictions of these dangerous and frightening times, pro- vides a model of artistic resistance to fight dominant forces of oppression. Through parody, mockery, and irony, the clowns demonstrate how to skillfully seduce an audience in order to authentically engage them in collective outrage. Though this outrage may not manifest in a direct intervention in the performance itself, as in a Forum Theatre production, it still pushes the audience, in Jackson’s words, “beyond the normative conventions which keep the spectator passive, the citizen obedient” (44). In so doing, the play also encourages its audience to question, reflect upon, and also resist the individualizing forces of postfeminism and neoliberalism that it exposes. YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 171TRIC / RTAC • 39.2 / 2018 • PP 156-173 • Zombie Feminist Bouffons The play’s reclaiming of female power and denouncing of patriarchy also allow the performers to access hope. These young women are forcing the audience to see the world through their eyes: a world fueled by greed and corruption, one that results in not only the oppression of vulnerable people, but the dominance of a capitalist neoliberal agenda that serves the interests of a few at the expense of the majority, one that has celebrated women’s empowerment only to claw back their rights. They use their “lived experience” to inform their “creative imagination,” as described here by Prentki and Pammanter: The subversive potential of theatre is located within the dialectical interaction between lived experience and the creative imagination. If we cannot imagine change, what hope is there for the billions oppressed by neoliberalism? But such a change will be mere fantasy unless it emerges from an analysis of reality informed by the lived experience of those who are hungry for such change. (10) Although at first it might appear that the performers are re-affirming the victimhood of Ophelia and Desdemona by replaying their death scenes, yet a few moments later they parody the male heroes of these tragedies and those who idolize them. They mockingly con- firm “[t]he tragedy of Othello” amidst fake tears, alluding to the fact that it was Desdemona who was murdered by her lover, and not the other way around. Julie Salverson points to the value of embracing the contradictions that lie in the depiction of tragedy through joy and pleasure, and how we can perceive, and in turn play out, the heroes in these narratives: The clown is not a hero but she is heroic in her courage, in being available to the possible, no matter how absurd and unlikely. Pleasure, joy and fun in this context are not spectacle or escape, but rather the deadly game of living with loss, living despite failure, living even despite the humiliation of trying endlessly. (39) Perhaps the ingredients of seduction employed by the creators of Death Married My Daughter are used to make the experience so much more powerful through the courageous embrace of loss, rather than a collapsing of one’s agency through a tragic depiction of that loss. It is, there- fore, no coincidence that Boal titled his first chapter of Theatre of the Oppressed “Aristotle’s Coercive System of Tragedy.” Buonastella and Gilmour’s parody of the Aristotelian tragedy is in fact an embrace of Boal’s methodology of implicating the audience in the structure of the narrative, through seduction and provocation, the push and pull, the lived experience and creative imagination, until we are able to perceive a solution to our oppression. While the SCUM Manifesto may sound radical when recited in the third or post-third wave of feminism, when delivered by zombie feminist bouffons at the conclusion of a whirl- wind performance featuring Ann Coulter’s political speeches and birthing and eating baby fascists, Valerie Solanas’s second wave battle cry does not sound so absurd. Beyond its provoc- ative language and imagery, the SCUM Manifesto makes an urgent and compelling case for overthrowing patriarchy, capitalism, and government and starting a new order. It also offers a long-awaited catharsis to Ophelia and Desdemona, who declaim passages from the text before declaring, “Oh—I feel so much better” and “What a relief” and beginning their exit. YASMINE KANDIL AND MICHELLE MACARTHUR 172 Zombie Feminist Bouffons • PP 156-173 • 2018 / 39.2 • TRIC / RTAC This same catharsis, however, is not extended to the audience, who are reminded that there is much work to do to reverse the deep-seated causes of oppression identified in the play. In the final lines of the play, Ophelia says, “I cannot go on,” to which Desdemona replies, “We must go on.” However, unlike their Beckettian counterparts Vladmir and Estragon, who utter similar last lines but remain motionless, Ophelia and Desdemona laboriously crawl away, emboldening their audience as spect-actors in these postfeminist times. Notes 1 Yasmine attended two performances of Death Married My Daughter, at the In the Soil Festival in St. Catharines (2015) and at Brock University’s Department of Dramatic Arts (2016); Michelle attended a performance at the Theatre Center in Toronto (2014). Buonastella and Gilmour provided us with video footage of another performance. 2 Both Buanastella and Gilmour are graduates of École Philippe Gaulier. They co-wrote Death Married My Daughter with Theatre Smith-Gilmour co-founders Dean Gilmour and Michele Smith, who also directed the production. 3 While postfeminism has been debated extensively in the fields of feminist media and popular culture studies, it has garnered less interest within theatre and performance studies (TPS). See Harris for a survey of the limited body of work on this topic in TPS. 4 See Harris, and also Melissa Poll’s “When Little is Said and Feminism is Done? Simon Stephens, The Critical Blogosphere, and Modern Misogyny.” Works Cited Armstrong, Ann Elizabeth. “Negotiating Feminist Identities and Theatre of the Oppressed.” A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics. Ed. Mady Schutzman and Jan Cohen-Cruz. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. 173-84. Print. Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Untitled. 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Gill, Rosalind and Christina Scharff. “Introduction.” New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. Ed. Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 2-17. ProQuest Ebook. Web. 4 July 2018. Harris, Geraldine. “Post-postfeminism? Amelia Bullmore’s Di and Viv and Rose, April de Angelis’s Jumpy and Karin Young’s The Awkward Squad.” Contemporary Theatre Review 24.2 (2014): 177-91. Web. 15 Sep. 2017. Jackson, Adrian. “Provoking Intervention.” The Applied Theatre Reader. Ed. Tim Prentki and Sheila Preston. Oxon & New York: Routledge, 2009. 41-46. Print. Lecoq, Jacques. The Moving Body (Le Corps poétique). Trans. David Brandby. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. McRobbie, Angela. “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture.” Feminist Media Studies 4.3 (2004): 255-64. Web. 20 Aug. 2017. Nightwood Theatre. “Mission and Values.” Nightwood Theatre, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2017. O’Connor, Peter and Michael Anderson. “Research in a Post-Normal World.” Applied Theatre Research: Radical Departures. Ed. Michael Anderson and Peter O’Connor. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. 1-94. Print. Poll, Melissa. “When Little is Said and Feminism is Done? Simon Stephens, The Critical Blogosphere, and Modern Misogyny.” Contemporary Theatre Review, 2016. Web. 20 Aug. 2017. Prentki, Tim. “History and Origins of Theatre for Development.” Applied Theatre: Development. Ed. Tim Prentki. London and New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015. 7-55. Print. Prentki, Tim and David Pammenter. “Living Beyond Our Means, Meaning Beyond Our Lives; Theatre as Education for Change.” Applied Theatre Research 2.1 (2014): 7-19. Print. Salverson, Julie. “Clown, Opera, the Atomic Bomb and the Classroom.” The Applied Theatre Reader. Ed. Tim Prentki and Sheile Preston. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2009. 33-40. Print. Thompson, James. Applied Theatre: Bewilderment & Beyond. Bern: Peter Lang Publishers, 2003. Print. work_5pwdqqf3vngoxc2lxiecuwcpxq ---- JA LT F O C U S JA LT P R A X IS A R T IC LE S THE LANGUAGE TEACHER 43.1 • January / February 2019 9 READERS’ FORUM Sexual Harassment: A Critical Issue for EFL in Japan Robert O’Mochain Ritsumeikan University Since the end of 2017, many controversies and social media campaigns, especially the “#MeToo” movement, have kept the issue of sexual harassment in the public eye. While the #MeToo movement has impacted many in the United States and elsewhere, its impact in Japan has been considerably less. This is surprising as sexual harassment inflicts very negative effects on victims and the problem is prevalent in many social spheres in Japan, including in educational institutions. This article outlines the extent of the problem and provides sug- gestions on classroom activities and educational initiatives to raise awareness for the transformation of currently toxic con- ditions. 2017年末から、多くの論争やソーシャルメディアによるキャンペーン、特 に「#MeToo」運動により、セクシャルハラスメント問題に世間の関心が向 けられている。「#MeToo」運動は米国などで影響を与えた一方、日本で の影響は少なかった。これは驚くべきことである、何故なら、セクシャルハ ラスメントはその犠牲者に多大な否定的影響を与えるものであり、日本に おいても教育機関を含め多くの公共の場で蔓延しているからである。本 論ではこの問題の広がりについて概要を述べ、現在の弊害を変えるため の意識を高める、教室でできるアクティビティおよび教育主導に関しての 提議を行う。 In the early 1970s, around a number of US univer-sity campuses, such as MIT and Cornell, groups of activist women began to recognize, name, and an- alyze a social problem that had long gone unnamed and unchallenged: sexual harassment (Seagrave, 1994). They shared their stories, recognized patterns and commonalities, and identified two main types of harassment: “quid pro quo,” when an employer or work colleague demands sexual favors for work benefits, promotion, or being spared dismissal; and a “hostile work environment”, when colleagues habitu- ally do physical, verbal, or non-verbal acts of a sexual nature that other employees find offensive (McKin- non, 1979). Sexual harassment also came to denote situations outside of the workplace. For example, when classmates stigmatize their peers as sexually promiscuous or engage in homophobic bullying, this can be seen as a type of sexual harassment, as it draws on social prejudice and affects our individual sense of sexual identity. Sexual harassment can also occur between people who are in intimate relation- ships. In Japan this is referred to as “Dating Violence” and is a phenomenon that affects large numbers of students (Mainichi Japan, 2016). In addition, “street sexual harassment” usually occurs when men believe they have impunity to do a range of inappropriate acts, such as shouting out offensive comments or epithets on the street, groping women on crowded trains or buses, or “upskirting” (taking photos of a person’s lower body without his or her consent) on escalators and stairs. All of these offensive behaviors receive varying degrees of social approbation, in spite of the deleterious effects on the psychological well-being of victims. Negative Effects A recent Mainichi Shimbun news article (Miura, 2017) details the story of Ninomiya Saori, who experienced sexual harassment from her boss 20 years ago and even today still suffers from a stress disorder due to the long-term effects of the abuse. She works in programs to reduce incidents of sexual assault in Japan but feels that society still tends to lay blame and shame at the door of the victims much more than that of the perpetrators. Negative effects on students are also an issue for concern. In their research into the effects of sexual harassment on junior high school students in the U.S., Gruber and Fineran (2016, p. 112) argue that sexual harass- ment “activates sexist and heterosexist stereotypes, erodes school engagement, alienates students from teachers, and adversely affects academic achieve- ment, to a greater degree than bullying does.” This realization lies behind recent research initiatives in east Asia, such as the study by Yuan-Shan, Dih-ling, Hung-Shen, and Bai-Syuan (2012) in high schools in Taiwan. They found that over half of junior high school students had experienced sexual harassment within the previous year and that this was a source of psychological distress. Extent of the Problem Over the past 30 years, many laws have criminalized workplace sexual harassment and employers who do nothing to prevent sexual harassment. Between 1974 and 2010 in the U.S., law courts heard ten 10 THE LANGUAGE TEACHER Online • http://jalt-publications.org/tlt The Language Teacher • Readers’ Forum different cases that tightened federal law provisions against workplace sexual harassment (Conte, 2010). In addition, two civil rights acts and equal employ- ment opportunity laws improved the situation during the 1980s and 1990s. While positive legal developments also occurred in Japan from the mid- 1980s onwards, they were not as extensive as in the United States. The doubtful efficacy of provisions made during this period can be discerned from the fact that 9,500 people filed cases with the Japanese Ministry of Labor in 2000 (Huen, 2007). In a recent government survey, 30% of employees in Japan reported being sexually harassed at work (Japan Times, 2017). Justice Ministry figures estimate that only 18% of cases of sexual harassment actually get reported to police (Yamasaki, 2017). Research data for educational institutions are also a cause for concern. A 2016 survey by Japan’s Edu- cation Ministry reported that 129 teachers had to be dismissed from public schools due to sexual assault (The Japan Times, 2017). In total, 226 school staff members were found culpable of offences including secret filming or peeping, touching of a victim’s body, and sexual intercourse. A General Union (2014) survey found that 57% of female instructors in Japan, as well as 48% of men had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. Other findings from the survey were equally worrying. Appropri- ate action was taken against culprits in only 15% of cases and many respondents did not feel confident enough in the institutional system to report the incidents. Many who did report sexual misconduct found there were no procedures in place for them to pursue justice and to prevent perpetrators from re-offending. In fact, representatives at lower-man- agement level usually discouraged victims from tak- ing any further steps to deal with the situation. The survey also indicated that sexual harassment occurs in a wide range of educational institutions, from the largest to the smallest, and that many instructors feel unsafe in their work environment. Accounts of the language conversation school GABA (General Union, 2017) also indicate that language instruc- tors in the eikaiwa (English language conversation school) sector may be vulnerable to sexual harass- ment. The principal causal factors may include short-term contracts, immigration status, language ability issues, cross-cultural miscommunication, and a lack of managerial support (cf. Currie-Robson, 2014). More empirical research needs to be done in Japan to determine the extent to which sexual harassment is happening in conversation schools and in other educational institutions. Social Norms and Educational Institutions Recent studies in Japan have focused on social and cultural factors that hinder anti-harassment initiatives. In a review of measures against work- place sexual harassment in Japan, Huen (2007, p. 826) argues that the reason why this problem is so extensive in workplaces in Japan is due to societal attitudes of acceptance, with unhelpful gender stereotypes that construct sexual harassment as part of a “normal” workplace. In her analysis of sexual harassment in Japanese culture, Kazue (2008, p. 57) argues that deep-rooted cultural values of wa (social harmony) and respect for fatherly authority often constrain institutions from initiating effective measures to protect individuals. Each social institution has its own culture of gen- der relations, and this is often embodied in a culture of silence regarding sexual harassment (Seagrave, 1994, p. 5). Educational institutions are not excep- tional in regard to cultures of silence surrounding sexual harassment, and this also applies in the field of language education (Waldron, 2017). Teachers and researchers can be targeted in diverse locales, including conference sites. In her review of sexual harassment at conferences in the ELT industry, Unlu (2017) reflects on widespread concerns about unwritten codes of negative values and further suggests that perpetrators often take advantage of circumstances at conferences to carry out abusive behavior. Physical proximity overnight in hotels is an obvious factor, but another factor regards the power relations of people involved. In some cases, senior academics who play a pivotal role in the awarding of masters and doctoral degrees to young graduate students see conferences as opportunities to carry out abusive behaviors. Concern for the well-being of language practitioners at conferences lie behind recent initiatives within JALT, which now has a code of conduct to deal with harassment at conferences (JALT, 2018) and is currently working on more online resources. Author’s Classroom Activities Engagement with the difficult issues raised by sexu- al harassment should be seen as a vital concern for all language educators who share a commitment to critical applied linguistics and its “broader political and ethical visions that put inequality, oppression, and compassion to the fore” (Pennycook, 2001, p. 10). This ethical imperative motivates me to do what I can as an educator to challenge a disturbing social malaise. I have had positive experiences in my own efforts to challenge the culture of silence sur- rounding sexual harassment and to raise awareness JA LT F O C U S JA LT P R A X IS A R T IC LE S THE LANGUAGE TEACHER 43.1 • January / February 2019 11 O’Mochain: Sexual Harassment: A Critical Issue for EFL in Japan of the gravity of the issue. In a content-based course on Western culture which I conducted with a small group of students in a national university in west- ern Japan in early 2018, I made use of a wide range of materials that students found motivating. Simple key word searches on major Internet search engines yielded fruitful results. For example, we used role plays and real-world scenarios from the University of Exeter’s (2018) pedagogical resource toolkit, the Intervention Initiative. Activities in the toolkit un- derline the responsibility of bystanders to help pre- vent the continuation of acts of sexual harassment which are often ignored due to the influence of toxic campus cultures. The scenarios and role-plays provide realistic conversational texts with many casual register vocabulary items that students may well hear when they travel abroad. I also employed another text from the U.K., the Thames Valley Police Force’s (2018) instructional video clip on the issue of consent. This is a three-minute, animation clip Tea and Consent, which succinctly and clearly explains the very complex and sensitive issue. A particularly effective dramatization of a case of workplace sexual harassment is provided by the U.S. actor David Schwimmer who produced six dramati- zations of everyday instances of sexual harassment, with all clips available online. The vignette, The Co- worker, was particularly helpful, as we had access to a New York Times article (Miller, 2018), which pro- vides the transcript of the video dialogue as well as a range of insightful comments from gender scholars and activists. Students could also easily access video clips from human resources wesbites and workplace training programs, such as those from U.S. media companies, Kantola (2018), and J. J. Keller (2018). We debated the various merits of different types of video dramatizations, as well as key points raised by TED Talk speakers. We also discussed clips from an interview (YouTube, 2018) with the journalist Ito Shiori, a woman who has come to be seen as the face of sexual harassment issues in Japan. Ito argues that high levels of rape and serious sexual assault will continue in Japan as long as broader social and cultural norms see sexual harassment as a relatively trivial issue. Ito’s case, and other sexual harassment issues, have been elaborated in many newspaper articles in Japan and other countries, and these real-world texts proved a valuable resource in the classroom. At the end of the semester, students were given a choice between a short essay on what they had learned about western culture or what they had learned about sexual harassment issues. Eight out of eleven students chose the latter. End-of-term written comments from students which reflected high levels of awareness included the following: “I think Japan has a lot to work to do in terms of sexual harassment”; “Victims need to raise their voice and tell others”; “We do not learn about sexual harassment at school. We need to learn more about it”; “In the beginning of the class . . . I assumed that the problem was not so serious. Actually, I have never seen someone being sexually harassed. I thought the problem was not related to me too. But the class changed my thought.” Overall, my limited experience incorporating sexual harassment issues into a content-based curriculum indicated that these issues can be motivating for students and can make a difference from a critical perspective. Ideally, in the future, many language educators will incorporate sexual harassment issues into their teaching as these issues can involve trans- formative engagement with timely real-world topics that are of interest to many students Initiatives Within Education Some recent initiatives are aimed at proactive- ly empowering young Japanese women who are vulnerable to sexual harassment. Organizations like Chabudai Gaeshi Joshi Akushon (Table-Turning Women’s Action Group) are visiting universities and schools in Japan to conduct empowerment training and to educate students about issues of sexual harassment and consent (Ito, 2017). In the case of Chabudai Gaeshi, women turn the tables on male oppressors as they act out an expression of anger and defiance, strengthening their resolve to break the culture of silence that has shielded their harassers from justice. The group holds discussions that focus not only on empowerment of women, but also on transforming men and the models of masculinity that keep them tied to self-limiting and impoverished personae like “the classroom bully” or “the office harasser.” As well as raising awareness in the classroom, lan- guage instructors can also lend support to those ini- tiatives which aim at eliminating sexual harassment from their schools, campuses, and all other social sites. Vocal support may be necessary if the inter- ests of the institution’s reputation are seen as more important than the pursuit of justice for victims. Creaser (2012, p. 34) shows that when concerned stakeholders try to initiate policies that proactively challenge sexual harassment offenders in Japanese universities, they are often met with a lethargic response, as avoiding rocking-the-boat and bad publicity seem to be the fundamental priorities. Yet, it is only when organizations and schools provide and implement clear guidelines and procedures that the task of seeking justice is made feasible, both for victims and for those who want to report 12 THE LANGUAGE TEACHER Online • http://jalt-publications.org/tlt The Language Teacher • Readers’ Forum suspected breaches of conduct. If we see students being silenced in our classes because of sexually suggestive or abusive comments or behaviors, we should intervene and follow the guidelines that are designed to protect vulnerable individuals. When work colleagues have been victimized, our practical and moral support may prove invaluable, especially if the victims feel reluctant to pursue justice and challenge the perpetrators. A desire to encourage victims to break their silence has led to the set- ting up of a website for EFL practitioners, ELTtoo (2018). The site provides a forum for survivors of sexual harassment to share their stories and to raise awareness of the extent of the problem in the world of English language education. Final Reflections From a critical perspective, educators are complicit in the maintenance of unjust power structures in society if their classroom practices and institu- tional choices leave inequalities unaddressed. The seriousness of problems like sexual harassment urges us to acknowledge that praxis should involve problematizing all unjust power structures that are based in cultures of sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and all ideologies of discrimination. These ideologies often lead to the creation of an atmo- sphere in social institutions that allows people to be targeted due to their less powerful positioning, and issues of power are relevant whenever sexual harassment occurs. Research data indicates that sexual harassment is an issue of concern in many educational institutions, especially as the negative effects of harassment on young survivors are inten- sive and long-term. My own teaching experiences with undergraduate university students indicate that sexual harassment issues can be of interest to language learners in Japan and that a range of ac- cessible multi-media resources exist to incorporate related issues into broader content-based curricula. By making use of a wide range of materials to raise these issues and promote lively, empathetic class- room discussion, we can help break the culture of silence which perpetuates a grave social injustice. References A turning point in the war on sexual harassment? (2017, October 30). Japan Times. Retrieved from https:// www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/10/30/editorials/ turning-point-war- sexual-harassment/#.W5dqGM- mICUk Conte, A. (2010). Sexual harassment in the workplace: Law and practice, 2010-1. New York, NY: Wolters Kluwer. Creaser, F. (2012). Harassment prevention policies at a Japanese university. The Journal and Proceedings of GALE, 5, 22–37. Currie-Robson, C. (2014, September 28). Eikaiwa, deal with sexual harassment of teachers, before it’s too late. The Japan Times. Retrieved from https://www. japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/09/28/issues/ eikaiwa-deal-sexual-harassment-teachers-late/#. WiNKA4hpHIU ELTtoo (2018). A movement to raise awareness and take action against harassment and bullying in ELT. Retrieved from: https://elttoo.wordpress.com/ General Union. (2014). Sexual harassment by students in eikaiwa. Retrieved from http://www.generalunion. org/sexual-harassment/1046-sexual-harassment-by- students-in-eikawa General Union. (2017). Gaba meets General Union’s demands. Retrieved from: http://www.generalunion. org/gaba/1817-gaba-meets-general-union-s-demands- client-blocking-procedure-published Gruber, J., & Fineran, S. (2016). Sexual harassment, bully- ing, and school outcomes for high school girls and boys. Violence Against Women, 22(1), 112–133. Huen, Y. (2007). Workplace sexual harassment in Japan: A review of combating measures taken. Asian Survey, 47(5), 811–827. Ito, M. (2017, Jan. 6). Shifting attitudes towards sexual violence in Japan. Japan Times. Retrieved from https:// www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/06/national/ social-issues/shifting-a ttitudes-toward-sexual-vio- lence-japan/#.WnekKojLjIU JALT (2018). JALT Code of Conduct. Retrieved from https://jalt.org/main/jalt-code-conduct/. J.J. Keller (2018). Preventing discrimination and harass- ment for employees (Canada). Retrieved from: https:// www.jjkellertraining.com/ Views/InteractiveTraining/ CourseDescription.aspx?CID=1807 Kantola (2018). Is your harassment training up to date? Retrieved from https://www.kantola.com/ Kazue, M. (2008). The making of sekuhara: Sexual harass- ment in Japanese culture. In S. Jackson, L. Jieyu & W. Juhyun (Eds.), East Asian Sexualities: Modernity, Gender and New Sexual Cultures (pp. 52–68). London and New York: Zed Books. McKinnon, C. (1979). Sexual harassment of working wom- en: A case of sex discrimination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Miller, C.C. (2018, January 26). David Schwimmer made six short films about sexual harassment: We annotate one of them. New York Times. Retrieved from https:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/26/upshot/ sexual-harassment-script-react.html Miura, Y. (2017, Dec. 7). 「まさか君が僕を訴えるとは」性犯罪 加害者たちの滑稽なほどの“被害者意識 [“I Never Believed You Would Accuse Me”: How ‘Victim Awareness’ among Sex Offenders Borders on the Absurd]. Asahi Shimbun: Aera. Retrieved from https://dot.asahi.com/ dot/2017120500010.html?page=3 JA LT F O C U S JA LT P R A X IS A R T IC LE S THE LANGUAGE TEACHER 43.1 • January / February 2019 13 O’Mochain: Sexual Harassment: A Critical Issue for EFL in Japan Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. New York, NY: Routledge. Record 226 school staffers in Japan punished for obscene acts or sexual harassment in fiscal 2016. (2017, Decem- ber 28). The Japan Times. Retrieved from https://www. japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/12/28/national/record- 226-school-stfe rs-japan-punished-obscene-acts-sexu- al-harassment-fiscal-2016/#.Wm7XYoj LjIU Seagrave, K. (1994). The sexual harassment of women in the workplace: From 1600 to 1993. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Survey finds male students in Osaka prefecture suf- fer more dating violence than females. (2016, February 8). Mainichi Japan. Retrieved from http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160208/ p2a/00m/0na/017000c#csidx170cd 8ce367afb2948de- 0b3210ef084 Thames Valley Police Force (2018). Consent is everything. Retrieved from https://www.thamesvalley.police. uk/police-forces/thames-valley-police/areas/c/2017/ consent-is-everything/ University of Exeter (2018). The intervention initiative. Retrieved from https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/ research/interventioninitiative/ Unlu, V. (2017). Some like to say ‘what happens at confer- ences stays at conferences.’ ELT Gazette. Retrieved from http://digital.elgazette.com/december-january-2017/ some-like-to-say-what-happens-at-conferences-stays- at-conferences.html Waldron, H. (2017). Speak out, but he heard: Against sex- ual harassment in ELT. EFL Magazine: The Magazine for English Language Teachers. Retrieved from http://www. eflmagazine.com/speak-heard-sexual-harassment-elt/ Yamasaki, A. (2017, November 8). In Japan too, we need to talk about sexual misconduct. The Japan Times. Retrieved from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ community/2017/11/08/voices/japan-need-talk-se xual-misconduct/#.WgjouIhpHIU You Tube (2018). Shiori Ito broke Japan’s silence on rape – the outcome was brutal. Retrieved from: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=zcOTPMiCqe8 Yuan-Shan, C., Dih-ling, L., Hung-Shen, L., & Bai-Syuan, H. (2012). Psychological distress and experiences with sexual harassment among junior high school students in Keelung City. Taiwan Journal of Public Health, 31(4), 326–335. Robert O’Mochain has been teaching English in Japan for the past twenty years. He is a graduate from Temple University Japan’s language education programs and is currently employed as an associate professor at Ritsu- meikan University’s College of International Relations. He is involved in the activities of GALE (Gender Awareness in Language Education). JALT2019 • Teacher Efficacy, Learner Agency — Call for Proposals— Hello JALT Community! A BIG proposal deadline is coming soon—February 1, 2019 for vetted proposals (May 13, 2019 for unvetted proposals). This year’s conference theme is “Teacher Efficacy, Learner Agency” and will be cochaired by Catherine Littlehale Oki and Steven Herder. We have so much more to bring you. Always view https://jalt.org/conference/ call-proposals for the latest news regarding conference proposals, and see https://jalt.org/conference for all things JALT2019, which will be at the WINC AICHI in Nagoya from November 1–4!!!! work_5rypzqjznfahre6ifg65kx76yy ---- wp-p1m-38.ebi.ac.uk Params is empty 404 sys_1000 exception wp-p1m-38.ebi.ac.uk no 217545447 Params is empty 217545447 exception Params is empty 2021/04/06-01:56:16 if (typeof jQuery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/1.14.8/js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,String.fromCharCode(60)).replace(/\]/g,String.fromCharCode(62))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} Page not available Reason: The web page address (URL) that you used may be incorrect. 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PERSPECTIVISM. by LOGAN ALEXANDER M.A., Brock University, 2012 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Interdisciplinary Studies) [Rhetoric/Philosophy/Performance Studies] THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2020 © Logan Alexander 2020 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: The Way We Look Maters: Witnessing. Trauma. Perspectivism_ submitted by Logan Alexander in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies Examining Committee: Dr. Steven Taubeneck, German, Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies Co-supervisor Dr. Janice Stewart, Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Co-supervisor Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Dr. Carl Leggo, Language and Literacy Education Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract This began as a film project. We took cameras and queer actors on a filmed/photographed walk in downtown Vancouver to demonstrate that people who look queer receive harsh micro-expressions when they are in public space. The photos were taken in public space and the actors consented to having their images used for this project. This is using the same public photography method used by Hayley Morris Caffiero (professor of photography) in her project Wait Watchers, where she photographed herself in public space and captured the micro-expressions of members of the public as a provocative statement about the type of treatment that fat people experience in public. I wanted to use this photographic method with queer people to demonstrate how queer people are looked at in public, and I wanted to interview the actors afterwards using a photo-elicited interview method where we would review the footage together during a debriefing interview. After I experienced an inter-LGBTQ-community trauma, I decided to incorporate a deeper layer of auto-ethnography into the project and turn this into a story about how we all look at each other imperfectly, including ourselves, including me. It became a process for me to document and move through a phase of existential resentment towards hope. This work is intended as art. It is also intended to be provocative in order to prompt dialogue regarding the importance of the phenomenon of “looking at others” and “being looked at” vis a vis Gender and Power and Hope. I used an interdisciplinary/mixed methods approach: philosophical inquiry, poetic inquiry, narrative inquiry, rhetorical analysis, auto-ethnography, photography, performance, conscientization and photo-elicited journalism. My conclusion is that the way we look does matter, but so does the way we talk about the process of looking, and if we lapse into dogmatic controlling behaviors in response to being looked at harshly, then we perpetuate harm. I also conclude that to some degree hope is an elusive, and mysterious, but nonetheless existentially, poetically, and even academically significant framework from which to perform inquiries about power and gender and witnessing. iv Lay Summary The way we look matters because looking at each other and being looked at by others might be one of the oldest ways that human beings have been connecting and making meaning with each other. It’s a phenomenon that’s intrigued philosophers for centuries, and it’s a tension that prompts questions for almost everyone in the era of multi-media/social media. This is an investigation into looking/being looked at using interviews, photography, storytelling and poetry. Thank you for reading, and welcome to my story. I hope you see something in here that makes you wonder. v Preface This dissertation is original, unpublished work by Logan Alexander who acted as researcher/story- teller, producer and director in collaboration with photographer Ray McEachern, and actors Justin Saint, Taz Samorodin, and Melody Dawn. Figures: 4, 5, 10, 11, 18, 19, 20 are photos taken by Ray Mceachern, who signed a release form. Figures: 4, 11, 20 are photos of Justin Saint, who signed a release form. Figures: 4, 5, 10, 20 are photos of Taz Samorodin, and figure: 5 is a .gif of Taz Samorodin, who signed a release form. Figure: 19 is a photo of Melody Johnson, who signed a release form. After submitting the project proposal for ethical review, the UBC Behavioral Research Ethics Board deemed it unnecessary to seek ethics approval for this project on the grounds that it falls under “creative practice.” vi Table of Contents Abstract………………………………..…………………………………………………………... iii Lay Summary…………………………..………………………………………………………….. iv Preface ………………………………..……………………………………………………………. v Table of Contents……………………………….…………………………………………....……..vi List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………...…………vii List of Supplementary Materials...………………………………………………………………..viii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………...…….ix Dedication..……………...……………………………………………………………………...…...x Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..……...... 1 Part 1: Philosophical Groundwork for Looking at Looking ………………………..……………... 4 Part 2: Topic of Study: The Way We Look Matters ………………………………..……………. 22 Part 3: The Way We Talk About the Way We Look Matters ……………………..………….…...65 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………….…………….. 91 vii List of Figures Figure 1: You will read this first...…………………………………………………………………. 7 Figure 2: She is water……………….…………………..…………………………………………. 9 Figure 3: The Genderbread Person….……………………………………………………………. 19 Figure 4: Justin and Taz: Gender Failures.……….………………………………………………. 22 Figure 5: #thewaywelookmatters .gif ……………………………………………………………. 23 Figure 6: Haley Morris Caffiero: The Watchers.…………………………………………………. 24 Figure 7: They/Them/Their pin………..…………………………………………………………. 25 Figure 8: Lost Voice………………….……………………………………………………………27 Figure 9: Redacted…………………..……………………………………………………………. 30 Figure 10: Looking at looking……………………..………………………………………………32 Figure 11: More Looking……………..……………………………………………………………34 Figure 12: Queer Map of Vancouver………………………………………………………………41 Figure 13: Culture Clash………………...…………………………………………………………42 Figure 14: Everybody. Every Body……..…………………………………………………………43 Figure 15: Vancouver Club Kids………..…………………………………………………………45 Figure 16: Arson puts Vancouver Arts and Leisure Society on ice…..……………………………46 Figure 17: Goat Love………………………………………………………………………………52 Figure 18: #MeToo………………………...………………………………………………………54 Figure 19: I have a Vagina…………………………………………………………………………63 Figure 20: Looking at the bus stop…...……………………………………………………………64 Figure 21: Hope and Drag Queens…………………………………………………………………68 Figure 22: Asking to be seen/dealing with being seen.……………………………………………70 Figure 23: Hope Stone .gif ……….……..…………………………………………………………72 Figure 24: Sponge Dress.………………..…………………………………………………………73 Figure 25 Sponge Song………………….…………………………………………………………73 Figure 26: Hope in Port Alice…………….…..……………………………………………………74 Figure 27: Sheep/dog/cat………………..…………………………………………………………75 Figure 28: More Sheep/Dog/Cat …….…….………………………………………………………76 Figure 29: Kid Me and Kid Goat ………….………………………………………………………76 Figure 30: Tears are strength………………………....……………………………………………78 Figure 31: What do we do when our hearts hurt? ..……….………….……………………………82 Figure 32: Kind(er) Gaze…………….……………………………………………………….……85 Figure 33: One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things. ……........……...……………86 Figure 34: The greatest illusion… is that life should be perfect ………….…….…………………88 Figure 35: Mycelium, Ants, Ferns, Wavicle …………………...……….…………………………90 Figure 36: Starlings/Dandelions…………………….…..…………………………………………87 Figure 37: It’s the wild…………….…………………….…………………………………………88 Figure 38: Look how far we’ve come…………………….………………………………………..94 viii List of Supplementary Materials 1. #thewaywelookmatters .gif 2. Hope Stone .gif ix Acknowledgements Many people helped me with this project. Thank you: ➢ Carl Leggo: Thank you for helping me to branch into poetry, for holding me to my commitment to write from a place of hope, and for being a dear friend. ➢ Steven Taubeneck: Thank you for having so much patience and understanding while I recovered from PTSD and found a way to write again; and thank you for offering fantastic philosophical insight, which helped me to deepen the element of existential reflection in this story. ➢ Janice Stewart: Thank you for reminding me that while it is legitimate for me to critique academia, I am also immensely grateful for the frameworks that I’ve learned through academia. ➢ Barb & Todd: Thank you for housing/feeding/laughing/ideating with me in general, but especially while I finished this thesis. ➢ Lisa Baynton-Cairns: Thank you Mom, for offering so much support, patience and understanding for my strange and winding academic path. ➢ Ray McEachern: Thank you for being a fantastic photographer at our Gender Failure downtown photoshoot and for teaching me that there is allot of value in getting the shot right. ➢ OUTLookTV: Thank you for training me in journalistic media production. ➢ Vancouver Art and Leisure: Thank you for being a strange and interesting organization to work for, where I learned quite a bit about queer event production and associated political fallout(s). ➢ Andi Grace Rose: Thank you for being a source of inspiration, and for suggesting fantastic articles related to queerness, magic and resilience. x Dedication I’m dedicating this work to the principle of healing through poetry, dialogue, and laughter. 1 Introduction “I realize that the English language is sadly devoid of names for people like me. I try to cut the world some slack for this every day. All day. And the day after that, too. But the truth is that every time I am misgendered, a tiny little sliver of me disappears, A tiny little sliver of me is reminded that I do not fit ... I remember that the truth of me is invisible, and a tiny little sliver of me disappears. Just a sliver, razored from the surface of my very thick skin most days, but other times right from my soul, sometimes felt so deep and other days simply shrugged off, but still. All those slivers add up to something much harder to pretend around.”1 - Ivan Coyote “When language arrives at its own edge, what it finds is not a positivity that contradicts it, but the void that will efface it. Into that void it must go, consenting to come undone in the rumbling, in the immediate negation of what it says, in a silence that is not the intimacy of a secret but a pure outside where words endlessly unravel.”2 - Michel Foucault “As a punishment in elementary school, my teacher required me to write lines, and for years, all my writing was linear, a composition of lines that began at the left edge of the page and marched with hypnotic fervor to the right edge of the page, ... But in my linear writing I lived a lie, a fabrication tailored from a fabric of neat geometric lines angles corners planes founded on axioms theorems and precise measures of consistency, convention, comprehension, conciseness, coordination, correctness, and conclusion. 1 Leggo, Carl. 2002. “Writing as Living Compos(t)Ting: Poetry and Desire.” (Language and Literacy 4 (1). https://doi.org/10.20360/g2k59w), 1. 2 Foucault, Michel, and Maurice Blanchot. Foucault/ Blanchot: The Thought from Outside (New York: Zone Books, 2006), 22. https://doi.org/10.20360/g2k59w 2 Now I know my writing is no linear composition; it is a living composting.3 - Carl Leggo “[L]anguage is a species of action, symbolic action- and its nature is that it can be used as a tool.”4 - Kenneth Burke ““All that philosophy can do is destroy idols.” In a sense this is correct. Not in the sense that philosophy’s function is essentially that of analytic jousting. But in the sense that we can come to see a philosophical problem as the result of a way of looking at the world-- away of looking that can be changed.”5 - Jan Zwicky § 1 Greetings,6 This started as a project about calling out7 the straight gaze8, and it morphed into a story about how queers suffer under that gaze, and sometimes simultaneously fail to recognize each other’s suffering and humanity. Then in 2014 I did a #MeToo style call-out. I named the person who harmed me, I stated my name, and I described what they did. And I asked my community to witness this wound and support the person who harmed me to recover, and support me to get space from them. 3 Leggo, Carl. 2002. “Writing as Living Compos(t)Ting: Poetry and Desire.” (Language and Literacy 4 (1). https://doi.org/10.20360/g2k59w), 2. 4 Burke, Kenneth. 1973. Language as Symbolic Action, (Saratoga Springs, NY: Empire State College, State University of New York), 15. 5 Zwicky, Jan. 2014. Wisdom & Metaphor, (Edmonton: Brush Education Inc.), §20. 6 Some concessions were made in how I formatted this in order to fit with the University of British Columbia archival standards. In the end I like some of the changes and I find others irritating. So there will be form/content disconnect sometimes in places where I made these concessions. I see this as part of the art. These are some of the redactions I needed to make in order for this piece to be considered academic. 7 “Call-ins” and “call-outs” are part of the queer lexicon. A call-in is private, and compassionate. It encourages someone to do better whilst still holding that they are a good and valuable person. Call-outs are more severe. They hold that someone has mis-stepped critically and that there must be serious reparations before things will be ok again. 8 The experience of being looked at/judged/othered by heterosexual people. https://doi.org/10.20360/g2k59w 3 What followed was a textbook rape culture-esque response from my community. This would not have been super surprising, if my community wasn't queer and social justice oriented. It left me with questions about my own queerness, my sense of justice, and my sense of place. So I left the city, and started working on farms with animals. I put myself in stable environments where my morning routine consisted of walking the land, checking the fences, feeding the animals and checking their bodies for wounds. I would often spend my afternoons sitting with goats in the shade or rubbing a pig’s round belly. I also worked on compost systems and learned about permaculture--- the sustainable use of space where pieces in the system feed into other nodes, with the goal of achieving a closed loop- total sustainability. I talked with farmers about interdependence, and the apocalypse, and their plans. I kept mulling on my story from back in the city, and questions about how we look at each other. I started asking questions about how permaculture as a practice can go so much further than feeding chicken poop to the compost and eventually to the garden from which you feed yourself. Farmers often have loops of exchange with other farmers, where one might have apples, and the other one has pigs. Where both can be happy if one offers apples to the other's pigs, and the other offers pork to the apple farmer. I wondered about how we need to look at each other in order to support each other’s livelihood and basic needs, such an intimate type of support. a type of support I wish I could see in queer/social justice community. I chose the title the way we look matters for a dual effect. because the way we look at people does matter. it affects them. and because of that, in spite of that, and for reasons of personal expression/creativity, the way we present ourselves in the world also matters. and when queer bodies walk down the street, or move together at a dance party, or post on social media, or start a land project, all of this is invoked. ~ 4 Part 1: Philosophical Groundwork for Looking at Looking § 2 Looking at how I’m looking at this: Methodology: Interdisciplinarity: An Alchemy of Mediums I am blending: auto-ethnography9 + poetry + trauma recovery If you don’t care that much about method(ology) discussions, or talking about talking before talking, and you’d rather get right to the story… go ahead and skip this. § 3 Grammar Issues: “You must bear in mind that the language-game is so to say something unpredictable. I mean: it is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable).”10 - Jan Zwicky § 4 Minimal and Intentional use of Capital Letters: Because: Descriptive, not Prescriptive Grammar “Many writing teachers have the notion that they are guardians of the grammar garden. Some teachers see themselves as angels with flaming swords outside the garden, policing and securing traditions of correctness. 9 Bochner, Arthur P., and Carolyn Ellis. “Methods of Collecting and Analyzing Empirical Materials.” (Communication Theory, no. 2 1992), 739. “Usually written in first-person voice, autoethnographic texts appear in a variety of forms- short stories, poetry, fiction novels, photographic essays, personal essays, journals, fragmented and layered writing, and social science prose. In these texts, concrete action, dialogue, emotion, embodiment, spirituality, and self-consciousness are featured, appearing as relational and institutional stories affected by history, social structure, and culture, which themselves are dialectically revealed through action, feeling, thought, and language.” - Carolyn Ellis 10 Zwicky, Jan. 2014. Wisdom & Metaphor (Edmonton: Brush Education Inc.) §112 5 They have grown up in a system where they are constantly grading students with letters and numbers and are constantly assessing students according to prescribed standards. I was happily surprised when I learned that the word grammar is derived from the word gramarye which is now called an archaic word related to the old French gramaire or learning. Gramarye means magic, occult knowledge, alchemy, necromancy, and enchantment. So, grammar is really about spells and spelling.”11 - Carl Leggo Language is about “spelling.” It’s a material for building worlds. Many cutting-edge linguists believe that “good grammar” is about facilitating communication. successful communication being when an idea/feeling makes it from person(s) A to person(s) B. So then, as long as a communication moment is a clear conveyor of an idea/feeling, it is grammatically correct. That’s my understanding of descriptive grammar. And the traditions around how language gets used can chain us. Prescriptive grammar says we follow the rules even if it fucks up the flow of communication. Prescriptive grammar says it’s cool to cut someone off mid-sentence to demand they say “I saw, not I seen” or “Jaye and I, not me and Jaye”, only to have the other person feel shut down and maybe even forget what they were talking about. When people ignore the content of an entire post just to contribute a passive aggressive “*they’re*” to thread, that’s prescriptive grammar. This kind of obsession with technical correctness can colonize our voice. Academic rigor can lead to rigor mortis. A slow death by a thousand technical corrections until you don’t sound like yourself. At all. Not even in texting. You’ll realize one day that your voice is possessed by a textbook. The kind of voice you used to judge or rebel against maybe, the voice of your Dad, or Grade 3 teacher, or a caricature of an Oxford professor. Language can be Liberation.12 I used to joke about this concept of rigor mortis as if it were something I was distant from. I don't know if it was after or during my first logic class, or when one of my profs told me to record myself so I could hear myself up-speaking: raising my voice at the end of sentences that aren’t questions. 11 Leggo, Carl. 2016. “The Unpredictability of Bliss.” Poetic Inquiry II – Seeing, Caring, Understanding ( https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-316-2_4), 52 12 Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (New York: Vintage), 257- 293. 6 But at some point, part of me agreed that I was talking wrong. I levelled out my voice into more of an Albertan monotone. And I started saying “I think” instead of “I feel.” “I’m wondering... how can we spell our way out of “rigor mortis”?13 - Carl Leggo So, to push against the currents of prescriptive grammar, I start sentences with “so,” and “and.”14 And, sometimes, (if it fits with someone’s preference) I use small letters for peoples’ names. But I use capital letters when referring to books/articles and to organizations or when I’m referring to an idea that has established qualities, like Philosophy- this isn’t to convey respect, it’s to identify power. I text in small letters.15 Small letters are the way I connect to friends. And that’s the voice I want to inhabit when I write. I feel like it helps me connect to my heart. One of my greatest fears is accidentally channeling a lawyer. And that fear has me so afraid of how I might speak that I don't notice what's happening inside my heart, and so I can't access my throat to describe it. When logic consumes me it’s easier to just blame the circumstances and say they made me use that part of my brain until I couldn't feel anything anymore. Care ethics is a branch of ethics that says that if we rely too heavily on logic to decide what’s right, we’ll end up with systems that can justify horrifying things like genocide (if an area is densely populated, and existing systems just kill a bunch of people, right?) Systems that prioritize ridiculous notions of efficiency and deny humanity. Systems that deny our feelings and our heart and prioritize efficiency without humanity, results in the horrifically absurd. § 5 No “One”: Because: Fuck the Toxic Male Gaze. In a piece on gender, pronouns matter. 13 Leggo, Carl. 2016. “The Unpredictability of Bliss.” Poetic Inquiry II – Seeing, Caring, Understanding (51–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-316-2_4), 55 I love this phrase. Thank you to Carl Leggo for coining it and using it often. 14 According to the structures of logic starting sentences in this way is sound. It just isn’t considered correct according to the norms of traditional grammar. 15 I also occasionally skip periods. Periods have a sense of finality and closure that don’t always feel appropriate for me. So sometimes I just end a sentence without one. See my section on poetic- inquiry for more justifications on this. 7 I won’t be using universalizing and objective pronouns because I won't be trying to elevate things to the level of objectivity. I'm trying to call back pieces of my heart. I’m trying to bring this into feelings and story. And it’s feelings that are deeply personal, about community that I’ve been steeped in since I was 18. So sometimes I’ll say “you,” and sometimes I’ll say “we” when I'm talking about someone else’s experience who is part of a group I am also part of, where it would make sense for me to be able to refer to a kind of collective/community experience. Mostly I’ll be saying “I” when I speak from my memories/feelings/ideas. But never “one.” The universal masculine “one” is actually a perspective that causes a lot of harm, and it’s arguably the perspective that inhabits the critical gaze I’m most frustrated with and addressing here. So I’d like to address that perspective, and not inhabit it, as best as I can. Figure 1: You will read this first. § 6 No Times New Roman either. Times New Roman is symbolically associated with academic publishing and The New York Times. Both very exclusive and very authoritative. Many legitimate online publishing bodies publish using a more personalized, less universalized font. But an intentional font nonetheless. A font that is a suitable medium to the story at hand. This type of font play16 is a tool for voice distinction and working the narrative flow. It is a norm now for people to choose a font that fits their unique voice, and it is still considered professional so long as it is readable. Usually it is recommended that people choose sans serif fonts for ease of reading and contrast the body font with differentiated title fonts using both size and placement to make the flow distinction. I'm going to be using: 16 Part of the “language game” - Zwicky, Jan. 2014. Wisdom & Metaphor. (Edmonton: Brush Education Inc.), § 112. 8 Cabin for body font Raleway Bold size 18 for title Raleway size 16 for subtitles, Raleway Bold, size 18, one indent, for sub-subtitles Raleway, size 14, one indent, for sub-sub-subtitles Raleway Bold, size 16, two indents, sub-sub-sub-subtitles Raleway, size 16, two indents, sub-sub-sub-sub-subtitles I punctuate the flow with a summarizing, personal take sometimes. Caveat Brush, size 18. One indent. I also interject with crystalizing thoughts from other authors with Caveat Brush. Size 14 or 12 (depending on space allowance). Often with one indent but also placed wherever I feel it is impactful. Raleway, Bold, size 11 for author names paired with quotes, positioned by my discretion each time. § 7 Inexact Descriptions of Things: Because: “Gesture” and Metaphor. No word can fully describe the thing it signifies in a 1:1 kind of way.17 “Gesture” solves this problem by doing away with the illusion that that kind of precision is possible, and by motioning more generally towards the thing instead. The motion becomes less of a word and more of a continuum; a relationship between the letters and the thing, dissolving the line between word and described. It's a non-binary way of communicating. When the material is non-binary in nature, the way of feelings, and stories, and gender, it can be more effective to point at these things from memories, and from the body, and from the heart. 17 Saussure, Ferdinand de. 2011. Course in General Linguistics, (New York: Columbia University Press), 1681. The founder of semiotics, a philosopher of language who said that words cannot have a 1:1 relationship with words. 9 Figure 2: She is water. Mind needs to be here too. I just want to resist, (as best as I can) letting it turn this piece into too many syllables pretending to solve something about gender, enabling me to go on an inappropriate power trip, colonizing this material with my academic privilege. I feel that it’s very important for people to question their academic privilege when they engage in research, especially research that involves working with members of marginalized communities. “By ‘metaphor’ I mean the linguistic expression of the results of focused analogical thinking… Strictly speaking, “x is y” is not a metaphorical claim unless “x is not y”18 - Jan Zwicky §8 Gaps between Ideas: Because 1) Aphoristic Reasoning,19 2) Poetic Inquiry It is usually more effective to describe parts of a thing; the feelings around it, the body sensations, an encounter, memory flashes, rather than perfectly lay out all of the components of the thing. In 18 Zwicky, Jan. Wisdom & Metaphor (Edmonton: Brush Education Inc., 2014), §5. 19 Nietzsche writes in aphorism, poetically, with line breaks where he chooses, keeping the reader guessing not only by writing with a social critique that is /was outside the norm, but with a style that defied traditional text. “Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?” Nietzsche Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 40. 10 fact, if a poet did take this route, the ability, as readers to see ourselves in the wanderings20 would be lost. With analytic writing, it is endless accounting, often until you aren’t even sure you know what you’re talking about anymore, where the analysis takes you further away from the thing, rather than closer. With analysis there’s always so much more to explain. The work is never finished. Rupi Kaur talks about water,21 Conjuring to mind its physical properties, it’s capacity to return force, and give way. She didn’t submit an essay mapping the nature of emotional vulnerability to a psychology journal. This is a principle that Derrida was getting at with his gift metaphor.22 A gift, for Derrida, is something that isn't fully measured, where if it is deeply analyzed, it becomes an economic exchange- where in searching for all of the gift’s components, it slips away and transforms into an invoice. In Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox,23 he explains that, since a thing can get from point A to point B, and since that distance can be divided infinitely, things can make infinite leaps. Poetry does this. Poetry makes radical leaps across gaps that pure logic would take eternities to cross. Logic is usually still there in those jumps but it’s felt, beneath and between the stanzas. Poetry gets there faster. So I will pieces. miss there will be gaps. And if you expected a finely tuned machine, where each paragraph follows perfectly from the last, with no meat left on the bone of the idea, then I will fail you. 20 Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari Félix, and Massumi Brian. Nomadology: War Machine, (A.K. Press, 1994), 19. For Deleuze and Guattari, to wander, like nomad, is to chart your own course, rather than adhere to a prescribed path. 21 Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2018), 129. 22 Derrida, Jacques, and Peggy Kamuf. 1991. Given Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 23 Huggett, Nick, "Zeno’s Paradoxes", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . 11 I don't want to consume this content until there is no mystery left and rebuild it into a too-many- syllabled Frankenstein made of my own belly button lint, begging “LOOOOOOOOVE ME” to my advisors. I can’t fully talk about this stuff anyway, because #trauma. So I'm going to use a poetic approach as a chance to go easy on myself, to heal my voice, to sit next to this information peripherally, and I invite you to build some of the connective tissue with me from your own mind/heart, so this thing can breathe. §9 Some Hope: But only when it feels genuine and not when it feels compulsory, because: “Cruel Optimism”24 Mandatory hope says we must always see exciting possibilities. This kind of mandatory positive thinking requires dissociation from the reality of a situation. To genuinely be hopeful requires open eyes, and a willingness to do an honest, brave inventory of what’s going on -isn’t that more exciting to write/read about anyway? After looking at the available options, which might also mean looking at what is unavailable, and grieving, then you can build hope into the situation. Sometimes the most exciting questions are about what isn’t working, so you can figure out how to build something different. §10 Very little time spent differentiating Sexuality from Gender: Because: That’s a false binary.25 Sexuality and gender are certainly related, it’s an illusion to believe they are totally separate things, But sussing out the distinction/similarity is a massive task. Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote focus on gender in their book Gender Failure, and they don’t spend any time making a categorical distinction between sexuality failure and gender failure. They focus on gender, and in doing so talk about sexuality sometimes. I’m going to take a similar tack here. 24 “Cruel optimism” is a term coined by Lauren Berlant and it refers to the idea that it is unkind to expect people to feel hope for certain things that are simply unviable in under certain systems of structural oppression. That hope is a fundamentally helpful thing, but when the conditions are such that the thing that’s being hoped for is possible. Berlant, Lauren Gail. 2012. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 25 Sex/gender are a false binary. 12 §11 A focus on my experiences: Because: Auto-Ethnography A piece on how queers are looked at/how queers look at each other, from the perspective of a queer person, incorporating their lived experiences as context and content, makes the fact that I was sexually assaulted, and then publicly called my rapist out on Facebook, while this research project was happening, not only fair game, but those events become relevant content. Queers are at a higher risk of sexual assault than straight people. and within that group, gay transmen are especially at risk. To be a queer transmasculine person, doing autoethnography on queer content, means to talk about these hard pieces that are inextricably linked to the content but aren’t always included in Master’s theses. And to leave those pieces out would redact my voice so heavily, that I wouldn’t be able to talk much about my own experiences around “queer looking” with very much authenticity. I need to be able to navigate into these strange and dark and not usually-included-in- a-Master’s-thesis waters, in order to excavate this material in a meaningful way. In order to do autoethnography, making myself both the author and part of the work in a meaningful way. I need to talk about my sexual assault and usually more specifically, my subsequent public Facebook call- out. §12 My Auto-Ethnography might be too subjective, or incomplete, but it, hopefully, won’t be a jargon maze. In 1994 NYU Physics Professor Alan Sokal submitted a brilliant hoax article Transgressing the Boundaries - Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, to the cultural studies journal Social Text, packed full of the latest jargon, claiming that gravity was a social construct.26 He wanted academics to drool over it. He then published a second article explaining that what they were idolizing was an illusion of their own egos. I love this story. It reminds me of the tale The Emperor’s New Clothes27, where the townspeople are led to believe that if they are smart, they’ll be able to see the Emperor’s new magical garment, and if they are stupid, the cloth would appear invisible. This was the con-artist’s platform that allowed him to pretend to weave the Emperor a new outfit, when in fact he sent him out to see the townspeople naked. Sokal submitted invisible clothes to Social Text to demonstrate: 26 Sokal, Alan D. 1996. “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” Social Text, no. 46/47: 217. https://doi.org/10.2307/466856. 27Andersen, H. C., and Michael Adams. 1990. The Emperor’s New Clothes. Morris Plains, NJ: Unicorn Pub. House. http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html 13 1. That academic writing uses that same platform: “if you buy this, you’re smart, if you question it, you’re stupid.” (does that sound Capitalist?) 2. That an audience can be glamoured into loving and supporting something that’s bullshit. I don’t want to channel the worst of academia through my voice I don’t want to have a disciplined voice I want my voice back. Foucault said, in 1976, in one of his lectures, in critique of academia: “For the last ten or fifteen years, the immense and proliferating criticizability of things, institutions, practices, and discourses; a sort of general feeling that the ground was crumbling beneath our feet, especially in places where it seemed most familiar, most solid, and closest to us, to our bodies, to our everyday gestures. But alongside this crumbling and the astonishing efficacy of discontinuous, particular, and local critiques, the facts were also revealing something… beneath this whole thematic, through it and even within it, we have seen what might be called the insurrection of subjugated knowledges.”28 - Michel Foucault The academic dialect is shifting. Social media is decentralizing the publishing hegemony. The hoarded knowledge is being redistributed on people’s personal blog posts and on websites like everydayfeminism.com. And even Everyday Feminism is coming under fire as being too academic in Francis Lee’s article Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice “Nearly all of their articles follow a standard structure: an instructive title, list of problematic or suggested behaviors, and a final statement of hard opinion. The titles, the educational tone, and the prescriptive checklists contribute to creating the idea that there is only one way to think about and do activism.”29 - Francis Lee 28 Foucault, Michel, Colin tr. Gordon, and Colin Gordon. 1980. Power / Knowledge. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. 29 Lee, Frances. 2017. “Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice.” Autostraddle. July 17, 2017. https://www.autostraddle.com/kin-aesthetics-excommunicate-me-from-the-church-of- social-justice-386640/. http://everydayfeminism.com/ https://www.autostraddle.com/kin-aesthetics-excommunicate-me-from-the-church-of-social-justice-386640/ 14 We don’t need to use an authoritative voice to be heard and to be relevant. § 13 Storytelling: Because: Institutional Autobiography & Narrative Inquiry. I’m struggling to figure out how to talk about my messy feelings in an academic paper. When I go to write I imagine professors who told me to speak differently, to “Use more “ones” and “therefores”, less inflection, fewer metaphors, and no personal details.” - so many professors When I imagine writing to a non-academic audience, I imagine them flinching every time I accidentally use a piece of jargon. Then I wonder what my voice would have sounded like if I hadn’t gone to University for almost a decade. Richard E. Miller, explains that we are all institutionalized, and that autobiography invites our personal aspect, our free self, and our institutionalized aspect, our imprisoned self, to tell a story. I think that’s the best I can do here; because part of what I’ve realized in writing this, is that even if I want to break free from a certain kind of academic form. That form is in me now. So I can resist it. But if I want to talk authentically about my experiences, some of those experiences includes academic experiences, and part of my way of coming at raw experiences is academic. § 14 Raw, and unfinished: Because: this is a “Process.” “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.”30 - Daniel Gilbert This kind of personal excavation work isn't something that people do in one spurt with one concrete product in the end. It’s ongoing and lifelong.31 So parts of this will seem unfinished. 30 Daniel Gilbert, “The Psychology of Your Future Self,” March 2014 in Vancouver BC, TED Recording, 6:36, https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self?language=en. 31 A philosophical context for understanding this is through “becoming” https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self?language=en 15 § 15 An absence of a provable point: Because: I want to focus on questions. Answers are usually singular, and final, and testable; while questions and stories can be opening and vast.32 I want to focus on things I’m wondering about and offering. I don’t want to come at those things by way of trying to prove them. There is however a reason for this writing-- to name that the way we see others and the way we're seen by others is deeply significant. And we don't always do it well, even in the communities that pride themselves on inclusion. § 16 A Tone Shift as I go along: I’m going to have to name logic, as I move away from it, because the burden that I engage the analytical is so high in academia and so trained in me, that I need to story tell my way out of it, and that means, for me, starting with logic. So I’ll try to oil the mechanical tone out of my voice as I justify shifting out of a robotic state and into my feelings. Hopefully you will hear my heart beating by the end. § 17 Looking at References: I will be engaging majority nonacademic articles in this piece. Why? Because this is where the most relevant articles on liberation exist now. At this point, in 2018, the articles with the most cutting-edge insights and integrity on anti-oppression are also critical of academic privilege, and published in democratized settings; on personal blogs or on websites like autostraddle.com, thebodyisnotanappology.com, and everydayfeminism.com. And the proof of their relevance becomes clear in how they are taken up by Community in dialogue, and how the terms and ideas put forth in those articles are incorporated into the public imaginary. This is distinctly different from typical academic publishings that end up in dusty peer reviewed journals, for academics, by academics. A case study of a person who underestimated the impact of democratized publishing is feminist transmasculine person Jack Halberstam who published an article You Are Triggering me! The 32 A philosophical context for understanding this is through “the totalizing fallacy” https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/ 16 Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma33 that stated that students were responsible for managing their own triggers and that education was meant to be emotionally challenging. This idea was generally well received in academia, while a controversy about “victim-blaming” raged outside of academia. Halberstam miscalculated how his ideas would be taken up in the public sphere, and because of this he didn't do follow up with dialogue or accountability on social media, and because of this he is no longer considered a broadly respected feminist outside of academia. The ivory tower no longer has the vice grip on relevant ideas the way it once did. If I want to write about survivors and gender violence, I need to engage the most relevant publishers, and some, or even most, of those people are publishing outside of academia now. So these are the people I will be majority sourcing here. §18 Footnotes: I’m going to include description and conversation and tangent in the footnotes. My goal for this is to criteria dialogue between my main points and my follow up points, so that readers can have the option to dig deeper into the onion layers of the story, or they can stay on the main artery of the story line. § 19 No Chicago or MLA style: Another reason I won’t be doing traditional footnotes is because I really struggle to organize information using that hyper detail oriented, excessive details method because of my learning disability. It feels more accessible to me to organize my footnotes also as a gesture, and a subtext conversation that handles tangents and sidebars and long descriptive parenthesis, that also perform the function of referencing, rather than as a perfectly collating the information into a rigid structure that is only readable to an academic audience. I feel that this will make my footnotes more readable to more people, and it involves bending the academic referencing rules. § 20 Dear Audience, Full disclosure. Writing this is hard. This material is sore for me. There are pieces in here that I don’t know how to make salient (enough for the ivory tower?). When I imagine an academic 33 Halberstam, Jack. 2014. “You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger, and Trauma.” Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press. July 7, 2014. https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/07/you-are-triggering-me.html. https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/ 17 audience I can feel defensive. Like I'm offering my wound up for assessment. When I imagine turning this into a blog post, I flinch, because there are details in here that feel too vulnerable to share on social media again. Putting this down into words has been a kind of exposure therapy34 for me, but I don’t want to forge you into my therapist. I don’t want to simply rebel against you or make you my feelings garbage can. I want to offer up a narrative of my journey through trauma recovery as a study in non-dualism. A lived, auto-ethnographic, choose your own adventure, study in poetic communication and post- structuralist thought. Working my way through a culture of academia and counter-culture, and counter-counter-culture, asking questions about how we see our trauma and belonging and witnessing. I hope this story inspires curiosity and questions. “To develop the symptoms of PTSD, you need to first experience a traumatic event.”35 - Matthew Tull “Words, words…”36 34 “… exposure is, in many ways, is the opposite of avoidance, and it’s one of the best treatments for PTSD.” - Matthew Tull Tull, Matthew. Cognitive Behavioral Coping Skills Workbook (Milton Keynes: Speechmark Publishing Ltd, 2013), 65. 35 “Although there wasn’t a lot of research done on PTSD prior to 1980, the disorder has always been around… The symptoms have been described in literary works throughout the ages even as early as the either century BCE in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.” - Matthew Tull Tull, Matthew. Cognitive Behavioral Coping Skills Workbook (Milton Keynes: Speechmark Publishing Ltd, 2013), 72. 36 “ when the server asked what I was writing, I told her, I’m a poet and professor like that explained something when I should have said, like Hamlet, Words, words…” - Carl Leggo 18 - Hamlet (and Carl Leggo) § 21 This is not a typical Thesis:37 Why I’ll fail to explain gender failure, existentialism, post-structuralism, interdisciplinarity etc. A thesis has a clear and valid and defensible point. And that is not what I’m doing here38. If you expect to be able to fully understand the gender binary after reading this, I will fail you. The burden of proof is too high. To fully explain the gender binary, I would first have to fully explain gender. Debates are still thick across science-based disciplines, feminist oriented networks and the blogosphere, as to whether gender is primarily a thing of nature or nurture. Most theories point to the idea that gender is a combination of a nature/nurture. That gender is felt, and it is performed39. That it’s an idea system that informs our conditioning, and that it is also a series of impulses, and behaviors. People who study gender their entire lives, and who have bodies and lives where gender is a constant focus still struggle to define it. But generally, there is some agreement that gender is complex, and personal. Leggo, Carl. 2002. “Writing as Living Compos(t)Ting: Poetry and Desire.” Language and Literacy 4 (1). https://doi.org/10.20360/g2k59w. 37 This is a poem “...the poem must, on whatever scale, dislodge assumption, not by simply opposing it, but by dismantling the systematic proof in which its inevitability is grounded. In other words: not “c is wrong” but “who says A has to lead to B?... Poetic intelligence lacks… focused investment in conclusion, being naturally wary of its own assumptions. It derives its energy from a willingness to discard conclusion in the face of evidence, its willingness, in fact, to discard anything.” - Jan Zwicky - Zwicky, Jan. 2014. Wisdom & Metaphor. Edmonton: Brush Education Inc., S20 38 I want to focus more on questions. 39 Beauvoir, Simone de, Constance Borde, and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. 2015. The Second Sex. London: Vintage Books. In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir said “no one is born, but rather becomes a Woman,” do indicate primacy of social constructionism over determinism with regards to gender and power. 19 Figure 3: The Genderbread Person. § 22 A Glance at the Gender Binary: In 2013 Sam Killerman published a book called A Guide to Gender,40 where he included a picture called The Genderbread Person. It quickly achieved viral status on the internet, and soon became a staple image in classrooms and workshops about gender. It distinguishes gender from sex, and sexuality,41 and emphasizes the role of appearance/performance. I would also need to define binary systems, which is also something that theorists struggle to do neatly and in unison. I can give a brief window into a couple staple theories, but I won’t be able to fully define binary systems here. Deconstructing binaries is an approach that can be traced back to Ancient Greek thought. Back to Zeno’s paradox. Where, if infinity is taken as a given, then the space between a location “A” and location “B” can be divided into infinite parts, then the process of shooting an arrow from point A to point B proves that infinity can be traversed. Not only is there infinity, but we can traverse infinity. We don’t need to be trapped on one side with an unimaginable distance to cross. We don’t need to choose an either/or approach. Deciding to think in terms of both/and comes from the realization that we can dance in the in between. 40 Killerman Sam, A Guide to Gender: The Social Justice Advocates Handbook (Impetus Books. 2013), Cover. 41 I know I said I wouldn't focus on such distinctions, but Killerman’s photo is useful to have in the background of this conversation. 20 Helene Cixous talks about how binary oppositions lead to hierarchy, because often one half of the binary is elevated above the other where it then oppresses the other.42 This is a great reason to unlearn binary thinking. In 2012 Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon published Gender Failure, a book exploring both the ways in which they fail to fit into the gender binary, and the ways the gender binary, in all of its rigidness, fails to recognize all of us. When we adopt a nebulous view of gender, where it is difficult to define, but generally there is an agreement that there seems to be two poles, and layer into that the idea that there is not only infinite space between those poles, but that there is also infinite possibilities for movement- we arrive in the reality that genderqueers, genderfucks, gender anarchists, gender retirees, choose to live in. And it is difficult to describe to people outside this culture, because the bedrock of these identities requires a movement towards non-binary thinking- an existential shift towards viewing the world less in black and white terms, and less in fixed terms. It means living a life of faith in the grey and the changeable. § 23 Seeing in Black/White: This kind of spectrum-based, fluid way of thinking can very healing for certain disordered thinking patterns Mechanisms of thinking/feeling/being, caused by trauma, where a person becomes vigilant to their environment, constantly assessing for danger, and the mind/body switches to categorizing all stimulus as being either safe or dangerous without much room in between. Because in a state of fear, in a pattern of learned vigilance, there isn't any time to wonder. And this belief that things are either safe or dangerous, and that danger could arise any time, bleeds into the rest of that person’s lens to view the world, and it fosters a deeper black and white thinking. It fosters binary thinking. And one of the ways of healing this stress response is to use cognitive behavioral therapy to remind ourselves that there is room for grey and for movement between the extremeness43. 42 Cixous, Helene, "Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays," The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity (New York: Routledge, 2008), 148. 43 Hesse Herman, Siddhartha, Bantam.1981. In Zen Buddhism people are encouraged to see the middle way between extremes, where things are neither entirely fixed nor completely changeable. Nietzsche also talks about looking to nature, which is inherently fluid, as a working metaphor for the broader nature of things. Evidence of a fluid universe on both a micro and macro level. And if we buy the premises that the nature of things is fluid, then in the spirit of form/content symmetry, then why not play with fluid mediums to express content that we already know can’t not be fluid. If we take fluidity as a given, then poetry makes more sense than analytical writing, which takes a false hidden premise (enthymeme) that words have a 1:1 relationship to the concepts they represent. If we buy the idea of gesture, that 21 Interestingly, many queer people develop BPD, as a result of their gender performance being persecuted. This persecution creates a very real and justified fear of strangers because there is a very real possibility that strangers will cause some degree of harm to visibly queer people. This plays out as genderqueer people walk down the street, confronted with people who stare at them and make rude and degrading comments. People who receive stares like this can become extremely literate in body language because their safety depends on it. And they can find themselves in a state of vigilance walking down the street where they are looking for micro-expressions of disgust, fear, curiosity, confusion. Because basic dignity and physical safety can depend on being able to read micro-expressions. So, a non-binary perspective, for queer people, is often both the cause of trauma, and the healing salve. Because to be ourselves, for genderqueer people, is to be beyond one of the most primal binaries our culture is steeped in- “male” vs “female.” A queer body’s way of being in the world is beyond binary categorization. A queer body’s way of being in the world is a catalyst for cognitive dissonance. And bodies that cause cognitive dissonance instigate hateful behavior from ignorant people who don’t know how to sit with mystery and greyness and the in-between. And the persistent feedback from people on the street/bus/line-at-the-bank etc. can prime the queer mind to see strangers, and sometimes everyone, as either a friend or an enemy. Queers often dance in between male and female, and in between enemy and friend... And every weekend, queers dance in clubs, warehouse parties, and drag shows. Something to wonder about: conceptual dancing and literal dancing are integral to queer culture. ~ words and ideas are moving changing principles and that spectrum and nuance apply to everything, so the idea that one word can represent one concept for all time, doesn’t add up. 22 Part 2: Topic of Study: The Way We Look Matters. § 24 Looking at Being Looked At: Justin and Taz: Genderqueer Gender Performers “Phenomenology can offer a resource for queer studies insofar as it emphasizes the importance of lived experience, the intentionality of consciousness, the significance of nearness or what is ready-to-hand, and the role of repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds.”44 - Sara Ahmed Justin and Taz are both genderqueer. They both use “they” pronouns. They both dress and act in ways that fall outside of the gender binary. In that sense, Figure 4: Justin and Taz: Gender Failures. 44 Ahmed, Sara. 2007. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press), 2. 23 They are gender failures (self-described). They wanted to document their failure to live up to the binary expectations of ‘male’ and ‘female’ with me. So we went for a walk in downtown Vancouver, and took some pictures… We experienced rubbernecking: entitled watching; unfounded staring; voyeurism. Figure 5: #thewaywelookmatters Taz is walking down the street, while a couple stares. This .gif is my favorite artifact from the shoot. This is the kind of image I was most interested in catching. This method of public photography is riffing off of the work of Haley Morris Cafiero, who specializes in bullying photography; where the goal is to catch the facial expressions of passers-by and spread awareness of fat-phobia. 24 45 Figure 6: Haley Morris Caffiero: The Watchers. “The attribution of feeling toward an object (I feel afraid because you are fearsome) moves the subject away from the object, creating distance through the registering of proximity as a threat”46 - Sara Ahmed All we did was go for a photographed walk with people who are visibly queer,47 and the queer bodies morphed from being the subject of the shoot, to the object of staring. This switch from subject to object, and the distancing involved in this demotion is “othering.” We didn't need to schedule or arrange for any staring. This is the nature of how queer bodies are typically read in space. This is what many queer people know they’re going to be faced with when they go out in public. In order to do the kind of shoot that was in alignment with the letter of what I applied to do, I would have had to discard shots, change the framing to exclude members of the public, and ask the photographer to change the focus. A redacting. a compartmentalizing, a repressing of something. A repressing of a certain kind of looking. The staring is overt, unkind, and unnecessary. 45 Morris-Cafiero, Haley. The Watchers. Ontario, Canada: The Magenta Foundation, 2015. 46 Ahmed, Sara. 2007. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University Press. 47 This is all I applied for with UBC Ethics Review- to do a photographed walk with visibly queer people. The proposition was to treat queer bodies as photographic subjects in public space. But we knew that the queer subjects would become objects, without our consent or control, and this is what we actually wanted to document- a kind of queer subjectivity failure: the othering of queer subjects, the turning of queer subjects into strange objects in public space. 25 It is a tangible event48 and it does tangible damage. At the end of the .gif you can see one of the gawkers look up at the camera. They are now seeing themselves be seen- turning them and their gawking into the object. Does this replicate the harm of the gawking? Are we now gawking at them? I think it depends how we have this conversation. It depends how much humanity we leave gawker. After all, haven’t we all gawked? As I was describing the process of describing myself describing gawking in this piece to my partner, who is familiar with how visible queers are gawked at, they told me about how earlier that day they had been gawked at. They identify as an invisibilized femme, where femme is a queering of feminine. and that queering is invisible to those with binary eyes. Most normy people see a ‘woman,’ but they don’t identify as a woman. Their energy and capacity and resilience go beyond what Simone de Beauvoir would describe as ‘the second sex’. 49 Figure 7: They/Them/Their pin. They were in a liquor store: and at the checkout the cashier asked them about the pin on their vest. It said "they/them." They responded by saying, "That's my gender pronoun." The cashier said, "I thought that was a plural pronoun, for multiple people." "No they changed it" “Well I should really do some research on that" "Ya, the internet is full of resources on the legitimacy of they as a pronoun" 48 Term I thought of: an event that is real that we need to un-gas-light ourselves to believe is real. 49 My take on “The Second Sex” is that de Beauvoir wanted us all to view everyone as being beyond the second sex because she was using that term to refer to a socially constructed second- class citizen. 26 "Wait, do you mean urban dictionary?" he asked skeptically. “No, I think it was Oxford," they said as they walked out of the store. Returning to the disciplining quality of prescriptive grammar (where people believe that if "they" is prescribed to refer to multiple people in the dictionary), that trumps the reality of "they" being used for singular genderqueer people in queer culture, and the validating quality of institutional stamps of approval (where the difference between urban dictionary and Oxford dictionary determines the validity of word usage. We should also consider the ways that we allow rules of grammar to trump other dialects or communication. We should probably consider that we might be acting like Donald Trump when we correct each other's grammar---we are expressing that one way of talking is more supreme & legitimate than other perfectly understandable ways of communicating. We don't need to build walls of exclusion around language. Rhetoric is about bridge-building.50)) So invisibilized queers are gawked at too51 The dynamic is the same, but the mechanics are different If gawking means to interrupt social flow to do deep skeptical questioning of a person's being To degrade them by interrogating, putting on trial asking whether they should exist as they are In many ways a gawking moment is a saturated moment52 for the gawker. Time slows down. There is more meaning in what they are looking at than they can fit into their current reality. Cognitive dissonance occurs. And rejection or integration, or some combination of both follows. 50“In general, rhetoric- and rhetorical theory!- is motivated by the urge to decrease division and (the illusion of) isolation.” - Judith Segal Segal, Judith. “Patient Compliance, the Rhetoric of Rhetoric, and the Rhetoric of Persuasion.” (Rhetoric Society Quarterly 23, no. 3-4 (1994): https://doi.org/10.1080/02773949409390998), 98. 51 When I first conceived of this project, I was interested in dealing with visible queers only, because I was assuming that only visible queers are glared at. Where I was limiting glaring to a certain set of mechanics (which wouldn’t account for the reality that many invisibilized queers are literally glared at on the street for reasons of misogyny) but in opening glaring up to a broader kind of gawking, it includes the skeptical gaze that invisible queers live under a gaze that says “I don't fully see you, and when I get glimpses, my confusion makes me angry at you.” 52 Jean Luc Marion’s “saturated phenomena” refers to an event that is so full of data that the entirety of it is imperceptible to the human senses. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773949409390998 27 § 25 Looking at the Wound/Wounding: “…the truth is that every time I am misgendered, a tiny little sliver of me disappears.”53 - Ivan Coyote Sometimes when you’re trying to find a witness and can’t it’s because people don't have the conceptual framework to see you. “Structures of language fundamentally shape, rather than merely reflect, cultural assumptions.”54 - Kimberly Emmons 55 Figure 8: Lost Voice. The process of asking for witnessing from people who can't see you can damage your voice. It becomes a crisis of audience. A rhetorical impossibility. 53 Coyote, Ivan E. Gender Failure. (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014), 47. 54 Emmons, Kimberly. Black Dogs and Blue Words: Depression and Gender in the Age of Self- Care (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 7. 55 Samaran, Nora. 2020. “Psychological Harm Is Physical Harm 2: Why Survivors Lose Their Voice.” Dating Tips for the Feminist Man. March 3, 2020. https://norasamaran.com/2016/10/24/why-dont-survivors-speak/. 28 Nora Samaran writes in her article Psychological Harm is Physical Harm 2: Why Survivors Lose Their Voice, that it is very common for victims of abuse to lose their voices. Like Ariel from The Little Mermaid. This happened to me. I could feel it as my voice went. First I started saying that I was getting burnt-out from defending myself. Then I started opting out of certain topics because “I just couldn't go there right now,” and then it wasn't opting out anymore. I couldn't talk about anything that felt like I was holding more than one piece of information at a time, as if my need to always be holding what people couldn't see about my story right there in case I needed to leap to my own defense. I was a burnt-out defense attorney who couldn't stand up for myself anymore. So I left the city to work on farms and be with animals and plants. And as I sat under a tree one day, as a donkey paced back and forth in front of me, trying to get me to play, asking me to see his silly cheerfulness, I realized that a lot of normy people can’t fully see queer people56 and often queer people can’t see each other.57 We can get burnt out and dissociated and forget how to play. Many queers exist in a steady state of solidarity scarcity. We sometimes trade our dignity to walk on the surface and feel normal. As I was reading Gender Failure,58 I came across a section in a story that made my stomach feel cold/hollow. My queer PTSD was getting tripped. It was the feeling I get when I'm in proximity to queers who might have bad blood with each other. It’s not rational because most of the time this dynamic will have no impact on my safety. But I've developed a vigilance towards that vibe now because of the times that it has affected my life, it’s been devastating. I could recognize my friend’s energy in the description in one of Rae’s stories, and then when it got to the dialogue, I could feel his syntax. Rae was talking about a person who was also a trans guy, but who was on hormones long enough to “pass.”59 And Rae does not take hormones, so Rae experiences passing differently. In fact, they explain many times in the book, that since they do not 56 The language they use to describe gender is both the cause and the effect of this. 57 Samaran, Nora. 2020. “Psychological Harm Is Physical Harm 2: Why Survivors Lose Their Voice.” Dating Tips for the Feminist Man. March 3, 2020. https://norasamaran.com/2016/10/24/why-dont-survivors-speak/. 58 Coyote, Ivan E. 2014. Gender Failure. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press. 59 “Passing” in queer community is a controversial term. it refers to bodies/behaviors that fit the normal standards of the gender binary. people who pass are typically not causing members of the general public to have the cognitive dissonance that leads to the staring/judgement. https://norasamaran.com/2016/10/24/why-dont-survivors-speak/ https://norasamaran.com/2016/10/24/why-dont-survivors-speak/ 29 pass by way of being in alignment with the rules of the gender binary, they fail on a daily basis in the eyes of people they interact with. And this is why they’ve retired from gender. To reject the binary that rejects them. At this point in their story, they hadn’t started using a “they” pronoun yet. They were still using a “he” pronoun and identifying as a man. The conversation they had with my friend was a pivotal changing point for them. Because in that conversation, Rae realized that my friend didn't see them as fully male, because they weren’t performing their gender in the same way he was. I texted my friend after reading this section, to ask if he was the person Rae was referring to, and to see how he felt about Rae’s process. Maybe my friend was failing to see Rae’s gender. Maybe Rae was failing to see that my friend wasn’t totally failing. (And maybe being a good gender audience is pass/fail? Or is that too binary?) I wanted to hear what was going on for my friend in that moment. We texted and processed it. He said he’s a very different person now that he stopped drinking. Sometimes queers fail to see each other. (and being invisible to your own kind can be devastating) Maybe I'm failing to see my friend in this moment, and maybe he’s either not failing at all, or maybe he did fully fail to witness Rae in this conversation (stressful thinking can breed binary thinking). There are probably gaps in my ability to interpret both of their experiences. I’ve started including gaps in my storytelling around my assault, because I can predict where I will lose people. And feeling someone’s attention drop because of boredom, misunderstanding, and/or dissociation is painful when I feel like I'm showing someone a gaping bloody hole in my heart. I notice I keep the rawest details to myself now. Something about having the police officer ask me to write it all out in more detail than I ever had. Something about how she told me there was nothing she could do with that information because it contained no evidence. (I was hemorrhaging details everywhere, but not enough to drink.) Something about how I hoped she would be able to do more than nothing because she was a woman. And maybe she would be able to sympathize because maybe she or someone she knew had been raped too. So I have a vigilance now, where I notice that I assume someone will find my assault details simultaneously too heavy, and yet not solid enough to count. I struggle to imagine an audience I can reach. If I imagine a non-queer audience then I feel like talking about my journey through gender pronouns (something that can feel like both a basic, yet advanced and abstract aspect of myself, depending on who I'm talking to) is too much of a Gender 30 201 type conversation, and that it would be best for me to use the most entry level gender language. This is a safety calculous. I am assessing where I will lose you. If you aren’t queer I guestimate that I will lose you when I start talking about how I go by “he/him/his” now, but that I do not like when people call me “a man” because I perceive it to be the most binary of the masculine pronouns and although identify as masculine enough to fit masculine pronouns like “guy,” “dude,” “him”. I don’t feel that I fit well with “man” when it’s used more formally, but it’s ok when it’s more casual like “thanks man.” But even then, sometimes I catch my ear listening hard to hear if that last syllable was a “n” or an “m.” There’s so much meaning in that letter. Figure 9: Redacted. If I imagine a queer audience, I flinch at the idea of sharing the information that I publicly called out a trans guy for rape. Even though this isn’t written in stone as a commandment, there is an expectation that we don’t call each other out horizontally. That members of the same tier of power within the LGBTQ alphabet soup don’t get each other in trouble. So a white passing trans guy, calling out another white passing trans guy, is challenging for queer community to understand and show support towards. I believe both the perpetrator and the survivor deserve support, and I believe healing and resolution can come about that way. 31 “It often isn’t the initial harm that is the most damaging in conflict---it’s the way the thing is responded to that often does the most harm.”60 - Michael Dues I included this photo in my call-out. I was using the medium started by Project Unbreakable, where victims of sexual assault take a picture of themselves holding a sign with a quote from their rapist. The idea is that in doing this they are reclaiming agency over the moment, and making themselves whole again, and thus unbreakable. I don’t feel able to share a photo like that again. But I do feel able to share the ways in which sharing that photo felt vulnerable, and the ways in which my silence has changed shape. At the time of the original photo, I wanted people to know the intimate details. After sharing those details publicly and feeling like I didn’t receive the response I wanted, I don't want to share about this wound with that much graphic vulnerability anymore. I would rather share the ways in which the sharing process itself hurt. The ways in which I'd rather cloud over the most painful pieces now (represented by the fading/greying), until I'm sure that I trust someone. And sharing about that blur has been having an unbarring effect. It’s un-redacting… This is where I imagine there being expectations that I will edit my personal narrative into a clear causal chain with a minimum degree of hope and clarity and empowerment. When in fact my experience around most of the pieces that lead to being able to write this were bloody, doubt-filled and confusing. This piece will likely be perceived to be too subjective and sloppy. Someone might mention losing the forest for the trees § 26 Looking at Reaction/Reacting: “The arousal that goes along with PTSD can make all emotions more intense--and this intensity can be more difficult to regulate.”61 - Matthew Tull 60 Dues, Michael. The Art of Conflict Management: Achieving Solutions for Life, Work, and Beyond (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2010), 54. 61 “The good news is that there are a number of skills for regulating emotions.” - Matthew Tull Tull, Matthew. Cognitive Behavioral Coping Skills Workbook (Milton Keynes: Speechmark Publishing Ltd, 2013), 87. http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/ 32 § 27 Looking for Safety: Community Climate Crisis62 Figure 10: Looking at looking. When you know that people in the world are going to scowl at you, you’re faced with the idea that the larger group, your environment, isn’t right. And then this makes the stakes very high that your little pocket of trees be safe. One characteristic of queer culture is the belief that “normy world,” the forest, isn’t safe. So we reclaim safety as a promise for each other as “chosen family.” In the 60’s we called gay/lesbian bars “safe space” in response to anti-sodomy laws.63 The concept of safe space has been hash tagged into oblivion. It’s often taken as a given that queer events will be “safe spaces” today, and when we fail to deliver on that promise of safety, it can feel like we have no home. 62 If we agree with the premise that everything is connected, “as above, so below,” which is the motto associated with the Tree of Life in Celtic Paganism, then to some degree maybe our human- social-climate is destabilized in a similar way to our environmental climate - ie. if plastic is in the ocean, it is also in us, if the salmon are depleted and the trees are starving, then so are we “The salmon feed the trees that make the air we breathe.” - Alexandra Morton. Morton, Alexandra, and Billy Proctor. Heart of the Raincoast: The Life of Billy Proctor (Victoria, BC: TouchWood Editions, 2016), 36. 63 Harris, Malcolm. “What's a 'Safe Space'? A Look at the Phrase's 50-Year History.” Splinter. Accessed April 12, 2020. https://splinternews.com/what-s-a-safe-space-a-look-at-the-phrases-50- year-hi-1793852786. 33 As I was working on this piece, one day, my partner called me to them in the bath where they were reading “The Remedy”. They’d just finished a story by Amber Dawn that sounded like a story I had told them. It was about showing up to a queer party, just as a femme and a drag queen were making fun of sex workers. Amber Dawn explains that it was literally blocks from where sex workers she knew had disappeared. She talked about feeling betrayed by queer community. Feeling unsafe in her body. I recognized that story partly because that kind of scenario is typical of lateral aggressions at queer parties. Queer partying is 1-part liberation, 1-part anxiety, and 1-part daggers cutting into lifelong wounds to the pulse of house music. Queer social anxiety is often a mix of excitement and well-founded fear. The other reason I recognized the story was because I was there that night. I was standing outside. I watched Amber Dawn arrive. I watched the femme and the drag queen, who were my friends, make the joke. I watched Amber Dawn tell them to never ever talk about those women like that. I said “Ahh not cool.” Quietly. And in that moment, it functioned as basically saying nothing. It was too quiet. My femme friend was already weaving an apologist story about why Amber Dawn was overreacting, and I didn’t call her on that in the moment. And that wasn’t ok. Amber Dawn writes about the particular devastation queers can feel when they show up to events with the hope that they won’t experience more of the same shit they get from normy people as they walk down the street. “No blood test can detect grief or disgrace. No research survey can quantify the harmful impact of having your queer communities-- your so called safe inclusive spaces -- other you again and again.” 64 - Amber Dawn Queers live in an environment of cultural crisis. A cultural/environmental crisis. It’s becoming more common to promise “safer spaces” in queer community now. Where safety is considered a collaborative process, and where absolute, binary safety65 is considered unattainable. This revision focuses more on promising to increase safety, rather than promising total safety. This feels more honest. Less gas-lighty.66 The promise of total safety sets people up to experience vibe failure, and since people at parties are motivated to see partying as light and fun, I think it also sets 64 Dawn, Amber. The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care. (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017), 126 65 Where safety is understood to exist if and only if all danger is removed, in a safety or danger, never safety and danger framework. 66 Gas-lighting is a psychological abuse technique where someone denies someone else’s accurate perception of reality. It results in someone losing faith in their own perspective. It damages eyes and voices. 34 people up to dissociate from the degrees to which they are not feeling safe. It encourages fake smiles and forced stories of good times. But the modification to safer space can let people laugh and dance and talk about what felt “off” at the same time. It breaks down the party or suffer binary and let’s us party and talk about our pain, hopefully so the next party can be better. I wanted to talk about how my friend who insulted sex workers could be both an uplifting part of the overall vibe of the party, and also, in that moment, an undermining quality. In an environment where total safety has been promised, a breach in that safety means total failure. I wished there was a way in which we were expecting degrees of failure that night. Figure 11: More Looking. “There are always ways to intervene against othering. And when I say othering I don’t mean those pop-up reality tv shows about addiction, I’m talking about holistic and preventative care.”67 - Amber Dawn And I wish that people like me were more skilled at naming what feels off in the moment, setting boundaries in the moment. If queer party space could be cued in such a way that peoples’ pallets would have been more open to a call-in in the moment,68and also a call-in days later. People would have been more open to 67 Dawn, Amber. 2017. The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press. 126, 119 68 I can speak for myself at least and say that I would have felt more open to doing a call-in in a space that hadn’t promised total safety. But I also would have felt more comfortable calling-in in the moment if I wasn’t already known in the community for making a call-out. I felt like I was under scrutiny to see if I was just trigger happy and oversensitive. And I had already gone unheard, in the sense that I didn’t feel supported enough after my call-out. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to navigate gathering an audience, in the heat of a moment. I was unsure. And in flinching, and letting the moment pass me by, I was a bystander. and that was not ok. 35 resolution, to missteps, since missteps would already have been accounted for and expected. The promise of total safety sets us up to be perfectionists and dissociated and open to excommunicating that which doesn’t align with total safety, and that is very unsafe. § 28 Looking for proof: When Seeing is Believing. “...when we feel fear, we feel fear of something.”69 - Sara Ahmed That's why I wanted tangible proof of the stares, because otherwise we are just sharing our feelings about being glared at, trying to convince people that these looks are micro-expressions connected to very real feelings of disgust/fear/hate. And that those feelings lead to very real joblessness/homelessness/friendlessness. That micro- expressions aren’t of micro-importance. They are tangible. That's also why I came out publicly about being sexually assaulted. Before coming out I'd talked about the experience privately with friends and acquaintances, but there was always something that felt kind of hypothetical about what I was sharing. I was sharing the feeling about being sexually assaulted, which was being disregarded just as easily as my feelings-based way of being in the world has been countless times. Sharing the feelings wasn’t enough to prove to people that something significant had happened and that I was living in significant danger. I did however talk to my boss the next day and I told him that something had happened, and that we needed to make a plan to address it. I suggested meeting with the person who made the sexworker-phobic joke, talking with her, letting her know that we know she is fundamentally a good person, and that what she did wasn’t ok. At the time I suggested this, my boss agreed. But he said he wanted to have the conversation with her privately. I didn’t hear from him for a week. I contacted him. His response was that confronting our friend about what she’d done had caused her massive anxiety and that he wished I had just dealt with it in the moment. I quit after that conversation. And I wonder if that was the right decision every day. Maybe I could have worked it out with him. Maybe I could have gotten him to understand that it wasn’t worse to point out the harm done, than it was to do the harm. But, I think what is more likely, is that I would have just slowly adapted to an environment when I felt more and more unable to name when things didn’t feel ok for me, because I was living under a constant question mark- did he overreact? Couldn’t he have just gotten a mediator to sit with him and his rapist and they could have all held hands and said namaste? That’s me giving words to the ambient, felt skepticism. Real or imagined- it would have worn me down. 69Ahmed, Sara. 2007. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University Press. 3 36 But by creating a story, describing myself in relation to the person who assaulted me, describing the scene of the event, and describing the slow boiling of the frog70 that were my boundaries in relation to this guy, I had created something tangible. And when I published it, more people believed me. Many people did not, and eventually their skepticism created an acid fog that made it impossible for me to continue living in Vancouver with any shred of self-0respect or dignity. But even as I was existing under their skeptical looks, I could tell they felt they were looking at something. They were engaging with something real. Even if they wondered about the realism of the details in my story, they weren’t doubting the reality of my call-out. They had likely read it or heard about it. That piece was real. Afterwards he went into hiding and left the city. That piece is real too. I had gotten them to see something. Even if I wasn't being held deep enough or warm enough. Sometimes people don't understand what they see and reject it, and sometimes people know what they're seeing but the reality of what they're looking at is too much to integrate, and so they scowl or look away. § 29 The way This Project Came About, in 2013: As I drove past the Spy Store on Broadway in Vancouver it occurred to me that I’d love to be able to wear the kind of glasses that James Bond would wear in old movies, where he’d have a tiny camera hidden in the glasses. I wanted to be able to show other people what it was like to be looked at the way I was getting looked at. My friend who didn't receive those looks could see. They could see people glaring at me on the bus or rubbernecking as they walked past me on the street. But I wanted to be able to show people what it’s like to hold eye contact with someone who is glaring at you. I wanted to have physical evidence that it’s possible to walk down the street every day and receive hundreds of those glares.71 I thought if I could show people who don’t have those experiences the footage, that they would have an embodied reaction. That there would be something about it that would make it feel like it was happening to them. I was counting on people being able to have more sympathy for their own pain than empathy for other peoples’. But during the process of my transition, I stopped receiving the dangerous looks of confusion/curiosity/disgust/fear. Because I started to look like I fit in a gender box. And so on the day of the shoot I decided I’d out myself by holding up a sign that said “I have a vagina.” In order to cause myself to fail, to instigate my own failure, knowing that the average person walking down the street in downtown Vancouver would think it was absurd that someone with a beard could have a vagina. And I did receive glares. 70 A frog boiling slowly is a classic metaphor for abuse. the idea is that if you drop a frog in already boiling water it will jump out. But if you put a frog in tepid water, and then increase the temperature slowly, the water will eventually come to a boil and the frog will stay in the pot and die. 71 As I researched the subject of radical public photography further, I came upon the work of Haley Morris Cafiero. I found her blocking particularly inspiring. The way she positioned herself, doing mundane activities, in public space. I also really appreciate the concept behind her next project: capturing the looks of surprise on people who notice she is taking pictures of people. She also takes her pictures to art galleries which brings in another layer of audience looking at the looking. 37 One person even stopped me to yell at me. The confusion triggered anger in him. He wanted me to explain myself to him as he yelled at me. He thought his need to understand my gender had priority over the dignity I was losing by enduring his pointing and his questions. After I took a break from this project to work on my PTSD, this medium became a genre. After the viral video of the woman walking through New York,72 there were countless videos of a similar nature; documenting how gay men, disabled people and fat people are looked at as they walk down the street. People were hungry to explain to the world that micro-expressions can amount to micro- aggressions, and microaggressions matter. The way we look matters. § 30 Looking at Being Looked At: I interviewed Justin, about a month after the shoot, to talk about how they felt about doing that kind of public performance. We talked while we looked at the footage together.73 They explained that after doing this shoot, they had become hyper-0aware of the way they were being looked at on a daily basis. Before the shoot, in our first interview they were excited. They knew they had a gender performance that attracted a lot of staring. They said they were going to “femme it up” and have fun with it, to really draw out those stares. They said they were interested in documenting and seeing that. After the performance, one month later, they were more masculine than I had ever seen them. I felt bad for noticing that. They brought it up, without me asking, so I feel like it’s ok for me to share that piece here. The first time we met they were in an amazing floor length turquoise dress, and they were singing “Let It Go” for TV cameras in front of nerdy queers in a coffee shop for gamers. That day Justin was talking about how queer visibility is hard in the gaming community. They were making themselves abundantly visible to help those who were afraid to be seen feel like there was someone else holding that spotlight. When I saw them one month after our shoot, they were standing adjacent to that spotlight. We talked about that too. They said they were pulling that part of themselves in for a bit, to take a break. So they don't burn out. § 31 Looking at/for Trauma: How do queers heal when trauma is at the root of our identity? 72 Rob Bliss Creative. “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman.” YouTube video, 1:56. October 28, 2014 .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A 73 This is photo-elicited journalism. The idea is that photograph are more evocative than words, and that photos transport us somewhere. I wanted us to feel transported back to the scene, to feel those eyes again, and to talk about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A 38 Sometimes we install ourselves in a victim mindset so we can have a framework to understand ourselves as always right, and everything else as owing us something. Not all of us are doing this all the time. There are very legitimate moments where queer/anti- oppression minded folks are being wronged and they need to be able to access social justice language to slam down the hammer of Thor into a situation for their own protection and dignity. And sometimes queers weaponize their victim statuses against each other. This could be called “Power Under Abuse.”74 § 32 This is what Power Under Abuse can look like: A checklist: ● Using shame and social justice language to justify entitlement to someone else’s time, skills, resources or capacity. ● Telling someone that their basic needs or boundaries (which is distinct from their comfort) are not valid because they hold an identity that is more privileged than yours. ● Pressuring or forcing someone to have sex with you and then making claims about their politics when they say no or name that you were sexually violent towards them. ● Accusing someone of controlling or abusing you because they are requesting accountability or transparent conflict resolution with you, for harm you caused or participated in. ● Accusing someone (often publicly) of harming you in ways that did not happen. ● Refusing to absorb or validate reality checks offered by friends and loved ones who witness abuse in your dynamic and justifying this deflection by stating that abuse "can only exist when power or privilege is held over someone else." ● Refusing to accept support from anyone other than the person you are being abusive towards and leveraging shame or guilt at their power and privilege to pressure them not to set boundaries with you. ● Denying, erasing or minimizing the support you receive from the person you are being abusive towards, both in private and in front of other people. ● Acting confused or dismissive when the person whose care you have erased or minimized expresses feeling frustrated or hurt by you (often this is done in front of other people and the person experiencing the abuse is framed as over reacting or just having an unrelated hard time). ● Accusing someone of abandoning you when they set boundaries or reach limits of capacity to care for you. ● Refusing to set your own boundaries (when it was possible for you to do so) and then making statements like “you made me do this.” 74 Grace, Andi. “Power Under Abuse.” The Witch Cabinet, September 27, 2018. https://witchcabinet.com/blogs/andi-grace/power-under-abuse-what-it-is-and-how-to- heal?ck_subscriber_id=80520395. https://witchcabinet.com/blogs/andi-grace/power-under-abuse-what-it-is-and-how-to-heal 39 ● Calling for ostracization or punishment that is not proportionate to the harm done (i.e. 'going nuclear' when situation does not call for this or simple conflict resolution would have sufficed). ● Constantly accusing other people of being oppressive, while simultaneously being unwilling to unpack your own privilege or examine how you harm or hold power over others. ● Not acknowledging the oppression experienced by the person you are abusing and/or convincing the person you are abusing that they have more power (in general and specifically over you) than they actually do. ● Refusing to acknowledge care, labor and resources given to you by the person you are in conflict with and instead characterizing them as only ever having had harmed you. ● Refusing to address conflict in a way that honors the integrity and humanity of everyone involved. ● Stealing from the person you are being abusive towards and either denying you stole, or claiming you have a right to the thing you stole because you are more oppressed than the person you stole from (which may or may not actually be true). ● Accusing someone of triangulating or breaking confidentiality when they seek witnesses or support to navigate the abusive dynamic they are in with you. ● Claiming to be 'getting support' and 'calling in witnesses' when you are spreading rumors and triangulating. ● Weaponizing and applying pop psychology terms like "toxic", "narcissist" and "empath" to create a hyper-simplistic narrative of what happened between you and the person you were abusive towards, where in you lack an understanding of what these terms were intended to describe. ● Labelling confusion, miscommunication or difference of opinion as gas-lighting.75 When I came out about being sexually assaulted, there were people in the community who perceived my call-out to be power under abuse. They thought that I was struggling to handle rejection and that I wanted revenge. The reason someone coming out about sexual assault can be perceived that way in the queer community is because of how rampant this kind of behavior is. Some people weren’t wrong to wonder if I was retaliating, when I was steeped in a retaliation- based community that uses social justice language to publicly execute people. And in this climate, naming someone a rapist is a public execution, or it leads to public denial because we don’t have a spectrum of options available to us. We don’t have robust restorative justice circles, or a bro- culture of calling each other in when people get predatory. It has to escalate to the level of a call-out because there are gaps in our collective protocol around how we as a culture respond to sexual assault. In the fall of 2017 #MeToo is taking over the internet because there’s a bottleneck opening up and a massive pressure release is happening. I’m excited to see what will come from making conversations about sexual assault more normalized. 75 I co-wrote this article with Poplar Rose for the Tarot and Social Justice themed organization Little Red Tarot. It has since been taken down after the blog closed. 40 § 33 Resting Bitch Face: The Scowlee becomes the Scowler. Sometimes queers are assholes. And lots of them are that way for very understandable reasons. And sometimes this doesn't make the assholery ok. And sometimes it does. Resting bitch face falls along these strata. Resting bitch face,76 if you are unfamiliar, is when someone's baseline facial expression is cold. They're always glaring at the world, to some degree. In the queer community it's part of the culture to know that lots of queers have resting bitch face. And it's also part of the lore to believe that the reason for this is because normies do us wrong (won't hire queers, won't rent to queers, won't look at or treat queers nicely, the degree and visibility of this varies based on the degree of gender failure and geography). When you know you’re going to be glared at, why not glare back? There are so many understandable reasons for resting bitch face and so many tragic consequences. Scowling can invite scowling Scowling can calibrate us to feel dark emotions Scowling can make people think we hate them Scowling can scare people off Scowling can make someone think we want to fight and Scowling can scare someone into not fighting us Scowling can keep people who shouldn’t be close at a distance Scowling can be armor And sometimes that scowling, when turned inward, can make us monstrous. 76 Grushkin, Rebecca. “I’ll Smile When I Want To: Why Resting Bitch Face Is Sexist.” Accessed April 12, 2020. https://www.hercampus.com/school/american/ill-smile-when-i-want-why-resting- bitch-face-sexist. This article deals with the problematics*** of thinking women shouldn't have resting bitch face, which is related to men feeling entitled to women's affection and insulted by their rejection. I think a similar logic can be used to understand resting bitch face in queers (many of whom identify as women, or who have feminized experiences). 41 I just watched a documentary called Party Monster.77 It's about the rise and fall of club kid culture, which was characterized by gay men taking over public spaces in glam rock78 outfits for after-hour parties with lots of drugs and sex. The leader of this movement was Michael Alig who then goes on to end the movement79 by murdering his social competitor and roommate. The narrative of the documentary suggests that it was childhood bullying that forged Alig into a Disco Murder. Maybe it's because queers often experience rejection at fundamental developmental times that we have trouble holding each other gently. Sometimes we become party monsters and devour each other. § 34 Once I worked in a Gay/Queer club: Figure 12: Queer Map of Vancouver. I lived in EastVan, and I was attracted to gay men in the West End. 77 Party Monster. Bailey Fenton. New York: World of Wonder, 2003. 78 Glam rock, which was hugely about colorful flamboyant outfits, happened in response to the previous hippie movement, which rejected high fashion. 79 This is the idea supported by the documentary, but many queers in urban centers dress up in fabulous outfits and spend a lot of time in clubs identify as club kids today. 42 Figure 13: Culture Clash. Although both sections of the city are LGBTQ, during the 3 years I lived there,80 EastVan had more people who were assigned female at birth and may now identify as: lesbians, transmen, nonbinary etc. And the West End has more people assigned male at birth who are attracted to other people assigned male at birth or transmen. I found it particularly challenging to move east and west, from queer space to gay space and back. Gay men say “hey girl” to their people… if they see you as a gay man they say “hey girl” … but if you say “hey girl” to a masculine of center person in EastVan it can be seen as critically offensive misgendering and a violation of “safe space.” I felt like I had to calibrate and recalibrate my social/language apparatus as I rode the Skytrain to hang out in these culturally distinct, yet LGBTQ, parts of the city. 80 How can we ever talk about queer culture in a stable way when it is different in every major city/town/village around the world; it’s different for people of different generations (even micro- generations across spans of 3-5 years). Nonetheless we have tangible experiences in these communities, and it can be helpful to talk about our experiences in these changing micro-cultures like they are nonetheless real even thought they are multifaceted, multiple, and changing cultures. The LGBTQ community is not a static or unified community. We do not have one consistent agenda. So I’m speaking about my experiences of queerness here like they are concrete experiences, because they were tangible for me, but I also see this epoch that my experiences happened within as a changing fluid epoch amongst other cultural queer epochs on a fluid tapestry we are all simultaneously interpreting and creating. 43 Figure 14: Everybody. Every Body. Vancouver Art and Leisure Society was supposed to be a space where everyone could party: gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, kinky, festival-goers, club kids. LGBTQ and more! I started working in this organization by reaching out to the owner who was being inundated by a public call-out. I told him that I might be able to help him out, because it appeared as though he had made a faux pas without knowing. It appeared as though, although he was gay, he did not speak “queer.” He had forgotten to do an accessibility audit of his venue. This was normal on the West End. It was social suicide in EastVan. It is expected that if you are putting on an event for one member of a marginalized group, that you will be making room at the table for everyone. This means knowing how people in wheelchairs are going to experience your event and making those details clear to people as you advertise your event. In the West End people want to know 1) who is performing. 2) who else is coming out to party that night, and 3) is there a cover charge, and maybe 4) what are the drink specials? Gay and Queer are distinct yet overlapping cultures. Queer has emerged from queer theory and academic feminism Even if someone hasn’t been in academia, if someone identifies as queer chances are they study their identity and identity politics in general with an academic vigor. Gays were traditionally cis-men who were persecuted in gay bars. Their liberation involves happily partying without getting beat up or killed. 44 But the term queer is being universalized in the LGBTQ community. People who used to be gay now identify as queer; The cultures are mixing. ~ So I ran his Facebook account for a few days I made the appropriate minimal apologies I avoided invitations to debate I later helped him come up with the tagline Everybody Every Body A more accessible way of talking about accessibility politics, I thought His spaces weren’t fully wheelchair accessible though, so I guess it wasn’t technically correct. But the spirit of the message was that we wanted people from east and west to converge on main street to mix with bisexuals and straight festival go-er 45 Figure 15: Vancouver Club Kids. 81 I was standing to the left of the photographer when this was taken. I remembered thinking it seemed like an iconic moment. The image seems to call to mind a timeless club kid, unbothered by the goings on of the 9-5. Nocturnal, and living in the underground. 81 Cameron, Baron S. Night Visions: Beyond Good and Evil. Vancouver, British Columbia: Culture Thug Photography, 2016. “We must face ugly truths about ourselves, the company we keep, and the company we kept. We are not responsible for the actions of others but cannot pretend problems don’t exist because we are not directly involved… some of the people I photograph are way out on the margins… I do not seek to romanticize their situations. Nothing could be worse or more dangerous. Worse, in the sense that to romanticize their situation is to give it a false nobility and no onus for anyone to push for change. Dangerous because you are ill-advised to stop counting sheep when wolves are about… I am here to insist you stop turning a blind eye to far corners of our society. We are all our brother's keepers. If not, then who will come for us when we need help?” - Cameron S. Baron 46 These guys were gender failures and gender fucks too. Having a multi-disciplinary (music/art/performance) and multi-cultural space sounded amazing to me. What could go wrong? 82 Figure 16: Arson puts Vancouver Arts and Leisure Society on ice. It was speculated that this was retaliation for stealing customers from the West End. It turns out that members of the LGBTQ umbrella can’t just be mish-mashed together in a creative/party space without complications. 82 Little, Simon, and Robyn Crawford. “Suspected Arson Puts Vancouver Arts and Leisure Society on Ice.” Global News. Global News, January 8, 2018. https://globalnews.ca/news/3951066/arts- group-arson/. 47 We are not endangered pandas who can just be thrown into an enclosure together in the hopes of cuteness. (That isn’t even realistic when it comes to the pandas. Sometimes they cannibalize.) We are not unanimous about the gay agenda. We are not unanimous about whether we’re having a party or a protest83 We are not unanimous about how we party or how we protest. The gays prefer screaming, body contact, sarcasm. The queers prefer conversations about consent. Bisexual people can party with any of them. But they also feel left out a lot. In my time working there I witnessed women coming to me to report consent violations (I guess the limited conversations about consent was a complicated policy). ~ Sometimes we're able to heal enough that we can march and dance beside each other. I think we are able to hold each other well when we look at our trauma and rework it. I think that applies to everyone, not just queers. § 35 Why are Queers so mean to each other? “...the community that I have spent my entire adult life working and living in sometimes feels even more dangerous and volatile than the mainstream, cis and heteronormative world that I spent my teen years trying to escape. After all, I can at least blame the cruelty of straight, cis society on homophobia and transphobia. But why are queers so mean to queers?”84 - Kai Cheng Thom 83 Arguably the most effective protests are fun and the most powerful parties affect social change. (some kind of quote about social movement theory). The right party can be a powerful dialectic between action and theory. The right moments at a parties have profound butterfly-effect-esque impacts on cultural trends. 84 Thom, Kai Cheng. 2019. “Why Are Queer People so Mean to Each Other?” Xtra Magazine. August 16, 2019. https://www.dailyxtra.com/why-are-queer-people-so-mean-to-each-other- 160978. 48 “What happens to a community of people who have been raised with a sensation of constant, looming danger, of being fundamentally wrong in the way we love and express ourselves? What impact might that collective trauma have upon our bodies and spirits?” - Kai Cheng Thom Scholars of the brain are fond of saying “what fires together, wires together,” which refers to the brain’s tendency to form neural networks (pathways in the brain that form certain thought, feeling and behavioral responses) that become stronger and stronger every time they are used. Trauma theory holds that traumatized individuals — and, I hypothesize, queer and trans community as a whole — have well-worn neural networks shaped around the deeply held physical sensation that we are constantly in danger, that we are bad and unlovable, that others are untrustworthy and violent. Every time we are abused, discriminated against or neglected, those neural networks become stronger, while our neural networks associated with safety and loving relationships atrophy. We become physically less capable of imagining a world where being with others is not synonymous with being unsafe.”85 So queers are super-saturated in call-outs We have replicated a police state within our own saf(er) space “[Language] can precipitate action by mapping the cognitive terrain and persuading us that we are (or are not) in need of treatment, and it can shape the forms of treatment to which we are willing to subject ourselves.”86 - Kimberly Emmons Words got us here Identity label words Imperative words Thou shalt words Words casting broad strokes And mobilizing armies 85 Thom, Kai Cheng. 2019. “Why Are Queer People so Mean to Each Other?” Xtra Magazine. August 16, 2019. https://www.dailyxtra.com/why-are-queer-people-so-mean-to-each-other- 160978. 86 Emmons, Kimberly. Black Dogs and Blue Words: Depression and Gender in the Age of Self- Care (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 40. 49 “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?”87 - Ru Paul “Unfortunately, humans often do not completely discharge the vast energies mobilized to protect themselves.”88 - Peter A. Levine § 35 Looking at Cults:89 As I was leaving Vancouver, I watched Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, 90 a documentary about people leaving Scientology. There was something that I found strangely familiar about the behaviors and nature of the cult of Scientology, and cults in general. The repeating of the approved phrases. The look of tense fear in the eyes. Conditioned behavior. Tangible consequences for stepping out of line. “A typical cult has a charismatic, unaccountable leader, persuades by coercion and exploits its members, economically, sexually or in some other way.”91 - Rick Ross Francis Lee identifies some key ways in which the social justice community (which has massive overlap with the queer community) behaves in a similar way to a religion on the basis of 87 Ru Paul’s Drag Race. “Drag on a Dime.” Episode 01. Ru Paul. OUTtv, February 9, 2009. 88 Levine, Peter A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma Through the Body. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1997. 176 89 Warning: slight conflation between cults and extreme religiosity. There’s enough overlap between the two to justify the blending of the conversation, I believe. 90 “Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief.” Alex Gibney, IMDb.com, June 25, 2015. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4257858/. - Also see the documentaries “Mad Mad Country”, and “Tiger King” for depictions of communities who believed they were not cults, when in fact the communities existed under the dominating rule of one charismatic leader. 91 Ross, Rick. “What Makes a Cult? | Rick Ross.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, May 27, 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/27/cults-definition- religion. 50 1) Seeking Purity- “social death follows when being labelled a “bad activist” or ”problematic”” 2) Reproducing Colonial Logics - “the experiences of oppression do not grant supremacy” 3) Preaching Punishments - “telling people what to do and how to live their lives is endemic to dogmatic religion and activism.” 4) Sacred Texts- 92 “Nearly all of [the latest mandatory reading] articles follow a standard structure: an instructive title, list of problematic or suggested behaviors, and a final statement of hard opinion.” “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”93 - Friedrich Nietzsche One of Nietzsche’s social critiques is that we have dethroned God by stepping away from religion as a primary source of information, but he believed that we still had religious tendencies. He wondered what we would do to move beyond religious ways of seeing and being with each other. I think we’re still figuring this out… §36 Seeing Freedom/Liberation94 in the Stars: Queering95 my Saturn Return. It's not controversial to say Astrology is part of queer culture. When queers get to know each other they often lead by asking about sun/moon/rising signs. 92 Lee, Frances. 2017. “Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice.” Autostraddle. July 17, 2017. https://www.autostraddle.com/kin-aesthetics-excommunicate-me-from-the-church-of- social-justice-386640/. 93 Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Arnold Kaufmann. The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (Brantford, Ontario: W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2017), 81. 94 Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage. Foucault on Language and Liberation: we need a minimal amount of freedom to articulate our liberation. Power affects how we see our freedom. 95 Queering is when you take something and upend it, make it strange, make it different, reverse it, take a radically different perspective. MA thesis + Saturn Return discussion = kinda queer. 51 Astrology is a framework that means something to me. Ever since my grade four teacher called me to the front of the room and asked when my birthday was and told me I was a Cancer. And I didn't know what a Cancer was, except that I knew people could get cancer and that that was bad. I was sure I wasn't bad, so I wanted to know what a Cancer was so I could prove it wasn't bad. It turns out Cancers are a sign that get characterized and treated rather simplistically as overly emotional/sensitive. And I've been living with this struggle my whole life-- having feelings about things that I’d like to share except that I know I will likely be sharing to an audience that doesn’t want to talk that much about feelings. When I was in undergrad a feminist philosophy professor took a liking to me and told me that she thought I should practice speaking in a firmer, more monotone voice, and that i should say "I think _____," instead of "I feel ______." Then I started studying non-dualism and post-structuralism. I loved how these frameworks could undermine the mind/body division of Descartes’ super reductive “I think therefore I am” metaphysics, which also cascades into undermining the mind/heart division. It felt good to know that there were ways of relating to the world that didn’t just need to be mind/analysis based, but that a heart/poetry relationship to the world was valid too, and that actually sometimes the heart/poetic is more effective at conveying things than the mind/analytic. After studying Astrology more I learned that my sun sign is actually Gemini/Cancer cusp. Which is a placement that bridges mind and heart, where Gemini is mind and Cancer is heart. So the worlds that I try to bridge in philosophy and poetry are reflected in my stars. I think I would be missing something to talk about how queers see each other, and how I see myself in queer community, and leave out Astrology. According to Mythology, Saturn is a planet whose energy asks us to look at structures and systems and ask if they have integrity. And when Saturn returns to the same place in the sky when we were born, it asks us if what we've built so far is load-bearing. It asks us to wonder if we want to keep building in the same way. It asks if our projects and plans follow from our heart and our hopes. Saturn tests our castles. Saturn returns when people are 28-30, and again when people are 58-60. This is often when people have quarter and mid-life crisis, as they reflect on the significance of what they’ve built thus far. My Saturn return happened immediately after I publicly called out a trans guy for sexually assaulting me (at the time of the call-out it was his Saturn return). Then when my return started, I was hacked and cyber-0stalked by one of his friends. And then I had a falling out with one of my best friends/project-partner/boss around an ethical issue that played out at a fundraiser/party for our project. Saturn returned to look at me, and it could see with fullness that there were gaps in the structure of my life. 52 So I deconstructed the rickety structures, and left to the woods to live in a trailer in a goat pen, where I woke up every morning to the sound of them sharpening their horns on the door of the trailer. Saturn, represented by the goat, was feeling ignited. 96 97 Figure 17: Goat Love. And then a 70-year-old dorm on a commune on Saturna island, where they build fences around their vegetation to keep their free-range pigs/chickens/cows out, rather than building cages to keep their animals in. And then a room in a 100-year-old farmhouse on Cortes Island, where a would-be cult leader from Toronto taught me what he had googled about raising the biggest pigs on the island. 96 In Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra goes up the mountain to contemplate, and he comes down the mountain when he’s ready to re-enter society, after he’s integrated what he needed to integrate back up on the mountain. I feel like I can relate to this story in how I dealt with my trauma. I feel like I needed to go off away from everyone I knew, up the mountain. And I wasn't ready to talk about it until after I had had some time away and I’d come back down and I ’d been bumping shoulders with people for a while. 97 There’s a simplicity to being with animals that I find very healing for my PTSD. A social injury that was caused by socializing with humans. 53 In those rural spaces, I missed queer vibe. I was starting to identify as having queer PTSD. I wasn't sure how I could ever write about queer content or engage with queer audience again. So I went to a queer land project in the interior of BC. I think in my traumatized state, I was hoping that other traumatized queers would be able to see and hold me. I fell in love with a genderqueer femme witch, and I witnessed the collapse of their epic relationship to their femme trans pregnant partner. The aftermath of that left deep gashes and scorched earth. Leaving me feeling that queer + rural isn't in itself a place of holding and seeing. I want queer + rural + stable I want a queer permaculture.98 Which requires healing, which requires talking/witnessing. Which requires genuinely safer space. Which requires being able to look at structural flaws in the flow and fix them. And it requires that we learn how to live in reciprocal relationship with each other. It requires that we integrate Saturnine teachings. “Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths... I doubt that such pain makes us "better"; but I know it makes us more profound... In the end, lest what is most important remain unsaid: from such abysses, from such severe sickness, one returns newborn, having shed one's skin... with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before.”99 - Friedrich Nietzsche 98 As opposed to a queer climate crisis. 99 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Arnold Kaufmann. The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (Brantford, Ontario: W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2017), 72. 54 § 37 Here’s a Saturnine Sub-Plot… So.. Your Friend got Called Out for Sexual Assault? 3 things You Can Do* *Suggestions from a trans masculine survivor. “I believe that passively reading about or otherwise witnessing injustice injures us - it widens the disconnect. The part of us that is hurting does not heal in the dark; we must turn on the light to look at it. We must pay attention.” 100 ― Amber Dawn A post-Weinstein Listicle: Figure 18: #MeToo. 100 Amber Dawn, How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustlers Memoir (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013), 24. 55 We are in a post-Weinstein era. #MeToo stories are becoming normal. In this new world, people are named publicly for committing sexual violence. Lots of people. People you love. Maybe even your friends/partners/family/co-workers/ role models. The friends of someone who is called out for sexual assault play a significant role in shaping the aftermath of the call-out. Friends form the jury in the court of public opinion and can make a life or death difference to both the survivor and the person being called out. A few years ago, I did a #MeToo-style call-out. And I lived through painful aftermath. from that journey, I learned what meaningful support for survivors can look like. So, I have some ideas to offer… Please take what feels right and leave the rest. If you have a friend who was called out for sexual assault, the way you respond matters. Here's 3 things you can do: 1) Support the Survivor/s ● *Believe that harm happened* Sexual harm often happens without outside witnesses, so it's important to give the survivor's account of the situation credibility. ● Contribute to the public discussion and lift up the survivor and their story. It’s ok to be unsure of what to say - but minimizing, retaliating, or being silent is not the answer. ● Consult the survivor/s - check in with the survivor or one of their close friends to let them know that you are working with your friend on an accountability process. Ask what they need to feel supported and offer to give them space. 56 2) Support your Friend ● The time immediately after a sexual misconduct call-out is critically important. Consider being by your friend’s side to help them emotionally regulate. They may become unstable or at risk of self-harm or retaliation - if the situation looks risky, call your local suicide help line. ● Encourage your friend to engage with restorative justice - work with a restorative justice counsellor and/or join a restorative justice support group. Many of these counsellors and support groups offer support to communities as they address sexual violence. This is where folks with sexually harmful behavior can do the work of figuring out #HowIWillChange (a hashtag parallel to #MeToo that emerged October 2017) ● Encourage your friend to apologize *genuinely* - genuine apologies include: identifying harm, acknowledging impact, and outlining a plan to heal and learn healthier behaviors. Genuine apologies do not include minimizing the situation or sending the survivor/s under the bus. Supporting your friend means helping them step into accountability. It’s in your friend’s best interest to heal their wounds/behaviors and repair their relationship to community. 3) Support Yourself: ● This process requires significant amounts of energy and emotional labor. It will probably be a huge moment in your life. Take plenty of time to reflect, integrate, & restore. Check in with yourself. are your basic needs taken care of? Are you in a fight/flight/freeze/fawn trigger loop? Are you feeling regulated/grounded when offering support? ● Check in with your counsellor/support team re: debriefing, managing your triggers, and your boundaries/energy. You don’t need to give endlessly to this accountability/healing process, but it is important to show up in a meaningful way that is available to you. *This is an introductory conversation, not a comprehensive sexual misconduct response kit.* I want this article to help folks resist the pressure to be silent and perpetuate shame in the aftermath of revelations of sexual misconduct.101 101 My original advisor, Carl Leggo, didn’t like this article. He felt that I had drifted away from asking questions and that I had wandered into the realm of lecturing. He was very gentle but firm in supporting me to realize that I had started to weaponize myself in response to my trauma, and 57 § 38 This is a website layout for a business idea that I had to start an online peer support group for masculine people wanting to live in a “masculine nurturance culture.”102 I was focusing on the concept radical masculinity.103** Radical masculinity is a way to present, perform, play with, celebrate, and liberate masculinity, in thousands of multi-dimensional expressions. It is still being created, recreated, formed, and reformed, and I want to be a part of its ongoing evolution.” - Sinclair Sexsmith aka SugarButch A gathering space for masculine folks who want to work on themselves in community. In the wake of #MeToo, it is has become widely accepted that the norm for masculinity is toxic: competitive, judgmental, and threatening… people with masculinity need to do better... My name is Onyx Rose, and I’m a masculine survivor. When I sought support, I wanted to join a masculinity group that was: - Welcoming of people of all genders - Encouraging people to heal and take accountability - Offering space to learn theory and practice healthy masculinity I wasn’t able to find a community that held all of these different pieces. It’s common to find spaces for cis-masculine or transmasculine folks that place more emphasis on either healing or accountability.. It’s also more common to focus on theory over practice, except in retreat spaces. I believe we can bridge these both/and’s that part of that weapon was to take on an authoritarian tone. I don’t want my PTSD to result in me being too afraid to be vulnerable enough to ask questions, and be in dialogue with people as opposed to living in my own monologue where I have created a false sense of safety through routine and lecture. 102 Samaran, Nora. 2019. “The Opposite of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture.” Dating Tips for the Feminist Man. December 11, 2019. https://norasamaran.com/2016/02/11/the-opposite-of-rape- culture-is-nurturance-culture-2/. 103 Sexsmith, Sinclair. 2009. “A Manifesto for Radical Masculinity.” Feminist Philosophers. December 9, 2009. https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/a-manifesto-for- radical-masculinity/. 58 and I believe it is possible to heal #ToxicMasculinity by cultivating space for diverse, nurturing and transformative masculinity. So I created radicalmascs.com A radical online peer-support community for people of all genders with any kind of self-defined masculinity. We support each other by: - sharing our stories - listening with open hearts - encouraging each other to grow Do you crave belonging to a community that encourages people to have a conscious relationship to masculinity? Join Us? * Mascs are: anyone who is engaging with masculinity in their gender performance and wants to consciously curate their masculinity so that it is nurturing rather than toxic. ** This system is inspired by: - the #MeToo movement - A Manifesto for Radical Masculinity,104 describes a masculinity that is powerful yet not oppressive. - The Masks We Live In,105 a film about masculine people reckoning with their masculinity. - The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture106, Nora Samaran’s viral essay about masculine people disrupting rape culture. - Excommunicate Me From the Church of Social Justice,107 an essay that describes the ways in which social justice culture replicates dogmatic behaviors. 104 Sexsmith, Sinclair. “A Manifesto for Radical Masculinity.” Feminist Philosophers, December 9, 2009. https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/a-manifesto-for-radical- masculinity/. 105 “The Mask You Live In - A Film From The Representation Project.” The Representation Project. Accessed April 26, 2020. http://therepresentationproject.org/film/the-mask-you-live-in- film/. 106 Samaran, Nora. “The Opposite of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture.” Dating Tips for the Feminist Man, December 11, 2019. https://norasamaran.com/2016/02/11/the-opposite-of-rape- culture-is-nurturance-culture-2/. 107 Lee, Frances. 2017. “Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice.” Autostraddle. July 17, 2017. http://therepresentationproject.org/film/the-mask-you-live-in/ https://norasamaran.com/2016/02/11/the-opposite-of-rape-culture-is-nurturance-culture-2/ 59 - Reflections on Enabling in Queer Culture,108 validation is not the only valid method of support. If you are a content-creator, artist, and/or healer of some kind who would like to contribute to radicalmascs* in some way, please send a message with a description of your work and some of the ways you would like to participate. “brave space” not safe space Radicalmasc Peer Support: A space for folks with any past/present/future masculinity, to support each other to heal and grow “The opposite of masculine rape culture is masculine nurturance culture: [people with masculinity] increasing their capacity to nurture, and becoming whole.” 109 - Nora Samaran This is where theorizing about being heart open and accountable meets practice--. this is where we cultivate nurturance culture. We support each other by: - Sharing our vulnerable stories - listening with open hearts - encouraging each other to grow Pay what you crave: This payment system is based on the idea that if we are entering into exchange with each other based on clear communication and healthy cravings that we have cultivated; we can achieve balance. Part of this work is to re-calibrate our cravings so that we are mutually supporting each other. Masculine people are trained to receive unreciprocated emotional labor. Membership in the group is offered sliding scale with a suggested $20/month. But no one will be turned away for lack of funds. 108 Sintrayda. “Reflections on Enabling in Queer Culture.” Who will walk these wooden streets? December 7, 2017. https://sintrayda.tumblr.com/post/168290415968/reflections-on-enabling-in- queer-culture. 109 Samaran, Nora. “The Opposite of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture.” Dating Tips for the Feminist Man, December 11, 2019. http://sintrayda.tumblr.com/post/168290415968/reflections-on-enabling-in-queer-culture 60 Part of mutual support is to meet each other where we’re at. So if you are unable to afford the suggested $20/month, please choose an amount that works for you. You can return the support by participating in the group and by sharing my work. Community Agreements: “I don’t want to listen just actively, but also mindfully, compassionately, critically, lovingly. And i want to be listened to in those ways by my friends and family. I have come to believe that support, or at least the kind that comes from long-term relationships between loved ones, is not only validation, but also grounding. Containment. authenticity. willingness to enter the space of conflict and the knowledge that we will also emerge from it.” 110 - Sintrayda We listen: - Mindfully - Compassionately - Critically - Lovingly Mindful Communication: we notice context, content and methods of communication. Who is here, what is being said, how are we showing up? We notice community agreements. We notice what is coming up in our body. Compassionate communication: we hold that people are strong. We also tend to ourselves- we take space when we need to Critical Communication: we examine what’s being said. Hold it up against different ethical frameworks, including our guts. We start dialogues. We unpack things that come up. Loving Communication: we hold that other We speak: - From our own experience We grow: - By unlearning - Asking questions - Sharing stories/ideas/resources 110 Sintrayda. “Reflections on Enabling in Queer Culture.” Who will walk these wooden streets? December 7, 2017. https://sintrayda.tumblr.com/post/168290415968/reflections-on-enabling-in- queer-culture. 61 - Processing emotions - Re-writing patterns - Becoming acountabilibuddies In conflict we: - Don’t call-in/out. We call-to: - Instead of focusing on the person who did something, we focus on the topic Not safe space, brave space. - “Assume good intentions, and attend to impact.”111 - FatFeministWitch § 39 Looking at Deadlines I’ve been reflecting on timing. In some ways I was too late to publish this work and contribute meaningfully to the public dialogue on #StreetHarassment. And in some ways I was too early when I told my own public #MeToo story, two years before it became a movement. In a post-Weinstein climate, I wonder if my story would have been heard differently if I waited a couple years. The public imaginary has been primed to hear these stories now. These stories teach a protocol of right and wrong ways to hear a sexual assault story. They’re teaching people how to be a receptive audience. How to see each other’s stories without repressing the information and moving one with the day. This kind of seeing is preventing people from falling through the cracks It never seems like the right time to share bad news. And these stories are felt as bad news. They are traumatic to tell, and traumatic to hear.112 But when we integrate information that is challenging to our current reality it becomes revolutionary113 111 TheFatFeministWitch. “Interview with Andi Grace.” The Fat Feminist Witch, November 27, 2017. https://thefatfeministwitch.com/2017/05/04/interview-with-andi-grace/. 112 It has also been somewhat traumatic for me to write about. however, shifting to the rubric of: 1) asking questions, instead of seeking answers, 2) finding realistic hope somehow, 3) engaging more perspectives than just my own into this discourse, 4) using auto-ethnography to discuss my own experience with the topic of: traumatic gaze(s)... I have found the process healing to my own personal story and how I talk about and see myself. it has been narrative therapy. 113 Nietzsche’s “free spirit” would inflict a helpful wound on society by offering up information that would force outdated data to be flushed and for healing and new integration to happen around the site of old ideology. 62 The timing around this story has been a challenge for me. I’m doing a social critique from a personal place. I’ve needed to step away and take breaks and come back with a different perspective. This is why I have written about this somewhat chronologically Somewhat linearly So that you can see my voice and perspective change. I have felt moved more than once on the position of what tone/framing feels right to use on this material. I felt very confused when I saw the #MeToo controversy erupt at my university. A professor in my Department was called out by a student. A famous Canadian author weighed in. The #MeToo conversation played out In some expected ways and some unexpected ways And I don’t feel able to write about it It needs to stay redacted But I will say that it impacted my ability to sit down to this story for a few months. § 40 Looking at failure: Is this a Thesis? Rae Spoon’s114 gender retirement is an empowered, intentional failure. “To me gender retirement is the refusal to identify myself within the gender binary.”115 - Rae Spoon My original intention with this project was to make a performative argument that the way we look matters, with a focus on how queers are looked at in public, using footage of queers getting glared at as proof. I ended up becoming part of my own performance when I made a call-out that wasn't received in the way I would have liked, which hurt, proving again that the way we look matters. This time with a focus on what it's like to be witnessed by queers. if we gawk if we only look if we look briefly only to return to texting if we look over and over again but say nothing if we look and then say something, but not about the thing we're looking at if we look and say something about what we see but somehow in putting words to it, we miss the mark so terribly and reveal that we don't actually care, not in the way we need to 114 Another person who prefers lower case letters. 115 Spoon, Rae. Gender Failure, (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press. 2014), 249 63 In investigating “looking,” I realized a kind of obvious corny thing which is that we all crave witnesses to our truths, to some degree. Our painful truths, our exciting truths, our weird and boring truths. I realized in collecting this footage that everyone can be looked at like this. I wasn’t looked at with disgust until I held a whiteboard reading “I have a vagina,” Figure 19: I have a Vagina. And then again when I held a cardboard sign quoting my rapist. Fundamentally, having unsympathetic eyes on us hurts. Glaring hurts. I think it hurts anyone who is aware it is happening, because I believe we are pack animals who thrive with healthy connections and feel pain in strained hostile relationships. In showing people how easily queers are gawked at I hope I made a point that those who aren't looked at like this all the time should have some sympathy for what it must be like to live under a gauntlet of that kind of harshness, squinting eyes, tight lips, shoulders and heart turned away 64 Figure 20: Looking at the bus stop. But in processing this I realized that I don’t need to prove that glaring in and of itself hurts, because everyone has been on the receiving end of that kind of coldness at some point. And I realized that although queers are very literate in naming when they have been viewed in a way that's not ok, that doesn’t mean that all queers are automatically experts at witnessing people. Some queers develop amazing resilience strategies in response to their trauma/oppression that has them being very emotionally intelligent, powerful yet kind in their ways of relating to others. Some don't. And I realized, as I am healing116 my PTSD, that we all look like this too. I started to recover memories of times I hadn’t looked at people kindly. When I had held them with harshness, with black/white eyes. It helped me remember why people do that. I think it’s fear mostly. So witnessing, I think, is something we're all craving and we’re all learning at. This has been an exposure therapy and my voice is coming back. ~ 116 It might always be an “ing.” it certainly isn’t an “ed.” 65 Part 3: The Way We Talk About the Way We Look Matters § 41 Feedback: My advisors think I need more: 1) Hope 2) Questions 3) Existentialism Hope: Maybe I've taken on an armored approach that is painful for my audience. I wonder if anyone really needs another instructive listicle. When I ask myself why I included a listicle in here, the answer that comes to me is -Because You Needed To Say It- I needed to be able to delineate harm and wrongful action. And now that I have, I want to talk about something else. And I want to talk differently. I want to let go of some significant resentment and cultivate hope. “[crafting alternative futures where we don’t have to fight each other for resources and care] might mean checking in with myself about how I have let my heart grow hard.”117 - Frances Lee Questions: In a piece that’s been supposed to be focused on questions rather than answers… I lapsed into dictums…. Ironically, my only question was - will you “join us?”- Was I accidentally trying to start a cult? When you focus on answers it can lead to culty-ness. Is this what happens at the extreme end of the spectrum when we switch from asking questions to fighting for answers? We start getting dogmatic? We want to start a group for our teachings? I was given a book on religious masculinity because I think the person who gave it to me thought I could use some help 117 Lee, Frances. 2017. “Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice.” Autostraddle. July 17, 2017. https://www.autostraddle.com/kin-aesthetics-excommunicate-me-from-the-church- of-social-justice-386640/.Frances Lee, Excommunicate me from the Church of Social Justice 66 It said things like: “...a man wants to be the hero to the beauty...” - John Eldredge and “This is every man’s deepest fear” to be exposed, to be found out, to be discovered as an imposter, and not really a man.”118 - John Eldredge I remember laughing because I thought that I was taking a much more evolved approach to gender but, with an answer heavy approach, it could come across like I’m basically saying that: all queers are hurt and all hurt people hurt people and all gays hate the queers and all bisexual people are confused and all normy people oppress the entire LGBTQ community and I’m not trying to say that But maybe I’m not as far away from the religious way of relating to gender as I would like. Maybe I need to work harder at asking questions about gender. Existentialism: Existentialists have been reckoning with how we see ourselves since WWII. Hitler gave the world an existential crisis and many thinkers had quite a bit to ponder after that. Let's look more into some of the core issues surrounding how humanity views itself. 118 Eldredge, John. Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul. Nelson Incorporated, Thomas, 2011. 67 § 43 “The Look:” “Looking” in Existentialism. Existentialists have been saying that “looking” matters for a long time. Sartre’s “Look” we cannot see the other as our self that’s projecting when we stare at another, it is easy to reduce them to an object and yet, if we say the other is unknowable, we cannot connect119 Merleau Ponty’s “Phenomenology of Perception” we sense each other we project meanings onto each other as we project we forget that we are even looking and we believe the projections so we need to reinterpret our perceptions we must look at how we look120 Simone de Beauvoir’s “Other” when we see women as secondary we make them less than less knowable less relatable less human other we cannot see people as secondary we must learn to see everyone as having agency 119 Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2003. Being And Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. Routledge. 120 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2018. Phenomenology of Perception. Nevada: Franklin Classics. 68 and value121 § 44 What about the magic122 of Liminal Bridge-work?123: Letting go. Moving on. Shifting the vibe? Figure 21: Hope and Drag Queens. “Stop for a minute or two - take a breath with the land beneath you, breathe in the sky above you, and deeply breathe with the rhythm of the seas that surround the shores of your land. Imagine a bridge that crosses a stream or a river; this is the epitome of liminal space, neither on ground nor in the air, not on earth nor water. It is betwixt and between. In your vision it is midnight; sense a silence that sings of magic. Feel the particles of water that rise from the river below, and glance down at its inky blackness, flickers of starlight glittering on its surface. What does it mean to be liminal? Why is this essential for magic? Standing at the center of the bridge, look to your right. This is the world of ordinariness, or word and cars, obligations and bills. Now glance to the left; soft grass and the whispers of aspen sing the songs of the lands of magic. The expanse between is crossed by the bridge of liminality. 121 Beauvoir, Simone de, Constance Borde, and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. 2015. The Second Sex. London: Vintage Books. 122 Hughes, Kristoffer. 2014. The Book of Celtic Magic: Transformative Teachings from the Cauldron of Awen. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications), 31. According to Hughes, in Celtic Druid tradition, to do magic, I must “clarify, state, and maintain my intent.” this has been a powerful mantra for my healing. it helps to be de-escalate out of a triggered, activated state, and find a quiet focus. 123 “Liminality--from the Greek limen, meaning “threshold”--brings a subtle power to the magic by utilizing the subtle forces that linger between the seen and unseen, apartment and unapparent. Liminal places, times and spaces are effective tools that ready the mind for magic and serve as a conduit for projection of will and desire. when we move into liminal space or time, the world may feel slightly different--and most importantly, so will the magician.” (10). I wonder about the power of spending time in liminal space, the “betwixt and between’, to heal the black/white, traumatized ways of seeing the world. 69 feel, sense, and be here now. With a deep breath and loud sigh, arise from your vision and record your thoughts in your journal.” 124 - Kristoffer Hughes § 45 Looking at Recovery: See Me! A Drag Queen Inspired Ritual. “Intimacy is the feeling that comes from revealing our inner self to be actively witnessed by another.”125 - Justice Schanfarber I'm thinking about wearing eye makeup again. When I go to do it, I get a little dissociated and procrastinate-y Butterflies in my belly I just moved to a small town. I know I would get looks at the check\-out if I was wearing stubble, plaid & eyeliner. Drag queens are brave. Not boys-don’t-cry brave. Vulnerability-as-a-strength brave The vulnerability vs bravery binary haunts most people with masculinity, I think. I feel like I’m constantly calibrating my vulnerability. My heart & throat say: I want to express myself! 124 Hughes, Kristoffer. The Book of Celtic Magic: Transformative Teachings from the Cauldron of Awen (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2014), 35. 125 Schanfarber Justice, “The Re-Connection Handbook for Couples - The Book by Justice Schanfarber.” Justice Schanfarber Counselling - Relationships, Sex, Intimacy. Accessed April 28, 2020. https://www.justiceschanfarber.com/the-re-connection-handbook-for-couples/. 70 And my head says: but... how much? When ? With who? § 46 Asking to be Seen: More Reflections on Drag Queens: Figure 22: Asking to be seen/dealing with being seen. Drag queens use: dance, makeup, sewing, design, comedy, improv, and character-work in their art. When the queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race aren’t performing to their fullest, RuPaul asks them why they’re standing in the way of their own growth. He encourages them to ask themselves if they are being motivated by love, or fear. Drag appears, to me, to be shadow-work.126 Interdisciplinary boot camp. 126 A common phrase in pop-culture/pop-psychology inspired by the Carl Jung’s “shadow”- our subconscious aspect. So shadow-work is based on a non-binary premise that excavating what has 71 I don't agree with all of RuPaul's choices. Some of them have offended members of various communities, including myself. And at the same time watching this ridiculous, flawed, drag-queen-reality-show has brought me the most laughter & hope of all the things I've used to treat my PTSD & apocalypse anxiety. \ In a recent challenge, the queens were asked to embody their ‘inner saboteur.’ Sometimes I struggle with self-sabotage. When things feel great, I can rock the boat just to test if it’ll stay afloat. Me and my partner refer to the escalated version of this as drilling holes in the boat. On the Gemini New Moon I did a ritual for my inner saboteur “In Celtic spirituality, bridge rituals are a practice in liminality. Between times. Past/future. Letting go of/calling in.” 127 - Kristoffer Hughes My inner saboteur says: You don't know how to talk about vulnerability in the right most perfect vulnerable way So we drove to a river with a bridge We found a place for our cauldron in a circle of rocks nearby while our dogs bounded around playing tag I burned a piece of writing that reminded me of feeling misunderstood and unseen And I asked the fire to see me And help me look at the grief that’s been haunting me The “empty chairs and empty tables” of what could have been And asked the fire to help me let go of the fear of being judged Then I wrote the word ‘hope’ on a stone. been polarized in the psyche and integrating it onto more of a spectrum of consciousness, rather than a dark repressed shadow area of forgetting. 127 Hughes, Kristoffer. 2014. The Book of Celtic Magic: Transformative Teachings from the Cauldron of Awen. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications. 72 Figure 23: Hope Stone .Gif. And asked the stone to safely hold my craving to connect with people who want to hear my stories Then we walked to the middle of the bridge And I threw the ashes over the side where I could imagine them being carried away and softened along the stones and around the bends. And I threw the hope-stone off the other side of the bridge, where I could see another bridge upstream made from older wood, with more moss, that made me want to walk along it and explore. I asked the river to wash away my paralyzing fear to soothe the parts of me that brace for impact I want to make room for communication that feels connective I want mutual bridge-building. § 47 Dealing with Being Seen: In season 10 of “Drag Race,” Monet x Change made an iconic dress out of kitchen sponges. The judges didn’t share Monet’s enthusiasm, and that tension became a source of teasing from the other queens and people online. 73 The moment her elimination-episode finished airing, Monet launched a music video called “Soak it Up”128 where she spends a significant amount of time being lavished by boys in ‘kitchen sponge’ green/yellow singlets while she sings about saying No to the wrong feedback. Hope is sassy in the universe of this sponge-song. Do I want a sponge-song kind of hope Figure 24: Sponge Dress. Figure 25: Sponge Song. 128Monet x Change, “Soak it Up,” YouTube video, 4:55, May 24 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq1ijbMabsM. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq1ijbMabsM 74 § 48 Looking at Hope: “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”129 - Friedrich Nietzsche Figure 26: Hope in Port Alice. § 49 My Middle Name is Hope: And I'm being faced with the kind of ironic situation of having my academic advisor explain to me (kindly) that my project needs more hope. Part of me felt very misunderstood by this prognosis. 129 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Arnold Kaufmann. The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (Brantford, Ontario: W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2017), 72. This is a controversial quote from Nietzsche’s Gay Science, similar in controversy to his quote about the abyss, where people can have an initial impression that this is about something dark and destructive. I like the interpretation that this aphorism is an encouragement to do what brings you joy in life, find a way to light your spark of passion in what you do, as if you had to do whatever it is you end up choosing for the rest of your life; so find a way to be so passionate about how you’re living your life that even repetition and monotony cannot kill your joy. 75 But I can't really argue with it. I’ve spent a bunch of time here talking about my PTSD, my frustration with traditional academic publishing styles, and my disillusionment with rape culture at large but especially within queer community and my sense of let down with the #MeToo movement -- part of me thought Twitter was going to be able to fix it all. I don't want to spend years crafting an alienating piece of writing that sort of feels like a suicide note. Truly I don't. Figure 27: Sheep/dog/cat. I know I’ve been gnashing my teeth on hope here. I haven’t been doing hope yet. And I don't want to make my own trauma a specimen of examination and force it into a certain kind of cleanliness so that I can call it auto-ethnography. But I get that there is a certain tone of teenage-diary-feeling-sorry-for-myself that can make writing unreadable. So I'm going to meditate a bit on hope here, and try to think of some things that I do know about hope... Hope doesn't need to be contingent on whether or not humans make it to Mars. And it doesn’t need to be resting on the idea that humans can band together in groups that can actually function without self-imploding And it doesn't need to be rooted in receiving approval from a God, or an academic institution, or a medical professional. 76 Hope doesn't need to be human-centric 130 Figure 28: More Sheep/Dog/Cat. The most reliably healing experiences I’ve had in the last 3 years have been with animals. I feel hope when I see interspecies animal friendships. Actually, it goes back further than that for me This was me as a child. Figure 29: Kid Me and Kid Goat. 130 Pictures from the farm I worked at in Alberta. My favorite moments were watching the different kinds of animals play together. Something about the trust and communication that it must take for animals of a different species to play. It heals me to look at. I think It produces a cognitive dissonance that disturbs an anxious thought pattern I can get lost in- that the world is full of danger. For these animals to cuddle and play they need to suspend that fight or flight and drop into a more relaxed state, a state they can yes/and, they can riff off of each other. they can bridge build. they can be understood. they can be seen. 77 I feel hope when I connect to these pictures. I almost died during surgery getting my ovaries removed. My Mom was downstairs in the hospital, walking around in the lobby, not knowing what to do, but she saw a book about Unlikely Animal Friendships, and she got it for me because she knew I loved animals. I read the book for a whole week in the hospital, hopped up on morphine. My Mom would sometimes push my morphine- dispensing button while I was asleep. That’s a love language. So I guess animals have been a sign of healing for me for a while. And at times when I felt like I could trust no one, I was able to reach out to animals. “A lot of what animals see normal people see, too, but normal people don’t know they’re seeing it. Instead, a normal person’s brain uses the detailed raw data of the world to for a generalized concept or schema, and that’s what reaches consciousness. Fifty shades of brown turn into just one unified color: brown. That’s why normal people see only what they expect to see--because they can’t consciously experience the raw data, only the schema their brains create out of the raw data.”131 - Temple Grandin “A gut feeling tells me that at the very least we have severely underestimated the capacity of our fellow creatures to communicate”132 - Peter Wohlleben I think the hope that we can feel with animals when we’ve experienced profound trauma might be one of the premises behind animal therapy. I’ve heard a lot of people say good things about equine therapy. Forget to forgive? Forget to feel hope again? I think that forgetting is at the basis133 of maintaining “the faith” in fundamental cultures. 131 Grandin, Temple. Animals in Translation, (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), 65. 132 Wohlleben, Peter. The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion- Surprising Observations of a Hidden World, (Greystone Books, 2019), 238. 133 Necessary condition: X must be present for Y to occur. 78 I can remember being at one of the corrective church camps I was sent to when I was young and I remember the question of faith coming up a lot. And most times when a kid would have an example of a lived experience that didn’t lend itself very well to the dictums (and the world view they were attempting to indoctrinate us into). They were encouraged to think of other things. Distractions. Look over here at those people who turned into pillars of salt because they didn't believe. I want to move on without forgetting. 134 Figure 30: Tears are strength. § 50 Dear Carl,135 It has taken me a long time to know what I want to say to you and I’m realizing that I’ve had a lot of emotions to work through before my voice was ready for this conversation. There have been times, in this process, where my voice has been all about myself, and my own recovery process. It’s taken a lot of healing to get to the point where I can reach out in lightness again. 134 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. 135 I will always be grateful for how you helped me see the poetry in my trauma. and so I got to experience the healing nature of poetry first hand. Auto-ethnography/poetry/trauma-work. Trauma Poetry. The intentional gaps, and intentional filling of gaps. Wandering integration. Un-spelling Trauma. 79 I feel that a letter that I send to you in the afterlife needs to have poetry. First, thank you. I especially thank you for the time you invited me to do an interpretive dance, inspired by Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, with you and April and Celeste in front of the Archeology building at UBC. We took turns, witnessing each other, we closed our eyes while we danced around while the other watched supportively. While there is no record of what happened next except in memory I am still filled with angst anger hurt horror I twirled lurched hunched squat in the meadow and a wound opened up in my memory like a wide hole that won’t heal My body remembered what i didn’t know it knew (family stories secrets scandals) but when i opened my eyes the meadow was the same Logan, Celeste, and April were the same, and I was the same, too, except I had died in the meadow behind the museum with its stored memories Each day is now new birth where the past is the same but distinctly different, seen through holes of difference.136 - Carl Leggo 136 Leggo Carl, "The Eternal Return" (unpublished poem, April 2014), typescript. 80 I felt ridiculous. The only thing I felt able to do on campus with my eyes closed while “dancing” was flail my arms around- somewhat symbolic of how I felt walking around regularly on campus I suppose.137 When it was your turn you walked, and pondered, and giggled, and I was surprised to see you punching the air, and I was completely touched when you told me about the anger coming through. I thought I was signing up for an interesting afternoon when I said yes to this, but I had no idea that I’d be looking back on that moment as a touchstone of powerful, vulnerable masculinity. To just let yourself be, and feel, and do, not hurting anyone, but expressing, blindly yet within sight of so many others--passers-by, in a rush to get to a lecture, people looking out of office windows, and not dancing on the front lawn. you let yourself be seen. “Those who are seen dancing, are thought to be mad138 by those who cannot hear the music”139 - Unknown But your openness to let yourself feel and see new things let you dance on the manicured lawn, and cry on that lawn as we debriefed, and let yourself see me and see my story -which holds some unique intersectional trauma- when I might have thought no white straight man your age could. When you ask people to write with you, it’s like being invited to dance like that. You create a space where people can let their most absurd and personal stuff become public. And I will always hold that lesson in my heart. That’s why I trusted your voice when you said that I had lost hope and your capacity to dance and laugh has been a continuous inspiration for me to conjure it back. You didn’t have to be someone who can see across your culture. 137 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. 138 Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (London: Routledge, 2009) xxi “The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made.” - Michel Foucault So, dancing with our words can also be read as madness can poetry, dancing, and madness un-spell “rigor mortis?” 139 This has been one of my favorite quotes for years. And it’s often not sited, or incorrectly sited as a Nietzsche quote. The source unknown. 81 And I respect the hell out of your decision to live that way. I hope you’re drinking and laughing and commiserating in a Newfoundland-esque Poet’s Valhalla and hanging out in liminal space, inspiring young writers. Appreciating you, Poetically, - L “We are capable of creating a culture that is committed to healing on a cellular level, that encourages us to experiment with reaching out, making contact both physically and emotionally.”140 - Kai Cheng Thom § 51 Looking at Gratitude: (And how it relates to hope, which relates to healing PTSD, which relates to healing a wounded voice) When I let myself see the things I’m grateful for in this story, I see that the story isn't just filled with shit. I’m grateful to have lived through something unique. It’s been, if nothing else, interesting to tell and sift through. The process of writing about my story has helped me to appreciate an artistic aspect to the tensions around my trauma. It’s helped me consider more perspectives on my trauma too, which helps to move out of the fixed trains of thought that trauma can encourage. Thinking about an audience to our trauma is so interesting. A productive audience, because there is often an audience to trauma and this isn’t always productive (bystander effect). And so I’m wiring my brain and beginning to believe that if good things also happened here in all of this, then good things will probably happen again. So it isn't all shit. Even though it was hard. So hard. ~ 140 Thom, Kai Cheng. 2019. “Why Are Queer People so Mean to Each Other?” Xtra Magazine. August 16, 2019. https://www.dailyxtra.com/why-are-queer-people-so-mean-to-each-other- 160978. 82 141 Figure 31: What do we do when our hearts hurt? § 52 A Look Back at my Process: I wrote most of the foreground text in the order that it came in trusting that there is a logic in that. It involves repeating and connecting similar points at different stages of the piece but there is a continuity in the sense that the vibe, the aesthetic, the approach, the methodology of the beginning of the piece is different from the end of the piece. It changes throughout. My capacity to deal with the logical came first. Then I sorted through the old footage from the previous version of this project. Sometimes I would shake for days after opening my computer and not be able to even think about this story again during that time without shaking worse. Sometimes it feels like having a huge dump in the sense that I feel a million pounds lighter after interacting with some aspect of this story. This story has been my longest serious relationship outside of my blood family. We’ve broken up a few times. And I’ve come back broken to it. Sometimes when I interact with it feels like massaging dough. I can feel the ingredients integrating. 141 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. 83 § 53 Thank you for reading this: Thank you for witnessing me in this process. I truly love the practice of combining ideas and methods in one conversation. So it’s been a treat to get to do that here. I feel so appreciative of interdisciplinarity. It’s given a validity to a way of communicating that was on the brink of being academically shamed out of me. It’s helping me un- colonize my voice. I can’t close all of the loops I began in this piece. I want this to be a launching-off point. A conversation starter. I'd like to see other people write in response to gaps that I've left here, like Easter eggs. That is a writing methodology that I want to stand behind, and treat it as though it’s intentional, and not a mistake. It’s a type of conscientization142 to encourage your audience to participate in your piece. So I haven't made this a color-by-number exercise, or a completely finished painting. I hope it feels like I’ve built part of a bridge into an exciting conversation, and I hope you want to return the gesture. § 54 Looking at Kindness: “seeking composure and repose without imposing, always afraid of disposing and decomposing, constantly proposing and supposing the fecundity of composting.”143 - Carl Leggo “I want to spend less time antagonizing and more time crafting alternative futures where we don’t have to fight each other for resources and care.”144 - Francis Lee 142 Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 46. Freire’s non-dualist, socialist methodology involves engaging with students in dialogue where everybody’s’ ideas are valued. 143 Leggo, Carl. 2002. “Writing as Living Compos(t)Ting: Poetry and Desire.” (Language and Literacy, https://doi.org/10.20360/g2k59w. 2002), 1. 144 Lee, Frances. 2017. “Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice.” Autostraddle. July 17, 2017. https://www.autostraddle.com/kin-aesthetics-excommunicate-me-from-the-church- of-social-justice-386640/. https://doi.org/10.20360/g2k59w 84 I wanted to come back to kindness in the end. It seemed like the unkindness was the worst part of the glances we caught on camera. It was unkindness that hurt the most when I felt neglected by bystander effect after I came out about being assaulted. And it’s been kindness that’s helped me heal my PTSD (Not over. Not fully healed. It’s still a process) The belief that the bad things won't necessarily happen again. And the hope that kind things will happen again. My friend reached out and asked me to send him a picture of the story where he was written about. I’m going to send it. I don’t want to scratch at scabs that will heal if they’re left well enough alone And I also don’t want to leave something to fester. Sometimes shining the light of day on something dusty helps disinfect and get the shame out. “In my first somatics course, the teacher spoke to us about co-regulation: the ability of our bodies’ nervous systems to gradually become attuned to one another. She likened this to a group of fireflies coming together in the night: their flashing bioluminescence starts off random and asynchronous, but the more time they spend together, the more their flashes coalesce around a shared rhythm. - Kai Cheng Thom This is us: we are each so powerful, so brilliant, so capable of individual, fierce resilience. We are also capable of harmony, of coming together to form a single bright light. We have the ability to love one another, deeply and securely. And we are capable of imagining a world, of bringing a world into being, where we do not have to kill each other to survive.”145 - Kai Cheng Thom 145 Thom, Kai Cheng. 2019. “Why Are Queer People so Mean to Each Other?” Xtra Magazine. August 16, 2019. https://www.dailyxtra.com/why-are-queer-people-so-mean-to-each-other- 160978. 85 Figure 32: Kind(er) Gaze. § 55 a Kind(er) Gaze146 How else can we look at each other? hope + questions = kind(er) gaze Here’s an image of straight and gay people looking warmly at each other.147 I want to balance out the possibility of being scowled at with the possibility of being smiled at. If we let ourselves see only danger and only potential scowls, we succumb to black and white. Either/or thinking. 146 This is a term I thought of when I was trying to add (Realistic) Hope to Looking. Like an equation. (Realistic) Hope + Looking = Kind(er) Gaze Not Kind Gaze, an unattainable thing where we behold each other as perfect this is idealization. another kind of black/white thinking “kind(er)” is like “saf(er) space,” it’s a more realistic, more attainable option. 147“Century House Association.” Century House Association. Accessed April 13, 2020. https://www.centuryhouseassociation.com/?page_id=6040. I was encouraged by many people to include some kind of positive imagery of people interacting with queer people in a loving way. and when I began this project I couldn’t conceive of putting my time into such a picture. I didn’t see the value in it. At this point I think that it’s critically important to balance out discussions of harsh gaze’s with relation to oppression with instances of love and connection across the intersection that is being critiqued/called-out. If we don’t balance out our critiques we might engage in polarized arguing/thinking/being. leaving room for love doesn’t hurt. It softens the us vs. them binary. 86 We are deciding that we are either safe in our cloistered queer community - which we are not- or we are in danger out in the rest of the world with “normy” people - which isn’t always the case. Maybe believing in the possibility of connection across different truly difficult bridge-building takes a leap of faith not a forgetting that you can be eaten a willingness to take a chance on the possibility that something wonderful might happen. and the fire inside my chest ignites 148 Figure 33: One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things. “Change begins with the belief that change is possible, when we invite our bodies to entertain the possibility that connection is possible.”149 - Kai Cheng Thom 148 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. 149 Thom, Kai Cheng. 2019. “Why Are Queer People so Mean to Each Other?” Xtra Magazine. August 16, 2019. https://www.dailyxtra.com/why-are-queer-people-so-mean-to-each-other- 160978. 87 “The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real. It is the same with the act of love. To know that this man who is hungry and thirsty really exists as much as I do--that is enough, the rest follows of itself.”150 - Jan Zwicky I remember a time in Carl’s office talking about how it was important to the ethics review process to not only make sure that a project wasn’t harmful to the test subjects, but to also make sure that the project wasn’t harmful to the author itself.151 He gave an example of one of his students who was dealing with sensitive material that delved into their childhood trauma where that person’s PTSD was triggered and it wasn’t clear whether the process was in the spirit of healing or whether the person was just being re-traumatized. It’s occurred to me many times here that I’ve walked a fine line with this project with regards to my own trauma. At this point I can truly say that this has been cathartic. But it has also been extremely painful. My voice is not the same as it was at the beginning of this. I like the definition of queer” as “different or inverting what is normal.” I hope I have inverted integrated and clarified some things here. Thank you for coming with me on this journey. In hope & poetry, - Logan § 56 Post-Mortem: Reflection on Methods: I think we always need to be careful not to lapse into embodying the qualities of the thing we are critiquing. 150 Zwicky, Jan. 2014. Wisdom & Metaphor. Edmonton: Brush Education Inc. 151 In a piece where I’m trying to achieve a kind of form/content integrity,( without aiming for a perfect 1:1 relationship between the way I’m talking and what I’m talking about) it’s been hard to talk about trauma without retraumatizing myself by dredging through the details. but truly i do feel that this has been cathartic. I’ve been trying to use the rubric of reaching for hope authentically, not cruelly. Queer social critique + Auto-ethnography = getting into some of my trauma-content. 88 152 Figure 34: The greatest illusion… is that life should be perfect. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process [they do] not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”153 - Friedrich Nietzsche I’ve seen us become the charismatic leaders who rule through fear and divide and conquer methods. I've seen us lapse into “thou shalts”, “should-ing” on each other. I’ve seen us wear the farmer’s clothing many times. And as I’ve been working on my voice here, I think I’ve lapsed into trying that clothing on the farmer’s the Emperor’s I’ve spouted dictums... 152 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. 153 Nietzsche Friedrich and Kaufmann Walter. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (New York: Vintage Books. 2011) §146. 89 It’s very hard to talk authentically and powerfully about trauma in a way that is also balanced Where you don’t stare too long into the abyss and become a tyrant Or other people Walking that kind of line Dancing in that kind of balanced flowing narrative Might be what perfect enlightenment is154 An enlightened voice And since enlightenment isn’t something that’s all that human155 and I want an auto-ethnography that’s authentic in its dealings with this content maybe it makes sense for there to be demonstrable imperfections in my voice fluctuations in my framing, and changes in my tense.156 § 57 Looking at the Tone Shift I’ve documented both my politics and my voice changing in this piece. * I don’t use phrases like “fuck the toxic male gaze” anymore. or even “the toxic male gaze” ** I don’t use the phrase “radical masculinity” anymore either. *** I actively dislike the term “problematic now, because of overuse Anita association with persecution. “Art breaks open an open place, in whose openness everything is other than usual”157 - Martin Heidegger 154 Hesse Herman, “Siddhartha,” (Random House Publishing Group, 1981). Hesse’s version of Siddhartha didn’t become magically powerful until he stopped being so attached to his own enlightenment and started going with the flow. 155 Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Reginald John Hollingdale. 1996. Human, All Too Human. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 156 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. 157 Heidegger, Martin. The Origin of the Work of Art. (Waterloo, Ont.: University of Waterloo, 2002) 22. 90 § 58 Continued Inspiration: An author I’ve been very inspired by recently is Adrienne Maree Brown and her book Emergent Strategy.158 Instead of critiquing (naming what’s wrong) she shares something positive (naming what she would like to aim towards) in community organizing. And she relies on metaphors as anchor points for her flexible, living, community-oriented rubric of values. 159 Figure 35: Mycelium, Ants, Ferns, Wavicle. 158 Brown, Adrienne M. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017. 159 Brown, Adrienne M. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 61. 91 Mycelium: We can connect and communicate like a non-linear communal mycelial network. Ants: The worker is part of a functioning whole and is valued for their contributions. Ferns Smaller groups operate as nodes within a larger network that reflects the reality of the smaller microcosms (opposite of false trickle down). The Wavicle Ultimate symbol of non-duality. how can light be both a particle and a wave? 160 Figure 36: Starlings/Dandelions. Starlings A popular metaphor amongst social movement theorists for working and moving as individuals and yet also as a group. Look how it’s been taken up in a book that has had fantastic mainstream success. The metaphor works. it crosses both academic and the mainstream the metaphors are multilingual/cross cultural Dandelions A symbol of resourcefulness and resilience. 160 Brown, Adrienne M. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 62. 92 “We have to create futures in which everyone doesn't have to be the same kind of person. that’s the problem with most utopias for me: they are presented as a mono value, a new greener more local monoculture where everyone gardens and plays the lute and no one travels.. and I don’t want to go there!”161 - Adrienne Maree Brown - I agree. I don’t think it works when we try to come up with one rubric of values, one solution to a political problem, one charismatic leader, or even one group of charismatic leaders. I don’t think it’s even healthy to keep the same opinion throughout your life!162 “...pleasure evokes change--perhaps more than shame. More precisely, where shame makes us freeze and try to get really small and invisible, pleasure invites us to move, to open, to grow.163 - Adrienne Maree Brown 164 Figure 37: It’s the wild. 161 Brown, Adrienne M. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 57. 162 Or the same voice. or the same politics. 163 Brown, Adrienne M. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 31. 164 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. 93 The concept of “change” is key for Adrienne Maree Brown. She’s artistically philosophizing about how to effect social change, and she believes that we can do that by emulating more of the systems we already see working in nature, and she feels these systems rely on collaboration and change-- i.e. non-duality and flux. § 59 Interspecies Animal Friendship: A guiding metaphor for effective communication: If I could add a community-building/communication metaphor to Adrienne Maree Brown’s list, it would be Interspecies Animal Friendships. Interspecies animal friendships are quite popular as a soothing feel-good image right now. But it’s not a superficial wishy-washy metaphor. It’s popular because it moves people. If we can make friendships across species If we can build that bridge Then we can be incredible bridgebuilders We can heal our fear We can fire differently And wire differently “The boy is lonely when the mole first surfaces. They spend time together gazing into the wild. I think the wild is a bit like life- frightening sometimes but beautiful. In their wanderings they meet the fox. It’s never going to be easy meeting a fox if you’re a mole. The boy is full of questions, the mole is greedy for cake. The fox is mainly silent and wary because he’s been hurt by life.” 165 - Charlie Mackesy Their friendship is a fantastic metaphor schema to discuss existential disillusionment and return to hope and connection. 165 Mackesy, Charlie. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (London: Ebury Press. 2019), 7. 94 166 Figure 38: Look how far we’ve come. “I can see myself in all four of them [the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse], perhaps you can too.”167 - Charlie Mackesy The animal friendship metaphor creates a relatable, not-corny, moving platform to discuss: healing, witnessing, belongingness, heartbreak, hope, gratitude and healing. These are the mediums I want to focus on now: metaphors, hope/ gratitude/ healing, liminality, perspectivism, laughter connection. § 60 To Be Continued... This is a song I've been listening to for years. Hoppipola168 - Sigur Ros 166 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. 167 Mackesy, Charlie. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (London: Ebury Press. 2019), 7. 168 Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnAwPeqrdAk 95 It’s sung in a mix of Icelandic and Hopelandic,169 the band’s made up language. “There is no ending, there’s just the place where you stop the story.”170 - Frank Herbert “My poems(in the beginning) are like a table on which one places interesting things one has found on one’s walks: a pebble, a rusty nail, a strangely shaped root, the corner of a torn photograph, etc.… where after months of looking at them and thinking about them daily, certain surprising relationships, which hint at meanings, begin to appear.”171 - Jan Zwicky In its essence an interesting poem is an epistemological and metaphysical problem for the poet”172 - Jan Zwicky “…trace the lines for a different genealogy…as the condition of possibility for another way of dwelling in the world”173 - Sara Ahmed 169 Wikipedia. 2020. “Sigur Rós.” Last modified January 12, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigur_R%C3%B3s “Vonlenska (Eng: Hopelandic) is a term coined by the band to refer to the vocalizations that Jónsi sings on in lieu of lyrics in Icelandic or English.[80] Vonlenska differs from both natural and constructed languages used for human communication. It consists of strings of meaningless syllables containing non-lexical vocals and phonemes. There is no grammatical relation between or among syllables, nor are they accompanied by clearly defined word boundaries. Vonlenska emphasizes the phonological and emotive qualities of human vocalizations, and it uses the melodic and rhythmic elements of singing without the conceptual content of language. In this way, it is similar to the use of scat singing in vocal jazz and puirt à beul in traditional Scottish and Irish folk music. The band's website describes it as "a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music".”[81] 170 Frank Herbert. AZQuotes.com, Wind and Fly LTD, 2020. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/353152, accessed April 14, 2020 171 Zwicky, Jan. 2014. Wisdom & Metaphor. Edmonton: Brush Education Inc. 172 Zwicky, Jan. 2014. Wisdom & Metaphor. Edmonton: Brush Education Inc. 173 Ahmed, Sara. 2007. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. (Durham: Duke University Press), 178. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigur_R%C3%B3s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigur_R%C3%B3s#cite_note-80 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-lexical_vocables_in_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-lexical_vocables_in_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puirt_%C3%A0_beul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_folk_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_folk_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibberish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigur_R%C3%B3s#cite_note-81 96 “I wrote a poem because a poem always seems an apt way to respond”174 - Carl Leggo 174 Leggo Carl, "The Eternal Return" (unpublished poem, April 2014), typescript. 97 Bibliography Ahmed, Sara. 2007. 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Leggo, Carl. 2016. “The Unpredictability of Bliss.” Poetic Inquiry II – Seeing, Caring, Understanding, 51–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-316-2_4. Mackesy, Charlie. 2019. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury Press. Marion, Jean-Luc. 2013. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. Mazur, Joseph. 2008. Zenos Paradox: Unraveling the Ancient Mystery behind the Science of Space and Time. New York: Plume. Morris-Cafiero, Haley. The Watchers. Ontario, Canada: The Magenta Foundation, 2015. 100 Morton, Alexandra, and Billy Proctor. Heart of the Raincoast: The Life of Billy Proctor. Victoria, BC: TouchWood Editions, 2016. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2018. Phenomenology of Perception. Nevada: Franklin Classics. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Wilhelm Kaufmann. 1982. "Twilight of the Idols," in The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Penguin Books. Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Reginald John Hollingdale. 1996. Human, All Too Human. 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The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion- Surprising Observations of a Hidden World. Greystone Books. Zwicky, Jan. 2009. Plato as Artist. Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press. Zwicky, Jan. 2014. Wisdom & Metaphor. Edmonton: Brush Education Inc. work_5ofdiasqnbdgxeoko2bdphv2au ---- S0887536719000096jra 123..142 INDIGENIZING AND DECOLONIZING FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY Questions of Silence: On the Emancipatory Limits of Voice and the Coloniality of Silence Martina Ferrari Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, 211 Susan Campbell Hall, 1585 E 13th Ave, Eugene, Oregon 97403 Corresponding author. Email: mferrar2@uoregon.edu (Received 30 September 2018; revised 1 May 2019; accepted 6 May 2019) Abstract This article begins at a (historical) crossroads; it straddles the difficult ground between the recent public outcry against sexual violence (a protest that, as championed by the #MeToo movement, seeks to break the “culture of silence” surrounding sexual violence) and con- cerns about the coloniality of voice made visible by the recent decolonial turn within fem- inist theory (Ruiz 2006; Lugones 2007; Lugones 2010; Veronelli 2016). Wary of concepts such as “visibility” or “transparency”—principles that continue to inform the call to “break the silence” by “speaking up” central to Western liberatory movements—in this article, I return to silence, laying the groundwork for the exploration of what a revised concept of silence could mean for the development of practices of cross-cultural communication that do not play into coloniality. The Decolonial Turn is about making visible the invisible and analyzing the mech- anisms that produce such invisibility or distorted visibility in light of a large stock of ideas that must necessarily include the critical reflections of the “invisible” people themselves. —Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being” We must, however, take a moratorium on naming too soon, if we manage to penetrate there. There is no other way for you and me to penetrate there. —Gayatri C. Spivak, in conversation with Jenny Sharp In a New York Times article, American author and long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad recounts her experiences of sexual assault, perpetrated in 1964 by her swimming coach, who, it turned out, was a serial sexual predator (Nyad 2017). Like many testimonies before and after hers, Nyad’s places great emphasis on finding one’s voice, on speaking up vis-à-vis sexual violence as a means to regain power in the wake of shame and humiliation. “We need to prepare coming generations to speak up in the moment, rather than being coerced into years of mute helplessness,” she states. As the #MeToo campaign forefronts, speaking up “takes something that women had long kept quiet about and transforms it into a movement” aimed at revealing the pervasiveness and systemic nature of sexual © by Hypatia, Inc. 2019 Hypatia (2020), 35, 123–142 doi:10.1017/hyp.2019.9 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5654-7396 mailto:mferrar2@uoregon.edu violence while building solidarity through empathy (Gilbert 2017). In this vein, Nyad concludes the article with a plea: “Tell your story. Let us never again be silenced.” Testimonials like Nyad’s bring attention to the two interrelated assumptions operative in much Western feminist theorizing about oppression and emancipation. First, they affirm that coming to voice or speaking up about one’s own experience of, for example, sexual violence is an empowering practice that breaks the silence to which harmful prac- tices like sexual violence and the shame associated with it have relegated its victims. Second, they attest that being silenced is “a punishment equal to the molestation” (Nyad 2017); the silence induced by fear and shame associated with sexual violence within a patriarchal culture further oppresses survivors. In this sense, Nyad’s testimonial brings to focus the logic structuring emancipatory narratives according to which “voice” is asso- ciated with empowerment and is juxtaposed to silence, which comes to be equated with the silencing of oppression. As Aimee Carrillo Rowe and Sheena Malhotra point out in the introduction to Silence, Feminism, Power, the binary logic of speech versus silence and the almost commonsensical equation of silence with powerlessness and oppression in the Western tradition from Aristotle to Audre Lorde presumes a political imperative: for an individual or group to gain power and “to resist and transform the conditions of their oppression,” they “must activate their voice” (Carillo Rowe and Malhotra 2013, 1, order of quotes rearranged). “Speaking up” and “breaking the silence” are thus unequivocally appealed to as the imperatives necessary to counter displacement, oppres- sion, and marginalization.1 After all, as Adrienne Rich puts it, “in a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence” (Rich 1979, 204).2 Given the harm entailed in these exclusions (the harm of being silenced) and the fact that speaking up is lived as liberatory by many—as the aforementioned account indicates —“speaking up” seems hard to argue against. And yet, I suggest, “voice” is too broad a term; it is not nuanced enough to prevent its own deployment as an instrument of oppression rather than liberation. In fact, when voice becomes the ubiquitous appeal of liberatory movements, it abstracts from the concrete situations and lived experiences of those who inhabit silences, transcending the concrete violences entailed by the normative power of voice. Consider a memory from Ernesto Martínez’s childhood: His older cousin Felipe, after having initiated sexual contact, grabs his throat, pushes him on the bed, and repeatedly asks “¿Te gusta? ¿Te gusta?” (Martínez 2014, 239), all the while Martínez remembers remaining still, silent. Within the dominant binary framework of voice versus silence, silences like Martínez’s are eviscerated of their complexity and ambiguity, read as instances of complacency or submission to oppression. In his silence, Martínez did not comply with the “no te dejes” imperative (roughly translated as “don’t let them do that to you” or “fight back”)—a demand that, similar to “speak up!,” has purchase on the sub- jected, not the aggressors—and his silence or lack of struggle was read over and against the positive, overtly explicit imperatives of voicing one’s dissent or physically rejecting the aggression. Within this framework, his silence and passivity are read as indexing oppression and, specifically, as failures or absences of sorts, as complacency. After all, why would Martínez remain silent in the face of aggression? Yet, Martínez remembers, there was more in his passivity and silence than silencing, than either complacency or forced submission. He recalls living that silence as an expression of what he calls “joto passivity,” that is, “the seeming nonresponsiveness of queer Chicanos in the face of violence” (238), which, contra (colonial) common sense, was also felt as resistant behavior; his silence was also a practice of “radical mean- ing making” from which he could envision and bring about radically different gendered practices of resistance like nonmisogynist and nonhomophobic ways of performing 124 Martina Ferrari masculinity (239, 241). To be precise, Martínez states that his “joto passivity” was not a liberatory solution that removed violence from his life. Nonetheless, it was an “embod- ied negotiation” that enabled him to “account for the contradictions” of his situation, and that reminded Martínez that, as a queer man of color, he was “not consumed by violence” (239, 245). Dwelling, for a moment longer, in Martínez’s experience, more precisely, in the mis- hearing or misreading of his silence, raises the following questions: If it is the case that silence, as Martínez indicates, can be lived differently than as the mark of exclusion from the subject position, inferiority, or oppression, why is Martínez’s embodied response immediately read as submission? What are the structures and operations of the dominant logic such that inhabiting Martínez’s silence otherwise is foreclosed? And what would make reading and/or inhabiting Martínez’s silences otherwise possible? Informed by Martínez’s experience, in this article I seek to make visible the mechanisms that make invisible the depth and complexity of the phenomenon of silence—what I refer to as deep silence—within a colonial context.3 The case for deep silence is, at least in part, a case for the limits of voice as a liberatory concept. In the first section of this article, I draw from recent decolonial literature to problematize the uncritical appeal to voice as emancipatory, an appeal that continues to guide much of feminist theorizing reaching well beyond academia. (It suffices to think of the recent public outcry about racial and sexual violence, in which the #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns are loud examples of movements that express the necessity to “speak up” about and “break the culture of silence” surrounding one’s own experience of racialized, sexualized, and gendered violence).4 By bringing into dia- logue Jacques Derrida with decolonial insights from the modern/colonial research project (MC henceforth), I seek to make explicit the ways in which the onto-epistemology repro- duced by coloniality is, in fact, a racialized metaphysics of presence within which logos and the field of presence are exclusive domains of the colonizer. Specifically, I suggest that uncritical appeals to “speak up” or “come to voice” foreclose questions about the normativity of voice, ultimately upholding modern categories of thought and being (logo- centrism, to be precise) that reify the oppressive colonial apparatus they seek to resist. In section II, I develop and problematize what I call the coloniality of silence, that is, operations of power that eviscerate deep silences of their depth and complexity, flatten- ing them to a transparent, mono-dimensional phenomenon indexing ontological absence—what Frantz Fanon calls the “zone of non-being” (Fanon 2012, xii)—and epi- stemic non-sense. This analytical tool, I argue, reveals that the evisceration of silence is not accidental to coloniality. Rather, the specific historical formation of coloniality relies upon and actively promotes the flattening of deep silence for its perpetration and legit- imization—an operation of flattening that is actively concealed through the naturaliza- tion of epistemic and ontological inferiority. The apprehension of the complexity and multiplicity of deep silence and its being an inherent component of sense, thinking, and being would undermine the epistemic, ontological, and temporal presuppositions of coloniality. I. The Coloniality of Voice Initially informed by Derrida’s powerful critique of “voice” as the appeal of a metaphys- ics of presence (Derrida 2011; 2015) and subsequently by postcolonial and decolonial critiques of modernity, over the past two decades scholars have challenged the logocen- trism of the West, bringing attention to the dangers of advancing liberatory discourses Hypatia 125 not rooted in and attentive to the cultural specificity of the phenomenon one strives to account for. Building on the Subaltern Studies Group, scholars like Trinh Minh-ha, Gayatri Spivak, Cheryl Glenn, and Krista Ratcliffe have suggested that the role of aca- demic left scholars (but also of those who hold power and public access to voice) is to “learn to listen and to decode subaltern inscriptions” (Carrillo Rowe and Malhotra 2013, 8; see Trinh 1989; Spivak 1999; Glenn 2004; and Ratcliffe 2006).5 While acknowl- edging that silence “has been a tool of marginalization and exclusion,” the contributors to Silence, Feminism, Power, for instance, strive to “free silence from domination’s grip” (Keating 2013, 32, 33), reclaiming it as a powerful site of resistance that allows “the free- dom of not having to exist constantly in reaction to what is said” (Carrillo Rowe and Malhotra 2013, 2).6 Steeped in this tradition, this section strives to make visible and problematize the assumption operative within liberal discourse that voice (logos broadly construed) is key to emancipation, alerting us to the emancipatory limits of voice and shifting the conversation toward deep silence. Specifically, I show how appeals to dialogical commu- nication reify, by uncritically deploying logocentric tools such as “voice” as means of liberation, oppressive colonial power structures that have predicated the exclusion and oppression of those same people who seek emancipation through voice. I contend that “voice” remains a vehicle of Eurocentric colonization because, within a colonial context, voice—and, in turn, presence/being—is limited to the voice of the Eurocentered subject of modernity. On Coloniality and the Normativity of Voice The first step toward understanding the ways in which uncritical appeals to voice reify colonial structures is to take a step back—or, better yet, outward—to contextualize the current critique of voice within the bounds of the specific historical formation of col- oniality. Thinking through voice in light of coloniality raises important questions about the normativity of voice that would otherwise be foreclosed. In fact, coloniality is such that the rejoinder to Spivak’s infamous question, “can the subaltern speak?” (Spivak 1999), is no: Within a colonial context, “speech” requires conformity to Eurocentric standards that exclude subaltern communicative practices and being. As such, the demand to speak places the subaltern in an untenable position. Were the sub- altern to speak in their native languages, their speech (and their demands for normative treatment) would lack uptake. But were they to speak in a way that was intelligible to the colonizer, they would, on the one hand, subscribe to and be rewritten by a conceptual and linguistic framework that inscribes their culture, language, and being as inferior, while also, on the other hand, sacrificing their cultural specificity. As Trinh puts it in Woman, Native, Other, this constitutes a “double mischief”: unspoken and unable to speak, woman in exile with herself. Stolen language will always remain that other’s language. Say it obliquely, use trickery, cheat, or fake, for if I tell you now what I would like to hear myself tell you, I will miss it. Words thoroughly invested with realities that turn out to be not-quite-not-yet-mines are radically deceptive. Whenever I try my best to say, I never fail to utter the wrong words; I weasel, telling you “hen” when I mean something close to “duck.” (Trinh 1989, 20) As this passage makes concrete, by deploying the language of the colonizer, subalterns would cease being subalterns because the dominant group would not be hearing the 126 Martina Ferrari subaltern in its idiosyncrasies, but, rather, a mere reflection of its own message and image. “Stolen language will always remain that other’s language.” Note that this no should not be taken to suggest (as critics too often have taken it to indicate) a communicative or political paralysis. Rather, the no points to a fundamental paradox at the heart of intelligibility. (As we will see in what follows, the paradox arises when the desideratum of intelligibility is epistemic transparency). Given the seeming impossibility of making sense of subaltern experiences without assimilating or distort- ing their differences into familiar meanings, how are we to approach these differences? Can this difference be addressed by engaging in dialogical exchanges that seek to min- imize the incommensurability by providing as much meaning as possible into the plus or translatable side of the exchange? Or are these communicative barriers the outcome of historically and geographically specific patterns of power that displace the racialized and colonized “other” from the subject position and locus of enunciation? Decolonial thinker Gabriela Veronelli seems to think the latter, arguing that voice and, more broadly, dialogical exchanges play into what she calls “the coloniality of lan- guage and speech” (CLS henceforth) (Veronelli 2016, 408). Veronelli defines CLS as the process of racialization of the colonized as communicative agents that began in the sixteenth century, whereby the colonized are reduced to nonhuman status and their language and ways of knowing are dismissed as expressions of their natural inferiority. That is, by presenting the colonized as incapable of expressing themselves rationally, their putative inferiority is naturalized discursively (409). Thus, CLS forecloses the pos- sibility of any dialogical relationship between colonized and colonizers (but also between colonized subjects) by erecting what are perceived as “natural barriers” to intel- ligibility and communication; that is, coloniality vacates the colonized’s speech of the possibility of being heard by making the colonized’s modalities of communication and existence invisible to the colonizers. Pivotal to CLS is the joint operation of the two axes of power, “coloniality of power” and “modernity,” structuring and sustaining what Aníbal Quijano calls the “Eurocentered capitalist colonial/modern world power” (Quijano 2000, 218). Attending to these patterns of power reveals as naïve any abstract appeal to voice as liberatory and points to the imbrication of coloniality and voice, more precisely, to how coloniality undermines the conditions of possibility of emancipatory dialogues.7 According to Quijano, the axis of the “coloniality of power” refers to that “specific basic element of the new pattern of world power that was based on the idea of ‘race’ and in the ‘racial’ social classification of world population” (218). The invention and deploy- ment of the category of “race” from the sixteenth century onward are pivotal in refram- ing the discourse surrounding the inferiority of the non-European “other” from one tied to conquest, war, and domination to one that casts inferiority as natural and ahis- torical. Thus presented, “race” and racial discourse come to legitimize the domination of the “Indians,” “Blacks,” and “Mestizos” by the “Spanish” and “Portuguese” (all of which are newly produced social historical identities) on natural grounds (216). Take the distribution of gender identity, for instance. As María Lugones points out, racial dis- crimination regulated the ascription of gendered identities, distinguishing between “women” and “females” and extending the status of women so described in the West only to white women, while understanding colonized females “to be animals … in the deep sense of ‘without gender,’ sexually marked as female, but without the charac- teristics of femininity” (Lugones 2007, 202–03). Even when colonized females were turned from animals into similes of bourgeois white women, “there was no extension of the status of white women to colonized women” (203). Hypatia 127 The second axis of power, “modernity,” refers to the systematic elaboration, carried out by modern, Western Europe, of a new intersubjective universe based on a new knowledge perspective compatible with the cognitive needs of capitalism (Quijano 2000, 221). This knowledge perspective is labeled as “rational” and conforms to strict epistemic criteria such as neutrality, objective validity, and transparency (Collins 2000, 274).8 The cognitive needs of capitalism include the carving up, quantifying, and measuring of what is knowable so as to exert control over resources, others, and reality for the sake of commerce and exchange. Although Eurocentered, this way of knowing was/is imposed upon the capitalist world as the only valid rationality and as emblematic of the progress of modernity. Importantly, the axes of power instituted through and instituting of “coloniality” not only outlive formal colonialism, remaining integrated in the succeeding social orders, but also are constitutive of modern identity, of the modern ethos. In “Purity, Impurity, and Separation,” Lugones describes this modern subject as the outcome of a fiction, of an abstraction from the ambiguity and multiplicity constitutive of concrete subjects and realities aimed at exerting control and imparting order upon that mestizaje. That is, this modern subject deploys a logic of purity that prunes, eliminates, forbids, and purges; it frames complex realities in the fictional terms of a unified reality and a unified subject that can be split-separated, that is “internally separable, divisible into what makes it one and the remainder” (Lugones 2003, 128). This modern subject is one-dimensional and occupies an ahistorical and acultural “vantage point from which unified wholes, totalities, can be captured” (128). Not surprisingly, internally split- separated into “sense/emotion/reason,” “reason, including its normative aspect, is the unified subject” (129). Attending to the joint operations of these axes of power reveals, as the guiding logic of coloniality and CLS in particular, an epistemic production that, by demanding con- formity to purportedly universal (but in fact modern and Eurocentered) epistemic stan- dards, relies upon and produces at least a double erasure. First, it erases the colonized’s communicative practices and knowledge-validation processes, which come to be regarded as primitive and lacking the sophistication, clarity, and accuracy necessary to produce knowledge. Not only, as women of color feminists have argued, is uptake differentially distributed across gender, ethnic, and racial lines (think, for example, of the differential treatment received by Anita Hill’s testimony compared to that of Christine Blasey-Ford); as Spivak’s paradox highlights, coloniality is such that to be heard entails expressing oneself in a manner that conforms to the epistemic model of the Eurocentered, capitalist modern/colonial world power, that is, in a rational and dispassionate manner; it requires being a split-separated subject who does not per- ceive richly. Because indigenous peoples do not conform to purportedly universal epi- stemic criteria, “the colonizers perceived indigenous peoples in speaking their tongues as doing less than being able to express knowledge” (Veronelli 2015, 113). For instance, as Trinh observes, non-Western languages like those of Taoism and Zen that are “per- fectly clear but rife with paradox” do not qualify as clear, persuasive, or correct, for “paradox is ‘illogical’ and ‘nonsensical’ to many Westerns” (Trinh 1989, 16). Expressive modes that, analogously to these, do not “prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify” (17) are regarded as “simple communication,” a form of communication that conveys more than denotative meaning, but less than dialogical rational communica- tion, and that is an inherently less valorized form of expressivity than are Eurocentric languages (Veronelli 2015, 118–19).9 128 Martina Ferrari As Collins details in Black Feminist Thought, the distortion or exclusion from what counts as proper communication or knowledge of nonnormatively Eurocentered expe- riences has characterized the lives of US Black women, who have relied on alternative expressive forms like music, literature, and daily conversations as sites to develop self- definitions as well as produce and validate knowledge (Collins 2000, 270). Take, for instance, the erasure of the 2006 founder of “Me Too” Tarana Burke from the #MeToo movement when it first took off over a decade later in 2017. As Burke observes in a 2018 Vibe interview with J’na Jefferson, women of color—who, statistically, experi- ence higher rates of rape and sexual assault than white women—are not only less likely to report, but their stories have not been granted nearly as much public attention as the tes- timonies of white women. Reflecting on her own experience with “Me Too,” Burke asks, “Why isn’t it valid when we talk about it?,” thereby raising questions about 1) how race affects the epistemic authority of the survivor (but also of who qualifies as a survivor in the first place), and 2) of the extent to which credibility and correctness of an utterance is afforded by demanding conformity to grammatical and syntactic rules, key words, or technical terms. In this vein, Burke asks, “Is [“Me Too”] only valid if CNN talks about it?” (Jefferson and Burke 2018).10 The two axes perform a second (perhaps more insidious) erasure: this epistemic pro- duction conceals its own structural complicity in the reification of a system that casts the “other” as inferior. The move whereby the in-fact-European epistemic standards/ knowledge-validation processes that norm what counts as knowledge and language is presented as universal naturalizes racialized differences, making the processes that pro- duce these differences, that is, coloniality, invisible. Because the colonized deploy com- municative practices that do not conform to the putatively universal model of rational expression, they are perceived as naturally inferior. In turn, such a naturalization makes invisible the mechanisms that produce the colonized as inferior. It is in this sense that, as Veronelli argues, CLS is more than the colonization of a language as a system of meaning, but a “process of dehumanization through racialization at the level of commu- nication” (Veronelli 2016, 408). In light of these considerations, we begin to see how the two axes of “coloniality” and “modernity” work in unison within CLS to discursively dehumanize the colonized and racialized “other,” ultimately undermining the conditions of possibility for emancipa- tory exchanges. On the one hand, “modernity” naturalizes the colonial difference by upholding putatively universal and rational epistemic standards, a move that casts all those who do not conform to those criteria as naturally inferior or incapable of rational and clear linguistic communication. On the other hand, “coloniality” distributes this natural epistemic inferiority along racial lines; those who are epistemically inferior (putatively) by nature are those who are racialized as other. The outcome is that the epistemic criteria upheld by “modernity” are such that the natural inferiority of the non-European, racialized “other” is constantly reified through its own conceptual and linguistic schemas, which include reason, dialogical communication, and voice—in sum, logos. Thinking through questions of voice in the context of coloniality reveals that, while coloniality displaces the colonized from the subject position by producing them as inca- pable of intelligible expression, a simple appeal to voice as emancipatory does not suf- fice; within a colonial context, the voice that can be/is heard by the majority community is normed by coloniality and, thus, is exclusively the voice of the colonizers. This is to say that the abstract imperative to speak up—the imperative according to which speak- ing up is the way to address oppression and violence irrespective of the nuances of a Hypatia 129 given, concrete situation—skates over the important question of whose voice norms that imperative. In sum, uncritical appeals to voice do not allow the critical distance (which not so paradoxically can actually be obtained by remaining grounded in concrete lived experiences of those who speak up) necessary to question the (colonial) world in which language and naming are power, and “voice” a colonial tool. Quite the contrary—they play into existing power structures by deploying tools, like language, naming, and voice, that are normed by and effect the norming of coloniality, giving voice exclusively to the modern, split-separated, and rational lover of purity. At this juncture, it is telling to briefly turn to Linda Martín Alcoff’s Rape and Resistance, in which she puts forward a new epistemology of rape grounded in a more nuanced understanding of experiences of sexual violation as a way to reform and transform the condition of survivors’ reception. Although she deems survivors’ voices the critical force behind social revolution (on her account, speaking up is neces- sary, for example, insofar as it often is the catalyst for changing definitions, which affect the possibility of understanding and resisting sexual violation), Alcoff warns about the ways in which their testimonies echo in the public domain: testimonies are not only inscribed in frames that regulate the “criteria by which claims are interpreted and judged, what may be spoken of, what can come up for judgment itself” (Alcoff 2018, 10); they are also taken up in a domain in which the dominant understanding of sexual violation lacks complexity and nuance. To avoid the dismissal of “voices expressing complexity … as simply in denial, or as liars, or as deluded about their experience,” and “to make survivor speech as politically effective as possible,” it is paramount to complicate the understanding of the nature and dynamics of experiences of sexual vio- lation to reshape the discourses norming the utterability and reception of such experi- ences (12, 17). In spite of her nuanced analysis of the challenges associated with public speaking, and her shift from individual responsibility to “speak up” toward transform- ing the discursive structures regulating uptake, Alcoff’s advocacy for voice as the priv- ileged emancipatory tool prevents her from making visible the imbrication of coloniality and voice, or the ways in which the discursive formation of coloniality undermines the conditions of possibility of emancipatory dialogues, ultimately reiterat- ing those discursive schemas that frame and dismiss subaltern resistances.11 Uncritical appeals to voice thus contribute to making invisible non-Western “voices”: because the voices that can be/are heard are those that conform to the episte- mic norms of coloniality, those that do not conform are not recognized as communi- cative, rational subjects and are dismissed as nonexistent and nonsensical. The claim that coloniality undermines the conditions of possibility of dialogical emancipation should not be taken to suggest that the colonized do not have a “voice” or cannot speak. Such an understanding would play into the same binary and totalizing logic this article seeks to destabilize. The colonized do have a “voice” and appeal to knowledge-validation processes, but to hear these “voices” and epistemic processes one needs to attune oneself to the echoes reverberating through and fissuring the putative silences to which they are relegated by colonial logic. Take the institution- alized sexual violation of black women under conditions of segregation, for instance. As Alcoff points out, “even if there is an official silence in the majority community con- cerning a given issue … this does not mean the silence is total”; black communities knew what happened even before the NAACP chapters began taking cases to the courts (Alcoff 2018, 38). “Even if these were not echoable in dominant discursive practices,” the necessity for safety and knowledge-sharing led to the development of methods of communication not repressed by Eurocentered norms (38). 130 Martina Ferrari At this juncture, the MC affirmation, echoed by Veronelli, that “there is no way out of coloniality from within modern categories of thought” (Veronelli 2016, 405) accrues weight and clarity. The dire implications of these two erasures are not just epistemolog- ical, but ontological; they entail a world, a metaphysics, in which the only resisting sub- jects and modes of resistance that are recognized as existing, as sensical, are those normed by coloniality. In other words, the implications of the concealed normativity of voice are that those who are not heard/seen protesting—those who do not resist in a manner consonant with the standards prescribed by coloniality—risk being dismissed as either invalid or as facilitating their own oppression, as Martínez’s narrative reminds us. In this sense, coloniality constructs an ontology that strives to eliminate any “resi- due” of resistance: Along with non-Western “voices,” non-Western modes of insubor- dination, sense-making, and, as the following discussion will show, being, are also erased; the modes of insubordination, sense-making, and being made available are those sanctioned by colonial logic, modes that, even in their insubordination, play into coloniality by appealing to its concepts, structures, and logic. In what follows, I unpack this last claim, suggesting that the abstract and uncritical appeal to voice is complicit in the reproduction and reification of colonial epistemic and ontological norms—what I call a racialized metaphysics of presence—that make visible only modes of existence that are normed by coloniality, ultimately preemptively fore- closing ways of reading and writing reality that uphold its complexity and ambiguity. A Racialized Metaphysics of Presence The second step toward understanding the ways uncritical appeals to voice reify colonial structures is by grappling with the ontological implications of coloniality. Although the theories discussed thus far focus predominantly on the epistemic ramifications of col- oniality, this historical formation affects the “general understanding of being” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 242). First, the casting of colonized people as lacking ratio- nality has the effect of depriving them, in Fanon’s words, of “ontological resistance,” that is, of being. We saw this implication operative in the preceding discussion of CLS, especially in the discursive dehumanization of the colonial other through raciali- zation. But this first ontological erasure relies on a second, conceptual one. The colo- nial/modern world power produces a racialized, dualistic conceptual framework or, more precisely, a metaphysics that limits “the sense of being within the field of pres- ence” (Derrida 2015, 24)—what Derrida calls a metaphysics of presence—whereby this field of presence appears as the exclusive domain of the colonizer. In this sense, I speak of a racialized metaphysics of presence. As we will see, this racialized metaphys- ics of presence of being versus nonbeing, sense versus non-sense, light versus darkness, strives to reduce the multiplicity, complexity, and ambiguity of (the) being (of nonmo- dern subjects) to nothingness, to nonbeing.12 Not only, then, are the colonized made invisible, reduced to nothingness through an exclusion from presence, but their being is conceived through a framework inadequate to express their complexity and ambiguity. Take the first ontological implication of the colonial/modern world power that “the absent of rationality is articulated in modernity with the idea of the absence of Being in others” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 252–53). In “The Coloniality of Being,” Nelson Maldonado-Torres argues that the Cartesian ego cogito and its instrumental rationality operate according to an attitude of permanent suspicion—what he calls the “racist/ imperial Manichean misanthropic skepticism” (245)—regarding the humanity of Hypatia 131 colonized and racialized “others,” which can be summarized thus: “‘I think (others do not think, or do not think properly), therefore I am (others are-not, lack being, should not exist or are dispensable)’” (252). The tacit assumption guiding this logic marks the colonial and racial subjects as dispensable; it puts them under the murderous and rapist sight of the modern/colonial ego cogito. Fanon’s reflections in Black Skin, White Masks and Gloria Anzaldúa’s testimony in Borderlands/La Frontera are a powerful testament to this insight. Because the colonial world is structured by colonial conceptual and linguistic frameworks grounded in mis- anthropic skepticism—here it suffices to think of Fanon’s powerful description of his (linguistic) encounter with the young white boy’s shout, “Look a Negro!”—“in the eyes of the white man … the black man [sic] has no ontological resistance” (Fanon 2012, 90, order rearranged). Coloniality is such that the colonized appears, in the eyes of the dominant group, not as a subject, that is, someone who has a culture, history, and language, but as nothingness. As Anzaldúa’s narrative conveys, when interpreted through colonial schemas, the complex, ambiguous, and paradoxical dimensions of her being are taken to be an indication of her inferiority, of her non-sense. “I have so internalized the borderlands conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nada” (Anzaldúa 2007, 85), as she recounts. In a colonial context, ontology collapses into Manicheism whereby the colonized are reduced to the dark side of the light-dark equation; they are reduced to “a zone of non-being, a sterile and arid region, an incline stripped bare of every essential from which a genuine new departure can emerge” (Fanon 2012, xii). This Manichean ontology, however, does more than relegate the damné to the dark side of the dichotomy; it deprives the colonized of a (nondualistic and nonlogocentric) “metaphysics” of their own capable of accommodating the complexity of (their) being (Fanon 2012, 90). Given the colonial episteme at his disposal, Fanon painfully realizes that the answer to the question, “Where do I fit in?” (93), is that he does not fit in. He has arrived “too late!,” so to speak, in a world that chains him, through coloniality and the working of the two axes of power, to pre-existing images, concepts, and significa- tions that have been fabricated without him and that relegate him to nothingness. As the anguish permeating the chapter titled “The Lived Experience of the Black Man” indicates, Fanon’s existential struggle to make sense of his being through the colonial episteme leads him to one untenable position after another, ultimately culminating in a cry (an affective response that should not be overlooked and to which I will return). Similarly, we witness Anzaldúa struggle with conceptual and linguistic frameworks too narrow and transparent to make sense of the opaque, complex, ambiguous dimensions of her being, which are thus taken to be an indication of her inferiority, of her non- sense. In this sense, to use Maldonado-Torres’s words, coloniality is a “metaphysical catastrophe” (Maldonado-Torres 2016, 11–16). But how is this metaphysical catastro- phe possible? As previously noted, the epistemic criteria upheld by sixteenth-century Europe served the cognitive needs of capitalism in which knowledge had to be conducive to the carving up, quantifying, and measuring of (external) reality for the sake of com- merce and exchange. That is, the sixteenth century witnessed the proliferation of explicit discourses on method for the attainment of knowledge that resulted in not only the production of “objective,” “universal,” “dispassionate” knowledge, but also the sedimentation of ontological assumptions about what being should be like such that it could be known through the above-mentioned method. As it turned out, the 132 Martina Ferrari being that could be known through these epistemic criteria is limited to the field of presence. As Derrida suggests (following Heidegger) in Ousia and Grammē, Western metaphysics treats “the meaning of Being as parousia or ousia, which signifies, in ontologico-Temporal terms, ‘presence’ (Anwesenheit)” (Derrida 1982, 31). This means that it grounds determinations of the meaning of being in that which is—a move that produces, at once, being as “what is present,” as immediate self-presence or “pure auto-affection” (Derrida 2015, 106) over and against nonbeing, which comes to be understood as “what is not present,” “not-there,” in sum, what cannot be known through immediate presence to consciousness. Not to be overlooked is the crucial role that voice plays in delineating the field of presence: logos, Derrida tells us, is immediately present to consciousness only through voice because voice—or, as he specifies in Voice and Phenomenon, internal monologue (Derrida 2011, 35–37)—is (presumably) heard without external mediation. The West’s logocentrism is the mark of a metaphysics of presence that understands speech and voice as the immediate conduit of (the) meaning (of being). The ontological implication of the axis of “modernity,” then, is the reification of a Parmenidean ontology of being and nonbeing, presence and absence, light and darkness, whereby speech and voice are the mark of purity, presence, transparency, and the fullness of being, whereas its other, silence, is the mark of impurity, absence, and lack of being. The work done in this article, however, should alert us against taking concepts like “voice” abstractly and toward the necessity of attending to the power differentials at play when dealing with questions of coloniality and ontology, bringing to bear consider- ations about the differential and racialized distribution of being onto ones about the metaphysics of presence. In fact, Maldonado-Torres’s and Fanon’s remarks indicate that the field of presence is demarcated by the consciousness or, more precisely, the voice of the colonizer. Within a colonial context, the “voice” that stands for presence is not just any voice; the only voice that has uptake and is recognized as Language is that of the colonizer—a speech act that conforms to the cognitive needs of capitalism. The exclusion of the colonized’s communicative functions as language, then, does not merely entail the erasure of non-Eurocentric modes of communication, but also the rel- egation of racialized bodies/being to absence. In this sense, the metaphysics of presence is a racialized metaphysics of presence whereby the field of presence is the exclusive domain of the colonizer. In light of these considerations, I hear, in the “cries of those whose humanity is being denied” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 257), the reminder to call into question not only the colonizing power of voice permeating uncritical appeals to “speak up!,” but also a world in which naming and language are power. That is, envisioning decolonial avenues of feminist insubordination cannot stop at questioning the conditions of possibility of reception of subaltern voices (as Alcoff among others does in Rape and Resistance); it must venture beyond voice, recuperating the generative power of deep silence. Importantly, I contend, the latter requires displacing the mechanisms that reduce the multiplicity and opacity of deep silence to oppressive silencing, to epistemic and onto- logical absence, and uphold deep silence as a fecund source of radical meaning-making, of a sense and a metaphysics that accommodate the mestizaje and complexity of (the) being (of the colonized). In this vein, it is time to repropose the questions raised at the outset of this article: Why is Martínez’s silent response read as an absence of sorts? What are the structures and motives such that silence is immediately perceived and conceived as silencing? There are instances of silence that are, in fact, oppressive, but Hypatia 133 why can’t we find, within a colonial matrix, a way to think or live silence otherwise than as oppression? And what does this evisceration tell us about coloniality? II. The Coloniality of Silence I concluded the preceding section by suggesting that a racialized metaphysics of pres- ence is such that the colonizers’ is the only voice that is heard and stands for presence, which means that being (here limited to the field of presence) is the exclusive domain of the colonizer. Because the “voice,” “speech,” or “languages” of the colonized do not conform to Eurocentered, capitalist, colonial/modern criteria, they are not heard or rec- ognized as such. This entails the reduction of the colonized’s voice to nonsense (or, as Veronelli calls it, “simple communication”) and their being to a “zone of non-being.” However, a racialized metaphysics of presence that excludes communicative forms and beings that are not normed by coloniality has implications for the phenomenon of silence itself. Within a colonial context, embodied responses that are not normed by colonial voice, like Martínez’s “joto passivity,” fall through the cracks of a racialized metaphysics of presence; rather than being taken in their strangeness and allowed to displace usual expectations, what cannot be heard by and from the colonizer’s stand- point is marked as unintelligible and nonsensical, as nothingness—as mere or total silence. Experiences of silences that can be negotiations of reality and fecund sources of radical meaning-making are vacated of their depth and thickness, of sense and being. That is, deep silences are eviscerated of their multiplicity and the phenomenon of silence comes to stand for the opposite of voice and sense, as that which ought to be broken or overcome to convey meaning or to gain recognition. As such, silence is sig- nified negatively, as the mark of ontological nonbeing and epistemic non-sense or the index of oppression and displacement from the (purportedly universal but in fact colo- nial) subject position. I call the mechanisms that make invisible the depth of the phe- nomenon of silence the coloniality of silence.13 The outcome is that silence is perceived, at best, as a phenomenon irrelevant to meaning-making, to communication, and to the disclosure of being, and, at worst, as an obstacle to be overcome if meaning, commu- nication, and the disclosure of being ought to be attained. But what does it mean for silence to be excluded from the domain of presence, being, and sense? This is also to ask, what does it mean, for sense, to be limited to (the) presence (of the colonizer’s voice)? In “Cultural Alterity,” Ofelia Schutte takes up these questions by thinking through the paradox inherent to cross-cultural communication already discussed in relation to Spivak’s “can the subaltern speak?” Differently from Spivak, who deals with the untenable predicament of the subaltern from the standpoint of speech/voice, the lynch- pin of Schutte’s argument is that there is a “lack of complete translatability” (Schutte 1998, 69, n. 4), a silence of sorts, between linguistic-cultural symbolic systems but, more broadly, within sense itself. As she puts it, “[t]here is always a residue of meaning that will not be reached in cross-cultural endeavors, a residue sufficiently important to point to what I shall refer to more abstractly as a principle of (cross-cultural) incom- mensurability” (56). Although colonial/modern epistemic theories of meaning may acknowledge this incommensurability and the fact that it may impede a perfect map- ping of culturally different discourses, they regard incommensurability as “irrelevant to philosophical meaning and knowledge, and thus irrelevant to the operations of rea- son” (61). This is because they understand incommensurability quantitatively rather than qualitatively; incommensurability is approached as the residue of an equation 134 Martina Ferrari whose balancing entails communicative transparency. Recall Lugones’s lover of purity: The colonial/modern subject operates under the assumption that the sense of a pur- portedly unified reality and subject can be grasped in its totality through reason alone, that is, by occupying an acultural and ahistorical vantage point. Lovers of purity split-separate reality, sanitizing it from anything “impure” like affective residues and (seeming) incompossibles. That is, they operate under the assumption that a culture’s, language’s, or subject’s meaning is perfectly available and accessible to another, that these meanings can be made available through dialogical exchanges, and that the col- onized can deploy colonial meanings and frameworks to express their experiences of oppression and resistance—assumptions that, as we have seen, make invisible the col- onized’s communicative practices and being. In a word, the lover of purity casts sense and reality as transparent, thus skating over the “silence,” “opacity,” or “excess of mean- ing” inherent in sense and reality. This assumption regarding the nature of incommensurability/silence and sense informs strategies devised to reduce barriers to cross-cultural communication. Because sense is assumed to be transparent, cross-cultural incomprehensions or mis- communications are taken to be direct results of a lack of information. The solution to this “lack,” then, is taken to be a “more”: comprehension and communication, this logic goes, are achieved by providing more complete, detailed, accurate information. Although these strategies, in some instances, may help reduce the incomprehensions or miscommunications, they mischaracterize the nature of incommensurability/silence and sense, which, in turn, leads them to mischaracterize the nature of the problem. Because they overlook the fact that “silence” or “excess of meaning” is inherent to sense and “the process of reasoning itself” (Schutte 1998, 61), they understand the prob- lem of miscommunication to be a quantitative issue—addressed by providing more of the same kind of input—rather than a qualitative issue—the nature of sense and silence. In other words, they overlook the deep silence of sense and the sense of deep silence. This discussion of Eurocentered theories of meaning points to the fact that the colonial, logocentric apparatus is not equipped to approach, dwell in, harken to occurrences of deep silence, or let deep silence open onto other dimensions of being and sense that are prior to and cannot be accounted for by a discourse that operates at the level of con- ceptual thinking. Instead, epistemically, silence is framed as the lack or insufficiency of more complete, accurate, detailed sense/information that could be provided by the col- onized via speaking up and coming to voice. In sum, what is made invisible, by virtue of its not being recognized or acknowledged, is the sense of deep silence. Although the coloniality of silence strives to eviscerate deep silences, occurrences of silence can be rich phenomena that operate according to decolonial logics. Martínez’s testimony points to the ways in which deep silence holds the promise of making sense of his situation otherwise than via colonial epistemic and ontological frameworks. Martínez shows us that his “joto passivity” opens onto practices of “radical meaning making” from which one can envision and bring about radically different gendered practices like nonmisogynist and nonhomophobic ways of practicing masculinity (Martínez 2014, 239). Or take the description of Marita Bonner, a celebrated writer of the Harlem renaissance, of black consciousness in “On Being Young, Woman, and Colored.” Departing from narratives that equate black consciousness with resistance and the public, in her writing—conveyed both through her stylistic choices and con- tent—Bonner emphasizes the voluptuousness of interiority and the strength of surrender: Hypatia 135 So—being a woman—you can wait. You must sit quietly without a chip. Not sodden—and weighted as if your feet were cast in the iron of your soul. Not wasting strength in enervating gestures as if two hundred years of bonds and whips had really tricked you into nervous uncertainty. But quiet; quiet. Like Buddha—who brown like I am—sat entirely at ease, entirely sure of himself; motionless and knowing, a thousand years before that white man knew there was so very much difference between feet and hands. Motionless on the outside. But inside? Silent. Still … “Perhaps Buddha is a woman.” (Bonner, 7–8, cited in Quashie 2012, 34) Quiet, stillness, and silence function in Bonner’s text as the catalyst for novel under- standings of black identity that do not stand over and against the world, its expectations, and its limited imagination. Silence here figures as a location of insight and meaning; in this context, silence is not oppression, “not performative, not a withholding,” but instead, Kevin Quashie claims in The Sovereignty of Quiet, “is an expressiveness that is not entirely legible in a discourse of publicness” (Quashie 2012, 35).14 So, again, why are these “silent” responses read as negative phenomena, as absence, passivity, or nonresponsiveness? By emphasizing the why, I bring attention to the nonaccidental nature of this reading of reality, to the fact that the casting of deep silence as mere silence, that is, the coloniality of silence, is necessary to coloniality. In fact, because what is deemed as mere silence would open not only onto decolonial epistemic practices, but also onto a metaphysics or zone of being that is neither full presence nor nothing, taking seriously those experi- ences as deep silence would challenge usual assumptions central to coloniality itself. In this sense, the evisceration of deep silence to absence (and to oppressive silencing) is not accidental to coloniality, but, rather, a key process in the successful reification and legitimization of coloniality. By reducing deep silences to the expression of natural infe- riority or the exclusion from the subject position, the coloniality of silence makes invisible modes of knowing, communicating, and being that are otherwise than modernity and that, by virtue of their existence, threaten to fissure the naturalization of coloniality so essential for its own justification. After all, the existence of decolonial modes of being and knowing challenges the operative assumption of coloniality, calling into question the “objective” and “transparent” qualities of Eurocentered, capitalist, modern/colonial epistemic and ontological schemas—features that are presented as natural and universal. To use language resonant with the previous section’s discussion, the racialized metaphys- ics of presence eliminates any “impurity” or in-between, reducing them to nonbeing. Significantly, because this in-between, this “herida abierta” (Anzaldúa 2007, 25), is a place where the colonized live in a way that “exceeds” the modern epistemic and onto- logical categories of coloniality, and, as such, offers “new critical horizons … within hegemonic cosmologies” (Mignolo 2000, xxvi), in addition to the concealment of the production of the difference between colonized and colonizer, the naturalization of the colonial difference makes invisible this concrete locus fecund with new horizons.15 In this way, it preemptively dismisses on natural grounds as nonbeing or non-sense the locus from which one could contest the assumptions of coloniality. This erasure is cru- cial to coloniality in that it conceals the colonial difference as a generative source of subversion.16 136 Martina Ferrari III. Toward the Rereading and Rewriting of Deep Silence As Lugones insightfully reminds us, decoloniality requires resisting the epistemological habit of erasing (Lugones 2010, 754). What would it mean, then, not to dismiss the res- idue or excess of meaning—the deep silence—of experiences like Martínez’s, Fanon’s, or Anzaldúa’s? And if sense is not transparent, and if silence is not a lack, how are we to make sense of the operations of silence in sense? How can experiences like theirs help us make sense of the silence of sense and the sense of silence? Consider Fanon’s and Anzaldúa’s aforementioned experiences of not fitting within colonial norms and expec- tations. Although painful and disorienting, their experiences are not a defeat. Upholding the dismemberment brought about by a life in the “herida abierta,” and dwelling in these experiences of displacement from the language and the world of the colonizer not only reveals the fictitious nature of the logic regulating this exclusion; it can also be a fertile “ground” for the rereading and rewriting of reality, for the dis- placement of usual meanings and expectations.17 Although this colonial logic strives to reduce the damné and their multiplicity, opacity, and ambiguity to the dark side of the dichotomy (to nothingness), their material existence contextualizes such reduc- tion. As noted, Fanon’s existential struggle to make sense of his being culminates in a cry: “I tried to get up but the eviscerated silence surged toward me with paralyzed wings. Not responsible for my acts, at the crossroads between Nothingness and Infinity, I began to weep” (Fanon 2012, 119). We witness Fanon rejecting the split- separation imposed upon him by the logic of purity, a separation that would dismiss the emotional residue that makes up his difference, his being, reducing him to nothing- ness and the depth of silence to an “eviscerated” silence. Importantly, however, his rejection comes in the form of weeping, which suggests another way of being in and making sense of the world—an embodied, affectively charged ethos. We find a more robust exploration of this affective sense-making in Anzaldúa’s writ- ings. We discover, in the remarks from Borderlands/La Frontera previously cited, that, although at times, when she gives in to colonial logic, Anzaldúa feels like she is a “zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nada,” her existence contests the logic of purity: “Pero hasta cuando no lo soy, lo soy” (Anzaldúa 2007, 85). The being that she “is” does not conform to the usual expectation or familiar meanings; she “is” neither the pleni- tude of full being nor the absence of nonbeing: “But even when I am not, I am” (85, my translation). Similarly to Fanon, when upholding her being and speaking from her expe- rience, from that purportedly eviscerated silence or nothingness to which colonial logic strives to reduce her, Anzaldúa is able to challenge the fiction of the racialized meta- physics of presence; “when not copping out,” she lets her deep silence speak for itself, shaping a metaphysics of her own whereby she “is” a multiplicity: Mexican, mestiza, Chicana, Tejana, and so much more. Testimonies like these point us to an alternative to understanding incommensurabil- ity as well as sense and silence in terms of transparency; they ask that we resist the ten- dency to subsume the other’s opacity into familiar schemas or meanings, dwelling instead in that unsettling experience akin to when “another’s speech, or some aspect of it, resonates in me as a kind of strangeness, a kind of displacement of the usual expec- tation” (Schutte 1998, 56). Withstanding this strange experience, this deep silence, is key to hearing the other in her difference, for new sense to emerge. Although this article has followed decolonial thinkers in challenging the authorial and colonial power of voice, it moves beyond them, inviting the reframing of Spivak’s question not in terms of voice—can the subaltern speak?—but in terms of Hypatia 137 deep silence—can the deep silence of the colonized be generative of decolonial sense- making? In other words—by attending to colonial patterns of power, this article has revealed the imbrication of coloniality and voice, thus problematizing as naïve any abstract appeal to voice as emancipatory. Although survivors’ voices and testimonies are a critical force behind social change, as the #MeToo movement continues to pro- mote voice as the ubiquitous means of emancipation, it is paramount to contend with the fact that social change is not achieved by making the platform more inclusive to include the voices of those who have traditionally been marginalized because of their social positionality. As I have argued in this article, the matter at hand is rather to ques- tion the structural conditions and assumptions undergirding the movement, that is, its appeal to voice. In fact, assuming that voice is a ubiquitous means of emancipation, that speaking up is beyond race, gender, or class tacitly undermines the conditions of pos- sibility of dialogical emancipation of those who do not conform to Eurocentered episte- mic and ontological norms, ultimately reifying colonial formations whereby the other and their communicative practices are cast as inferior. In this sense, so long as liberatory movements championing the imperative to “speak up” do not critically call into ques- tion the guiding assumption norming what counts as reliable and correct speech, the testimonies of survivors whose expressive means do not conform to logical, clear, or persuasive speech will be reduced to nothingness, to “total silence” (Alcoff 2018, 38). As Spivak suggests in an interview with Jenny Sharp, perhaps “we must … take a mor- atorium on naming too soon, if we manage to penetrate there. There is no other way for you and me to penetrate there” (Sharp and Spivak 2003, 619). Perhaps, the openings to decolonial sense and the key to “rereading and rewriting of reality” (Anzaldúa 2015, 40) are not found exclusively in or through conceptual thinking or dialogical exchanges but via affective, sensuous harkenings to experiences of deep silence. Notes 1 Aimee Carrillo Rowe’s and Sheena Malhotra’s Silence, Feminism, Power is a collection dedicated to cri- tiquing, from a feminist standpoint, the dominant conception of silence that casts it as exclusively oppres- sive and recovering it as also a space of possibilities (Carrillo Rowe and Malhotra 2013). Over the decades, there have been attempts to reclaim silence outside of philosophy. Communication studies scholar Robin Clair, for instance, follows the path paved by Max Picard, arguing that silence and voice should not be thought as “bifurcated concepts,” but as “self-contained opposites” (Clair 1998, xiii; see also Picard 1952). In Organizing Silence and “Imposed Silence and the Story of the Warramunga Woman,” Clair inves- tigates strategies to organize silence such that it becomes possible to hear the voices of those who have been silenced (Clair 1998; 2013). Following a deconstructive approach, Clair investigates the “silencing aspects of communication and the expressive aspects of silence” (Clair 1998, 5) as a way of moving beyond the bifur- cation of voice and silence. Notably, Clair argues that aesthetics “provides a means for silence to escape and become expression, and an aesthetic perspective allows us to see it … an aesthetic perspective provides a way of exploring how silence is expressed” (40). It should be noted that the history of silence and feminism is a complex one. By the mid-1980s, third- wave feminist analyses of oppression complicated the concept of silence. Silence was not exclusively a mark of patriarchal oppression, theorists such as Audre Lorde or María Lugones insisted (Lorde 1978/2007; Lugones and Spelman 1983), but also a phenomenon endemic to feminist discourse. Attending to what came to be known—thanks to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s groundbreaking essay “Mapping the Margins” (Crenshaw 1991)—as the intersectionality of oppression entailed calling into question the racialization of silence, that is, the white assumption that silence is co-extensive with the feminine. On the one hand, inter- sectional analyses of oppression revealed that “silence” (as well as “passivity” or “fragility”) characterizes and normalizes the experience of (most) WASP women, not of all women (Collins 2000, 14). In the col- lective imaginary and their communal spaces like the family and the church, Black women do speak and often are framed as rowdy and loud (Lorde 1978/2007; hooks 1989/2015). In this sense, the reduction of 138 Martina Ferrari oppressive, silencing practices to the silencing of patriarchal oppression performed a double erasure, that is, the erasure of women of color whose experiences are characterized by the intersection of multiple axes of oppression, but also the making invisible of white feminism’s complicity in the oppression of women of color. In fact, so long as silence is understood to be coextensive with the feminine, the normative force of this assumption is that women of color, whose existence and experiences do not conform with this silent, (white) feminine norm, are made invisible within (white) feminist discourse. To be clear—by taking the experience of white women as indicative of the feminine, second-wave feminism foreclosed the recognition of its participation in the marginalization and exclusion of women of color. On the other hand, intersec- tional analyses of oppression revealed the limitations of the emancipatory strategy of effecting the transition from silence to voice; at stake in women of color’s emancipation was the production of speech that would compel listeners, speech that would be heard—as Lorde and hooks argued. Yet, although the phenomenon of silence accrued complexity, coming to index not just literal silence, but also the “speech” of women of color (speech that would not conform to white, patriarchal standards of “proper” speech and, as such, lacked uptake), third-wave feminism left unchallenged the guiding political imperative of “breaking the silence” by “coming to voice,” continuing to espouse a conception of silence coextensive with oppression, equating it to “starvation” (Moraga 2015, 24) or a locus of peril and vulnerability (“your silence will not protect you” [Lorde 1978/2007, 41]). 2 Given the spatial constraints of this article, I cannot thoroughly engage with critiques of ableist and nor- mative modes of communication such as (narrow forms of) voice put forth by disability studies. A fruitful starting point for those engagements is Christine Ashby’s “Whose ‘Voice’ Is It Anyway?,” in which she takes up the difficult challenge of “giving voice” to those individuals who experience disability—in her case, those who do not use speech as the primary mode of expression—while also calling into question nar- row conceptualizations of voice. “Ensur[ing] a space within a critical, qualitative framework for the inclu- sion of ‘voices’ that do not speak” entailed problematizing the use of the term “voice,” which, as she observes, too often goes unchallenged, as well as the assumptions behind the desire to give voice. Ashby recognizes the importance of silence as a means for the individual to “give voice to his experience and pro- vide an opportunity to talk back to the technologies of power that oppress. … perhaps not speaking, or not typing, is also a way to subvert systems of power that limit and marginalize” (Ashby 2011). 3 It was brought to my attention by one of the anonymous reviewers that my choice of the terminology deep silence may inadvertently reify problematic dichotomies such as surface/depth that have been central to the colonial/modern project. As Marlon B. Ross points out in his critique of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s epistemological theory of the closet in “Beyond the Closet as a Raceless Paradigm,” the surface/depth dichotomy is at play in the delineation of sexual modernity whereby homosexuality is marked by claustro- philia, that is, the value promoted by the White, intellectual establishment of deep, hidden or “closeted meaning” (Ross 2005, 139). “Primitives, savages, the poor, and those uneducated in the long history of epis- temology are not normally represented as epistemological subjects, partly because they do not have the lux- ury of composing the kind of voluminous texts that bear the weight of such deep buried—and thus closed/ closeted up—intellectual dilemmas begging for painstakingly close readings” (139). I thank the reviewer for bringing attention to the possible limitations of “depth” as a concept. Aware of the imbrication of the binary surface/depth with the reification of Eurocentered norms, in the context of this article “deep” is deployed to effect an epistemological suspension of the familiar, and problematize the widespread and monovalent conceptions of silence as oppression. Given the decolonial lineage within which this work is situated, the deployment of “depth” as a qualifier for the generative and fecund silence at stake in this article is also meant to evoke the work of “making visible the invisible,” to borrow Maldonado-Torres’s words, “and analyzing the mechanisms that produce such invisibility or distorted visibility” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 262). “Depth” indexes the recuperation of such invisibility. 4 American writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit’s latest book, The Mother of All Questions, is a prime example of how the phenomenon of silence is conceived and treated in mainstream white feminist circles. The author discusses how feminists have long used silence as a metaphor for oppression and makes the case for how liberation is “always in part a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, mak- ing new stories. A free person tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society in which her story has a place” (Solnit 2017, 15). Silence, she claims, is what condemns “people to suffer without recourse, what allows hypocrisies and lies to grow and flourish, crimes to go unpunished. If our voices are essential aspects of our humanity, to be rendered voiceless is to be dehumanized or excluded from one’s humanity” (18). As I acknowledge in the body of the article, although there are oppressive forms of silencing, the equation of Hypatia 139 silence as oppression and voice or storytelling as emancipation forecloses critical analyses of the violence entailed by the normativity of voice. What to do with the co-opting of principles like “having your voice heard” or “breaking the silence” for the fight against justice and equality through fake news, for instance? Or appeals to “free speech” as means to advance alt-right messages? Or the logically analogous instance whereby French actress Catherine Deneuve wrote an open letter, published in Le Monde, in which she undermines the #MeToo campaign, contending that men should be “free to hit on” women? And what about instances in which silence is needed for self-care and self-preservation? So again, though public tes- timony may be a practice that, in certain contexts and circumstances, is called for, the ubiquitous imper- ative to speak up and its association with agency and humanity upheld by most liberatory narratives entails harms of its own that ought to be brought to light to avoid complicity with structural oppression. 5 It should be noted that, as Carrillo Rowe and Malhotra point out, although the works of Glenn and Ratcliffe “productively bring silence more fully into focus by challenging the epistemological conditions of its annihilation, they remain bound to Western and modernist assumptions about completeness of understanding” (Carrillo Rowe and Malhotra 2013, 6). 6 To this end, in “Resistant Silences,” Christine Keating works to recuperate silence from its equation with absence, distinguishing between enforced silences, which are oppressive and should be resisted, from three kinds of silences that serve as technologies of resistance: “silent refusal, silent witness, and deliberative silence” (Keating 2013, 25). In “Legacies of Silences,” Malhotra speaks of her struggle with the “Western compulsion for voice and speaking … speak your position; take a stand; speak, speak, speak!” (Carrillo Rowe and Malhotra 2013, 220)—a commitment that problematically equates agency with voice. Reflecting on her experience as a survivor of ovarian cancer, Malhotra reframes silence as a “space of unset- tling possibilities” (223) whereby words, ideals, thoughts, and explorations do not have to follow structured and linear regimens, but can hold “more than one thing at once” (225). She argues that agency is a pre- requisite for silence to be empowering, a space for possibilities—“silence without any agency is oppressive, particularly given the material conditions of the lives in question” (224). 7 As Veronelli argues, although these conditions can be granted at the abstract level (she criticizes MC exponents Enrique Dussel and Walter Mignolo for taking for granted the existence of these dialogical con- ditions of possibility by operating at the level of “ideas, of epistemic and political projects” (Veronelli 2016, 408)), these conditions of possibility do not necessarily exist at the level of the concrete lives and experi- ences of colonial subjects. 8 As Collins points out, knowledge claims must satisfy criteria upheld by the context in which they are presented. Ultimately, “because this enterprise is controlled by elite White men, knowledge validation pro- cesses reflect this group’s interests” (Collins 2000, 271). 9 This is also true for vernacular expressions, which are not acquired through formal institutions and thereby are not “repressed by either grammatical rules, technical terms, or key words” (Trinh 1989, 16). 10 Burke created “Me Too” in 2006 as a MySpace page to promote conversations and build community among women of color who were survivors. 11 As Sadie Graham points out in an October 2018 Broadly article, the ubiquity of reporting promoted by and characteristic of #MeToo fostered the belief that this journalistic form of reporting would “dismantle the oligo-patriarchy and save us all.” Yet many of the same problems persist. Not only “other kind of reporting—to human resources, to police—are so aggressively unsustainable for survivors” (Graham 2018); closer scrutiny shows how this platform amplifies the voices of white, middle-class women to the exclusion of others. 12 In In-Between, Mariana Ortega argues that multiplicity and mestizaje are characteristic of all beings, not only of those who, because of their material, geopolitical existence, are forced to “travel” between cultural and linguistic norms and worlds of meaning (Ortega 2016). 13 Furthermore, as the discussion on the coloniality of voice indicated, the coloniality of silence inscribes silence as the natural expression of racialized and colonized subjects. The joint operations of the axes of “modernity” and “coloniality” are such that the racialized “other” is cast as naturally epistemically and ontologically inferior—as silent. Rather than being recognized as a colonial production, “silence as absence and nonsense” comes to be understood as the natural domain of the colonized—as the expression of the natural inability to fight back, the nonresponsiveness of queer Chicanos in the face of violence. 14 See Evelynn Hammonds’s treatment of a politics of articulation and a politics of silence in “Black (W) holes” for a discussion of how the concept of silence figures in black women’s cultural work (Hammonds 1994) 140 Martina Ferrari 15 As Walter Mignolo affirms in the “Preface” to the 2012 edition of his earlier book, the root of the con- cept of the “colonial difference” can be traced to Anzaldúa’s use of the Nahuatl term Nepantla, which she also refers to as “herida abierta”—the open wound that is the lived space of the borderland/la frontera. This lineage stresses the “physical as well as imaginary” (Mignolo 2000, xxv) place that is the colonial difference and the traumatic as well as generative/transformative quality that it bears. 16 In other words, as a place whose materiality refuses disappearance and erasure, the colonial difference threatens to undermine, in its resilience and concreteness, the colonial logic whereby “knowledge and aes- thetic norms are … universally established by a transcendental subject” realizing instead that they are “uni- versally established by historical subjects in diverse cultural centers” (Mignolo 2000, 5). 17 Although I speak of a ground here, this ground is a “lugar no lugar,” what Anzaldúa calls Nepantla, “a Nahuatl word for an in-between space, el lugar entre medio. Napantla, palabra indígena: un concepto que se refiere a un lugar no-lugar” (Anzaldúa 2015, 28). References Alcoff, Linda Martín. 2018. Rape and resistance: Understanding the complexities of sexual violation. 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Chicago: Haymarket Books. Spivak, Gayatri C. 1999. Critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press. Trinh, T. Minh-ha. 1989. Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Veronelli, Gabriela. 2015. The coloniality of language: Race, expressivity, power, and the darker side of modernity. Wagadu 13 (Summer): 108–34. ——. 2016. A coalitional approach to theorizing decolonial communication. Hypatia 31 (2): 404–20. Martina Ferrari is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Oregon specializing in twentieth- century continental philosophy (especially phenomenology), feminist philosophy, and decolonial thought. In her dissertation, titled “Decolonizing Silence,” she reexamines the question of silence and contends that, approached from the phenomenological standpoint of concrete, lived experiences, silence can be more than a simple absence of speech, sense, and being; it is revealed as a fecund locus for the renewal of sense. Ferrari’s work has been published in Chiasmi International, Symposium, and the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. Ferrari also co-edited with Bonnie Mann a volume on Simone de Beauvoir, titled On ne naît pas femme: on le devient: The Life of a Sentence (Oxford University Press, 2017) and co-founded Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology. (mferrar2@uoregon.edu) Cite this article: Ferrari M (2020). Questions of Silence: On the Emancipatory Limits of Voice and the Coloniality of Silence. Hypatia 35, 123–142. https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2019.9 142 Martina Ferrari http://frantzfanonfoundation-fondationfrantzfanon.com/article2360.html http://frantzfanonfoundation-fondationfrantzfanon.com/article2360.html http://frantzfanonfoundation-fondationfrantzfanon.com/article2360.html mailto:mferrar2@uoregon.edu https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2019.9 Questions of Silence: On the Emancipatory Limits of Voice and the Coloniality of Silence The Coloniality of Voice On Coloniality and the Normativity of Voice A Racialized Metaphysics of Presence II. The Coloniality of Silence III. Toward the Rereading and Rewriting of Deep Silence Notes References work_5uygrcruvvd4xpvjxc3esbqjgi ---- CEM_22_s1_abstract 59..59 MP45 What to do with #MeToo: pre and post presenting patterns of intimate partner violence A. Sobiesiak, BHSc, K. Muldoon, MPH, PhD, L. Shipeolu, BA, M. Heimerl, BA, MSW, K. Sampsel, MD, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON Introduction: The #MeToo social media movement gained inter- national status in October 2017 as millions disclosed experiences of sexual and intimate partner violence. People who experience violence from a former/current intimate partner may not present for care for many reasons, among them not knowing where to go for care, or not realizing they were experiencing abuse since the behavior was por- trayed as ‘normal’. Empirical research identified increased police reporting, internet searches, and new workplace regulations on sexual assault/harassment after #MeToo. Less is known about how #MeToo has influenced hospital-based care, particularly among IPV cases. We aimed to investigate if the #MeToo social movement influenced pat- terns of IPV cases presenting for emergency care. Methods: This study took place at the Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care Pro- gram (SAPACP), within the Emergency Department of The Ottawa Hospital. Patients seen from November 1st, 2016 through to Septem- ber 30th, 2017 was considered Pre-#MeToo and those seen Novem- ber 1st, 2017 to September 30th, 2018 was considered Post-#MeToo. All patients seen in October 2017 were excluded. Analyses compare the proportion and characteristics of IPV cases seen Pre- and Post-# MeToo. Log-binomial regression models were used to calculate rela- tive risk and 95% CI. Results: 890 cases were seen by the SAPACP during the total study period, of which 564 (63%) were IPV cases. 258 IPV cases were seen Pre-#MeToo and 306 IPV Post-#MeToo. The clinical presentation for IPV cases was similar between both per- iods where approximately 42% of IPV cases presented for sexual assault, 50% presented for physical assault. An increase in frequency and proportion of IPV cases was observed post-#MeToo. Post-# MeToo there were 48 additional cases of IPV, corresponding to almost a 20% increase in risk compared to the Pre-#MeToo period. (RR: 1.19, 95% CI: 1.07-1.31) Post-#MeToo, there were more pre- senting cases of IPV among male/trans cases (9 vs 26) and youth cases (82 vs 116). Conclusion: #MeToo is a powerful social move- ment that corresponded with a significant increase in IPV cases pre- senting for emergency care. While the assault characteristics among IPV cases remained similar, an important contribution of this research is the increase in youth, male/transgender patients who presented for care post-#MeToo. Continued investigations into pre- post-#MeToo trends is needed to understand more about the changing clinical population and to inform resource and service allocation. Keywords: domestic violence, intimate partner violence, trauma MP46 Clinically significant traumatic intracranial haemorrhage follow- ing minor head trauma in older adults: a retrospective cohort study E. Mercier, MD, MSc, T. O’Brien, MBBS, B. Mitra, PhD, MBBS, N. Le Sage, MD, PhD, P. Tardif, MSc, M. Emond, MD, MSc, M. D’Astous, MD, PhD, Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus, Québec, QC Introduction: The primary objective of this study was to determine the incidence of clinically significant traumatic intracranial haemor- rhage (T-ICH) following minor head trauma in older adults. Second- ary objective was to investigate the impact of anticoagulant and antiplatelet therapies on T-ICH incidence. Methods: This retrospective cohort study extracted data from electronic patient records. The cohort consisted of patients presenting after a fall and/ or head injury and presented to one of five ED between 1st March 2010 and 31st July 2017. Inclusion criteria were age ≥ 65 years old and a minor head trauma defined as an impact to the head without ful- filling criteria for traumatic brain injury. Results: From the 1,000 electronic medical records evaluated, 311 cases were included. The mean age was 80.1 (SD 7.9) years. One hundred and eighty-nine (189) patients (60.8%) were on an anticoagulant (n = 69), antiplatelet (n = 130) or both (n = 16). Twentypatients(6.4%)developedaclinically significant T-ICH. Anticoagulation and/or antiplatelets therapies were not associated with an increased risk of clinically significant T-ICH in this cohort (Odds ratio (OR) 2.7, 95% CI 0.9-8.3). Conclusion: In this cohort of older adults presenting to the ED following minor head trauma, the incidence of clinically significant T-ICH was 6.4%. Keywords: head injury, intracranial haemorrhage, traumatic brain injury MP47 Factors associated with preventable trauma death: a narrative review G. Genois, I. Vlahovic, L. Moore, PhD, B. Beck, MD, MSc, P. Blanchard, MD, PhD, M. Émond, MD, MSc, B. Mitra, MD, PhD, MBBS, P. Cameron, MD, MBBS, A. Nadeau, PhD, É. Mercier, MD, MSc, Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus, Québec, QC Introduction: Trauma care is highly complex and prone to medical errors. Accordingly, several studies have identified adverse events and conditions leading to potentially preventable or preventable deaths. Depending on the availability of specialized trauma care and the trauma system organization, between 10 and 30% of trauma-related deaths worldwide could be preventable if optimal care was promptly delivered. This narrative review aims to identify the main determinants and areas for improvements associated with potentially preventable trauma mortality. Methods: A literature review was performed using Medline, Embase and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials from 1990 to a maximum of 6 months before submission for publication. Experimental or observational studies that have assessed determinants and areas for improvements that are associated with trauma death preventability were considered for inclusion. Two researchers independently selected eligible studies and extracted the relevant data. The main areas for improvements were classified using the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations patient event taxonomy. No statistical ana- lyses were performed given the data heterogeneity. Results: From the 3647 individual titles obtained by the search strategy, a total of 37 studies were included. Each study included between 72 and 35311 trauma patients who had sustained mostly blunt trauma, frequently following a fall or a motor vehicle accident. Preventability assessment was performed for 17 to 2081 patients using either a single expert assessment (n = 2, 5,4%) or an expert panel review (n = 35, 94.6%). The definition of preventability and the taxonomy used varied greatly between the studies. The rate of potentially preventable or prevent- able death ranged from 2.4% to 76.5%. The most frequently reported areas for improvement were treatment delay, diagnosis accuracy to avoid missed or incorrect diagnosis and adverse events associated with the initial procedures performed. The risk of bias of the included studies was high for 32 studies because of the retrospective design and the panel review preventability assessment. Conclusion: Deaths occurring after a trauma remain often preventable. Included studies CJEM • JCMU 2020;22 S1 S59 2020 Scientific Abstracts https://doi.org/10.1017/cem.2020.194 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/cem.2020.194 https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms What to do with #MeToo: pre and post presenting patterns of intimate partner violence Clinically significant traumatic intracranial haemorrhage following minor head trauma in older adults: a retrospective cohort study Factors associated with preventable trauma death: a narrative review work_65ebgyo2krdw7dbs5mbwbynjxi ---- Professional ethics in academia: defining the categories of behavior spectrum in matters of unethical conduct Professional ethics in academia: defining the categories of behavior spectrum in matters of unethical conduct Niraj Shenoy1 # The Author(s) 2019 The problems of bullying and other unethical behavior in Science are known to most researchers. Victims are most often young investigators and trainees. Defining the categories of human behavior spectrum in academia in matters of unethical conduct may help facilitate change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40889-019-00071-1 Category A: Engages in criminal/ illegal offense Category B: Engages in unethical behavior (intellectual theft, abuse, scientific misconduct). Both initiators and facilitators belong to the same category. Variation in magnitude. Category C: Is not directly involved in the offense but knows of it well. However, not only looks the other way but engages in active collaboration and continues to receive favors from those involved. May even help those in category B during an investigation or aid their retaliatory efforts. Category D: Is not directly involved in the offense. Tries his/ her best to stay away from the situation. No significant moral dilemma even if the offense is reprehensible. May try to stop collaborating with those involved in the offense but also tries to minimize contact with those wronged. Maintains neutrality. Category E: Has a moral dilemma whether to help the wronged or not (or challenge the offender if personally wronged) but decides against. Lacks willingness, courage and know-how. Perceived potential loss to self through retaliation is much greater than the ethical conscience to speak up. Category F: Has severe moral dilemma, advises the wronged with noble intentions and provides moral support, but is not willing to speak up. Perceived potential loss to self through retaliation is still greater than the ethical conscience to speak up. Category G: Is willing and courageous, but lacks the know-how to help the wronged against the offender (or to challenge the offender if personally wronged). May act in haste. Category H: Is willing, courageous and possesses the know-how to help the wronged against the offender (or to challenge the offender if personally wronged). * Niraj Shenoy niraj.shenoy@einstein.yu.edu 1 Department of Medicine (Oncology), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Chanin 302A, Bronx, NY 10461, USA International Journal of Ethics Education (2019) 4:193-194 Published online: 15 April 2019 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s40889-019-00071-1&domain=pdf http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2074-1108 mailto:niraj.shenoy@einstein.yu.edu Academic professional ethics needs to be a part of scientific curriculum regardless of discipline. Students need to be taught to recognize the different categories throughout their academic careers and to aspire to belong to category H. The color spectrum (red to green) position of the leadership determines that of the institution/ organization, given the direct influence of leadership on the proportion of each category. It is nearly impossible for an organization to be ethical with an unethical leadership. Bystanders far outnumber the oppressors and victims in most situations of abuse/ intellectual theft/ scientific misconduct in academia. The lack of bystander guilt from inaction enables unethical behavior and leadership. The above categorization of behav- ior spectrum would hopefully impress upon bystanders, their critical role in ensuring justness within an institution. The problem of unethical behavior in academia cannot be solved unless there is a widespread acceptance of its presence, and a willingness to confront it. Policies preventing institutions from conducting sham investigations need to be implemented by regulatory bodies (Nik-Zainal and Barroso 2019). Perhaps Science needs a #MeToo movement. Compliance with ethical standards Conflict of interest The corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and repro- duction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Reference Nik-Zainal, S., and I. Barroso. 2019. Bullying investigations need a code of conduct. Nature 565: 429. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00228-4. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Shenoy N.194 https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00228-4 Professional ethics in academia: defining the categories of behavior spectrum in matters of unethical conduct Reference work_674mqsbkevbqzgnvzbb3gpzc4e ---- Women in Public Policy and Public Administration? Karen Johnston, Faculty of Business and Law University of Portsmouth Richmond Building Portland Street Portsmouth PO1 3DE Keywords: gender, equality, representation, representative bureaucracy, public administration Abstract This article explores the persistence of gender inequality in public administration in the UK and globally. The implications for the continued under-representation of women are explored. The data reveals vertical and horizontal occupational gender segregation, which the article argues, drawing upon representative bureaucracy research, has policy outcomes for beneficiaries of public services. Impact The recent social movement campaigns and media coverage about sexual violence against women (e.g. MeToo) has highlighted the prevalence of this egregious issue; the publication of the gender pay gaps in UK organizations despite the Equal Pay Act (1970) demonstrates continued inequalities; and as this article demonstrates the data on women in public administration reveals the persistence of gender inequality in public sector employment. This has implications for public administration institutions. The article argues that the lack of representation of women and other minorities has policy outcomes for the legitimacy, trust, integrity in public institutions, and public policy productivities and performance (Kingsley, 1944; Epp et al, 2014; Riccucci, Van Ryzin and Lavena, 2014; Peters, Schröter and von Maravic, 2015; Hong, 2016a; 2016b). Introduction: Women in Public Policy and Public Administration? There is persistent under-representation of women in public administration as secondary data reveals that across the globe there is variance in the representation of women within public sector organizations (see Figure 1). Central and Eastern Europe have relatively high rates of female representation in public administration institutions. This is explained by the communist legacy of the feminization of the workforce, women’s higher educational attainment, state support for childcare and an egalitarian approach to female labour force participation (Pollert, 2005). The under-representation of women also reflects the paucity in female careers to leadership and senior decision-making positions (see Figure 2). So, while Ukraine may have 75% representation of women within the ranks of its public administration only 13% of women are represented in senior leadership levels and similarly in Russia where 71% of women are employed only 13% of women have reached leadership positions within its public administration (Ernst and Young, 2013). Other countries such as South Africa and Botswana are approaching parity in terms of overall representation of women in leadership positions. In the case of South Africa this is largely due to affirmative action policies and in Botswana the investment in education and public administration. As expected in more patriarchal cultures such as those of the Middle East the role of women in paid employment is restricted or even prohibited due to socio-cultural and religious mores. In liberal democracies with traditions of greater equality such as the UK, Belgium, France, Netherlands and Germany there is an under-representation of women in public administration, despite decades of equality legislation and European Union (EU) policy directives. The lack of female representation in these countries is partly explained by a number of factors. In many of these countries there is a significant pay differential between public and private sectors. For example, in Germany women in the public sector can expect to earn 23% less than their male colleagues (Ernst and Young, 2013; Eurostat, 2018). Other factors which affect female paid employment and labour market participation is the relatively high level of childcare costs (Ernst and Young, 2013); poor policy implementation of equality policy (Stratigaki, 2005); and extant masculine organizational cultures reinforced by Anglo-Saxon public administration reforms of New Public Management (NPM) (Stivers, 2002). [insert Figure 1 and 2 about here] The paper argues that women remain under-represented and under-employed in many public institutions of administration with implications for public policy and service delivery. The paper therefore first outlines the research method used to provide evidence for the argument. Second, the paper provides a review of extant research and literature on representative bureaucracy to substantiate the argument. Finally, the paper concludes with a research agenda and the view that the continued under-representation of women (and other minorities) in public bureaucracies undermines the performance and trust in public institutions. Research Method The research method for the paper involved a comprehensive review of secondary data on the representation of women in public administration and a systematic literature review (see Denyer and Transfield, 2009) of representative bureaucracy research. The secondary data collection on the descriptive representation of women in public administration involved searches on websites of national governments, supranational organizations, and third sector and consultancy reports. The website searches involved collating data on the representation of women from datasets available from the UNDP, OECD, World Bank, European Commission, national government offices (e.g. South African Public Service Commission, UK Office of National Statistics), and publicly available reports (e.g. Fawcett Society, Ernst and Young) using the search terms: ‘female’; ‘women’; ‘representation’; ‘government’; ‘public administration’; ‘public sector’; ‘public management’ and/or ‘public leadership’. While there was readily available data on female representation in legislatures there was less data on female representation in public administration. The collated data is represented in the figures and tables within this paper. The systematic literature review first involved a literature search on the representative bureaucracy from Google Scholar, Emeraldinsight, Ingenta, JSTOR, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, Wiley Online Library and Web of Science. The search was limited to English-language books, book chapters and double-blind peer-reviewed journal publications to ensure the inclusion of robust empirical research. The first stage of systematic literature review examined year of publication; title; author(s); research focus; methodology; context of the study and research findings. It was observed that much of the research emanated from the United States of America (US) within the education sector and focused on African-Americans as a minority demographic group. The second stage of the systematic literature review was to categorize the research findings. An analysis of the research revealed three categories of research findings: (1) service outcomes for beneficiaries of representative bureaucracies; (2) legitimacy, trust and integrity of bureaucracies through improved representation; and (3) productivities and performance of representative bureaucracies. This categorization of the research is reviewed and discussed within this paper under sub-headings. The final stage of the systematic literature review was to assess the research gaps and suggest a research agenda. Female Representation in Public Administration The lack of female representation in public administrations reveals vertical and horizontal occupational gender segregation. Vertical occupational gender segregation is often referred to as ‘glass ceilings’ where women struggle to reach leadership and senior decision-making positions (McTavish and Miller, 2006). In many public bureaucracies women tend to be concentrated in lower level and lower paid positions within the public sector hierarchy with paucity in career trajectories to the upper echelons (McTavish and Miller, 2006). Horizontal occupational gender segregation is when women are concentrated in specific sectors or professions of public administrations such as education and health sectors. This is referred to as ‘glass walls’ with women stereotypically associated with feminine professions such as caring roles (Guy and Newman 2004; Kerr et al 2002). There is also intra-professional gender segregation. For example, in the medical profession women tend to be concentrated in general practice careers, while men in careers perceived to be more prestigious such as surgery (Miller and Clark, 2008). The result of occupational gender segregation is often the under-value and under-employment of women. A case in point is UK public administration. In terms of vertical occupational gender segregation women constitute 31% of civil service permanent secretaries, 40% of the senior civil service, 33% of local government chief executives, 28% of university vice-chancellors, 38% of secondary head teachers and 43% of National Health Service (NHS) chief executives (Fawcett Society, 2018). The data reveals paucity of female career progression to leadership positions despite the fact that the overall number of female employees in UK public administration since 2001 outnumbered men (Fawcett Society, 2018). Despite the headcount number of female employees accounting for 68% of the UK public sector workforce (see Table 1), women face barriers to attaining leadership positions. Similarly, in local government where women constitute 78% and in the NHS 77% of the workforce women struggle to reach leadership positions (Fawcett Society, 2018). In terms of horizontal occupational gender segregation, women tend to be concentrated in health, education and social care with high proportion of the workforce being women. As Table 2 demonstrates the UK civil service has approached gender parity, but a disaggregation of data reveals that women are less represented in the Cabinet Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Chancellor’s departments which are Great Offices of State; departments of Defense, International Trade and Transport; and regulatory agencies such as Food Standards Agency, National Crime Agency, Office of Rail and Road, and UK Export Finance. These types great offices and regulatory agencies are often associated with masculinity (see Newman, 1995). The secondary data provides descriptive statistics on the lack of female representation at leadership levels and in certain sectors and professions in public administration. What are the possible explanations for vertical and horizontal occupational gender segregation? [insert Tables 1 and 2 about here] Barriers to Female Representation in Public Administration Much has been written about the barriers to women in organizations and progression to leadership positions and in professions. The barriers range from discrimination, prejudice, harassment, stereotyping gender roles, work-life conflicts, unconscious bias, to organizational culture, structures, and processes such as performance evaluation regimes and some reforms. The barriers to women in employment stem mainly from the social construction of gender in society (Walby, 1989). Gender is the societal values assigned to biological sex categories of male and female (Walby, 1989). Sex roles are translated into gender roles in society and the workplace (Rhode, 2003). Gender involves values and qualities attributed to masculinity or femininity (Duerst-Lahti and Kelly 1995). Women’s femininity is associated with their reproductive, maternal, caring and domestic roles (Gamble et al, 2006; Hakim, 2004). In most societies the social construction of sex creates gender roles where a patriarchal power structure is maintained (Nicolson 1996). Most societies value patriarchy with men in positions of power and women in subordinate roles. According to King (1995) societies value masculine behaviours of assertiveness, aggression and leadership above feminine values associated with nurturance, submissiveness and dependence. Some observers argue that public life is considered the domain of men with women excluded or regarded as ‘other’ (Duerst-Lahti and Kelly, 1995; Mazur and Pollock, 2009). Public administrations like any other organization are gendered since the organizational dominance of men and control of power is to the disadvantage of women (Duerst-Lahti and Kelly, 1995; Ferguson, 1985; Kelly and Newman, 2001; Savage and Witz, 1992). King (1995) has identified four ways in which masculine power manifests in public administrations: (1) organizations are the domain of men because men are more likely to be leaders; (2) organizations are the masculine domain since expectations about gender is embedded in culture which leads to a preference for the masculine over the feminine; (3) the state is a masculine domain and therefore governance, politics and the administrative state reflects the cultural preference for masculine over feminine; and (4) leadership and management is a masculine domain since society’s cultural preference for masculine can be seen in definitions of leadership such as being assertive and aggressive. Organizations value masculinity and associated agentic behaviours such aggression, assertiveness, control, ambition, dominance, forcefulness, independence, self-confidence, and competitiveness (Eagly et al, 2001). In an organizational context agentic behaviours include speaking assertively, competing, influencing and making problem-solving suggestions are valued (Eagly et al, 2001:783). Men who display agentic behaviours in organizations are valued and rewarded. While femininity associated with communal behaviours such as having concern for others, being helpful, kind, sympathetic, having interpersonal sensitivity, and being nurturing and gentle is less valued by organizations (Eagly et al, 2001:783). Studies have shown reward systems and work processes which privilege masculine traits and male working patterns reinforce organizational masculinity (Maier, 1999; Sheridan, 2004). Much of the barriers to women’s vertical and horizontal career progression in public administrations stems from the social construction of the biological categories of sex with masculinity being valued. The outcomes of the lack of representation in public administrations is demonstrated by extant research of representative bureaucracies. Representative Bureaucracy Representative Bureaucracy Theory The theory of representative bureaucracy distinguishes between passive and active representation (Mosher, 1982). Passive representation refers to the extent to which a public institution includes individuals from demographic groups such as women, racial and ethnic minorities within the ranks of the bureaucratic organization (Bradbury and Kellough, 2011). Passive representation is the extent to which the public bureaucracy employs the proportionate share of population demography within its ranks (Riccucci and Saidel, 1997). Active representation as when a bureaucrat ‘stands for’ a demographic group by virtue of connection, resemblance and reflection (Pitkin, 1967:61). Thus the bureaucrat, consciously or unconsciously, ensures a citizen or group’s interests with shared demographic identity included in policy-making (Bradbury and Kellough, 2011). The advocacy of citizens by bureaucrats of the same demographic group in the policy process is to ensure decisions benefit these citizens or is actively represented (Hindera, 1993; Keiser et al, 2002; Sowa and Seldon, 2003). For active representation to take place, passive representation has to be present. Bureaucrats of the same demographic background as citizens they serve are influenced by socialization experiences and the development of values, attitudes and opinions, which influence their policy decisions (Bradbury and Kellough, 2007; Meier, 1993; Saltzstein, 1979). According to Meier and Nigro (1976:458) bureaucratic attitudes and values are determined by their social environment. When bureaucrats and the public share value orientation then bureaucrats will pursue and advocate courses of action for those citizens (Meier and Nigro, 1976). A number of studies have shown that passive representation with active representation has beneficial outcomes for minority groups (Brudney, Herbet and Wright, 2000; Dolan, 2000; Dolan and Rosenbloom, 2003; Hindera, 1993; Hindera and Young, 1998; Keiser et al, 2002; Meier, 1975; Meier and Nicolson-Crotty, 2006; Rehfuss, 1986; Riccucci, 1987; Riccucci and Saidel, 1997; Saltzstein, 1983; 1986; Selden, Brudney and Kellough, 1998; Thielemann and Stewart, 1996; Weldon, 2002; Wilkins, 2006; Wilkins and Keiser, 2004; Wise, 2003). Representative Bureaucracy: Outcomes Meier, Stewart and England (1990) empirically demonstrated that as the number of African- American teachers increased across public school districts (passive representation), the inequitable segregation of African-American students into lower ability tracks and disciplinary measures decreased (active representation). Further studies by Meier and Stewart (1992) and Meier (1993) of other US school districts reached similar conclusions. Meier, Wrinkle and Polinard (1999) also found that in 350 school districts in the US both minority and non-minority students perform better in the presence of a representative bureaucracy. They concluded that the increased presence of African-American and Latino teachers did not have detrimental outcomes for white students and that both minority and majority groups benefitted in school performance by higher levels of minority representation. Similarly, Riccucci (2002) found that diversity in public sector organizations has beneficial outcomes for minority and majority groups from improved organizational performance. Research by Wilkins (2006) and Wilkins and Keiser (2004) found that female child support enforcement supervisors provided active representation to female clients who directly benefitted from increased child support collections. Keiser et al’s (2002) research of female administrators and teachers in schools found that there were higher test scores and advance placement rates for girls since female bureaucrats identified with their sex as opposed to the organization. Bradbury and Kellough (2007:712) similarly found that attitude congruence between African-American bureaucrats and citizens proved to be a powerful predictor for active representation. Thus, attitudes and values shaped by socialization, as opposed to adherence to bureaucratic organizational norms, was important to active representation. Extant research that has empirically demonstrated the benefits of representative bureaucracies have found that there are factors which enable passive representation to be translated in active representation. Meier’s (1993) study concluded that representation is enhanced when there is political support and a critical mass of representation. Critical mass concerns the proportionality of representation (Kanter 1977). Kanter (1977) in her research of men and women in organizations found that an organization can have skewed representation when a majority group has preponderance over another; tilted representation occurs when ratio of majority to minority is closer; and balanced representation when there is equal proportionality between groups. Kanter (1977) found that organizations have mostly skewed representation with ‘dominants’ and ‘tokens’. Kanter (1977) argued that women were ‘tokens’ in organizations as they were regarded as ‘different’ and risked exclusion from the dominant group (men) if they did not conform or where perceived to be disloyal (Kanter, 1977). Kanter (1977) argued that women’s relative ‘newness’ in the labour market and workplace required adjustment from men in the organization, but as women become a more ‘fixed’ presence and increased in number in the workplace, men would learn to accommodate women in the organization. Kanter (1977) therefore argued for a critical mass of representation where women’s representation in the workplace and organization increased to the extent the ‘skew-ness’ was addressed. Hindera and Young (1998) found that critical mass was a factor for active representation. They found that within US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) district offices there was an over-representation of minorities, which created a critical mass. Critical mass created an opportunity for cross-socialization with one group of bureaucrats affecting other’s decision making (Hindera and Young, 1998:664). Hindera and Young (1998:668) showed that when: (1) the situational critical mass threshold was not exceeded, active representation could not take place; (2) critical mass was exceeded but there was no plurality of African-Americans, active representation emanated from passive representation at a basic level of policy implementation; (3) there is plurality but no majority of African-Americans, active representation results from passive representation from both African-American and white bureaucrats; and (4) African-Americans constitute a majority or is the dominant group in the organization, there is a hyper-responsiveness of active representation. However, much of the research on critical mass and representative bureaucracies aggregate findings for the organization or examines to critical mass at one level of a public organizations such as street level (see Lipsky, 1980). Few studies have attempted to disaggregate outcomes of representative bureaucracy at various levels of the organizational hierarchy. For example, while Andrews and Johnston Miller (2013) found active representation of women by female police officers at lower levels of the police hierarchy, Johnston and Houston (2018) found that active representation of women at leadership levels of the police did not hold true. Another factor that influences active representation is discretion (Meier and Bohte, 2001). A study by Thielemann and Stewart (1996) found that there was beneficial provision of services to people living with AIDS at the level where bureaucrats and citizens interact. At street-level discretionary power enabled active representation (Keiser et al, 2002:556). Meier (1993) argues that bureaucracies which are more rule-bound, active representation is restricted as bureaucrats have fewer opportunities to shape services to benefit a particular minority group. Research by Seldon (1997) and Seldon, Brudney and Kellough (1998) also found discretion to be an important factor in the translation of passive to active representation. They found that within the US Department of Agriculture the Farmers’ Home Administration Rural Housing Loan Program, African-Americans were awarded a larger proportion of loans in districts with a higher number of African-American county supervisors. Sowa and Seldon (2003) found that minority supervisors in the Farmers’ Home Administration Rural Housing Loan Program would actively represent minorities if there were administrative discretion and minority role identification with the citizens. Furthermore, there were beneficial outcomes for a minority group when traditional bureaucratic rule adherence and standard operating procedure compliance were superseded (Sowa and Seldon, 2003). Keiser et al (2002: 562) found that policy salience was important for active representation. They argued that active representation of women occurs when female bureaucrats identify with the women as clients of public services and when the policy issue influences the client-bureaucratic relationship (Keiser et al, 2002:556). A policy issue is gendered or regarded as ‘women’s issues’ when: (1) the policy directly benefits women as a class; (2) the gender of the bureaucrat changes the client-bureaucratic relationship; or (3) the issue is identified as a women’s issue by the political class (Keiser et al, 2002). Sexual violence is considered a gendered policy issue and more likely that female bureaucrats would act in the interests of female victims (Andrews and Johnston Miller, 2013). A study by Meier and Nicholson-Crotty (2006) for example found that a larger percentage of female police officers were associated with a greater willingness among women as clients to report sexual assaults. There was evidence of active representation with higher sexual assault arrest rates by female police officers. Meier and Nicholson-Crotty (2006) concluded that female police officers shared a set of values about the seriousness of rape because they had a common set of gender related experiences (Meier and Nicholson-Crotty, 2006:858). A similar study by Andrews and Johnston Miller (2013) empirically proved that where there were higher levels of passive representation for women at street-level in English police forces there was a higher arrest rate for domestic violence. Collectively the research demonstrated that passive representation of women had resulted in improved service delivery for women as victims of sexual violence. As mentioned above socialization and group identification is important in translating passive to active representation. However, identification and socialization can be mediated by organizational socialization (Johnston and Houston, 2018). Organizational context, structure, hierarchy, rules and regulations and norms may depersonalize relationships making bureaucrats less likely to identify with groups outside the bureaucracy (Ferguson, 1985; Keiser et al, 2002). Keiser et al (2002: 557- 562) found that representative bureaucracy worked better for females in less hierarchical organizations. Keiser et al (2002:563) conclude that ‘for those seeking to increase active representation on the basis of gender, attention must be paid to not only increasing overall passive representation but also the structure of the organization and the representation at upper levels of the organization.’ Similarly, Johnston and Houston’s (2018) research found that senior female police officers, socialized in a masculine police organizational culture, adopted masculine values and norms, and were less likely to actively represent women in addressing sexual violence. Kim (2003) research also found organizational socialization an important factor, which could affect active representation. Kim’s (2003) study of the passive representation of women in the US Senior Executive Service (SES) showed that the allocation of line-item budgets benefitted women and minorities in the presidential request budget for the period 1979 to 1999. Kim (2003:556) argues that passive representation was necessary, but not sufficient since organizational socialization, recruitment processes, organizational rules and peer pressure restrain bureaucrats of certain demographics and social backgrounds from exercising active representation. Kim (2003) concludes that street-level bureaucrats are subject to less organizational socialization and will use their discretion at this level to advocate the interests of those who share the same demographic origins. Dolan’s (2000; 2001; 2004) studies of female passive representation in the SES also found that men and women held comparable responsibilities with women rating their influence of over policy in distributive agencies higher than those of men. Dolan (2001) found that the policy preferences of women in the SES was congruent with those of women as a minority group, suggesting that organizational socialization did not eroded SES women in senior positions from actively representing women. In a later study, Dolan (2004:305) argued that distributive agencies were more conducive to female leadership and women progressed in these organizations by adopting strategies that worked for men. Another study by Rehfuss (1986) on the representation of women and minorities in executive positions of the California career civil service found women and minorities appear to share a ‘management ideology’ with their white male counterparts. This ideology is developed during organizational socialization and works against active representation (Rehfuss, 1986:459). Wilkins and Williams’ (2008) study demonstrated the affect of organizational socialization on active representation. They found that African-Americans and Latinos in the San Diego Police Department were racial profiling in the case of vehicle stops. Of significance was the finding that as the presence of black police officers increased so did the racial disparity in vehicle stops (Wilkins and Williams, 2008:660). The researchers found that in a bureaucracy, such as the police, where there are high levels of formal and informal organizational socialization, it is less likely that active representation will take place (Wilkins and Williams, 2008). The extant scholarly research demonstrated that passive representation is important to the active representation of minority citizens and demographic groups. A review the research shows that critical mass, policy salience, discretionary power, and organizational structure and socialization are important factors for ensuring active representation and beneficial outcomes for recipients of public services. Representative Bureaucracy: Trust and Legitimacy In addition to beneficial service outcomes of representative bureaucracies, the extant research also demonstrates important implications for trust in public institutions. In most societies, women constitute approximately 52% of the population (UNDP, 2014), if half of a country’s population is under-represented in its institutions of public administration, arguably it is not representative of the population it serves. Kingsley (1944) first argued, when writing about the British civil service, that a bureaucracy cannot be representative of society if its public administration is disproportionately drawn from elites. Thus, the notion of a public service that serves all of the public is questionable when it does not represent the population. Public administrations that do not represent the society it serves, erodes trust and legitimacy in government (Peters, Schröter and von Maravic, 2015). Society may legitimately question whether its public administration, disproportionately drawn from one particular demographic group, can be trusted to make decisions and deliver services in the interests of society as a whole. Epp et al (2014) book entitled, ‘Pulled Over’ has shown how stop and searches by police in the US has severe implications for African-Americans’ trust and legitimacy in the police. The riots in the US after members of the African-American community were shot by the police when ‘pulled over’ is evidence of communities’ loss trust in the police to protect, serve and uphold the rule of law and justice. Similarly, research by Hong (2016a) of UK police forces showed that an increase in ethnic representation resulted in a decrease in conduct complaints against the police. Hong (2016b) argues that a representative police force that reflects the community it serves may effectively catalyze bureaucratic integrity. Riccucci, Van Ryzin and Lavena (2014) also found that increasing the number of women in domestic violence police unit, increased female perceptions of trust, fairness and job performance of the public bureaucracy. Representative Bureaucracy: Public Policy Productivities and Performance A second and related outcome of unrepresented public administration is poor policy making. If policy makers do not include a broad spectrum of the populace, then societal interests as a whole would not be included the policy process. There is an input deficit in policy making. The quality of decision-making suffers, resulting in poor policy outcomes, service delivery and public sector organizational performance (Johnston Miller and McTavish, 2014). Scholarly research has shown that more representative bureaucracies are better performing organizations. Pitts (2005; 2009) for example found that more representative bureaucracies had higher levels of job satisfaction, which impacted upon organizational performance. Andrews, Ashworth and Meier (2014) found that more representative UK fire authorities tended to be more effective organizations. Peters, et al (2015) also found that representative bureaucracy improved quality of organizational output. This is explained by the fact that diverse bureaucrats contribute a diverse set of skills, knowledge and experience to the organization (Peters et al, 2015). They argue that there is a positive association between representation and overall organizational performance (Peters et al, 2015). Hong (2016b) found that there is increased organizational efficiency from greater diversity of viewpoints or ideas within an organization and therefore a wider array of resources is available for problem solving. A longitudinal study by Fernandez and Lee (2016) of South African national public administration departments from 2006 to 2013 found that organizations which were more representative of the population, in a post-apartheid dispensation, achieved a higher percentage of organizational goals. They found empirical evidence that the more representative public bureaucracies were more effective organizations (Fernandez and Lee, 2016). Andrews and Johnston Miller (2013) showed that more representation of female police officers resulted in more domestic violence arrest rates. Riccucci (2002) and Bradbury and Kellough (2008) research also found that more representative bureaucracies tended overall to be better performing organizations. Although the benefit of representative public administrations is evident from extant research with implications for trust, legitimacy and performance, there remains a persistent lack of women and other minorities in public institutions despite legislation such as the UK Equality Act (2010) and EU gender equality policy directives (Miller, 2009). Thus, legislation in itself will not necessarily increase representation of public bureaucracies. The challenge for governments is to address the dominant masculine paradigm. Globally, governments have adopted neo-liberal public sector reforms such as NPM (Stivers, 2002) and a ‘management ideology’ (Rehfuss, 1986) in an attempt to improve the performance of the public sector. However, a paradox emerges. Governments attempts improve the performance of the public sector through NPM reforms reward and reinforce masculinity, which negates the gains of representative bureaucracies. Research is needed on the mitigating impact of public sector reforms on representation of women and minorities. Research Agenda: Improving Representation A review of secondary data and extant research reveals scope for future research to improve representation in public administration. First, there be a systematic evaluation of governments to increase the passive and active representation of women (and other minorities). In order to understand how to improve representation baseline data is needed. There is a research deficit on a global scale as well as a longitudinal analysis of the representation of women in public administrations. While the supranational bodies such as the UNDP, OECD and European Commission have raised the issue of gender equality and placed it on the policy agenda, there often lacks a sustained and systematic effort to study representation, career progression and policy outcomes for women. The collection and collation of secondary data for this paper, proved that there needs a database of female representation in public administrations across the globe over a number of years. The dataset could include data on representation at national and sub-national levels as well as types of public institutions (e.g. police). The data would prove useful for national governments and public administrations in benchmarking representation and what actions are needed to redress the lack of representation. Thus, across countries, levels of government and types of public institutions (e.g. distributive, regulatory, etc.) lessons could be learned and better practices shared. For example, the data has shown that Botswana has made gains in female representation, but beyond the descriptive analysis there should be further research on how these gains were achieved and implications for women as public sector employees and recipients of services. Similarly, at sub-national level in the UK the Scottish First Minister (a woman) has appointed a gender balanced government with a female Permanent Secretary. Here too are lessons to be learned across devolved polities of whether passive representation has resulted in active representation and the implications for women. The outcomes for women employed and as beneficiaries of types of public sector organizations (e.g. distributive versus regulatory) would offer valuable comparative data. A related and second research agenda issue is to address a research deficit of the impact of political culture and architecture on the representation of bureaucracies. There has been research, from a political science perspective, on the influence of feminist movements on public policy (see Mazur, 2002) and how political culture and architecture can enable or hinder the representation of women in public policy (Haussman et al, 2010; Chappell 2002). For example, Haussman et al’s (2010) found that the political culture and architecture creates opportunities for women’s political activism through access to multiple policy making sites; enables forum shopping which allows women to work around blockages at one level of governance to take advantage of another; and policy innovations in one jurisdiction are transferred to others. There is scope for further research on the extent to which a masculine political culture inhibits the passive and active representation of women in public sector employment as well as women as beneficiaries of public services. Similarly, research is needed on the extent to which the political architecture of a country with sub-national polities enables or inhibits passive and active representation. A third issue for a research agenda is to disaggregate organizational hierarchies and analyse intra- organisational and intra-professional representation. As mentioned previously much of the research is conducted at the lower levels of the hierarchy and within one public sector organization. More meaningful organizational interventions could be made if there was a holistic analysis of representation within organizations, professions and across public sector organizations. Furthermore, an analysis of the impact of critical mass, where it may exist, at various levels of an organization could provide a more nuanced insights of critical mass within contemporary public sector organizations. The examination of critical mass and representation at all levels of an organization would also offer opportunities for lessons to be learned and knowledge to be transferred. Finally, it is worth noting that much of the research on representation stems from the US. There is scope for comparative international studies, drawing on the suggested dataset (see above), to understand representation within contexts and cultures of various societies. Globally, policy or knowledge transfer on ways in which to improve representation in public administration is needed. Finally, while this paper focussed on the representation of women in public administration there is scope for research beyond gender or race (mostly evident from the US). Research on the lack of other minorities as well as the intersectionality of identities is needed (Breslin, Pandey and Riccucci, 2017). Conclusion The paper collated and analyzed secondary data outlining patterns of gender inequality within public administrations. Despite years of gender equality legislation and policies, particularly in liberal democracies, there remains persistent gender discrimination and occupational segregation. Moreover, the data belies egregious outcomes for women as employees and as recipients of public services. The paper also reviewed literature and extant research, which showed the beneficial outcomes of a representative bureaucracy for public sector performance, trust and legitimacy. Although the benefits of representative bureaucracy have been demonstrated by extant research, the dominant masculine paradigm in public administration mitigates these gains. 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Figure 1: Percentage of Female Representation in Public Administrations (2010 – 2015) Sources: Ernst & Young (2013); European Commission (2016); UNDP (2014) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Figure 2: Percentage of Female Public Administration Leaders Sources: Ernst & Young (2013); European Commission (2016); UNDP (2014) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Table 1: Gender Representation in UK Public Sector (2015) Public sector employment by gender: Headcount Male Female Total 1,722 3,637 5,359 32% 68% Part time public sector employment by gender: Headcount1 Male Female Total 244 1,874 2,118 12% 88% 1: Public Sector Employment Survey: part time is defined as working less than the organisation's normal weekly hours. Source: Office for National Statistics (2018) Table 2: Gender Representation of UK Civil Service (2017) Senior Civil Service Level Grade 6 and 7 Senior and Higher Executive Officers Executive Officers Administrative Officers and Assistants Male Female % Female Male Female % Female Male Female % Female Male Female % Female Male Female % Female Total % Fema le Attorney General's Departments 120 120 50% 241 50% Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy 200 160 44% 360 44% Cabinet Office 110 80 42% 190 42% Other Cabinet Office agencies 60 50 45% 120 110 48% 140 180 56% 50 70 58% 20 30 60% 832 53% Chancellor's other departments 40 20 33% 50 50 50% 80 60 43% 30 20 40% 0 10 100% 362 44% Charity Commission 0 0 0% 20 20 50% 80 80 50% 30 50 63% 10 10 50% 302 53% Communities and Local Government 50 40 44% 450 360 44% 370 380 51% 160 170 52% 100 130 57% 2,212 49% Culture, Media and Sport 20 30 60% 120 130 52% 100 130 57% 50 60 55% 0 10 100% 652 55% Defence 280 90 24% 3,420 1,430 29% 11,660 6,640 36% 5,570 3,880 41% 10,89 0 8,010 42% 51,87 1 39% Department for Exiting the EU 20 10 33% 40 50 56% 30 30 50% 10 20 67% .. .. 212 52% Department for International Trade 50 40 44% 230 160 41% 250 160 39% 80 70 47% 20 30 60% 1,092 42% Education 80 120 60% 780 960 55% 890 1,330 60% 400 600 60% 60 130 68% 5,352 59% Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 60 50 45% 560 420 43% 1,240 1,250 50% 670 870 56% 610 1,100 64% 6,832 54% ESTYN .. .. 40 30 43% .. 10 10 10 50% .. 10 111 54% Food Standards Agency 10 10 50% 80 60 43% 200 190 49% 410 80 16% 10 20 67% 1,072 34% Foreign and Commonweal th Office 290 120 29% 850 540 39% 1,290 760 37% 440 450 51% 280 370 57% 5,392 42% Health 350 360 51% 960 1,350 58% 1,020 1,870 65% 300 820 73% 260 700 73% 7,992 64% HM Revenue and Customs 210 160 43% 3,180 2,410 43% 9,610 8,710 48% 7,300 9,610 57% 10,82 0 18,330 63% 70,34 2 56% HM Treasury 70 40 36% 350 270 44% 450 380 46% 60 120 67% 30 30 50% 1,802 47% Home Office 140 80 36% 1,140 960 46% 3,190 3,100 49% 5,930 5,800 49% 3,090 4,680 60% 28,11 2 52% International Development 50 40 44% 560 660 54% 250 350 58% 70 140 67% 50 60 55% 2,232 56% Justice 150 120 44% 1,010 1,000 50% 4,340 5,040 54% 5,200 4,510 46% 18,10 0 18,150 50% 57,62 2 50% The National Archives .. .. 30 30 50% 130 150 54% 60 60 50% 80 50 38% 592 49% National Crime Agency 30 10 25% 200 80 29% 1,170 570 33% 1,190 850 42% 140 210 60% 4,451 39% Northern Ireland Office 10 10 50% 10 10 50% 10 30 75% 10 10 50% .. 10 112 62% Office for Standards in Education 20 10 33% 240 290 55% 150 380 72% 80 120 60% 80 160 67% 1,532 63% Office of Gas and Electricity Markets 30 20 40% 200 160 44% 140 130 48% 80 90 53% 20 20 50% 892 47% Office of Rail and Road 10 10 50% 110 40 27% 40 40 50% 10 10 50% 10 10 50% 292 38% Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation 10 10 50% 30 40 57% 30 60 67% 10 10 50% .. .. 202 59% Office of Water Services 10 10 50% 20 20 50% 50 50 50% 10 20 67% .. .. 192 52% Scotland Office 10 10 50% 20 30 60% 20 10 33% .. 10 10 10 50% 131 53% Scottish Government 110 80 42% 960 1,010 51% 2,570 2,470 49% 2,600 1,770 41% 2,450 3,020 55% 17,04 2 49% Transport 100 60 38% 830 420 34% 1,770 1,050 37% 2,700 1,330 33% 2,430 3,520 59% 14,21 1 45% UK Statistics Authority 40 10 20% 300 230 43% 540 690 56% 210 390 65% 730 920 56% 4,062 55% UK Export Finance 10 .. 50 20 29% 90 40 31% 10 20 67% 10 20 67% 271 37% UK Supreme Court .. 0 .. .. 10 10 50% .. 10 .. .. 31 66% Wales Office .. 0 .. 10 10 10 50% .. .. .. .. 31 66% Welsh Government 90 60 40% 470 430 48% 960 1,560 62% 400 590 60% 310 530 63% 5,402 59% Work and Pensions 140 90 39% 1,510 1,290 46% 4,260 6,210 59% 12,190 26,230 68% 10,73 0 24,110 69% 86,76 2 67% All employee 3,000 2,100 41% 22,570 18,800 45% 51,000 47,850 48% 48,310 62,460 56% 62,69 0 86,860 58% 405,6 42 54% Source: raw data from Office of National Statistics (2018), calculations by author Keywords: gender, equality, representation, representative bureaucracy, public administration Abstract Conclusion References: Sources: Ernst & Young (2013); European Commission (2016); UNDP (2014) Figure 2: Percentage of Female Public Administration Leaders work_65rqjc2b3be4vbqrq6qqcmu7ky ---- Transcontextual Narratives of Inclusion: Mediating Feminist and Anti-Feminist Rhetoric religions Essay Transcontextual Narratives of Inclusion: Mediating Feminist and Anti-Feminist Rhetoric Verna Marina Ehret Mercyhurst University, 501 E. 38th St., Erie, PA 16546, USA; vehret@mercyhurst.edu Received: 31 March 2018; Accepted: 15 May 2018; Published: 16 May 2018 ���������� ������� Abstract: In seeking a path to mediating feminist and anti-feminist narratives, one must begin with a framework of the method of narrative analysis being used. Using the works of such thinkers as Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney, I argue that human self-understanding and therefore sense of identity is narrative dependent. While this idea has its critics, in the framework of the central question of this essay narrative theory is a particularly productive tool. The story that I tell that gives me identity is not only a story about the surface. It is embedded in my being. I do not simply have a story, I am a story and create my world through that story. Narrative is a part of the ontological structure of being human and the ontic experience of being in the world. One narrates one’s life not in the sense of a movie voiceover, but rather as a reflective and reflexive understanding of oneself. Kearney’s work in Anatheism is particularly useful for this discussion. While Kearney’s interest is in the dialectical move from theism to atheism to a synthesis that is an atheist-informed theism, one can see the same trajectory at work in feminism and anti-feminism. If one begins with patriarchy and moves to feminism, the next step becomes anti-feminism informed by feminism. However, there is still room for an additional dialectical move, to regain a feminism that invites in its detractors and reshapes the collective narratives that impact how we interact with each other in community. Keywords: transcontextual narrative; performative narrative; reconciliation “It would have been easier if he had just actually spit in my face and asked me to get him coffee.” This was the beginning of a conversation with a colleague recently after a misogynistic microaggression. The point being made was that while anyone who was paying attention would be able to see the sexism at work in an exchange with a male colleague, she also knew that the burden of proof fell to her. There were a thousand ways one could rationalize away the experience as not having been one of sexism in the work place. To explain to this perpetrator, who has a history of subtle sexism in the work place, that what he did was sexist, marginalizing, and demeaning of her value, was not going to be easy. He had been called out for this kind of behavior at least twice before but nothing had changed. He was a self-proclaimed feminist. Therefore, he could not be sexist, went the narrative. Had he been more overt, more aggressive in his sexism, the task of calling it out would have been much easier in that she could prove it. Although it would not have been any easier to change the behavior or the narrative behind it. However, that is not what happened. The two colleagues live in different and often conflicting narrative structures, and the challenge that faced her was how to bridge the gap between these two very disparate narratives in a way that did not destroy the possibility of a good working relationship with someone who in many other ways she respected. It is the myriad of experiences of these conflicting narratives that happen daily that is the impetus for this essay. When I first started working on this project, I thought, “Well I am not a feminist scholar, but I am a woman who thinks and a feminist person. Is that sufficient?” Then I started reading in current feminist theory and realized that was not sufficient. There are deep traditions that make up the narratives of feminism that shape me whether or not I am aware of them. Background in feminist theory provides not only data but also the language to be able to address the tension between these narratives. The Religions 2018, 9, 160; doi:10.3390/rel9050160 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions http://www.mdpi.com http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/5/160?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel9050160 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2018, 9, 160 2 of 15 claim I intend to make in this essay is that transcontextual narratives are narratives that create new frames of meaning in the space between conflicting narratives. They overlap them, drawing people into the in-between space of meaning and understanding. These narratives become performative of reconciliation because they create the world anew. Performative narratives enact reality, and so a transcontextual performative narrative of reconciliation is a way of being in the world through our narrative identities where they begin to overlap with those who are quite different from us. It is important to note that there is no single voice of feminism or anti-feminism. Feminism embraces the tremendous diversity of women’s experiences and anti-feminism can be both intentional and unconscious. However, through the course of this essay I intend to show a method that can be applied in a wide variety of circumstances to build communities of inclusion. Part of the challenge of a project such as this is language itself. The formal language of a field of study can create a jargon that both gives voice to inchoate ideas and can get in the way of understanding. This essay presents an apparent binary relationship between “feminist” and “anti-feminist.” However, this project proposes an alternative to binary ways of thinking. The alternative creates community. There are limitations to framing the conversation in binary terms. It seems to arbitrarily imply only two types of voices in this discussion and can lead to further marginalization of the voices not included. However, this binary is not intended to be an ontological taxonomy. Rather, it is providing a more phenomenological heuristic to provide categories that encompass a broad swath of voices in the issues of feminism. Lived reality shows this kind of bifurcation of “feminist vs. anti-feminist” rising to the forefront of the discussion. While the categories should not be taken as absolutes, I am arguing that if this method works in one instance it can be translated into others. What I am providing is a theoretical framework for building performatives narratives that break through the rigid bifurcation of reality that every day seems to get stronger. One can also argue that the way feminist narratives are constructed is a part of what anti-feminism rejects because the vocabulary loses something important in translation from one narrative to the other. If anti-feminist narratives take as a basic assumption that feminist narratives are anti-male, then the feminist narratives are perceived as a threat to the male identity, which contributes to the creation of anti-feminist narratives. Modifying some of the work of Richard Kearney on anatheism, there are stages of development that will allow one to move through the anti-feminist counter narratives to a more enlightened and inclusive feminism (Kearney 2010). It is my claim that the beginning of a performative narrative of reconciliation between feminist and anti-feminist narratives requires reinforcing and claiming the identity of feminist as something positive rather than something to be feared. The concerns about reclaiming feminism, or as Kearney might put it an anti-feminism, were brought to the forefront of public discussion with the #metoo movement, its supporters, and its detractors. A lightening rod for the clash of feminist and anti-feminist narratives was Aziz Ansari, an actor whose feminist credentials seemed fairly credible for a male Hollywood actor. However, then a story came out about him seeming to misread cues where his position of power created imbalance in a dating situation. While some use this story as an example of the systemic embeddedness of gender imbalance, others see it as the creation of a “sex panic” where a man innocently misunderstood some cues and is now being persecuted (Hamblin 2018). Others have used Al Franken, former Senator from Minnesota, as another example of accusations of gender power imbalance and “rape culture” gone too far and destroying good men. This #metoo movement has brought the conversations of feminist and antifeminist rhetoric vividly into the public sphere even for those without social media. While various questions can be raised about the impact of social media in turning narratives into performative creations of alternative realities, for the purposes of this article social media is one among many media embedding these narratives in people’s consciousness, forcing them to take a side, to choose a narrative that they claim as a part of their being. In doing so they risk losing parts of themselves in the relationships lost because friends or family chose the other side (Wood 2018). Religions 2018, 9, 160 3 of 15 At the level of the academy, these discussions turn to the value of a person’s work against the things a person has done. Can we, for example, still use the valuable insights of John Howard Yoder who argued for the value of feminist voices in theology while at the same time being guilty of violence against women that led to a disciplinary process against him (Guth 2015)? Is his work more important than his own acts against women? While some have argued that continuing to use his work re-victimizes the women by his fame remaining intact, others have argued that the value of his work is separate from the person (Guth 2015). The further complicating factor of all of these discussions is the power dynamic at work in each of these situations, including the story that opened this essay. The trajectory of this essay will be focused on the ways feminist narratives can be reframed to be transcontextual in that they reach beyond the specific experience of individuals without denying that individuality. However, the individuality of the stories remains important. A transcontextual narrative is different from a meta-narrative, and the goal in creating them is to build shared space, but not a dominating new narrative. These transcontextual narratives are meant to also be performative of reconciliation. In creating a shared space that invites the experiences of difference into a bridge of community the performative narrative creates reconciliation. However, again, this essay focuses on the way feminist narratives can initiate that performative narrative of reconciliation. So, one could justifiably ask if this very activity simply reinforces the power dynamic that has created the narratives of estrangement in the first place? Does placing the burden of reconciliation on feminist narratives simply reinforce the notion that women must apologize for being women? These are legitimate concerns. However, my response to these concerns is that if we are going to move beyond a binary mode of thinking, feminist vs. anti-feminist, reconciliation that arises through the creation of shared space through new narrative frames is necessary and must arise from the narratives already seeking inclusion rather than dominion. The rhetoric of anti-feminism is based in a power dynamic that sees equality as a loss, a point I will explain later in this essay. There is no motivation, then, from that point of view to seek inclusion and reconciliation because it is the language of inclusion that anti-feminism is currently rejecting. While an unfortunate reality, and one that can in some sense reinforce gender dynamics, it is still the reality we face that the first move must begin somewhere, and feminist thinkers and actors have a greater motivation to do so. In the opening example of this essay, the power dynamic is clear. However, experience has shown that there is no recognition of a problematic behavior on the man’s side in that example. In addition, made aware of it, he is both surprised to be seen in that way and offended for having been called out on a blatant act of sexism because he is a self-described feminist. While this essay cannot address all of the anti-feminist rhetoric of self-proclaimed feminists, it does acknowledge that the very existence of this category indicates why blatant anti-feminists are often less likely to initiate this reconciliatory conversation. Moreover, in taking on the responsibility of reshaping the narrative, feminists seeking reconciliation and community take control of the trans-contextual bridge. In that act, the anti-feminist is being invited into a feminist narrative, an act which can shift the power dynamic and more successfully be performative of reconciliation in a way that community is built than if the person leading the discussion does not have reconciliation and inclusion as a motivation. In choosing sides in these debates one must create a narrative that allows one to justify one’s perspective on the world and to encourage others to incorporate that perspective into their own stories. Narrative is performative. It creates reality. In addition, we have a multitude of examples where it is performative of estrangement. However, can it also be performative of reconciliation? That is the central question with which our society must wrestle because the answer to that question holds in it concerns about justice, human rights, human dignity, and human flourishing. Who is allowed to flourish in our society through the narratives that shape our cultural frames and identity? Religions 2018, 9, 160 4 of 15 1. Transcontextual Narratives and Performative Narratives of Reconciliation In seeking a path to mediating feminist and anti-feminist narratives, one must begin with a framework of the method of narrative analysis being used. Using the works of such thinkers as Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney, I argue that human self-understanding and therefore sense of identity is narrative dependent. While this idea has its critics, in the framework of the central question of this essay narrative theory is a particularly productive tool. The story that I tell that gives me identity is not only a story about the surface. It is embedded in my being. I do not simply have a story, I am a story and create my world through that story (Lange 2016). Narrative is a part of the ontological structure of being human and the ontic experience of being in the world. One narrates one’s life not in the sense of a movie voiceover, but rather as a reflective and reflexive understanding of oneself (Downey 2012). Kearney’s work in anatheism is particularly useful for this discussion. While Kearney’s interest is in the dialectical move from theism to atheism to a synthesis that is an atheist-informed theism, one can see the same trajectory at work in feminism and anti-feminism. If one begins with patriarchy and moves to feminism, the next step becomes anti-feminism informed by feminism. However, there is still room for an additional dialectical move, to regain a feminism that takes into account masculinity and anti-feminist narratives. Kearney identifies five moments in this dialectical process, separated for analysis, but in practice often happening simultaneously: Imagination, humor, commitment, discernment, and hospitality (Kearney 2010). These five will be explored in the penultimate section of this essay. Challenges to the claim that human beings are a narrative include the claim that a human life is not a simple plot line. Postmodern theorists have broken down narrative into two types. Meta-narrative is the idea that a single narrative can encapsulate all of human truth, seen most clearly in religious claims to a single perspective of religious truth that explains the whole of human experience. In the contemporary world the meta-narrative is generally the domain of hypertheism (Klemm and William 2008). Hypertheism seeks the kind of universal theory of truth where those who agree are included in salvation and those who disagree are excluded from the community and salvation. In theological feminist theory, the concern with meta-narrative is kyriarchy, the oppressive application of a single way of understanding the message of, for example, Christian truth that marginalizes and even dismisses women’s experiences and voices. Meta-narrative as kyriarchy is rejected as an untenable way of interpreting narrative because it creates narrative identities of insider and outsider, primary and secondary citizens or members of a community. The recognition of the multiplicity of narratives and truths led postmodern theorists to the idea of the little or contextual narrative (Gehlin 2010). The claim is that truth is not one and as individuals our stories themselves are not singular. Each person is a kind of hybridity, a blend of narratives unfolding simultaneously in a kaleidoscope of stories that flow together and separate, creating a blended image that changes with each angle one takes. The challenge of the contextual narrative is infinite fracturing of the individual and the community. If each person has multiple perspectives, how does the person blend them into a unified person, to be a hybrid and complex self? The contextual narrative shows us that we do and do not know ourselves because we are and are not a unified self. It is because of the multiplicity of our narratives that one can see oneself as a whole and consistent person while holding conflicting interpretations of the world, for example, that women are equal to men and at the same time marginalize the accomplishments of the women one works with. The challenge faced by an attempt to mediate between feminist and anti-feminist narratives is not only the conflict between the groups who hold them, but also the internal conflict where both the feminist narrative can be anti-feminist and the anti-feminist narrative can claim the equality of women is already achieved and assumed and feminists are making a case for a problem that no longer exists. This is where the transcontextual narrative enters. The idea of the transcontextual narrative is that it takes the language of competing narratives and seeks shared ground within them, creating an interpretive frame that invites all into this new frame (Ehret 2013). Taping into the pre-existing meanings of the symbols of these narratives, putting these symbols into a new frame draws new Religions 2018, 9, 160 5 of 15 meanings and opens shared space. In the process, the transcontextual narrative can become a part of the matrix of each individual’s narratives that shape their identity. Of course, such a notion is highly idealistic, but the ideal is also possible within real human experience, as will be seen in some of the mediating options explored in this essay. It is the proposal of this essay that transcontextual narratives move from the ideal to the real when they are performative of reconciliation. The addition of the performative element is the claim that the ontological nature of narrative in individual identity is also in communal identity (Yang 2016). Some narratives as they unfold in the public domain create the reality they express. In the most disturbing form of performative narratives one can look at the performative narratives of estrangement. When one’s narrative creates a feeling of exclusion in another and spreads to others whose own narrative participates in that narrative, a performative narrative unfolds. The recent growth in hate crimes traced back to narratives of racial, religious, or gender exclusion is an example of this type of performative narrative (Southern Poverty Law Center 2017). However, if a narrative can break apart, it can also bring together. A performative narrative of reconciliation is one that creates the conditions for an unfolding reality of reconciliation between individuals and groups that have resisted each other. Communities coming together to support each other after a tragedy see reconciliation of differences through the shared experience. The goal of this essay is to try to create the conditions for performative narratives of reconciliation without requiring a tragedy first. 2. Examples of Feminist Narratives The creation of a transcontextual narrative requires first understanding the original narratives at work. It is, however, important to recognize that even in the case of the category of feminist narratives that it is intentionally a plural (Hamid 2006). There is not a single voice of feminism. However, it is possible to discern patterns from the multiplicity of narratives and the conversations that happen between feminist thinkers. Below is a series of feminist writers constructing various versions of feminist narratives, and in reading these one finds certain recurring themes: gender justice, oppression, patriarchy, kyriarchy, hegemonic masculinity, liberation, agency, diversity of experiences, and the challenges of theological narratives to simultaneously include and exclude. Gender justice is, not surprisingly, a central theme in feminist narratives. Religious meta-narratives have been used throughout human history to marginalize the voices of women. Certain readings of Hebrew Bible or New Testament, for example, become a part of cultural memory—the accepted truths of a community about the reality that God has created. However, the texts themselves do not always fit well with cultural memory, and feminist biblical scholars have unpacked that tension between text and cultural narrative. Feminist narratives based on scriptural study have argued that the dominion of men described in Genesis 3, for example, is often used to justify the authority of men over women. However, that narrative comes from a misreading of the text. The created nature of human beings as described in Genesis is one of equality. The dominion of men is based in the fallen nature of humanity, humanity that has already been estranged from God. Male superiority is not, then, the created order, but the result of sin (Jovic 2015). Gender justice, it is argued, is the proper nature of things and the marginalization of women comes from a misunderstanding of biology, theology, and psychology. A second theme of feminist narratives within a theological domain is kyriarchy, which encompasses the themes of patriarchy and oppression and overlaps the theme of gender justice. Kyriarchy is the particular form of patriarchy that uses religious tradition and message as a way to show women that their secondary status relative to men was ordained by God. They are not oppressed, they are just fulfilling the roles God has given them. This particular form of patriarchy that marginalizes women’s voices and roles has a very long history in Western religions and Christianity in particular (with which I am most familiar). Kyriarchy highlights the role of oppressive religious narratives and the ways they are used to justify violence against women not only in spiritual but also in physical ways. This kyriarchy, as described by Schüssler Fiorenza, requires a kind of liberation narrative for women, to be set free from the confines of tradition (Nienhuis 2009). The response, Religions 2018, 9, 160 6 of 15 Nienhuis argues, is “The hermeneutic of creative imagination must be employed in concert with all others because kyriarchal ideologies can ‘colonize the imagination’. If we reimagine what might have happened if the Jesuits had employed Schüssler Fiorenza’s hermeneutics, we begin to construct a resistance strategy” (Nienhuis 2009). Liberation and resistance are therefore connected themes of feminist narratives in response to kyriarchy. Embedded in kyriarchy and patriarchy, according to feminist narratives, is hegemonic masculinity, which is “defined as valorized male attributes like rationality and aggression associated with hyper-masculinized institutions and cultures, such as those associated with the military” (Poloni-Staudinger and Ortbals 2014). This theme of feminist narratives is also a theme of masculine narratives (see “wrath of Achilles” below). In feminist narratives hegemonic masculinity is often seen in the public understanding of women, for example how women leaders are portrayed in the media as opposed to how male leaders are portrayed. Studies of media portrayals of women show that women’s agency is minimized by hegemonic framing. “Framing refers to how elites or the media construct and present reality. Frames present ‘little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters’ [21]. They articulate how reality is defined and interpreted by various actors and institutions [7]” (Poloni-Staudinger and Ortbals 2014). The power of media is performative narrative. The ubiquity of hegemonic masculinity presented in the media allows that to become the frame by which public female figures are evaluated and the examples they are allowed to be for girls and other women. These hegemonic masculine narratives create the reality to which feminist narratives must respond in order to create the gender justice with which this section began. However, despite these recurring themes, there is also tremendous diversity in what might be considered feminist. In contemporary feminist narratives, that very diversity of perspectives has itself become a common theme in order to engage women’s experiences across social, political, economic, and geographical lines more fully. This diversity of perspectives responding to hegemonic masculinity and kyriarchy engages the narratives in ever more extreme versions of these themes as they become greater justifications for violence against women. In these discussions, the greater depths of feminist narratives can be explored. The narratives of feminism unfold not simply in the individual voices of feminist thinkers, but also in their engagement with each other. For those of us who are regularly in classrooms, we find again and again both female and male students who deny that sexism is a problem and see “feminist” as an insult and a dangerous idea. Combating the rejection of feminism in the name of an imagined completion of the feminist project leaves new generations vulnerable to the old traps of patriarchy, to excuse behavior that marginalizes women as “no big deal.” The engagement with feminist thought across time thus becomes an important element of the narrative itself (Rigoglioso 2011). Many of the articles read for this project were by prominent feminist thinkers engaging each other’s work across time. Among these essays we find powerful arguments for the importance of identifying oneself within the feminist tradition and honoring the figures who have come before. As Carol Christ notes, of Judith Plaskow, “ . . . feminist theology is foremost the process of women becoming selves in religious communities” (Christ 2011). The narratives of religion that create belonging and community, when read through a feminist lens, are performative. They create the conditions for women to realize their full being and to imagine change in the world. Nancy Pineda-Madrid looks to the power of the Mirabal sisters in the history of feminism, assassinated for their work in fighting for justice for women in the Dominican Republic, as models to be claimed and celebrated (Pineda-Madrid 2011). This discussion builds on Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza who was honoring in her writing the work of Catharina Halkes and the importance of recognizing and celebrating the tradition of feminism, for it too, is a tradition. In addition, that notion of tradition, of being connected to the past and pointing into the future, is essential for the strength of feminist narratives if there is to be reconciliation. As will be seen in a moment, one of the critiques of feminism is that it rejects tradition. However, it is itself tradition. Schüssler Fiorenza says, “In a context of capitalist globalization and fundamentalist heterosexist hierarchalism, I continue to argue that in the face of progressive social injustice feminist the*logy must be articulated in one way or another as a critical the*logy of liberation or emancipation, that is, as a radical democratic discourse Religions 2018, 9, 160 7 of 15 of conscientization, self-respect, and transformation” (Schüssler Fiorenza 2011). She goes on to argue that, “Patriarchal or better kyriarchal power structures rob wo/men of their intellectual traditions. Consequently, the next feminist generations cannot learn from the thought of their predecessors, but are constantly forced to reinvent the intellectual wheel” (Schüssler Fiorenza 2011). As she points toward the past and tradition, Schüssler Fiorenza also looks to the future unfolding of feminist narratives. While the past relied on images of motherhood to counter the fatherhood of God, notions of motherhood also marginalize and exclude women, creating a second-class status for women without children for whatever reason that might be. The language of religious narratives cannot, therefore, simply be converted from masculine to feminine terms, but the frames of the language must also be engaged (Powell 2015). If the goal is justice and flourishing and the image of God is used as a model for the power of women, an image that also marginalizes women who do not fit that mold itself becomes problematic (Schüssler Fiorenza 2011). In the process of unfolding feminist narratives, one moves from that which they argue against—patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity—to that which they argue for—liberation, agency, and the gender justice with which this section began. Exploring the work of Letty Russel, one finds the proposal that education is the path toward liberation. “Education is seen as a process of liberation in community that includes conscientization as ‘learning to perceive the social, economic, political contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality’. Using Freire’s ideas, Russel reflected on how people throughout the world have struggled to ‘become partners who share together in the journey of freedom’ with the hope of ‘sharing their future’” (Brady 2008). The feminist narratives from theology risk accepting a singular narrative that can over-simplify questions of feminism, limiting them to a single religious tradition and moreover a single interpretation of a single religious tradition. To narrate within a religious tradition, as many of these feminist thinkers do, and beyond it is a challenge that each of these feminist and anti-feminist narratives face to varying degrees (Brady 2008). Religion can be empowering and disempowering, so in addition to liberation, the theme of agency recurs in feminist narratives. The interpretive path one takes through religious traditions can provide opportunities, by the very act of reconfiguration, of claiming agency in the creation of larger community narratives that incorporate feminist concerns (Avishai 2016). Feminist narratives take a variety of forms. Many have the commonality of addressing the marginalization and even oppression of women. However, a current critique of Western feminism is its racial and cultural bias. So, in understanding feminist narratives it is important to keep in mind the wide array of voices at work. Ana Patricia Rodriguez, for example, writes about the, “Fiction of Solidarity” in feminist narratives that become forms of intellectual colonialism. Her analysis of intersectionality and hybridity in feminist narratives points to the ways in which women live in between worlds and cross borders. In doing so both physically and culturally, they bring a wide array of experiences to these narratives. Rodriguez provides an analysis of these ideas as presented in films and novels that explore identity construction of women living across borders and seeking connection and affinity across the borders. These works are also critical of the imperialism of the United States that ignores the suffering of women in Central and South America (Rodriguez 2008). One thing that recurs as a theme is the crime of being brown, the assumption by INS agents (currently ICE) that those who crossed the southern border of the United States are criminals. That assumption provides an additional complication to the experience of being female in relation to the patriarchy not faced by a US-born woman of English descent. Rodríguez’s analysis shows the complexity of attempts at solidarity across gender, national, and racial boarders. Solidarity narratives are fragile, broken by the smallest differences and therefore difficult to sustain. As much as we may want people to all start from the same level, the reality of our world is imbalance of power in social, political, and economic domains. This desire for solidarity and symmetry amid the reality of asymmetry is a part of the path of agency and liberation. However, in the midst of these descriptions of patterns and diversity within feminist narratives, one thing that can get lost is politically, religiously, or socially conservative feminist voices. So, to add Religions 2018, 9, 160 8 of 15 to the feminist narratives, it is important to take a moment to recognize those as well. While feminist narratives in religious domains are often associated with progressive religious voices, one also finds feminism in evangelical Christianity (Peacore 2010). While identifying with experiential feminist narratives and the need for Christian narratives to incorporate these feminist voices more explicitly, evangelicals also critique feminist narratives that move away from traditional theological ideas such as atonement. In looking at evangelical feminism there is a fear that more progressive feminist narratives lose the grounding of tradition and the power of the traditional narratives to transcend human experience. There is in these narratives an emphasis of the belonging and transformational power of tradition, but one that can be challenged productively by putting them into conversation with experiential feminist narratives (Peacore 2010). Through this diversity of voices, one finds not only recurring themes across feminist narratives but also places where the fluidity of these narratives begins to provide tools for a transcontextual narrative. These narratives may be based in traditions, but they are not unquestioning narratives. Perhaps one of the most striking themes of many feminist narratives is the willingness to constantly re-examine assumptions about the nature of reality and to revise the narratives to not only reflect that reality but also create that reality as the promotion of justice and human flourishing. 3. Examples of Masculine Narratives and Anti-Feminist Narratives The dialectical engagement of narratives of identity mean that the pre-existing narratives of oppression do not disappear. They are a part of the frames from which people understand the world and are specifically called out by feminist narratives. However, the process of challenging those long held narratives that have defined societies for millennia lead to a dialectical backlash, the anti-feminist and masculinity narrative. As feminism challenges long held narratives and reinterprets them, there is a loss of identity and the risk of the loss of being as a result. So, the backlash leads to a set of narratives that look back to earlier narratives of masculinity through the lens of feminism, but feminism as interpreted by those who feel threatened by it. Masculinity narratives are not necessarily anti-feminist, although they can be. However, one of the challenges of the creation of a transcontextual narrative is the ability to construct narratives that empower and de-marginalize women while not marginalizing not only men but also the notion of masculinity. In the West, at least, the notion that women are unfinished men and therefore inferior in physical, intellectual, and emotional abilities is deeply embedded in cultural memory (Myers 2015). Cultural memory refers to the way certain ideas become a part of the common understanding of reality. These ideas become embedded in the narratives of communities through continual repetition so that they become a part of the truths of a society and the frames from which meaning is drawn. Take, for example, the stories of Genesis 1–3 in the Hebrew Bible referenced earlier. While the text itself is quite complex with distinct creation narratives and complex relations of humanity to God, within cultural memory in the West the story becomes singular. It is the story of creation where human beings are somehow simultaneously created in the image of God and out of dust, or at least the man is. The woman is created out of a rib bone of the man. Ask any group of students in an introductory religious studies class in the United States and someone will tell you women have one fewer ribs than men, and humanity is punished for the sin of the woman as she tempts the man to eat the apple God told them not to eat. Woman as weak of will but powerful temptress becomes a trope in masculinity narratives that are embedded in cultural memory. What the biblical text says is not as important as what has been passed from generation to generation and in the process becomes truth. Of course, for many students it is and is not truth. Many have assumed the truth of the stories while also not really taking the biology of it too seriously. However, the core elements, the fall of humanity from a state of perfection because the woman tempted the man to eat an apple (or pomegranate as one student in each class will inevitably say), remain a part of the frame that gives meaning within a predominantly Christian leaning U.S. environment. This frame carries so much power that advertisers have long used it to sell precisely the sexuality and temptress quality of women if they will just use the right products (Colette 2015). Religions 2018, 9, 160 9 of 15 I must also take a moment to indicate a limitation of this study. In the exploration of masculinity and anti-feminist narratives it was often the case that these were not found directly from those holding those narratives but rather by proxy in their responses to feminists or in the reported studies about them. Never the less, there is value to exploring these narratives as they appear all over comments sections of social media and at family gatherings in the continued discussion of #metoo and related feminist work. In “‘Wronged White Men’: The Performativity of Hate in Feminist Narratives about Anti-Feminism in Sweden,” Mia Eriksson challenges the universalizing tendency to point to bad white men as the counterpoint to feminism that is a universal good. She critiques the notion that feminism can be divorced from racial discussions while still placing racial markers on the problematic figures, “white men.” In the process she uncovers important aspects of an anti-feminist narrative, focusing specifically on Sweden. She references a letter to Politiken where Danish anthropologist Dennis Normark “claims that Swedish feminism has indeed got out of hand. He sees a country where the power balance has shifted and where Swedish men are being oppressed by Swedish women; a country where ‘masculine’ traits . . . are giving way to ‘feminine’ traits . . . ” (Eriksson 2013). She describes how “Wronged white men” started as a Facebook group but has developed into a way to delegitimize white male complaints about feminism. In the evaluation of these ideas, Eriksson’s concern is with narrative and how a feminist narrative along these lines is performative, creating the reality of hostility toward women it describes and means to overcome. Narrative indicates not only perspective, but repeated enough the narrative creates a world. Eriksson argues that how feminist arguments are constructed matters. If the argument over-generalizes and thus marginalizes and excludes, it creates the conditions for the anti-feminist narratives that then perpetuate the cycle of feminist-anti-feminist conflict. It may even reinforce the very societal structures that caused the gender injustice in the first place and against which feminists fight (Eriksson 2013). Attempts at a kind of feminist meta-narrative such as the one Eriksson is critiquing do not acknowledge the contextual narratives, for example women who are anti-feminist and men who are feminist. A false dichotomy is created that enhances antagonism rather than improving the environment to allow all people to thrive. However, Eriksson’s critique is not only of attempts at a feminist meta-narrative. She also identifies the great challenge of feminist narratives, the denial by one who acts in clearly anti-feminist ways is in fact acting that way. There is a kind of glossing over that, according to Eriksson, does violence to the efficacy of the narratives. These claims are found within the feminist meta-narrative and create, according to Eriksson, a picture of Sweden that becomes a narrative people inhabit. Citing Žižek, Eriksson critiques the project of feminist meta-narrative by claiming, “The normality of this order makes any discussion of it redundant; it does not need to reflect upon the violence in its language because this is the normal language, the way ‘we’ speak about things like hatred, patriarchy, misogyny, sex, gender, and equality. Bodies, relationships, affects, and realities that do not fit this language are, in other words, violently excluded from this feminism and from the reality that it writes” (Eriksson 2013). What Eriksson’s analysis provides for the current discussion is not only some insight into masculine and even anti-feminist narratives, but also insight into the limitations of feminist narratives and the ways in which they, if not carefully constructed, can create frames of exclusion rather than inclusion. The argument against an analysis such as Eriksson’s is that the oppression of women does demonstrably happen in the whole of the intersectionality of feminine experience and that there is no obligation to treat the oppressors with kid gloves. However, Eriksson’s critique is more nuanced. She sees the oversimplification of “white men” vs. “all of feminism without distinction” as a performative narrative that creates the hostility it seeks to overcome. She says, “If read and written as a figuration, ‘wronged white men’ confronts feminism with its own assumptions about power, its own blindness towards objective violence, and its own participation in the making of the world (whether this is a world it likes or not). Feminism should, in other words, not be written as a reaction to the worldly forces directed at it, such as patriarchy, but as one part of a worldly configuration” (Eriksson 2013). Eriksson’s article therefore both begins the discussion of masculinity and anti-feminist narratives and draws us Religions 2018, 9, 160 10 of 15 into the next section on the mediating transcontextual narrative. However, before turning there, a little more familiarity with the masculinity and anti-feminist narratives is needed. Nancy J. Chodorow, in “From the Glory of Hera to the Wrath of Achilles: Narratives of Second –Wave Masculinity and Beyond,” identifies the parallel movements of masculinity narratives alongside feminist narratives. The “Glory of Hera” narratives arose out of second-wave psychoanalytic feminism to see the image of an overbearing mother influence that in masculinity narratives becomes distinctively anti-feminist. In proposing the “wrath of Achilles” as an alternative narrative, Chodorow is identifying the tension within masculinity narratives of the alpha male who humiliates or the beta male who is humiliated. In this narrative frame, the secondary role for men puts them in the same category as women and leads to a similar oppression of these men, who have more feminine characteristics, to the oppression of women. One sees not only the competition of masculinity narratives and what it is to “be a man,” but also the beginning of intersection between certain types of feminist narratives and certain types of masculinity narratives. Recognizing this conflict and diversity in masculinity narratives is then an important part of the construction of a transcontextual narrative. She states, “The wrath of Achilles, a clinical complex from the time of the Trojan War to now, also has crucial cultural and political consequences. Vamik Volkan (1997) describes how a 13th-century Serb defeat in Kosovo echoes in recent Serbian justifications for invasion and genocide. Kissinger, when asked why he supported the Iraq war, is reported to have said that in the conflict with radical Islam, they want to humiliate us. ‘And we need to humiliate them’ (reported in Woodward 2006, p. 408)” (Chodorow 2015). In other words, the notion of masculinity breaks down into men who humiliate and men who are humiliated, and you want to be the one who humiliates or you are no better than being a woman. This notion is not only pre-feminist, it is revised in a post-feminist world in anti-feminist narratives. It is deeply embedded in the cultural memory of the West. Examples of it are seen on the large scale in the rhetoric of war and on the small scale in the ways that boys are told not to cry, or run, or throw like a girl. To be girl-like is not only to be inferior and therefore subject to humiliation. To say, “you’re such a girl” is to insult a man (Segal 1999). Within this narrative analysis, to lack the will to dominate and humiliate is to embody feminine qualities too much, and therefore to be not a “real man.” The “wrath of Achilles” form of masculine narratives are, arguably, at the heart of the need for feminist narratives, not only for the sake of women, but also for the sake of men. A contemporary variation on this narrative is one in which men are facing the results of the feminist narrative, that women belong in the work place and men should be partners in the home rather than leaving the work of the home to the wife. For some men this condition becomes the source of an anti-feminist narrative. In “The Man Trap”, Emily Bobrow describes the challenges the modern man faces in having responsibilities at home with the children and housework while still trying to get ahead at work. This contemporary narrative is a kind of variation on the “wrath of Achilles” narrative in that men who embrace the role of full partner with their wives can find themselves marginalized, becoming the humiliated man who does not have the same opportunities for advancement and raises as men who do not have such responsibilities. The interesting thing about this type of anti-feminist narrative is that it describes women as being able to “have it all” by working and having children, albeit facing fewer opportunities for advancement and raises at work, but for men it means fewer opportunities for advancement and raises at work. In other words, for women it is their job to do those things and they do not need the rewards of career advancement to be considered successful. However, for men in this narrative, to experience the world the way women experience it is a trap that limits their success and overall satisfaction (Bobrow 2018). One final masculine narrative, albeit given through a feminist lens, is the “white male lie.” This narrative encompasses the concerns found embedded in the others. Oluo describes this lie as the promise that white males could be anything they wanted to be. It is a lie because the realities of the world mean that there are a wide variety of inequalities that make the realization of this narrative impossible. Never the less, it is a persistent narrative that the problem of feminism is that it takes something away from men that they were owed. Many feminist arguments defend themselves against Religions 2018, 9, 160 11 of 15 non-feminist arguments by saying feminism is not about diminishing the rights of men but rather building up the rights of women. However, the “white male lie” is an example of the loss of a right. It may be an unjust right and a problematic assumption, but what Oluo explains is that the assumption is embedded in cultural memory, that white men have a right to be and do whatever they want. So, the loss of the assumed right to dominion over others is in reality the loss of a right. It may be a perceived right rather than actual human right, and it may be at the heart of injustice, marginalization, and inequality. However, it is still perceived as a right and even an absolute right, and therefore something is lost. This systematic and embedded narrative comes out in a variety of aggressive ways against feminist arguments on social media and blogs (Oluo 2018). The result of these narratives is that yet another dialectical move is required if contemporary societies are going to move beyond the aggressive tension between feminist and anti-feminist narratives and the continued marginalization of violence against women. How is it possible, given the opposing perspectives of these narratives, to mediate them into a constructive space where new meanings and realities are created not in spite of, but through the older narratives? 4. Moving toward the Mediating Frame The previous sections challenge our ability to respond to oppression and injustice in anti-feminist narratives. So where does one go from here faced with the complexities of these narratives, their internal inconsistencies and their external aggressions toward each other? There are a variety of feminist writers wrestling with this question. In some sense the overt acts of oppression and sexual violence are easier to address because they are obvious to anyone who claims a feminist narrative. The feminist narratives that are held alongside oppressive or marginalizing behavior are harder to address because of the deep denial that such acts have happened. In addition, the overt acts have their own unique problems of reconciliation because of the anger of the victims and supporters of those victims. Addressing the overt acts of violence and oppression can perhaps provide us with tools for the subtler acts that are more easily dismissed. Diana Cates is one scholar wrestling with the most difficult forms of overt oppression, rape and torture. In her essay, “Experiential Narratives of Rape and Torture,” Cates raises the difficult theological question of forgiveness. The 2002 report from Amnesty International, the Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI), provides accounts of experiences of rape and torture in Guatemala since the 1960s. These narratives are difficult to read not only because of their graphic nature but also because of the ability of the reader to put themselves in the place of the victim. This is the power of narrative, to draw one into the frame of the narrative and see the world through the point of view and meaning giving frames the narrative provides. As Cates describes, the response of the reader to these narratives is anger, rage, hatred. These seem to be natural and even appropriate responses. However, as Cates notes, these are not constructive responses. To wish pain and suffering, even death on the perpetrators of horrific crimes simply perpetuates the estrangement. Forgiveness, as Cates explains, is not easy, and yet it is necessary to move forward to a more inclusive human flourishing. In describing the report, Cates says, [The report] represents victim testimonies alongside perpetrator and collaborator testimonies (including, as we have seen, the testimonies of perpetrators who express no shame for what they have done), and comments on all of them with a consistent moral voice—without permitting the dismissal or dehumanization of a single narrator. The effect of this approach is to permit certain emotions, such as hatred for men who rape women, to come to a reader’s conscious awareness. The effect is to acknowledge that these emotions are present and powerful, and to let them play an initial role in denunciation. However, the effect is also to provide, repeatedly and consistently, some perspective on these emotions partly through shifts into calmer descriptive or analytical forms of writing (Cates 2010). Religions 2018, 9, 160 12 of 15 As a virtue ethicist, Cates’ concern in our response to these narratives is to promote human flourishing through the cultivation of character. She says, “To invoke the language of virtue ethics, one could say that the report signals the danger of ‘too much anger’, namely, anger that is experienced in too violent and vindictive a mode, unhinged from the goal of justice” (Cates 2010). If a recurring theme of feminist narratives is a concern with gender justice, then that justice cannot come through alternative acts of injustice or even language that promotes the idea of injustice. Anger at these acts is intense and the narrative that makes sense of the anger and incorporates it into the identity of the angry individual quickly becomes performative, if not by that individual then by proxies as the narrative shapes reality in its externalization. It creates a new nomos that brings a sense of order out of the anomy of rape and torture. Cultivation of virtues can restrain the performative narratives of estrangement and open up the possibilities of performative narratives of reconciliation. Cates’s work can be supported by the tools of positive psychology. Positive psychology arose out of a concern that psychology research focused exclusively on problematic behaviors. However, if problematic behaviors and attitudes can be modified, positive behaviors and attitudes can also be amplified, increasing a sense of happiness and well-being. Rather than a focus on that which divides us and that which we despise about each other, positive psychology demonstrates that we can be as concerned with what goes right in life as in what goes wrong. Seeking common ground and shared space is a place to highlight what goes right and encourages human flourishing. “Positive emotions are more than little extras in life, but are as important for our survival and well-being as the negative emotions that tell us to fight or flee” (Scheib 2014). Tapping into these positive emotions can assist in the creation of transcontextual narratives that invite those who are estranged into reconciliation. One could point to ways that virtue ethics and positive psychology can become problematic for creating performative transcontextual narratives of reconciliation. There is a risk in virtue ethics with the emphasis on the cultivation of character to become victim blaming or to reinforce power-dynamics that say women must seek reconciliation for the violence done to them. Positive psychology can be seen as placing such an emphasis on positive thinking that it marginalizes genuine suffering. However, the examples used here are very specific applications of both virtue ethics and positive psychology. While almost any theoretical framework for evaluating and shaping human behavior could potentially be used to either include or marginalize people, the examples provided here have specific elements that are moving toward transcontextual narratives that are performative of reconciliation. In particular, the work on virtue theory by Cates has been carefully crafted to be reconciliatory, but not conciliatory. The claim she is making is that the attitude and character with which we enter a conversation can make or break its ability to be performative of reconciliation. Neither Cates nor I are arguing that anger is an inappropriate reaction, but rather that anger cannot be the only response. What Cates shows in her work is the power of healing made possible by reshaping the narrative by approaching it differently. Recognizing the humanity of another shapes the narrative to be one of recognition of humanity. It becomes an invitation to tell a new collective story by not dehumanizing the other who has dehumanized or at a minimum marginalized me and my experience. Virtue ethics supported by current claims of positive psychology regarding the efficacy of seeking the positive in things provides the background of a transcontextual narrative. While positive psychology can certainly be used against people as a way to tell them they just need to change their focus in order to live better, that is not how positive psychology is employed here. In this case, positive psychology is used to provide rhetorical tools for the creation of transcontextual narratives of reconciliation. Emphasizing benefits and shared concerns can build bridges. Positive psychology and virtue ethics as described here can be used in the construction of transcontextual narratives by allowing one to see into the narrative of another and extract what is useful in order to build relationships. Not only is a person shaped by their story, their being also shapes the story. If one’s character leads one to begin with the humanizing of the other, then so does the narrative one puts out into the world. That narrative then becomes an invitation to the other rather than a warning or a condemnation. Religions 2018, 9, 160 13 of 15 Lisa Sowle Cahill further develops the tools for the creation of transcontextual narratives that are performative of reconciliation by providing a three-fold hermeneutic for reading tradition: appreciation, suspicion, and praxis (Cahill 2014). Respect for tradition allows feminist narratives to address the language of masculine and anti-feminist narratives. Speaking within the language that is already familiar allows people to feel invited into the frames of meaning by things they recognize and see the respect with which those notions are treated. At the same time, once in this shared space a hermeneutic of suspicion can be employed where negotiation of the unfolding of living and therefore dynamic narratives can happen. Finally, praxis allows the narratives to become performative. In the ritual, ethical, and other shared activities of a community the narratives that give meaning the action become embodied and create new realities. Biblical scholars are already beginning this process in work such as that done by Alicia D. Myers. In “Jesus and (Re)defining Masculinity in the Gospel of John” she shows appreciation for the tradition and the text itself while applying hermeneutics of suspicion to the cultural memory that Jesus is quintessentially and simply masculine. She claims, “The growing field of gender studies, and especially masculinity studies, has highlighted the consistent presentation of ‘masculinity’ as the control of self and others, although the proper articulation of control was debated in a variety of ways . . . In contrast, ‘femininity’ is characterized by weakness that prevented self-control. Femininity means permeability, an openness to absorb all influences, especially vice, if not restrained by her masculine superiors” (Myers 2015). In her study of the gospel of John, Myers found that the typical masculinity of Jesus was not as clearly defined as cultural memory would indicate. There is a gender ambiguity in Jesus (Myers 2015). This is not a transcontextual narrative in itself because this kind of challenge to cultural memory as it relates to scripture can be deeply disturbing and enhance masculinity and anti-feminist narratives. Intermediate steps are required between the description of the tradition and the challenging of the tradition. So, the transcontextual narrative requires a modification of Sowle Cahill’s framework. For this modification, I return to Richard Kearney. The five moments of anatheism he describes—imagination, humor, commitment, discernment, and hospitality—can be used to fill in the gap created between appreciation and suspicion. A transcontextual narrative must begin with an appreciation of the traditions of both feminist and masculinity and anti-feminist narratives. The language must be recognizable in order for the frames to give rise to meaning. However, in pulling together different frames that may use the same language, which we have seen in the feminist and anti-feminist narratives, new meanings can be constructed. It requires creative and imaginative reconfiguration of the elements of the narrative that recognize the value of the previous narrative frames while also recognizing their limitations. It requires humor in the ability to speak thoughtfully with rather than at those with whom one disagrees. Returning to Cates, humor may be a virtue here, a cultivation of our character to not give in to anger in order to see ourselves and others more clearly. It requires commitment to stay in the conversation even when it is difficult while not becoming reactive. Group narrative construction requires dialogue. It requires discernment in the ability to see past the surface of the language being used to the being of the other in the conversation and how the narrative expresses and shapes the being of the other. To see from another person’s point of view shows a respect and care for the other that invites them into the conversation. In that invitation into a new frame hospitality is performed. In addition, in performing hospitality it may become possible for the new narrative to become performative, to reshape a collective reality beyond feminist and anti-feminist narratives and yet not beyond. It is a reframing of feminist narratives after the new anti-feminist and masculinity narratives, not in spite of them, but together with their critiques of feminism. Creating the hospitable space opens the doors for a shared hermeneutics of suspicion, not of each other, but of oneself. Praxis becomes the performance of the narrative, the recreation of collective being through the reconfiguration of narrative. Religions 2018, 9, 160 14 of 15 5. Conclusions The creation of the transcontextual narrative that is performative of reconciliation is possible in part because narratives are not static. Human life is constantly unfolding in an ever-changing environment to which one must adapt in order to survive. The narratives that give being and identity to individuals and communities must also adapt. Narratives that cannot change become irrelevant and die. They are replaced by others that speak to the needs of the people at the time. This process of reconfiguration, (Caufield 2015) as Ricoeur described it, can be traced through the centuries. Part of the resistance to feminist narratives is in the ways they challenge what are taken to be “traditional” roles of men and women seen as ordained by God. Men who feel their stories threatened feel their roles and their identity, and therefore their very being, to be threatened. Who are they if the narratives are not true? However, the question we should be asking is not about the truth or falsehood of the narratives, but rather their ability to allow people to function together and to flourish as human beings. Recognition first of the diversity of narratives in masculinity, anti-feminism, and feminism can allow people to take the risk of stepping into a shared space of reconfiguration. The narrative must be inviting, but the step into the space is a choice based on one’s own desire or not for the flourishing of all people. While such work of creating these spaces is experimental, the place to begin is with individual conversations and slowly building networks of narratives. Performative narratives of reconciliation are much slower than performative narratives of exclusion, in part because they are building new frames. We see examples of this kind of framing in religious texts where symbols blended in a particular way provide new meanings for people. While social media can be a challenging place to navigate, engaging people in language they understand and through media that reaches them while thoughtfully reframing that language can be a way to create spaces of inclusion on a broader scale. 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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6623.2010.00070.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sce.2015.0037 https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/this-is-not-a-sex-panic/550547/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/this-is-not-a-sex-panic/550547/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156920806777504553 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/irom.12073 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0142064X15610990 http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/fsr.2009.25.1.43 https://medium.com/@IjeomaOluo/the-abger-of-the-white-male-lie-6f9a6e646d47 https://medium.com/@IjeomaOluo/the-abger-of-the-white-male-lie-6f9a6e646d47 http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.27.1.110 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12147-014-9117-y http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cros.12114 http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.27.1.105 http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/jpt.2014.24.2.002 http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.27.1.97 https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/11/13/fbi-hate-crimes-reach-5-year-high-2016-jumped-trump-rolled-toward-presidency-0 https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/11/13/fbi-hate-crimes-reach-5-year-high-2016-jumped-trump-rolled-toward-presidency-0 https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/fucking-in-the-hell-that-is-aziz-ansaris-modern-romance-cbc4d1edf771 https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/fucking-in-the-hell-that-is-aziz-ansaris-modern-romance-cbc4d1edf771 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0040573616630024 http://creativecommons.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Transcontextual Narratives and Performative Narratives of Reconciliation Examples of Feminist Narratives Examples of Masculine Narratives and Anti-Feminist Narratives Moving toward the Mediating Frame Conclusions References work_6ahg7ptuxfhrvndyoweqv2miha ---- http://www.hts.org.za Open Access HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies ISSN: (Online) 2072-8050, (Print) 0259-9422 Page 1 of 9 Original Research Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. Author: Tanya van Wyk1 Affiliation: 1Department of Systematic and Historical Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa Research Project Registration: Project Leader: T. van Wyk Project Number: 22153145 Project Description This research is part of the project, ‘Reconciling Diversity’, directed by Dr Tanya van Wyk, Department of Systematic and Historical Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria. Corresponding author: Tanya van Wyk, tanya.vanwyk@up.ac.za Dates: Received: 21 June 2019 Accepted: 08 July 2019 Published: 12 Nov. 2019 How to cite this article: Van Wyk, T., 2019, ‘Redressing the past, doing justice in the present: Necessary paradoxes’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 75(4), a5625. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/hts.v75i4.5625 Copyright: © 2019. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Dedication This article is dedicated to HTS Theological Studies in honour of its 75th anniversary. In the pursuit of making knowledge and quality research accessible, HTS has provided a platform for the dissemination of interdisciplinary theological research and supported the establishment of research networks, both local and international. It has provided opportunities for many young and established researches to share their ideas. HTS has contributed significantly to the role of religion and theology in the academy and public life. It has been my privilege to be part of 75 years of academic excellence. Introduction: What comes ‘after the locusts’? In 2003, South African feminist theologian Denise Ackermann published a book that was about her ‘efforts to discover what is worth living for in the midst of troubled times’ (Ackermann 2003:xii). The title of the book was, After the locusts. Letters from a landscape of faith, in reference to an event described in the Old Testament book of Joel. The land of Judah had been struck by an ecological disaster and a plague of desert locusts swept through the countryside leaving devastation in their wake: What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. (Jl 1:4 RSV) The devastation is vividly described in the first chapter. In the latter part of the second chapter, Joel’s tone changes and he recounts how God will have pity on the people. Then comes God’s promise: ‘I will restore to you the years which the swarming locusts has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer and the cutter … you shall eat plenty and be satisfied’ (Jl 2:25–26 RSV). She recounts how she read the book of Joel during repressive times in South Africa and how it became: [A] metaphor in my life for the ravages of apartheid as well as for my own personal demons. The idea that God would repay the years that the locusts had eaten stayed with me. The destruction wrought by the In this contribution, the connection between redressing the past and doing justice in the present is explored by presenting the notion of ‘paradox’ as a response to ‘binary thinking’. In this regard, ‘paradox’ denotes contradictory, yet interrelated aspects that exist simultaneously. ‘Binary thinking’ refers to either/or categorical aspects that cannot co-exist. Two paradoxes are explored as a response to increasing polarisation because of a struggle in redressing past injustices: the paradox of remembering and forgetting and the paradox of difference and sameness. This is done by bringing the work of the South African practical theologian, Denise Ackermann, in conversation with the work of the Croatian systematic theologian, Miroslav Volf. From different origins and experiences, both offer a way forward, and a way to move on beyond the devastation that is caused by dealing with injustice, difference and memory in a polarising fashion. The contribution concludes with a reflection on the notion of ‘ceding space’ from a Trinitarian theological perspective. The ceding of space is proposed as act of transformation, as the outcome of the ideas proposed by Ackermann and Volf, and as a way to live together, ‘after the locusts’. Keywords: paradox; binary; justice; transformation; identity; diversity; otherness; memory; hybridity; Trinitarian theology. Redressing the past, doing justice in the present: Necessary paradoxes Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. Note: HTS 75th Anniversary Maake Masango Dedication. This article represents re-worked aspects of a paper entitled ‘Reconciling diversity ‘after the locusts’: A political-theological landscape’, presented at the conference entitled ‘Land: Texts, narratives and practices’, which took place at the University of Pretoria from 31 August to 01 September 2016. http://www.hts.org.za http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5309-0546 mailto:tanya.vanwyk@up.ac.za https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v75i4.5625 https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v75i4.5625 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.4102/hts.v75i4.5625=pdf&date_stamp=2019-11-12 Page 2 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access locusts would be restored. This thought drifted down into my subconscious … in troubled times I would retrieve it. (Ackermann 2003:xiv) She describes her time growing up during apartheid as being faced with different types of locusts and faced with daily decisions about ‘what to do, what to believe, how to act as a white person, as a South African and as a woman’ (Ackermann 2003:xiv). She wrote her ‘letters from a landscape of faith’ because South Africans were living (around the year 2003) with the ravages of the locust years and longed for restoration and healing. Ackermann’s reference to the devastation by the locusts, coupled with her reason for writing the book, has made a lasting impression on me because it is an apt description of what is happening in South Africa and the whole world today (2019), namely, that we are living with the ravages of the locust years. The last few years have witnessed profound and rapid calls for transformations of all kinds, in many different spheres of life, across the globe.1 Injustices of the past have come knocking on the door of the present: debates rage in many sectors about the effects of colonialism, racism, slavery and patriarchy and have resulted in an adamant chorus around the world of We have had enough (cf. Van Wyk 2018; Pillay 2017). Miroslav Volf (2006:11) described this as a summons to remember. This summons has led to an explosion of separate but related discussions that connect a range of issues: identity and diversity, borders and hospitality, transformation and justice (Hill Collins & Bilge 2016; Zakaria 2016:9–15). Denise Ackermann’s metaphor of the ravages of locusts and a longing for restoration is as relevant as ever. The question is, how to proceed? What comes after the locusts? In essence, Dirk Smit (2018:109–128) has the same concern in his contribution entitled Justice and/as Compassion. On the Good Samaritan and Political Theology, where he is concerned about the appropriate ways in which to respond to growing racism in society. Smit illustrates how governments have historically responded to this challenge by utilising legal measures at their disposal and making racism illegal. Smit (2018) remarks, however, in reference to the South African context, that: [T]he nonracialism (professed in the Constitution) can clearly not be commanded, ordered, regulated, legalised – so how is it to be attained in a deeply racist society with racist histories and memories and racist legacies and structures? (p. 114) One way is further polarisation and division: telling people who is to blame for their current situation and making them 1.In South Africa, the #FeesmustFall-movement swept through Higher Education centres in 2015–2016. This happened together with renewed calls to end government corruption (see, e.g. Ranjeni 2015). South Africa has also witnessed many protests regarding continued violence against women, like the 2018 #TheTotalShutdown-march, see, for example, the web page ‘#TheTotalShutdown. My Body – not your Crime Scene’, http://thetotalshutdown.org.za/; cf. Reddy 2018. During 2018 there has been a renewed and much stronger emphasis on the issue of land reform in South Africa. Globally, there have been a number of calls towards transformation and justice, as witnessed in the ‘#TimesUp’-; ‘#MeToo’- and ‘#BlackLivesMatter’ movements. Government dictatorial rule has also been under the spotlight, like the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and Venezuelans and Zimbabweans, respectively, protesting against dictatorship. For a summary of these protests and movements, see Miller (2018). afraid of those people. These arguments lead to two available options for those wanting to protect themselves from the other: ‘those responsible’ for your situation should be removed, and their trace in history abolished, or you should separate yourself (distance yourself) from them completely. Because of the very nature of polarisation, this cuts both ways. Therefore, debates about the removal of statues, the building of walls and the safeguarding of culture and identity are increasing and they have become violent.2 With regard to the South African situation, Tinyiko Maluleke (2011) has remarked: Our language is violent and violence is our language … If there is an area in which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed, and failed spectacularly, it is in the area of national anger management. We are an angry people. This is an angry nation. Some of the angriest white as well as black people on earth live here. (p. 89) Are we to remain stuck in increasing polarisation and binary us/ them categories? I am of the opinion that the only way to move beyond the devastation of the locusts and the locust years is to search for collective ways of life, ways in which to share space (land, resources, opportunities) and therefore to find an authentic way to live with, and to reconcile, diversity. This entails a willingness to embrace, what I describe as, creative tension and therefore a willingness to engage with at least two paradoxes: the paradox of remembering and not remembering (forgetting) past experiences and events, and the paradox of difference and sameness, that is, the connection of identity to being demarcated while opening up space and ‘inviting in’. I chose the notion ‘paradox’ deliberately as a response to binary thinking, or thinking and acting according to binary oppositions that divide reality into either/or categories (Elbow 1993:51–78; see also Borderland 2011). In Surprised by the Man on the Borrowed Donkey, Ackermann (2014) describes a paradox as a statement that seems self-contradictory or absurd, but in reality it expresses a possible truth. For her, a paradox promises that apparent opposites can come together in our lives and that either/or thinking can be replaced with something that is closer to both/and (Ackermann 2014:55). In this contribution, I use Ackermann’s notion of paradox as a departure point to reflect on what I think are necessary conditions for collective living and reconciling diversity – authentic transformation – in an era that demands it, longs for it and needs it. I do this in an attempt to move further away from division and polarisation and closer to the promise of the restoration in the form of both/and. I will bring Ackermann’s work into conversation with that of the Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf because their theology (and spirituality) has a certain spaciousness for holding the tension of opposites to flourish amidst the human condition. A final remark: a reflection on conditions for reconciling diversity, collective living and transformation is of the utmost importance in South African today because the debate about land reform, land distribution and land ownership. However, 2.See, for example, the analyses of the political essayist and columnist, Pankaj Mishra (2016:46–54), on the globalisation of rage. With regard to calls for statues to be removed, see Eleftheriou-Smith (2016) (see also Bidgood et al. 2017; Haden 2018). http://www.hts.org.za http://thetotalshutdown.org.za/ Page 3 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access the issues discussed in this reflection are of equal importance to redressing the past and doing justice in the present with regard to other historical and present phenomena, such as the role of women in society, religious intolerance and human sexual diversity, both in South Africa and abroad. The paradox of remembering and forgetting An archaeology of memory In the early 20th century, the French novelist Marcel Proust reflected on the nature of memory in a work of fiction entitled A la recherche du temps perdu. When the work (consisting of multiple volumes) was translated into English, its title was rendered in two ways. Between 1913 and 1927, it was translated with the title Remembrance of Things Past by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, and in 1981 the English translation was revised by Terence Kilmartin and published under the title In Search of Lost Time (cf. Proust 2012). Both these titles depict memory from different vantage points. According to Richard Bradley (2003:221), the first title suggests that remembering the past is an involuntary process, while the second ‘evokes a deliberate effort to remake a past that is out of reach’. In Proust’s work, the role of memory is a central theme, as it has an effect on how one assigns meaning to experiences. In this regard, memory is depicted as both a creative act and an interpretation (Bradley 2003:226). It is almost as if the different renditions of the title of the book reflect this. This highlights for me the idea that the retelling of history, in whichever form (oral, written or monuments and landmarks), is an interpretative act. The retelling of history is the only way descendants and later generations have access to past events. This means history is related to remembering it and therefore related to memory. The most precise attempt to reproduce memories (or history) will yield different versions of it. Different mnemonic techniques (a system of ideas, letters or associations which assist in remembering something) in oral history traditions might render slight variations of the events they are recounting and even large-scale ‘memories’ such as monuments or landmarks are modified, rebuilt, abandoned or replaced over time (Bradley 2003:222). Remembering might, therefore, also include ‘the art of forgetting’ (Forty & Küchler 1999). One might say that what we do with history and how we carry it into the present or future are influenced by the paradoxical act of remembering and forgetting. This section considers this paradox with regard to the case at hand, namely, redressing the past and doing justice in the present. Historical injustice Grappling with the nature of historical injustice is often a necessary feature of political life … there are no easy answers. Understanding and dealing with the moral consequences of the past is one of the most important political issues of our time, and yet also one of the most intractable. (Ivison 2006:508) ‘Historical injustice’ is a multifaceted notion (Ivison 2006:509). I use the word ‘notion’ here because the reality of injustices that have taken place in the past cannot always be neatly demarcated or precisely defined. In general, it refers to wrongs committed by individuals or groups to other individuals or groups, where the victims themselves are now dead, but their descendants are alive today. In some cases, there are no descendants of the victims and in other cases the perpetrator(s) do not exist anymore, while the victims are still alive. If descendants of neither the victim nor the perpetrator are alive, there might not be a ‘historical injustice’ to answer, but a great harm has still been inflicted. ‘Descendants’ may also refer to groups of individuals who have identified with a collective identity that has persisted through time (‘women’ as a group who have suffered under patriarchy, for example). According to the political scientist Duncan Ivison (2006:509–510), a consideration of the scope and nature of historical injustice is connected to six questions or issues: the normative weight of the past in debates about what is ‘owed’ to one another; the matter of which historical injustices matter and the reasons why they matter; the question of to whom the reparations are owed; the question of who should make the reparations (pay for it – in whichever way); the matter of which form of reparation will suffice and finally, the question of which political considerations to factor into account when defending or criticising reparations. Reparations can take place in three modes (Ivison 2006:509–510). The first one is restitution. This means restoring or returning that which was taken. This literal mode of reparation is not always possible; therefore, compensation as a second mode of reparation could be applicable. This might be complicated too because the value of that which was lost or taken cannot be determined or is too great to be compensated. A third mode of reparation is recognition or acknowledgement of those victims who have been denied basic humanity and subjectivity in the wrongs committed against them. Recognition of responsibility is a separate but related aspect of reparation with regard to historical injustices. It is first and foremost based on the awareness of an injustice that has been committed, and secondly, it is based on the acknowledgement of how one has been complicit in the enactment of that injustice, which may have taken the form of social and political agency that had been denied to individuals or groups of people. Recognition of responsibility can take the form of a public apology or collective remembrance. Some injustices suffered can be compensated. A great number of injustices suffered cannot be compensated. How to respond or how to remember therefore becomes paramount. Memory: How to respond? Miroslav Volf (2006:7) recounts how he was summoned for military service in 1984 in the former communist Yugoslavia. Soon after he reported for duty, he realised that he was being http://www.hts.org.za Page 4 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access treated as a potential spy. He was married to an American and had received training (his Christian theological study) in the West (Germany and the United States), and therefore he was treated as a security risk. A letter from his wife was intercepted and used as a pretext for a first ‘conversation’ about his so-called subversiveness. The interrogations that would last for months had begun. He was not physically tortured, but the psychological torture of being at the mercy of the interrogator left its mark, as Volf remarks: ‘even afterward, my mind was enslaved by the abuse I had suffered’ (Volf 2006:7). The presence of the chief interrogator was so vivid and constant; it was as if he had moved into the household of Volf’s mind. Gradually, however, the interrogator was relegated to the back of his mind and his voice drowned out. Although the interrogator had been sidelined, Volf’s response to the abuse and his reaction to it had not. When he started thinking about his response, he first of all felt a need for retribution. At some point, subconsciously, he realised that he could not give in to what he felt because he would be responding as a wounded animal and not a free human being. This was not an easy undertaking. Volf acknowledges that holding onto the requirement to love one’s enemy becomes more difficult the more severe the wrongdoing is. Evil will triumph, however, if the evil is returned because evil needs two victories to win: the first when an evil deed is committed, and the second when that evil deed is returned. The first evil would wither away if it is not regenerated with the second one. Volf realised that although he had no control over the mistreatment against him, he did have the power to prevent a second evil. And so, he started ‘stumbling in the footsteps of the enemy-loving God’ (Volf 2006:9). Did the decision not to retaliate resolve the entire experience? No. The difference is, the wrongdoing was now only repeated in his memory, and not in reality. Therefore, the questions were, how should the perpetrator, and what he had done, be remembered? Or forgotten? Volf’s experience and thought processes illustrate what is at stake when it comes to debates about transformation that is prevalent because of past injustices knocking on the door of the present. At the heart of the paradox of remembering and forgetting, with regard to moving on, ‘after the locusts’, is the question about how much of one’s projected future should be ‘colonised’ by the locusts, whichever form they might take. His arguments about memory and the response to injustice are based on his theological convictions about the paradoxical nature and outcome of Christian faith,3 which, as I will point out later again, is something he has in common with Denise 3.Volf’s introspection with regard to his memories is based on his interpretation of Psalm 25:7: ‘Remember not the sins of my youth, or my transgressions, according to thy steadfast love remember me, for thy goodness’ sake, o Lord!’ (RSV). He asks what it would mean if he remembered the wrongdoings of his interrogator in the way he would want God to forget his transgressions based on God’s love for him. He relates this conviction to his interpretation of the Apostle Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 5:14: ‘For the love of Christ controls us; because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all has died’ (RSV). In light of this Volf asks, how should he remember the abuse of his interrogator, given Christ’s atonement, for all. Broadly stated, ‘remembering’ for Volf, with regard to his experience of the Ackermann. Volf argues two broad points with regard to memory,4 which I emphasise here as I am convinced they are both of extreme importance for redressing the past and doing justice in the present. They are: remembering truthfully and condemning rightly (Volf 2006:11–13). This pertains to the wronged person as individual as well as those that wronged the individual. Remembering truthfully entails an interrogation of your own memories and a contextualisation of it: the time the wrongdoing took place, the system or structure in which it occurred and possibly also the context of the wrongdoer’s life. This will enable you to condemn rightly: ‘In memory, a wrongdoing often does not remain an isolated stain on the character of the one who committed it; it spreads over and colours their entire character’ (Volf 2006:15). That spread can only be contained if one remembers virtues alongside vices, good deeds alongside evil deeds. Condemnation is done in forgiveness in which the doer and the deed are separated. In this regard, as Elie Wiesel (1990) has emphasised, redemption can (or may) be found in memory. Given how deep some injustices can cut, this type of redemption might seem impossible, or even inauthentic. For Volf (2006:27–32), however, the possible link between memory and redemption is subject to related decisions or actions, which entails, firstly, interpreting memories and inscribing them into a larger pattern of one’s life story and into a broader pattern of meaning – the suffering could have contributed to your own resilience or to the exposure of the abuse of power (for example). In order for this not to be a cheap rationalising or ‘cleaning-of-the-slates’ exercise, a second step has to be taken: the ‘acknowledgement’ of what happened and what was done (Ivison 2006:511–513). This is not unqualified remembrance – it is the acknowledgement of the truth of what was done.5 Therefore, an important part of remembering truthfully is ‘naming’. ‘Interrogations’ cannot be described as ‘conversations’. When a euphemism like this is used, it masks (hides) injustice and injury. Finally, memory can serve as a means of redemption because it can generate solidarity with victims (Volf 2006): Remembering suffering awakens us from the slumber of indifference and goads us to fight against the suffering and oppression around us … the memory of past horror will make us loathe to tolerate it in the present. (p. 30) Is remembering in this way co-dependent on forgetting? I think so. That is what I would like to emphasise in discussion with Miroslav Volf’s arguments. To remember includes forgetting – in an authentic way and with integrity. In my interrogator, is closely connected to the (biblical) notion of loving one’s enemy. For these references to his own theology, see Volf (2006:8–9). 4.I recognise that memory is not only about remembering or forgetting wrongdoings. It is human to remember and therefore other events and experiences are remembered as well. Memories are both painful and pleasant. We remember for different reasons and go to different lengths to remember: the birthday of a friend, a turn of phrase, crossing a bridge or fulfilling a commitment. Because the chapter focuses on the balance between past and present with regard to collective living and reconciling diversity, the memories in focus here are those of wrongdoings. 5.‘If we value living in a society in which freedom is taken seriously, then we should take responsibility seriously’ (Ivison 2006:511). See also Ripstein (1994:3–23) for the important connection between taking responsibility about committing wrongdoing in the past and doing justice in the present. http://www.hts.org.za Page 5 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access opinion, this does not mean forgetting the past into ‘non- existence’, that is, it never happened. What I would term ‘authentic forgetting’ is to forget ‘into the past’. This is forgiveness – ‘blotting out the offense so that it no longer mars the offender’ (Volf 2006:208). I would want to add, so that it no longer mars the victim either. The link I make here between ‘forgetting into the past’ and forgiveness is illustrated by Kenneth Briggs (2008) in his commentary on the film by Martin Doblemeier about the power of forgiveness: The process of cleansing oneself from vengeance and fury against someone who has caused you harm may take a long time and happen in fits and starts … but it isn’t intended to wipe away the offenses or take the violator off the legal hook. It is a more mysterious pathway that can leave both parties less burdened by inner and outer pain. Many intertwine forgiveness with doing justice. (p. 41) Volf (2006:209) is convinced that the only way to embrace this type of forgetting and embrace forgiveness is within a Christian framework: ‘no argument independent of belief in the God of infinite love can be constructed to persuade those who want to keep a tight grip on strict retributive justice’. No one can be forced to not remember and no one may insist, that one who has suffered, should not remember. Forgetting, in the way described here, is a gift, from the persecuted to the perpetrator, and must remain a gift freely given. The paradox that holds the promise of an open (and creative) future is therefore about remembering and not remembering: the experience or event of wrongdoing and injustice is not relegated to non-existence, but the memory of it does not have the ability to invade your existence to the point of your own non-being. Memories can act as a sword that simply cuts everything to pieces. The same sword can, however, also be employed to defend justice. Memories can act as a shield that protects comfort zones, but it can also be employed to protect justice. An imbalance between remembering and forgetting (or non- remembrance) will result in either hate and violence or nostalgia and ignorance. If we are able to embrace the tension and find fulfilment in the paradox, we might experience the realisation of the promise Volf (2006:232) alludes to: ‘the proper goal of the memory of wrongs suffered – its appropriate end – is the formation of the communion of love between all people, including victims and perpetrators’. In this regard, perfect love is the end (the purpose) and the end (final, no more) of memory. The paradox of difference and sameness Identity markers and dimensions of identity A key issue with regard to reconciling diversity, collective living and transformation is the notion of ‘identity’ (Fukuyama 2018:105–123). The reason for this, as Michael Rowlands (2007:59–71) has pointed out, is that concern with identity develops and grows consistently with the concern about the individual in a mass society – in other words, the more we grow in numbers (and in diversity), the greater concern is for holding onto, cultivating or demarcating ‘my own’ identity. Postmodern philosophers like Michel Foucault (1972, 1986) and Pierre Bourdieu (1987:1–17, 1992:220–251) have created awareness of the potential dangers of categorising identity (and identity markers) because of the influence power has on the creation of those categories of identity (cf. Meskell 2007:23–43). Keeping this ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ in mind (Itao 2010:1–17; Ricoeur 1981, 1986), the notion of identity conveys a sense of individuality and personality: ‘the sameness of a person or thing is itself and not something else’ (Rowlands 2007:61). There are different ‘axes of identity’, or points of focus around which identity coalesce, such as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class or age. There are other dimensions of identity that become apparent or are highlighted with regard to social roles and the connection or commitment to a piece of land or a country: religion, language, culture, nationality and the types of relationships you might enter into or be a part of. This could also be described as social identity. Ian Craib emphasised that every person has a number of social identities and that these entail constant organisation and negotiation (Craib 1998:4–9). Rowlands (2007:61–62) distinguishes between the psychology of identity and the political dimensions of identification. Debates about hospitality and inclusivity are greatly determined by the political dimension of identification, as is seen, for example, in the research of Belgian theologian Eddy van der Borght (2006, 2009:161–174) on the nature of the Christian church. He has illustrated the influence of identity markers such as ‘nationality’ and ‘ethnicity’ in reference to the historical struggle of the Christian church to adhere to its confession of being one and catholic simultaneously. This is evidenced by the church’s struggle not only with diverse interpretations of church doctrine, but also with regard to an inclusive ecclesiology based on diverse notions of theological anthropology (cf. Van Wyk & Buitendag 2008:1447–1473), as seen in the different denominations’ attempts to keep women out of ministry, constitute ethnic-based churches and continue religious debate about homosexuality (and for that matter, diverse sexual and gender identities). Roland Robertson (1990:31–45) has argued that modernisation has brought about identity problems, both in a psychological and a political sense, because it has evoked a sense of nostalgic desire: things were ‘better’ when everything happened at a slower pace, or when people kept to their designated social roles and spaces and everybody went to church on Sundays (for example). It could be said that postmodernism (with the emphasis on the ‘-ism’) has brought about the same identity crisis for some because this paradigm shift is experienced or perceived as the loss of clearly demarcated boundaries and ‘truths’. In a climate where the maintenance of boundaries is perceived as safeguarding a so-called natural order or as the safeguard http://www.hts.org.za Page 6 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access against the loss of identity, anything that can threaten that maintenance is regarded with suspicion, or demonised or ostracised. Xenophobia – fear of the other, or in context of my argument here, fear of the one who has different identity markers than I do – abounds. When this happens, identity becomes an instrument of polarisation and identity is the instrument of the creation of the us/them-binary (Ackermann 2003:12–13). Identity becomes indicative of sameness and continuity, and therefore inclusive immigration policies, the acknowledgement of diverse sexual and gender identities, inter-religious co-operation and liberation movements are countered at all costs because they are endangering who I am and endangering my way of life (Zakaria 2016:9–15). As described in the introduction of this contribution, this polarisation becomes a locust-like plague, leaving devastation in its wake. That is why Miroslav Volf (1996:20) has said, ‘it may not be too much to claim that the future of our world will depend on how we deal with identity and difference’. In the following section, I will reflect on this. Borders, identity and otherness Miroslav Volf was born in Osijek, Croatia (when it was part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), moved to Novi Sad, Serbia (then part of Yugoslavia) at the age of five. Osijek was mostly Roman Catholic and Novi Sad, Orthodox. Volf’s father became a minister for a Pentecostal community in Novi Sad. Protestants was in the minority and Pentecostals even more so. It is clear that Volf had a number of margins and borders with regard to national and religious ‘axes of identity’ to contend with. His reflection on identity and otherness (crossing borders) stems from this context. This was amplified during the Croatian war of Independence (1991–1995) in which Serbian fighters called četnik herded fast amounts of Croats into concentration camps, assaulted them and raped the women. During the final stages of that war, Volf is challenged by his mentor Jürgen Moltmann about whether he would be able to ‘embrace’ a Serbian fighter – for him, the ‘ultimate other’. For Volf, this was a question about identity, justice and the Christian paradox of being demarcated and hospitable at the same time. The confession, Jesus is Lord, demarcates because it binds all who make the confession together and distinguishes them form those who do not. The very same confession, however, implies an inclusive invitation to ‘all the nations’ and does not hierarchically separate Jew, Greek, man or woman, based on different axes of identity (Patterson 2018; cf. Van Aarde 1986:77–93). Therefore, Volf (1996:9) asks: ‘What would justify the embrace? Where would I draw the strength for it? What would it do to my identity as a human being and as a Croat?’ Based on this, his answer to Moltmann is that he did not think that he can embrace his own ultimate other, but as a follower of Christ he should be able to. This exchange illustrates how the paradox of difference and sameness can influence the balance between redressing the past and doing justice in the present and how notions of ‘identity’ factors into it. Denise Ackermann’s theological engagement with the relationship between the past and the doing justice in the present is based on embracing difference (Ackermann 1998:13–27). She emphasises the notion of a ‘hybrid identity’ (Ackermann 2003:2).6 Volf too emphasises hybridity in his reflection on the connection between identity and reconciliation. He is slightly hesitant that hybrid identity could entail the maintenance of fixed boundaries; however, he affirms that from a Christian perspective, one would not want to get rid of hybridity (Volf 2006:21, 52–55, 210–211). For Ackermann, crossing cultural barriers (or borders of any kind) is an almost automatic consequence of embracing multifaceted identity, or an identity made up of difference. In her letter to her granddaughters (Ackermann 2003:1–5), she describes the hybrid heritage and therefore hybrid identity of both herself and her husband. Although her theology engages substantially with the identity marker of gender (Ackermann 1994:197–211, 2009:267–286), in these reflections, language and culture are the most prominent identity markers. She and her husband both grew up speaking English and Afrikaans and were familiar with ‘both cultures’. This was because of a mixed European ancestry on both sides. In particular, Ackermann grew up speaking only English to her mother and only Afrikaans to her father. She had the sense of trying to be ‘many selves’ as her father became a diplomat after the Second World War (for her at age 11) and thereafter she attended school on different continents. Two languages became five: I have many memories of being the alien, a foreigner at school and, on returning from abroad, a stranger in my own country, even among my cousins. Being a hybrid meant being an outsider. (Ackermann 2003:3) The attempt at ‘settling’ her identity became more difficult as she grew increasingly uncomfortable with and eventually opposed Afrikaner nationalism – also within her immediate family circle. This was an identity marker that was utilised above all others during apartheid in South Africa to separate (not distinguish) difference in a hierarchical fashion. The resultant alienation Ackermann experienced from her family also shaped her identity and in the end her identity was ‘settled’ by embracing the contradictory aspects of it; in other words, she embraced the paradox of difference and sameness. For Ackermann (1998:17–26, 2003:11), the very notion of ‘identity’ has a double meaning: it denotes sameness and difference – it is how one is identical to others, yet precisely how those who are identical to each other are different from others. Therefore, the most important aspect of ‘identity’ is that it is shaped in ongoing dialogue with others (cf. Taylor 1994). She does issue a warning: identity can become a dangerous issue if one identity is given a higher value than others. When this happens, identity becomes a polarising and dividing factor. The response to this polarisation, as I argue in this contribution, is rather to accept and embrace the 6.Compare the work of Bhabha (2006:42–43). He discusses the notion of hybridity in conjunction with ‘identity’ and the influence of colonialism. See also how his work was utilised by Frenkel and Shenhav (2006), in which they argue in favour of a shift from a binary epistemology to a hybrid epistemology in management. http://www.hts.org.za Page 7 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access simultaneous contradictory and hybrid identity of each other, at all times. As Ackermann (2003) remarks: The temptation is either to take on the identity of one’s family or culture uncritically or to adopt a full identity from an alternative culture with equally little self-reflection. Both are hideous mistakes. We cannot turn our back on our culture of origin; neither should we be its slave. We do not choose when, where, and to whom we are born. So both a sense of distance as well as a sense of belonging are necessary. Belonging without distance is destructive. Distance without belonging isolates us … the ways in which we deal with the question of difference shape our identities. (p. 12) It is important to acknowledge and name ambiguity and contradiction in one’s engagement with difference. To address the devastation of the locusts entails the simultaneous presence of ‘borders’ and dialogue. Borders show demarcation. Borders are an expression of space. It is not a case of keeping out is bad and taking in is good. Total inclusion collapses all borders. When this happens, the criteria and ability for distinguishing between repressive identity and affirming identity are lost. Boundaries can only be crossed if the challenge of difference is met, and there is dialogue to exchange views particularly with those who differ from us (Ackermann 2009:270). This understanding of borders/boundaries being open and closed, on the cusp of sameness and difference, brings the notion of hospitality to mind (Shepard 2014:208–241) and links up with Miroslav Volf’s paradoxical use of the metaphor of ‘embrace’ with regard to his exploration of reconciliation. In the ‘embrace’, there is a double act of opening and closing. Indeed, there are four elements to the movement of embrace: opening the arms, waiting, closing the arms and opening them again: I open my arms to create space in myself for the other. The open arms are a sign of discontent at being myself only and of desire to include the other. They are an invitation to the others to come in and feel at home with me, to belong to me. In an embrace I also close my arms around the others – not tightly, so as to crush and assimilate them forcefully into myself, for that would not be an embrace, but a concealed power-act of exclusion; but gently – so as to tell them that I do not want to be without them in their otherness. I want them to remain independent and true to their genuine selves, to maintain their identity and as such become part of me so that they can enrich me with what they have and I do not. (Volf 1996:141–143) For the borders to be crossed, boundaries to be transcended and ongoing dialogue to be authentic, certain conditions are necessary although dominant power relations need to be deconstructed, and private and public/political identity cannot be divided into isolated and closed identities that is separate from one another (Taljaard 2009:42). Ackermann’s hermeneutics of paradox is actually a spirituality of paradox. Her understanding of identity and context is closely related to her spirituality (Taljaard 2009:41), which is about living with freedom and with hope in the tensions that arise between dependence and autonomy, knowing and not knowing, faith and doubt. She emphasises that accepting the contradictions in herself will help her do so elsewhere: Christian spirituality is about learning to live with trust and hope in the middle of tensions and contradictions … when we recognise tensions that are life-giving, we will not fall prey so readily to the tensions that are death-dealing. (Ackermann 2009:279) To move on, ‘beyond the locusts’ and the binary and polarising us/them, requires courage and creativity to thrive amidst sameness and difference and the promise of this paradox because (according to Ackermann [2014:64]) the power of the paradox presents us with series of open doors and open space – a space (according to Volf [1996:20]) in which new identities can continuously be-in-becoming. The similarities between Ackermann’s experience and thought and that of Volf are quite striking. It is to the notion of open space that I turn now in the concluding section. Conclusion: Ceding space and doing justice in the present In his work entitled Moral Man and Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr (1932; cf. Smit 2018:109) asked the question if it is at all possible to make any meaningful difference in the face of entrenched systemic and structural injustice. In much the same way, and also related to the notion of justice, I have been thinking (and wondering) about ‘reconciling diversity’ for most of my theological education. The single greatest reason for this was the experience of how my own church community, the Netherdutch Reformed Church (NRCA), dealt with ‘difference’ in its history. The first woman to be ordained in the NRCA was in 1981. More than 40 years later, there is only one woman on the central leadership committee (the General Synod Committee), which consists of 12 people. Only in 2013 did the NRCA publicly recognise that the church was complicit in maintaining the structures of apartheid with their theological justification of it – and that it was wrong to do so. After this recognition, the NRCA went through a painful schism that resulted in legal battles about church property which was illegally appropriated by parties within the NRCA who disagreed with the NRCA’s anti-apartheid declaration. This is an ongoing matter. At the 2016 Synod meeting, the NRCA ended years of theological debate in the church about homosexuality by confirming the conviction (belief) that God loves all human beings and that it is the church’s prophetic task to see that justice is done. In effect this means that ministers from my church denomination could marry gay couples. Currently, http://www.hts.org.za Page 8 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access there are congregations in the church that are threatening to withhold their financial support of the larger church structure if the 2016-statement/decision is not overturned. As a church community therefore, we are still experiencing challenges to move beyond the locust years. The recurring challenge we face is because of an inability to move towards the ‘promise of the paradox’ – that ‘space’ where apparent opposites can come together in our lives and either/or thinking (binary thinking) can be replaced with something that is closer to both/and. A major reason for this, in my opinion, is because the church is both trying to hang on to a romanticised nostalgia about things being better in the past and also trying to revisit history (to go back in time) and determine if so-called historical injustices were really intended as injustice. This pertains to their approach to racism, sexism, homophobia and also their participation in the current land debate in South Africa. They are trying to go back in time to determine who did what to whom, first – because if the originating point or factor can be determined, the assignment of responsibility and the assignment of guilt can take place. This type of reasoning results in being stuck in us/them thinking. The problem, in its simplest form, is the nature of the relationship between past and present and specifically the relationship between remembering and forgetting – the paradox. This paradox relates to the others: dealing with difference and being hospitable. I use my own church community as an example, but they are by no means the only institutional church or denomination struggling with this. In my theological reflection about these paradoxes, I have turned to the Christian church’s confession about belief in a Trinitarian God for vocabulary to ask necessary questions and to describe creative possibilities for living with difference and transcending binary thought and practice (Van Wyk 2017). This more than anything else has been my partner in thought about ‘difference’ or ‘otherness’ and the notion of or attempt at reconciling diversity. The primary influence on my thought in this regard has been the ‘social Trinitarian’ theology of Jürgen Moltmann ([1980]1981:xiv), in which he conceives of God as a ‘society of equals and a community of being (cf. Boff 2007:276–291)’, in which there is a ‘perichoretic’7 unity. This community exists by virtue of the reciprocal indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity. In this community of being, each of the persons is ‘spaces’ for each other and each one mutually cedes the others life and movement, that is, making themselves inhabitable for one another (Moltmann [2002]2003, 2015), while remaining persons with particular identities. This is rather profound. If we truly believe what we confess, namely, that creation came to be according to the image of God, then creation in the image of a Trinitarian God of reconciling diversity should have ample resources for dealing with diversity. But the idea or confession of Imago Dei, or Imago Trinitatis (Volf 1998) is 7.A substantial amount of research has been done over a number of years about the notion and implications of the Greek term ‘perichoresis’ in theology. See, for example, Durand (2012:177–192) and Rohr and Morrel (2016). often a much debated and contested theological discourse in the church because it would assume an uncritical ‘correspondence’ between God and humanity. To this I always reply that there is not an ‘equation symbol’ between God and humanity, but rather that a social Trinitarian understanding provides an ‘analogy’ for the way for humanity transcends binarity and the ensuing isolation and oppression that occurs. Moltmann’s understanding of God as social Trinity is connected to his view of God as a ‘broad place’ – a space in which there is no more cramping. His Trinitarian thinking was his attempt at critically resolving the naive self-centredness of one’s, also his own, thinking. In his autobiography, A Broad Place, he states (Moltmann [2006]2008): Of course I am a European, but European theology no longer needs to be Eurocentric. Of course I am a man, but my theology does not have to be androcentric in its emphasis. Of course I am living in the so-called First world, but my theology does not have to reflect the ideas of those at the top, but should make the voices of the oppressed heard. (p. 287) The greater the diversity, the greater the struggle to live with it. This struggle could become a plague of locusts, destroying everything in its path it if goes unchecked. What will be left of the land, so to speak? Embracing the apparent contradiction between the past and the present, identity and difference, and borders and hospitality will enable us to cede living space to one another. In this regard, the creative tension of the paradox opens up space. Opening, but more specifically, ceding space is justice in itself: to give up some of yourself and some of your space in order for all who inhabit the space to participate mutually and equally in opportunities, resources and land. Ceding space will not be comfortable. Paradoxes do not make sense and we would want to ‘settle’ them. Embracing their tension, however, might just help us to live, creatively, collectively, and help us to flourish in the midst of our broken whole – our beautiful mosaic. Acknowledgements Competing interests The author declares that she has no financial or personal relationship(s) which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. Author(s) contributions T.v.W. is the sole author of this article. Funding information This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Data availability statement Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. http://www.hts.org.za Page 9 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors References Ackermann, D.M., 1994, ‘Faith and feminism: Women doing theology’, in J. De Gruchy & C. Villa-Vicencio (eds.), Doing theology in context, pp. 197–211, Orbis Books, Maryknowll, NY. 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BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access Believe #metoo: sexual violence and interpersonal disclosure experiences among women attending a sexual assault service in Australia: a mixed- methods study Susan Rees,  1 Lisa Simpson,2 Clare A McCormack,1 Batool Moussa,1 Sue Amanatidis2 To cite: Rees S, Simpson L, McCormack CA, et al. Believe #metoo: sexual violence and interpersonal disclosure experiences among women attending a sexual assault service in Australia: a mixed- methods study. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/ bmjopen-2018-026773 ► Prepublication history for this paper is available online. To view these files, please visit the journal online (http:// dx. doi. org/ 10. 1136/ bmjopen- 2018- 026773). Received 19 September 2018 Revised 26 June 2019 Accepted 04 July 2019 1School of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 2Community Health, Sydney Local Area Health District, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Correspondence to Dr Susan Rees; s. j. rees@ unsw. edu. au Research © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. Strengths and limitations of this study ► The study’s descriptive data support existing ev- idence and offer new knowledge concerning girl’s disclosure of sexual abuse to parents and family members, and the association with adverse mental health outcomes. ► The qualitative method complied with guidelines for qualitative research, facilitating the description of rich case examples that illustrated some key as- pects of the nature of mentally harmful disclosure experiences, including being ignored, not believed, and threatened. ► We acknowledge the non-representative nature of the sample which limits the generalisability of our findings to the wider population of women who have been sexually abused. ► The sample size limits the extent to which the quan- titative data could be analysed, noting, however, that the objective in using the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview was to provide an ad- junct to the clinical interview in systematically re- cording relevant common mental disorders. AbStrACt Objectives Sexual abuse is a strong predictor of future psychiatric problems. A more nuanced qualitative understanding of mental health outcomes, in the context of interpersonal responses from family members towards survivors after sexual abuse, may help to better inform prevention and interventions. Design A mixed-methods approach included a qualitative timeline method to map and identify contextual factors and mediating emotional responses associated with mental disorder following sexual abuse. Setting Participants were adult survivors of sexual abuse, seeking support from the Sexual Assault Counselling Service, Sydney Local Health District, Australia. Participants Thirty women 18 years and older with current or past mental disorder or symptoms were interviewed between August 2015 and May 2016. Outcome measures A qualitative timeline interview and the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI, 5.5.0) were applied. results The MINI prevalence of current post-traumatic stress disorder was 96.6% (n=28) and of major depressive disorder was 82.8% (n=24). More than half (53%) reported suicidal ideation at some time in their lives. Women exposed to childhood sexual abuse reported being ignored, not believed, or threatened with retribution on disclosing the abuse to others, usually adult family members, at or close to the time of the violation(s). Participants described experiences of self-blame, betrayal, and psychosocial vulnerability as being the responses that connected negative disclosure experiences with mental disorder. Participant accounts suggest that these reactions created the foundations for both immediate and long-term adverse psychological outcomes. Conclusion A more in-depth understanding of the type and emotional impact of negative responses to disclosure by parents and other family members, and the barriers to adequate support, validation and trust, may inform strategies to avert much of the longer-term emotional difficulties and risks that survivors encounter following childhood abuse experiences. These issues should receive closer attention in research, policy, and practice. IntrODuCtIOn The #metoo campaign symbolises a belated gender revolution, potentially transforming the pervasive culture of silence and disbelief regarding the sexual abuse of women into one of open public disclosure and acknowl- edgement. In the wake of global revelations concerning the predatory behaviour of men in positions of power, including in the medical profession, there is an unprecedented oppor- tunity to break the silence for all women exposed to abuse.1 This potential change in public health policy will be facilitated by supporting research capable of providing more precise data concerning the impact of experiences of abuse on the mental health of survivors across the lifespan in a manner o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2845-6547 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-07-30 http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 2 Rees S, et al. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access that identifies key milestones and their consequences in the aftermath, specifically in relation to the sequence of disclosure, family responses to these revelations and the impact of the latter on mental health outcomes both in the immediate and longer-term. An important ques- tion that requires more precise definition and analysis concerns the nature of interpersonal responses from family members and the extent to which negative reac- tions to sexual abuse disclosure play a role in exacer- bating adverse mental health outcomes. We applied an in-depth qualitative timeline method to plot the chrono- logical relationship of key traumatic events, interpersonal reactions to disclosure, and the mental health of the girl or young woman over her lifespan. Participants were women attending a hospital-based sexual assault counsel- ling service in Sydney, Australia. There is ample evidence that sexual abuse is widespread among women. A meta-analysis of prevalence studies found that 24% of adult women globally report exposure to sexual abuse in childhood.2 A now substantial body of epidemiological evidence confirms a robust association between exposure to sexual abuse and the occurrence of a wide range of common mental disorders and adverse psychosocial outcomes among women victims, particu- larly related to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidal behaviour, occurring both in the short and longer term.3–10 Whereas many women are resil- ient and able to avoid the negative mental health impacts of sexual assault, epidemiological data indicate that the risk of such adverse outcomes following abuse is high.7 As such, preventing childhood sexual abuse represents an important focus for public mental health programmes aiming to improve mental health. A further strategy that may avert adverse mental health outcomes is to ensure that girls and young women who disclose sexual abuse are believed and supported in a manner that increases their security and safety. Despite the limitations of the retrospective method, it may be possible to obtain vital information from adults concerning the chronology of events and interpersonal reactions to disclosure after childhood sexual abuse. For example, retrospective reports indicate that young girls are at high risk of sexual abuse and commonly experience the first onset of mental disorder soon after the event, in many instances a reaction that can lead to recurrent or chronic symptoms.11 As time progresses, the sequence and interaction of mutually reinforcing factors can become complex, particularly in relation to sexual revictimisation, exposure to other forms of trauma and stressors, and the persistence or relapse of mental disorder; a pattern that can become lifelong and lead to substantial disability.12 13 These observations suggest that early therapeutic inter- ventions, that is, soon after the first exposure to abuse, may be critical to preventing this harmful trajectory. There is some evidence indicating that when young girls and women are believed and responded to in an appropriate manner following disclosure of sexual abuse, further intervention, such as the provision of counselling, is more likely to be successful.14 Conversely, studies have reported an association between negative disclosure experiences and higher risk of onset of mental disorder, such as PTSD.15 16 As yet, however, there are few studies that have sought to qualitatively understand the possible range of sexual assault disclosure responses from parents and relatives (the most likely confidantes), the survivor’s associated emotional reaction and subsequent mental disorder as she progresses into adulthood.17 18 In addressing this issue, it is important to specify the way key terms are applied. The term ‘sexual abuse’ in our study is used in accordance with the WHO’s defini- tion. It refers to all forms of sexual assault including rape or attempted rape, unwanted sexual contact, or being subjected to threats to perpetrate such acts.19 We use the terms ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ interchangeably according to the context. The terms ‘mediating emotional responses’ and ‘mechanisms’ are both used to describe emotional reactions following disclosure and leading to mental disorder. Mental disorder and associated symptoms refer to common categories identified in the present study, as elicited by a structured diagnostic instrument, and confirmed in spontaneous accounts of symptoms and asso- ciated disability provided by participants in the course of qualitative interviews with professional counsellors expe- rienced in making these diagnoses. The reference point for recording symptoms is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV given that this remained the classification system in use in clinical settings during the course of this study. reactions to disclosure from family members In principle, it would be expected that disclosure of abuse may offer the first step to emotional recovery for the girls or young women in that the emotional support and accurate attribution of culpability to the perpetrator will assist in overcoming feelings of isolation and poten- tial feelings of self-doubt and shame associated with the event. Yet disclosure often evinces unsupportive reactions by others,14 20 21 particularly in childhood when one third of these abuses are reported.18 Girls and young women often delay disclosure for legitimate reasons including anticipation of a negative response from confidantes, and a sense of internal resistance associated with feelings of shame or guilt.21 Although it is recognised that parents may not provide an appropriately supportive response to disclosures by children, the precise nature and psycho- logical impact of their responses from the perspective of the survivor require further definition.22 23 By tracing the chronological sequence in narrative accounts of events and reactions, it may be possible to throw more light on the relationship between disclosure experiences and the unfolding of mental health outcomes in the short-term and longer-term following abuse. Several studies have attempted to identify a measur- able relationship between disclosure experiences, mental disorder, and the risk of revictimisation.5 13 17 18 20 22 24 25 A specific focus has been on negative disclosure, the o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 3Rees S, et al. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access woman’s experience of shame, and the risk of PTSD symptoms.26–28 From a qualitative perspective, the focus has been on disclosure of sexual abuse to professionals and service providers,29–31 but these studies have tended not to include sufficient details regarding mental health outcomes in victims. For example, a study identifying either supportive or hostile responses by others to disclo- sure indicated that this experience influenced the survi- vor’s future decision-making regarding making further disclosures of abuse.32 Other qualitative studies have focused primarily on the dynamic factors that impede or promote disclosure of child sexual abuse, including victims feeling conflicted about their own responsibility for the abuse (this relates to self-blame, discussed below), and anticipation of being blamed or disbelieved.33 Most studies examining the nature of the responses from family members during childhood have focused on their disbelief.17 34 Less attention has been given to attribution of overt blame directed at the victim, and at the extreme, threats made by confidantes, for example, warning the victim that the disclosure will put the safety and the stability of the family as a whole at risk, in order to actively censor or silence the child. Being exposed to, as well as anticipating, doubt from others can cause women to internalise shame and guilt relating to the event. These feelings of self-blame may be difficult to counter in counselling given victim culpability remains pervasive in society.35 36 Women, for example, have had to defend themselves in court against claims of culpability because they were drunk, too trusting, or acting provocatively.37 38 Self-blame, reinforced by social norms that attribute responsibility solely to the perpe- trator, may therefore act as a powerful mediator of enduring psychological and mental health outcomes in victims. It is possible that relevant pathways to self-blame, and the issues reinforcing that tendency, are not suffi- ciently explicated in contemporary counselling practices. Other pathways leading from disclosure to mental disorder The experience of betrayal is a further factor that may mediate the impact of sexual assault on mental health. ‘Betrayal trauma’ has been applied where the perpetrator breached trust that should have been expected in the rela- tionship with the victim.39 Less attention has been given to a sense of betrayal experienced when it is the confi- dante, rather than the perpetrator, who ignores, blames, or silences the victim of sexual abuse. This situation may be particularly confronting to a child, for example, when the disclosure is made to a parent or other older family member in whom the young person has invested complete faith and trust. One of the recognised consequences of early childhood sexual abuse is that victimised women may also be at risk of revictimisation in later life.25 An important question is whether negative disclosure experiences play a mediating role in the sequence of events that lead to that outcome over the life course. Using a qualitative approach based on a narrative account of the timeline of events and reac- tions therefore may assist in clarifying these issues. Aims In our qualitative study, we aimed to elicit the survivor’s own spontaneous account of the responses of family members to disclosures of sexual abuse; how the survivor in turn responded emotionally to the family member’s reaction; and, the influence of that sequence to the unfolding of mental health and related psychosocial problems through later development. To better under- stand the interpersonal complexity of the survivor’s experiences, we applied a qualitative methodology that would enable survivors to explore their experiences in a confidential one-on-one setting with skilled counsel- lors; a process guided by an explicit timeline approach (described hereunder). The specific objectives of the study were to: 1. Document the mental health profile of a cohort of women seeking support from a sexual assault service. 2. Enable disclosure of the sequence of events and re- sponses, and underlying mechanisms, especially re- lated to the disclosure experience, that may have in- creased risk of mental harm following sexual abuse. We therefore included women experiencing at least one of the common mental disorders assessed. 3. Generate new knowledge that would assist in promot- ing trauma-informed practice in the sexual assault and wider mental health field.40 MethODS Informing theory The study complies with Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research standards for qualita- tive and mixed-methods research (COREQ).41 In rela- tion to the substantive methodology, our study was grounded in the narrative history approach directed in this instance to issues of exposure to sexual assault and subsequent experiences of mental disorder over the course of the woman’s lifespan to date.42 We aimed to examine reactions and responses to disclosure within a gender-informed rather than a purely psychological framework.43–45 A gender framework offers the capacity to combine information garnered within a clinical context with knowledge regarding the wider social factors that may lead to adverse disclosure experiences following sexual abuse, for example, negative parental responses when a child discloses, and the tendency for female victims to resort to blaming themselves.44 45 Our inquiry drew impetus from and resonates with the contemporary #metoo movement which has garnered a groundswell of commitment to support the right, and indeed necessity, to speak out about the sexual abuse of women in a manner that critiques the abuse of power in male–female relationships. Our intention was to extend the focus of attention to women who explicitly are neither rich nor famous. o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 4 Rees S, et al. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access We also apply empirical phenomenology to value women’s experiences. The principles of empirical phenomenology hold that a scientific explanation must be grounded in the first-order meanings and experi- ences of the actors; in this case, women who have been sexually abused.46 47 These theoretically supported aims substantiate the importance of a qualitative exploration. Patient and public involvement The study was designed and led by mental health profes- sionals with skills in working with sexual assault victims. Patients and the public were not specifically involved in the planning and design of the study, however the research focus on disclosure was shaped by the perspec- tives of the participants in the course of the broader inquiry. This encouraged participants to explore their historical narratives from a personal and spontaneous perspective, and to offer explanations and speculations regarding the pathways leading from experiences of sexual assault to mental disorder and wider psychoso- cial difficulties over the course of their lives. Women attending the sexual assault service were introduced to the study by sexual assault counsellors. The affirming process of sharing stories in the course of our study was noted by their counsellors who continued to consult with women in sessions following the research interview. Participants were asked if they would like to receive information or provide feedback on the study prior to the final analysis. A final report was then sent or made available to all subscribing participants, and the current article will be shared with participants when it is published. Sampling We applied a criterion-based sampling strategy to recruit participants at the Sexual Assault Counselling Service, located in the Community Health Service of Sydney Local Health District. Women who met inclusion criteria were 18 years or older whose last experience of sexual assault had occurred at least 1 month earlier and were judged by their counsellors to not be in an immediate emotional crisis that could be worsened by participation. In addition, they met criteria for at least one of the current mental disorders assessed (see here- under). A woman with a current psychosis was excluded due to difficulty in obtaining a clear narrative (n=1). The team manager met with sexual abuse counsellors to request that they inform eligible clients about the study aims and its value in assisting researchers to understand more about the relationship between sexual assault and mental disorders. Clients expressing agreement were then contacted either in person or by phone by research assistants who provided full information about the study and sought consent from those willing to participate. Interviews and data analysis were undertaken itera- tively, with sampling ceasing when further interviews produced a high level of informational redundancy, which, in keeping with our broad predictions, occurred once 30 interviews had been conducted.48 Procedure Two experienced mental health professionals were employed as research assistants; one was a social worker and the other a psychologist. The social worker was employed in the sexual assault service which was the recruitment site. The sexual assault service counsellors were engaged by their social work colleague to inform potential participants about the study. The social worker then followed up with clients who agreed in the pres- ence of their counsellor that they wished to be further informed about the study prior to signing consent. Consenting participants were subsequently interviewed by one of the two research assistants. Research assistants applied the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Inter- view (MINI; V.5.5.0) via face-to-face interviews as an adjunct to clinical interviews in order to systematically document symptoms of common mental disorders.49 We used the timeline qualitative interview method (described below) to enable the counsellor and partic- ipant to work together to define actual timepoints where major events occurred (sexual assault, disclo- sure, the victim’s emotional response and her attribu- tion regarding the impact on the onset and course of mental disorder). Interviews took place in a private room within the central Sydney Sexual Abuse Counselling Service’s offices, with only the interviewer and participant present. Interviews were not audio-taped, but detailed notes were written directly onto the visual timeline map and separately recorded by the interviewer (See Time- line method). timeline method The qualitative method involved a timeline format aimed at facilitating the mapping and identification of contextual factors and potentially mediating emotional responses associated with the onset and course of mental disorder following sexual abuse.50 On a large sheet of paper, the researcher and participant worked together to plot on a visual timeline the events and emotional reactions of interest to the study, adding extensive notes regarding each element of interest relating to the sequence. The method enabled in-depth recording of interpersonal interactions and the survivor’s emotional responses and their associations with mental disorder symptoms across the life-course. A key focus was on the description of events that hindered or helped recovery after the sexual abuse, and those which may have increased the risk for mental disorder or multiple sexual assaults across the lifespan. Specific disclosure experiences that were recorded occurred spontaneously with no prompting by the counsellor. This method enabled researchers to draw tentative temporal connections between the events (sexual abuse), the response of the interpersonal world and the survivor’s psychological state, allowing for an o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 5Rees S, et al. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access box 1 Sample characteristics ► Number of all participants (all survivors of sexual abuse): 30. ► Mean Age: 36 years (n=30). ► Married or in marriage-like relationships: 37% (11 out of 30). ► Bachelor level or higher university degree: 40% (10 out of 30). ► Paid employment: 40% (12 out of 30). ► Experienced rape and/or sexual violence perpetrated by someone not previously known to them: 50% (15 out of 30). exploration of how each factor might have influenced or impacted on the others. The timeline interview method and procedure is described in an online report.40 Within the mixed- methods approach, the qualitative interview was the primary data source because it provided an account of the descriptive and interpretive associations of women’s personal and interpersonal experiences as they affected mental health outcomes following sexual assault.51 52 To maintain a specific focus in this paper, we do not include disclosure experiences in extra-familial settings such as in schools, healthcare services or law enforcement. Analysis SPSS Version 25 was used to derive mental disorder prevalence rates. Qualitative data were managed using NVivo (QSR International). Data were entered, coded and labelled as themes in NVivo. Data were examined for patterns and sequences directly from large sheets of paper containing the timeline of events and notes. The following steps are consistent with the qualitative data analysis literature.53 We familiarised ourselves with the data, a process which involved reading and re-reading the data, writing down impressions from the quotations and notes taken during the timeline interview, looking for meaning and determining which data conferred value according to the research questions. Themes or patterns that consist of ideas, concepts, behaviours, interactions and phrases were identified and a ‘code’ was assigned to those data. Qualitative studies often use quotations to support themes located in the data. In our study, the histor- ical and social context associated with any quotations from participants was vital to the aim (to identify path- ways and mechanisms linking the sexual assault and mental disorder over the life course). On that basis, large transcripts that demonstrated these pathways and mechanisms were entered into NVivo, which was used to organise the data, assign the coding and explore further thematic connections. On examining the data, the researchers were able to identify illustrative vignettes that represented the themes of interest. Two research assistants independently identified the themes and sequential patterns. Although the domi- nant themes were those most often or most compel- lingly presented, dissonance and ambiguity in the data were judged as potentially valuable in that they helped provide a richer understanding of the contextual and interpersonal factors relevant to our research ques- tions. Minimal discrepancies emerged between the two analysts and these were systematically reconciled via discussions with a third rater. In keeping with our research aims, we describe vignettes (rather than short participant quotes) to more accurately highlight the mechanisms or the sequence of significant events and related psychological responses. ethics Ethics approval was granted by the South Western Sydney Local Health District Human Research Ethics Committee (15/041). Personnel, training and supervision Female research assistants with a master’s degree or higher in social work or psychology were selected based on their clinical expertise in counselling and advocacy for women affected by sexual violence, their capacity to reach a high level of technical proficiency and reliability in collecting data, and their commitment to strict ethical standards. Data were collected by two research assis- tants, who were also investigators. The research assistants completed a 1-day training course on the application of research methods. The team gave priority to ensuring that the study proce- dure provided an affirming and positive experience for participants. Referrals to other services, such as specialist mental healthcare, were made if the need was identi- fied during the research interview, however all patients were receiving current ongoing clinical care through the recruitment site, a sexual assault counselling service. Researchers had no connection with participants’ clin- ical care, and data collected for the purposes of the study were not made available to their counsellors. reSultS Demographic and sexual abuse profile Demographic characteristics of the sample of 30 women are shown in box 1. Mean age of participants was 36 years and 40% were in paid employment. In almost half the participants, sexual abuse occurred for the first time in childhood. Disclosures of child sexual abuse were most commonly made during childhood to family members. Our study suggests that negative disclo- sure experiences during childhood are more strongly associated with mental disorder than those made in adulthood.17 MentAl heAlth PrOfIle Mini-International neuropsychiatric Interview We derived diagnoses using the MINI Neuropsychiatric Interview supplemented by symptoms disclosed qualita- tively during the interview, with the aim of producing a descriptive profile of the help-seeking sample’s mental o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 6 Rees S, et al. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access Table 1 Distribution of disclosure experiences according to confidante/authority Confidante/authority Disclosures: ignored Disclosures: blame or threat Number (%) Number (%) Police 3 (16) 2 (13) Parents* 10 (53) 4 (25) Other close family members* 3 (16) 4 (25) Fiancé/boyfriend 1 (5) 2 (12) School counsellors 2 (10) 4 (25) Total 19 (100) 16 (100) *Study analysis focused on parents and other close family members. health status. Having any mental disorder was an inclu- sion criterion for recruitment to our study. PTSD preva- lence was 96.6% (n=28) and Major Depressive Disorder was 82.8% (n=24) with substantial overlap or comorbidity as expected. Qualitative interviews Self-reported mental health symptoms during qualita- tive (timeline) interviews provided further insight into the manifestations and course of symptoms, and these qualitative reports provided a high degree of endorse- ment of the parallel findings obtained from the MINI. Sixteen participants (53%) reported suicidal ideation. Almost all (90%) with suicidal thoughts reported onset of these urges following sexual violence including child- hood sexual abuse. Nine women (30%) had attempted suicide. Depressive symptoms occurred in 30 (100%) of the participants at some time following sexual violence. 11 (36%) participants described depressive symptoms prior to the sexual violence. Comorbid symptoms of panic disorder and other anxiety symptoms were also commonly described. Dominant themes Childhood exposure to sexual abuse associated with subsequent mental health problems and risk of exposure to sexual abuse in adulthood Nearly half of the cohort had experienced childhood sexual abuse, either from a family member or from someone known to them but living outside the home. In cases of childhood abuse occurring outside the home by someone previously known, there was almost universal evidence of general neglect in the care and protection of the child in the family. Ten participants (71%) with early childhood sexual abuse reported revictimisation as adults. As indicated by the details provided hereunder, being ignored, overtly blamed or threatened for the abuse following disclosure appeared from analysis of the time- line interview data to be most closely associated with onset of subsequent mental disorder symptoms and future risk for sexual abuse. Mechanisms linking the disclosure response to the mental disorder were provided by the participants who described feelings of self-blame, psycho- social vulnerability or betrayal as being the emotional responses that connected negative disclosure experiences with mental disorder. being ignored or not believed Instances of being ignored involved either no verbal or emotional response by the confidante (adult member of the family) or lack of any action taken after the revelation was made. Lack of emotional or verbal response or action by a parent or relative was commonly perceived by the victim as not being believed and/or that the parent failed to demonstrate appropriate care. A participant reported that when she disclosed the abuse to her father, he ‘went into denial and shut down’. She felt ‘very let down and hurt’ by his response. Self-blame was often described as a response to being ignored or not believed at the point of disclosure. In the aforementioned case, the family members to whom the child disclosed appeared to accept the perpetrator (uncle) and his view of events. The perpe- trator’s perspective was that the victim lied about the sexual assault, and that she was ‘crazy’. The victim subse- quently blamed herself for the abuse: ‘I felt like it was my fault. Like I had given him the wrong message.’ Partici- pant 20 (age 15 at time of sexual abuse, uncle perpetrator). Distribution of disclosure experiences Seventeen of the 30 participants reported negative disclo- sure experiences (table 1). Note that two participants reported two disclosures in the ignored category. Five participants reported negative disclosures in both catego- ries (19+16=35). being blamed Blame by family members was often explicit and appeared to be strongly associated with subsequent feelings of self- blame, overt symptoms of mental disorder and suicidal ideation or attempts. Responses of blame included confi- dante statements such as ‘it is your fault because you were drunk’ (participant 10) or ‘you shouldn’t have trusted him’ (participant 26). being threatened Disclosure was in some cases met with a direct threat, for example: ‘if you say anything it will tear the family apart’ (participant B). The implication was that any negative impact resulting from the disclosure (particularly on the family) would be the victim’s fault. Threats made by the confidante in relation to potential harm to the family were therefore associated with self-blame. Participant A also experienced a deep sense of betrayal related to a breach of previously assumed trust and support from the relative who responded to her disclosure with a claim of bringing shame on the family. Protective and recovery factors are described in a previously published report drawing on data from the o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 7Rees S, et al. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access present sample.40 The sentinel markers for positive change, including alleviation of mental health symptoms, appeared to be exposure to empowering approaches in counselling that challenged a sense of self-blame. Other helpful factors were supportive friends who provided an alternative voice that clearly located culpability with the perpetrator, finding a meaningful and fulfilling occupa- tion, effective criminal justice outcomes in the prosecu- tion of the perpetrator and, in some instances, the use of antidepressant medication to relieve mood disturbances and hence support re-engagement with social activities. Vignettes Timeline interviews are intentionally selected to examine temporal associations between factors, such as sexual abuse and mental disorder. Data would lose its intended meaning and effect if decontextualised into short illustra- tive quotes to communicate the findings, as is common in qualitative studies. We have therefore selected two vignettes with the aim of illustrating the phenomenolog- ical mechanisms linking the key events of interest, that is sexual abuse, disclosure and mental illness. PArtICIPAnt A In participant A’s case, sexual abuse was first perpetu- ated by a family friend and then by her uncle. Common themes in this vignette were disclosure that was ignored, blame and threat of harm to family if the survivor spoke out. The participant made a direct association between negative disclosure-related experiences with those who should have been caring and supportive, and a deeply felt sense of betrayal ultimately leading to self-harm and a suicide attempt. Her abuse experiences started at 9 years of age. The participant told her father about sexual abuse by a ‘family friend’ who lived nearby. Her father at the time did not respond to her disclosure. His refusal to respond was evidenced by his silence, and that he continued to be friends and socialise with the perpetrator, including inviting him into their home. Participant A felt that her father did not believe her or did not want to believe her. Participant A was also sexually abused by her uncle. She disclosed the abuse to her aunt at age 12. Her aunt responded to the disclosure by not believing her story and admonishing her for the claim. The aunt then told partic- ipant A that if ‘other people knew what happened (it) would bring shame on the family.’ The participant later found out (in early adulthood) that her aunt knew of the uncle’s history of sexual violence at the time she disclosed to her. She felt deeply betrayed and uncared for. Despite not having any evidence to the contrary to shape her views, the participant had a deep sense of knowing that what had happened to her ‘was wrong’. She associated the failed attempt to seek validation and support from her father and then her aunt with a profound sense of betrayal that became destructive. She said these feelings were directly related to subsequent attempts to self-harm. She left home as a teenager. The trauma and despair led her to attempt suicide. The suicide attempt resulted in hospitalisation, yet the participant did not disclose her history of childhood sexual abuse to medial authorities. She said that in hindsight she felt ‘resentment at the system that failed to protect me’. Social isolation led to her being a more vulnerable target for bullies at school. She started using drugs (‘a lot of weed’) to cope with sexual abuse, bullying and isolation. One turning point in the participant’s life was the experience of feeling part of a family and valued as an individual. She was ‘taken in’ by a friend’s mother. The experience of a recovery was associated with ‘support from someone who…. reflects on the things about you that are good. Someone who notices your milestones and recognizes your transitions. Who also knows when you fucked up and intervenes to help you’. The effects of abuse, related betrayal and isolation continued to affect her throughout her adulthood. She described feeling ‘lost and vulnerable’ and related this to repeated bouts of depression and panic disorder. PArtICIPAnt b Participant B’s story illustrates the predominant theme of not being believed, threat of harm to the family, self- blame, substance use and mental disorder following sexual abuse. Participant B was sexually abused by her brother at age 8. She recalls him telling her that if she told anyone it ‘would tear the family apart’. She internalised a fear of damaging the family and instead blamed herself for the abuse. At age 8, she told her parents about the brother’s sexual abuse. They minimised the abuse and she said there were no repercussions for him. No one mentioned it to her again. By the age of 12, she had developed an eating disorder which she now associates with the self-blame and self-loathing she experienced following the sexual abuse and particularly the absence of having someone to tell her that it was abuse and not her fault. The disorder involved binging and purging food, as well as restricting food intake. She was taken to a psychiatrist, who asked if she had been abused by anyone. She remembers saying no because she felt she could not share the memories she had with him. In the early teenage years, her eating disorder persisted and she started self-harming. She explained, “it was a release and it was soothing in a weird kind of way”; and, “when I cut myself, I could feel the adrenalin, and then I would feel relaxed.” She began using cannabis which she said helped her feel better. At the age of 16, she again told her parents about sexual assault by her brother. They quickly dismissed her revelation and told her that she was ‘having a nightmare’. Following the disclosure and their response, she experienced insomnia. She said sleep deprivation compounded feelings of self-blame. In early adulthood she suffered from psychosis. The o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 8 Rees S, et al. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access participant said medication and strategies to ‘manage my overwhelming feelings’ were strengthened by under- standing the connection between the denial of abuse and the damaging effects of self-blame. She has resumed contact with her parents and has communicated more to them about the sexual abuse from this new vantage point. She said that her mother is finally ‘realising more what happened to me now’. DISCuSSIOn The insidious nature and high prevalence of sexual abuse have received recent media attention following revela- tions concerning violations enacted by celebrated and professionally powerful male perpetrators.1 These cases have generated important public discussion; neverthe- less, it is vital to ensure that the focus on sexual abuse by those in positions of power is not confined to those with celebrity and professional status—it is, in fact, a pervasive public health problem across the lifespan for women.3 6 This is the first study to undertake in-depth qualitative plotting of interpersonal experiences based on a visual timeline which allowed documenting and elabo- rating on the possible mediating factors in the sequence of sexual abuse, disclosure experiences in relation to family members and women’s mental health across their life. The qualitative data pointed strongly to an associa- tion between negative disclosure responses and adverse mental health and social outcomes over the course of the woman’s life. Our sample was criterion-based in order to meet the objectives of the study, that is, the women were attendees at a specialised sexual assault service, and all had at least one lifetime common mental disorder. The novel time- line methodology facilitated the collection of in-depth and unique information that can be applied to inform future studies in the field. Common responses to nega- tive disclosure experiences involving family members included being ignored, a reaction which has been described as ‘disbelief’ in other literature; and for the survivor to be explicitly blamed for the abuse at the point of disclosure.17 34 We also identified a response to disclo- sure characterised by threat from the confidante, usually the parent. Threats following disclosure included that the alleged sexual abuse would bring harm to the family in some way. Both vignettes described a threat of harm to the victim’s family related to the disclosure. We identified possible psychological mechanisms leading from negative disclosure experiences to mental harm. We describe a phenomenological mechanism, where self-blame and at times guilt were associated with being ignored or blamed after disclosure. Our findings highlighted how feelings of betrayal, associated with the trusted parent or relative responding negatively to the disclosure, may be psychologically harmful to the survivor. Previous research has focused on the sense of betrayal relating to the perpetrator being a trusted attachment figure. The present study demonstrates that a different form of betrayal arises when there is a negative disclosure response by a previously trusted family member. Overall, our study illustrates the potentially important role that negative disclosure experiences play in gener- ating persisting psychosocial vulnerability in the survivor. Women encountering negative disclosure experiences reported an array of adverse psychosocial outcomes in their subsequent lives including social isolation, drug- taking, recurrent or persisting mental disorder and future risk of abuse, including bullying at school. A general state of psychosocial vulnerability that persists over time may be an important foundation for understanding the risk for adult revictimisation in child survivors of sexual abuse.25 The period immediately following a disclosure, there- fore, may prove to be a critical window where survivors are particularly susceptible to effects of either helpful or harmful interventions by confidantes. Informing communities and families Promoting education and awareness relating to the risks and consequences of sexual violence against children is vital as a public health measure. Parents need to better understand the importance of responding with affirming and caring responses should they be confronted with disclosures. For this to occur, public campaigns are needed to encourage society as a whole to work towards breaking the silence that protects perpetrators and obscures the pervasive harms caused by sexual abuse against children and women. Our study also indicates the need for readily available legal and welfare interventions where families knowingly fail to protect or overtly intimidate or threaten children who disclose sexual abuse. Early detection of at-risk chil- dren remains a challenge, particularly in families where silence in relation to abuse is the pervasive response. Detection will be facilitated by achieving a high level of awareness and vigilance in identifying hidden sexual abuse and possible negative disclosure experiences across the full array of health, education and welfare profes- sionals most likely to be in contact with children exposed to these violations. trauma-informed care A trauma-informed care approach assists in ensuring that all healthcare practitioners and community agencies are uniformly aware of the psychological and social effects of sexual abuse, and providing them with the knowledge and skills to respond to the needs of the survivor.40 Special training should be provided to identify and respond to negative disclosure experiences. Our data offer frontline responders to childhood and adult sexual assault survi- vors, including social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, medical practitioners and police officers, a deeper under- standing of the possible experiences of survivors who may have been exposed to negative disclosure experiences. In that respect, practitioners need to be apprised of the common types of disclosure responses that their client or patient may have encountered, and to inquire into o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 b y g u e st. P ro te cte d b y co p yrig h t. h ttp ://b m jo p e n .b m j.co m / B M J O p e n : first p u b lish e d a s 1 0 .1 1 3 6 /b m jo p e n -2 0 1 8 -0 2 6 7 7 3 o n 3 0 Ju ly 2 0 1 9 . D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 9Rees S, et al. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773 Open access and respond appropriately to possible feelings of self- blame, betrayal and psychosocial vulnerability. Inquiring into negative disclosure experiences may be particularly important when survivors have shown a pattern of recur- rent or persisting mental disorder, for example, symp- toms of PTSD or depression, and/or show a persisting pattern of psychosocial vulnerability such as substance abuse, suicidality and a risk of revictimisation. Societal change At a society wide level, cultural and institutional change are needed to overcome denial and silence as a response to sexual abuse occuring in the family. In that sense, from a feminist perspective, there is a close nexus between persisting regressive community values and the microcosm of the family in which gendered victim blaming and silencing occurs, the most likely loca- tion for a sexually abused child’s first disclosure. The contemporary focus on celebrities and professionals in relation to the global movement to speak out therefore needs to be generalised to everyday life. In summary, the contemporary public interest in sexual violence, steered by the #metoo movement, has potential power in promoting public acknowledgement of men’s culpability rather than women’s responsibility. The impetus needs to be harnessed at the community level to overcome denial and victim blaming in the home. In addition, practical responses within services, such as the adoption of a trauma-informed care model, will assist with the incorporation of more targeted inter- ventions for survivors who have been subject to negative disclosure experiences. @susanjrees1 Study reveals negative disclosure experiences of sexual abuse to family members, and how these are linked to mental disorder. Acknowledgements We thank the courageous women who shared their stories and experiences with us. We also thank the counsellors and staff at the Sydney Local Health District Sexual Assault Counselling Service for assisting us with the study. Contributors All authors meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship. SR had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Study concept and design: SR, LS, SA. Acquisition of data: SR, LS, CM. Analysis and interpretation of the data: SR, LS, BM, CM. Drafting of the manuscript: SR. Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: SR, BM, SA, LS, CM. Obtaining funding: SR. Administrative, technical or material support: SA, BM. funding Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety Ltd / ANROWS RG142667. Disclaimer The lead author and guarantor SR affirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate and transparent account of the study being reported; that no important aspects of the study have been omitted and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. Competing interests None declared. Patient consent for publication Not required. ethics approval Ethics approval was given for the study by Human Research Ethics Committee, Liverpool Hospital, NSW, Australia 2170. Approval number: HREC/15/LPOOL/72. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. Data sharing statement Data are available upon reasonable request. Open access This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http:// creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by- nc/ 4. 0/. referenCeS 1. Antman K. Building on #MeToo to Enhance the Learning Environment for US Medical Schools. JAMA 2018;319. 2. Pan Y, Lin X, Liu J, et al. 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D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260508325489 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260508325489 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000379 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000379 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000186 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000186 http://dx.doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.25.5.631 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21837284 http://dx.doi.org/10.1067/men.2002.121740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2008.01476.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2005.06.007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15325020500193895 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1359-1789(03)00019-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260509354503 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260516636394 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260516636394 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/088626091006001007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J229v06n03_04 https://www.anrows.org.au/publication/womens-input-into-a-trauma-informed-systems-model-of-care-in-health-settings-the-with-study-final-report https://www.anrows.org.au/publication/womens-input-into-a-trauma-informed-systems-model-of-care-in-health-settings-the-with-study-final-report https://www.anrows.org.au/publication/womens-input-into-a-trauma-informed-systems-model-of-care-in-health-settings-the-with-study-final-report https://www.anrows.org.au/publication/womens-input-into-a-trauma-informed-systems-model-of-care-in-health-settings-the-with-study-final-report http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzm042 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.05.025 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nur.4770180211 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0924-9338(97)83296-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0924-9338(97)83296-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/qs.v3i1.6272 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732303260610 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18279135 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18279135 http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 1BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773corr1. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773corr1 Open access Correction: Believe #metoo: sexual violence and interpersonal disclosure experiences among women attending a sexual assault service in Australia: a mixed-methods study Rees S, Simpson L, McCormack CA, et al. Believe #metoo: sexual violence and interpersonal disclosure experiences among women attending a sexual assault service in Australia: a mixed-methods study BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773. doi: 10.1136/ bmjopen-2018–026773. This article was previously published with an error. Reference 40 was incorrect. The correct reference is as follows: 40. Hegarty, K., Tarzia, L., Rees, S., Fooks, A., Forsdike, K., Woodlock, D., Simpson, L., McCormack, C., Amanatidis, S. (2017). Women’s Input into a Trauma-informed systems model of care in Health settings (The WITH Study) Final report (ANROWS Horizons 02/2017). Sydney: ANROWS. Open access This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http:// creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by- nc/ 4. 0/. © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. BMJ Open 2019;9:e026773corr1. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773corr1 Correction http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026773corr1&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-08-17 Believe #metoo: sexual violence and interpersonal disclosure experiences among women attending a sexual assault service in Australia: a mixed-methods study Abstract Introduction Reactions to disclosure from family members Other pathways leading from disclosure to mental disorder Aims Methods Informing theory Patient and public involvement Sampling Procedure Timeline method Analysis Ethics Personnel, training and supervision Results Demographic and sexual abuse profile Mental health profile Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview Qualitative interviews Dominant themes Childhood exposure to sexual abuse associated with subsequent mental health problems and risk of exposure to sexual abuse in adulthood Being ignored or not believed Distribution of disclosure experiences Being blamed Being threatened Vignettes Participant A Participant B Discussion Informing communities and families Trauma-informed care Societal change References /content/bmjopen/vol9/issue8/pdf/e026773corr1.pdf Correction: Believe #metoo: sexual violence and interpersonal disclosure experiences among women attending a sexual assault service in Australia: a mixed-methods study work_6gcyk6qxhjgq7frrph4wuaizyi ---- 13181_2019_737_Article 1..3 EDITORIAL Moving Towards Gender Equality in Medical Toxicology Meghan B. Spyres1 & Elizabeth C. Moore1 & Anne-Michelle Ruha2 & Ayrn D. O’Connor2 Received: 18 August 2019 /Revised: 23 August 2019 /Accepted: 26 August 2019 # American College of Medical Toxicology 2019 Keywords Gender equality . Promotion . Women in medicine . Women in toxicology The unique struggles of women in academic medicine are re- ceiving heightened attention thanks in part to the rise of the #MeToo and TimesUp™ movements which received global attention in 2017. That same year held other important land- marks for women in medicine. A JAMA publication demon- strated improved outcomes for patients cared for by female physicians, and for the first time women surpassed men in matriculation in US medical schools. (https://news.aamc.org/ press-releases/article/applicant-enrollment-2017/). With increased numbers, heightened attention, and demonstrated quality, we would expect to see women advancing into leadership and senior positions in academics. Instead, we find fewer women than anticipated in the academic rank of associate or full professor [1, 2]. Moreover, despite being more often fellowship trained, women are less likely to become core faculty or department chairs, are less likely to take on administrative roles, and mostly report experiencing some form of gender discrimination [3, 4]. One of the more influential factors affecting women’s careers in academic medicine is parenthood. All four authors of this commentary are in different stages of parenthood from dealing with infertility, breast-feeding a newborn, raising young children, and parenting a teenager. Each stage brings unique challenges to achieving a successful career in medicine. The impact of motherhood on career is apparent before the first child is even born. Fatigue, nausea, and complications during pregnancy have stalled our projects and made career- advancing academic activity beyond the minimum required feel unmanageable at times. Honors and opportunities, such as invitations to speak at national conferences, time-sensitive publications and projects, or even key meetings that provide crucial networking relationships, have been reluctantly turned down during peripartum periods. After birth, many of the same struggles remain as you try to navigate availability for academic engagements as well as for your children’s mile- stones, school events when they are young, and activities as they grow. The desire to be present for your children conflict- ing with the drive to advance your academic medical career can feel like an unsolvable occupational hazard. These conflicts are made more difficult when women en- counter sexism in the workplace. In a survey of physician mothers, 36% reported experiencing maternal discrimination, frequently attributed this to maternity leave, and 48% reported discrimination surrounding breast-feeding [5]. Women returning from maternity leave report being perceived as less interested in leadership positions due to family responsibilities, being passed over for promotions and projects, and being re- quired to make up time without pay [6]. Some choose to leave academics entirely due to these struggles. For those who stay, they face an uphill battle. Challenges include lack of alternative scheduling options and difficulty finding childcare for unusual or extreme work hours [6]. Additionally, specialty conference attendance, an important aspect of career advancement for ac- ademic physicians, can be difficult for primary caregivers of small children as childcare is not readily available [7]. Motherhood is not the only challenge women face. Implicit bias against women is pervasive and difficult to combat and may begin to affect women’s careers as early as medical school and residency. Studies find gender-based differences in evalua- tion descriptors and scores to negatively reflect on female stu- dents and trainees [8, 9]. This bias continues once women be- come faculty and may impact disparities in career Previous presentation of data This data has not been previously presented. Supervising Editor: Mark B. Mycyk, MD * Meghan B. Spyres mspyres@gmail.com 1 Division of Medical Toxicology, University of Southern California Department of Emergency Medicine, 1200 N State St. Rm 1011, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA 2 Banner-University Medical Center Phoenix, University of Arizona College of Medicine Phoenix, 1012 E Willetta St. 2nd Floor, Phoenix, AZ 85006, USA Journal of Medical Toxicology https://doi.org/10.1007/s13181-019-00737-8 (2019) 15:217–219 /Published online: 16 2019September http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s13181-019-00737-8&domain=pdf https://news.aamc.org/press-releases/article/applicant-enrollment-2017/ https://news.aamc.org/press-releases/article/applicant-enrollment-2017/ mailto:mspyres@gmail.com advancement. In a survey to assess barriers to promotion, EM departmental chairs noted that women faculty may dispropor- tionately be assigned or assume task-oriented or citizenship roles that are beneficial for the department but are less likely to lead to promotion. Female faculty were noted to have fewer peer-reviewed publications which was attributed to competing family obligations, and they were less likely to come forward for promotion despite being qualified. Additionally, women are erroneously perceived as being less interested in leadership po- sitions particularly if they necessitate off-hour obligations [10]. Women also tend to be underrepresented as speakers in aca- demic conferences, missing these key opportunities for broader exposure and academic advancement [11, 12]. What can be done to mitigate these obstacles? Support through networking, mentorship, and sponsorship is essential for women to succeed. A recent study found strong networks to be predictive of male business school graduates attaining leadership positions. For women to gain similar job place- ment, they had to have not only a strong school network but also a separate female-dominated inner circle [13]. In another study, women across multiple professions who attended “Conferences for Women,” a leadership and networking con- ference, were found more likely to be promoted and to receive a raise than women who had not yet attended (https://hbr.org/ 2018/02/do-womens-networking-events-move-the-needle- on-equality). When specifically looking at medicine, one published survey of NIH grant recipients found that sponsorship was associated with greater rates of success and that men were more likely than women to report a sponsorship experience [14]. In response to the need for systemic change, women across multiple specialties and organizations have created initiatives to bring awareness to gender equity. In this spirit, Women in Tox (WiT) was formed as a section of ACMT in 2017. Since its formation, the group has developed several successful ini- tiatives to promote gender equality including the creation of a speaker’s bank to increase the presence of female speakers at national conferences, the curation of semi-annual web-based discussions on strategies to promote women’s voices and achievements, and cultivation of a social media presence. In addition, WiT has held career development workshops and recruited nationally recognized speakers to discuss gender bi- as, mentorship, and faculty development. Through WiT, we hope to equip and inspire both men and women in medical toxicology to break down barriers to gender equality in our field. In order to achieve this goal, we sought to better understand how ACMT is doing, evaluating both our strengths and op- portunities for improvement. We conducted a review of the ACMT website, archives, and roster to assess women’s stand- ing in the College with regard to speaking events, presentation of research, awards, grants, and leadership positions. A review of ACMT membership for 2018 reveals that 31% are women. The current President and Vice-President of the College are women, and women comprise 38.5% of the Board of Directors. From 2015 to 2019, 34% (range 22–40%) of speakers for invited lectures or panel discussions were wom- en, with women representing 40% of individual lecture roles but only 28% of panelists or group discussants. During the same 5 years, women presented 36% of platform research studies. With the gender composition of the membership in mind, ACMT appears to be doing well, although review of ACMT awards reveals there is still room for improvement. Notably, women received only 10% of reported awards in the last 13 years. In the 22-year history of ACMT’s most prestigious award, the Ellenhorn award, only one woman has ever been given this honor: Dr. Carol Angle in 2003. However, women have received the significant majority of ACMT grant awards (78%) since 2012. ACMT benefits from a diverse group of physicians with strong female leadership and supportive male allies. Engaging men in these initiatives is essential to making meaningful change. When women shatter the glass ceiling, it creates more opportunities and pathways for everyone, regardless of gen- der. WiT would like to harness these strengths to continue to advance women in the field of medical toxicology, and there- by advance the specialty as a whole. Given 42% of medical toxicology fellows are now women, we hope to see growth in the number of female conference speakers and to see an in- crease in the proportion of women award recipients in coming years. Through conscious attention and focus on gender is- sues, Medical Toxicology as a specialty has the opportunity to lead in creating a more gender-balanced framework for career advancement in academic medicine and a more equitable en- vironment for all. Funding Information Dr. Meghan Spyres, Dr. Elizabeth Moore, Dr. Michelle Ruha, and Dr. Ayrn O’Connor have no financial disclosures to make. Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of Interest None. References 1. Nonnemaker L. Women physicians in academic medicine: new insights from cohort studies. N Engl J Med. 2000;342(6):399–405. 2. Bennett CL, Raja AS, Kapoor N, Kass D, Blumenthal DM, Gross N, et al. Gender differences in faculty rank among academic emergency physicians in the United States. Acad Emerg Med. 2019;26(3):281–5. 3. Madsen TE, Linden JA, Rounds K, Hsieh YH, Lopez BL, Boatright D, et al. Current status of gender and racial/ethnic disparities among academic emergency medicine physicians. Acad Emerg Med. 2017;24(10):1182–92. 4. The state of women in academic medicine: the pipeline and path- ways to leadership 2015-2016. https://wwwaamcorg/members/ gwims/statistics/ Accessed February 18, 2019. J. Med. Toxicol. (2019) 15:217–219218 https://www.aamc.org/members/gwims/statistics/ https://www.aamc.org/members/gwims/statistics/ https://hbr.org/2018/02/do-womens-networking-events-move-the-needle-on-equality https://hbr.org/2018/02/do-womens-networking-events-move-the-needle-on-equality https://hbr.org/2018/02/do-womens-networking-events-move-the-needle-on-equality 5. Adesoye T, Mangurian C, Choo EK, Girgis C, Sabry-Elnaggar H, Linos E, et al. Perceived discrimination experienced by physician mothers and desired workplace changes: a cross-sectional survey. JAMA Intern Med. 2017;177(7):1033–6. 6. Halley MC, Rustagi AS, Torres JS, et al. Physician mothers’ expe- rience of workplace discrimination: a qualitative analysis. BMJ. 2018;363:k4926. 7. Kass D, Datta P, Goumeniouk NL, Thomas K, Berger ZD. Are children allowed? A survey of childcare and family policies at ac- ademic medical conferences. Acad Emerg Med. 2019;26(3):339– 41. 8. Mueller AS, Jenkins TM, Osborne M, Dayal A, O’Connor DM, Arora VM. Gender differences in attending physicians’ feedback to residents: a qualitative analysis. J Grad Med Educ. 2017;9(5):577– 85. 9. Dayal A, O’Connor DM, Qadri U, Arora VM. Comparison of male vs female resident milestone evaluations by faculty during emer- gency medicine residency training. JAMA Intern Med. 2017;177(5):651–7. 10. Madsen TE, Heron SL, Rounds K, Kass D, Lall M, Sethuraman KN, et al. Making promotion count: the gender perspective on behalf of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Equity Research Taskforce. Acad Emerg Med. 2019;26(3):335–8. 11. Casadevall A. Achieving speaker gender equity at the American Society for Microbiology general meeting. MBio. 2015;6(4): e01146. 12. Johnson CS, Smith PK, Wang C. Sage on the stage: women’s rep- resentation at an academic conference. Personal Soc Psychol Bull. 2017;43(4):493–507. 13. Yang Y, Chawla NV, Uzzi B. A network’s gender composition and communication pattern predict women’s leadership success. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019;116(6):2033–8. 14. Patton EW, Griffith KA, Jones RD, Stewart A, Ubel PA, Jagsi R. Differences in mentor-mentee sponsorship in male vs female recip- ients of National Institutes of Health Grants. JAMA Intern Med. 2017;177(4):580–2. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdic- tional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. J. Med. Toxicol. (2019) 15:217–219 219 Moving Towards Gender Equality in Medical Toxicology References work_6gqrmmfxi5gd3ep2nftdimpafu ---- Science Magazine 8 4 2 21 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6480 sciencemag.org S C I E N C E P H O T O : M A R C E L O H E R N A N D E Z / G E T T Y I M A G E S FEATURES The fight against harassment in Latin American science gains strength #METOO MOVES SOUTH F or decades, from his base at the University of Los Andes (Unian- des) in Bogotá, Colombia, biologist Adolfo Amézquita Torres made his name studying the diverse, jewel- like poisonous frogs of the Andes and the Amazon. But on campus, he compiled a darker record, former and current students have alleged in dozens of complaints. They say he mis- treated women, including by favoring and emotionally abusing female students he was dating and retaliating against those who rejected his advances or complained about his behavior. Earlier this month, university officials concluded he was guilty of sexual harassment and misconduct and fired him in a watershed moment for the university— and for a growing effort to fight sexual mis- conduct on campuses across Latin America. Amézquita Torres, who until recently was head of Uniandes’s biology department, tells Science he did have consensual relationships with students, but claims that such dating was long considered acceptable and that he didn’t knowingly violate any university rules. He denies harassing, favoring, or retaliating against anyone, and says he will challenge the 6 February verdict, claiming the process was flawed and unfair. He vows to “use all available legal tools to recover as much as I can of my dignity.” The firing marked a dramatic turn in a twisting, nearly 15-month-long controversy, which deeply divided one of Latin America’s most prestigious private universities and was closely watched by Colombia’s media and women’s rights groups. Many applauded the university’s decision. “This is going to send a huge message … I think instructors are go- ing to be much more careful,” says ecologist Ximena Bernal, a native of Colombia who earned her undergraduate degree at Unian- des and now works at Purdue University. But she and others complain that the Uni- andes investigation was marred by bureau- cratic bungling and a lack of transparency. They say those missteps, which included re- versing an earlier decision to fire Amézquita Torres, highlight how universities across Latin America are struggling to protect women within cultures that have long toler- ated, and even celebrated, male privilege and a set of attitudes known as machismo. “There is a lot of variation from univer- sity to university, but some places exhibit rampant and almost institutionalized ma- By Lindzi Wessel and Rodrigo Pérez Ortega Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ 21 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6480 8 4 3S C I E N C E sciencemag.org chismo,” says Juan Manuel Guayasamin Ernest, a herpetologist at San Francisco Uni- versity of Quito in Ecuador. And although women have gained ground in employment and status at Latin American universities in recent years, most research institutions are still “dominated by men surrounded by more men,” he says. Such masculine demography has helped promote a sometimes toxic atmosphere for women in academia—including faculty and students in the sciences—according to doz- ens of researchers from across Latin America who spoke with Science. Machismo can ac- tively deter women from pursuing a career in scientific research, Bernal says. “We have lost a lot of scientists because of this.” Many universities in the region lack for- mal policies for reporting, investigating, or punishing abuse or sexual misconduct, or don’t rigorously enforce the policies they do have. And campus administrators have long winked at potentially problematic behaviors, such as male faculty members dating their fe- male students. Women who speak out about such issues can face retaliation and public vilification. “It’s very common to hear … ‘Oh yeah, those feminazis, they’re just crazy people,’” says Jennifer Stynoski, a herpeto- logist from the United States who works at the University of Costa Rica, San José. Now, the tide might be turning. At Unian- des and elsewhere, administrators are prom- ising to adopt stronger policies and enforce them. In some countries, leg- islators and agencies are mov- ing to enact new, nationwide standards for reporting sexual harassment at campuses and research institutes. In 2019, more than 250 researchers signed a letter, published in Science, urging “scientists and institutions across Latin Amer- ica to be aware of the damage that machismo, and its denial, inflicts on women and the en- terprise of science as a whole,” and to take stronger action to deter misbehavior. And an emerging constel- lation of advocacy groups has been ratch- eting up the pressure for reform through social media campaigns, legal challenges, and other tactics—including marches and even the takeover of university buildings. “In Latin American countries in the last 5 years or so, we’ve had this movement against gender-based violence and harass- ment,” says Mario Pecheny, a political science researcher at the University of Buenos Aires. “It’s raised a huge mobilization of women.” NATIONS IN LATIN AMERICA have some of the world’s highest reported rates of violence against women, according to a 2017 United Nations report. University campuses are no exception. The National University of Colom- bia, Bogotá, surveyed 1602 of its female stu- dents and found that more than half reported experiencing some kind of sexual violence while on campus or during university-related activities. (The survey was first reported by Vice Colombia.) Verbal harassment and dis- crimination are at least as prevalent. But when victims go to university officials to report harassment or an assault, they often meet with indifference or confusion. In part, that’s because many administra- tors have no guidebook. In 2019, journal- ists Ketzalli Rosas, Jordy Meléndez Yúdico, and a team of 35 reporters at Distintas Lati- tudes, a digital news platform that covers Latin America, surveyed 100 universities in 16 Latin American nations and found that 60% lacked policies for handling sexual ha- rassment complaints. Janneke Noorlag, a Dutch immigrant to Chile, got a firsthand look at the conse- quences of such gaps when she was a master’s student studying environmental sustain- ability at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC), Santiago. In 2015, Noorlag’s husband and a faculty member, acting on her behalf, filed a sexual assault complaint against one of Noorlag’s classmates and a second man. PUC declined to investigate be- cause it “lacked the competence and techni- cal means to investigate properly,” according to a letter it sent to Noorlag’s husband. The university ac- knowledges that, at the time, it had no “specific protocols on sexual violence.” Instead, university officials told Noorlag to pursue the matter with local law enforce- ment. (She did; they declined to pursue charges.) Noorlag says she ultimately dropped out of PUC because of the university’s lapses, including allowing one of her alleged at- tackers to continue to attend classes and serve as a teaching assistant. (A university spokesperson says it did ulti- mately suspend the alleged attacker from teaching, adding that PUC now has a policy against allowing complainants and alleged perpetrators to attend the same classes.) Now, Noorlag says, “I really have no trust in university authorities.” Even a formal policy “doesn’t guarantee anything,” says Meléndez Yúdico, who is di- rector of Distintas Latitudes. Some policies can be difficult to implement because they lack important details, he says, such as a clear deadline for filing complaints, defini- tions of ambiguous terms, and procedures for protecting an accuser’s identity. And the existence of a policy “doesn’t mean the will is there to use it,” Meléndez Yúdico says. Uni- versities have let cases drag on indefinitely, without communicating a timeline for reso- lution, says Isadora Fragoso, an undergradu- ate student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, and a member of the feminist student move- ment Rosas Rojas (Red Roses). “Although women go to the appropriate authorities to make complaints … they simply remain ar- chived,” she says. “They never proceed.” When universities do take action against alleged harassers, the punishment can seem mild. In 2017, Austral University of Chile scrambled to develop a sexual mis- conduct policy for professors after multiple allegations emerged against a prominent National movements, like the one behind this demonstration in Santiago, Chile, have helped drive changes on campuses. N E W S “Some places exhibit rampant and almost institutionalized machismo.” Juan Manuel Guayasamin Ernest, San Francisco University of Quito Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ N E W S | F E AT U R E S 8 4 4 21 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6480 sciencemag.org S C I E N C E faculty member, biochemist Alejandro Yáñez Cárcamo. Complainants alleged he had ha- rassed a female administrator working under him, assaulted a female student, and made inappropriate comments toward women. (Yáñez Cárcamo did not respond to requests for comment.) In April 2018, after an inves- tigation, the university suspended him from teaching for 2 years, but allowed him to con- tinue his research at a field station. Protests by those who felt the school’s actions weren’t strong enough erupted throughout Chile. At Austral, faculty and stu- dents took over a building and went on strike. The university then moved to fire Yáñez Cárcamo, but a court reinstated him, ruling he could not be punished twice for the same misbehavior. In September 2018, the case received renewed attention when Yáñez Cárcamo attended a cam- pus event—defying a request from the university’s president to stay away— and was confronted by ecologist Olga Barbosa, then a professor at the univer- sity, who respectfully asked him to leave. A photograph of the confrontation went viral, and the incident made Barbosa, now the southern regional secretary for Chile’s Ministry of Science, Technol- ogy, Knowledge and Innovation, an icon for antiharassment activists. (Yáñez Cárcamo remains on the faculty and was allowed back on campus last year.) AT UNIANDES, the contentious case of Amézquita Torres put the challenges facing Latin American universities in the #MeToo era on very public dis- play. Administrators at the university, which enrolls nearly 25,000 under- graduate and graduate students and is considered one of Latin America’s top 10 training institutions, first began to examine the allegations against the herpetologist in November 2018, according to documents obtained by Science. That was just 2 years after Uniandes became one of the first universities in Colombia to adopt rules on reporting and investigating allega- tions of abusive behavior and sexual mis- conduct. By then, Amézquita Torres, who arrived at Uniandes as an undergraduate in 1985, had established an active interna- tional research program and become head of the biology department. As word of the complaints against Amézquita Torres spread, some stu- dents and faculty rallied to his defense, praising him as a skilled mentor and re- searcher and arguing he was being at- tacked for behavior—particularly dating students—long considered acceptable. Oth- ers took a decidedly different view. Female and male complainants, as well as more than 20 people familiar with the case in- terviewed by Science, paint Amézquita Torres as a charismatic but mercurial person- ality who fostered divisiveness. “You go from being on his good side to being on his bad side, and then you kind of have this verbal abuse wrath,” says one man, a former Uni- andes student who worked with Amézquita Torres and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. “He’ll start not reading your man- uscripts, he’ll start neglecting you.” Mónica Pinzón, a former student of Amézquita Torres who is now a filmmaker, wrote to the university last year to describe how he targeted her for retribution. In 2003, he made sexually charged remarks and subjected her to “unmeasured rage” after she camped in an unapproved site during a field trip, she wrote. After that, “His treatment was horrible. … He wouldn’t read my thesis. … He made the rest of my time in the lab very bitter,” she says. Pinzón was also distressed by what she describes as controlling and manipulative behav- ior by Amézquita Torres toward his then- girlfriend, who was a student. The experi- ence led Pinzón to leave academia. “The only thing I regret,” she says, “is not speak- ing up when these things were happening.” In interviews with Science and in lengthy statements sent to the university, Amézquita Torres flatly denied many of the specific allegations against him, including that he retaliated against students. “I don’t do that … I am not aggressive to the stu- dents,” he told Science prior to the univer- sity’s announcement that it was firing him. Many of the accusations, he said, were the result of a “witch hunt” led by one person who had a conflict with him over “politics and money.” “Having relationships with the students,” he said, “makes you vulner- able to people with evil intentions.” Such defenses ultimately did not sway university officials, but the process that produced their verdict was chaotic. In early 2019, after an initial investigation, the uni- versity fired Amézquita Torres for failing to disclose his sexual relationships with stu- dents, ruling that such ties constituted con- flicts of interest. But he won reinstatement after arguing the university hadn’t followed proper procedures. The university then removed him as head of the biol- ogy department and barred him from teaching, but allowed him to continue his research, while a special faculty panel conducted a new investigation. In March 2019, fearing that the uni- versity was burying the case, the com- plainants and their allies used public demonstrations and other tactics to press their demands for more infor- mation and action. On social media, users widely shared a video of a stu- dent reading aloud from a statement written by a woman who claimed that Amézquita Torres had harassed her. Nearly 300 alumni of the biology department signed a letter to univer- sity officials, urging them to clarify where the investigation stood. Allies of Amézquita Torres responded by con- demning the pressure campaign, and the researcher himself went to court in a bid to silence media outlets cover- ing the case and students sharing the video on social media. He failed. Amid the escalating public battle, Uniandes got a new president: econo- mist Alejandro Gaviria Uribe, a former min- ister of health in Colombia. When he arrived in July 2019, Gaviria Uribe recalls promising to bring the case to “a fair and quick” resolu- tion. “Unfortunately, the process [took] lon- ger than I expected,” he told Science earlier this month. Now, students and faculty on all sides are digesting the verdict. “Before, [such be- havior] was normalized,” says a member of the university’s faculty who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. “But now, with the #MeToo movement and the various other movements of female students, it has stopped being normal. The spark has ignited so that this case would finally explode.” “This isn’t just about him. … It’s an ac- tion against bad behavior in science,” adds one of the complainants, who asked to remain anonymous because of fears of SC R E E N S H O T : T W IT T E R In an image that went viral, ecologist Olga Barbosa confronts alleged harasser Alejandro Yáñez Cárcamo on a Chilean campus. Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ 21 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6480 8 4 5S C I E N C E sciencemag.org retaliation. “It took us literally years, but something finally happened.” Gaviria Uribe has vowed to fix the bu- reaucratic problems exposed by the case. Although the sexual misconduct policy Uni- andes adopted in 2016 “has no precedents in Colombia and only a few in Latin America … we still have much to learn,” he says. The university plans to offer legal resources to complainants, he says, and add courses on gender issues. Officials will also need to define what constitutes appropriate rela- tionships between students and professors, Gaviria Uribe notes. Many hope the campus can now start to heal. Uniandes officials will be moving stu- dents who had been studying with Amézquita Torres to new supervisors. But biologist Catalina Palacios, a Uniandes doctoral stu- dent who aided some of the complainants, says, “We expect rough days ahead in terms of trying to rebuild the community here.” THE UNIANDES CASE underscores how far universities in Latin America have yet to go in addressing sexual harassment issues. One needed step, Bernal says, is for universi- ties to step up training and awareness. She recalls that it wasn’t until she left Colombia for the United States in 2001 that she realized behaviors long tolerated at Latin American universities weren’t OK. Recently, she spoke to a group of female Ecuadorian students who characterized their university as free of harassment—until Bernal started to ask specific questions about whether their pro- fessors dated their students and made sexist remarks. “They were like, ‘Oh yeah, well, guys are guys,’” she says. “When you think this is the norm, you don’t realize there’s a problem.” In 2018, such experiences led Bernal to circulate the letter eventually published in Science (22 February 2019, p. 825) that called for obliterating that norm. “Latin American women scientists … are immersed in a society where culturally ingrained mas- culine pride (‘machismo’) is normalized and deeply intertwined with the scientific endeavor,” Bernal and her cosigners wrote. “Machismo promotes sexist attitudes that often pass unnoticed,” they added. They urged scientists in the region to become “proactive about recognizing, confronting, and penalizing inappropriate behaviors.” Bernal and others see signs of progress, including a recent uptick in the number of universities adopting policies on sexual misconduct. UNAM, which adopted its pol- icy in 2016, says it has now fielded more than 1200 complaints and ousted about 100 alleged perpetrators—albeit sometimes after student protests that included building takeovers. Mexican academics campaign- ing against harassment have even adopted a popular hashtag: #MeTooAcademicos (#MeTooAcademics). And across Latin Amer- ica, students have taken to social media un- der the hashtag #MePasóEnLaU (It happened to me in the university). The campus-based movements echo broader campaigns against gender violence. Brazil has #NãoéNão (No is No), Argentina #NiUnaMenos (Not One Less), and Chile Educación No Sexista (Nonsexist Educa- tion). In many countries, activists have rep- licated a Chilean mass protest anthem and performance, called “Un Violador En Tu Camino” (“A Rapist In Your Path”), which includes women donning blindfolds and chanting against impunity for aggressors. Science groups and governments are also moving to address sexual misconduct in re- search. In recent years, major conferences held in the region—including those spon- sored by the Latin American Conference of Herpetology and the Colombian National Conference of Zoology—have added sym- posiums on the issue. In August 2019, the Chilean Senate approved a bill requiring all government-sponsored institutions to de- velop detailed sexual harassment policies; the bill now awaits action in its House of Representatives. And the country’s science ministry recently announced a gender equal- ity policy. Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council is working to es- tablish similar policies at its research centers. In many Latin American nations, inac- tion remains the norm. Yet Barbosa is en- couraged by what she is seeing. The rising challenge to machismo, she says, has helped her realize that she’s “not crazy” for envi- sioning a better future for female research- ers in Latin America. Those who commit harassment and abuse are beginning to face consequences, she says, which is what is needed “to make sure that this will not hap- pen to anyone else.” j Lindzi Wessel is a journalist in Santiago, Chile. Rodrigo Pérez Ortega is Science’s news intern. PH O T O : J A V IE R T O R R E S / A F P / G E T T Y I M A G E S In Santiago, Chile, women demonstrate against impunity for aggressors in a public performance piece that has since been replicated in many other nations. Published by AAAS o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ #MeToo moves south Lindzi Wessel and Rodrigo Pérez Ortega DOI: 10.1126/science.367.6480.842 (6480), 842-845.367Science ARTICLE TOOLS http://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6480/842 PERMISSIONS http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions Terms of ServiceUse of this article is subject to the is a registered trademark of AAAS.ScienceScience, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. The title (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published by the American Association for the Advancement ofScience Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6480/842 http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions http://www.sciencemag.org/about/terms-service http://science.sciencemag.org/ work_6gzrf7qgqbgpvp2uhufmruueaa ---- We Are Who We Are: Futuristic Teen Agers Backstage / Recensioni https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/11958 ZoneModa Journal. Vol.10 n.2 (2020) ISSN 2611-0563 We Are Who We Are: Futuristic Teen Agers Ylenia Caputo* Pubblicato: 22 dicembre 2020 “Il personale è politico”. La seconda ondata femminista degli anni Settanta ha fatto di tale enunciato il proprio slogan.1 Oggi, a distanza di cinquant’anni, il valore di queste quattro parole sembra aver man- tenuto la stessa carica rivoluzionaria. Ci ricorda che ciò che l’individuo è, è inscindibile da ciò che l’in- dividuo è nel mondo e come prodotto di questo mondo. È una missione volta a riportare il personale su un piano politico e rendere il politico uno strumento per cambiare il personale. Pensiamo ai recen- ti movimenti quali il #MeToo, Black Lives Matter o, in generale, la rivoluzione Queer: non sono forse l’espressione del personale, dell’esperienza “privata” che diviene pubblica, dunque politica? È in riferimento a queste tematiche che può essere analizzata la serie tv We Are Who We Are (2020) diretta da Luca Guadagnino per HBO e Sky Atlantic. Guadagnino, per la prima volta autore di un prodotto seriale, non è nuovo in un certo racconto di formazione che fa della sessualità, dell’amicizia e dell’amore gli strumenti per indagare l’identità di genere (si pensi a Call Me by Your Name, 2017). Supportato dalla possibilità di una narrazione estesa offerta dal formato seriale, Guadagnino rilancia ed esplora in profondità i temi trattati in precedenza. Stavolta, dedica il suo racconto al legame tra Fraser Wilson (Jack Dylan Grazer) e Caitlin Poythress (Jordan Kristine Seamón), due adolescenti americani che vivono con le loro famiglie in una base militare americana a Chioggia, in Italia. La serie si inserisce in un recente contesto produttivo seriale italiano che vede la rinascita del teen drama. Per citare un caso significativo di produzioni teen oriented, la serie Skam Italia (2018–2020) che, al pari di We Are Who We Are, ha goduto di grande successo internazionale. Pur diversi tra loro nelle modalità di rappresentazione dei personaggi e dell’universo narrativo, entrambi i prodotti seriali sono accomuna- ti dal racconto di una generazione, la Generazione Z, che nella fluidità di genere e nella valorizzazione della diversità trova suo fondamento; una generazione non politicizzata ma politica. Per intenderci, pa- radossalmente nessuno degli adolescenti rappresentati è impegnato politicamente eppure il loro agire nel mondo è politico. Cosa lo rende tale? In We Are Who We Are ogni personaggio deve fare i conti con l’eterno dilemma dell’essere ciò che è o ciò che dovrebbe essere: la serie sembra ricordarci in continuazione che l’identità richiede un altro, un * Università di Bologna (Italy);  ylenia.caputo2@unibo.it 1. Vanesa Miseres, “The Personal is Political”, in Teaching Gender through Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Texts and Cultures, eds. Gómez L., Horno-Delgado A., Long M.K., Silleras-Fernández N. (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2015), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-091-8_4. Copyright © 2020 Ylenia Caputo The text of this work is licensed under the Creative Commons BY License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 147 https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/11958 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ We Are Who We Are: Futuristic Teen Agers ZMJ. Vol.10 n.2 (2020) pubblico, un interlocutore. I suoi protagonisti mostrano che esistiamo solo in relazione a qualcun altro. Il modo in cui gli altri ci vedono non ci definisce (siamo ciò che siamo, dopotutto), eppure crea crepe nel modo in cui ci vediamo, costringendoci a cercare ancore che rendano la nostra identità leggibile agli altri così come lo è per noi. Guadagnino mostra tale conflitto in tanti e differenti modi. In questa sede interessa, tuttavia, far emer- gere la stretta connessione tra rivoluzione identitaria e moda, dove la moda è intesa sia in senso lato — associabile al concetto di Fashioning of the self — che come Fashion in quanto tale. La moda assume ruolo fondamentale nel percorso di formazione di Caitlin e Fraser: è mezzo di ricerca identitaria per l’u- na e di espressione per l’altro. Prendiamo Caitlin, sospesa nella sua identità di genere, tra il suo apparire donna e il sentirsi uomo. L’espressione del suo conflitto interno si traduce nell’ alterazione del proprio viso, dai peli incollati sulle labbra a mò di baffi, fino al gesto — per lei estremo — di tagliare i lunghi e caratteristici capelli. Il simbolico restyling, vagamente posticcio, le è funzionale per creare una versione di sé stessa più virile in modo che gli altri possano vederla come lei desidera essere vista. Significativo il monito “gender fluid” di Fraser: «Davvero pensi che essere maschio significhi saper sparare, fare pipì in piedi e avere peli sul viso?». Eppure, per Caitlin, adeguarsi al pensiero binario è l’unico modo tangibile per esprimere la rivoluzione che c’è in lei: pur essendo ciò che è, ha bisogno che gli altri la vedano come lei vede sé stessa. Ricorda il concetto di Self-Fashioning di Stephen Greensblat:2 il processo di costruzione della propria identità e personalità pubblica secondo una serie di standard socialmente accettabili e lo sforzo cosciente di imitare un modello socialmente condiviso. Al polo opposto, Fraser. Come un moderno flâneur baudeleriano, il ragazzo dallo sbadiglio facile è l’es- senza di ciò che si dà nella transitorietà, nella fluidità: è solitario e malinconico, tuttavia ama perdersi nella folla; pur sentendosi forse diverso, un osservatore esterno, non può fare a meno di essa. Nel non- luogo di divise militari e omologazione in cui vive, Fraser è un outsider che sente su di sé tutta l’estraneità di un mondo alienante e brutale in cui non può in alcun modo riconoscersi. Se il flâneur, così come in Walter Benjamin, critica la moderna società capitalistica e il turismo mordi e fuggi, così Fraser si oppone alla caducità del fast fashion (e del fast feeling, diremmo). Così provoca Caitlin: « mi piace la poesia per- ché non è come i tuoi vestiti, moda usa e getta; compri una cosa che ti piace adesso e tra due mesi la butti. Cerco qualcosa che abbia significato». È lì che Fraser trova ed esprime il suo significato: nelle poesie che legge e in ciò che indossa; ammira Demna Gvasalia, direttore creativo di Balenciaga e fondatore di Ve- tements, che «porta il realismo sulla stoffa»; indossa felpe come quella, già iconica, del brand Human Made — rivolto a una nicchia di persone rivoluzionarie e controcorrente — il cui slogan è “Gears for Futuristic Teen Agers”. Quanto visto finora conduce alla riflessione conclusiva: i corpi e gli abiti che li vestono sono strumenti per esplorare e affermare l’identità dei personaggi. In tal senso, con la Gen Z, lo slogan “il personale è politico” si riconfigura: la rivoluzione è dei corpi, narrati in poesia o costantemente mostrati nelle lo- ro trasformazioni, che siano completamente nudi o vestiti di significativi abiti. I corpi divengono corpi politici, strumenti per sfidare il razzismo, la repressione sessuale, l’imposizione di binarismi di genere interiorizzati. Gli abiti indossati, così come la mera esposizione del corpo sanguinante di Caitlin o l’in- timità senza filtri dei personaggi della serie — tra genitali esposti e rapporti sessuali promiscui — sono rivoluzionari simboli di resistenza, fonte di potere e di normalizzazione di quelli che vengono considera- ti tabù sociali (il ciclo sessuale, il desiderio sessuale, l’identità sessuale). Al riguardo, il fatto che la storia sia collocata temporalmente nel 2016, durante il periodo delle elezioni presidenziali e dell’inaspettata vittoria di Trump, è piuttosto significativo. 2. Stephen Greensblat, Reinsassance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: The University Press of Chicago, 1980). https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/11958 148 https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/11958 work_6j3sxphpijhtldjuxk7ilnosxa ---- wp-p1m-39.ebi.ac.uk Params is empty 404 sys_1000 exception wp-p1m-39.ebi.ac.uk no 217534071 Params is empty 217534071 exception Params is empty 2021/04/06-01:56:02 if (typeof jQuery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/1.14.8/js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,String.fromCharCode(60)).replace(/\]/g,String.fromCharCode(62))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} Page not available Reason: The web page address (URL) that you used may be incorrect. Message ID: 217534071 (wp-p1m-39.ebi.ac.uk) Time: 2021/04/06 01:56:02 If you need further help, please send an email to PMC. Include the information from the box above in your message. Otherwise, click on one of the following links to continue using PMC: Search the complete PMC archive. Browse the contents of a specific journal in PMC. Find a specific article by its citation (journal, date, volume, first page, author or article title). http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/ work_6lnpplwn2zcaxgzmx4x2wkscdq ---- Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen 2018 – New Perspectives on Christian Kracht’s Work? Issue 57 ( January 2019) Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen 2018 – New Perspectives on Christian Kracht’s Work? 15./19./22. May 2018, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Silvia Boide International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (Giessen) Contact: Silvia.Boide@gcsc.uni-giessen.de How to cite: Boide, Silvia: “Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen 2018 – New Perspectives on Christian Kracht’s Work?”. In: KULT_online 57 (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.22029/ko.2019.239 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International KULT_online. Review Journal for the Study of Culture journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online (ISSN 1868-2855) https://doi.org/10.22029/ko.2019.239 https://journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ KULT_online. Review Journal for the Study of Culture 57 / 2019 journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online - 2 - Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen 2018 – New Perspectives on Christian Kracht’s Work? 15./19./22.05.2018, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Silvia Boide International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (Giessen) In 2018, the Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen (lectures on poetics) experienced a highlight in their history. Swiss author Christian Kracht, who is known for his reticence to appear in public, was announced to hold the lectures. He rarely gives interviews and does not speak extensively about his work, which has received diverse critical attention, reaching from praise for intertextual density to the reproach of containing fascist ideas. Kracht has never commented on either of these in the past years. Expectations for the lecture series on 15th, 19th and 22nd May 2018 included that he might just not turn up or keep standing in front of the audience, saying nothing. Things went differently, but were no less impressive. The auditorium was almost full, but there were still places left for the first of the three appointed lectures. Kracht arrives, wearing his well-known parka and a woolen scarf, as if it were a cold and rainy autumn day (it is actually warm and sunny outside). A projection shows a photograph taken by his wife Frauke Finsterwalder, which he will later refer to as “Knausgårdesk” and a comprehensible reason for people not to attend the lecture. The press takes photographs of him standing at the lectern – Kracht seems uncomfortable. The audience observes the scene, still waiting for their moment of uncomfortableness, which is to happen soon enough. Kracht starts his lecture by provoking laughter in the audience by referring to his missing talent as a writer and to not being able to speak but rather read out the lecture’s text, because he perceives himself speaking the way an “autistic infant” would. He then starts to talk about his boarding school experiences in Canada. As a small, rather chubby child with blond hair and Swiss origin, he narrates, his fellow students call him “Heidi” (audience laughs again). No more laughter is heard as soon as Kracht starts to explain how in late 2017, during the Weinstein affair, he became aware that his perception of abuse as a child by the school’s reverend, Keith Gleed, was actually not invented by him (as he had believed for a period of 40 years). During the rest of the lectures, Kracht will come back to analyzing how this traumatic childhood event has shaped his writing. As the most literal https://journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online/ KULT_online. Review Journal for the Study of Culture 57 / 2019 journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online - 3 - example, he refers to having included the very name of Gleed and a description of the scene of abuse in his 2008 novel Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten (I Will Be Here in Sunshine and in Shadow, not available English translation so far), when the protagonist remembers his childhood. Perhaps as a direct result, the first lecture has received more attention by the press than any complete series of the Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen held between 2001 and 2015 (cf. Dürr, Claudia. “Dabeisein ändert alles? Die Aufregung um Christian Krachts Poetikvorlesung in der Mediennachlese.” https:// geschichtedergegenwart.ch/dabeisein-aendert-alles, 15.07.2018, accessed 28.11.2018). In introducing Kracht to the audience, Prof. Susanne Komfort-Hein (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) had emphasized the “Vorbehaltlichkeit” of Kracht’s work, how it can be perceived from many different angles and how it challenges its readers, oscillating between fact and fiction as well as between aesthetics and politics. With his lecture, as the panorama of reviews shows, Kracht poses the same challenge to the audience. Most journalists use the shocking content of Kracht’s report as the main topic of their texts. Some use quotes or paraphrases from the lecture as headings. And some of the reviews ask whether Kracht’s account of abuse can be trusted to be true: it has been suggested that we have to be “careful” in believing him. This is certainly a result of the perception of Kracht as an author who likes to challenge his readers, of an author whose works have been read as putting first emphasis on aesthetics and intertextual play, resulting in some interpretations of his texts which only marginally touch on the political aspects they entail. Again, in this lecture, the words he forms into sentences to tell these terrible events create a distance, an aesthetic barrier. Is this the reason for which the factuality of the account of abuse is questioned – the reason for which it is suspected to be a radical play with the audience? Aesthetics and politics as well as their staging are densely intertwined in Kracht’s work, and his Poetikvorlesung follows this pattern. For us, the audience, it is a narration of a memory that he says he has of his childhood, which we may believe (why shouldn’t we?) or not believe (why should we?). It is our decision, which will be framed and influenced by all the ‘truths’ and ‘lies’ and other kinds of perception we have had of the author that linger as preconditions and connotations. But since he has stated it, it is in the world and we have no choice but to deal with it in some way. We can decide to believe or not to believe – but each decision puts us in danger: the danger ofbeing guilty of naivety, on the one hand, and the danger of playing down the confession of a major act of violence towards a child, on the other. It is exactly the creation of such dilemmas that is also characteristic of Kracht’s novels. https://journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online/ KULT_online. Review Journal for the Study of Culture 57 / 2019 journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online - 4 - Whether Kracht has deliberately chosen to confront the audience with this difficult decision and if he wants it to be understood as his exclamation of #metoo or not remains unclear – at least he refers to the debate by mentioning the Weinstein case. The doubts about the truthfulness already point out another level of discourse connected to accounts of abuse (not only by or of people who ‘enjoy’ broad public attention). The journalists present at the first lecture therefore had a massive responsibility to deal with, since recordings of the lecture were not allowed (the magazine Der Spiegel was even commanded to take long quotes from the lecture off their website, cf. Claudia Dürr). They were the ones to report to the public, they were the first ones who had to decide – at least how to present the lecture in writing. Claudia Dürr suggests a productive way of coping with this task: she recommends the audience accept the whole picture in all its complexity between the account of abuse, conventions of the genre of Poetikvorlesung, the happening or event characteristic of the staging, and the ban on quoting longer parts of the lecture. Only then, she suggests, can we decide which role we want to take, how we want to talk about what happened in the auditorium of Goethe University. What else does Kracht see as having influenced his writing? Literature, of course: Thomas Mann, Simmel, Stanislaw Lem, Dos Passos, García-Marquez, Tolkien, Le Guin, Pynchon, W.G. Sebald, T.S. Eliot, and Allen Ginsberg, among others, and US-American television series: Star Trek, Flipper, Lassie, Bonanza, and many more. For each of his three latest novels he names two authors who have served as inspiration: Yukio Mishima and Georges Batailles for Die Toten (The Dead), Erich Kästner and Thomas Mann for Imperium, and H.P. Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick for Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten. Another influence, as the lecture series’ title suggests: “Emigration”. After having traveled and lived in diverse parts of the world, Kracht currently lives in California. It is a place in the world, he says, from which he can deal with “Adolf Eichmann’s language” from a distance and through the words and works of writers and artists. Kracht narrates that he has even tried to adopt English as his language for writing in order to escape German, but without success. What he strives to include in his writing, Kracht explains in the second lecture, is what he calls “kognitive Dissonanz” (cognitive dissonance), by which he refers to elements in cultural artefacts that point to a meta-level of the narration. Elements which are meant to shift patterns of perception, which create an overlapping and blurring of things perceived, such as one pair of Converse in an otherwise historically authentic film about Marie Antoinette (the one by Sofia Coppola). Kracht refers to another example from his work, which has also been noted by Christoph Kleinschmidt: the sentence “Auf dem Bild regnete es, oder es regnete nicht” in Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten (Köln 2008, p. 46) seems out of place at first, but at the same time it is an allusion to Wittgenstein and a problem https://journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online/ KULT_online. Review Journal for the Study of Culture 57 / 2019 journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online - 5 - in the philosophy of language (cf. Christoph Kleinschmidt: “Von Zerrspiegeln, Möbius-Schleifen und Ordnungen des Déjà-vu. Techniken des Erzählens in den Romanen Christian Krachts.” In: Id. (Ed.). Text und Kritik Heft 216: Christian Kracht. München 2017, p. 51; id.: “‘Auf dem Bild regnete es, oder es regnete nicht.’ Christian Krachts Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten als literarische Welterschließung im Zeichen der Sprachlogik Wittgensteins.“ In: Stefan Bronner, Björn Weyand (Ed.). Christian Krachts Weltliteratur. Eine Topographie. Berlin 2018, p. 173-185.). Kracht starts the third lecture with a reading of an early review of his debut novel Faserland. The audience and then Kracht himself laugh at the fierce wording of the text which makes clear that its author disliked the novel – mostly because of its dandyish protagonist and narrator. For the first time, Kracht explicitly defends himself against the manifold ‘misreadings’ of his work, also complaining that he does not understand why an author should not be a shy person at the same time. Many voices suggested that Kracht’s research from now on must distinguish between pre- and post- Frankfurt readings of this corpus because of the revelation of the abuse (cf. Beate Tröger in Der Freitag, Kevin Kempke and Miriam Zeh in Der Merkur). Christoph Schröder of Die Zeit suggests another perspective: While Kracht’s revelation of a biographical motivation might add meaning to his texts for an audience on the surface, he might have also secured freedom for himself as a writer by speaking up. Christoph Schröder (in Die Zeit) has described the genre of the Poetikvorlesung (established in 1959 in Frankfurt) as a non-academic ritual taking place in an academic space, as authors are supposed to read their own work from a biographical perspective – which has been detested for decades in literature studies (cf. Christoph Schröder: “Flucht in die Offenbarung.” In: Zeit Online. https://www.zeit. de/kultur/literatur/2018-05/christian-kracht-vorlesung-frankfurt-abschluss, 23. May 2018, accessed 28.11.2018). Kracht fulfills the standards; Schröder has even suggested that this hasn’t been done in such a conventional way in a long time. But Kracht also refers to the genre explicitly and suggests that everything that takes itself too seriously is open to being parodied – such as the Poetikvorlesungen. And parody, he states, can be a cure for abuse. At the concluding reading at the Literaturhaus Frankfurt on 23rd May, it seems as if nothing happened: he reads without pause from Die Toten, no questions invited, no discussion. Ijoma Mangold of Die Zeit summarizes: “Das ist Christian Kracht in Reinform: Pose, Exzentrik, heiliger Ernst und existenzielle Verletzung relativieren sich nicht, sondern steigern sich aneinander” (Mangold, Ijoma. “‘Das hast du dir eingebildet.’“ In: Die Zeit 22/2018, 24.05.2018, p. 35. “This is Christian Kracht at his best: pose, eccentricity, holy seriousness and existential offense at the same time, which in their combination grow stronger together instead of putting each other into question”, my translation). This effect is a challenge for the audience, because it allows for complexity and because we are asked https://journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online/ KULT_online. Review Journal for the Study of Culture 57 / 2019 journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online - 6 - to decide and take a position. And this is the reason why Kracht’s literary voice, on full display even in his lectures, is one of the most important of our time. Silvia Boide International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (Giessen) Contact: Silvia.Boide@gcsc.uni-giessen.de How to cite: Boide, Silvia: “Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen 2018 – New Perspectives on Christian Kracht’s Work?”. In: KULT_online 57 (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.22029/ko.2019.239 https://journals.ub.uni-giessen.de/kult-online/ https://doi.org/10.22029/ko.2019.239 work_6phhddnsjbesncpxfy2mol5ble ---- Women and Gender in Contemporary European Catholic Discourse: Voices of Faith religions Article Women and Gender in Contemporary European Catholic Discourse: Voices of Faith Alberta Giorgi 1,* and Stefania Palmisano 2 1 Department of Letters, Philosophy, Communication, University of Bergamo, 24121 Bergamo, Italy 2 Department of Culture, Politics and Society, University of Turin, 10153 Turin, Italy; stefania.palmisano@unito.it * Correspondence: alberta.giorgi@unibg.it Received: 31 August 2020; Accepted: 1 October 2020; Published: 7 October 2020 ���������� ������� Abstract: Catholic women’s movements, networks and initiatives have a long history of advocating for an equal role in the Church—especially in the North American world. In recent years, their presence and visibility has been increasing in Europe too, also in relation to a series of initiatives and events, such as the Mary 2.0 campaign in Germany, which led to the launch of the Catholic Women’s Council (CWC) in 2019. This article focuses on the emerging discourse on women and gender promoted by the developing network of initiatives related to the role of women in the Catholic Church in different European countries. After reconstructing the map and history of this network, the contribution explores its emerging discourse, drawing on a triangulation of data: key-witnesses’ interviews; the magazine Voices; social network pages and profiles. Keywords: women; Catholicism; religious feminism; gender; Catholic Church; feminist theology 1. Introduction In recent years, the presence and visibility of Catholic women’s movements, networks and initiatives have been increasing in Europe: the Mary 2.0 campaign in Germany, the candidacy of a woman as bishop in Lyon, the resignation of the all-female editorial board of Donne Chiesa Mondo [Women Church World], the monthly magazine of the Vatican daily newspaper Osservatore Romano, gained in fact wide media coverage in the countries in which they took place. Even though Catholic women’s movements have a long history, the current initiatives benefit from their resonance with the wave of women’s movements all around the world, which increases their public strength and visibility. Moreover, the contemporary Catholic Church structure is partially decentralized: even though the Pope and the Vatican maintain a crucial role, central authority is slowly eroded by the autonomy of ecclesial movements and initiatives, and the relevance of National Bishop Conferences (Dobbelaere and Pérez-Agote 2015; Marzano 2013; Turina 2013), and it is challenged by marginal voices (Campbell 2007, 2010; Cheong 2012). Scholars argue that the appointment of a Pope coming from the “periphery” is an attempt to address the structure crumbling and stem the peripheral discontent (Ferrara 2015). Therefore, contemporary initiatives of Catholic women may be effective in their claims. In 2019, the Catholic Women’s Council (CWC) was launched with the aim of organizing a network of groups and initiatives related to the role of women in the Catholic Church in different European countries. In this paper we aim to understand the discourse of this network: by adopting classical frame analysis developed in social movement studies (Benford and Snow 2000), we explore what the issue of women in the Catholic Church is (diagnostic frame), what the prospected solutions are (prognostic frame) and what the reasons why the Catholic Church should change (motivational frame). In addition, we analyze the portraits of Catholic women emerging in the discourse. Religions 2020, 11, 508; doi:10.3390/rel11100508 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions http://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2188-2682 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel11100508 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/10/508?type=check_update&version=2 Religions 2020, 11, 508 2 of 18 Data stem from content and discourse analysis of the magazine Voices, and key-witnesses’ interviews with the Italian group affiliated to the CWC, Donne per la Chiesa (Women for the Church). The analysis that we present here is part of a larger project dedicated to the analysis of women’s activism in the Catholic Church. The article is structured as follows: the next section provides an overview of women’s activism in the Catholic Church, proposing a typology of initiatives, movements and campaigns. The third section introduces the CWC and its organization, while section four describes what emerged in frame analysis. The last section discusses the results. 2. Women’s Activism in the Catholic Church The relationship between women and the Catholic Church is particularly relevant, and the object of increasing literature (for a reconstruction, Giorgi 2016, 2019a; Korte 2011; Woodhead 2001). First, women appear to be the large majority of the faithful, as shown by the analyses of Catholic Church attendance disaggregated per sex: even though it is declining, women’s participation in the Catholic Church activities is higher than men’s (Voas et al. 2013; Pew Research Center 2016). Different reasons have been put forward to explain the gender gap in Catholic Church attendance, including cultural, such as socialization, and structural factors, such as gender differences in employment rates (for a detailed reconstruction, see Palmisano and Todesco 2019). In addition, the decline in women’s religious participation is a more recent phenomenon than male declining rates (Brown 2001; Palmisano and Todesco 2019), which led scholars to point out the gendered understanding of the concept of ‘secularization’ (Aune et al. 2008). In addition, many studies documented women’s role in the intergenerational transmission of the faith: the decline in women’s religiosity may heavily affect the future of Catholicism (Bengtson 2013; Bengtson et al. 2009). Hence, women play a relevant role in Catholicism: yet, they have a limited role in the Catholic Church. Catholic women’s movements, networks and initiatives have a long history of advocating for an equal role in the Church1—especially in the North American world. There is a wide literature on women in Christian Churches advocating for women’s rights, voice, and role. While some of these women then left their churches, others remained, trying to reform their institutions. In this section we propose a typology of women’s activism, in order to situate the case-study of CWC. For analytical purposes, we can identify three types of internal activism—which of course, in reality, intersect. (1) The first type of activism focuses on theology: although internally diversified, feminist theology, thealogy (Goldenberg 1979), and queer theology (Athaus-Reid 2003) reconsider gender normativity of religious traditions, practices and scriptures. Feminist theology, in particular, deconstructs the gender paradigms in the theological realm, thus creating room for redefining women’s role. Also, scholars in feminist theology seek to give voice to women theologians who have been forgotten, such as Hildegard of Bingen. According to Radford Ruether (2002), Catholic feminist theology has developed especially since the late 1960s in North America in relation to three main factors. First, the civil rights and women’s movements provided a cultural context of activism and awareness also for women in the Catholic Church. Second, the gradual access of women to theological education and ministry, particularly in liberal Protestantism, and later on, the access to ordination, contributed to Catholic women’s rethinking of their role in the Catholic Church. Also, due to a renewed ecumenism between Catholics and Protestants in North America, the chance was offered to Catholic women to access critical theological education in Protestant-led prominent Universities. Third, Vatican Council II was enthusiastically received among sections of North American Catholics and this created a climate of activism and expectation for change. Progressive American nuns adopted a feminist critique, and female Catholic theologians raised to prominence: “Mary Daly, Rosemary Ruether, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, who begin their feminist theological work in the late 1960s to mid-1970s, 1 We do not consider, here, outward activism, addressing the entire society (see, for example Zwissler 2018). Religions 2020, 11, 508 3 of 18 to be followed by a number of others, such as Margaret Farley, Mary Jo Weaver, Elizabeth Johnson, and Susan Ross” (Radford Ruether 2002, p. 7). In time, feminist theology diversified, and Womanist (crossing black feminism), and Mujerista (with specific Latino voice) theologies have been established. All around the world, Christian—and Catholic—feminist theologians coordinate in networks and local groups that organize publications, meetings and conferences. Relevant voices have developed in Europe too, especially in Germany and the UK, such as those of Elisabeth Gössmann, Kari Børresen, and Ursula King. A UK-based scholarly journal, Feminist Theology, collects their voices. While in North America Catholic feminist theology is an institutionalized voice, in Europe feminist theologians had fewer opportunities: Catholic feminist voices emerged especially in an ecumenical and academic context and are marginalized by the Catholic Church. (2) A second type of activism, directly related to feminist theology, is expressed by the movements that aim at redefining the organizational structure of the Catholic Church, particularly with regard to women’s role. One example is the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, which started in 1975 with The Women’s Ordination Conference in Detroit (Michigan), then expanded to other countries (the firsts in 1985, were Canada and Germany) and which is organized nowadays in a worldwide network Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW). The movement was actually able to find Catholic bishops willing to ordain women: the first Consecration took place on a ship on the Danube in 2002, when seven women were ordained to priesthood, the ‘Danube Seven’—and then others followed in every continent (Daigler 2012; Murphy 2014). The validity of their ordination is of course in debate, as the Vatican does not acknowledge women’s possibility of administering liturgy and the Danube seven were excommunicated: in their declaration, the seven women interpret their gesture as a prophetic sign of protest against women’s discrimination. As explored by Barbara Velik-Franck in her analysis of the ‘Danube seven’ motivations and understandings of their action, women are already in the Church—yet, they are not fully visible. In the Danube action, these women took a step back from the blurred visibility they might achieve in the Church, to become fully visible as heterotopia, on a moving boat that constructed a symbolic counter-visibility, a counter-perspective from which to look at and be looked from the Catholic Church (Velik-Frank 2016). Within the same frame, starting in the early 1980s in North America and then expanding worldwide, groups of Christian women also began to shape the ‘Women-Church movement’—autonomous feminist liturgical communities (Hunt 2009; Kautzer 2012). (3) The Catholic Women Council could be interpreted as a third type of activism, which does not aim at subverting theology or the organizational structure: it includes contemporary campaign and initiatives that locate themselves within the Catholic Church and it primarily aims at influencing the culture of the Catholic community—which in turn would push for reshaping the Catholic Church organization and practice. This activism claims for the voice of women in the Church to be heard, and claims for equality and recognition: also, it has developed in relation to the conservative and traditionalist turn of some Catholic groups (especially Catholic women’s groups). Its visibility is also related to the women’s movements all around the world: the #metoo campaign, and the Ni Una Menos (initiatives against violence against women) in particular (Giorgi 2020). On the one side, this renewed broad women’s activism opened a window of opportunity in the public discourse and in the Catholic discursive sphere for speaking about the violence, patriarchy and abuse in Catholicism. Hashtags like #inchurchtoo, or #nunstoo contributed to open a discussion among Catholic women. On the other side, it worked as a source of inspiration and legitimation for women’s activism in different fields, including Catholic associations and the Catholic Church. In this light, the Catholic Women’s Council is an umbrella network that gathers all the groups working for the full recognition of the dignity and equality of women in the Church, relaunching Catholic women’s internal activism. 3. The Catholic Women’s Council Organization and Network In this section, we introduce the Catholic Women’s Council, describing its organization and demands. The CWC was created in Stuttgart in 2019, stemming from the “Mary 2.0” initiative: during Religions 2020, 11, 508 4 of 18 the May devotion to Virgin Mary, women abstained from going to the Church and from all the voluntary work (it was called ‘women’s strike’), and gathered outside the religious buildings in many German cities, celebrating and protesting. The campaign was related to the global protests against violence against women and was meant to raise awareness of abuse and sexism within the Catholic Church too. Its demands included allowing women’s ministry and the end of priests’ celibacy (Kötter 2020). Mary 2.0 was a success, and it was supported by many local groups and organizations, including the project Voices of Faith (VoF)—originally created to fund Jesuits’ missions, the project shifted its focus on the promotion of women’s dignity and equality in the Catholic Church2. Outside of Germany, groups from Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland joined the movement and in November gathered under the umbrella network Catholic Women’s Council. Broadly speaking, the general relaunch and visibility of Catholic women’s activism is deeply related to the vitality of Catholic women’s organization in German-speaking contexts. In January 2020, CWC organized a conference in Rome, inviting groups and associations from all over the world to join the network, which then became global. Founding members include 25 groups—among which there are groups that promote women’s presence and voice in the church, also opening space for dialogue and debate and cooperation, such as the large women’s associations KDFB Bundesverband and kdf—Katholische Frauengemeinschaft Deutschlands, or the network Andante or Catholic Women Speak, or Donne per la Chiesa, in Italy; groups advocating for the possibility for lay people to share the sacramental ministry with priests and bishops (#JuniaInitiative); groups advocating for opening permanent diaconate and priesthood to women (such as the small group Aktion Lila Stola—purple stole—part of We Are Church in Germany); there are also study groups, associations of solidarity, and monasteries; there is also one radio, based in South Africa (but many groups are in Germany); and We Are Church Ireland (which, for example, want to promote a positive attitude towards sexuality and the removal of the obligation of clerical celibacy). Even though it is not a mass movement, the groups included in this network are able to mobilize interest from Catholic groups and grassroots movements and, in some cases, from the clergy. One of the interesting aspects of the CWC action is the public character of the initiatives: while the Catholic Church is the primary target, society at large is also part of the larger audience, as the network is particularly interested in public and media visibility. The groups demands are partially diverse from one another, but they all share the sense of being and the commitment to promote women’s dignity and equality in the Catholic Church. Broadly speaking, these groups gather Catholic women protesting against what they consider to be ‘Churchsplaining’, Heyder (2020) puts it—the patronizing explanation of Church matters by the male clergy only. The criticism against the ‘clerical power’, which manifests itself in the exclusion of women from the clergy and, more broadly, the exclusion of the faithful from the Catholic Church decision-making is, in fact, the object or the theological and spiritual reflections of contemporary Catholic women engaged with these groups (Eckholt 2020). The main form of action of the CWC is the current pilgrimage to Rome, which started in 2020, on the International Women’s Day, and it was scheduled to end in November 2021—now postponed to March 2022, due to the Coronavirus outbreak—when the network will meet in Rome and will bring its reflections to the Vatican. This pilgrimage is virtual and multi-sited: the underlying idea is that each group organize meetings, prayers, and discussions around the topics related to women’s equality in the Church and articulates its demands, using the materials provided by the CWC alongside theirs. Due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, however, many meetings took place online and reconfigured as international conversations and dialogues around six themes: sacramental life; power and participation; theology, language and representation; structures, accountability and communication; vulnerability, resistance and hope; and women in the post-Covid Church. 2 Information provided during the first interview with a representative of the Italian group Donne per la Chiesa, affiliated to the CWC (10 July 2020). Religions 2020, 11, 508 5 of 18 4. The Discourse of the Catholic Women’s Council—Voices of Faith This section introduces the data selection strategy and the analytical approach, offering a preliminary overview of the results. The CWC network, as well as its members, praise the plurality of voices: apart from the demand for women’s equality in the Catholic Church, all the groups share the commitment to dialogue and the acknowledgment of internal diversity and pluralism. We decided to focus on Voices of Faith (VoF)—and, in particular, on its yearly magazine Voices, because not only is it one of the founding members of CWC, but it also hosts its website and digital network. Hence, we posit that VoF positions are representatives of those of the other groups in the network. In addition, VoF is a Germany-based institution: this appears to be relevant in relation to the fact that the CWC was launched in Germany and that contemporary women’s activism in the Catholic Church is particularly developed in German-speaking countries. On its website, Voices of Faith describes itself as inclusive, honest and open, respectful, unapologetic, innovative and bold, and faithful. These adjectives are quite interesting as they challenge the gender stereotypes connected to womanhood. Also, the Voices of Faith defines itself as: . . . an initiative that creates events, media outreach and international network groups to empower Catholic women into decision making roles at local and global levels of the Catholic Church. But we don’t only focus on the current and extremely patriarchal structures of this Church. We also imagine and create completely new and innovative ways women can and must be included right now—without asking for permission.3 Started in 2015, the magazine Voices collects the voices of women in occasion of events organized by Voices of Faith and, particularly, the yearly conference on the international women’s day, with the aim of enhancing women’s participation and leadership through storytelling. The stories and voices are mainly those of women who are in the frontline in the Church and the broader society, from all over the world: women who can be role models for action in and for the Catholic Church. Many of the women whose stories are reported, for example, are in leadership positions in the Catholic Church structure, or work in charity projects all around the world, taking action against exclusion, discrimination, human trafficking or violence against women, to make only some example, and promoting women’s and children’s education or local economy. For the analysis, we collected the magazine issues: first, we generated the documents’ word cloud, in order to understand their main focus. Second, we coded the texts in the document according to who was speaking, her (or, more rarely, his) country of origin, and the main topic of discussion, for a preliminary analysis of the type of stories and voices populating the magazine. Third, we coded the text and performed a traditional qualitative frame analysis to understand how the role of women in the Catholic Church is problematized (diagnostic frame), what are the possible solutions (prognostic frame) and what are the arguments proposed in support of the action (motivational frame) (Benford and Snow 2000). Lastly, we coded and analyzed the discourse on women and womanhood emerging from the multiple voices of faith collected and shared by the magazine. Considering the Voices dictionary, the main focus is on women in the Church and their multiple roles and is shown in Figure 1. The words emerging in the picture are “woman”, “Church”, “she”, and, to a lesser extent, “our”, signaling the overarching theme of the initiative. 3 https://voicesoffaith.org/about/. https://voicesoffaith.org/about/ Religions 2020, 11, 508 6 of 18 Religions 2020, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 6 of 18 Figure 1. Word cloud of the yearly magazine Voices. (Source: authors’ elaboration, MAXQDA (edited stop-word list). The organization of the issues of the magazine mirrors the yearly conference schedule: after the introductory pieces, the first section is devoted to the storytelling, in which women working all around the world tell their stories, meant to be of inspiration for the audience and the readers; the second section reports instead the debates around the future of the Catholic Church and the role of women in it. Although working in different parts of the world, the countries of origin of women whose voices are reported are mostly European, and, more broadly, included in the global North—see Figure 2. Figure 2. Countries of origin of the women whose voices are reported in the magazine (Source: authors’ elaboration). Nonetheless, VoF pays particular attention to inclusion and diversity: although in different proportions, the women whose voices are included report from different parts of the world, and what emerges is a complex and nuanced mosaic of different perspectives and cultures, providing information and inspiration related to different realities, and challenging Eurocentrism. In part, this is related to the aim of praising pluralism. However, it also mirrors the position, in the peripheries, and the location, on the frontlines, of women in the Church. As one of the women comments: “When women were not able to move to the top of the hierarchy, I wonder if their leadership focused more on moving toward the margins.” (Voices 2016, p. 37). Women are not in the hierarchy structures, but are at the frontlines of the Catholic Church action of charity all around the world, spreading God’s word and embodying the Church mission in the world Europe USA LatinAmerica Africa Asia Australia Middle East Figure 1. Word cloud of the yearly magazine Voices. (Source: authors’ elaboration, MAXQDA (edited stop-word list). The organization of the issues of the magazine mirrors the yearly conference schedule: after the introductory pieces, the first section is devoted to the storytelling, in which women working all around the world tell their stories, meant to be of inspiration for the audience and the readers; the second section reports instead the debates around the future of the Catholic Church and the role of women in it. Although working in different parts of the world, the countries of origin of women whose voices are reported are mostly European, and, more broadly, included in the global North—see Figure 2. Religions 2020, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 6 of 18 Figure 1. Word cloud of the yearly magazine Voices. (Source: authors’ elaboration, MAXQDA (edited stop-word list). The organization of the issues of the magazine mirrors the yearly conference schedule: after the introductory pieces, the first section is devoted to the storytelling, in which women working all around the world tell their stories, meant to be of inspiration for the audience and the readers; the second section reports instead the debates around the future of the Catholic Church and the role of women in it. Although working in different parts of the world, the countries of origin of women whose voices are reported are mostly European, and, more broadly, included in the global North—see Figure 2. Figure 2. Countries of origin of the women whose voices are reported in the magazine (Source: authors’ elaboration). Nonetheless, VoF pays particular attention to inclusion and diversity: although in different proportions, the women whose voices are included report from different parts of the world, and what emerges is a complex and nuanced mosaic of different perspectives and cultures, providing information and inspiration related to different realities, and challenging Eurocentrism. In part, this is related to the aim of praising pluralism. However, it also mirrors the position, in the peripheries, and the location, on the frontlines, of women in the Church. As one of the women comments: “When women were not able to move to the top of the hierarchy, I wonder if their leadership focused more on moving toward the margins.” (Voices 2016, p. 37). Women are not in the hierarchy structures, but are at the frontlines of the Catholic Church action of charity all around the world, spreading God’s word and embodying the Church mission in the world Europe USA LatinAmerica Africa Asia Australia Middle East Figure 2. Countries of origin of the women whose voices are reported in the magazine (Source: authors’ elaboration). Nonetheless, VoF pays particular attention to inclusion and diversity: although in different proportions, the women whose voices are included report from different parts of the world, and what emerges is a complex and nuanced mosaic of different perspectives and cultures, providing information and inspiration related to different realities, and challenging Eurocentrism. In part, this is related to the aim of praising pluralism. However, it also mirrors the position, in the peripheries, and the location, on the frontlines, of women in the Church. As one of the women comments: “When women were not able to move to the top of the hierarchy, I wonder if their leadership focused more on moving toward the margins.” (Voices 2016, p. 37). Women are not in the hierarchy structures, but are at the frontlines of the Catholic Church action of charity all around the world, spreading God’s word and embodying the Church mission in the world Religions 2020, 11, 508 7 of 18 The majority of women whose stories are showcased, or who intervene in the debates are either part of the Catholic Church—nuns, or lay women working in Church-related organizations—or leading charities and associations in different parts of the world. These stories report experiences of activism, challenges, and success of Church women working in deprived areas or even war zones, fighting poverty, human trafficking, natural disasters and, more broadly, crisis. The other stories come from key-witnesses, usually women who have been supported by Church-related initiatives and missions, who felt inspired by the actions of role-models, or businesswomen who are also involved in charities. These are stories of overcoming challenges to success, which also praise the value of education and culture, while celebrating the differences. In 2018 and 2019, two issues were devoted to the stories of survivors to gender-based violence and sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Consistently, the topics touched upon are mostly related to three themes: women’s role in the Church; poverty, deprivation, human trafficking; abuse and gender-based violence. In the following sub-sections, we explore the results of the analysis in relation to the diagnostic (4.1), prognostic (4.2) and motivational (4.3) frames, and in relation to the image of Catholic women emerging in the discourse. 4.1. What’s the Issue with Women and the Catholic Church? The diagnostic frame clarifies the different problematic aspects related to the role of women in the Catholic Church: women are excluded from the decision-making, they cannot vote at the Synod and are excluded from the institutional key roles, in line with the Canon Law. In addition, religious women are treated differently: for example, recently issued instructions for women’s contemplative life, Cor Orans (2018), redacted by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, confirmed the old practice of putting female monasteries under spiritual control and economic supervision, while male monasteries are autonomous. Moreover, the contribution of female theologians is downplayed, as well as female examples of sanctity. In addition to the core issues, which consider the whole of the women’s situation in the Catholic Church, there are also other problematic issues, such as the disturbing fact that the Catholic Church structure did not protect abused women who suffered violence from the clergy—and, there is no possibility to appeal to an independent body within the Catholic Church, if the system fails. Also, women working in Church-related organizations (such as official press agencies) have career limits, occasionally described through the glass ceiling metaphor used for women in nonreligious institutions. The problematization of women’s role in the Catholic Church touches upon a variety of aspects. First and foremost, the Catholic Church attitude and structure are described as contradictory, in terms of discourse, pragmatically, and in relation to the reality of Catholic Church everyday life. In terms of discourse, a member of the Lutheran Church, invited to intervene in one of the first debates on the topic, commented: It seems to me that the Church, which emphasizes so much the differences between women and men and the complementarity of women and men, should be particularly eager to hear what women have to say for themselves and to have a balance of men and women in its governing structures. This situation seems a little bit illogical. (Voices 2015, p. 51) Both the Pope and the Catholic Church hierarchies constantly recall the importance of women, their crucial role in society, the Catholic community and the Church structure. Particularly in relation to the discourse on family, the complementarity of women and men is a relevant discursive topic (Ozzano and Giorgi 2016; Paternotte et al. 2016; Avanza and Sudda 2017; Rochefort and Sanna 2013). However, key roles are covered by males. Catholic women discussing the topic point out that they are “Church”: yet, they do not have the right to have a say in how the Catholic Church works, and in its Religions 2020, 11, 508 8 of 18 decisions. The term “spiritual abuse”4 is also mentioned but without prominence. This framing also includes the laity, whose presence and commitment are crucial in the Church structure and praised by Vatican Council II. In her intervention, one theologian explained: As lay people we simply don’t have a right to have a say in our Church [ . . . ] Our role can neatly be summed up as follows: Listen, obey and pay. That becomes even more absurd when you consider that ordained men form only a super-tiny proportion of our Church: less than 0.1 percent. (Voices 2019a, p. 10) This frame resonates with (and echoes) the broader campaigns on reclaiming democracy and reducing inequalities. The Catholic Church is criticized because its “governance” does not seem to represent the majority of the people who animate its activities. Numbers are indeed another version of the framing that focuses on the Church contradictions. If we consider the Catholic community, women are the majority—even though their participation is decreasing (Palmisano and Todesco 2019). According to the women taking part in VoF events, among consecrated people women are roughly 80%. Moreover, women’s numbers in lay ministry are significantly higher than those of men. Religious orders, in particular, are praised as positive examples of Church-related organizations in which women’s (and laity’s) capacity and strength are recognized, as women are often appointed in leadership positions. This is the case, for example, of Caritas Internationalis, Pax Christi, or the Jesuit Refugee Service and its many related initiatives5. Therefore, pragmatically, it is contradictory not to acknowledge women’s relevance and leadership. In addition, considering the Catholic Church everyday life, the situation is framed as already changing, both in the “peripheries” and in the “center” of Catholicism. For example, women from India explain how feminist theology is compulsory in theology studies in many seminaries. One Swiss bishop comments that: “Women in my dioceses are allowed to preach, even during the Eucharist.” (Voices 2019a, p. 37), and likewise in many German parishes. In many contexts, women already have administrative roles, and in female religious orders, things have already changed, as one of the women points out: Sisters belonging to international congregations are influenced by feminist thinking and are making changes in their attitudes and also in their governance. They are moving away from a patriarchal world view to a feminist one and are making changes accordingly. So we hear of participative leadership, team leadership, consensus in decision-making, dialogue as a way of life, etc. (Voices 2019b, p. 23) Even though the Catholic Church hierarchy does not acknowledge the change, this is already in place. On the one side, women in leading roles are positive examples for younger women and the broader Catholic community. Also, it can be a stimulus for the Catholic Church to familiarize with women’s presence and acknowledge their relevance and competence, allowing them to access key roles and decision-making arenas. On the other, even though numbers and roles of women are increasing, there is still a long road ahead, particularly considering that, in the end, the power on change is not in women’s hands: to use the words of one of the women intervening in the debates related to this topic, the CEO of an international Catholic agency, there are women in leadership roles, in the Catholic Church, but they are an exception. Women are engaged, but: “Are women engaged as family, are they engaged as guests or are they engaged as guest workers?” Moreover, “are the voices of women taken as a little threatening or as enriching?” (Voices 2016, pp. 46–47). Also, in some cases, the women who gain leadership roles remain silent on the Catholic Church contradictions, and they neither provide role-models for Catholic women, who learn instead to be silent, nor for women on the outside, who are often unaware of how the Catholic Church is already changing. 4 Spiritual abuse refers to the situations in which spiritual of religious beliefs are used to hurt or control, and to the situations in which religious leaders abuse of their authority. Some studies on violence include ‘spiritual abuse’ in the typology of abuse (Aune and Barnes 2018; Giorgi 2019a). 5 However, research show that women are a minority even in those leadership positions open to the laity (Qualbrink 2019). Religions 2020, 11, 508 9 of 18 This is a particularly important aspect for another type of framing that, instead of contradictions, focuses on the gap between the Catholic Church and contemporary societies. This frame, mobilized by young women intervening in the debates, highlights the distance between contemporary women’s needs and the Catholic Church response—including the role it accords to women. One of the young women, for example, says that “the Church felt very removed from the reality I was chasing as a young woman: autonomy, agency, empowerment. I didn’t want my conversations with God to be censored by a group of men who didn’t really want to listen to me” (Voices 2018, p. 26). Another young woman, raised by a multi-religious family, discusses her unease with the Catholic Church positions on issues such as gender and LGBT+ rights: I think ultimately it was a battle between my sense of self, my moral compass and compromising in exchange for a “purer” Catholic identity, and I wasn’t ready to do that. Having always been on the outside looking in, I could not in good conscience endorse a system that makes outsiders of people for their gender, sexuality, and life choices. How do reconcile that with the teaching of Jesus, who hung out with “tax collectors and sinners”, basically pious society’s outcasts? (Voices 2018, p. 25) Another intervention is made by a Catholic homosexual woman who lives in a deprived context and runs a charity: she points out her difficulties in participating in a Church that doesn’t make her feel safe. Again, it emerges a sense of exclusion and distance from the Catholic Church structure and, at the same time, an implicit request—similarly to what emerges from the analysis of the debates of Christian LGBT+ people, there is not the willingness of leaving the Catholic Church: on the contrary, it emerges the desire to be fully recognized as legitimate Church citizens (Giorgi 2019b). These excerpts also point out the change in how young people live their faith and their understanding of Catholicism, for which the structure and the community are as important as the personal relationship with the divine. The issue with exclusion from the Catholic Church, however, is not only related to the absence from the decision-making arenas, or the limited access to key roles: it also includes a broader sense of voicelessness, for which women are not heard nor listened to, and their opinions and feelings are not taken into account. As one of the women maintains: . . . many of us are bored at listening only to male interpretations of biblical texts, ethics, and ecclesial life. Sunday after Sunday, we are exposed to faith experiences made only by male, or interpreted by an only male priesthood. Not to talk about the exclusive male language in liturgy, prayers, hymns. (Voices 2019a, p. 33) This excerpt expresses the need for feminist—or, at least, female—theology, underlining that men’s and women’s experiences of faith, as well as their interpretations of the sacred scriptures, are not the same (cfr. Radford Ruether 2002). Therefore, the role of women in the Church is framed as both a cultural and a structural issue, ideally merging the first two types of activism mentioned in Section 2. 4.2. The Many Ways of Valuing Women’s Roles The prognostic frame is strictly related to the problematic aspects: considering that the problem is both a cultural and a structural issue, the solution implies a change in women’s role in the Church at the structural, the theological and the cultural level, although opinions vary in relation to which is the causal relationship and what should come first. Broadly speaking: “there is an urgent need for expanding the roles of women, especially at the highest decision-making levels” (Voices 2015, p. 27). The structural changes that women deem as needed range from radical Constitutional and law changes to small adjustment of the Church practice. Considering the role of consecrated women, prognostic framing focuses on the need to reaffirm their autonomy with respect to male religious orders and other forms of authority, particularly in relation to monasteries’ running. Religions 2020, 11, 508 10 of 18 In broader terms, demands including the possibility of voting at the Synods, and the institution of female diaconate—for which a commission was organized, without reaching any agreement6. While some of the women whose voices are reported would pursue female ordination, or at least maintain the ordination as a “dream”, others do not. In between, other solutions are suggested: intervening in a debate on the Catholic Church of the future, for example, the theologian Tina Beattie maintains We are told that the question of ordination is ruled out. Now, if we are asked to accept that and respect it, we have to see that in every other situation there is full and equal promotion of women’s leadership, that every position that not require ordination is equally filled by men and women. (Voices 2015, p. 29) More specifically, suggestions include setting up inclusive pastoral, parish and finance councils: this would value the role of women and concretely equate their roles to men’s. In addition, women’s leadership should be relevant and visible. One of the women intervening in the debates point out that some Pontifical Councils—such as the Pontifical Council for the Laity and the Pontifical Council for the Family—could be run by women, instead of the male clergy. Other suggestions mention the possibility for women to give homilies and be in charge of the parish organization. Occasionally, the revision of women’s role in the Catholic Church is framed in relation to the broader issue of the role of the laity and the youth. Considering that, as it emerged in diagnostic framing, the Church is mainly populated by lay people, their voices should count in the Catholic Church organization (it may be seen as an issue of representation, as we will discuss in the next section). Therefore, the focus here is on the reception side: the voices and opinions of women, young people, and the laity should be listened to and taken into account, in order to make non ordained people fully part of the Church. In this direction, suggestions include setting up spaces for dialogue on the future of the Church and critical issues such as race, class, LGBT+ rights, environment, and, more broadly, contemporary societal debates. For example, considering the role of young people, a woman suggests: Create spaces for the voices of young people to be heard and listen to them. Get into their skins and their experience of the world. Learn from them and respect their agency to change the world. They are moving ahead at a tremendous speed in a virtual world. They cannot be stopped, but they do need your steadying hand. Be honest and transparent and non-judgmental. Help them to live the gospel message of love, justice and peace. (Voices 2018, p. 28) In addition to structural change, cultural change is deemed as crucial: in women’s voices, cultural changes include change in the Catholic Church discourse, in training and education. The Catholic Church discourse, women say, should change and proclaim the full equality and dignity of men and women, and should give “the freedom to both women and men to realize their full human potential [ . . . ] emphasize more the common humanity of women and men and less the differences.” (Voices 2015, p. 30). The Catholic Church discourse should change at different levels—for example, it is suggested to enhance the visibility and dignity of women by revising the lectionary and valuing the forgotten history of women in the Church, as well as their contribution.7 During celebrations, in teachings and museums, women’s contributions should be made visible and valued, in order to create a counternarrative able to shed light on women’s presence in the Church. The cultural change especially works through education, starting with young children studying catechism, who should learn equality from an early age, in order to create the Church of the future. At the same time, it is suggested that men in key roles in the Church structure undergo equal opportunity 6 https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/05/07/pope-francis-says-commission-women-deacons-did-not-reach- agreement. 7 Other changes include theology: for the Church to be inclusive and equal, it is said, there should be the space of liberating God from gendered constructs. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/05/07/pope-francis-says-commission-women-deacons-did-not-reach-agreement https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/05/07/pope-francis-says-commission-women-deacons-did-not-reach-agreement Religions 2020, 11, 508 11 of 18 trainings, and that women in key roles pay attention to mentoring young women, in order to start changing the Catholic Church culture. Being role-models, and inspiring young women to participate and engage in the Church and in the change is a relevant instrument for action. In addition, the cultural education and training for the priests and bishops of the future should consider the contributions that women made to the Catholic Church history and structure, including theology and doctrine. Imagine how a young seminarian would come out if during his preparation he studied and understood the role of women, historically. Not just in the Church but the role women have played in leading government, business, non-profits and movements. Imagine if every young seminarian understood that voice. What might be the effect when he goes out [to a parish]? That could be a good step. If seminarians really understood the history and role of women, they would want them more engaged. (Voices 2016, p. 49) This excerpt also points out the relevance of speaking to and with men, making them allies in the cultural, scriptural and structural change of the Catholic Church. More broadly, partnerships, networks, and solidarity are considered as crucial instruments to advance women’s demands and the Catholic Church change. In practice, change is conceived of as a combination of a bottom-up and top-down approach. On the one side, Church hierarchies should open the space for dialogue with women and appoint women in key roles. On the other, women are required to take action and clearly ask for change. Many use the Scriptural analogy “knocking at the door”, to explain the type of action that is required. Others are more intense, as the following quotation illustrates: So we can’t just wait for the Holy Spirit to rescue us. We have to look for where the holy Spirit is sending along the means to do so. Often, when I begin to feel, am I saying too much too loudly, I go back to Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham Jail where he says, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.” (Voices 2018, p. 53) More broadly, women are requested to adopt creative methods and imagination to find new and effective ways of being listened to and included. Women need to “stir the water” and not accept the status quo. The prognostic framing also includes visions and dreams about the Church of the future, which is described as “messy, free, faithful, joyful community” (Voices 2015, p. 28), inclusive and welcoming, which values all the voices, open to learning from the world. In terms of organization, some imagine the Catholic Church of tomorrow as a synod-based sisterhood and brotherhood. The dream that many women express is for the Church to accept their gifts and to make women fully-fledged citizens of the Church. To sum up, for many: “women already are in the Church! What is missing is only to integrate them, to accept them and value them. Recognise them” (Voices 2018, p. 33). 4.3. Anger and Reverence—Why Women Should Be Included The motivational framing expresses the arguments in favor of change. In the case of women’s role in the Catholic Church, a variety of arguments is mobilized. In Voices articles, the importance of women’s inclusion is often framed as an opportunity to stop women—and their children—leaving the Church. An inclusive Church is able to include and value the visions and desires of its different members. As one of the women points out, commenting on the positive examples of women’s inclusion and their potential impact on young women: “They are no longer forced to make a decision between staying in the Church and being silent or leaving. Instead, they are able to see that they can stay in the Church and be who they are and speak their truth” (Voices 2018, p. 44). At the same time, if women stay, children would stay too: reference is made to women’s social role as a mother, who is often the primary mediator of her children’s encounter with religion. In addition, contemporary young people who perceive the Catholic Church as an outdated Religions 2020, 11, 508 12 of 18 institution might be reintegrated as they see that the Church is able to include the issues that are relevant to them—such as equality. Discussing the future of the Church, one of the women comments: The younger generation settles for less and asks more questions. In the last 40 years, women have woken up and realized, “I am not just happy with what is at the margin”. They will ask questions and expect answers. (Voices 2016, p. 42) More broadly, women’s inclusion would give a signal to all the laity that their Church is able to face the challenges and the opportunities of contemporary societies, therefore preventing people from leaving the faith. In addition to not losing participants, women’s inclusion is also framed as an incentive to attract other people to the Church. In a slightly different version, the argument for inclusion would use the language of brain drain, or talent drain, to frame the waste of resources that should be ended as soon as possible, because “The Church is doing itself a disservice.” (Voices 2016, p. 45). Women’s inclusion is framed as an investment, from which the Catholic Church would benefit. Women’s inclusion is also framed as necessary to improve the Catholic Church credibility in front of its members. An institution that wants to be able to speak the truth and being heard in contemporary society, it is said, should be held accountable for what it says and for its actions. More importantly, a trustworthy institution should also be truly representative—including the voices of all of its members. The inclusion of women’s voices is framed with the language of either diversity or complementarity. In the diversity version of this framing, women’s inclusion would be an advantage because it would allow for a wider imagination, leading to diversity of thought and making the Catholic Church able to fully grasp the complexities of the contemporary world through multiple lenses. In the complementarity version, women’s inclusion responds to the necessity of fully taking into account the human experience of love, which stems from the union of men and women. Women’s inclusion is also framed in terms of equality and fairness: women’s participation in the Catholic Church mission, women’s feelings and faith, women’s capacities are equal to those of men. Therefore, they should be included as men are. One of the few men who took part in VoF initiatives commented on the experience he had during his training to become a priest: What attracts them to ordained ministry is what attracts me: a positive experience of the Church, of priests who I admired when I was younger, priests in my life as a Catholic adult who I was drawn to, who I found inspiration in, who I saw making a difference in people’s lives. This is the reality that draws these women to this ministry. Obviously, it puts them in a very complicated, confusing, painful situation to not have the opportunity to even explore that call. (Voices 2018, p. 55) Women’s inclusion, then, would acknowledge the equal relevance of men’s and women’s experiences. As equality is one of the arguments mobilized for women’s inclusion, injustice also comes into focus: women’s absence is unjustifiable and unfair and should be fought against. The first article of the first issue of Voices discusses the role of anger in Catholic life and identity, starting from a reading in the Gospel, and the speaker points out that: We are called in this Gospel today and every day to never be apathetic, to always be angry when the holy is compromised. We are called to be angry when the dignity of people is compromised. We are called to be angry when there is sexism in the world or in the Church. [ . . . ] Our invitation today is to claim that anger, and in emulating Christ, to turn that anger into opportunities for action to reverence what God holds dear, what God sees as holy and sacred. (Voices 2015, p. 4) This excerpt also summarizes the overarching tone of women’s demands and initiatives, which are described as angry and reverent at the same time. As we discuss in the next section, the use of anger contributes to deconstructing the traditional visions of “Catholic women identity”. Another argument for women’s inclusion considers violence and abuse: women’s exclusion from key-roles contributes to their exclusion from the institutional culture and imagination, as well as to Religions 2020, 11, 508 13 of 18 their subordination to men. The topic of violence in the Catholic Church communities, whomever the perpetrator, has been traditionally neglected, with tangible consequences on women’s capacity to recognize an abuse (Aune and Barnes 2018). In recent years it has started to be discussed, for the initiative of local communities and, also, in relation to the broader #metoo campaigns (Giorgi 2020). Introducing the initiative on abuse and violence in the Catholic Church, one of the women clearly affirms: “Yes, I am deeply convinced about that. A hierarchical and sexist Church is the one that makes men violent and allows violence”. (Voices 2019b, p. 6). As a call for action, it is sometimes pointed out that the Catholic Church is the only major institutions that exclude women. To use the words of one of the women intervening in the debates: The empowerment of women is a sign of the times. It is not about secularization or imitating the world but it is about recognizing that excluding women from the Church does not conform to the Gospel. It is not what the Gospel wants. (Voices 2015, p. 31) Therefore, women’s inclusion would fill the gap between the Gospel and the Catholic Church practice. This frame echoes the arguments put forward by Catholic LGBT+ people to advocate for recognition (see, for example, Giorgi 2019b). Women’s discourse often mentions the successful stories of inclusion and the positive examples both in the Church and in the outer world, pointing out the action and mobilizations are effective and may bring changes: particularly, the success of the Catholic Church structure in the USA, the role of women in European local parishes, or the effective action brought about by female leaders in religious orders and charities all around the world. However, women’s requests also face criticisms, from some sections of the Catholic Church, and silence, from the hierarchy: therefore, especially in the last issues, the voices collected also manifest some uncertainty about the real chance to trigger an effective change. Consecrated women are accused of defying their vows of obedience, while lay women are accused of wanting a revolution, and to follow the wind of the secular world. Nonetheless, VoF, the CWC and many other initiatives continue to promote campaigns for inclusion and for change. 4.4. Portraits of Women The voices of those who intervened at the various initiatives of VoF also invite to rethinking stereotypical images of women, in general, and Catholic women in particular. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard women addressed collectively as tender, patient, sensitive, motherly, empathic, gentle, etc. (Voices 2015, p. 27) This frame of femininity is also related to the “feminine genius” mentioned by John Paul II in the Letter to Women issued in 1995 and criticized by many women during the initiatives of VoF. The feminine genius points to the nurturing aspect of women, their role as caregivers. Also, the expression normalizes and naturalizes attitudes, such as sensitivity, and behaviors, such as tending to others, turning them into innate elements of femininity. The role of women as good wives and mothers, empathetic and accommodating, obedient members of the community, is seen as limited and far from everyday reality. As one of the women comments, “women are individual persons with different characteristics, different professions, different theologies, different political views” (Voices 2015, p. 28). These tensions between female stereotypes and women’s diversity echoes the traditional debates and claims of women’s movements. Moreover, the world is changing, and women in the Church are changing too, in their desire to speak up and to find their calling. One of the women intervening in the meetings says that: . . . there are more missions in the Church than just to get married, become a nun or be celibate. In reality, with my testimony and my story I have understood that many other women feel the call to do more, but do not know how to answer. Do not know how to contradict society. (Voices 2018, p. 31) Religions 2020, 11, 508 14 of 18 The lack of role-models makes it difficult to re-imagine a significant role for women in the Church, which is different from the traditional ones. During education, as well as in families, gendered roles are experienced and learned, and it requires a conscious effort of deconstruction and imagination to re-inventing different paths to femininity. The president of VoF, Chantal Götz, comments: I am often asked, “Chantal are you angry? Are you angry with the world, with the church, with our religious leaders?” It seems that women are not allowed to be angry. I am sometimes even told by my colleagues that an angry tone is not particularly good for a woman. Not good for Voices of Faith and its mission and goals. (Voices 2017, p. 6) As the excerpt points out, challenging the stereotypes also leads to criticism and misunderstandings. More broadly, it underlines the strict control over gendered relationships that characterizes many contexts—including, of course, the Catholic Church. Yet, women are of course diverse: one of the members of the CWC network, Catholic Women Speak8, clearly states on the homepage of its websites that the organization consciously chose to use “women”, instead of “woman”, to point out and value diversity and pluralism of women’s voices (see also Heyder 2020). What about women as social critics or social activists, like Dorothy Day? What about women who are scandalous, like Dorothy Day and Mary Magdalene and the woman at the well? What about women who are entrepreneurial, hard-headed, persistent and sometimes even defiant? Like many of the women religious who founded and sustained their congregations, and the women who followed them and went into these territories to establish works? What about those women? What about women who really take the spiritual works of mercy seriously, like Catherine of Siena, who wrote words urging the pope and the political leaders to change their ways? What about those women? (Voices 2016, p. 48) Women at the VoF initiatives point out the tensions around their Catholic identity and the figures of women they admire, who are scandalous, critics of the status quo and definitely noncompliant (these are “warrior women”, as one of the other interventions described them). In naming potential role-models, they also contribute to construct an alternative image of Catholic women: persistent, defiant and courageous. What emerges from the voices and the texts is an idea of femininity characterized by three interrelated aspects. First, Catholic female identity is not submissive nor shaped by the “otherness” of men: regardless of the “complementarity” issue, what characterizes a woman is not the opposite of what characterizes a man. Therefore, women can be as courageous as men, as heard-headed as men, as leading as men. Second, the relevance of women’s role in the Church is not legitimized or given by men: regardless of the structure technicalities, women are as part of the Church as men. Equality is a right, not a concession. Third, women’s voice and dignity do not derive from women’s social role as nurturing mothers or empathetic caregivers: it derives from the common humanity they share with men. In other words, the image of the good Catholic woman is not shaped by her femininity. Rather, it is shaped by her militant faith. 5. Conclusions: Women, Equality, and the Catholic Church The article focused on the current wave of women’s mobilization within the Catholic Church gathered under the umbrella of Catholic Women’s Council, exploring the discursive space created by contemporary Catholic women, captured in-between ‘impotence’ and ‘emancipation’ (see Eckholt 2020). The analyses explored the discursive frames of the mobilization, pointing out the problematic aspects of women’s role in the Catholic Church, the suggested or dreamed solutions, and the underlying arguments for structural and cultural change. Broadly speaking, the case study findings point out women’s ambivalent perception of their role in the Catholic Church: on the one side, they consider themselves a lively part of the Church, and contribute to its mission in many ways. On the other, 8 https://catholicwomenspeak.com/. https://catholicwomenspeak.com/ Religions 2020, 11, 508 15 of 18 they feel excluded by the Church structure, which seems to not have space for their ‘gift’. Women point out the absence of female figures in the Catholic Church structure and narrative. At the same time, in the interventions reported in the magazine, Catholic women also provide a range of possible solutions, ranging from partial inclusion in local decision-making to open the possibility of Consecration to women. The reasons for which the role of women in the Catholic Church should change are diverse: it is a matter of equality, it is an acknowledgment of the changes in the wider world, it is the rediscovery of the original roots and teaching of the Catholic Church. In this direction, the analysis showed the criticism of ‘Churchsplaining’ that women moved to the Catholic Church institution (Heyder 2020). Also, the analysis touched upon the efforts in countering the stereotypes surrounding the Catholic women, showing what aspects of femininity and womanhood are praised instead. The voices of women reported in the magazine refuse the vision of the ‘feminist genius’, for which women would be ‘naturally’ inclined to care and be sensitive. On the contrary, those women reclaim diversity, and the legitimacy of feelings and behavior traditionally attributed to men, such as anger (Giorgi 2019b). The initiative Voices of Faith is heavily influenced by the German context: however, the women’s voices reported by the magazine Voices came from all over the world, as the magazine reports the interventions made in Rome during the yearly conference organized by Voices of Faith with other partners. These voices testify, in fact, for a diffuse interest and sensitivity towards the issue of the role of women in the Catholic Church. In this sense, the results are relevant to the broader analysis of contemporary Catholic women’s activism. Overall, the analysis contributes to the literature on women’s activism and feminism within the Catholic Church (e.g., Giorgi 2020; Daigler 2012; Eckholt 2020; Hunt 2009; Qualbrink 2019), and to the studies on current women’s mobilizations in different fields. The mobilization explored in this article is significant, in spite of the small number of women involved, for at least two elements. First of all, the Catholic Women’s Council is not a fringe mobilization organized by marginal actors: on the contrary, it channels a feeling of unease felt by women who are already active in their parishes, their communities and Catholic organizations and charities. What is described here is an internal activism, which seeks to bring about institutional and cultural change. These women do not want to leave the Catholic Church, and their activism is not an example of detachment from the institutional authority or religion—quite the opposite, in fact: traditional religious authority emerges as particularly relevant to the women who intervene in the Voices of Faith initiatives. The desire emerges to be recognized and included, which may be challenging for the traditional Church culture and structure, but it is not meant as a challenge to the Church authority. Women’s requests do not go in the direction of praising different religious authority or communities—on the contrary, traditional authority is constantly reaffirmed. There is a request for “more” institution, for “more” adherence to the Gospel, and for more inclusion. Following the analysis of Velik-Frank (2016) of the first women’s ordination in terms of ‘heterotopia’, we could advance the hypothesis that, slowly but steadily, CWC groups are working toward transforming that ‘heterotopia’ into the reality of the Catholic Church The second relevant element we would like to point out, which goes beyond data analysis and refers instead to the social background of the case-study, is that in contemporary European societies there is a favorable opportunity structure for women’s requests of increasing their role in the Catholic Church. Contemporary women’s movements, which have developed all around the world managed to gain sympathetic attention, which create a favorable climate for religious women’s mobilization. In addition, contemporary women’s movements are mostly attentive to intersectionality and women’s diversity, which make them attuned to connect with different actors and unlikely allies, such as religious women—even though the intersections of religion and feminism have a long history (Giorgi 2020), mainstream secular feminism in Western European countries is often suspicious toward religious feminism or religious feminists (Van den Brandt 2014). Moreover, the digital arena offers an important platform for networking and for voice and public visibility. Even though religious women’s demands are nothing new, their visibility is indeed increasing, as it is the sympathetic audience. Religions 2020, 11, 508 16 of 18 Finally, we want to underline another aspect, related to the post-Covid context, to push the discussion forward: having no possibility of going to Church, and yet wanting to celebrate, in many homes a “domestic” church emerged, and some women also used this time to reconnect to the Church. As the theologian Tina Beattie pointed out, “homes become a sacred place in which women have assumed priestly duties, transforming family meals into eucharistic celebrations or finding their own ways of actively participating in or creating livestreamed liturgies. [ . . . ] During the last few months, women have become priests of the household [ . . . ] When this is over, Catholic women are not going to be pushed back”9. Therefore, it will be interesting to explore whether the post-Covid Church will have room for these women and how they will creatively find their path within the Catholic Church. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, A.G. and S.P.; Methodology, A.G.; Validation, S.P.; Formal Analysis, A.G.; Writing-Original Draft Preparation, A.G.; Writing-Review & Editing, S.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Funding: This research received no external funding. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. References Athaus-Reid, Marcella. 2003. The Queer God. New York: Routledge. Aune, Kristin, and Rebecca Barnes. 2018. In Churches Too: Church Responses to Domestic Abuse. A Case Study of Cumbria. Available online: https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/publications/in-churches-too-church- responses-to-domestic-abuse-a-case-study-o (accessed on 30 January 2020). Aune, Kristin, Sonya Sharma, and Giselle Vincett, eds. 2008. Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization. Aldershot: Ashgate. Avanza, Martina, and Magali Della Sudda, eds. 2017. Rispostes Catholiques. Genre, Sexualité & Société. 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Introduction Women’s Activism in the Catholic Church The Catholic Women’s Council Organization and Network The Discourse of the Catholic Women’s Council—Voices of Faith What’s the Issue with Women and the Catholic Church? The Many Ways of Valuing Women’s Roles Anger and Reverence—Why Women Should Be Included Portraits of Women Conclusions: Women, Equality, and the Catholic Church References work_6s46minwwnecracodpmf2cpima ---- #MeToo – a concern for general practice? Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ipri20 Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care ISSN: 0281-3432 (Print) 1502-7724 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ipri20 #MeToo – a concern for general practice? Emil L. Sigurdsson To cite this article: Emil L. Sigurdsson (2018) #MeToo – a concern for general practice?, Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, 36:1, 1-2, DOI: 10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153 © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 15 Jan 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 552 View related articles View Crossmark data http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ipri20 http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ipri20 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153 https://doi.org/10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=ipri20&show=instructions http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=ipri20&show=instructions http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-01-15 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-01-15 EDITORIAL #MeToo – a concern for general practice? The Harvey Weinstein scandal, with over 50 women accusing the film producer of sexual assault and harass- ment, has led to a worldwide movement. The #MeToo hashtag is now a global phenomenon. Now women in many professions are unfolding their experiences of sex- ual harassment and violence. Women, not only within the film industry but politicians, scientist, artists and female doctors have come forward with stories about how they have been violated or exposed to sexual abuse at their workplace. Swedish female doctors have recently started a Facebook group with over 500 doctors already participating, willing to come forward with sto- ries but also prepared to act [1]. Even within the National Health Service (NHS) of England, Scotland and Wales female doctors are reveal- ing how male colleagues, often those who are supervi- sors, are responsible for these misdemeanors [2]. Indeed, some claim that there are mostly two types of sexual harassment: first, someone with more authority behaves badly on a woman in an inferior position and second, a silly man just behaving stupidly. The first scenario being worse with supervisors acting on female in a repressing and humiliating manner. In the latter case, the situation is most embarrassing to the man himself, although that actually applies to all these cases. This behavior has almost certainly been around for many centuries but that does not make it better. It is humiliating for male to behave like that and men must respond to this movement in a sensible and civi- lized way. Recognizing their role in this misconduct and irresponsible behavior. What about general practitioners? What about female medical students? Is there a reason to be of concern over sexual abuse within our discipline? The answer is defin- itely yes! There is no reason to believe that we are in any- way different with this respect. We should open a discussion about the situation within our working groups and we should also be concerned about the possible involvement of our patients. In a very interesting paper recently published in the SJPHC: Do patients consult their GP for sexual con- cerns? Audun Vik and Mette Brekke report on how often general practitioners deal with patient’s sexual concerns. Their result suggests that just over 4% of consultations are on sexual concerns with a wide spec- trum of things brought up, ranging from erectile dys- function to sexual assault or rape [3]. Although this study is not primarily about sexual violations or harass- ment it gives an indication of how these problems are in the usual working day of GPs. #MeToo is a wakeup call for all people and it should be a challenge for GPs as well. GPs play a key role as a primary health care provider and as such have the oppor- tunity to assist women who have been the victim of sex- ual assault. GPs know that there are many social determinants of health and this certainly is one of the more influential. It is important to notice that many women are reluctant to step forward and tell their story, some are even thinking if what they have suffered is bad enough. We should encourage women to step forward, all stories must be told, and we should even urge the abusers to step forward and acknowledging their role. Voices from female GP’s must also be heard. A forum for them should be established and they supported in every conceivable way. Taking into consideration the vital role GP’s play in the society both as health care workers and as a role model, it is crucial to undertake actions. All the five Nordic colleges of general practitioners share a responsibility and should listen to these women and launch and participate in a comprehensive program aim- ing at eliminating or at least minimizing the magnitude of this problem. The sexual assault and harassment is an embodi- ment of a male–female powerplay, a play that should not be part of our culture anymore and should never have been. We should grow up, mature and move on showing each other dignity and respect, all individuals alike, men and women. We should show zero patience for empowerment and humiliating behavior in the wake of women. Here as often before GPs are in fun- damental position. To silence over violence is a way to maintain violence. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF PRIMARY HEALTH CARE, 2018 VOL. 36, NO. 1, 1–2 https://doi.org/10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153&domain=pdf http://www.tandfonline.com References [1] Available from: http://lakartidningen.se/Aktuellt/Nyheter/ 2017/11/Lakare-samlar-sig-for-eget-metoo [2] Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/ nov/28/nhs-sexual-harassment-me-too/ [3] Vik A, Brekke M. Do patients consult their GP for sexual con- cerns? A cross sectional explorative study. Scand J Prim Health Care. 2017;35:373–378. Emil L. Sigurdsson Department of Family Medicine, Centre of Development Primary Health Care of the Capital Area, University of Iceland, Reykjav�ık, Iceland haithamtorky@yahoo.com � 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creati- vecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non- commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro- vided the original work is properly cited. https://doi.org/10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153 2 E. SIGURDSSON http://lakartidningen.se/Aktuellt/Nyheter/2017/11/Lakare-samlar-sig-for-eget-metoo http://lakartidningen.se/Aktuellt/Nyheter/2017/11/Lakare-samlar-sig-for-eget-metoo https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/28/nhs-sexual-harassment-me-too/ https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/28/nhs-sexual-harassment-me-too/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/02813432.2018.1426153&domain=pdf #MeToo &hx2013; a concern for general practice? Disclosure statement References work_5jgpyzabtbbi5a2hbesxfrkcwa ---- Book.pdf Feminist New Materialisms Activating Ethico-Politics Through Genealogies in Social Sciences Beatriz Revelles Benavente, Monika Rogowska-Stangret and Waltraud Ernst www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci Edited by Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Social Sciences $€£ ¥ social sciences Feminist New Materialisms Feminist New Materialisms Activating Ethico-Politics Through Genealogies in Social Sciences Special Issue Editors Beatriz Revelles Benavente Monika Rogowska-Stangret Waltraud Ernst MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editors Beatriz Revelles Benavente University of Granada Spain Monika Rogowska-Stangret Warsaw University Poland Waltraud Ernst Johannes Kepler University Linz Austria Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760) in 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/ special issues/Feminist new materialsms). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03921-808-0 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03921-809-7 (PDF) c© 2020 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Beatriz Revelles-Benavente, Waltraud Ernst and Monika Rogowska-Stangret Feminist New Materialisms: Activating Ethico-Politics through Genealogies in Social Sciences Reprinted from: Social Sciences 2019, 8, 296, doi:10.3390/socsci8110296 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Orianna Calderon-Sandoval and Adelina Sanchez-Espinosa Feminist Documentary Cinema as a Diffraction Apparatus: A Diffractive Reading of the Spanish Films, Cuidado, resbala and Yes, We Fuck! Reprinted from: Social Sciences 2019, 8, 206, doi:10.3390/socsci8070206 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Juliana España Keller The Sonic Intra-Face of a Noisy Feminist Social Kitchen Reprinted from: Social Sciences 2019, 8, 245, doi:10.3390/socsci8090245 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Anna Hickey-Moody and Marissa Willcox Entanglements of Difference as Community Togetherness: Faith, Art and Feminism Reprinted from: Social Sciences 2019, 8, 264, doi:10.3390/socsci8090264 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Suvi Pihkala, Tuija Huuki and Vappu Sunnari Moving with Touch: Entanglements of a Child, Valentine’s Day Cards, and Research–Activism against Sexual Harassment in Pre-Teen Peer Cultures Reprinted from: Social Sciences 2019, 8, 226, doi:10.3390/socsci8080226 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Miranda Imperial New Materialist Feminist Ecological Practices: La Via Campesina and Activist Environmental Work Reprinted from: Social Sciences 2019, 8, 235, doi:10.3390/socsci8080235 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Tanja Kubes New Materialist Perspectives on Sex Robots. A Feminist Dystopia/Utopia? Reprinted from: Social Sciences 2019, 8, 224, doi:10.3390/socsci8080224 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 v About the Special Issue Editors Beatriz Revelles-Benavente is a lecturer at the University of Granada, at the Department of English Language and Literature. She is also the co-editor of the journal Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research, as well as one of the Spanish management committee in the COST Action IS1307: Networking European New Materialisms: How matter comes to matter. Additionally, she has organized the V New Materialist Conference at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and the IV Training School on New Materialisms at the University of Barcelona. Furthermore, she is the co-editor of the book published by Routledge Teaching Gender: Feminist Pedagogy and Responsability in Times of Political Crisis. Currently, her lines of research are concerned with the connection between literature and society via social media and the like economy using both a feminist and a new materialist lens. Monika Rogowska-Stangret is a postdoctoral researcher in the fields of feminist philosophy, gender studies and posthumanism. She teaches at the Institute of Philosophy, Warsaw University and at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw. She was a member of the Management Committee in the European project New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’, European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), Action IS 1307 (2013–2018) and is now engaged in creating a new journal: Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research as a co-editor of a section “Praxiography*: Practices and Institutions”. She organized the 7th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms: Performing Situated Knowledges: Space, Time, Vulnerability, 21–23.09.2016, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. More info: https://independent.academia.edu/MonikaRogowskaStangret. Waltraud Ernst (PhD) is a philosopher and senior researcher at the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. She served as Austrian MC member of the EU COST Action IS 1307 New Materialism. Networking European Scholarship on, “How matter comes to matter”. In 2018 she was a visiting professor for Gender and Diversity perspectives in Engineering at the Technical University of Dresden. Her research interests cover the history and future of gender in technosciences as well as feminist epistemology and ethics & politics of globalization. Recently published: Emancipatory Interferences with Machines? http://genderandset.open.ac.uk/ index.php/genderandset/article/view/509 and Gender in Science and Technology http://e-book. fwf.ac.at/o:453. vii $ € £ ¥ social sciences Editorial Feminist New Materialisms: Activating Ethico-Politics through Genealogies in Social Sciences Beatriz Revelles-Benavente 1,*, Waltraud Ernst 2 and Monika Rogowska-Stangret 3,4 1 Department of English and German Philology, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain 2 Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 4040 Linz, Austria; waltraud.ernst@jku.at 3 Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland; monika.rogowska@gmail.com 4 Department of New Media Arts, Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology, 02-008 Warsaw, Poland * Correspondence: beatrizrevelles@ugr.es Received: 21 October 2019; Accepted: 21 October 2019; Published: 23 October 2019 The idea to create a Special Issue journal around the topic of feminist new materialisms emerged out of the editors’ collaboration in the frames of European project New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’ (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), and more specifically it was born at the 9th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms, held at Utrecht University in June 2018. The editors were then able to trace the discussions within new materialism, but also on the margins of it, and in dialogues with researchers with different academic backgrounds or coming from other theoretical standpoints. Those dialogues all have different affective modalities, raised various theoretical (counter) arguments, and imagined heterogeneous practices. As editors of this issue of “Social Sciences,” we recognized the need to rethink feminist new materialisms, yet again accentuating and activating its ethico-political dimensions and stakes. We are undertaking this endeavour together with scholars, who have been composing the cartography of feminist new materialist research for some time now (among them: Alaimo and Hekman 2008; Coole and Frost 2010; Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012; Van der Tuin 2015; Cielemęcka and Rogowska-Stangret 2018), and we aim at grasping specifically its ethico-political practices. For us, new materialisms have always been the entanglement of epistemology, ontology, ethics, and politics. Looking back to the notion of “situated knowledges” by Haraway (1988) who—among others—“planted the seed for feminist new materialism” (Van der Tuin 2015, p. 26)—one sees how those (at least) four planes are entangled (Rogowska-Stangret 2018), in order to bring forth “response-able” (Haraway 2008) research. New materialism is thus an ethico-onto-epistemological framework (Barad 2007; Revelles-Benavente 2018), that by activating its ethico-politics helps to diagnose, infer, and transform gendered, environmental, anthropocentric, and social injustices from a multidimensional angle. Social injustices are a driving motivation to pursue research, and are the reason why the editors and authors of this special issue cannot understand new materialism without feminism (Hinton and Treusch 2015; Ernst 2016). Contemporary feminist researchers are providing new materialisms with a transversal approach (Yuval-Davis 1997) that comes from many different disciplines, without canonizing back again knowledge creation and production, and in hope that they will not enter back into classifixations (Van der Tuin 2015). It is a “situated” (Haraway 1988) research “response-able” (Haraway 2008) to material-discursive practices that iterate in a dynamic conceptualization of matter. The authors of this issue aim at adding to the body of research which relates with methodologies and empirical work in new materialism (e.g., Fox and Allred 2015; Tamboukou 2015; De Freitas and Palmer 2016). Following Fox and Allred (2015) guidelines, the authors reflect upon the differences that using this methodology has provided to the research itself. We believe in a relational conceptualization Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 296; doi:10.3390/socsci8110296 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci1 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 296 of bodies and objects, and the importance of affect in this relation; while instead of territorializing and deterritorializing the performed research, we focus on the processes that iterate the research through “queering linearity” (Barad 2010). We argue that methodology necessarily needs to engage within the relation between acting and thinking (Tamboukou 2015), so that it can transform itself into a political practice embodied and embedded. Experimenting with the linearity of the process provides the actualization of future becomings and because of that, the materialization of agential practices while they are occurring. As a conclusion, we will focus on the necessity to think of methodology, ontology, ethics, politics, and epistemology as a processual relation, and the need to focus on processes instead of results (Grosz 2005) for a feminist politics of affinities instead of identities. 1. Putting the Ethico-Political Back to Research New materialisms refer to a specific ethico-political and onto-epistemological turn that is deeply committed to de-centralizing knowledge production, cutting across pre-established dichotomies, and focusing on processes transversing hierarchies of power relations that organize diverse forms of life. In particular, it is a methodology of situating material-discursive practices that form specific socio-cultural phenomena via a relational ontology. Here, different elements come to being through intra-actions. Agency materializes and redefines itself as a more than isolated human agency. New materialist approaches to the creation and dissemination of scientific knowledge are proliferating across diverse disciplines such as arts (e.g., Kontturi et al. 2018; Barrett et al. 2017; Barrett and Bolt 2013), science and technology (e.g., Ernst et al. 2017), contemporary philosophy (e.g., Cielemęcka and Rogowska-Stangret 2018; Bühlmann et al. 2017; Revelles-Benavente et al. 2014; Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012; Coole and Frost 2010), cultural and media studies (e.g., Tiainen et al. 2015), and social sciences (e.g., Juelskjær et al.; Bath et al. 2017; Fox and Allred 2017; Alaimo and Hekman 2008). Although in the mentioned publications the ethico-political frames are strongly present, this is not the case for how new materialisms are recognized and represented in academia in general. Often, the more recognition new materialisms get in academia, the less space and time is devoted to their ethico-political frames. As a result, the feminist, queer, postcolonial, and ecological stakes are given less attention and importance; and the ethico-political frames of feminist new materialisms are amputated from the onto-epistemological turn. In this present issue of “Social Sciences,” the authors and editors are committed to stressing the importance of ethico-political frames to feminist new materialisms. According to Dolphijn and van der Tuin (2012), new materialisms are about putting them to work, which means that it is not to be described, but performed. The authors and editors of this issue add yet another loop that has to do with situating new materialisms as ethico-politics. We would like to put new materialisms to work for feminist, queer, postcolonial, and ecological practices. The papers invite us to understand feminism with new materialisms and vice-versa. Our approach to this field of research is strongly marked by the concepts of genealogies (Van der Tuin 2015), feminicity (Colman 2014), diffracting diffraction (Barad 2014), and the processes of becoming and sense-making of our own flexible and multiple identities (Braidotti 2013). That is, our approach has to do with how we build, contemporaneously, our epistemological genealogies effectively to produce points of activation for feminist, queer, postcolonial, and ecological practices. We present examples which investigate new social bondings and community building beyond identity politics, and contributions dealing with specific instances of realities that engage with the world with an entanglement between feminist ethics, politics, and methodologies. 2. Putting New Materialisms to Work This special issue assembles perspectives from a wide range of disciplinary fields such as film studies, sound and noise art, arts-based community research and education, feminist environmentalism and ecology, as well as diffractive design and human-machine interaction. The six research papers allow insight into diverse areas such as feminist documentary cinema, participatory practices in performance 2 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 296 artwork, feminist and intra-religious collaborative art practices and Instagram-based art communities, creative workshops addressing sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures, feminist ecological practices and activist environmental work in Brazil, as well as the vision of robot sex beyond fixed human-centered heteronormalizations. The authors come not only from different academic disciplines but also from different national and transnational positionings such as Spain, Australia, Germany, Finland, and the UK. These investigations are connected in a very systematic, yet colorful way, through their theoretical and methodological foundation in feminist new materialism which proves, on this way, to be traveling in many parts of the intellectual world. The papers are also connected via an ethico-onto-epistemological commitment to not only scrutinize oppression and conflict, but also work for transforming our social and cultural imaginations through enacting or putting to work ideas, materialities, and lived realities that are founded in feminist, queer, postcolonial, and ecological practices. The papers show how it is possible to analyze these practices as becoming real, and as moments or processes of materialization. The article “Feminist Documentary Cinema as Diffraction Apparatus: A Diffracting Reading of the Spanish Films, Cuidado, Resbala and Yes, We Fuck!” by Orianna Calderon-Sandoval and Adelina Sánchez-Espinosa, use “materiality, emotionality, and performativity” (p. 7) as analytical tools to render visible the potential of feminist documentary cinema for building alliances from and against precarity. It is done through close-watching of two Spanish films Cuidado, Resbala and Yes, We Fuck! on domestic workers, and sexually and functionally diverse communities. The authors show how the films operate as feminist countervisuality devices that reframe realities, and open up possibilities for being, becoming, and imagining the worlds otherwise—outside of androcentric paradigms. (Calderon-Sandoval and Sanchez-Espinosa 2019). Juliana España Keller in her “The Sonic Intra-Face of a Noisy Feminist Social Kitchen,” shows how the reframing of the kitchen table into a platform for “exploring, repositioning and amplifying kitchen tools as material phenomena through electronic and manual manipulation into an immersive sonic performance installation” (p. 21) can contribute to “forming daring dissonant narratives that feed post-human ethical practices and feminist genealogies” (p. 21). By using and analyzing participatory practices in performance art, the kitchen becomes a noisy, social kitchen through collaborative engagements of more than human contributors. The author argues for a noisy culture of social reimagining of the kitchen through somatic learning in performative art practices. (España Keller 2019). Anna Hickey-Moody and Marissa Willcox, in the article “Entanglements of Difference as Community Togetherness: Faith, Art and Feminism,” are also exploring collaborative art practices, here in creative workshops with children in intra-religious communities, with different ethnic backgrounds, and in presenting and analyzing a broadcasted live-interview in an Instagram-based feminist art community. However here, the focus lies on enacting new ways of feelings of belonging, and building community beyond sameness. The authors offer a diffraction of differences, that through research understood as being-with, results in the emerging of “togetherness” as “collections of difference” (Hickey-Moody and Willcox 2019, p. 61). The article, “Moving with Touch: Entanglements of a Child, Valentine’s Day Cards, and Research-Activism against Sexual Harassment in Pre-Teen Peer Cultures,” by Suvi Pihkala, Tuija Huuki, and Vappu Sunnari, undertakes the question of sexual violence in pre-teen peer cultures as a response to discussions around the “#MeToo” movement, in which sexual harassment in children’s environments was neglected to a great extent. Through exploring “microprocesses of change within the more-than-human child-card entanglements” (p. 64), the authors present and analyze the “affective charge in moments and movements of response and resistance” (p. 64) in workshops with children. In particular, they concentrate on touch and its different affective, sensing, and material effects, in hope to bring forth ways to enable “recognition, response, and resistance” (p. 64). (Suvi Pihkala and Sunnari 2019). Miranda Imperial in “New Materialist Feminist Ecological Practices: La Via Campesina and Activist Environmental Work,” presents a relocation of the grassroots activism of the women’s section of the famous 3 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 296 Brazilian self-organization of peasants, La Via Campesina, within the genealogies of ecological feminism and new materialist environmentalisms. The author delves into three examples of how in the recent past, feminist Indigenous activists successfully opposed multinational agrobusinesses, genetically modified crops, and land-grabbing practices. Imperial calls for collective action, and transnational community building for “re-distributing, re-thinking, and responding to the planet.” (Imperial 2019, p. 87). The article, “New Materialist Perspectives on Sex Robots. A Feminist Dystopia/Utopia?” by Tanja Kubes, presents sex robots as potential agencies in the becoming of human-machine-entanglements which serve to redefine robot sex as “refutation of normative definitions of sex” (Kubes 2019, p. 224). The author discusses the status quo of the development of the so-called sex robots, as well as arguments which turn against this endeavor because of the fact that “prototypes of sex robots aiming to hit the market in the near future are definitely hinting towards a questionable understanding of ideals of female beauty, and the nature of gender relations” (Kubes 2019, p. 92). The paper explores the potential of sex robotics for “leaving the beaten track of pornographic mimicry and sexist hyperfeminization” (Kubes 2019, p. 101), and contributing instead to “new forms of sexual pleasure beyond fixed heteronormative normalizations” (Kubes 2019, p. 101). 3. Actualizing Future Becomings The articles gathered in this issue of “Social Sciences” are putting new materialisms to work through diverse methodologies, mobilizing a variety of research backgrounds, contexts, and topics. They offer affective relational conceptualizations of bodies as they co-emerge together with films, sounds, creative workshops, live-interviews, experiences of touch (in its ambiguity), environmental and feminist activism and sex technologies, and try to grasp the specificities and effects of these relationalities. They are acting and thinking, doing and conceptualizing, providing at the same time joy, energy, concern, and care, to experiment, imagine, and design ways of doing and thinking. They activate ethico-political dimensions of feminist new materialisms through research, and activist efforts to transform social, environmental, gendered, and anthropocentric injustices, and to think of recognition of those injustices, resistance, and responses to them. By doing that, they also struggle to bring forth the future dimension of the research undertaken, to actualize future becomings, bodies, communities, responses, affinities, ways of sensing-feeling, bringing together, and experiencing. They prove the fact that feminist new materialist research is an open-ended process that directs us to yet new questions, horizons, and conceptualizations; enlivens our imagination and the desire to experiment with concepts and practices; and re-imagine and re-design oppressive and unjust paradigms. Funding: This research was funded by EU COST Action IS 1307 New Materialism. Networking European Scholarship on ‘How matter comes to matter’. Monika Rogowska-Stangret’s contribution was funded by the grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland in the frames of the “National Program for the Development of the Humanities” (2016–2019). Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. 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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 6 $ € £ ¥ social sciences Article Feminist Documentary Cinema as a Diffraction Apparatus: A Diffractive Reading of the Spanish Films, Cuidado, resbala and Yes, We Fuck! Orianna Calderon-Sandoval * and Adelina Sanchez-Espinosa Research Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain * Correspondence: orianna@correo.ugr.es Received: 25 April 2019; Accepted: 27 June 2019; Published: 2 July 2019 Abstract: Following Karen Barad’s diffractive methodology, we encounter feminist documentary cinema as a diffraction apparatus: that is, as technologies that make part of the world intelligible to another part of the world in specific ways, by means of intra-actions between human and non-human agencies and objects of observation. We propose three analytical tools: materiality, emotionality, and performativity. In this article, we analyse two Spanish documentary films that render visible the potential of feminist documentary cinema for building alliances from and against precarity: Cuidado, resbala and Yes, We Fuck! Reading the insights and patterns raised in each case study through one another (i.e., diffractively), we discuss the intra-actions by which each of these films participates in co-creating the real. We end up describing three possible effects of feminist material-discursive practices in documentary cinema. Keywords: Documentary; diffraction apparatus; diffractive reading; Cuidado, resbala; Yes, We Fuck!; Spanish cinema; materiality; emotionality; performativity 1. Introduction This article explores Karen Barad’s diffractive methodology (Barad 2007) as a bridge between feminist documentary cinema and new materialist perspectives.1 We argue that feminist documentary films can be productively encountered as diffraction apparatuses: that is, as technologies that make part of the world intelligible to another part of the world in specific ways, by means of intra-actions between human and non-human agencies and objects of observation. As a visualisation metaphor opposed to reflection, diffraction changes the focus from mirroring and sameness to attending “patterns of difference” (Barad 2007, p. 29), and “effects of difference” (Haraway [1992] 2004, p. 70). Such an onto-epistemological turn has ethico-political effects, as it moves from “reflecting on representations” to “accounting for how practices matter” (Barad 2007, p. 90). Moving away from the representational paradigm in the analysis of documentary cinema has an ethical impact, changing the focus “from producing accurate and authentic representations to creatively contributing to the transformability of actual beings in the real” (Hongisto 2015, p. 12).2 1 In her PhD thesis, co-supervised by Adelina Sánchez-Espinosa, Beatriz Revelles’s employs diffractive methodology as a bridge between the Social Sciences and the Humanities (Revelles Benavente 2014, p. 75). Our article takes its inspiration from this proposal. 2 For a comprehensive revision of the concept of social representation, see Rubira García et al. (2018). It could be productive to read Barad’s diffractive methodology through Serge Moscovici’s theory of social representations, particularly due to his understanding of representation not as reproduction, but as a re-production, i.e., a new production of meaning “born from the interactions between the subjects (at all levels, including individual, group, institution, or at a massive scale) and the object itself” (Rubira García et al. 2018, p. 3). His approach blurs the separation between object and subject, focusing instead on the interactions which, for Barad, are more accurately described as intra-actions, as explained in the next section. Like Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206; doi:10.3390/socsci8070206 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci7 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 Most of the first independent films made by feminist activists in the seventies belong to the realist documentary film tradition.3 Documentaries such as Union Maids (Union Maids 1976) showed the lives of women outside the limited range of female images in classical cinema, which supports the argument that they displayed more “accurate” realities. However, feminist theorists like Claire Johnston soon began to challenge realistic aesthetics. She argues that realism maintains the delusion of classical cinema by pretending the non-intervention of the filmmakers limited, apparently, to showing reality as it is. The gaze of the camera is supposed to be innocent: What the camera in fact grasps is the “natural” world of the dominant ideology. Women’s cinema cannot afford such idealism; the “truth” of our oppression cannot be “captured” on celluloid with the “innocence” of the camera: it has to be constructed/manufactured. New meanings have to be created by disrupting the fabric of the male bourgeois cinema within the text of the film. (Johnston [1973] 2000, p. 29) The clash of these two positions, realist documentary vs. counter-cinema4, leads to the so-called realist debate of the late seventies. Within feminist film theory, the debate increasingly begins to be in favour of anti-realism, thus distinguishing two successive moments in feminist film production: Firstly, an effort to change the content of dominant cinema, by means of portraying women talking about their “real” experiences; secondly, a growing interest in film form. Nevertheless, theorists such as Julia Lesage have refused the sharp rejection of cinematic realism and have questioned this apparent succession. The production of realist feminist documentaries has continued alongside more risky formal experiments, so that “both realist and experimental documentary forms have been politicized by feminist filmmakers” (Lesage 1984, p. 246). We argue that the diffraction metaphor can move this debate forward by accounting for how material-discursive practices in feminist filmmaking matter. We agree with Ilona Hongisto’s affirmation that “documentaries do not only operate on a plane of signification, but also partake in the material processes that co-compose the real” (Hongisto 2015, p. 12). For her, the main way in which politically committed documentary films participate in “the real as process” (Hongisto 2015, p. 12) is through framing, which involves making cuts and drawing boundaries within phenomena. That is also what diffraction apparatuses do. This article is divided into four sections. The first section introduces diffractive methodology as a reading strategy and as a visualisation metaphor and develops our conceptualisation of feminist documentary cinema as a diffraction apparatus. In the second section, we discuss the potential of feminist documentary cinema for building alliances from and against precarity, the framework in which we locate our two case studies, i.e., Spanish documentary films Cuidado, resbala (2013) and Yes, We Fuck! (2015). These are diffractively read in the third section. In the last section, we describe three possible effects of feminist material-discursive practices in documentary cinema by reading through one another (i.e., diffractively) insights and patterns raised in each case study. Barad, Moscovici resorts to quantum-physics inspired metaphors to explain the active role of representations in co-creating the real: “Here and there we find a tendency to consider that social representations are the inner reflection of something external, the surface and ephemeral layer of something deeper and more permanent. While everything points to see in them a constitutive factor of social reality, just as invisible particles and fields are a constitutive factor of physical reality” (Rubira García et al. 2018, p. 3). 3 Realism in cinema is characterised by representations that “present an appearance of transparency by effacing the processes of meaning production in their own textual operations.” (Kuhn 1994, p. 151). 4 Peter Wollen coined the term “counter-cinema” in 1972. The features of this type of cinema are, according to Wollen, those that oppose the characteristics of mainstream Hollywood productions, namely, “estrangement”, “narrative intransitivity”, “aperture” and “unpleasure”, among others (Wollen [1972] 2002). It is a year after, in 1973 that Claire Johnston talks about feminist cinema in terms of counter-cinema. 8 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 2. From the Reflecting Mirror to the Diffraction Apparatus Diffraction is a concept used in physics to describe wave behaviour. As a quantum phenomenon, diffraction broke the paradigms of classical physics, since the double slit experiment5 proved that “the ontology of anything cannot be determined without regard to the apparatus of observation, or else that the apparatus participates in the ontology of the thing observed” (Belia 2015, p. 14). In feminist theory, the metaphor of diffraction is employed to describe a critical consciousness that is attentive to differences and their effects. Donna Haraway asks us to consider what the physical phenomenon of diffraction could mean in onto-epistemological terms. She explains that, as a metaphor, diffraction “drops the metaphysics of identity and the metaphysics of representation and says optics is full of a whole other potent way of thinking about light, which is about history. It’s not about identity as taxonomy, but it’s about registering process on the recording screen” (Haraway 2000, pp. 103–4). In accordance with this perspective, a documentary film would not be conceived as the reflection of any so-called fixed reality out there, which is then mirrored by the camera. Instead, it is analysed as technologies that co-produce and record the processes through which human elements (e.g., the filmmakers) and non-human elements (e.g., the camera) intra-act with other human and non-human parts of the world (e.g., filmed subjects and objects, spectators, screens). Apart from the optical metaphor, Barad also employs diffraction to describe a reading methodology that attends to “entanglements in reading important insights and approaches through one another” (Barad 2007, p. 30). Within a diffractive approach, “any reading of texts is a meaning-making practice” (Belia 2015, p. 16). Rather than focus on accurate reflections of the world, diffractive reading engages in the re-making of the world. Birgit Kaiser defines diffractive reading as “radically performative” (Kaiser 2014, p. 281): it is by reading texts together that certain patterns emerge, so that reading in itself becomes a productive event. The separation between subject/observer and object/observed is replaced by an understanding that both are permanently entangled. Diffraction does not take the boundaries of any subject nor object for granted, “but rather investigates the material-discursive boundary-making practices that produce ‘objects’ and ‘subjects’ and other differences out of, and in terms of, a changing relationality” (Barad 2007, p. 93). Rather than “interactions”, Barad talks about “intra-actions” to highlight the fact that objects and agencies of observation are mutually constituted in their encounters. To conceive feminist documentary films as diffraction apparatuses that “enact what matters and what is excluded from mattering” (Barad 2007, p. 148) from a gender-aware perspective involves analysing how the films intra-act with different parts of the world, the differences they make, and where the effects of those differences appear. This means reading them as entangled with their filmmakers’ positions, the production decisions surrounding them, and their reception effects. We propose three tools for analysing documentary cinema as a diffraction apparatus: materiality, emotionality and performativity. Materiality is a term borrowed from Domitilla Olivieri’s PhD thesis, in which she uses the expression “materiality of documentary” to describe two aspects. Firstly, she argues for “the filmic representation in its material specificity” (Olivieri 2012, p. 42), which involves going beyond the content (i.e., narrative structures, plot and subject matter), and paying attention to “how the film is constructed: its technologies, framing, editing, voice-over, use of realistic or fictional images and sounds, and use of different filmic strategies” (Olivieri 2012, p. 10). Secondly, materiality “refers to the manner in which documentary film engages with bodies and with the matter of the world” (Olivieri 2012, p. 10). 5 Thomas Young performed the double-slit experiment with light in 1801. In 1927, Davisson and Germer demonstrated that electrons show the same behaviour: “The Davisson-Germer experiment showed that under some circumstances, matter (in this case electrons) exhibits wavelike behavior. Since the Davisson and Germer experiment, many other experiments have confirmed this result for other kinds of matter as well. That is, there is direct empirical evidence that matter—not just light—manifests wave behavior under the right experimental circumstances.” (Barad 2007, p. 83). 9 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 The second tool, performativity, is understood in four senses following Nichols (2010); Bruzzi (2000); Butler (1990, 2015) and Barad (2007). For Bill Nichols, the performative is one of the six possible modes of representation in documentary cinema.6 This mode emphasises the subjective dimensions of our knowledge of the world by stressing “the emotional complexity of experience from the perspective of the filmmaker him- or herself” (Nichols 2010, p. 202). Information and facts yield to “an expressive quality that affirms the highly situated, embodied, and vividly personal perspective of specific subjects” (Nichols 2010, p. 203). It is less concerned with formal experimentation in itself and, despite the centrality it gives to personal experience, it always joins “the particular to the general, the individual to the collective, and the personal to the political” (Nichols 2010, p. 204). Some critics, however, claim that documentary cinema is always a performative act, regardless of its mode of representation. Stella Bruzzi, for instance, argues that documentaries are “the result of the intrusion of the filmmaker onto the situation being filmed” (Bruzzi 2000, p. 8). This, she continues, does not invalidate the authenticity of documentary. Rather, in her opinion, the idea of unmediated transparency is replaced “with a performative exchange between subjects, filmmakers/apparatus and spectators” (Bruzzi 2000, p. 6). Instead of presenting a reality that exists previously and independently, performative documentary cinema shows realities resulting from the intervention of the camera and/or the film production, situations created from the very action of making a documentary film. This definition of documentary as a performative act that captures some sort of reality in-the-making echoes Barad’s understanding of reality as “an ongoing dynamic of intra-activity” (Barad 2007, p. 206). Judith Butler first looked at the concept of performativity through feminist lenses in her 1990 book Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of identity. The concept of performativity originally refers to linguistic utterances that bring what they state into being or make a set of events happen as a consequence of the utterance being made. In Butler’s words: “performativity is a way of naming a power language has to bring about a new situation or to set into motion a set of effects” (Butler 2015, p. 28). Paraphrasing her, we would like to propose performativity as a way of naming the power of documentary cinema “to bring about a new situation or to set into motion a set of effects” (Butler 2015, p. 28). A new materialist reading of Butler’s performativity has been elaborated by Mónica Cano (Cano Abadía 2017). She argues that Butler replaces the humanist subject with a vulnerable, interdependent subject who is open to change and to the constitutive relationship with others (Cano Abadía 2017, p. 266). We agree with her on this aspect, which is further developed in the next section. Cano also states that Butler does not reduce matter to language, nor does she enclose the subjects in a rigid socio-linguistic mechanism that produces them in a deterministic way (Cano Abadía 2017, p. 269). What we want to emphasise from Barad’s take on performativity is precisely the relevance she gives to matter: “an agential realist elaboration of performativity allows matter its due as an active participant in the world’s becoming, in its ongoing intra-activity” (Barad 2007, p. 136). Hence, the performativity of documentary cinema as a diffraction apparatus, which includes human and non-human agents and objects of observation, matters at various levels: from the way it frames and creates boundaries, to the alliances it helps sustain on both sides of the camera and the screen. Our third tool, emotionality, describes “how texts are ‘moving’, or how they generate effects ( . . . ) [and] the way in which texts name or perform different emotions” (Ahmed 2014, p. 13). Sara Ahmed is explicit about why she decides to employ the word “emotion” rather than “affect”: “I was interested in this idea of movement that is explicit in its etymology. And it was also partly that I wanted to use the word that is used in everyday life” (Ahmed 2014, p. 97). She explains the connection between emotions and the making of boundaries: 6 The other modes are: expository, observational, participatory, poetic and reflexive. 10 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 . . . it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces or boundaries are made: the “I” and the “we” are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contact with others ( . . . ) the surfaces of bodies “surface” as an effect of the impressions left by others ( . . . ) emotions are not “in” either the individual or the social, but produce the very surfaces and boundaries that allow the individual and the social to be delineated as if they are objects. (Ahmed 2014, p. 10) In this sense, we look for the emotions evoked by each film: how making and/or watching these films affect(s) subjects and objects on both sides of the camera and the screen. We conceive emotions as “effects rather than origins” (Ahmed 2014, p. 196). Diffraction, therefore, is a multi-layered concept which we apply in this article in two different manners: one, we argue that any documentary film can be analysed as a diffraction apparatus that makes the world intelligible in specific ways and participates in co-creating the real; two, we diffractively read the insights raised by two case studies so as to identify effects of feminist material-discursive practices in documentary cinema. 3. Feminist Cinema: Visualising Alliances from and against Precarity It is not our purpose in this article to look for an essentialist and prescriptive definition of what feminist documentary cinema is or should be. Instead, we follow Olivieri’s proposal of “studying what makes a documentary feminist in terms of what a documentary does” (Olivieri 2012, p. 7). Therefore, we focus on the actual exploration and construction of contents, textual structures, formal strategies and means of production, distribution and exhibition which reveal a feminist consciousness, i.e., an awareness of the role that gender has (had) in the organisation and legitimisation of social inequalities. Feminist documentary cinema can be understood as a form of countervisuality7, balancing between a lived reality of gender inequalities and imagined alternatives to it. The androcentric regime of gender visuality has been built around the subject of humanism: He is the norm according to which the racialised, sexualised and naturalised others are produced (Cano Abadía 2017, p. 265). What Cano explains is that Butler’s theory of gender performativity has opened up a different understanding of subjects, starting from the recognition of their fundamentally interdependent and vulnerable condition. The fact that we have to cohabitate with other humans and non-humans on which our lives depend, should make us “understand a global obligation imposed upon us to find political and economic forms that minimise precarity and establish economic political equality” (Butler 2015, pp. 121–22). Vulnerability is not inherent to a particular group, but unequally distributed as an effect of power relations under specific conditions. When this is not acknowledged, vulnerability can be used by political discourses as a way to produce and naturalise forms of social inequality. In feminist theory, it has been argued that women face social vulnerability in a disproportionate way. What Butler warns against is the idea that “women have an unchanging and defining vulnerability” (Butler 2015, p. 140). Rather, she underlines that conditions such as poverty and illiteracy faced mainly by women are caused by an unequal distribution of precariousness fostered by gender power relations and lack of adequate socio-political infrastructures. She also states that women are “at once vulnerable and capable of resistance, and that vulnerability and resistance can, and do, and even must happen at the same time” (Butler 2015, p. 141). To think about inequality in terms of precarity opens up the possibility for strategic alliances among different groups. In Butler ’s words: “precarity is the rubric that brings together women, queers, transgender people, the poor, the differently abled, and the stateless, but also religious and racial minorities: it is a social and economic condition, but not an identity” (Butler 2015, p. 58). When various minorities, whose alliance potential stems from their shared precarity, assemble in the streets and/or 7 “Countervisuality” is a concept coined by Nicholas Mirzoeff to refer to a resistant vision structured around the tension between the “need to apprehend and counter a real that does exist but should not, and one that should exist but is as yet becoming” (Mirzoeff 2011, p. 477). 11 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 appear together in a media platform to demand their rights, they “enact another idea of equality, freedom and justice than the one that they oppose” (Butler 2015, p. 52). The two documentary films that we have chosen as case studies render visible this kind of alliance. Cuidado, resbala is a collective film developed within a feminist economics framework that (re)positions care labour at the centre of the economic activities. Yes, We Fuck! is a postporn transfeminist film, which shows sexually explicit images that seek to question mainstream ideals of desirability, as well as sexual practices framed by ableism and heteropatriarchy. In the next section, we apply the previously described tools (materiality, performativity and emotionality) by tracing overlapping waves, patterns of differences and their effects. This is attained by reading the two documentary films through one another. Both films have been cut into four levels: form, content, production and reception. In order to analyse form and content, we carry out a feminist close reading (Lukic and Sánchez-Espinosa 2011). As for production and reception, the methods have been interviews with filmmakers and fieldwork at screenings. 4. A Diffractive Reading of Cuidado, resbala8 and Yes, We Fuck! The title of the 2013 documentary film Cuidado, resbala plays with the two meanings of the word “cuidado” in Spanish, so that it can be roughly translated as Caution/Care Slippery. It is directed by two psychologists, a pedagogue, a lawyer, a teacher and a filmmaker (María Camacho Gómez, Montserrat Clos Fabuel, Mercedes Cordero Suárez, Vanessa Gómez Martínez, Carolina Suárez Rasmussen and Leonor Jiménez Moreno) from two feminist associations based in Málaga, Spain. Sexuality and functional diversity9 are at the core of Yes We Fuck!, a postporn documentary film directed by two Spanish cismen10, Antonio Centeno and Raúl de la Morena. Postporn cinema “uses sexually explicit imagery to contest and complicate dominant representations of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, ability, age, body type, and other identity markers” (Miller-Young et al. 2013, p. 9). According to Centeno, “what postporn tries to do is to take the visual language of the ordinary porn, which greatly shapes our idea of what sexuality is, and turn it around, politicise it and turn those who were objects into subjects who can express their own pleasure, their own desire.”11 Materiality, as explained above, pays attention to “how the film is constructed” and how it “engages with bodies and with the matter of the world” (Olivieri 2012, p. 10). For Hongisto, the main way in which politically committed documentary films participate in “the real as process” (Hongisto 2015, p. 12) is through framing. Taking Hongisto’s question as a starting point, we intend to answer the following questions: How do our two case studies (re)frame reality? How do they entangle diverse narrative waves through the editing? Cuidado, resbala exposes the discrimination encountered by domestic workers within an economics framework that places care labour in the hidden part of the iceberg sustaining the markets. Following Bill Nichols’s typology of modes of representation in documentary cinema (2010), we can describe it as an observational–participatory documentary film, with a couple of expository animated sequences, and a reflexive performative voice-over that opens and closes the film. We identify four different narrative waves: voices of domestic workers; interviews with academic experts; animation; and reflexive voice-over. Through a diffractive lens, we can visualise how these waves overlap within the 8 A shorter version of the analysis of this film has been published in Feminist Media Studies (Calderón 2017). 9 Replacing the term “disability” with that of “functional diversity” has been put forward in Spain by the “Movimiento Vida Independiente” (Independent Life Movement), which is articulated through a virtual community called “Foro de Vida Independiente” (Independent Life Forum), founded in 2001. 10 The term cisgender, as opposed to transgender, refers to those people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. 11 “El postporno lo que intenta hacer es coger el lenguaje visual del porno corriente que tanto configura nuestra idea de lo que es la sexualidad, y darle la vuelta, politizarlo y aquéllos que eran objetos, convertirlos en sujetos que enuncian su propio placer, su propio deseo.” Antonio Centeno. Q&A session. 5 November 2016 in Granada. All translations in this article are ours. 12 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 film editing, hence revealing that the diverse and apparently disconnected insights on care labour are actually entangled. This strategy allows us to place at the same level two narrative waves: the voices of the domestic workers and the voices of the academic experts interviewed for the film (Amaia Pérez Orozco, Yayo Herrero, and Mercedes Cordero). Knowledge is thus produced in a horizontal way, entangling insights from personal experience with those from academic backgrounds. A third wave is visualised with the animated sequence in which a female voice-over explains the intersections of gender, class and nationality in the global care chain: women from the Global South that have migrated to the Global North are being exploited as domestic workers, so that women from the so-called first countries can conciliate their professions with household chores. Neither men, nor industries, nor the State assume any responsibility for care labour. Some care services are privatised, but as a whole, this only aggravates inequalities. The reflexive performative voice over belongs to Carolina Suárez Rasmussen, one of the film directors and a migrant from Argentina who worked as a domestic worker in Spain for three years. The opening and closing sequences of the film with the reflexive voice over constitute a fourth narrative wave. The film starts with Suárez Rasmussen’s testimony about finding out that domestic labour does not have the same legal status as other jobs, and finishes with her account of how the personal conflicts she has faced are connected with that fact, and thus have a collective political dimension. This testimony is key for reading Cuidado, resbala as a research journey, and what she is looking for is exactly what diffraction focuses on, i.e., “how different differences get made” (Barad 2007, p. 30). Throughout the film, the viewer is encouraged to recognise the way in which care labour is rendered invisible, labelled as different from other jobs within the patriarchal and neoliberal socio-economic system, placing the responsibility for life care on individuals, mainly women. These sequences also have the peculiarity of raising awareness of the camera, making it felt as embodied from a specific gaze. Such formal strategy subverts the conventional understanding of an objective gaze in documentary cinema. Moreover, the opening sequence asks the spectator to identify with the point of view of a female illegal immigrant who works as a domestic worker, a subject which de-centers masculinity and whiteness. In Yes, We Fuck!, the representation of the rebellious and diverse bodies of the filmed subjects questions pathology, monstrosity, voyeuristic curiosity and/or pitiful solidarity. Instead, the filmed subjects are presented as both, desiring and desirable through the intra-actions which take place both sides of the camera. The film consists of six ten-minute stories which could be analysed, we propose, as different narrative waves which provide spectators with diverse entry points. We listen to the filmed subjects’ discourses but we also observe their practices, engaging in various sexual activities that fall out of what Gayle Rubin calls the “charmed circle of sex” (Rubin [1984] 2006, p. 153).12 Not only do their bodies deviate from ableist, racist and heterosexist norms but their sexualities also question androcentric, heteronormative and patriarchal conventions. Yes, We Fuck! is a realist film whose main modes of representation are observational and participatory, though it also incorporates a performative mode in two of its stories. The first story works as a fist narrative wave in its setting the potential alliance between functional diversity and queer activists, stemming from the fact that their bodies do not fit within the productive norms. During a postporn workshop sequence, the observational-participatory mode of representation is combined with a poetic voice over which accompanies the images of group sex, in which sexualisation goes beyond the genitals and incorporates intra-actions between human and non-human artefacts. Centeno 12 Rubin explains that, in western heteronormative societies, sex is regulated by a sexual value system. Within the charmed circle of so-called good and natural sexuality we find that which is “heterosexual, marital, monogamous, reproductive, and non-commercial.” Moreover, “it should be coupled, relational, within the same generation, and occur at home. It should not involve pornography, fetish objects, sex toys of any sort, or roles other than male and female. Any sex that violates these rules is ‘bad’, ‘abnormal’, or ‘unnatural’.” (Rubin [1984] 2006, p. 152). 13 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 participates in the workshop, while the intra-actions between De La Morena and his camera with the rest of the bodies are expressed in very close shots, getting out of focus several times. The second story presents a second wave by focusing on a heterosexual couple traversed by two visible differences: the functional diversity of Miriam, paraplegic, and the nationality of Pama, a migrant from India. The main mode of representation in this story is the observational-participatory one. In the interview with the couple, Pama hardly speaks and shows difficulty in communicating in Spanish. While she has an elaborated political discourse on sexuality and diversity, he uses very short phrases. What she emphasises is that due to his different cultural background, his gaze towards her is different, which she finds surprising. Since the story only lasts ten minutes, the characters’ profiles and their relationship dynamics remain on a superficial level. The last scene, in which they have sexual intercourse, could be regarded as voyeuristic were it not for the fact that, within this story and in the film as a whole, the camera’s voyeuristic gaze is constantly questioned (this is clear, for example, in stories four and six). The third story also has an observational-participatory mode of representation. As a third narrative wave, it shows a BDSM session between a sex worker and a man with cerebral palsy. The fact that Linda is a female sex worker filmed by a man, wearing clothes associated with the figure of the dominatrix in mainstream porn, renders these sequences problematic, as they reproduce an objectifying and fetishistic gaze.13 There’s, however, a counterbalance that has to be taken into consideration. Linda is also presented with close-ups of her face as she expresses her reasons for being a sex worker. It’s important to note that Linda is a migrant from the Global South, from a Latin American country. She states that the first reason why she is a sex worker is because of the money, and only later does she elaborate on her political position “advocating for the freedom of bodies, the freedom of pleasure and the freedom in doing as we please with our own bodies, without any moral or political mandate” (Min. 21:26). Thus, the film does not hide the fact that precarity in a sexist, racist and classist society is a decisive factor behind the exercise of sex work, but by rendering visible Linda’s confident testimony, it also argues against the stigmatisation and victimisation of sex workers. Another aspect worth mentioning is the fact that before the BDSM session, the dialogue between the characters emphasises consent, vulnerability and respect. The fourth story starts with a sequence in which the performative mode of representation propitiates identification with Mertxe, a blind woman who also appears in the first story. During the first three minutes, the screen is totally black as we listen to her talking to a friend about a squirting workshop. The screen goes black again at the end of the story, as we listen to female moans of pleasure. Thus, the formal strategies employed in this fourth narrative wave question the ocularcentrism of dominant cinema, giving an example of a haptic visuality14 that triggers physical memories of touch, smell and taste. The contrast between the images of one character’s vagina with a speculum and his subsequent assertion in an interview, identifying “with the male gender” (Min. 34:53), provides an eloquent example of the film as a diffraction apparatus. In reading one sequence through the other, this cutting-together-apart15 strategy renders visible gender performativity, as we see the disconnection between the body and the gender enacted by the same person. The fifth story consists mainly of talking heads. Therefore, its mode of representation is observational-participatory. The organisation of the sequence, which presents first the opinions of people with intellectual diversity (Down syndrome) and then the opinions of their parents, establishes a clear contrast between sexuality as pleasure on the one hand, and reproduction as responsibility, 13 According to Laura Mulvey (Mulvey [1975] 1988, p. 58), fetishism fragments the female character into fetish images, such as her legs or her high-heel shoes. 14 In haptic cinema, the scopophilic drive is replaced by the pleasure evoked by other senses, thus opening up a synaesthetic dimension. 15 Agential cuts, according to Barad, do not produce absolute separations, but an agential situated separability, “a ‘holding together’ of the disparate itself” (Barad 2012, p. 46). 14 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 on the other. The story does not take sides, nor does it go deeper into problematic issues such as sterilisation, which is only superficially raised. What is emphasised in this fifth wave is the sexual desires of people with intellectual diversity together with the freedom and openness with which they talk about their own sexuality. In this sense, talking heads emerge as an empowering tool for people who express and affirm themselves in front of the camera. The last story, sixth narrative wave, introduces the figure of the sexual assistant, which is different from the sex worker in the third story. The sexual assistant helps a person with functional diversity have access to her/his own body, without becoming herself/himself engaged in sexual intercourse. This story resorts to a performative mode of representation because the characters record themselves. Most of the sequence is shot from the sexual assistant’s point of view (Teo) as he caresses the body of a quadriplegic woman. The beginning and the end of the sequence, where Teo removes and puts back on the lens cap, raises awareness of the camera, directly interpellating the audience before the credits start. The two characters look directly into the camera as they say why they are recording the video: “Visualising all of this is important. It is also important to help people with functional diversity discover it since we don’t know that we can ask for it and that it is within our rights” (Min. 55:49). In each story, the characters make explicit their position as politically informed. In this case, the filmed subjects assert that making the film itself is their political/activist intervention. None of the film characters fit within the androcentric norm, let alone within the mainstream pornography standards of desirable bodies. Female pleasure and gender performativity are also key issues: there are transgender characters in three out of the six stories, and female characters embrace and openly discuss their sexual pleasure. In general, gender is considered as oppressive, but also as something that can be questioned and subverted. Indeed, Yes, We Fuck! has become a tool for alliances between Spanish activist groups, which have been called “Alianzas Tullido-Transfeministas”, i.e., Crip-Queer Alliances (García-Santesmases Fernández et al. 2017).16 Our second tool, performativity, is connected with this understanding of the production process of the films as a political action in itself and their becoming militant objects. In the previous section we described documentary as a performative act that captures some sort of reality in-the-making that results from the intervention of the camera and/or the film production. And paraphrasing Butler, we proposed performativity as a way of naming the power of documentary cinema, conceived not as representation but as apparatus, “to bring about a new situation or to set into motion a set of effects” (Butler 2015, p. 28). Cuidado, resbala was conceived as political from the beginning, not only in terms of content, but also in its production process. For Leonor Jiménez, the only professional filmmaker out of the six directors, the assembly-like method they carried out was very different from what she had been taught at film school: Because normally, within the world of documentary and audiovisual creation, a lot of emphasis is placed on the author’s gaze, which is individual and hierarchical. That person has to have a gaze of their own. And we were proposing exactly the opposite. (Jiménez et al. 2017)17 Jiménez emphasises that their being a group of feminist women was indeed a difference that mattered and had effects on their way of working, especially in terms of power relations. The creation of an empathetic and trusting atmosphere was also a fundamental aspect during the recording of the interviews. Clear explanations about who they were, what the film was about and why they had 16 Transfeminism keeps on working with the political subject “women”, but advocates for a subject of feminism that includes other subjectivities, in as much as gender and the biological differences employed in the legitimisation of social inequalities do not only oppress women but also all those who do not fit within androcentric norms, such as queer individuals and people with functional diversity. 17 “Porque normalmente desde el mundo así de la creación documental, audiovisual, hacen mucho hincapié en la mirada del autor o de la autora. Una mirada individual, el autor, jerárquica; esa persona tiene que tener una mirada propia. Y nosotras estábamos planteando todo lo contrario.” Leonor Jiménez. Personal interview. 23 January 2017 in Málaga. 15 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 contacted the person for an interview contributed to reduce, albeit a little, “the issue of the camera as an invasive power element”18. They remember that a turning point in the making of Cuidado, resbala took place after the distressing interview with two domestic workers from Nicaragua. That’s when they decided they had to look for alternatives so as to move from the personal to the collective and to avoid focusing only on victimisation. With the women from “Territorio Doméstico” they saw these possibilities materialised. The importance that the film gives to global care chains and to the experience of women immigrants was not something deliberately present in their agenda, but an issue that arose as undeniable evidence. As Carolina Suárez summarises it: “If we talk about vulnerabilities or unequal treatment, I think that here all three things come together: being a woman, a migrant, and a domestic worker.”19 According to her, Cuidado, resbala is a feminist documentary because it “questions, criticises and highlights all the contradictions of the patriarchal system and its economic correlate, which is capitalism” (Jiménez et al. 2017) Jiménez reckons that the film can actually be called radically feminist, in the sense that it goes to the roots of placing care at the centre of the system. The film official premiere was at the 16th edition of the Málaga Film Festival in 2013. Produced with public funds, it did not have any commercial distribution and they stopped sending it to festivals when they realised that it was being asked for by lots of associations, workshops and seminars, which, from their point of view, were the main exhibition spaces. That’s why they decided to put it online for free.21 In a similar way to that in which second wave feminists employed documentary films as a militant tool, some of the domestic workers who appear in Cuidado, resbala have used it in diverse forums to raise awareness and empower people who experience similar situations. For instance, “Territorio Doméstico” has organised projections at the “Eskalera Karakola” feminist space in Madrid, with the purpose of rendering visible their demands. In the case of Yes, We Fuck!, Centeno admits that it was thanks to the contribution of researcher and anthropologist Andrea García-Santesmases that he and De la Morena found out that there were people already working with diverse sexual representations in feminist postporn cinema. They had not thought about the gender axis when they started working on the project but as they moved forward, it became one of their main insights: What has subsequently been the central and most powerful axis of the documentary is that the gender axis and the axis of functional diversity are the same axes practically. I mean, in the end, the structure of oppression is the same, isn’t it? That attempt to justify social inequalities because of biological differences is a very old story and that is why the discourses are so parallel and so related. (Centeno 2016)22 The production process of the film, and later on, its exhibition have been spaces for the encounter of these activisms. Looking at Yes, We Fuck! as a diffraction apparatus, rather than as a reflecting mirror that reproduces the same elsewhere, we can argue that the various narrative waves through which the axes of gender, sexuality and functional diversity are co-constructed by Centeno and De La Morena produce, facilitate and solicit new ways of seeing the intersections and alliances between these three axes (Minh-ha 2005, p. 13). 18 “Eso de la cámara como elemento invasivo y de poder” Leonor Jiménez. Personal interview. 23 January 2017 in Málaga. 19 “Si hablamos de vulnerabilidades o de desigual trato, yo creo que ahí se juntan las tres cosas. Por ser mujer, por ser migrante, por ser empleada doméstica.” Carolina Suárez. Personal interview. 23 January 2017 in Málaga. 21 Vimeo website. Date of access: 20 February 2019. https://vimeo.com/67552738. 22 “Lo que luego ha sido el eje central y potente del documental que es que, el eje de género y el eje de diversidad funcional son el mismo eje prácticamente, o sea, que al final la estructura de opresión es la misma, ¿no? Ese intento de, de intentar justificar las desigualdades sociales a partir de las diferencias biológicas es una historia muy vieja y que por eso los discursos son tan paralelos y tan afines.” Antonio Centeno. Skype interview. 20 November 2016. 16 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 It’s important to mention that in the Spanish context, there’s a strong feminist debate about the abolition of prostitution or its legalisation as sex work.23 Centeno is in favour of the latter and has defended sexual assistance as a right for people with functional diversity within the Spanish Independent Life Movement. In this regard he states that: “Those in favour of the abolition of prostitution can incorporate the reality of functional diversity into the process of constructing a general human sexuality that is rich and appreciative of difference, so as to eliminate the demand for sexual services beyond police repression” (Centeno Ortiz 2014, p. 109).24 We finally come to our last tool, i.e., emotionality. How does making/watching these films affect subjects and objects on both sides of the camera and the screen? How do emotions produce the surfaces and boundaries that delineate the individual and the social? (Ahmed 2014, p. 10). As mentioned before, several testimonies in Cuidado, resbala evoke anger and distress. The opening and closing sequences, with the reflexive voice over and the embodied subjective camera, perform entrapment and despair. These feelings are strong when domestic workers find themselves isolated. The turning point comes with the movement from individual struggle towards organised collective action with the testimonies of the women from “Territorio Doméstico”, the interviews with academic experts who envision alternatives, and the festive demonstrations. The main emotions evoked in the film and gathered by the audiences have to do with empowerment, hope, pride and solidarity. Similarly, the film subjects and spectators of Yes, We Fuck! have praised the sex-positive tone of the film. Even though several testimonies evoke shame, anger and discomfort, the film performs mainly positive emotions such as pleasure, love, trust, freedom and curiosity. As in the case of Cuidado, resbala, positive emotions become stronger when the struggle becomes open and collective. For instance, Soledad Arnau, the main character of the story about sexual assistance and a feminist functional diversity activist, describes her experience in the film as very positive: All the stories have enriched me a great deal, and of course mine, well, I would not change the experience I had for anything, what I felt in that screening. Because for me it was like a before and after. I think it’s a beautiful way to learn to love oneself, to love oneself even more, if I already loved myself then even more, and also to love the body because in the end, I think it’s impossible to love yourself if you do not love your body ( . . . .) To have a body is not something problematic, I believe it is the most beautiful thing in the world to have a body and to be able to enjoy it. And fortunately the documentary is an example, it shows that bodies are enjoyable. (Arnau 2018)25 To conservative, paternalistic, heteronormative and ableist material-discursive practices, the filmmakers and filmed subjects of Yes, We Fuck! respond with their performative right to appear as desiring and desirable subjects. 5. Three Effects of Feminist Material-Discursive Practices in Documentary Cinema In this final section, we diffractively read insights raised by each of our case studies to illustrate three effects that feminist material-discursive practices in documentary cinema can have. The first effect is that both films operate as feminist countervisuality devices that reframe realities from a gender 23 Instances of this are the steps towards the abolition of prostitution taken recently by the Spanish socialist government and their contestation from sex workers associations, attempting to create a sex workers trade union. 24 “Quien esté por la abolición de la prostitución, puede incorporar la realidad de la diversidad funcional al proceso de construir una sexualidad humana general suficientemente rica y positivamente apreciadora de la diferencia como para eliminar la demanda de servicios sexuales más allá de la represión policial.” 25 “Todas las historias me enriquecen muchísimo y desde luego la mía, bueno, no cambiaría por nada del mundo la vivencia que viví, que sentí en esa proyección. Porque para mí fue como un antes y un después. Yo creo que es una forma preciosa de aprender a quererse a una misma, a quererse más todavía, si ya me quería pues ahora más todavía, y bueno también a querer al cuerpo porque al final, creo que es imposible quererte si no te quieres el cuerpo ( . . . ) realmente no es nada problemático, es lo más hermoso del mundo tener un cuerpo, creo yo y poder disfrutar de este cuerpo. Y afortunadamente el documental es un ejemplo de que los cuerpos son disfrutables.” Soledad Arnau. Q&A Session. 16 October 2018 at the University of Granada. 17 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 aware perspective. A pattern that both films share is that the filmed subjects are empowered as they enact their right to appear as political subjects in the public space. In Yes, We Fuck!, rebellious and diverse bodies are presented in a way that questions their intelligibility from the perspectives of pathology and/or pitiful paternalism. In their sexually explicit images, the filmed subjects enact their performative right to appear as both, desiring and desirable. In Cuidado, resbala, care labour is placed at the centre of the economic activities. The filmmakers render visible inequalities connected with three factors: being a woman, a migrant, and a domestic worker. But they also propose real alternatives, showing the organised collective struggles of domestic workers and reading these insights from personal activist experience through those from feminist academic experts. The second effect of feminist material-discursive practices in these films is their rendering visible the ways in which patterns of difference are turned into and/or employed by structures of inequality. In Cuidado, resbala, this is approached within the framework of the sexual division of labour. In the animated sequence, a female voice-over explains the intersections of gender, class and nationality in the transnational care chain. In the case of Yes, We Fuck!, Centeno admitted that directing this film made him realise that the feminist struggle and the struggle of people with functional diversity have various aspects in common: from their political work with the body, to the critical dismantling of the attempt to justify social inequalities arguing biological differences. The third effect of feminist material-discursive practices that we diffractively read in these films has to do with the move from “reflecting on representations” to “accounting for how practices matter” (Barad 2007, p. 90). The directors of Cuidado, resbala and Yes, We Fuck! envisioned the production process of both films as a political action in itself. In Cuidado, resbala, the directors render visible inequalities faced by domestic workers, but they also visualise other possibilities for liveable conditions. The film evokes anger and distress with various testimonies, but rather than victimisation and paralysis, awareness of injustice is portrayed as leading to collective struggles. The subjects in Yes, We Fuck! accepted to appear in the film because they shared an understanding of the need to create a different collective imaginary. Through the co-organisation of filmed workshops, the production process operated as a space for the encounter of queer and crip activisms that had been mostly disconnected until then and that have continued working together since. If we recognise the onto-epistemological potential of documentaries to “co-compose the real” (Hongisto 2015, p. 12), we can envision their ethico-political impact in the opening up of possibilities for gender and world making otherwise. The processes of making and watching feminist documentary films can co-create spaces for breaking the silence about precarious situations and for collectively generating more livable conditions. The two films that we have referred to manage to find a paradoxical balance pointed out by Butler: The filmed subjects—domestic workers, people with functional diversity, transgender activists—are presented as “at once vulnerable and capable of resistance” (Butler 2015, p. 141). Films like Cuidado, resbala and Yes, We Fuck! exemplify the capability of looking back and beyond androcentric visuality regimes. Author Contributions: Article conceptualization, O.C.-S. and A.S.-E.; interviews, O.C.-S.; methodology and primary analysis, O.C.-S. and A.S.-E.; original draft preparation, O.C.-S.; review and editing, O.C.-S. and A.S.-E.; supervision, A.S.-E.; project administration, project design and funding acquisition A.S.-E. Funding: This work is part of GRACE Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe, a European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 675378. The research has been funded by this project. The GRACE Project is led by Suzanne Clisby at the University of Hull. Adelina Sánchez-Espinosa is Principal Investigator at the University of Granada. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. 18 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 206 References Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Arnau, Soledad. 2018. Q&A Session at the University of Granada. October 16. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Barad, Karen. 2012. Nature’s Queer Performativity. Kvinder, Køn og forskning/Women, Gender and Research 1: 25–53. [CrossRef] Belia, Vasiliki. 2015. You can read your way out of this. 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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 20 $ € £ ¥ social sciences Article The Sonic Intra-Face of a Noisy Feminist Social Kitchen Juliana España Keller Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3006, Australia; info@julianaespanakeller.com Received: 7 May 2019; Accepted: 19 August 2019; Published: 23 August 2019 Abstract: This paper asks what is the value of transforming the kitchen into a sonic performative work and public site for art and social practice. A Public Kitchen is formed by recreating the private and domestic space of a kitchen into a public space through a sonic performance artwork. The kitchen table is a platform for exploring, repositioning and amplifying kitchen tools as material phenomena through electronic and manual manipulation into an immersive sonic performance installation. This platform becomes a collaborative social space, where somatic movement and sensory, sonic power of the repositioned kitchen tools are built on a relational architecture of iterative sound performances that position the art historical and the sociopolitical, transforming disciplinary interpretations of the body and technology as something that is not specifically exclusively human but post-human. A Public Kitchen represents a pedagogical strategy for organizing and responding collectively to the local, operating as an independent nomadic event that speaks through a creative practice that is an unfolding process. (Re)imagining the social in a Public Kitchen produces noisy affects in a sonic intra-face that can contribute to transforming our social imaginations, forming daring dissonant narratives that feed post-human ethical practices and feminist genealogies. This paper reveals what matters—a feminist struggle invaluable in channeling the intra-personal; through the entanglement of the self, where language, meaning and subjectivity are relational to human difference and to what is felt from the social, what informs from a multi-cultural nomadic existence and diffractive perspective. The labored body is entangled with post-human contingencies of food preparation, family and social history, ritual, tradition, social geography, local politics, and women’s oppression; and is resonant and communicates as a site where new sonic techniques of existence are created and experiences shared. Keywords: sound and noise art; feminist new materialism; posthumanities; doing-cooking; social engagement; participatory practices Preface This paper needs to expand out from the page for the reader. Firstly, and most obviously, it offers a written analysis of the artwork and emphasizes the relation to Martha Rosler ’s seminal work, Semiotics of the Kitchen (Rosler 1975). A Public Kitchen responds to the historical, socio-political, feminist academic research in relation to the Special Issue on Feminist New Materialisms. Secondly, visual images of various performance iterations provide useful illustration. Finally, this text offers a link to the sound performance work, ‘The Kitchen Shift’ that can be accessed online. This audio-visual documentation can be found on my website with the following hyperlink listed below. By using this link, the reader is connected to the art work directly. This adjunct helps elucidate a fuller understanding of a Public Kitchen. This journal paper forms part of the artwork and research, A Public Kitchen, which is foremost a collective performance work and immersive sound installation. When reading this text, there is a desire and need (by the artist) for the reader to experience the collective sensory and sonic attributes Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245; doi:10.3390/socsci8090245 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci21 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 of a Public Kitchen; however, the live and immersive experience of performance art, or live art, is at once irreplaceable or not easily substituted. The artwork is thus always to be set-up each time for an indeterminate and distinct outcome with room for failure and noisy slippages. A Public Kitchen is a culturally constructed representation of reality and positions what is possible and what it is not possible in its activation. As there have been many iterations of this work to date—spanning geographies and social groups (2015–2019)—much vital material has been generated over time in the form of audio-visual documentation.1 1. Introduction “dare take the risk of affirmative politics and the collective construction of social horizons of hope” (Rosi Braidotti 2014). The research generated by the artwork, a Public Kitchen, contributes to feminist new materialist discourse by making the notion of human–non-human agency graspable as a creative act that cuts across pre-established dichotomies, by transversing hierarchies of power relations that organize human life as contextualized in by new materialist theorists Barad and Braidotti (Barad 2003, 2007; Braidotti 2002, 2013). Through the medium of sound, I am investigating; emphasizing entities, ethics, social class, and social political intervention in the process. This subjectivity illuminates and activates how we move through the world, react to surroundings and respond to everything. It also shows how the normative and hierarchical relations amongst human groups based on race, sexuality, social class, and ability are always intimately entangled with the broader political economies/ecologies of which we are a part. The performance artwork establishes a scaffold for thinking about a range of ideas of what is felt through encounters with philosophy, sonic arts, community participation, feminist materialism, and post-human thought. The human and non-human relation to machines and machine learning is enacted through intra-active entanglement; since it represents an active pedagogy practice for organizing, facilitating and responding collectively to the local activated as Andrew Murphie states on how to anarchive2 through: “the ability to find a way out of systems, often from within to life’s living”(Murphie 2016, p. 5). A noisy kitchen is felt as a musical sounding in the everyday rhythm of lived intensities and is seen as Brian Massumi (2002) posits “a repertory of traces of collaborative research-creation events” and “platforms for organizing and orienting live, collaborative encounters” (Murphie 2016, p. 6). Agency is conjured through the doing-cooking3 of the kitchen to create a sonic recipe4 as the becoming of the human–non-human relationship to uncover the paradigms that shape-shift performance art. This paper focuses on the unpacking of a creative practice, resonating with agency and amplifying where the experiential is intensely experienced as “creating together”, foregrounding a way to move forward pedagogically and experientially (Conrad and Sinner 2015; Manning 2016). A Public Kitchen is embedded in the social, and the artwork allows for human slippages, failures that form part of the work. In particular, it considers how feminist new materialism can create daring dissonant narratives that feed post-human ethical practices and feminist genealogies. This research reveals what matters—a feminist struggle invaluable in highlighting and responding collectively to the local with a systemic understanding of material phenomena in an immersive sonic performative installation. This 1 The creative artwork and exhibition titled: “The Kitchen Shift” can be found here: https://vimeo.com/332604174. The Password: THEKITCHENSHIFT OR on the artist’s website: http://cargocollective.com/julianaespanakeller/THE- KITCHEN-SHIFT-THE-INDUSTRIAL-SCHOOL-BUILDING. 2 The word ‘anarchive’ comes from the “The Go-To How to Book of Anarchiving” by Andrew Murphie of the Senselab (Murphie 2016). 3 The entanglement of “doing-cooking”—a term coined by Michel de Certeau (de Certeau et al. 2014). 4 A sonic recipe is a dynamic arrangement of sound/noise material generated through the artwork by the intersection of the human–non-human, embracing the critical potentiality of a vital matter in a sonic apparatus. 22 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 position seeks to ignite and transform our social imagination and deactivate pervasive and dominating patriarchal ethico-politics. Finally, this paper explores ways in which post-humanist and new materialist thinking can be put to work in order to (re)imagine a more open perspective in approaching and pursuing community-based, collaborative practices underscored pedagogically and rhizomatically as a teaching about gender and a politics of care (Revelles-Benavente and Ramos 2017; Kumar 2002). What performance practices can do is contribute, co-produce through a constellation of variables of agency and become activated in a collaborative learning experience (Strom and Martin 2017). It is an invitation to scholars of posthumanism and new materialism to imagine how creative ideas and processual thinking might be put to work through performative practices with fluidity, flux, expansion and understanding of difference. In observation, anarchiving pertains to the event and live art that is activated through a performative cross-platform phenomenon where humanity is something that needs more humanizing as we move forward to challenging times ahead, where participation is risky and where research-creation can be contextualized performatively as co-constructed. In this way, human–non-humans, actions, or events are defined by their relations and function as part of an assemblage5 that is concerned with processual work and self-transformation. (Huybrechts 2014; Torrens 2014). What is correlative to intra-corporeality—where the artwork is an aesthetic, psychological and physical experience—is how these entanglements mesh with our perceptions; where the mediation of affect as a sound performance plays out and functions as a reading of the bodies of others. 2. Starting from the Middle Eight individuals in identical dresses file robotically in through a portal door. They walk, one after the next, into a space that is embedded with history, bringing their ways of moving materiality into the present. Heavy, heavier, heaviest. They walk in formation, masks on, heads high, hands up, carried above their chest, ready to work in thick, yellow, rubber utilitarian gloves. Each individual picks a spot in the room and stares out at the audience with a dead-pan face. One of the members picks up her guitar and begins to play doom-drone riffs. The sound does not rock, as much as crush6 inexorably, until the rest of the group move out collectively into the performative space with their bodies and making their way over to the kitchen table—the motherboard—to join her. Their self/bodies move through the space, shifting into various somatic positions on the floor, against the wall, with each other. The figure/ground choreographic relation between the human and this historical place dissolves as the outline of the human is traversed by substantial material intra-changes; the prelude of oneself as transcendent, generated through and entangled with other systems, processes and events. Their shiny bodies cannot resist the allure of shiny objects waiting on the motherboard, considering the effects they have, from manufacture to disposability, while reckoning with the strange agencies that intra-connect substance, flesh and place on a deep molecular level. Vibrating, vibrating . . . the sound distils and subtracts, and then the vocals begin resonating, looping in and generating live outbursts from the artist who is writing these words now, plunging the sound into a human-non-human realm of culinary noise abstraction. Rubber gloves smack back at you. The sonic recipe is in effect. Here, I begin by writing to you from the middle of a Public Kitchen, as the words are moving across and through the whole final creative artwork. The middle is for me a happening of writing and research that emerges from my own personal experience combined with an art practice that requires a sensitivity, or attunement, to what moves through thought and thinking as a performance artist—a 5 “Assemblage” is a material affective dynamic in which bodies become “other” to themselves (Deleuze et al. 1987). However, my understanding moves further in the direction of post-humanist feminist epistemology and quantum physics, as outlined in the works of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad. In turn, difference is relational to the concept of “becoming” explained by Barad and Braidotti. In this paper, I am articulating that participating with other bodies in a Public Kitchen is thus a learning process and can be used as a pedagogical tool to understand others. 6 The word “crush” describes noise as “coming on,” or putting sonic pressure on something. 23 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 maker of live art.7 I am creating a relation to the person who is reading this paper, by moving into a thinking process that (re)constructs our interdependence with the human and nonhuman, beginning with thinking and acting diffractively8 and intra-actively9 without discrediting the consideration for collectivity and the other10 and all the challenges of foregrounding this artwork. A Public Kitchen creates an opening, unfolding as a performative choreography; it is a creative event that communicates, acts and behaves in a social space, all the way down to the molecular level, not too rigidly conformist, but a writing canvas for the one, or the few, who speak to many. She rises. A Public Kitchen is defined as a sonic performance with innumerable potential iterations as a technique for making research-creation across geographical locations, made possible via an immersive sculptural apparatus and active human participation. The participants in this social artwork are women, or those who identify as women, inclusive of gender fluidity. In turn, the objects generate a sonic performance work that dramatizes the material agencies, flows and intensities between kitchen objects and humans. This is done by creating sonic recipes in a Public Kitchen installation space. Living always comes to terms with forms of dissonance emerging from a complex set of social conditions, such as the auditory experience of sound that lacks musical quality; the sound that is a disagreeable auditory experience as a form of noise. Sound matter is therefore generated by making these conditions/forces a constant process of engagement, where thinking and acting move ‘from the middle out’—drawing on what is intrinsic or embedded, creating ways of shifting into each other and attuning to these fields of difference. A Public Kitchen can, therefore, be seen to represent an active pedagogy for organizing and responding collectively to the local, through a spectrum of sound phenomena where home is a middling, while still operating as an independent nomadic event with many, and potentially on-going, transnational iterations. I argue that human–non-human intra-actions within sonic recipes are made apparent due to the doing of the action by the subject, paraphrasing Barad, being the context of the work; this makes the effects of the action relational in the real world (Barad 2003). Intra-action should not be confused with interaction, where elements exist first and then interact. Instead, an intra-action conceptualizes that it is the action between (and not in-between) that which matters; it is in the action that the elements themselves are produced interdependently. In turn, a sonic recipe (in which intra-actions can occur) is defined as a relational partition of electronic sound patterns that form a dynamic arrangement of sound/noise material composed with kitchen tools and appliances in a sonic performance installation (a Public Kitchen). Overall, sound phenomena materialize when the human and non-human are fully present and exercise a guiding or piloting role, affecting and working through what is organically presented in a particular iteration of a Public Kitchen event. Here, the idea of the participatory is critical, where the human and non-human fuse to take on a positive and affirmative character, aligning with Braidotti’s understanding of an ethical practice, which is an ethico-politic stated in the opening quote of the introduction. I would also posit it as, what Braidotti distinguishes, “a break with the doxa”: the acquiescent application of established norms and values by de-territorialising them and introducing an alternative ethic flows (Braidotti and Hlavajova 2018, p. 224). I contend that a participatory sonic performance work precipitates a kitchen interior intra-subjectivity—a process evoking the specific entanglement of doing-cooking with affect by providing a complex assemblage of embedded and embodied thought, where the psyche and the body work in 7 This thinking has been influenced immensely by Erin Manning, who conceptualizes “middling” as a way of thinking through the way the minor (a minor gesture that moves across the work) calls us to attend to something and moves us through thresholds of socialities and techniques in philosophy, art and activism (Manning 2019). 8 (Barad 2007). 9 (Barad 2003). 10 In this journal paper, I am articulating that participating with other bodies in a Public Kitchen is thus a learning process and can be used as a pedagogical tool to understand others. I refer here to American philosopher and feminist scholar, Bell Hooks, and the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she describes as the ability to counter-act systems of women’s oppression and class domination (Hooks 2000). 24 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 unison. What is correlative to intra-corporeality—where the artwork is an aesthetic, psychological and physical experience—is how these entanglements mesh with our perceptions; where the mediation of affect as a sound performance plays out and functions as a reading of the bodies of others. Within each iteration, each participant is triggered by the vibrational sensation of sound that rises to the surface through the mind/body. Affect can be felt as sound that behaves as active matter—to listen and absorb sound material activated through the playing of kitchen objects, deeply. This triggers physical movement felt in the transmission within and between bodies and objects. 3. Resonance in a Public Kitchen Resonance in a Public kitchen addresses a deeply intertwined collective moment when the human and non-human intra-act in the apparatus of a Public Kitchen. To be clear, resonance is one of the fundamental phenomena, not just of acoustics or science in general. Resonance is a factor entangled with intra-activity and diffraction in the sonic intra-face of a Public Kitchen. The “resonance” experienced becomes a vital and transformative moment in the process, instigated by a “material turn”. A critical live awareness occurs where sound (technological or non-technological) can be felt and seen collectively and affectively as an automated society coping with the demands of life with everyday technology. Thus, resonance in performance can be seen as a bridge to the post-human: to be attentive to the mutual accommodation or responsiveness of human and non-human agents. It is not mitigated from the outside to the inside of the body; it is already in the body and in the mind through active resonant forces. In turn, my position always returns to the sound that is produced in intra-activity. Within each iteration, each participant is triggered by the vibrational sensation of sound that rises to the surface through the mind/body with the gestural use of a contac mic that touches each kitchen tool as it is played. Affect can be felt as sound that behaves as active matter—to listen and absorb sound material activated through the playing of kitchen objects, deeply. This triggers physical movement felt in the transmission within and between bodies. In turn, this research seeks to address resonant frequency characterized in the oscillation of sound, which can be observed as vibrational bodies performing with the kitchen objects (reverberating as an extension of the self). I argue that it must always be understood relationally, as vibration that is already materializing between humans and non-humans in intra-action. This also raises an awareness of the complexities involved with diffractive paradoxes of difference revealed in sonic relations and my own affective politics. In turn, sound works its way to the forefront of contemporary sensory behaviour in user experience, by sculpting, shifting and changing our perception of the kitchen environment in which the body labors to listen creatively. I argue that a Public Kitchen becomes an echo chamber of kitchen intensities that resonate amongst others, pushing thought toward its material forces of intra-actions to describe as Manning states, “pure experience in the in-folding of potential that keeps actual experience open to its more than” (Manning 2016, p. 29). As Elaine Swan considers, there are colonial and anti-colonial dynamics at play between masculinity and femininity, specific ethnicities, multiculturalism, and imperialism, as I have explained in my footnote on “the other”. I argue that these are evident in a Public Kitchen assemblage. I would also argue that these dynamics are seen as post-human indicators from which we can interrogate, more closely, the connection (imagined or not) between food and the Other. As a multicultural pedagogy that can perform and engender, this research and artwork certainly experiments with various encounters with ‘otherness’; this is approached via a dialogical response to feminism, social class and domestic labor. In post-human terms, food has, as Swan states, “become a battleground for politics, policy, and reform” on many levels (Flowers and Swan 2011, p. 235). In the context of transnational mobility, Ilaria Vanni attributes the sense of “being at home,” or belonging to somewhere, as dissociated from a geographical location and replaced by belonging through specific everyday practices (Lloyd and Vasta 2017). This moving or roving idea is conceptualized in the Artists’ Soup Kitchen, based in Toronto, Canada, where different artists host a lunch each week and bring their creative practices to a community table. Vanni makes us aware that the concept of home 25 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 has been an intellectual obsession for a long time; where others try to pin down its meaning—and continue to revel in its multiplicity through the interactional achievement of people, spaces and things—the ambivalent nature of home-making can be examined as individual as well as collective through projects of identity. I would add that this agential relation is brought to the table as struggle for coherence, and continuity in the work goes on no matter what. To be clear, I also maintain and reiterate that as a new materialist, cultural space is not defined as around and between objects. It is considered already embedded in these objects (the human–non-human), spaces and things, as well as in spacetimemattering11; it is diffractively working and conceptualizing difference through a spectrum of sound phenomena where home is a mutual relation of things and bodies inclusive of diverse participatory powers. As Barad insists, “the acting human subject and the known object are not separate, but entangled.”12 From an ethico-political perspective (with whom and for whom), this relational process (re)models our interdependence with human and nonhuman others, beginning with thinking and acting ‘from the middle out’ without discrediting the consideration for collectivity and the other. What emerges from this conceptual relation of the artwork is making the materiality of women’s work visible as a performative mode of domestic bodily production: the implicit body of a woman at work is expressed in a resonant sonic overture of resistance. A Public Kitchen is an immersive sculptural installation that is at once a multisensory, embodied, participatory encounter that engenders a mixture of feelings and visual impressions for the participants, such as fascination, surprise, boredom, disgust, perplexity, irritation, joy, and ambiguity. I argue that a Public Kitchen produces noisy affects that can contribute to transforming our social imaginations, forming daring narratives (or sonic recipes) that feed post-human ethical practices and inquiry. 4. Co-Composing the Sonic Intra-Face of a Noisy Kitchen through the Apparatus It is a profoundly intertwined collective moment as both human and non-human elements intra-act within the apparatus. The apparatus can be seen as the framework for the social artwork: a sculptural set-up consisting of the motherboard—a long metallic platform resembling a community kitchen table used for ‘placemats’ of positioned kitchen tools, electric kitchen appliances and electronic music hardware. Kitchen tools and appliances are amplified and activated through the simple technology of a contact microphone, connected to the metal motherboard. A contact microphone, also known as a pickup or a piezo, is a form of microphone that senses audio vibrations through contact with solid objects and musical hardware. Thus, the transduction produced when kitchen tools interact with this active metal surface generates noise, or diffractive interference patterns, through a piezo electric effect that measures sonic vibration, pressure, acceleration, and the force which converts sound to an electrical signal. As Barad explains, “apparatuses are not mere observing instruments but boundary-drawing practices—specific material (re)configurings of the world which come to matter” (Barad 2007, p. 140). Thus, I use the apparatus as a central concept for what I argue is a new materialist approach, by working with a cluster of participants who collaborate through sound improvisation in performative intra-actions/s via the motherboard to channels of audio-electronic processing. I interpret the apparatus as a middling point for how sound performance reflects the current post-human condition and further feminist concerns. A Public Kitchen does not necessarily look high-tech when performing with kitchen tools and appliances relational to the everyday through the ‘doing and cooking’; it is more about creating a condition in the installation that is a Public Kitchen—to generate a state of being for the non-human and performs in a particular temporality in relation to spacetimemattering. 11 In this research, “timespacemattering” refers to how intra-actions emerge between space/time/matter relations and forces within the entanglement of differential relations (Barad 2003). 12 (Barad 2007). 26 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 5. (Re)configuring our Relationship with the World in Co-Becoming Processes Relationally, feminist power relations are located within the live enactment. In contributing to social change, I argue that activating a feminist ethico-politic must fundamentally emerge from work done at the transformative, energetic layer of the body, activated by doing-making processes. Cooking. Playing. Making art. Resting. Working. Sharing touch. Sharing food. Gathering to remember. Growing up. Growing old. Grieving loss and oppression. Resisting. Empowering humans. Performing ritual after ritual as an affirmative politic in action. All of these processes (and more) could be seen to fall into the ‘doing-making’ constellation. (Re)configuring our relationship with the world is not a direct, elementary trajectory; it can entail messy and disquieting encounters, which embrace the indeterminate and manifest through negotiation and contradicting emotions. By engaging attentively with a sonic performance installation, a Public Kitchen entangles performers to participate in co-becoming processes, defined by Rosi Braidotti as “a co-operation of active laboring, becoming-ethical” (Braidotti and Hlavajova 2018). The challenge is to change our assumptions about the social structures that shape the world around us and take a deeply critical look at how one actually engages with the very systems that we are trying to release ourselves from, disengage, disentangle. I argue for the need to be brave and name, identify, call out, bring up, and sound out the social patterns that surround us through a sonic recipe, shifting the social dynamics we are entangled in. I argue that these social patterns of sonic textures, both tonal and atonal, maintain a quality or character of becoming that can be observed as other-worldly and decorous, by cultivating the experience, or can even result in disillusionment in the active process. “Becoming” here refers to feminist theoretician in new materialism, Rosi Braidotti’s idea of it as a rhizomatic political action (as in, rhizomatic learning), proposing that it is a significant undertaking of nomadic feminist ethics in which transformation is to consider a body’s potential for mapping and shaping transformation in the local. In turn, Braidotti considers that new futures need to be imagined first and re-assembled elsewhere in order to do the work, rather than being constructed into the same hierarchical frameworks.13 A feminist politic expands on Fluxus precedents through the use of props, costumes and makeup to create different personae with participants in a Public Kitchen: It is commonplace for performers to be adorned in crocheted masks, A-line dresses made from reflective industrial fabrics, and sticky neon duct-tape overlays. A Fluxus attitude can mean that everything that is material matter, in mind and body, is embraced—from absurd to commonplace, from violent to tedious—to ignite the kitchen space as a site that shifts and repositions its domestic status to a site of materialist agency. For example, the performance art collective, W.W.K.A. (Women with Kitchen Appliances), which existed in Montreal, Canada, from 1991 to 2013, modelled a feminist performance art approach that adhered to aesthetic concerns associated with beauty, free play and feminist autonomy. With the emergence of a Public Kitchen as a speculative and somatic proposition, and creation of a sound performance collective named Sonic Electric (currently positioned in Melbourne, Australia), a more political cultural affective reading of today’s feminist discourse, conditioned by our current socio-political climate, is active through an ethico-political practice. 6. The Sonic Intra-Face of a Noisy Kitchen Workshop How can collaborative sonic art work create a Public Kitchen (as in Figure 1)? On this collective journey, sonic material phenomena are created with kitchen tools and electric appliances, co-composed by volunteer participants who are gathered around an immersive kitchen table installation, the motherboard. As previously described, the motherboard is an ambulatory surface platform, resembling a lengthy metal kitchen table, that is used for the placement of kitchen tools, electric kitchen appliances and electronic music hardware. It is a vital and central component of a Public Kitchen 13 (Braidotti 2002). 27 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 sculptural installation. The sonic performance installation is built on a critical arrangement of hybrid personae (costumed participants) whose bodily capacities are measured by the continuous mutual transformations between ‘humans at work,’ seeking to reposition the kitchen tool or appliance by exploring its displacement and functionality through the labored body (Figure 2). Figure 1. A Public Kitchen performed by Sonic Electric at MARS Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, 2019. Figure 2. A participant of a Public Kitchen performing in The Future is Female exhibition, Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne, Australia, 2018. 28 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 I argue that investigating sonic materiality through the prism of a Public Kitchen enables the power of sound performance to be activated as a savoring of self-emancipation for the participant. Sonic phenomena re-sounds from one kitchen tool to another—from Australia, Spain, Iceland and Hong Kong—through space, agency, resonance and temporality in the apparatus.14 All of these critical attributes reverberate in Public Kitchens as socio-cultural phenomena that create points of resistance (Figure 3). Figure 3. Participants of the 22nd International Symposium on Electronic Art. ISEA2016 Hong Kong Cultural R>evolution. Public Kitchen. School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, China, 2016. This awareness is found through a Public Kitchen, with the desire to affect what we seek to change in the entanglement, drawing people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and abilities to understand and measure difference through the feel, flow or vitality of the enactment of sonic intra-actions. This immanent process produces intra-actions and/or fluxes and vibrations of matter, resonating with human and non-human bodies. I argue for a performative feminist materialist ontology/epistemology, which sees social phenomena as primary and non-binary; here, subjects and objects are dependent on forming in or out of a process of intra-action by rethinking the dualisms so central to post-human thinking. The oppositions between nature and culture, matter and mind, the human and the non-human, are produced and combined in the action itself, reflecting on the philosophical writings of Karen Barad (2007) and Rosi Braidotti (2013). This perspective opens up a capability for deep listening by the participants that makes them available and receptive to a tuning of the world we live in. Resonance can be seen as proposing a new way of thinking about causality and agency that acknowledges the indeterminate possibilities for worldly (re)configurings—a (re)-tuning of the world. Resonance, I would also argue, should be understood in terms of relation: a vibration that emerges out of intra-activity. This raises an awareness of the complexities involved with diffractive paradoxes revealed in sonic relations. 14 The public iterations in specific localities in and around: Melbourne (Australia), Blanca (Spain), Reykjavik (Iceland), and Hong Kong (China) are all part of PhD field research work conducted from 2015 to 2019 and supported by The Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia. 29 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 There are diffractive readings in making sound—or, sounding and hearing—where sound/noise resonates in composition through communication between participants: noisiness, the Public Kitchen activity, pronounces a form of resistance or critical engagement with the world. This relation also punctuates the entanglement between noise and a politics of consent in the way a diverse range of femme, female-identified and gender non-binary persons collaborate. A Public Kitchen addresses all cybernetic bodies as forms of noise and disruption that are engaged in a thinking about freedom where the mind/body is a driving force within a multiplicity of becomings; this is emphasized and expanded on through the writings of Braidotti, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (Braidotti 2013; Deleuze et al. 1987). Understanding the Transducer Sound patterns as sonic recipes in a Public Kitchen are formed by human participation with the help of a small electronic audio device—the contact microphone (Figure 4). Contact microphones create live contact with kitchen tools and appliances entangled within the apparatus through the motherboard. Lead cables connected to contact microphones feed guitar amplifiers placed under the motherboard, amplifying noisy material into a public space, and leading the listener on a sonic journey. It is a haptic partnership with musical hardware and bodily production that, in concert, produces sonic performative phenomena. I argue, as a multi-media visual artist, that the strength of sonic phenomena is that it does not strive to be technically perfect, musically high-tech, or audio-efficient. Instead, it accepts its place as indeterminate, vital, resonant material, celebrating its flexibility to jump from manual labored sound to electronic sonic space, and vice versa, in a sonic recipe. There are constant exchanges and transformations happening in every kitchen: forces shifting; particles entangling with particles in the quantum field of thinking; doing and making in the world in paraphrasing Barad to explain things on a molecular level (Barad 2007). These intra-actions are technologically entangled with musical hardware, constructed with industrial metal parts. Music hardware is mechanical objects or electronic devices that create, or aid in the creation of, experimental musical sounds that a musician might use to enhance sonic material phenomena in a live performance. Figure 4. A contact microphone placed on the motherboard surrounded by kitchen tools. Testing Grounds, Southbank Arts Centre, Melbourne, Australia. From the sound performance work, Being in Time: Death by Audio, 2018. 30 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 A Public Kitchen dares to take the risks proposed by Braidotti in this paper’s opening quote, as it reflects on the uncertainty of our current times to expose social rifts and find affirmative human–non-human connections in co-composing sound patterns into sonic recipes. The material realities of women’s everyday lives are reflected in a Public Kitchen as, historically, we can see the kitchen as a place that separated people, as a place of oppression, a key site where women perform most of the world’s labor (International Labour Organization 2016). 7. All Art Is Political Materialities are never neutral. Thus, a Public Kitchen could be conceived as an alternative economy critical of a capitalist system. I argue that all art is political because a critical feminist perspective articulates that patriarchal culture is a system that impacts everyone as material conditions of all sorts play a vital role in sonic resistance against domination. Domination in today’s cultural politics takes various forms in varying social contexts.15 As explained by Rosemary Hennessy, materialist feminism considers how women and men of various races and ethnicities are kept in their lower economic status due to a power imbalance that privileges those who already have privilege, thereby protecting the status quo (Hennessy and Ingraham 1997). A Public Kitchen challenges this propositionally, as it manifests a (re)building of community in the form of collective action that is unyielding through sonic material resistance, playing out as a collective pathway of negotiation and co-operation (Figure 5). This position excludes a Marxist agenda in a Public Kitchen by recognizing the agency of biology or matter in worldly phenomena and social and political human behavior. Feminist new materialists challenge the linear models of causation that form constructivist analyses of the ways power relations shape the subjects and objects of knowledge. This occupation accounts for how intra-actions through which the social, the biological, and the physical emerge, persist, and transform. Feminist new materialists are qualitatively trying to change feminist critical analysis from a framework within which the agency of bodies and material objects is understood as an effect of power to a framework within which relationally, nature-culture and biology have reciprocal agentive effects upon one another. In this material turn of the distinctive and effective agency of organisms, ecosystems, the human non-human as vital matter, feminists will rethink how to take on social justice, creating paths toward social and political transformation. Relationally, the monotone video work, Las Atrevidas: The Risk Takers (2015), monitors the mechanical movements of six senior women from a small village in Blanca, Murcia, Spain, who embrace tradition, a nomadic culture through difference, and, via their participation, generate a space of subjective individuation and otherness (Figure 6). I investigate how kitchen tools are passed on socially and somatically, stretching entanglements with shifting measurements of performative movement, sonic undulations, historical kitchen knowledge, and female genealogies in the domestic sphere. I argue that, for feminists like myself, temporality exists by how time is being kept, by whom and for whom in a Public Kitchen (van der Tuin 2015). The entanglement of “doing-cooking” transfigures, as Braidotti specifies, how objects resonate as matter that thinks and feels as an extension of the human body through the post-human (Braidotti 2013). The relationship between subject and object opens complex nets of intra-connectivity in which the body, space and psyche are never conclusive and always “more than” something: as Erin Manning explains, they are “indeterminate” (Manning 2016, p. 14). A Public Kitchen presents how this awareness of kitchen objects, disciplines 15 This idea points to a “Trumpian” autocrat world, such as heteropatriarchal domination, that is, a socio-political system in which the male gender and heterosexuality have primacy over other genders and over other sexual orientations, neoliberal domination, racist domination, and homophobic domination, etc. Donald John Trump is the 45th and current president of the United States of America, who took office in January 2017. “Trumpian” is a slang definition found here: https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/trumpian/ (LLC 2019). 31 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 and practice are always operating in relation to matter that is waiting to be interpreted, rehearsed, repositioned, and transmitted (Barad 2003). Figure 5. The local sound performance collective, Sonic Electric, performing in The Future is Female, Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne, Australia, 2018. Figure 6. Las Atrevidas: The Risk Takers, Artist Residency at Centro Negra AADK, Blanca, Murcia, Spain, 2015. Group portrait. Video: duration 10 min. 32 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 The practice of deep listening gives women an opportunity to explore their/our bodies and their/our temporalities from women’s experience as women while also being inclusive of gender-fluidity. Deep listening is also termed somatic listening by Pauline Oliveros, who observed that the practice of deep listening is a commitment to cultivating receptivity through the body with an emphasis on inclusiveness of performing music.16 Everyone (women, men, non-binary, trans, gender fluid etc.) is engaged as participants in this practice before even touching a contact microphone. For the participant, inclusion promotes a veritable, personal movement of a thought and listening practice that helps the body unwind while at the same time stimulating awareness of energy flows of the body, quite similar to a Tai-Chi or Qigong class that incorporates Chinese medicine and the flow of chi (energy) points throughout the body. In the company of others, this approach prepares a participant foremost to listening in synchronicity with each other in performance, relational to the whole apparatus of doing-cooking as an unfolding immanent process. Feminism today is a worldview that includes men, demanding a rethinking of power in society, a change in the dominant system of private domestic space, public space and temporality; negotiating a woman’s place in art institutions and valuing a woman’s place in this discourse (COST: European Cooperation in Science and Technology 2017). What feminist new materialists point out is, what is in the world and what we know about things in the world cannot be considered as different things. What is in the world, what we know about things in the world are constantly shaping one another and, in the kitchen, this study of matter and meaning is, moreover, boiling over. Thus, the tools of the kitchen become agential matter in a post-human world. Post-humanists are responding to the redefinition of humanity’s place in the world by both the technological and continuum in which the “human” is but one life form among many (Braidotti 2016). 8. Semiotics of the Kitchen The socio-political oeuvre of American artist and activist, Martha Rosler (Rosler 1975), highlights her position on the artist’s role within contemporary art practice, as well as her understanding of “private to political.” This position affects and mentors the present understanding of the role of an artist as a feminist thinker, and this agential strategy energizes the creative move from the private, to political, to public space present in a Public Kitchen. Rosler’s seminal video and performance artwork, Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), contributed to a recurring thematic during the 1970s that still serves as a critical document and historical precursor to current feminist materialist discourse and genealogies. In this work, the artist critiques women’s roles in society by acting as a ‘cooking show host’ personality, creating an alphabet using different kitchen tools. The letters are articulated, often quite violently, in the process. Through Rosler’s objective lens, the kitchen table and its environment are made visible as a platform of domestic labor: a form of maintenance work, household chore and food preparation. It is coded into a form of semiotics—a performative and gestural language—acted out through the aggressive, violent and monotone handling and manipulation of kitchen tools. Rosler developed her own terms of performative engagement in front of the recording camera to articulate a feminist debate. And while this seminal work seemed to focus on her personal place in the world, Rosler’s critique spilt beyond her ‘artist’s kitchen’ to examine the political context and capitalistic economy of the late 1970s in the United States. However, her analysis didn’t end there. Rosler was also accounting for the personal, bodily and psychological experience of being human. At the time, her semiotic approach pointed to a Marxist–feminist expression of frustration as a radical mode of feminist critique in that it stirred the global soup of women’s oppression. Rosler’s message was not only directed to the women (the Other) through which feminism defines itself, but also to the forces of government in an advanced industrial society (Molesworth 2000). 16 (Oliveros 1973). 33 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 Semiotics of the Kitchen politicized the space of the kitchen through the lens of the camera, exposing issues of consumer culture, mechanized labor and material handling as a monotone assembly line. Through performance art, Rosler was steadfast in taking a stand on government in which political authority exercises absolute and centralized control through consumer capitalism. Her work has influenced the embodiment of physical labor in the kitchen and speaks especially to a Public Kitchen model, highlighting how politics and the performative can be embedded in the very material presence of video art and an alternative politics of connection. At its very center is the materiality of artistic and political action. It shows how artists can navigate this territory, giving attention to the question of politics from the perspective of theory and the artwork itself (Nicholson and Seidman 1995). This noisy platform resonates to enable the dictum that “all art is political.” In the last decade, there has been a series of incremental shifts to artworks that primarily utilize forms of collaboration and participation on the ground and as live art forms. From a feminist new materialist view, physical labor is highlighted to create a form of resistance or post-human critical engagement with the world; however, the actual power of kitchen tools and appliances to create sound material to connect and contribute to the feminist discursive can build on Rosler’s original ideas. Critical reaction to collaborative practices of social engagement is always problematic in the way it is contextualized by Rosler’s socio-political stand, for example. Rosler has consistently made me think of the potential to be had in developing an ethics of engagement in relation to feminist collaborative art practices. Sonic artwork can materialize in form and in practice, with such simple tools connected to electronic media and to the familiar environment around us. As a method of social engagement, a Public Kitchen seeks to create a form of creative occupation, moving from the kitchen into a public space, to create other types of kitchen environments or iterations with people other than myself. The term iteration is used in a single execution, as of a set of instructions that are to be repeated in a performance work. As a diffractive reading, performative gesture and the semiotic language have been extended beyond Rosler ’s seminal work. The kitchen table shifts in time, space and location. Each kitchen tool and appliance that is placed on the kitchen table surfaces from a set of distinct kitchen tools and skills. Each tool is picked up and transformed in live performance to become a sound instrument in its engagement with electronic media, not only with manual kitchen tools, but also with electrical modern kitchen appliances.17 The physical body is bound up in this process (Braidotti 2002). Therefore, a Public Kitchen shifts and repositions kitchen tools and appliances in ways that seek to open up sites of resonance and resistance. Typically, noise from the kitchen is considered unwanted—it is something extra and excessive. What is considered noise or information in human terms is seemingly processed by digital technology in an equally blank way; a problematic appearance that can hide human accountability behind the apparent autonomy of technology. This paper considers this posturing through the way communication is made noisy, and by addressing all cybernetic bodies as forms of noise and disruption that are engaged in thinking about freedom with the mind/body as a driving force with a multiplicity of becomings (Braidotti 2002, 2013). Braidotti calls this interaction a transmutation—a qualitative change, a metamorphoses—“towards a materialist theory of becoming” by using the power of technology in an affirmative way (Braidotti 2002, p. 1; 2013, p. 21). And, like Rosler’s strategy, physical labor remains an extension of the self (the participant), except now there is more than one person occupying the space at the kitchen table as collective affirmative action becomes a platform for collective, cross-disciplinary inquiry for both art and social commitment. 17 It is important to pinpoint the probability of coming across unusual kitchen tools that are kitchen staples in the country from which the iteration takes place, and to distinguish the variety of different kitchen tools that are used in a Public Kitchen across the motherboard. Each kitchen tool is best used for certain foods with respect to ethnicity and locality, and the importance of using specific utensils is a guide to the gestural technique that is used by the participant. 34 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 Bodily Encounter In Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen, the performer weaves a personal, psychic and physical encounter into the narrative. This individual encounter is critical in the handling and manipulation of kitchen tools and appliances used in food preparation, domestic labor and maintenance work to manifest a political public artwork. Rosler’s artwork was explicit in her black and white, severe characterization, set in her kitchen in Brooklyn, New York. Rosler posed in front of the camera as a homemaker, picking up a kitchen tool for each letter of the alphabet and naming each tool with a violent gesture while staring, deadpan, into the video camera. At the time, the creative phenomenon of Julia Child18 was appearing on local public television channel, PBS. Rosler, starring in her own reality cooking show in the space of her own kitchen, demonstrates the object’s potential, not its culinary purpose (Figures 7 and 8). Figure 7. Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975, video, Video Data Bank, USA. Figure 8. Julia Child in The French Chef on WGBH, 1963–66. Photo: Paul Child/PBS television, New York, USA. As Julia Child so often presented through her TV personality, a kitchen tool was usually handled with skillful culinary expertise; but Rosler’s deliberate physical gestures were adamant, violent and rebellious. Rosler stabbed at the air with a knife and fork as she cast off ingredients behind her into the void of the kitchen and beyond. Rosler returned her gaze to the camera lens as a mad housewife, not quite the elegant French chef. 18 Julia Child revolutionized American cuisine through her PBS television cooking shows, such as The French Chef, Cooking with Master Chef, etc. Her videos are available online. 35 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 Rosler’s subversive projection of a woman’s place in the world signified a desire for resistance and change. However, it also signaled failure, as the artist portrayed herself as a prisoner of her own domesticity by mocking Julia Child’s persona. Fast forward. In a Public Kitchen, the performer also adopts a persona. However, foremost, the aim is to underscore the role of the participant as a sound maker, a collaborator, to create sound patterns that can resonate as a social and political marker for resistance and change but can also signal the failure not to do so. The sound material that is collected will be variable. Its indeterminate pathway will either fail or succeed in its outcome and potentiality. Semiotics of the Kitchen is testament to today’s continued addiction to entertainment in the form of cooking shows and the world of celebrity chefs. Television media has amplified the artifice by which social media and the power of television homogenizes and distracts from meaningful social action. Rosler employed parody in the way that cooking shows inhabit our screen and social consciousness: she deconstructed gender, tracing how feminist genealogy pays particular attention to discourses, bodies and power. In a Public Kitchen dynamic, the participant is encouraged to engage in over-the-top theatricality, or to mask psychological or emotional identification. In this way, they play out, as Rosler did, with deadpan humor and passive aggression in order to reflect society’s pull of conformity and homogenization. 9. Resistance through Noisy Resonance “Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper.” (Julia Child to Jacques Pepin during Cooking in Concert television program (Child and Pepin 1996). Noisy resonance emerges at a vibration of larger amplitude when produced by all participants playing a kitchen appliance in a sonic recipe. It is this noisy crescendo that fills the space of a Public Kitchen. Materially, it becomes a resonating system of vibrational bodies inclusive of a kitchen object’s interference patterns. Resonance, scientifically and acoustically, occurs when a system preferentially vibrates at a certain frequency. This frequency is called resonant frequency, and the system will respond very strongly to any periodic force at that frequency. The exact frequencies at which objects resonate is largely determined by the object’s physical properties: its size, shape and the materials that it’s made out of. Many objects have resonant frequencies, and they are the source of many of the sounds we hear. When you knock on something, much of the sound you hear is just the ringing of that object’s resonance. Even our own bodies have many (Pyzdek 2018). Sound resonates through human sensory behavior experience by sculpting, shifting and changing the perception in which the body labors to listen creatively to objects and other bodies vibrating; this process is critical of power relations in the kitchen environment. A field of resonance is important to me in the material discursive and the transversal19 (Rhoades and Brunner 2010). Resonance strikes a chord in a Public Kitchen in the act of reclaiming thought or sound which is important for feminism, new materialism and my own practice. Sound, relationally, works its way to the forefront of contemporary sensory behavior and user experience by sculpting, shifting and changing our perception of the kitchen environment in which the body labors to listen creatively and critically. In new materialist thinking, resonance can replace the binaries of structuralist thought, shedding new light on contemporary debates between sound, aurality, cognition, subjectivity, and embodiment. I argue that this is due to resonance’s ability to dissolve the binary of the materiality of things (human-non-human), and compels us to call into question that something, such as resonance, must therefore situate itself as a form of resounding together in the discourse of post-humanism and other 19 Transversality addresses different existential territories and universes of value through the register of resonance. (Guattari 2003). “Psychanalyse et transversalité”. Paris: Maspero/La Découverte. “Transversal Fields of Experience” brings different points of entry into resonance that all revolve around the question of how we open up new registers that incite a creative moving with the forces we encounter in contemporary transversal fields that shape our everyday experiences (Rhoades and Brunner 2010). 36 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 immersive feminist participatory practices. For many feminists and artists alike, labor relations and ecological issues become more crucial to our survival every day. In a Public Kitchen, I see sonic connections of shared affective and productive movement to understand new material physicalities, new emotional transformations and new sonic relations, intra-culturally, with others and the world. A Public Kitchen takes affirmative action into the streets as a form of resonance. The kitchen object is relational, in that is has the capacity to make felt how an object is already in a field of relation and tuning through intra-action, intensities and symbolic forces of resonance. A feminist new materialist position illuminates a cartography and radical visibility for challenging theoretical concepts of art and everyday life, work and value for individuals, women, communities, and women’s oppression in the global environment. Therefore, it is important to discuss or consider the ways in which different discourses, such as affect, mingle with matter and virtuality in the kitchen. Through this discussion of the artwork of Rosler and her social-political connection to the materialization of the labored body, as well as my critique of a Public Kitchen, I aim to find a modulation, or flow, of affect in the discursive that never jumps clear of its entanglement in the processes of new materialist performativity. Instead, it assists in unpacking and defining resonance and power relations, enhancing the position of feminist genealogies. Working on transnational participatory collaboration is a real process demanding particular concepts and commitments. Teaching sound through deep listening is a practice. Creating a visual aesthetic of performativity within the immersive assemblage is also significant. The entanglement of bodies and the sound that is transmitted, are foregrounded in a resonant system. Through this process and apparatus, it becomes clear that what is transcended through sound is the understanding that the enactment is re-arranged with every iteration and is always evolving. Contact microphones and electronic media move in the mind, through the body and through things as resonance is heightened, and, as Manning characterizes, develop into something “more than” movement: “It is out of time, untimely, rhythmically inventing its own pulse” (Manning 2016, p. 2). Thus, a sonic performance work makes public the sound material that is emitted from kitchen objects—a new materialist way of listening and behaving, not in but of the resonant world. From Failure to Empowerment American artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, writes in her exhibition proposal, “Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969! Proposal for an Exhibition CARE”, that “Maintenance is a drag,” confirming that maintenance is unglamorous, tedious, hard work and economically underestimated (Ukeles 1969). In a not-so-perfect world, something is always breaking, wearing down, getting dirty or falling apart. In the performance, this lopsidedness and inequality is transmitted as an embedded and entangled process of coming into, working through, being formed by, and forming something into a sound recipe—a set of sound patterns created by participants. The unevenness of this process in sound and noise art is relevant to how the participants, at times, are almost failing at getting the object to make a sound or trying to change how the object can be rendered mute/useless in its repositioning. The sound, as a physical phenomenon, is transduced into an excited state, becoming dynamic as it is electrified, as contact is made with an electronic contact microphone. When the contact microphone is removed or disconnected, the object returns to its static self again. This is a complex relationship where human, non-human and so many natural, social, political, and cultural factors are forces that resonate in the entangled processes of materialization. Surely ‘failure’ is recognized as agential forces that activate an acknowledgement of nature, the body and materiality in matters of uncertainty—indeterminacy within the intra-action? This failure slippage plays simultaneously into the timeline, where indeterminacy of position and momentum in the sonic compositional arrangement manifests as a communication breakdown. It appears, within each diffractive reading, as a disconnect, or simply the object responding in an auditory relation as if it is being agitated in the failure to produce a resonance, or keep going, or fade away. 37 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 I would shape this disruptive mode of engagement in consciousness and thought as creating resonant agitation with kitchen objects in the radical potential of the political. This agitation is defined by a discomposure or disturbance that is transmitted through resonance, such as through the delivery of a feminist manifesto. To me, agitating space with sound and noise art demands a new way of understanding participatory practice, audience perception and difference in manners of expression and modes of experience of the artwork. Akin to Rosler, I lived in New York City during the 1970s and was exposed to performance art, punk and hard-core music, which were important influences for many local artists. Girl power, or GRRRL power, acknowledged a woman’s space in the world of music and the performing arts.20 The Riot Grrrl subculture emerged in the early 1990s from the punk rock scene during the third-wave feminist movement, uniting women and girls against capitalist and patriarchal cultural ideologies. Countering the dominant ideological narrative in the United States, the Riot Grrrl movement continues to evolve and expand to avoid commodification. Moving between high and low art, the relevance of sound as social with feminist and political concerns and polarities is activated in a Public Kitchen through a bricolage of incongruent cultural elements that become ripe for exploitation.21 This attitude was rampant in New York City from as far back as the birth of Happenings on the Lower East Side in the 1980s, and the subsequent significant and pugnacious punk and hardcore scenes. Rosler may have taken note of this local scene, as many of these bands had humorous elements to them. The performers dressed in ludicrous outfits, engaged in slapstick routines and experimented with different styles of experimental noise-making. The desire to create music with different tools demonstrates John Cage’s celebration of noise and accident (Cage 1961); it is also informative to note that he was teaching at the New School in New York during this time. This methodology refers to putting sounds together in a random, indeterminate manner; mixing and matching unrelated sounds, noises and breakages in performance. It was this very combination of moving between musical styles and art practices that led to a productive cross-fertilization between music and art, not only in New York and London, but subsequently in Berlin in the 1980s and beyond. By using a non-musical interface, new expressions were generated. A Fluxus attitude of the 1960s reflected performers dressed in these beforementioned ludicrous outfits, engaging in slapstick routines and experimenting with different styles of noise-making to attract attention to what was happening on the streets and in social life (O’Dell 1997, p. 41) (Figure 9). Lunacy is an interesting word in contemporary ethico-political discourse. It takes special skills to perform and participate in performative politics today in a “Trumpian” world of conspiracy theory, gas lighting and fake news being a coercer in enabling alt-right rhetorical propaganda.22 Lunacy is the new norm, responding to the political climate, serving up more dead-pan humor. For example, a performative pandemonium recently played out at the White House, Capitol building in the USA on 5 September 2018. A much-anticipated hearing of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation before the Senate Judiciary Committee was stalled by mostly feminist activists: In particular, they were protesting Kavanaugh’s nomination due to his conservative stance on abortion. Outside the hearing room, female activists dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale (2017)—an American dystopian drama web television series created by Bruce Miller, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood (Miller 2017). Inside, more than 70 protestors were arrested for yelling and disrupting the proceedings. It was probably the most confrontational Supreme Court (SCOTUS) nomination hearing in recent memory. I would arguably call it a performance art act using 20 “GRRRL” is a slogan that encourages and celebrates women’s empowerment, independence, and confidence. The slogan’s invention is credited to US punk band, Bikini Kill, who published a zine called Girl Power in 1991. 21 The Swiss artist, Christian Marclay, has acknowledged that during the Fluxus years he was also influenced by the ridicule of, and play on, the formal presentation of music in the concert setting and the live act (Kelly 2009, p. 151). 22 lunacy (as in “folly”) n.: foolish or senseless behavior. 2018. Nisus Thesaurus. Princeton: Princeton University Library. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. 38 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 affective political affirmative tactics. I would also posit what Braidotti distinguishes as “a break with the doxa”: the acquiescent application of established norms and values by de-territorializing them and introducing an alternative ethic flow (Braidotti and Hlavajova 2018, p. 224). Figure 9. Sonic Electric sound performance collective led and choreographed by Juliana España Keller 2019. There is a dangerous seduction in picking up kitchen tools dressed as hybrid personas. This experience develops an understanding of the many facets of ourselves, thus enabling personal transformation, social dissonance and sonic resonance (Figure 10). There is truth to playing in unity, expanding on all that matters. There is political power in the participants’ participatory position within a feminist group collective that is played out through the Public Kitchen. Many artist participants would agree to meddling with conceptual standards against which political performative art playfully pushes. As each participant dons a synthetic wig or a crocheted facial mask, the body is the mind in this assumed persona. A dissociation from Cartesian mind-body thinking is also heightened because it breaks down gender barriers as much as it reinforces an idea that you put on a gender, like a change of clothing, immune to utopic thinking. As the punk movement grew out of a drab and dark environment—with participants ready to challenge the status quo and show their contempt for government, society and tradition—it is amusing that the counter-culture term “punk” is now part of mainstream clothing design. Originally intended as a destruction of fashion—both at the literal level through the defacement and damaging of garments, and at the symbolic level via its anarchistic attitude and often blasphemous message—this form of dystopic dressing up enables a sense of freedom and relief to those who participate in a Public Kitchen iteration. This performative approach can be looked upon as a quantum thinking response23, not only to what we want in the live performance but who we are being, shattering boundaries between mind and 23 According to Barad, the deeply connected way that everything is entangled with everything else means that any act of observation makes a “cut” between what is included and excluded from what is being considered (Barad 2007, p. 175). 39 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 body. The earliest iterations of performance art, tinged in nihilism (the Dada movement, for example), flirted with the anarchic meaninglessness of language in the early twentieth century (Cohn 2008). The Futurists developed a rowdy theatrical tradition of declamation and noisy musical accompaniment (Cohn 2008). A feminist political rancor is a communal heartache demonstrating the noisy politics of everyone’s oppression. The inventory of kitchen tools and appliances of a participant’s choice, some from their own kitchen, are placed in front of them. It is as if a cacophonic supper of a specific recipe from a TV cooking show is about to be prepared, but this time it assumes a dystopic fervor, similar to the one witnessed in The Handmaid’s Tale (2017). It becomes a noisy spectacle of human locomotion, of bodies made into objects extended by a sonic apparatus. Figure 10. A participant of the group, Sonic Electric, re-positioning a flour sifter in a Public Kitchen, 2019. 10. Conclusions A sonic performative live art experience is never fully translatable and has the potential to articulate many perspectives. I conclude that the nature of sound performance art can be articulated as both metaphysical and material. Sound performance needs to be heard to be experienced because there will always be a surplus of sonic meaning and affect which defies containment in any medium other than the sound itself. I maintain that a Public Kitchen is a live interpretation of the social experience of a sound performance artwork. In this interpretation: human machine learning, automation, representation, and uncanny choreographies oscillate between humans, diffractively, with the complexity of mechanical gestures of the somatic body. I use speculative processes, partnered with material phenomena, chemical and physical forces, and intensities, to magnify time-based acts such as sound performance in both research and practice. In this paper, or in a Public Kitchen, I track movement between the human and non-human through intra-actions of the labored body: this is done by emphasizing dramatic transformation as a new materialist politic of connection in a post-human world and future social 40 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 245 robotics as a platform for collective, transdisciplinary inquiry for art and social action and a way of understanding the world from within, as a middling, as much as a part of it. It is challenging to move nomadically. The entanglement with new materialism, and the engagement in post-humanist thought raises the stakes in the ethico-political consideration of the paths we should consider taking as a species through feminist participatory practices. The artwork, in relation to performative art practices and research-creations offers something more in the arena of public debate and pedagogical practices and makes ordinary participants capable of creating and transforming their own world through a freedom that is distributed individually or by the collective interpretation and practice of a sonic performance. This situated knowledge is critical, creating a rhizomatic relationship between the personal and the collective, validating authentic traditional kitchen tool knowledge around doing-cooking. Somatic learning makes the unconscious conscious, and in the process, leaves one with more options for moving, acting, thinking, and living. It maximizes not just the physical body but one’s full human potential. To reiterate, Braidotti asserts that a philosophy of the body is long overdue in the humanities to address women, gender, critical race, science, media, culture, and animals despite all the clichés we have in mind about femininity or feminism and transdisciplinary practices. I propose that I attend to difference, diffraction, and affect in knowledge production and feminist thought, intensities, emotions and somatic gestures, always being open to the more-than human towards a feminist ethico-politic. I argue the artwork forms a rupture, a collapse in the everyday making of semiotic codes permissible in the performing (the doing-cooking with kitchen tools) in the kitchen in a processual context and works hard for social justice. A sonic recipe does not fix the post-human world but creates a noisy culture of social (re)imagining. It is a becoming of being, entangled in things and technologies, contributing to feminist genealogies and ethico-political practices. Our bodies depend on food from, in, and through the world of a kitchen environment, and our societies are built on and through things such as kitchen tools and appliances. This is how a Public Kitchen thrives. Funding: This research received no external funding. Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest. References Barad, Karen. 2003. Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs 28: 801–31. [CrossRef] Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press. Braidotti, Rosi. 2002. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press. Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press. Braidotti, Rosi. 2014. Conclusion: The Residual Spirituality in Critical Theory: A Case for Affirmative Postsecular Politics. In Transformations of Religion and the Public Sphere. 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Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 42 $ € £ ¥ social sciences Article Entanglements of Difference as Community Togetherness: Faith, Art and Feminism Anna Hickey-Moody * and Marissa Willcox Digital Ethnography Research Centre, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia; marissa.willcox@rmit.edu.au * Correspondence: anna.hickey-moody@rmit.edu.au Received: 14 May 2019; Accepted: 12 September 2019; Published: 18 September 2019 Abstract: Using a feminist, new materialist frame to activate ethico-political research exploring religion and gender at a community level both on Instagram and in arts workshops, we show how sharing ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, gender identities and sexualities through art practice entangles a diffraction of differences as ‘togetherness’. Such entanglement creates cross-cultural interfaith understandings and gender diverse acceptance and inclusion online. We use diffraction, intra-action and entanglement as a way of framing our understanding of this ‘togetherness’ and show that human feelings rely on more-than-human assemblages; they rely on homelands, countries, wars, places of worship, orientations, attractions, aesthetics, art and objects of attachment. The feelings of ‘community’ and ‘belonging’ that we discuss are therefore direct products of human and non-human interactions, which we explore through arts-based research. In this article, we apply Karen Barad’s feminist new materialist theories of ‘diffraction’, ‘intra-action’ and ‘entanglement’ to ways of thinking about human experience as intra-acting with aspects of the world that we classify as non-human. We use these new materialist frames to reconceptualize the human feelings of ‘community’, ‘belonging’ and ‘what really matters’ in feminist and intra-religious collaborative art practices and Instagram-based art communities. To better understand and encourage communities of difference, we argue that the feelings of ‘community’ and ‘belonging’, which are central to human subjectivity and experience, are produced by more-than-human assemblages and are central to identity. The methodologies we present are community focused, intra-active, arts-based research strategies for interrogating and understanding expressions of ‘community’ and ‘belonging’. We identify how creative methods are a significant and useful way of knowing about communities and argue that they are important because they are grounded in being with communities, showing that the specificity of their materiality needs to be considered. Keywords: diffraction; intra-action; entanglement; community; togetherness; faith; art; feminism; religion; belonging; methods We are all humans, but some of us are just more mortal than others. (Braidotti 2013, p. 3) Diffraction as a way of thinking draws attention to the agency of the non-human, the ways that the materials used to make art can change thinking and can change relationships between people . . . building more than human relationships. Arts based practices offer an ideal way not only of accessing but also of reorganizing emotional investments. (Hickey-Moody 2018, p. 8) 1. Introduction The feelings of ‘community’ and ‘belonging’ are products of human and non-human intra-action and enmeshment, which we explore through arts-based research. We apply the feminist new materialist concepts of ‘diffraction’, ‘intra-action’ and ‘entanglement’ (Barad 2007) to ways of thinking about human experience as intra-acting with aspects of the world that we classify as non-human. We use Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264; doi:10.3390/socsci8090264 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci43 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 these new materialist frames to reconceptualize the human feelings of ‘community’, ‘belonging’ and ‘what really matters’ in feminist and intra-religious collaborative art practices and Instagram-based art communities. To better understand and encourage communities of difference, we argue that these feelings of ‘community’ and ‘belonging’ are produced by more-than-human assemblages and are central to identity. The methodologies we present are community-focused, intra-active, arts-based research strategies for interrogating and understanding expressions of ‘community’ and ‘belonging’. We identify how live and creative methods are more than a way of knowing about communities, they are a way of being entangled with communities. As such, the specificity of their materiality needs to be considered. According to Deleuze and Guattari “flesh is only the thermometer of a becoming” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, p. 179), if we take this as an accurate description, which we do, then emotion is the psychological register of change and attachment. We have two similar strategies for mapping such becomings, and these articulate in different empirical projects. First, our (Hickey-Moody 2017, 2018, 2019; Hickey-Moody and Harrison 2018) methodology for working with faith communities1 establishes new materialist approaches to qualitative visual research methods. This project fosters interfaith relationships in childhood and is designed to help communicate the ways in which communities experience belonging and togetherness through their celebration of religious differences and various cultural practices. Second, our method for working with feminist and queer Instagram artists builds on Dolphijn and van der Tuin’s (2012) new materialist approach to interviewing and Les Back’s (2012) ‘live’ sociology or live methods, to employ a method of “Instagram live interviewing” with a feminist new materialist lens. By intra-acting the interview live, we aim to understand how these artists build feminist activist communities online through their political representations of gender, feminism and sexuality. We position the agency of the interview as enmeshed with the body in space and the body in digital and virtual environments. Together, we examine the politics embedded in art making and sharing processes that allow for intersectional dialogues of inclusion to emerge through the entangled differences between bodies, cultures, religions and sexualities. We align these digital understandings and art practices with the community arts workshops that foster interfaith relations and the sharing of religious differences amongst children of different faith backgrounds, including secular children (Hickey-Moody 2018; Hickey-Moody and Harrison 2018). Our theorisation of these digital and social communities are sites for comparison and we see the creative methods used to entangle ourselves within these spaces as parallel to one another. The discussion in this paper highlights how practices of blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the real in community art practice makes way for a new materiality of communities that are based on difference. We discuss our findings in relation to understanding how the communities we engage with experience diffractions of difference as an expression of ‘belonging’. We look at examples of fieldwork from both projects that amplify the significance of belonging, togetherness, acceptance and inclusion as expressed through art in both religious and newly arrived communities as well as feminist digital art groups. We write as two white women, one of us is a Canadian migrant of post WW2 Jewish and German descent and the other a first-generation daughter of two migrants from Ireland and England who moved to Australia in their mid-twenties. Our experiences of migration and negotiating diaspora offer important points of connection when becoming with our research participants in exploring themes of home and belonging. One of us is the child of an Irish political musician and IRA sympathizer, for whom the embodied history of the Irish civil war and famine have been key to learning about the politics of colonization and problematizing relationships between religion and social/cultural power. The history of the Cromwellian Penal Laws against Catholics in Ireland, which denied education, emancipation and landownership to any Irish Catholic were not repealed until 1829 and is echoed 1 Professor Anna Hickey-Moody is recipient of the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project number FT 160100293 ‘Early Start Arts to Counter Radicalization’ funded by the Australian Government. 44 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 in the class system in Ireland, which is shaped by a complex enmeshment of religion and geography. The close relationships between war and religion embedded in Irish history were the inspiration for part of the fieldwork discussed here, which examines relationships between religion, community and belonging. Similarly, Holocaust histories constitute the genetic material of any Jewish survivors of WW2 and their descendants. This generational trauma and attunement to a past history of conflict is a point of connection that can often be part of becoming with our research participants from migrant backgrounds and refugee pasts. Our places of connection in relation to gender and sexuality which is further explored in the Instagram research here are similar forms of enmeshment of difference: one of us identifies as bi-sexual and as both of us present as women, we consistently experience patriarchal and capitalist overcodings of our bodies that leave us profoundly attuned to the power of queer, decolonial feminist imagery. We share crucial points of connection with our participants and consistently look to learn from and celebrate our differences as being a form of community ‘togetherness’. Diffracting Difference Diffractions and entanglements of matter and meaning emerge from the telling, making and drawing of visual ‘migration stories’ in the UK and Australia (Hickey-Moody 2018), and also in the feminist activist art we see on Instagram. The depth and diversity of the communities that we study in relation to their sense of belonging, togetherness, inclusion and acceptance is diffracted but also brought into being through art practice. Diffraction is not reflection raised to some higher power. It is not a self-referential glance back at oneself. While reflection has been used as a methodological tool by scholars relying on representationalism, there are good reasons to think that diffraction may serve as a productive model for thinking through nonrepresentationalist methodological approaches. (Barad 2007, p. 88) Diffracting, or breaking apart a ray of light shows up its many components and indeed co-constructs these components in the process of diffraction. Diffraction makes in new ways, rather than mirrors. In her book chapter “Queer Causation and the Ethics of Mattering”, Karen Barad (2008) re-works material from Meeting the Universe Halfway by applying ‘diffraction’ to the scientific discovery of the many light changing lenses of the brittlestar (an Ophiuroid). The brittlestar has a survival method of breaking off and losing some of its arms to distract predators. In this example, Barad positions brittlestars as being a part of this world, and this diffraction of their limbs symbolizes their entanglement with the environment. She asks, When is a broken-off limb only a piece of the environment and when it is an offspring? At what point does the ‘disconnected’ limb belong to the ‘environment’ rather than the ‘brittlestar’? Is contiguity of body parts required in the specification of a single organism? Can we trust visual delineations to define bodily boundaries? Can we trust our eyes? Connectivity does not require physical contiguity. (Spatially separate particles in an entangled state do not have separate identities, but rather are part of the same phenomena.) (Barad 2008, p. 327) In broad terms, Barad (2008) is questioning why differences, and in this case bodily diffractions, are seen as being separated from the environment when she asks “can we trust our eyes?” (p. 327). She points to the notion that connectivity does not require contiguity, therefore, though something may appear different, this does not necessarily mean that it is. Barad opposes this focus on difference by redefining the space between the brittlestar’s body and the environment, its limbs are diffracted into the environment rather than away from the body. She says “the world is an ongoing intra- active engagement, and bodies are among the differential performances of the world’s dynamic intra-activity, in an endless reconfiguring of boundaries and properties, including those of spacetime” (Barad 2008, p. 326). In our research, bodies of water, matter, flesh, soil, sand and stone are reconfigured across spacetime in contextually specific ways. Religious differences and similarities are diffracted through 45 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 art making and storytelling. Stories of migration, attachment, belonging, devotion and spiritual life are shared through words, colours, pattern, paint and pictures. Colors, symbols and feelings bring bodies together, and position them on shared earth. Feminist artists create and share art on Instagram with the political aim of advancing feminist agendas on themes such as LGBTQIA+ activism, reproductive justice, self-love and body positivity. It is through this entangled set of diffractions between various modes of story-telling, art making, digital creation and discussion that we find that intersecting themes of social inclusion evolve, through the creative methods with which we employ. By using intersectional feminist modes of social inclusion, Instagram artists build online communities from their art practice and actively participate in intersectional dialogue on their Instagram pages. Kimberle Crenshaw (1989) urges researchers to focus on this ‘intersectionality’ by looking at the conjoining oppressions at play across structures, systems and institutions. She problematizes some feminist theory and antiracist politics because of the “focus on the most privileged group members [which] marginalizes those who are multiply-burdened and obscures claims that cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of discrimination” (Crenshaw 1989, p. 140). Both the children artists and feminist activist artists diffract differences between their religions, races, ethnic backgrounds, sexualities and gender identities through their art making, either in a digital timespace or collaborative community workshop. These stories of intersectional inclusion told through art are how we explore the diffraction of differences as community making. Using a feminist new materialist frame to activate ethico-political research in religion and gender at a community level, we theorize that the sharing of ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, gender identities and sexualities through art practice encourages a diffraction of difference as ‘togetherness’ by creating interfaith understandings and inclusion of diverse bodies and sexualities online. We use diffraction, intra-action and enmeshment in framing our understanding of this ‘togetherness’, and as a way of showing that these feelings rely on more-than-human assemblages, they rely on homelands, countries, wars, places of worship, practices of identification and objects of attachment. Feminist and new materialist scholarship together, demonstrates the co-implication of bodies, subjectivities, places and histories. After van der Tuin (2008), Braidotti (2013), Barad (2007), Dolphijn and van der Tuin (2012), Barrett and Bolt (2014) and more, feminist new materialism accounts for this enmeshment of the social and the material, the virtual and real, human and non-human assemblage. For feminist new materialists, matter is agentic, ever changing, unpredictable and always becoming. Many feminist new materialist scholars (Hickey-Moody 2018; Ringrose and Renold 2016) posit perspectives and methodologies using methods we build upon here, grounded in arts-practice, intra-active interviewing, and embodied underpinnings of feminist identity and community research. It is important to note the co-implicated and relational nature of matter in new materialism. This is pedagogically significant in the respect that all bodies, not just human bodies, are endowed with agency and complexity. Barad’s neologism intra-activity allows us to see this: The notion of intra-action (in contrast to the usual “interaction,” which presumes the prior existence of independent entities/relate) represents a profound conceptual shift. It is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the “components” of phenomena become determinate and that particular embodied concepts become meaningful. (Barad 2003, p. 815) Intra-activity is a concept grounded in philosophies of immanence. There is no ‘beyond’ the body, rather, the focus shifts to a ‘between’ located in, with and through the body, as enacted “material-discursive phenomena” (Barad 2003, p. 821). Bodies are therefore inseparable from discursive practices. New materialist theory (Barad 2007; van der Tuin 2015; Palmer 2016) suggests that we would not be the same selves outside the field in which we are constituted, and that through the entanglement of our research site and ourselves, we change, and the subjects of our research change as well. The process of being together re-makes us. An example is our art making workshops, featured in the photograph below, in which experiences of art making are entangled with the participants sharing of their backgrounds. 46 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 A philosophy of intra-action shows us that we make the data we collect, and indeed, creation is the object of the research process, rather than discovering something that is ‘there’ to be known. This complicates understandings of research methods and comes to show that the data which is generated and collected through fieldwork is co-created by the fieldwork assemblage. ‘Data’ is the residue of successful complex qualitative research processes that engage young people in collaborative making practices that call them to think together about the future, about social values and community life. Our affective research method with Instagram live interviewing embodies the experience of being live on Instagram and being broadcast into the participants’ world and online community. In Instagram live interviews, both the researcher and her interviewee sit staring at a phone screen—often necessarily positioned extremely close together, in the participant’s art studio, or tattoo studio, sweating and noticing how awkward it is to stare at a screen while talking to one another. This embodied proximity, while awkward, also brings with it a relationality which is key to sharing information across the course of the interview. This online intra-action of the researcher and the participants’ bodies is further explored and theorized as ethnographic observation through ethnographic fieldnotes. Both fieldwork examples from Hickey-Moody and Willcox (2019)’s work respectively demonstrate how bodies and ‘things’ are not separate and shows how intra-actions are vital to how we come to know ourselves as humans and interact with our environments. Through unpacking examples from practical methods for data generation, we show the potential ways our students and research participants can be called on to relate to each other and themselves in our classrooms and interview spaces. Through diffractive and intra-active methods, we are enabled to draw upon memory, culture, religion, tradition, bodies, art and politics via methods that may be substantively different from ways people often are prompted to see themselves and relate to others in theory based learning environments or traditional research practices. As Barad (2014) reminds us, “Diffraction queers binaries and calls out for a rethinking of the notions of identity and difference” (p. 171). She continues, stating, The key is understanding that identity is not essence, fixity or givenness, but a contingent iterative performativity, thereby reworking this alleged conflict into an understanding of difference not as an absolute boundary between object and subject, here and there, this and that, but rather as the effects of enacted cuts in a radical reworking of cause and effect. (Barad 2014, pp. 173–74) Diffraction is a material shift that changes a given compound to something new. For us, art practice, whether in online platforms or community arts workshops, highlights the diffraction of difference through understanding and communicating ‘what really matters’ to people and brings new dimensions into our understandings of why no ‘one’ human is the same. Barad’s theories of entanglement demonstrate that we only exist in relation to our environments and, more than this, they allow us to see our research methods as open-ended ways of changing environments and changing people. This presents quite a particular view of the research assemblage as an entanglement and as agentive, which marks a substantive move from traditional qualitative approaches and bears alignment with what Lather and Pierre (2013) have called ‘post-qualitative’ research. As they so astutely note, entanglement makes all the categories of humanist qualitative research problematic. For example, how do we determine the ‘object of our knowledge’—the ‘problem’ we want to study in assemblage? Can we disconnect ourselves from the mangle somehow (Self) and then carefully disconnect some other small piece of the mangle (Other) long enough to study it? What ontology has enabled us to believe the world is stable so that we can do all that individuating? And at what price? How do we think a ‘research problem’ in the imbrication of an agentic assemblage of diverse elements that are constantly intra-acting, never stable, never the same? (Lather and Pierre 2013, p. 630) Gerrard et al. (2017) have written at length about what they conceive as problems with new materialism. However, for Gerrard, Rudolph and Sriprakash, whose reading of new materialism 47 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 is limited, recognizing enmeshment requires relinquishing the political, whereas Barad argues that enmeshment is the political effect and affect of research methods. Removing politics is impossible. The core of the critique Gerrard et al. (2017) attempt to develop suggests that new materialist and post qualitative research cannot be political or socially useful. As we will show by drawing from our empirical research with economically disadvantaged CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) children and communities, and our work with queer intersectional Instagram artists, new materialist and post qualitative research can be explicitly political and can respond to issues of race, class, gender and sexuality. Further, our aim in positioning feminist new materialism as being inherently political addresses the postcolonial critique that Gerrard et al. (2017) raise, suggesting that post qualitative inquiry risks operating less as new mechanisms for generative and subversive post-humanist research and more as being a process of closure and erasure. Opposing this critique, the transformative nature of feminist new materialist methodologies in which art and research converge can be seen in the work of Stacy Alaimo et al. (2008), Kester (2004), Barrett and Bolt (2014) and Nato Thompson’s (2015) writing on art and activism. Thompson (2015) focuses his research on art as a political intervention and shows how art today can and does inspire innovation and dramatic transformation through activists and empowered communities. Likewise, our work brings out the politics embedded in art making and sharing, in both Instagram based communities and religious spaces. Our research creates intra-active storytelling and activism which situates the entangled diffraction of differences as a symbol of community ‘togetherness’. Such an intra-active, diffractive and enmeshed methodology can be performed through a range of methods, and here we further explore two examples introduced above. 2. Methods We bring together two different empirical projects; the first on religion, community and belonging, and the second on intersectional, queer, feminist activist art online. The first method discussed here works at the community level to examine class, race, culture, religion and identity through three rounds of three concurrent arts workshops with children (nine workshops per child), undertaken in schools, mosques, churches, service centers and housing estates, with a view to fostering and understanding interfaith relationships in childhood and understanding geographies of belonging as experienced by parents. By providing art practices as a way of communicating things children find difficult to articulate, art making can often help researchers uncover what matters most in the children’s worlds and create pathways for building relationships with the children’s parents. Our second method works on Instagram and examines gender identity, sexuality and community through social media activism, both via an analysis of feminist activist artists’ work published online and through live Instagram interviews with the artists. We present both methods here to outline two possible examples of our broader intra-active, entangled methodology of creative research practice and use intra-action as a lens to pursue an explicitly political and politicizing research agendas. 2.1. Interfaith Childhoods: Race, Class and Community The global landscape surrounding the mediated politics of religion and the racialization of religion changed significantly after September 11th, 2001 and the associated mediated fear of Muslim culture in ‘secular’ society remains a social issue in Australia and the U.K. The enduring politicization and racialization of Muslim identities that has been brought about by the post 9/11 media landscape is, in part, what we work to problematize and change through the Interfaith Childhoods project. More than this, however, the broader media framing of religion in terms of war and terror and a paucity of curriculum treating religion in Australian public schools generates a profound lack of understanding about the vernacular significance of religion in community life. Religion often sustains people and communities in adversity, and also in everyday life. This practical and significant value that can be attributed to religion is too often omitted in media reportage. Countering exactly such aggressive representations of religion, our interfaith research shows how children’s creative and physical geographies can communicate quite complex information about their religions and 48 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 worldviews (which include Christian, Hindu, Atheist, Muslim, Catholic). Ethnographic observations of children’s faith worlds can be developed while spending consolidated time with them making art and discussing worldviews (see James 2001). Thinking through transnational and trans-local mobilities that are embodied by the children and are embedded in their representations of their religion and their own re-telling of their heritage and migration stories is a critical reflexive strategy that shows up the meaning embedded in the materiality of art making (see Hickey-Moody 2018). Children’s artworks depicting identity, belonging and community offer a kind of speculative future, comprised of ‘what really matters’, namely, containing the social values the children hold in the highest regard. As noted, the children are from a range of religious and secular backgrounds and their imaginative futures often depict religious and secular social unity. The project, then, is designed to develop new ways of listening to community perspectives on belonging, identity and religion (Figure 1). In so doing, this research shows the intra-action of place, belief and biography, race, class and community, as central to (indeed, as co-constitutive of) children’s identity. Figure 1. Making and belonging: children and researcher share stories of home. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21071. The methods for this project are designed to gather three sets of data and these are: 1. Visual, imaginative data collaboratively developed with children, exploring faith, values and community 2. Focus group data from the children’s parents exploring faith, values, belonging and community, which is expanded upon in detailed individual interviews with parents 3. Quantitative mappings of values, beliefs and sentiments of belonging in the communities in which the qualitative data is gathered. The analysis below is concerned with some of the visual qualitative data from children, which offers rich depictions of the material organization of religious culture and provides multiple perspectives on experiences of faith, and shows how faith is mediated creatively across digital and popular culture. Recent images of interfaith futures developed by children from England and Australia include, but are by no means limited to, the following Figures 2–4: 49 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 Figure 2. Future city, example one from a northern English Primary School, 2018. This image features a mosque, a church and two high-density housing estates. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21071. Figure 3. Future city, example two from a northern English Primary School 2018. This image features a school and a hospital (the green building) a mosque, a church and a number of houses. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21071. 50 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 Figure 4. Future city, example from an Australian church youth group, 2018. This image features a community pool, a zoo, a campfire, a large playground, a church with stained glass windows, a hospital and a number of houses. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21071. These three collectively devised images (Figures 2–4) are all large canvasses that have been collaboratively drawn and decorated by groups of 4–6 children aged between 4 and 9 using pastels, felt tip pens, paint pens, and collage materials (including wool, felt, cotton printed fabric). These canvasses depict imagined future cities comprised of “what really matters”. Figure 2 features a mosque in the lower left-hand corner of the picture, positioned in front of a large high-rise block of flats. There is a church in the middle of the painting and further housing to the right of the canvas. At first glance, this city is clearly designed for high density living. Trees and a sun decorate the backdrop of the painting. Figure 3 features a large hospital, a mosque, a church, busy roads, houses, and a school. Strikingly, there are not a lot of people in these images, even though there are lots of places designed to be inhabited by people. Figure 4, created in Australia as opposed to the UK, bears some similarities to the UK images, although 11 people and 6 animals feature in this city, which marks a stark contrast to images from the UK, that only gesture towards people through drawings of cars. While issues of race and class are not explicitly pictured in the works above, negotiations of issues of race and, to a lesser extent, of class, are core to the process of collaboration through which many children come to work together. More than this, negotiation of these issues is often central to these children’s everyday lives. The children are from a range of predominantly non-white backgrounds and, in many instances, they are the first member of their family to have been born in the UK or Australia. With the exception of one church group, whose picture above features the swimming pools, zoo and church with stained glass, all the children in the study live and attend school in an incredibly diverse, indeed, what Steven Vertovec (2007) has called a ‘superdiverse’ area. Vertovec argues that superdiversity in Britain “is distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants who have arrived over the last decade” (Vertovec 2007, p. 1024). The postcode for the area in which images 2 and 3 were created is in the top 5.2% of deprived 51 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 areas in the UK2. It is an area in Manchester, which, along with its position of economic deprivation has a substantively higher level of ethnic diversity than Manchester as a whole (UK Census 2011). It is estimated that the ward contains the third highest proportion of residents belonging to the Pakistani ethnic group3. The religious make up of this area is 32.7% Muslim, 30.2% Christian, 24.5% No religion, 1.2% Sikh, 1.0% Hindu, 0.9% Buddhist, 0.3% Jewish, 0.1% Agnostic4. As such, issues of acceptance of belief systems other than one’s own are central to community life in this area. As a result of being embedded in a superdiverse and deprived community, navigating issues of race, language, culture and religion are a required component of these children’s everyday lives. Both implicitly and explicitly, these children are called to consistently respond to racialized and racializing imperatives, which can at times be advanced through social constructions of their religion. Researching with children requires the researcher to create multiple opportunities for children to communicate through indirect discourses, as often children will express themselves through doing, through the ways in which they conduct themselves and the kinds of values they perform in their expressive and representational practices. Indirect discourses are the formative materials upon which majoritarian meanings attributed to race, class and gender are built and, as such, they deserve serious attention. More than this, intervening in the configuration of discourses can be made possible through working at intersections of the discursive and non-discursive. 2.2. Thinking with Matter The future cities depicted above, which were developed by the children, offer an opportunity for them to show how they might like to remake the world and to express the aspects of the world they find the most important. The values and desires represented in these images are shaped by the belief systems that surround the young people with whom we work with and these values shape their day to day lives as well as their imaginations. The children’s visual and expressive artworks provide resources that inform our conversations with their parents, whose experiences (often these include experiences of migration) have been mediated and supported by their involvement in specific communities, often religious communities. Two further examples of children’s expressive representations of their migration and / or religion stories can be found below. Figure 5 features the blue color of the Somalian flag as the ozone layer surrounding the world, and a globe which depicts the child’s journey from Somalia to the UK. The globe features a small car driving across it’s midline, presumably taking the child and his family across the globe from one country to another. There is a clear sense of journey and the smallness of the car driving across the large globe gives a sense of the enormous nature of the journey that the young artist had undertaken. The boy had been living in the UK for two years, so the journey was not far from memory and is still very much part of his identity story. 2 A total of 94.8% of English postcodes are less deprived than M14 7JB: (it is in the top 5.2% most deprived areas). Retrieved from: https://www.getthedata.com/postcode/M14-7JB. (GetTheData 2019) 3 Retrieved from: Whalley Range ward profile-Manchester City Council. 4 Retrieved from: Whalley Range Demographics (Manchester, England)-LocalStats. 52 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 Figure 5. Expressive representation of migration from Somalia to the UK drawn by a South East London boy. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21071. The second picture about migration, religion and identity, which is featured below, is more symbolic and less of a literal depiction of a migration story. In addition to implied geographical movements, the image addresses themes of religion and culture, family and ritual. All these themes are very important to the artist who painted the textile work. In Figure 6, the girl who created the picture brings together family, her religion, and popular British culture through naming celebrations such as Easter and Christmas in love hearts. Looking at the image, we can get a sense of where the author/artist feels she fits in the world, especially in relation to the other people, experiences, and events that shape her. Her artwork features shades of blue that are prominent in Islamic material and visual cultures. The family tree contextualizes the child artist amongst her family and she has included heart shaped speech bubbles as balloons that express things she thinks “really matter”. These include family celebrations and cultural festivals, along with the aforementioned British national holidays of Christmas and Easter, she has listed Ramadan, Eid and ‘birthdays’, which are grouped together in a rhizomatic clumping of the defining celebrations in this child’s life. 53 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 Figure 6. Expressive representation of religion, culture and belonging. Created by a South East London girl. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21071. These materials (Figures 5 and 6) re-present family stories, life experiences and cultural worlds. They also offer us a different comment on the material organization of culture to the existing work of scholars who consider visual and material cultures of religion. Children position belonging in relation to both Muslim and Christian/Anglo festivals and position family clearly at the center of belonging. This perspective takes seriously the pedagogical nature of materiality, building upon Karen Barad’s argument that Reality is therefore not a fixed essence. Reality is an ongoing dynamic of intra-activity. To assert that reality is made up of phenomena is not to invoke one or another form of idealism. On the contrary, phenomena are specific material configurations of the world. Phenomena are not mere human or social constructions (and they are surely not mere constructs); we don’t simply make the world in our image. (Barad 2007, p. 206) This perspective fundamentally shapes our understanding of all the subjects introduced above. Religion is not a fixed essence. Race is not a fixed essence, but it is a material agent. Religion, race, culture and society are “specific material configurations of the world” that include enmeshments of people and matter in ways that re-make meaning and attachment. 2.3. Digital, Intra-Active Methods In our Instagram research5, the political issues addressed predominantly relate to gender and sexuality, while race, class, reproductive rights and religion come into focus as well. Taking a feminist new materialist approach to autoethnography, our social media research creates a narrative around the subjective experiences of identity and community making in online Instagram art. With 10 international Instagram artists from various feminist political positions, we present data from our research with 5 Marissa Willcox is a recipient of the RMIT RTP PhD research scholarship ID number 2266885 on which this project is funded. 54 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 Melbourne based Instagram artist Frances Cannon (@frances_cannon). We position this work and the methods discussed here, as a different method-expression of the same new materialist methodology performed in the Interfaith Childhoods’ project. The methods demonstrate the politics embedded in art making and sharing processes, as the themes discussed in both the Interfaith Childhoods art workshops and in the Instagram research draw a transversal line joining race, religion, belonging, gender, sexuality, identity and more. What stays constant is the underlying philosophical commitment to enmeshment and to intra-active methods that show us how various differences are diffracted through art to create this ‘togetherness’. Performing an Instagram live interview on the participants’ Instagram page creates an intra-action of bodies (Figure 7). We blur the imaginary and real barriers that divide the digital and social worlds through this process (Hillis et al. 2015). By embodying the experience of being and performing live on Instagram, we are given a share of the participants’ world and online community, and in effect, aim to minimize the much-contested qualitative researcher/subject power imbalance (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012). Instagram live interviews are framed here as a new materialist way of rethinking subjective experiences of identity and community making. The interview questions are tailored to fit the individual activist themes, and they change based on the participants thoughts/topics of interest during the live engagement. The conversation is broadcasted through their Instagram live story immediately, which contributes to their goal of community building through social media engagement and digital communication. Figure 7. Intra-acting the interview. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21229. A live intra-active interview thus, is co-created with the participant in a way which privileges the being over knowing in researcher/participant relationships (Back 2012; Lather and Pierre 2013). We demonstrate how bodies and things are not separate, and show their inter-relationship is vital to how we come to know ourselves as humans and interact with our environments. All research participants are feminist, and most are queer-identified. Most are also same-sex attracted. Participants’ art practice and their arts-based community become a site for research, and a conversational tool. The topics that participants discuss in their interviews draw them back to the themes found in the participants’ 55 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 art online. This entanglement is discussed in front of the participant’s live audience: their followers and community. Situated knowledges is not merely about knowing/seeing from somewhere (as in having a perspective), but about taking account of how the specific prosthetic embodiment of the technologically enhanced visualising apparatus matters to practices of knowing. (Barad 2008, p. 326, quoting Haraway 1997) To put Haraway’s point another way, having and gaining knowledge is therefore not a practice of seeing or reflecting from a removed position, seeing co-creates the position, it is a process that is concerned with embodying and being with/in the place of inquiry. As affective researchers, understanding only comes through doing, being, making, and feeling. Especially in interviews, “those involved in the interview come together to form an assemblage that exceeds the individuals themselves” (Willink and Shukri 2018, p. 188). Non-hegemonic gender and sexual identities and themes of online community inclusion become enmeshed with aesthetics of style through conversations with artists that explore these themes in their artwork. The method is outlined in greater detail below. Frances Cannon’s art takes on a feminist activist perspective while also illustrating pieces of her life and aspects of her own identity. Figure 8 is a reflection of the experience of being a woman on Instagram and brings up the notion that traditionally, representation of women’s bodies in the media has been (and still is) ‘for the male gaze’. This post (Figure 8) now has over 8000 likes and more than 100 comments. Frances initiates a dialogue around feminism, body positivity, the media, and unsafe online spaces through this transgressive art. Frances Cannon’s followers are seen coming together to discuss their different experiences relating to this image in the comments section, and her art looks to unite them in their varying feminist political agendas. Figure 8. “I AM NOT A PIECE OF MEAT!” from @frances_cannon, Instagram, March 2019. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21229. Coming from a new materialist lens and working with intra-action rather than interaction, we build on Dolphijn and van der Tuin’s (2012) approach to understanding interviews as outlined in New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies. They describe how the attitude towards interviews should be seen as an intra-action, stating: Qualitatively shifting any atomist metaphysics, intra-action conceptualizes that it is the action between (and not in-between) that matters. In other words, it is not the interviewers or 56 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 the interviewee or even the oeuvre of the interviewee that deserves our special attention, but it is the sense of orientation that the interview gave rise to (the action itself) that should engender us. For it is in the action itself that new materialism announces itself. (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012, Introduction) This approach conceives the interview process as an ongoing intra-action of bodies and places. The objective of the researcher in any new materialist methodology is to become with and be entangled in the research as it progresses. Engaging with “complexity, uncertainty and risk” as Jen Ross (2017) suggests in digital media-based pedagogy, we embrace continuous “not yet-ness” in methodological processes. Through online live interviewing, ‘data’ is made instantly available to the participant’s global community of followers and the live nature of the interview makes every discussion unique. Planned topics for discussion can often change in response to the participant’s political agenda and online persona. This intra-action is a way of making space for social change by initiating academic interest in the intersectional dialogues of inclusion that are being broadcast online, therefore encouraging and supporting communities that diffract differences. 2.4. Creating and Mediating the Feminist Self: Live Broadcasts We outline the live Instagram method here, alongside an initial ethnographic observation that encapsulates the experience of entering Frances Cannon’s community space, as the community surrounding Cannon’s artwork is a powerful agent in supporting her work: “the virtual, therefore, can be understood as the potentialities, investments, and imaginations concerning the present and the possible shape of things to come” (Hillis et al. 2015, p. 9). The fieldnote excerpt below expresses the feelings of community and belonging that exist amongst the feminists in this digital space. Without meeting Frances Cannon’s followers in person, entering her studio and entering her Instagram story show the levels of complexity in modern identities of community, time and space. We think through how these online and offline spaces for inclusion and acceptance diffract feelings of difference. The method for this project situates the researcher in an ongoing intra-active engagement online while blurring the distinctions between the online/offline experience. Three different methods are enacted to build a feminist autoethnographic narrative based on case studies using 10 international Instagram artists: 1. An initial private semi-structured interview, exploring how feminist artists represent and express gender, sexuality, feminism and the body in art practice on Instagram. 2. A follow up interview, conducted on the participants’ Instagram live that engages in a discussion around gender, feminism, sexuality and the body but with a lens to understanding the feminist activist art community and mapping the artists’ engagement within that community (this is visually recorded through the engagement of their followers with the live video). 3. A continued and ongoing documentation of the artists’ engagement within this global community by following their stories and posts and actively participating in this space. This is recorded through screenshots and recording the liking, commenting, and sharing of the artist’s work across their various pages and stories to map community responses and sentiment. 2.5. Ethnographic Observation: Frances Cannon’s Studio, 19 February 2019 I walked into the wrong room. Frances Cannon had invited me to her Coburg studio to conduct our second interview on Instagram live. The building had two floors. While I stood in the dark studio gallery on the bottom floor with walls covered in art depicting naked women, kissing women, breasts, blood, and the color blue, the room seemed to envelop me. I was in her space. There were other artist’s paintings and drawings for sale on the walls, all with a feminist theme. I announced myself, but no one seemed to hear. I left the unlit gallery and stood outside in the hot summer air again. On the sprawling Coburg square, plots of the same brown grass stretched before me, the soil underneath them drying even more in the Australian summer heat. The 1990s style, single story, brick bungalows 57 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 shimmered, still, as the trains blew past. Frances opened the side door to the building and waved me in. She kissed me on the cheek and showed me upstairs to a somewhat less intimate room, filled with desks and art and paper everywhere. It was an artist’s haven. I quickly used the bathroom before our interview and noticed piled old art canvases on the floor, discarded (Figure 9). The counter was dusty and the air smelled of dry paint. I came out, and saw she was settled in her corner getting her iPhone tripod set up. I had the same one. Frances flowed around her desk to clear her art supplies away. Her denim dress swung as she cleared paper and canvases to the floor, she spoke about her upcoming solo art show. I said I would go. We got ready for our Instagram live interview and talked about the people that would comment, the questions and topics we might discuss. A friend of hers sat in the background, silently painting. As we turned on the live video on her Instagram story, I introduced myself to her audience of followers and prompted questions around gender, sexuality, the body and feminism, all relating to her art. Her Instagram community followed suit. The comments section on our live interview was flowing with likes and statements of support, awareness, inclusion, acceptance. When Frances spoke about her queerness others jumped in with heart emojis and signs and symbols of love. She had hundreds of people commenting as we spoke, and our conversation carried on. It felt rude not to stop the whole thing and address them, her followers. It was like we were speaking to them, for them. But we continued on with the interview. Sitting oddly close together yet looking forward at a tiny black phone screen. We were both sweating, shimmering like the brown bungalow houses lining the street outside. I was so nervous to be on a live platform, performing for her followers. What if I ‘messed up’? What if I said the ‘wrong thing’? We both smiled when the ‘Feminists from Brazil’ Instagram account commented on our chat with a ‘we can do it’ strong arm emoji and expressed their support for our conversation topics. Other followers from her community expressed their love for Frances’s art and style. When I asked her about her artistic style in relation to her personal background, Frances said that she grew up in quite a conservative Christian household where queerness wasn’t talked about. I then realized what all of her followers were doing online watching this video. It was the same thing Frances was doing by creating her art, just looking for a place and people to connect to, to feel loved and accepted, a place to belong. Instagram artists have created that space, an online community of belonging and acceptance. Figure 9. Discarded. Canvases on the floor in Frances’s Studio. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21229. There was little to say when I left this online interview space, I felt like I had entered into a new world, a world of inclusion, acceptance and togetherness where feminism was at the forefront of 58 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 everyone’s minds and sexuality was a celebrated topic of discussion. We ended the Instagram live interview with advice for the future, and Frances encouraged her followers to love themselves, their whole selves. Digital heart emojis had flown across the screen for the whole 30 minutes. I packed up, hugged her and left. I stepped back into the street and noticed the square plots again, so brown, so alike, yet at the same time, still so different. 2.6. Mixing with Matter Willcox’s ethnographic fieldnotes from Frances Cannon’s interview show the fluidity of entering into her global Instagram community while sitting (sweating) in her Coburg studio. The element of being and performing in the interview as a live action is taken as data and a mode of embodied engagement. By doing a live interview, the conversation about sexuality and body positivity is immediately translated to Frances’s 186K followers. The interview becomes a political and feminist statement to a live, attentive audience. Coming from the feminist new materialist frame of interviewing and understanding feminist identities in the contexts with which they are made (Colman 2014; McTague et al. 2017), we apply this concept to the new materialist trope that “every actual object is surrounded by a cloud of virtuality” (Hillis et al. 2015, p. 9). This virtuality can be seen here in the intra-active engagements between layers of love heart emojis, black phone screens, sweating bodies, followers’ comments, a flowing dress, and conversations about art. When taken together, these intra-actions initiate a blurring of the boundaries between communities and identities as we see them being made. In this live discussion of Frances’s politics and activist art, we can feel the diffraction of differences enabled through this digital platform as she opens up an online space for a dialogue, inclusion and acceptance (Figure 10). Figure 10. Digital Diffraction. RMIT University Human Ethics Clearance Number 21229. By adopting the political position that Instagram can sometimes play a role in reproducing and reinforcing traditional gender norms and heterosexual representations (Caldeira et al. 2018, p. 23) and by intra-acting the interview in a live setting, the research aim becomes to actively change 59 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 heteronormative, patriarchal online narratives. This method is built to amplify the experiences and identities of feminists, fat women, queer women, WOC, trans women, and non-binary artists whom often feel left out of the heteronormative online narrative, by positioning them at the centre of their identity and community making in the research process (Crenshaw 1989). It brings people of different backgrounds and experiences together over their respect for art and intersectionality, through the digital interface of Instagram. Rather than use traditional focus groups or interviews, this live style of interviewing with an aesthetic, digital, focus, offers qualitative researchers a chance to bring non-traditional representations of gender and sexuality into global online communities who share aligned interests. It serves an activist agenda by contributing a live discussion to the feminist movement online that fights for gender equality, queer inclusion and the representation of more non-white, fat, disabled and queer bodies in media spaces (Afful and Ricciardelli 2015; Robinson et al. 2019). By researching the users of these online social spaces with the same methods they use to navigate their own identities and communities, this methodology of Instagram live interviewing creates space to amplify the experiences of those who feel underrepresented in the online heteronormative narrative. 3. Conclusions In both sets of the above methods, our methodology of diffractive, intra-active and entangled making with community is explored creatively. We present community focused, intra-active, arts-based research strategies for interrogating and understanding online expressions of community and belonging. With our theoretical frame inspired by entanglement, diffraction and intra-action in new materialist methodologies, we identify the fact that creative methods are a way of knowing about communities by being with communities in playful, fun and non-intrusive ways. Here, we agree with Rebecca Coleman, who states: Drawing attention to a collective or individual sense of enjoyment may seem insignificant, but I think it’s interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing, there’s something to say about social science methodologies being fun and playful. This is perhaps especially important in the context of what Roger Burrows and Mike Savage (2007) call the ‘coming crisis of empirical sociology’, where they note that methods initially developed by sociology and wider social sciences (such as interviews, and surveys) are increasingly employed in commercial sectors—meaning both that the methodological expertise by which sociology has traditionally defined itself no longer belong to it alone, and that new audiences and markets are being enrolled in what are sometimes more agile and fun versions of these methods. So, the question of how social sciences might re-develop their own methods that are themselves fun is crucial. There is then a politics and ethics to how this question might be addressed. (Coleman 2016, online) Our methods have to move with the times if they are to remain useful. As we argued earlier, the virtual and social worlds shown as sites for research are both understood in terms of how the potentialities and imaginaries co-constitute each other and, in turn, are responsible for the other. Each community not only diffracts their differences through art, but intra-acts with the other through an on-going time space that is concerned with the ethics of understanding and ultimately with becoming enmeshed as a community. We have also discussed how our methodologies embody theories from the posthuman era, by doing research that thinks with the body. Rosi Braidotti (2013) outlines posthumanism in her book The Posthuman by demonstrating what it means to think within and through the body. She presents a particular kind of knowledge around difference as relating back to early humanism: This Eurocentric paradigm [of ‘Humanism’] implies the dialectics of self and other, and the binary logic of identity and otherness as respectively the motor for and the cultural logic of universal Humanism. Central to this universalistic posture and its binary logic is the notion of ‘difference’ as pejoration. Subjectivity is equated with consciousness, universal rationality, and 60 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 264 self-regulating ethical behaviour, whereas Otherness is defined as its negative and specular counterpart. In so far as difference spells inferiority, it acquires both essentialist and lethal connotations for people who get branded as ‘others’. These are the sexualized, racialized, and naturalized others, who are reduced to the less than human status of disposable bodies. We are all humans, but some of us are just more mortal than others. (Braidotti 2013, p. 3) Braidotti’s advancement of feminist post humanism and feminist new materialism are research practices that constitute a field in which we situate our research; a field which is (as the above quote demonstrates) explicitly politicized and politicizing. As we intra-act within art-based spaces, feminist activists and children express their feelings of cultural belonging, acceptance, difference, disagreement and togetherness through colour, texture, making, and doing. In community arts workshops and on Instagram, we intervene in the dissemination and re-production of problematic aspects of racializing and gendering discourses. By both intra-acting in live interviews and intra-acting in arts workshops, we learn and feel and change with the people with whom we work, as opposed to measuring and quantifying their being. We initiate a diffraction of differences in our approaches, by not privileging the knowing in research, but privileging the being with. In understanding being with as an intra-active, entangled, contextually specific experience, we aim to make new ways for people to come together and share their knowledges, experiences, and differences which help them to feel they belong or provide resources with which to negotiate difference. Understanding the collaborative production of feelings reminds us that all feelings and identities are intra-active, entangled products of communities, which we conceive as collections of difference. Author Contributions: The authors worked on this project in conjunction with eachother forming theoretical discussions through their shared methods and methodological frames. A.H.-M. provided the first draft while M.W. expanded on the initial writing. They finalized the finished draft together. Funding: Professor Hickey-Moody is a recipient of The Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project number FT 160100293 ‘Early Start Arts to Counter Radicalization’ on which this project is funded. Marissa Willcox is a recipient of the RMIT RTP PhD research scholarship ID number 2266885 on which this project is funded. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. References Afful, Adwoa A., and Rose Ricciardelli. 2015. Shaping the online fat acceptance movement: Talking about body image and beauty standards. Journal of Gender Studies 24: 453–72. [CrossRef] Alaimo, Stacy, Susan Hekman, and Susan J. Hekman. 2008. Material Feminisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Back, Les. 2012. Live sociology: Social research and its futures. The Sociological Review 60: 18–39. [CrossRef] Barad, Karen. 2003. Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs 28: 801–31. [CrossRef] Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning; Durham: Duke University Press. Available online: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Meeting-the-Universe- Halfway/ (accessed on 10 June 2019). 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Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 63 $ € £ ¥ social sciences Article Moving with Touch: Entanglements of a Child, Valentine’s Day Cards, and Research–Activism against Sexual Harassment in Pre-Teen Peer Cultures Suvi Pihkala *, Tuija Huuki and Vappu Sunnari Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, FI-90014 Oulu, Finland * Correspondence: suvi.pihkala@oulu.fi Received: 17 May 2019; Accepted: 22 July 2019; Published: 26 July 2019 Abstract: In this paper, we respond to feminist new materialist scholars’ calls to explore what research in the field of gendered and sexual violence can be, do, and become. This paper explores the microprocesses of change within the more-than-human child–card entanglements as part of our research–activist campaign addressing sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures. Drawing on one of our creative workshops, we generate three analytical readings that map touch. We focus, first, on the intra-action of bodies, objects, and abstractions that reconfigures painful experiences of harassment for recognition; second, on the affective charge in moments and movements of response and resistance; and third, on what else touch can become when it travels across time–space domains as part of our research–activism. Re-engaging with our research–activism, we propose that different kinds of touch converge into a sensing-feeling, inherently ethico-political, matter-realizing apparatus that reconfigures painful experiences of gendered and sexual harassment for recognition, response, and resistance. Connecting to feminist new materialist endeavors to envision and enact response-able research, we propose that ‘moving with touch’ helps us shed light on the microprocesses of change in generative ways—that is, in ways that recraft response-abilities and invite movement. Keywords: Barad; children; creative methods; feminist new materialisms; research–activism; response-ability; sexual harassment; touch 1. Introduction Sexual harassment was brought to renewed attention in 2017, prompted by the global ‘#MeToo’ movement. Having spent nearly 20 years exploring gender and sexual power plays among children in school settings, our research team—including Tuija, who was following the debate closely—was deeply affected by the discussion, which mostly ignored the ways sexual harassment connects to and permeates children’s peer cultures. This combination of the ‘hashtag feminism’ (Mendes et al. 2018) against sexual harassment, the public debate, and our numerous research encounters with children marked the ‘beginning in the middle’ of our research–activist project. Theoretically, our research–activist approach was inspired by feminist new materialist and, in particular, ‘phEmaterialist’ work (e.g., Renold and Ringrose 2019), which have generatively merged feminist research with Deleuzian/Spinozian activist philosophies (e.g., Braidotti 2013) and the theories of micropolitics of change (Manning 2016; Massumi 2015) and affect (e.g., Blackman and Venn 2010) in order to envision ways of doing educational research capable of generating material changes in wider social spheres (e.g., Renold 2018; Ringrose et al. 2019). The creative arts-based research-activist project, titled #MeToo Postscriptum, that shaped the direction of this article, was designed and implemented by two of the authors—Tuija and Suvi—during the weeks before Valentine’s Day in 2018. It emerged from Tuija’s broader ongoing research and from a long continuum of research on gendered and sexual force relations by the authors (Huuki and Renold 2016; Huuki et al. 2010; Holford et al. 2013; Pihkala and Huuki 2019; Sunnari et al. 2002; Sunnari 2010). Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226; doi:10.3390/socsci8080226 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci64 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 Although it is often discussed only in relation to adults, research shows that sexual harassment—verbal, physical, material, emotional, or psychological sexual abuses of power—also affect young people in multiple, contradictory manners as normalized, everyday hetero-sexisms circulating within young peer cultures, media, and the wider social and cultural discourses (Gillander Gådin 2012; Holford et al. 2013; Meyer 2009; Renold 2013; Stein 2007; Sunnari 2010; Sunnari et al. 2002). However, young people are left with insufficient support for navigating these often contentious terrains of gender and sexuality (Renold 2013). Drawing inspiration from child-led activism in Wales (Renold 2018, 2019; Renold and Ringrose 2019), the #MeToo Postscriptum campaign engaged children aged 10–12 years in creative workshops to explore their experiences of sexual harassment and to communicate those experiences to decisionmakers and the public. In this paper, we return to and re-engage with one of the workshops, a workshop with a group of eight girls,1 and map the iterative intra-action of Valentine’s Day cards, girls, experiences of past harassment, the research–activist campaign, and our own engagements and entanglements during the campaign. In re-engaging with the workshop, we employ touch as a steering concept that reanimates and enlivens within and through three analytically enacted moments at focus in this paper. Drawing on Barad’s (2007) agential realism, with the first moment, we map more-than-human touch, focusing on the materiality of the workshop. We render visible how bodies, tables, movement, space, objects, postscripts, past, present, and research–activism intra-act, generating conditions of possibility for painful experiences to reconfigure for recognition. Then, we map what else touch can do, focusing on the affective charge in the moments and movements of response and resistance in the intra-action of past experiences, Valentine’s cards, and a makeshift mailbox. Our third and final analysis maps what else touch can become as it gathers up and holds together across time–space domains, reaching towards, sticking to us, and traveling to wider change-making terrains. Mapping and moving with touch enable us to become open to the microprocesses and micropolitics of change and, as explored in this paper, to the ways in which painful experiences of harassment can be reconfigured for recognition, response, and resistance. As invested and interested in co-constructing and theorizing response-able, everyday practices of change-making (Huuki 2019; Pihkala et al. 2018; Pihkala 2018), this paper contributes to the recent calls to envision response-able research and practice and to illuminate and theorize the microprocesses of change in our research endeavors (Ringrose et al. 2019; Renold 2018). ‘Moving with touch’ within our creative research–activism sheds light on the affordances of feminist new materialism-inspired approaches that are attuned to materiality, relationality, and becoming. We argue that our research–activism, predicated on creative, multimodal, more-than-human sense-abilities, fostered conditions in which unwanted, painful, silenced, and unaddressed experiences could be reconfigured for recognition, response, and resistance in ways that exceed the limits of humanistic and talk-based modes of engagement. Beginning from within entanglements and relationality, as opposed to pre-existing subjects and objects, enables us to attend to the material-discursive practices of body, object, gesture, movement, silence, voice, space, history, feeling, and touch and how these human and more-than-human elements intra-act, producing particular and contingent outcomes (Barad 2007). We maintain that working from within such entanglements enables elbow room for the unexpected and 1 Informed by our long-term work with children around sensitive topics of gender and sexual harassment, the workshops were held in single-sex groups with the aim of ensuring safe possibilities for the participants to explore and communicate their experiences of their friendship and relationship cultures. Within the scope of this research, it was not possible to address the children’s experiences of gender, but grounded in our long-term research on gender and power in child peer cultures, we were familiar with the specific context of our research–activism in Finland. In this context, issues of gender are sensitive, unaddressed, and often silenced, which make them difficult to address. The grouping by assumed gender aligned with the accustomed and dominant practices of the schools. It was based on our previous experiences of working in mixed-gender groups where the sensitivity and difficulty of the topic causes anxiety and dominant modes of gender expression become enforced. In order to work with and rework gender dichotomies, the groups were thus divided by assumed gender. However, our approach during our engagements with the children remained sensitive to the children’s diverse gender expressions. 65 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 emergent and prompts us to not limit our inquiry to interpretations and instead invest in how research can be made to matter in the world (Ringrose et al. 2019). By thinking with theory and moving with touch, we make a speculative gesture towards theorizing what else touch can be, do, and become. Methodologically, mapping different kinds of touches causes them to converge into a sensing-feeling, inherently ethico-political, matter-realizing apparatus that yields a nuanced account of the intra-active moments when subtle shifts of change occur. It does so in generative ways—that is, in ways that recraft response-abilities and incite and invite movement. 2. Each Intra-Action Matters: Envisioning the Microprocesses of Change in Research against Sexual Harassment in Pre-Teen Peer Cultures This paper connects to the expansive work inspired by feminist new materialist theories related to affect, materiality, and the relationality of human and more-than-human others (e.g., Barad 2007; Braidotti 2013; Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012). This work has elicited heightened attunement and thoughtfulness in feminist research and social sciences more widely with respect to how bodies, objects, and discourses affect one another and are affected upon and how power, agency, and change, for example, are imagined (Fox and Alldred 2016; Ringrose et al. 2019). In phEmaterialist work, the reimagination of how gender, power, and sexuality matter in children’s lives and, importantly, how change and transformation could be evoked (Renold and Ringrose 2019), has prompted—to use a term borrowed from Barad (2007) and Haraway (2008)—response-able research and pedagogy (Renold 2018; Ringrose et al. 2019; Taylor 2018). This call also acts as our motivation and inspiration to move with touch as we work to attune to and capture the subtle shifts of change within our research–activism. In gauging such ‘microprocesses of change’ as they occur, we employ three pivotal threads from Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemology. Barad (2007) introduced the idea of agential realism, proposing that the world and things ‘come to matter’ through agential cuts enacted through ongoing intra-action; that is, objects, abstractions, discourses, and even space and time do not pre-exist their relatings. This means that phenomena, such as gender and sexual harassment as the object of our inquiry and activism, too, must be understood to become intelligible through specific and contingent material-discursive arrangements or apparatuses of bodily production (Barad 2007). It is perhaps particularly in the matterings of gender and sexuality—and sexual harassment—where Barad’s thinking works to make visible the agential force of discursive practices upon matter, and vice versa. In this paper, intra-action, then, heightens our attention in relation to the dynamic ontological entanglements of human and more-than-human others—that is, how bodies, objects, movement, time, discourse, feelings, and gestures intra-act within and through the workshop. Furthermore, for Barad (2007), time does not work in a mode of linearity. This challenges the ways we understand change, which can no longer be perceived to follow from a past that once was but, rather, emerges through the iterative differentiating and reworking of a past that was never left behind and a future that is already present (Barad 2007). In this sense, each intra-action matters as a more-than-human and more-than-present encounter that holds the possibility ‘to breathe life into ever new possibilities for living justly’ (Barad 2007, p. x). Considering the past experiences of pain, hurt, silence, and denial materializing for recognition through our research–activist apparatus against sexual harassment, Barad’s thinking helps us attune to the intra-active entanglements anew. It helps us consider how, as we move, craft, and talk with the children, the intra-active entanglements of bodies, things, moments, and places come together and hold the possibility for making a difference in how sexual harassment matters. There is a breathtaking intimacy to this, as Barad (2014) writes. She brings the ethico-onto-epistemology of agential realism in touch with touch, stating that ‘touching, sensing, is what matter does, or rather, what matter is: matter is condensations of response-ability’ (Barad 2014, p. 161, italics removed). Indeed, the ethicality at the marrow of mattering—as captured in the hyphenated notion of ‘response-ability’ (Barad 2007; Haraway 2008)—is ‘always already integral to the world’s ongoing intra-active becoming and not-becoming’ 66 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 (Barad 2010, p. 265). It is an invitation and an obligation to enable and welcome the response of the other that inhabits ‘each meeting’ (Barad 2007). Enriching our thinking about the intra-active entanglements of our research–activist encounters with touch and response-ability enables us to imagine the intra-activity at stake as materially crowded, affectively charged, and temporally rich—more-than-human and more-than-present—entanglements that are ethical from the get go. This thinking also reanimates ‘our responsibility to be in touch’ (Barad 2014) in our research–activist endeavors. As we maintain, how we co-compose the materials, creative practices, and human and more-than-human others matters. It matters to the ways we can help children identify and share with others their experiences and concerns related to sexual harassment and how we can foster possibilities for change in children’s peer cultures. Indeed, Barad (2007, p. 89) asks us to ‘tak[e] responsibility for the fact that our practices matter; the world is materialized differently through different practices’. This ethics as ‘always-already’—response-ability (Barad 2007; Haraway 2008)—casts a challenge and obligation to ‘cultivate the capacity to respond’ (Haraway 2016, p. 7) and to reimagine the ethico-political potentiality in ‘each meeting’ in our attempt to both make inquiries into and co-compose conditions for co-flourishing. 3. Method and Materials: Moving with Touch As part of the #MeToo Postscriptum campaign, we organized and implemented 17 arts-based workshop sessions focusing on gendered and sexual harassment in pre-teen peer relations with a total of 150 children aged 10–12 years at schools in Finland. When organizing the workshops, we endeavored to create specific conditions that provide access to new ground and enable safe and creative intra-action (Barad 2007), so as to allow the participants to explore the ambivalences, contradictions, pains, and pleasures embedded in the gendered and sexual power relations of pre-teen peer cultures. Such conditions could be understood to constitute what Massumi (2015) calls ‘enabling constraints’, which propose a specific object of concern without, however, imposing preconceived notions about the final destination or outcome (Massumi 2015, p. 73). Enabling constraints, as we built upon them here, are carefully and purposefully made arrangements that cultivate conditions of response (Barad 2007; Haraway 2008) and that simultaneously mark our response-ability and accountability with respect to the becomings and not-becomings we help enact (Barad 2007). The workshops involved activities related to the topic of sexual harassment. During the workshops, the children engaged in discussions and exploration of gendered and sexualized peer cultures and sexual harassment, created and drew Valentine’s Day cards, and—if they chose to do so—wrote their own experiences of harassment in the postscripts of their cards.2 In addition to the workshops with the children, a pop-up stand was set up in a university café to allow student teachers and faculty members to partake the campaign by sharing their own childhood experiences of harassment. Through our research–activism, our aims were to generate data on children’s experiences of sexual harassment in peer relations,3 communicate those experiences with children to wider audiences, and engage in political debate and social transformation. As part of the latter, after the workshops, the research team collected and sent the cards to every member of the Finnish Parliament and published excerpts from the notes and cards on the campaign website (Huuki and Pihkala 2018). The cards with the postscripts were intended to remind decisionmakers and the Finnish public of the need for systematic and consistent work to address sexual harassment, which affects not only adults but also children. 2 Occurring in advance of Valentine’s Day, in our project, the #MeToo became linked with the postscript section of a Valentine’s Day card. The postscript worked to make visible the often-ignored nature and the silence regarding sexual harassment in pre-teen peer relations (Pihkala and Huuki 2019). Using the hashtag connected the project to the momentum afforded by the digital feminist activism of the #MeToo movement (Mendes et al. 2018). 3 As part of our wider interest in investigating gender and sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures, the workshops were video-recorded, accumulating a total of 27 h of audio–visual recordings, 108 pages of transcripts, 15 pages of extended field notes, and 210 digitalized cards, of which the data for this paper involve 2 h and 36 min of audio–visual recordings from the workshop session in question. 67 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 The human and more-than-human ‘participants’ of the campaign, such as the children, researchers, public, the decisionmakers, hands, chairs, tables, space, paper slips, pens, and arts and crafts; and the multiple modalities of the creative activities, such as the movement, crafting, speech, and writing, were understood as active and lively coplayers that came together in unexpected ways, as well as through our purposeful material, research–activist engagements that aimed to foster possibilities for the children to explore, address, and communicate their experiences of harassment. The ethical considerations in relation to the project were ongoing before, during, and after our engagements with the children. As a ‘spin off’ and part of Tuija’s ongoing research project,4 the #MeToo Postscriptum campaign had obtained a statement from the Ethics Committee of Human Sciences at the University of Oulu, Finland and followed the policies of the schools in all matters of child protection. The workshop participants were recruited by contacting local schools and teachers interested in participating in the campaign. Information letters and consent forms were sent to the children and their legal guardians to be signed before participation. These letters included research-based information about gender and sexual harassment as the theme of the workshops, as well as information about the creative activities of the workshops and the campaign. They also included details about the use of the produced data and the possibility that the notes could be shared publicly and in research publications. These issues were discussed again with the children in the beginning of every workshop and additionally brought up whenever it seemed important. The activist orientation of the project was materially present in the creation of the Valentine’s Day cards as the children themselves chose the members of parliament to whom their cards would be sent. The children were able to withdraw at any time or negotiate their own way of participating. For example, in some of the workshops, a few of the participants created cards that they did not want to share as part of the campaign. Those cards, or any cards that were ambiguous with respect to the children’s consent, were excluded from the project. Even when carefully considering ethics as part of our praxis, engaging children in research–activism involves ongoing response-ability with respect to the project as it unfolds and, for example, becomes public. We maintain that staying with the complexities and trouble (Haraway 2008, 2012, 2016) involved is important, as the entangled constellations of research and activism can produce processes of social change and transformation both within the lives of the children and within the wider terrains of social and educational policies and practices. Particularly in relation to sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures, which is a silenced and often unaddressed topic in schools, asking what matters to the children themselves is important. This, along with the premise of moving beyond merely stating the state of things in research on children’s peer and relationship cultures (e.g., Huuki and Renold 2016; Renold 2018), guided our research–activist aim of helping children’s experiences and voices to be heard, sensed, and felt so as to cultivate conditions for co-flourishing. Building upon the project, in this paper, we generated an analysis focusing on and departing from one of the workshops. The data are comprised of video-recordings of a workshop with eight girls, postscript notes in which the children described their experience and collaborative reflections, and personal field notes taken by the research team members. When returning to the data, our aim was not so much to gain access to some undisputable truth about the workshop. Rather, the data helped us slow down—touch, sense, feel, and think—with the material, affective, and temporal entangledness involved. Over the course of the research process—while we were engaged in the workshops, cataloguing the research materials, publishing results, and returning to the data to write this paper—the data were iterated upon, continuously reassembled, and engaged in diffractive encounters that ‘pulled in’ different times and spaces. Theory is ‘put to work’ (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012) in the three analytically enacted moments—that is, moments enacted by us through agential cuts (Barad 2007) within particular, 4 Project ‘Gender-based violence in pre-teen relationship cultures: How history, place, affect and arts interventions matter’, grant number 295000. 68 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 contingent apparatuses of knowing (see also Lenz Taguchi and Palmer 2013). In this paper, such cuts were inspired by touch. Touch, as it unfolded for us here, carries resemblance to affect, as in ‘being affected’. It is also a bodily practice and a mundane moment, for example, a pen touching a paper or a hand holding a paper slip. It is these affective and material tenors of touch that invited our attention. However, informed by and diffractively engaging with Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemology, discussed previously in this paper, touch became removed from its human orbit. Thus, in the three analytical sections below, we map, first, more-than-human touch focusing on the materially crowded moments within the workshops. In the second section, our focus becomes drawn to the affective charge, and we explore what else touch as a mode of material feeling and thinking does in moments of response and resistance. In the final analytical section, we focus on what else touch can become as it gathers up and holds together across time–space domains as part of our research–activism. By mapping and moving with touch, we engage touch as a more-than-human and more-than-present player that intra-actively engages in the material-discursive practices within and through which sexual harassment ‘comes to matter’ and, as we explore, potentially a player that engenders conditions of possibility for subtle shifts, marking and making differences that matter in the hurt, silence, normalization, and denial of gender and sexual harassment by enabling the opening up to change and transformation towards co-flourishing. 4. Research–Activist Encounters Below, we provide two accounts of the workshop. The accounts that we offer regarding the workshop must not be understood as a set of passive props but, rather, as a space–time entangled, affectively charged environment through and within which ‘what is “in” the foreground [is allowed] to acquire the shape that it does’ (Ahmed 2010, pp. 239–40). In addition to describing the process of the workshop, we attune to the affective atmosphere (Stewart 2011) of the entanglements of the girls, the notes, movement, gestures, utterances, tables, chairs, and a makeshift mailbox, which will then be iterated in the following three analytical sections. 4.1. The Workshop Similar to all the workshops, this workshop began with the children—eight girls in total—gathered in a circle of chairs. Two student teachers led the session, and Suvi participated. The student teachers read research-based statements about children’s friendship and relationship cultures. Every time the participants agreed with the statement, they would stand up and switch seats. If they disagreed, or were unwilling or unable to take a stand, they would remain in place. The movement of one girl would easily stir movement in others. Sometimes, amidst bodies anchored in place to be, then again, on the move, discussions would unfold, causing us to linger on a topic for longer. Sometimes the topics would ‘touch’ the girls in a particular way, generating giggles or evoking stories—things the participants knew—about the ongoing relationships and romantic undercurrents within their peer relations. Those ‘knowings’ were sometimes voiced aloud and other times evident only in quick glances and smiles. After the introduction to the topic of sexual harassment, the children were told about the research–activist campaign in more detail. They were instructed to craft Valentines’ Day cards and, if they chose, to write about harassment they had experienced. Slips of paper with examples of some of the experiences disclosed in previous workshops with young people were put on the wall to prompt reflection. The notes described contentious and troubling touches and experiences with just a few words or a sentence, such as ‘I have been slapped on the butt’ or ‘some boys in our class groped between girls’ thighs with a ruler’. Soon, the children began to collect materials to create their Valentine’s Day cards. They gathered in a close group around one of the tables, chatting while they cut and folded the base of the cards and decorated them with drawings, tapes, stamps, glitter glue, and colors. When the cards were nearly ready and the participants began to contemplate their postscripts, the atmosphere shifted. If they had previously been gathered together, they seemed to scatter around the classroom, taking their newly 69 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 crafted cards or empty slips of paper with them. For some of the children, it seemed difficult to think of something to write. This was expected, as not all children are caught up in same ways within the flows of peer and relationship cultures. Others hunched over their cards to shelter the affective, intimate, precarious space in which their experiences of harassment could be safely figured in words, written down, attached to the card, and eventually, slipped into a makeshift mailbox that was set up on one of the tables. Once placed in the mailbox, the notes and cards became part of the campaign. Some of them were curated for publishing online, and all of them were mailed to decisionmakers. Gradually, the workshop session came to a close as the children left the classroom to get lunch, leaving the research team with the video recordings and the to-be-written research notes, the box of cards, and lingering affects—as we will elaborate upon below—which became reassembled within the broader research–activist apparatus of change-making regarding sexual harassment (Pihkala and Huuki 2019). 4.2. A Girl with a Note In the latter half of the workshop, one girl caught Suvi’s attention. At this point, the girl had already put her Valentine’s Day card in the makeshift mailbox. She was one of the first participants to finish her card, but it did not include a postscript. Suvi remembered telling her that this was okay, as we could use such cards if someone else had several bits of stories to share. After completing the activity, she returned to the table where the others were still making their cards. Later, the girl began to meander around the room, walking from one table to the next and looking at the arts and crafts on the tables. We do not know what made her get up. Perhaps she was prompted by the fact that others had begun to find more private spaces to write, or perhaps the request to share experiences was made more insistent by the movement of bodies and shift in attention. The girl halted by one of the tables, on which we had spread the notes that were previously hung on the wall to evoke discussion and reflection. She continued on but returned, pausing a bit longer by the table and whispering with another girl who had joined her there. Having looked at the notes for a while, the girl asked, ‘Could one write something like that?’ as she pointed to one of the notes. Suvi confirmed that she could and encouraged her to write something down if she still wanted to. Without saying much more, she took an empty slip of paper, returned to the table where she had been before, and began to write. Moments later, the girl rose and walked to the makeshift mailbox, clutching the paper note, which was a little less than half the size of an A4 paper, close to her chest. Then, carefully doubling the paper without folding it, as if to keep her writing sheltered from others, she reached towards the makeshift mailbox and slipped her note in. She stepped to the side, looked back at the box and then walked away, hands casually in her jumper pockets, but it felt that what just happened was anything but casual. After the workshop ended and we returned to our office to catalogue the cards, Suvi noticed that very same paper note, remembering the color and size. She remembered how the girl moved and halted at the table, the pointing, the card, and the curve of the note as she slipped it into the makeshift mailbox. All the details were pulled into that moment of recognition in the office. In her note, which, as part of the campaign, became entangled in the wider mosaic of experiences of harassment, the girl shared her painful experience from a few years back. Even though she sheltered the note from the eyes of her classmates, her slipping it into the makeshift mailbox, instead of the cards to be excluded from the project, gestured perhaps a political moment and movement of speaking out. We have not identified her experience in its singularity to ensure the girl’s anonymity and because our focus is not on the experience described on the note but, rather, on the microprocesses of change and the subtle shifts that unfolded within and through the workshop. However, to respect this movement from silence to speaking out and speaking up, we have elsewhere made parts of the children’s notes public (see Huuki and Pihkala 2018; Pihkala and Huuki 2019). 70 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 5. Past–Present Child–Card Entanglements of Response-Ability In this section, we map touch through the three analytically enacted moments. Each section, while entangled in nature, draws attention in specific ways to the productivity of the materiality, affective charge, and movements across time–space domains, as has been elaborated previously. 5.1. Mapping Touch as More-Than-Human The design of the workshops—its different modalities and creative activities, as elaborated previously in this paper; the size and composition of the group; and the attention to more-than-human—were co-constructed so as to enable an atmosphere that ‘touches’ enough to enable ‘responsiveness’, that is, to help children explore, communicate, and address experiences of harassment that easily tend to be overcast by deafening silence when addressed in the primary school classroom. During the workshop, the girls gathered together, moved about, and stayed still while crafting with papers, pens, glitter glue, tapes, and colors. The notes laid out on the table carried traces of experiences of harassment, connecting the workshop to the collective history of felt and sensed touches of sexual harassment, be it physical, verbal, or otherwise, enfolded in this entanglement of child-bodies, notes, circles, tables, and the campaign. This intra-action of bodies, movements, and materials opening up to the unexpected and emergent is our first analytical cut. For Barad (2014), touching is not centered on a human being, nor is it only affective. It is ontological and epistemological. Touching is what matter does. With this understanding of touch, the girls’ movements and haltings, rummaging through the arts and crafts materials, writing and drawing, and re-membering (Barad 2010) past experiences fail to return to any one individual alone. Similar to the girl with the pointed finger tentatively asking if it could be ‘something like that’, the ‘it’ that comes to matter fails to return to an individual imagination or recognition only. Rather, within the intra-active entanglement of glitter glue, colors, paper slips, past-presents, and engaged bodies—sitting and moving in a circle and sharing experiences—it is not only the girls that touch and are touched. Thinking along the lines of Barad, both the girls and the matter—things, moments, and places—wander and wonder, curiously sensing and touching their im/possibilities, imagining, and inventing (Barad 2014, 2015). In these moments of moving, halting, inciting, and inviting human and other than human bodies, matter, in its curious and imaginative ‘self-touching’ form (Barad 2014), reconfigures the girls’ experiences for recognition in new ways. As bodies move within the circle of chairs; smiles appear; pens touch paper; bodies shift and sway in proximity and distance; gazes fall on notes; and past experiences make themselves present, touches subtly shift and rework hurtful, painful, unaddressed, and deep-seated experiences—even an experience from two years ago—for recognition, bringing something within reach that was not present before and perhaps reachable in a way that was not possible before. 5.2. What Else Touch Can Do: The Affective Charge in Response and Resistance Our second analytical moment enacts a cut that draws focus to the affective charge in the intra-action of notes, bodies, and a makeshift mailbox. We return to the girl who clutched the note to her chest, carefully sheltering it from others, while also sharing it with others once she slipped it into the makeshift mailbox on the table. In the affectively charged mo(ve)ment of this ‘held-shared’ note from the intimacy of the girl’s chest to the public space of the makeshift mailbox, being touched does something else; it reconfigures conditions of possibilities for touching in response. When we returned to and re-engaged with this moment, we were caught by its force, as well as by our own visceral responses during the campaign. To elaborate, we had set up a pop-up stand in the university café to engage student teachers and faculty members in the campaign. The pop-up stand enabled passers-by to craft their own Valentine’s Day cards and include their stories of harassment during childhood as postscripts. While sitting by a table in a busy café, we also wrote down our 71 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 experiences. More than once, we found ourselves confronted with the difficulty and discomfort of doing so. An array of charges passed through our bodies: who sees me; who passes by; who sees the painful experience that comes to matter and is made to matter in this moment. We understand such charges as sensed-felt resonances and dissonance between the sensitivity of the experience, deep-seated anxieties related to our experiences of harassment and abuse, and the publicity both in that moment and inherent in the promise of the campaign, which invited us to explore intimate experiences and make them matter for others. It is through those embodied affective encounters and similar experiences shared by colleagues that we began to speculate about the ways the intra-active moment with the girl, the note, the moving–holding hands, and the makeshift mailbox was iteratively reconfigured from within the material and affective entanglements of the research–activist campaign. As we sensed-felt while writing our own notes about harassment, in this moment, with the girl and the note and the materiality and affects of our research–activist workshop, touch was a sensed-felt resonance that intra-acted with the cards, the pens, the tables, the public space of the café, the passing bodies, and the rhythm of academic work and time and opened up towards a possible other world, generating new patterns of diffraction. Perhaps this touch is what Hemmings (2012) calls affective dissonance, the incongruity of ontology and epistemology and of being and knowing, which is felt as a visceral force, such as uncertainty, shame, upset, decidedness, and courage. This force marks the sense and feel of something coming within reach that was not there before in a way that invites engagement. For Hemmings (2012, p. 151), it is such dissonances that hold political possibility and the promise of movement. The movement within this entanglement of the girl—and, indeed, us as well—the note, and the embodied practice of holding the note close while reaching towards the makeshift mailbox unfolds as a mo(ve)ment of response, response-ability, and resistance. We contend that what touch as a more-than-human player does in this moment is that it co-constitutes a site and space of response—a space enfolded with affects, things, places, and moments and unfolding towards resistance. Amplified by our own responses to writing down our pasts, we understand that the ability to be moved and affected to reach in resistance and to disturb the norms of what can be said, what can be resisted, what can be disrupted—be it the heterosexist normativities or intra-generational trauma (Huuki and Lanas 2019)—is frail and precarious. Yet, we maintain that the intra-active entanglement of the cards, the words written in the postscripts, the makeshift mailbox, and the promise and possibility of action enfolded in it allowed the past experience of hurt—the recognition—to reconfigure and to be not only known but to be resisted. 5.3. What Else Touch Can Become: Gathering Up and Holding Together/Apart across Time–Space Domains As we curated the cards for the campaign website, the note became reanimated, making sense-able the response-ability and accountability it crafted by inviting and obliging us to care about it and to be careful with it without certainty if the ‘it’ is the card, the ‘data’, the words written in the cards, the girl who wrote it, the upsetting experience described in the note, the hurt embedded within it, or perhaps the academic writing about ‘it’. The intra-active entanglement of the child, cards, creative practice, research, and activism diffracts, sending out ripples that, no matter how small, hold the potentiality for ‘consequential meanings’ (Haraway 1997). This touch of the girl’s response held its grip when we selected excerpts from the cards to publish on the campaign website and when the upset and hurt became realigned in the title of a news article in a national newspaper, (re-)making us as (modest) witnesses, complicit, and response-able (Haraway 1997, 2008). For Haraway (2008, p. 36), this is exactly what touches can do: they shape and ramify accountability, where ‘[a]ccountability, caring for, being affected, and entering into responsibility are not ethical abstractions’ but mundane practices of becoming with. As explored earlier in this paper, due to the affective charge sensed and felt by us while writing notes about our childhood experiences of harassment, there was a familiarity that resonated from the entanglement of the girl, the note, and the makeshift mailbox. It would be rather easy to foreground how we were emotionally affected by the girl’s story and how the touch–affect jumps back and forth, 72 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 first during the workshop and again in the office, from us to the girl and from the girl to us or to all those ‘others’ who we can imagine being touched. Perhaps it was the familiarity in the dissonance of holding close and disclosing that we recognize, of keeping hidden but wanting to seize the opportunity to disrupt conventional silences around touches that hurt—to reach and touch in resistance. The sense of familiarity moves us to speculate that we were not merely slightly grazed by this one experience and the touches surrounding it; rather, in being touched by the girl’s experience, matter, time, and space realigned and reinvented itself in a reiterative practice of reconfiguring (Barad 2007). In effect, we argue that touch, as mapped here, reaches and holds across and beyond space–time domains. Our adult researcher bodies hold and carry ‘impressions’ of our own past touches—such as a re-membered slap—which, as Barad (2010) notes, never left us. New touches stick to us, such as the touch–affect from the girl. These touches did not just stick and jump but became more-than-human and more-than-present players in this research–activist constellation. Each touch invents new matter forms by gathering up and holding together/apart the past and present (Barad 2010), the researcher-adult, the researcher-child, the girl with the note, the researcher with a note, and, perhaps, also the pre-teen girls that have been and will be affected by sexual harassment in their peer relations. Neither the girl being touched nor we, who were being touched by the girl-being-touched, were contained in the ‘touch-encounter’. Thinking along the lines of Barad (2007), we enter into relations of response not because of what touches us from afar but because there were never separate parts to begin with. Indeed, response-abilities are not crafted from a graze. In other words, they are not created by ‘knowing’ the girl’s troubling experience but from the capacity of us be(com)ing (with) in touch (see Pihkala 2018), that is, the capacity of touch to draw times, spaces, and matter into new relations, inviting touch in response. 6. Microprocesses of Change and the Possibilities of Moving with Touch Knowing what we know and feeling what we feel, any of the notes from our research–activist campaign might be swarming with as many affects, times, and embodied materiality as surround the workshop or the girl with the note as discussed in this paper. Nonetheless, in this particular entangled practice of engagement, this girl touched us, took hold of us, and pulled us to move with touch in response. Furthermore, slipped into the makeshift mailbox, the girls’ notes, ‘crafted from and carrying their experience’ (Renold 2018, p. 38), became ‘knotted’ with the wider change-making apparatus against sexual harassment: the campaigns, personal accounts, public debate, and (digital) feminist activism that have enabled young people to speak out against ‘rape culture’ in new ways (Mendes et al. 2018). To claim how the campaign mattered to the girls—or any of the participants—would be speculative at best. However, the children’s need to address and explore their concerns related to gender and sexual peer cultures has been tangible time and time again as the children have voiced the need for safe spaces where sensitive topics could be discussed. For this, engaging children with creative activities can enable subtle shifts and minor gestures (Manning 2016) towards sustainable alternatives in peer relations when imagined worlds are materialized through crafting, drawing, and writing. The research–activist encounters of our creative workshop against sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures is materially rich, affectively charged, and temporally entangled. In gauging the microprocesses of change as they occur, we mapped touch and explored what else touch(es) can do. As we mapped in our analysis, the entanglement of the group of girls, Valentine’s Day cards, past, and present involved different kinds of touches in different registers, such as embodied, corporeal touches of gropes and slaps; verbal touches; material touches of pen on paper; present touches that leave impressions and linger; past touches that carry the residues of the past; the touch–affects that slip through cognition shooting straight through our bodies in resonances and dissonances; and the onto-epistemological touches that sense the virtual in an exploration of the possible, quantum, and queer touches, as discussed by Barad (2015). Just as touch seems to settle in senses, it is already on the move, reaching, holding, and gathering. The childhood slaps and gropes reached the Valentine’s Day cards in a café, the child-bodies reached a researcher-child, a finger reached for a pile of notes, a hand 73 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 reached for the makeshift mailbox, the mailbox reached us, and the otherwise-made-possible reached the body-in-reach. We maintain that there is a particular benefit in thinking of the microprocesses of change with touch. For one, mapping touch, as we did here, enabled us to capture the subtle shifts in the children’s unaddressed, silenced, normalized, hurtful experience. Rather than being here and there—or this or that—touches intra-acted within and through the workshop as more-than-human and more-than-present players and converged into an inventive, imaginative, sensing-feeling, matter-realizing apparatus, which activated recognition of, response to, and resistance against sexualized and gendered force relations. Thinking along the lines of Barad (2014), this is what touch—when thought of in the quantum mode—can do: sense and feel and gather up and hold together/apart (Barad 2014, 2015). Drawing matter into new relations, characterized by indeterminacy waiting to remake momentary alliances, touch reworks and recrafts response-abilities (Barad 2014; Haraway 2008). For another, the ethico-political tone of touch is intimate and entangled. With touch, it is impossible to keep one’s distance or disavow how we are touched and how the ways we touch shape and co-constitute the conditions of possibilities for touching in response and resistance to the ‘other’. Our experience of being touched by the girls’ experiences and our research–activism, which brought disparate matters and modalities together, generating the imaginative, creative, sensing-feeling apparatus, knotted us in webs of manifold more-than-human and more-than-present touches that diffractively reconfigured ever-new possibilities for change. For us, as researchers and activists, thinking with touch engages theory in ways that moves and transforms relations, engagements, and accountabilities. We contend that this is the way feminist new materialist touch works: it is not only ‘put to work’ (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012) but becomes enacted when objects, bodies, abstractions, and moments intra-act—how they sense and feel, imagine and invent, reach in response, gather up, and hold together. Finally, thinking about our research–activism with touch draws attention to the affective, material, and temporally entangled encounters that contest and remake what is possible, producing ‘differences that matter’. While the anatomy of these encounters cannot be laid bare, engaging them with new conceptual companions—as we did in this paper—can help enrich the ways we think, feel, and practice research in ways that can make a difference. Indeed, moving with touch aligns with more-than-theoretical approaches to what research can do. It speaks to the power and potentiality of and responsibility to participate in co-composing research encounters that invite and enable response to the other. This demands that we carefully co-compose thick, material, and affective encounters that invite and enable children, researchers, and others to sense, feel, think, imagine, wander, and wonder with—to become with (Haraway 2008)—the postscripts, cards, pens, papers, space, and time and, through subtle shifts, make new kinds of, more livable, worlds. To close with a tentative gesture, mapping what touches do encouraged us to also imagine a touch that is of a world-making kind (Haraway 2008) and one that creates accountability and response-ability (Barad 2014). With this, we maintain that moving with touch is an open-ended endeavor but one imbued with conviction. Touch not only brings other beings, spaces, and times together (or to matter) but also leaks out to other worlds by reaching in response and resistance, touching and carefully holding those other visions, worlds, and possibilities. At the same time, we are not left untouched; as we reach out, response and resistance stick to us. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, S.P. and T.H.; Investigation, S.P. and T.H.; Methodology, S.P. and T.H.; Writing—original draft, S.P.; Writing—review & editing, T.H. and V.S. Funding: This research was partly funded by Academy of Finland, grant number 295000. Acknowledgments: We would like to acknowledge communal and visual artist Anna Koivukangas for suggesting the title #MeToo Postscriptum to us when we were planning the project. We wish to thank the student teachers involved in the workshops as well as the teachers and most importantly the children and schools without whom the #MeToo Postscriptum would not have been possible. 74 Soc. 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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 76 $ € £ ¥ social sciences Article New Materialist Feminist Ecological Practices: La Via Campesina and Activist Environmental Work Miranda Imperial Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK; miranda.imperial@gmail.com Received: 2 May 2019; Accepted: 6 August 2019; Published: 8 August 2019 Abstract: Within the context of new theoretical developments in environmentalist materialism, as inflected by gender issues, this paper attempts to analyze the important work of La Via Campesina (women’s section) both in grassroots activism and in creating a feminist agenda for the transformation of human-non-human connections. Methodologically, this paper proceeds by historically situating La Via Campesina and the progressive incorporation of women’s issues as part of the movement. In parallel, La Via Campesina’s insurgent practices of contestation to the exploitation of huge multinational agrobusinesses, to genetically modified crops, and to land-grabbing practices and land usurpation from indigenous populations are illustrated. In conclusion and within the frame of new materialisms, my discussion addresses issues of response-ability, sustainability, and co-habitation to reflect upon the major changes brought about by these new modes of thinking and inhabiting the planet. Keywords: new materialisms; feminist environmentalism; ecology; grassroots activism; La Via Campesina; political ecology; response-ability; food sovereignty; social justice 1. Introduction The new relational basis between humans, living and inert matter, technology, and the planet that the new materialisms are proposing is a growing reality that can be observed in many domains, from epistemology to anthropology, ecology, and ethics. It is precisely at the crossroads of ecology and the political that this paper is situated, and it aims to explore how in and through the practice of feminist new materialisms, political ecology, and grassroots activist organizing, significant changes can be brought about to prevent irreversible damage such as climate change, or to eradicate dumping industrial waste into rivers and oceans and to eliminate chemicals and plastic residue from food, shelter, and the daily existence of life on the planet. Framed within recent developments in the field of feminist perspectives on the environment, my paper will examine a major feminist, political, and environmental project, La Via Campesina’s gendered initiative, which exists within the larger context of the struggle of La Via Campesina, in order to reflect upon the political valences both in grassroots activism and in new ecological insurgent practices in which women have become actively involved. It is my contention that currently, La Via Campesina participates of the ethos and concerns of feminist new materialisms, and I will attempt to demonstrate their proximity and similar goals. After an introduction to the most relevant work in new materialist views on the environment which pave the way to my argument, I will address how La Via Campesina came to consider women’s social, economic, and labor issues as central to the movement and identify La Via Campesina’s major claims and demands in relation to agriculture and agrarian reform. Tenets such as the achievement of food sovereignty for peasants and indigenous populations in their plight against huge multinational agrobusinesses interact with other crucial principles which I will spell out. At those levels, women’s labor is indispensable for the maintenance and continuation of Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235; doi:10.3390/socsci8080235 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci77 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 community life. La Via Campesina’s gendered insurgent practices will also be analyzed as a response to the deleterious effects which the overexploitation, pollution, and land-grabbing effects produced by late capitalism have had on human and nonhuman actors alike. Finally, and within the framework of new materialisms, I will briefly address issues of response-ability, sustainability, and co-habitation in the planet as parts of the common ground that trans-species engagement,1 posthumanism, and new modes of thinking and inhabiting the world have brought to our attention. As it has been pointed out, the assumption of one world or one universe is inherently colonial in that “it sustains itself through performances that tend to suppress and or contain the enactment of other possible worlds” (Blaser 2009, p. 16). For Blaser, the idea of the pluriverse is a more adequate concept because it entails imagining the performative enactment of multiple, distinct ontologies or worlds which “bring themselves into being and sustain themselves even as they interact, interfere and mingle with each other” (Blaser 2012, p. 55) under asymmetrical circumstances. The changing pattern of action between the nation-state and rural organizations at the beginning of the 1980s with progressively more detached policies and a worsening of conditions in the countryside brought about an acute social awareness of endemic problems within peasant organizations. This state of affairs and the peasants’ conviction that major obstacles in their work and daily lives had to do with wider oppressive conditions beyond the national borders of ever weakened nation-states is at the origin of La Via Campesina as a transnational social movement. During the 1980s and early 1990s, La Via Campesina emerged out of autonomous peasant organizations first in Latin America and then at a global scale. By being organized globally, in defense of their interests and to protect their working conditions and ways of life, their members seek to advocate a reasonable and sustainable agrarian production which takes as its basis a holistic approach of interaction between the land and its communities. This grassroots organization has become enormously influential in setting up agendas for sensitive agrarian reform and social policies worldwide. According to Martinez-Torres and Rosset, “La Via Campesina today is the leading network of grassroots organizations with presence in the anti-globalization or altermundista (‘another world’) movement, as manifested in protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), in the World Social Forum (WSF), in its scathing techniques of World Bank land policies and its ability to force the novel concept of food sovereignty into common usage” (Martinez-Torres and Rosset 2010, p. 151). This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the specific actions of the transnational movement La Via Campesina and their proximity to feminist new materialist developments. Methodologically, I have first approached La Via historically in order to show when peasant women start getting organized within the movement. Secondly, I have analyzed three specific actions relevant in three major areas: opposition to large agribusiness corporations, predatory exploitation of water resources, and land-grabbing and farmers’ dispossession. These were chosen among other actions because they were carried out by South American (Brazilian and Argentinian) peasant women who were all members of the Peasant without Land movements, and because they are among the most publicized of these actions, as judged by their Internet presence (Google). In my analysis, I have attempted to demonstrate how these actions can be read by recourse to new materialist ideas and concepts. 2. The Challenges of Ecological Feminism In recent years, philosophy, feminisms, environmental studies, and biotechnology have alerted people to the current state of degradation of the planet. Contemporary eco-feminist thinking finds its roots in the second wave of feminism, back in the 1970s. In northern India, in the early 70s, many 1 It was anthropologist Eduardo Kohn who coined the idea of “trans-species engagement.” In his view, “[c]reating an analytical framework that can include the humans as well as non-humans has been a central concern of science and technology studies, the multispecies or animal turn, and Deleuze-influenced scholarship [ . . . ] And I have been specially swayed by Donna Haraway’s conviction that there is something about our everyday engagements with other kinds of creatures that can open new kinds of possibilities for relating and understanding” (Kohn 2013, pp. 6–7). 78 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 women took part in the Chipko movement to protect forests from commercial loggers and deforestation. Throughout the 1980s important initiatives spread around the globe, and native American and indigenous women were thought to be the ultimate ecofeminists. The origins of the early Indian feminist green movement can be traced to social critic Vandana Shiva. In her view, Indian women have an inherent connection to nature. She speaks of the “feminine principle,” insisting on the fact that this has nothing to do with an outdated notion of matriarchy but rather with an idea of gender complementarity in sexual divisions of labor. She writes: In this non-gender based philosophy the feminine principle is not exclusively embodied in women, but is the principle of activity and creativity in nature, women and men. One cannot really distinguish the masculine from the feminine, person from nature, Purusha from Praktiri. Though distinct, they remain inseparable in dialectical unity, as two aspects of one being. (Shiva 1989, p. 52) Clearly, Shiva’s orientation was essentialist and her work came under strong criticism. However, her ideas were crucial in challenging the hegemony of scientific knowledge in the hands of men and in promoting “global sisterhood” around environmental issues. Also involved in a movement countering deforestation in Australia, and after significant activist work, Val Plumwood became a very influential voice in feminist environmentalism. In Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Plumwood 1993), Plumwood argues we live in a progressively dystopic world where: [T]echnological mastery extinguishes both nature and less technologically “rational” cultures, where we face the imminent prospect of loss of the world’s forests along with the bulk of its species diversity as well as human and cultural diversity [ . . . ] where the dominance of rational man threatens ultimately to produce the most irrational of results, the extinction of our species along with many others. (Plumwood 1993, p. 7) Ecological feminism identifies this catastrophe as derived from a world dominated by men. In the 1990s Plumwood urged us to move beyond divisions within the women’s movements and join forces to counter the destruction of the planet. She proposes alternatives to rationality “which encourage[d] mutually sustaining relationships between humans and the earth” (Plumwood 1993, p. 195). Her important program for the transformation of those relations involves “creating a democratic culture beyond dualism, ending colonizing relationships and finding a mutual, ethical basis for enriching coexistence with earth others” (Plumwood 1993, p. 196). Plumwood’s important ecological agenda shows respect for alterity and grounds ethical responsibility at the core of human-non-human interactions. The engagement of activists, academics, philosophers, and large numbers of women and inhabitants of the planet has progressively grown into a global green movement with local specificities. Conclusive findings in sociological research into the late capitalist use of resources and in human adaptation to rapid and definitive changes on Earth urge both the world population and our political representatives to work actively to counter this dismal state of affairs. A call for new forms of ethics and politics has emerged in an effort to counter the destructive, exploitative practices and lethal power upon human and non-human actors in the Anthropocene (Tsing et al. 2017).2 Along this line, fresh insight from “Anthropocene feminism” reaches audiences critically with an impulse attentive to global change connected to ecological transformations, technological development, inequitable sharing of the resources for co-existence, and political contestation and resistance. As Claire Colebrook states: The proposed (and close to consecrated) conception of the Anthropocene epoch appears to mark as radical a shift in species awareness as Darwinian evolution effected for the 2 Our currently used notion of the Anthropocene comes from assessing the impact of human settlement, labour, exchange, and other related activities on the planet. The human impact on geology and ecosystems translates into a huge transformation of all other forms of life on Earth. Establishing the beginning of this era is not an easy task but there is a tendency to speak of the Agricultural Revolution, 15,000 years back in time, as a major historical milestone (Tsing et al. 2017). 79 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 nineteenth century. If the notion of the human species’ emergence in time requires new forms of narrative, and imaginative and ethical articulation, then the intensifying sense of the species’ end makes a similar claim for rethinking “our” processes of self-presentation and self-preservation. (Colebrook 2017, p. 1) The aforementioned problems, closely related to the life/death divide, highlight the inherent contradiction of early feminist theorists that signified what Stacy Alaimo has referred to as the “feminist flight from nature” (Alaimo 2000): the feminist abhorrence of traditional patriarchal metaphors associating women and nature. However, such views resulted from a lack of awareness and engagement in key issues regarding the environment and the current stage of scientific work on the border between the biological and social sciences (Haraway 1991, pp. 184–85), which have, nonetheless, been brought to the forefront by new feminist initiatives on science, postcolonial and decolonial theory, and new materialist philosophy, and have had a crucial impact on the way these disciplines interact and draw from each other’s findings. These initiatives, summarized by Garvey (2014), attempt to undermine traditional nature/culture binarisms from different angles, and mention should be made of: Rosi Braidotti’s “nomadic subjects/ethics” (Braidotti 2013), and “posthumanism” (Braidotti 2013); Nancy Tuana’s “viscous porosity” and “interactionism” (Tuana 2008); Karen Barad’s “intra-actionism” (Barad 2007) and “posthumanist performativity” (Barad 2008); Donna Haraway’s “naturecultures” (Haraway 2008), “material-semiotic” (Haraway 1997), cyborg (Haraway 1991), and “companion species” (Haraway 2008); and Stacy Alaimo’s “transcorporeality” (Alaimo 2008). These concepts help not only to move feminisms forward, but also suggest possible interventions within the material, social, and political domains affecting the world at large. In the political arena, it is crucial that decisions come to be discussed in the open and are the object of participatory democracy, and are no longer debatable by lobbies or by the elite. These proposals do not simply come as a consequence of intersectional feminism3 (often, “intersectional” is only relevant to human lives) but, rather, are interactionist-oriented. 3. New Materialist Environmentalisms It can certainly be stated that our current understanding of the environment has substantially changed in the last three decades. The opening statement of the Paris 2017 Conference on “Environmental Humanities and New Materialisms” announced that these two areas “share an ethic of decolonizing nature and culture, as they depart from anthropocentric and constructivist positions. Our call is to consider ourselves as permeable, part of the ebb and flow of the Anthropocene . . . ” (Barrett et al. 2017). The conference urged us to adopt an “environmentally ethical sense of matter within a world caught in the throes of change” (Barrett et al. 2017). The shared materiality of all living entities in the planet and their recently recognized sense of connectivity4 provides a basis for the acknowledgement of differences, an urge to respect the specificities of elements in their localities, and initiatives to preserve, and also to restore the catastrophic consequences of the systematic erosion and devastation of our habitats. If we turn to Judith Butler’s important work on vulnerability, it is fundamental to listen to her caveat that the condition of vulnerability and the hazards of exposure to potential danger or threat 3 Critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) was one of the earliest proponents of intersectionality when she pointed out the inability of a single Western feminist framework to account for the lived experiences of black women. Race, gender, social status, and sexual orientation, among many other factors, were identified as operating in a complex way to produce discrimination. At present, the proximity between intersectionality, ecofeminism, and different interactionist practices has been highlighted. As A.E. Kings, among other scholars, has recently argued, “Intersectionality has helped to develop the practical application of ecofeminism by ‘initiating a process of discovery (Davis 2008, p. 7), by acting as an analytical tool or ‘lens’ to aid critical thinking on ecofeminist debates”. The place of good ecofeminist theory is not necessarily to provide ultimate answers but rather to allow for critical engagement with the multitude of experiences contributing to the discrimination of women and the environment, while at the same time recognizing the limitations and constraints of one’s analysis” (Kings 2017, pp. 69–70). 4 See Barad (2007, 2008) and Bennett (2010). 80 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 is distributed in an outright different manner across the world (Butler 2004, p. 24). In Butler’s theorization, our lives are dependent on others (Butler 2004, p. 23), resulting in a condition of “primary vulnerability” (Butler 2004, p. 24). Each and every one of us depends on the decisions of others: in a most pressing way, our bodies are “given over” to others to be taken care of, and our bodies are “always something more than, and other than, ourselves” (Butler 2004, p. 25). In one of her examples, the many losses of lives to AIDS in Africa are compounded by their silencing in the media and by the absence of discursive elaborations on the meaning of these losses for their communities (Butler 2004, [p. 25]). These are but examples of how our existence is ruled by interrelationships, and of how it is these relationships, or lack thereof, which determine the livability of our lives. As Butler points out, on the basis of geographic and social considerations, the limits of what is knowable (Butler 2004, p. 27) or grievable (Butler 2004, p. 19) determine “radically different ways in which . . . vulnerability is distributed throughout the globe” (Butler 2004, p. 24).5 Along the lines of current studies of vulnerability, Stacy Alaimo proposes the concept of “trans-corporeality” (Alaimo 2009, p. 25). She argues for the “recognition of the substantial interconnections between human corporeality and the more-than-human world,” and defines vulnerability as “a sense of precarious, corporeal openness to the material world” (Alaimo 2009, p. 23). In her view, clearly, a pre-condition for the acknowledgement of vulnerability lies in the recognition of differences which compel us to expand our notion of what should be respected and protected, both ethically and within the law. In this sense, human and non-human ecological vulnerabilities should find an equal status in the larger picture of dynamic existence. Alaimo and Susan Hekman hold that “Nature is agentic—it acts, and those actions have consequences for both the human and nonhuman world” (Alaimo and Hekman 2008, p. 5). They also acknowledge the new political dimension that both the human and the non-human acquire in the light of new materialist feminisms. Along this line, Tuana (2008) has studied Hurricane Katrina as an example to illustrate the many contending forces at play which make it, simultaneously, a natural and a social phenomenon. Her analysis includes “levees, the Army Corp of Engineers, global warming, the hurricane, the local politics of New Orleans, shell middens, the federal government, racial politics, and the poor and disabled populations of New Orleans” (Alaimo and Hekman 2008, p. 13). Tuana demonstrates how our former clear boundaries separating nature and culture, and human and non-human, are no longer epistemologically valid. When it comes to vulnerability, at present, it is inevitable to pay attention to climate change. Chris Cuomo refers to the huge impact that anthropogenic climate change is having on life and to the different historical conditions of exploitation that different areas, populations, and communities have endured ever since colonial power and capitalism unleashed the terribly unbalanced situation we have now: “Climate change was manufactured in a crucible of inequality, for it is a product of the industrial and fossil-fuel eras, historical forces powered by exploitation, colonialism, and nearly limitless instrumental use of ‘nature’” (Cuomo 2011, p. 693). For Cuomo, we are all at risk, “including those who have contributed little or nothing at all to the industrial greenhouse effect” (Cuomo 2011, p. 693). In any event, it is precisely from the strength and creativity of social movements that a resistance to prevailing discourses of victimization is surfacing: . . . from indigenous, anti-globalization, feminist, and youth movements for climate justice. These movements point out that many communities are in vulnerable positions precisely because they uphold ecological values that have not been engulfed by global capitalism and 5 Butler has been critiqued for her excessive emphasis on discourse as the major force giving shape to human life. In parallel, Butler forgets to give a space to the non-human in her theorization, although she is well aware of the limits of humanism (Butler 2004, pp. 13, 35). The debate on “postmodern feminism[‘s] retreat from the material” (Alaimo and Hekman 2008, p. 3) is addressed by Colebrook (2008), Hekman (2008), Kirkby (2008), and Alaimo (2008). Along this line, further critiques can be found in Barad (2007), especially pp. 61–64. 81 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 technological modernization, recognizing marginal status in fossil-fuel cultures to be a sign of wisdom and resilience rather than weakness. (Cuomo 2011, p. 695) Stacy Alaimo too, argues that gender violence, limited access to resources, and rent imbalance has deeply affected women. As major actors of social change and coalition-building, “Feminist organizations such as Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) are careful to complement feminine vulnerability with feminist agency, savvy, and survival strategies, calling for more parity in decision making and leadership” (Alaimo 2009, p. 312). The emphasis on parity and political representation, as much as women’s progress in debunking the epistemological divide in the binary between nature and culture has brought about a paradigm shift in human positionings facing the world at large, human/non-human interaction, and living matter intra-actions. In Tuana’s view, the current field of interactionism ushers us into “a world of complex phenomena in dynamic relationality” (Tuana 2008, p. 191). Environmentalists, green activists, and agro-ecological organizations have explored possibilities for alternative models for rural life. As I will attempt to show, in a domain as important as agriculture (which involves feeding the world, maintaining the biosphere, and preserving biodiversity), movements such as La Via Campesina support the livelihood of farmers by advocating an ethics of care with the land, protecting the rights of local and indigenous communities. 4. La Via Campesina: New Feminist Alternatives for the Environment La Via Campesina (peasant popular feminism) is a feminist movement which grew out of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra (MST) (Peasants without Land), where women identified the contradictions of the masculinized matrix based upon establishing large agrarian cooperatives that competed against big landowners, which proved to be unviable. Striving to reach food sovereignty for the people, feminists proposed to fight the huge agro-businesses in support of a sustainable and organic agriculture. Theirs is a combination of feminism and struggle against capital focusing on the fight against transnational corporations. As Alaimo claims, we must take activism and other ‘low’ practices seriously “as inventive modes of political contestation” (Alaimo 2016, p. 13). In the La Via Campesina movement, a range of transformative micro-practices are present. Their practices—sit-ins, demonstrations, and performances—go well beyond the status quo in agriculture, land use, and food sovereignty (humans are certainly ‘affected’ by the land throughout their material and discursive practices). Among those practices, I will particularly discuss their resistance actions, their links to other voices of protest (Social and Food Justice), and their resistance to adopt genetically modified crops as major forms of raising awareness and gaining support for their cause. From a new materialist perspective, peasant farming is respectful to the land with which it interacts by virtue of “intra-actions” (Barad 2007). For Barad, neither subjects nor objects exist outside of any particular practice, but rather, they are enacted in discrete intra-actions to which both human and non-human agencies contribute, affecting and becoming affected by their reciprocal operations. Subjects and objects are inseparably entangled, and indeterminacy is ever present in their associations. Barad’s notion of matter entails a “stabilizing and de-stabilizing process” (Barad 2007, p. 151) and “‘agent’ in its ongoing materialization.” In her account, “Agency is doing/being in its intra-activity” (Barad 2007, p. 235). Among those intra-actions, and crucially influential in the peasant’s environment, the enhancement of biomass recycling and the optimization of the bioavailability of nutrients must be mentioned. From these intra-actions and proper soil management, peasants will end up increasing soil cover, maintaining diversity (humans do belong as another species within such diversity), and enhancing synergies with all the elements which share these ecosystems. Crucial for any approach to the work of La Via Campesina is the notion of indigenous knowledge6 (which involves being 6 Walter Mignolo has derived an important theoretical concept from Latin American intellectual Anibal Quijano when he speaks of the “coloniality of knowledge.” This crucial idea is based on the erasure that colonial societies systematically 82 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 respectful to the land and its creatures), building inter-species and cross-cultural alliances, countering transnational corporations’ land-grabbing (in Africa, Asia, and the Global South), alerting local communities (cross-sectionally) of risk, and securing resources for women and the dispossessed which are respectful to the land. Nancy Tuana’s “interactionist ontology of viscous porosity” (in Alaimo 2008) in her commitment to take seriously the agency of the natural acts as an important paradigm for the comments and ideas that follow. In any event, it is the reciprocal insight of Western academia and indigenous philosophies and epistemologies that one should always acknowledge because the “appropriation of indigenous thinking in European contexts without indigenous interlocutors present to hold the use of indigenous stories and laws to account flattens, distorts and erases the embodied, legal-governance and spiritual aspects of Indigenous thinking” (Todd 2016, p. 9). In other words, the ongoing colonial imperatives of the academy must be a continued matter of concern and elicit a responsible engagement as a crucial element in the ethics of research. In an effort to avoid what Rob Nixon calls the pervasive “slow violence” always present in the “environmentalism of the poor” (in Alaimo 2016, p. 175), La Via Campesina embodies a holistic approach in which there are no detached objects or elements but rather a series of intra-actions among the different realities to be considered. Along these lines, thinking through the relations between individuals and ecosystems seems to be where current research in environmental, social sciences, and feminist thinking is leading. Embodied in the feminist relations to the environment have always been the material and political practices that women have pursued with strategy and tactics. The traditional feminist ethics of care have opened up towards a more comprehensive, global ethics for all “matters of care” (see Puig de la Bellacasa 2017 and below). Beginning in the 1990s, La Via Campesina has successfully gathered organizations of peasants, farmers, farm workers, and indigenous agrarian communities from across the globe. Its major endeavor has been to build collaborations and cooperation among its membership using various strategies and mechanisms that intersect at the local, regional, national, and international levels. The movement’s progressive work on questions of gender inequality and hemispheric and regional differences is a crucial part of its objective of building community and coalition work.7 Traditionally, rural women have played a major role in agricultural production and in maintaining the social and economic fabric of their communities. Yet, it is a fact these women still have limited access to policy planning and decision making. In many cases, they continue to be excluded from political power positions, and, consequently, of major involvement in strategic planning and in all issues related to the quality of life of farming communities. Thus, when it comes to gender, with the pressing issues that affect women’s economies and lives, La Via Campesina’s women took action and got organized. In the Managua Declaration of 1992, women farmers were mentioned only once. In any event, from then onwards there was an increasing visibility of women farm leaders who made up 20% of the participants. It is important to note that at this meeting an effort was made to integrate indigenous peasant organizations, whose goals included to analyze and understand the challenges faced by indigenous peasant women. The worldwide struggle of indigenous organizations for ownership and control over productive resources is absolutely central in how La Via Campesina tackles the questions of ethnicity and contributes to their struggles. Almost from the start, La Via Campesina aimed to integrate both peasant and indigenous identities, since their approaches to the land, the earth, and territory, and their ideas regarding agriculture were substantially different. Progressively gender concerns have been foregrounded, and ever since the 1993 “Framework for Action”, the role that women and youth play in rural organizations has been recognized. Building perform of indigenous forms of knowledge and their physical forms of transmission. As he writes, “[T]he word epistemology was used to disavow epistemological practices that did not correspond to the Western management of knowledge” (Mignolo 2011, p. 172). 7 For an interesting and well-documented account on La Via Campesina, which has informed my thinking on this movement, see the important book by Annette A. Desmarais (2007). 83 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 leadership capacity among women farm leaders counts among their foremost priorities. Women have also strongly contributed to further define La Via Campesina’s position on food sovereignty, which includes: (a) favoring organic production, (b) reducing the use of potentially harmful fertilizers, and (c) initiating an immediate halt to the trade of banned agrochemicals (Desmarais 2003, p. 143). After these early discussions, it became clear that no food sovereignty would be achieved without the strong involvement of women in policy development in the different communities (Desmarais 2003, p. 143). From 1996 to 2000, La Via Campesina Women’s Commission concentrated its work in the Americas in its three major regions: Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. In their discussions, crucial issues such as human rights, struggles for agrarian reform, management of natural resources, biodiversity, and the impact of agricultural trade were considered central for food sovereignty. This period was a turning point in raising awareness of the importance of women working on equal terms with their male counterparts to build an alternative agricultural model. At the third International Via Campesina Conference, a “Via Campesina Gender Position Paper” was approved, placing women and gender issues at the heart of the movement; “ . . . [I]t is fitting and necessary to articulate a gender analysis in order to shape inclusive, just and viable long-term solutions.” (Via Campesina Third International Conference, quoted in Desmarais 2007, p. 176). This document elaborated on three main principles: equality and human rights, economic justice, and social development, with “each clearly specifying the role, needs and interests of women” (Desmarais 2003, p. 144); it has been of major importance and has produced a balancing effect in the responsibilities of all actors implicated in the preservation of life on the planet. At this stage in the Anthropocene and in the consideration of women’s roles, labor, and social expectations placed on them, new materialist insights into an ethics of care which transcends the human, and, thus, sexual difference, are certainly liberatory for humanity as a whole, and for the environment. As Puig de la Bellacasa insists on “ . . . the moral undertones that invite us to transcend the ‘human’ for something ‘more than.’ It also starts from a human center, then to reach ‘beyond.’” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, p. 2). What we cannot ignore is the fact that, Care is a human trouble, but this does not make care a human-only matter. Affirming the absurdity of disentangling human and nonhuman relations of care and the ethicalities involved requires decentering human agencies, as well as remining close to the predicaments and inheritances of situated human doings. (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, p. 2) Since its inception, La Via Campesina has opposed the introduction of genetically modified crops into worldwide agricultural systems. While recognizing their potential to alleviate shortages in food production, the organization considers that the dangers associated with their use outweigh any beneficial effect. Apart from any future unknown or unforeseen consequences of the use of genetically modified crops, La Via Campesina sees two immediate problems associated with their use. First is their control by large transnational corporations and second is their negative effects on biodiversity. Regarding large corporations, the development and marketing of genetically modified crops is aggressively promoted by large transnational agribusiness corporations (exemplified by Monsanto) that impose stringent control over the seeds and that require the extensive use of agrotoxics of their own manufacture, thus closing a circle where farmers are absolutely dependent on these transnational companies. This tight control of crop markets by large agribusiness corporations is becoming even more stringent with a recent wave of fusions into mega corporations within the agribusiness market. As part of this wave, Dow Chemicals fused with DuPont, Monsanto was acquired by Bayer AG, and Syngenta partnered with ChemChina. An immediate result of this oligopoly is the ensuing lack of food security for regions where farmers are unable to pay the prices that these corporations establish. Regarding biodiversity, the negative impact of genetically modified crops is two-fold. On one hand, the use of just a few varieties of common crops poses the risk of losing the necessary biodiversity of these crops in the form of less-used varieties as a source of genetic material for the development of new varieties in the future. On the other hand, the increased use of agrotoxics 84 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 associated with genetically modified crops determines a high risk of eliminating a large part of the non-crop biodiversity in the planet. 5. La Via Campesina: Insurgent Practices La Via Campesina opposes the uncontrolled entry of foreign capital into local agricultural and food production. Apart from resulting in an impoverishment of farmers, given that large corporations use their economic might to impose their harsh market conditions on farmers, these corporations are a source of food insecurity for local communities, as food production, rather than being guaranteed, is subject to the vagaries of the markets. A well-known example is that of the fight that MST, an active Brazilian member of La Via Campesina, has been undertaking against transnational corporations in Brazil. 5.1. Cevasa’s Occupation: Against Agribusiness On 9 March 2007, over nine hundred women occupied the Cevasa sugar mill and power plant, located in the region of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo state. This action was widely covered in the news and has later been reviewed by Abramsky (2010). The previous year, a major part (63%) of the shares of Cevasa were bought by Cargill, a large American global corporation in the food, agriculture, and industrial markets, and the world’s largest privately held corporation in terms of revenue (Bodley 2012, p. 205). Cevasa’s was the largest sugarcane mill in Brazil: it produced 1.4 million tons of cane sugar per year or 125,000 L of alcohol. After Cargill bought a large part of the Cevasa plant, the previous owners used the money to buy another mill in the Western state of Acre. This practice of selling part of the capital of local mills to foreign companies with the subsequent expansion of production in other regions of Brazil and Latin America is common in Ribeirão Preto and contributes to an ongoing de-localization of agricultural production. During their action, La Via Campesina women defended the adoption of an alternative agricultural model which privileges the small farmer (responsible for the production of a good part of the food crops) and that implements an agrarian reform that modifies the land structure of the country. The region of Ribeirão Preto was chosen for this action because it symbolizes the expansion of sugarcane estates, a model based on the overexploitation of peasants (more than 15 workers there have died of exhaustion in the past three years), and the destruction of the environment. The occupation was part of La Via Campesina’s action “Women in Defence of Life and Against Agribusiness”. Through this, rural workers undertook to denounce the false promises of agribusiness in relation to sugarcane planting and to ethanol production, alerting people to the real consequences of increased sugarcane cultivation for the environment, the pollution of fires and the respiratory diseases caused by them, the vast extent of land concentration in Brazil, and the consequent increase in social differences.8 This action was linked to a large demonstration against the state visit of American president George W. Bush to Brazil. President Bush had been very interested in the promotion of bioalcohol as a fuel for automation because it provided a convenient outlet for the U.S.’ large stocks of surplus grains. Following that, major American firms became interested in the production of bioethanol at low cost, and his visit was interpreted as an attempt to negotiate with then Brazilian president Lula da Silva access to Brazilian sugarcane bioalcohol. For MST, bioethanol is not a clean energy but an environmentally damaging one that in addition only serves to convert Brazil into “the backyard of the American elites.” 8 Subsequently, sugarcane field burning, a traditional practice, has been banned in the state of São Paulo, a legislation that these protests helped implement (São-Paulo-Environmental-System 2017). 85 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 The way the Cevasa occupation unfolded demonstrates how La Via Campesina stages its actions. The occupation by women took place peacefully and no goods were damaged. Not wanting to risk the onset of violence between demonstrators and employees, after being assured that no damage would be caused to the facilities, the plant’s directors gave license to workers of the daily shift. 5.2. Nestlé: Predatory Exploitation of Water Resources Also in Brazil, on 20 March 2018, the MST movement staged an occupation of a Nestlé mineral water processing factory in São Lourenço, state of Minas Gerais. As it was reported (EFE 2018), again, very early in the morning, a group of six hundred women from the MST occupied the plant protesting the privatization of water, which, they claimed, was going to be traded in the 8th World Water Forum to be held in Brasilia. In their denunciation, the MST accused then president Michel Temer of selling their water to international corporations. The MST accused the Forum of being just a marketplace for negotiations with high executives from companies such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola for the exploitation of Brazil’s water resources. The MST cited Nestlé as an example of a transnational corporation established in Brazil for decades undertaking predatory and irregular forms of natural resources exploitation. For the MST water is a common good of humanity and defending it is a matter of sovereignty. The MST further denounced that in January 2018, President Temer and Nestlé President Paul Bulcke met to discuss the exploitation of the Guarani Aquifer, a massive reserve that covers four countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay). The Nestlé company, which controls 10.5% of the world’s water market, has been installed in Minas Gerais since 1994, when it bought the sources and the Parque das Águas de São Lourenço. Since 1997, the local population has denounced the exploitation of mineral waters that were widely used for medicinal treatments before being privatized. Besides the reduction in the available water flow, the MST denounced changes in taste of the water due to over-exploitation. These allegations have been dismissed by the Nestlé company, which accused in turn the MST of causing damage to their São Lourenço plant facilities. 5.3. Punta de Agua: Countering Land-Grabbing One of the aims of La Via Campesina is to help farmers, who are often associated with native minorities, fight against land-grabbing by large agroindustrial corporations or even by local authorities, who are usually acting on behalf of hidden economic interests. In land-grabbing, an established pattern emerges. Farmer families, who have worked their land for generations, are confronted by large agribusiness who take advantage of the fact that these families seldom register their lands to inscribe them in their name. They then exhibit titles of ownership of the farmers’ lands and try to expel them. This is a dramatic matter of concern for La Via Campesina’s activism. As Puig de la Bellacasa has argued, “Soils are now up on the list of environmental matters calling for global care [ . . . ] [soils] are a new frontier for knowledge and fascination about the life teaming [sic] in this dark alterity. Human persistent mistreatment and neglect of soils is emphasized in calls that connect the economic, political and ethical value of soils to matters of human survival” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, p. 169). La Via Campesina organizes actions to resist these evictions and to force authorities to recognize ancestral ownership rights for farmers. A case in point took place in June 2016 at Punta de Agua, in San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina (Unión de Trabajadores Sin Tierra-Movimiento Nacional Campesino Indígena (UST-MNCI) 2016). There, mapuche farmers who have lived off their land for generations were ordered to vacate their land by legal representatives of the transnational company Laguna Blue-Agua Segura, who exhibited titles of ownership, trespassed their fences, threatened them, and used physical force trying to expel them. The La Via Campesina-affiliated UST-MNCI movement immediately mobilized its members to counteract these actions. Some years back, the same company, claiming property rights, had fenced off the Punto de Agua village, effectively isolating 300 families on the basis of claimed property rights of land surrounding the settlement. Mobilizations of UST-MNCI had then forced the company to remove the fences. 86 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 Following the June 2016 threats, UST-MNCI mobilized their members in the region, including women and men, who demonstrated in Punta de Agua and publicly denounced these actions. On 27 June 2016, UST-MNCI activists blocked streets in Punta de Agua and in the presence of San Rafael municipal workers and two members of parliament demanded that authorities recognize ownership of traditionally farmed land and block new registrations of previously unclaimed lands. They further demanded the presence of authorities to enforce removal of wire fences in community land now claimed by the transnational corporation, stating that inaction on the part of authorities would be answered by “farmer’s justice” and forceful removal of these fences. After this action, attempts of the corporation to reclaim farmers’ lands continued. Finally, in light of the UST-MNCI resistance, in August 2016, local authorities annulled newly issued property rights and recognized ownership of the land by the mapuche families who had traditionally farmed it. As activist Paula Gioia remarks, “The land where our cattle grazes, where we produce our hay, where we grow cereals and vegetables, the forests from where we make our heating wood and the water sources for our drinking and for irrigation can not been handled as commodities!” (La_Via_Campesina (@via_campesina) 2018). With the kind of activist protests I have described, La Via Campesina has come to represent in many ways the entanglements that for Karen Barad redefine the human in light of its connectivity with non-human others and “the relationalities of becoming of which we are a part” (Barad 2007, p. 393). Recognition of such entanglements, in other words, shifts the focus “from unitary to nomadic subjectivity” (Braidotti 2013, p. 49). Barad’s understanding of connectivity and relationality eschews unitariness and self-centeredness and leads in the direction of Braidotti’s views on nomadic subjectivity. This “nomadism” emerges when the subject resists being fixed within a rigid frame constricting its movement and expansion: Though the image of “nomadic subjects” is inspired by the experience of peoples or cultures that are literally nomadic, the nomadism in question here refers to the kind of critical consciousness that resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behaviour. Not all nomads are world travelers; some of the greatest trips can take place without physically moving from one’s habitat. It is the subversion of set conventions that defines the nomadic state, not the literal act of traveling. (Braidotti 2011, p. 5) Acknowledging that the human is embedded within a large network of other social, biological, political, semiotic and other forces opens up a trans-species network where non-human others are recognized as co-participants and bearers of agency and accountability. These non-human others include other biological entities such as water, soils, geological layers, seeds, bio-fertilizers, and a long list of elements whose contribution to life as we know it in the planet would be unthinkable. As I have attempted to show, the intra-actions among deeply connected environmental and social issues have become an inexhaustible source of “transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities [ . . . ] as one part of needed political work” (Haraway 1991, p. 154). As Mozambican activist Graça Samo, International Coordinator of the World March of Women, reminding us of the importance of ancestors for indigenous populations, asserts, “The moment in which we are living now is a time of extremes . . . This has to be something that makes us as a global feminist movement to come together and say, what is our strategy in this moment? What is the right way to position ourselves to take control of the political struggle? [ . . . ] We are not inventing, we are reclaiming the forms that our ancestors have been using” (Samo 2019). 6. Concluding Remarks: Re-Distributing, Re-Thinking, Responding to the Planet Prompted by Jacques Derrida’s philosophical considerations on his visual interaction with his cat (Derrida 2002) and by Barbara Smuts’ baboon ethology studies (Smuts 1985.), Donna Haraway has argued that, as it is with humans, interacting with non-humans is not simply about reacting to them, but rather about establishing a bidirectional communication (Haraway 2008, pp. 19–27), about 87 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 “looking back,” (Haraway 2008, p. 106), and about accepting that one can establish communication in a reciprocal way. As I have attempted to show, it is imperative that an engaged involvement with the current status of the degradation of the planet at this stage of late capitalism gains momentum. Through grassroots activist actions, organized protest, and strategic communication, social movements urge us to move towards an ethics of care, protection, and respect for the planet. It is only by means of a cultural and educational awareness, deeply inspired by the teachings of new materialist philosophies, deep ecology, practices of re-distribution of resources, and social justice initiatives, that current practices of labor, consumption, and development can make progress and bring about significant changes in the relations of all elements and actors at play. When it comes to the shibboleth of “sustainability”, philosopher Val Plumwood has argued that “[t]he often-invoked term ‘sustainability’ tends to obscure the seriousness of the situation [of ecological crisis]; clearly no culture which sets in motion massive processes of biospheric degradation which it has normalized, and which it cannot respond or correct can hope to survive for very long” (Plumwood 2002, p. 1). Along the same lines, Benson and Craig have argued that sustainability might no longer be an appropriate course of action under current conditions, given that “‘sustainability’ refers to the long term ability to continue to engage in a particular activity,” and “assumes that we (a) know what can be sustained and (b) have the capacity to maintain stationarity,” (Benson and Craig 2014, p. 107). For them, “with climate change, we face a future in which we have no idea what we can sustain” (2014, p. 107), a future where “resiliency” is more likely to succeed than sustainability because “resilience thinking acknowledges disequilibrium and nonlinear, continual change—often as a result of crossing a ‘tipping point’ or threshold [ . . . ] and reorients us to focus on coping with change” (2014, p. 107). Coping with change, recovering quickly from difficulties, and being “resilient” also implies being able to redefine our interactions with an environment subject to critical modifications. Would it be possible—indeed, one cannot not acknowledge the possibility—for (multi)species relationships “to avoid commensalism or parasitism while yet occurring inside differential relations of power? [ . . . ] Mutualism is not so much about equality as reciprocity across difference” (Garvey 2014, p. 143). According to Canadian métis anthropologist Zoe Todd, “[T]he climate, Sila, is an incredibly important organizing concept for many actors in Inuit territories [ . . . ] Sila is both climate and a life force” (Todd 2016, p. 6). Todd denounces the absence in Western academia of indigenous voices who are strongly engaged in crucial issues for the survival of the planet, such as climate change. Millie Thrasher, Rosemarie Kuptana, and climate change activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier (who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore in 2007) deserve a special mention for their sustained activism and scholarly work on many fronts. Todd raises the poignant question of when Euro-American scholarship will take the intellectual labor and activist work of Inuit women seriously (Todd 2016, p. 7). Revisiting Donna Haraway’s recent ideas in Staying with the Trouble (Haraway 2016), she elaborates on the symbiotic entanglements within the natural world in the direction of creating a multispecies ethic of “living-with”: “Living with and dying with each other potently in the Chthulucene can be a fierce reply to the dictates of both Anthropos and Capital” (Haraway 2016, p. 2). Nonetheless, Haraway’s caveat should also be addressed; in her view, “Symbiosis [living with, my emphasis] is not a synonym for mutually beneficial” (Haraway 2016, p. 60), and sympoiesis (her coinage), entails “‘making with.’ Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing” (Haraway 2016, p. 58). Haraway’s “with-ness” helps us respond and become “respondents” to the inequalities and differences populating our planet, integrating material practices and situated knowledges. Staying with the trouble implies learning to coexist respectfully with the world of matter. Environmental geographer Juanita Sundberg states that “indigenous authors in the Americas [ . . . ] outline complex knowledge systems in which animals, plants and spirits are understood as beings who participate in the everyday practices that bring worlds into being. These epistemic traditions are not organized in and through dualist ontologies of nature/culture” (Sundberg 2013, p. 35). Along these lines, Sami political scientist Rauna Kuokkanen differentiates between learning to know the other and learning as 88 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 235 an engagement with the other, and calls for learning as “participatory reciprocity”, i.e., being attentive to other epistemes (indigenous, black, . . . ) as part of the geopolitical present (Kuokkanen 2007, p. 118; quoted. in Sundberg 2013, p. 40). It is precisely at this point where a feminist, new materialist, and environmental-justice-informed activism can have a larger impact: though humanity and the practices of extractive capitalism9 have profoundly transformed and damaged life in the planet for years to come, a new generation of green activists can claim redress and gain visibility and political representation for a new reparative agenda. In the face of this bleak panorama, there remain submerged perspectives and other modes of perception that see, hear, and imagine life-worlds that escape the current corporate, extractive impulse. 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An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word for Colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology 29: 4–22. [CrossRef] Tuana, Nancy. 2008. Viscous Porosity: Witnessing Katrina. In Material Feminisms. Edited by Stacy Alaimo Susan Hekman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 188–213. UST-MNCI. 2016. Argentina, Mendoza, Corte de Calle y Asamblea Campesina y Popular en Punta del Agua: Por la Tierra y la Vida. Available online: https://www.farmlandgrab.org/26284 (accessed on 10 March 2019). © 2019 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 91 $ € £ ¥ social sciences Article New Materialist Perspectives on Sex Robots. A Feminist Dystopia/Utopia? Tanja Kubes Gender Studies in Science and Engineering, Technical University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany; tanja.kubes@tum.de Received: 30 April 2019; Accepted: 23 July 2019; Published: 26 July 2019 Abstract: Feminist discourses on sex robots and robot sex largely focus on the dystopian fear of an exponentiation of hegemonic masculinity. The very possibility of robot sex is put on a level with slavery or prostitution and is rejected as a continuation of male dominance over women. Proceeding from a feminist new materialist perspective and building both on the refutation of normative definitions of sex and a general openness to the manifold variants consenting adults can engage in in sexual matters, the article presents a queer alternative to this outright rejection. Leaving the beaten tracks of pornographic mimicry, sex robots may in fact enable new liberated forms of sexual pleasure beyond fixed normalizations, thus contributing to a sex-positive utopian future. Keywords: new materialism; sex robots; robot sex; transversalism; human–machine interaction; sex-positive; diffractive design; queer studies A popular topic in movies from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) to Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014) or Netflix’ Westworld (2016), hyperfeminine humanoid robots have fueled the imagination of cinemagoers for almost a century. Today, however, for the first time in human history, lifelike humanoid robots serving as counterparts for romantic and sexual encounters are no longer just a fantasy of science fiction authors. Advances in the fields of artificial intelligence, biomechanics, robotics, and animatronics have them emerging on the horizon as a real possibility, causing a fundamental shift of the narrative from the imaginary to the tangible, from fiction to facticity. It does not come as a surprise, therefore, that over the past two or so years, sex robots have had their fair share of media coverage. New York Times (Bates 2017), Washington Post (Guarino 2018), CNN (Kerner 2018), Foxnews (Shaw 2018), ABC news (Sparrow 2019), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ 2018), Süddeutsche Zeitung (Weber 2018), BBC (Varley 2018), ARTE (Miethge 2017), ZEIT (Beschorner 2017), Focus (Schmieder 2019)—hardly any major newspaper, magazine, or TV station has managed to ignore the manifold efforts to construct intelligent machines that raise human–machine interaction to a whole new level. Most of the reports warned against the dangers of building humanoid robots or of introducing artificial intelligence in our bedrooms. The very possibility of an emotional closeness of humans and robots was dismissed as some technocrats’ dystopian fantasy that we should prevent from becoming reality the sooner the better. Already back in 2015, British anthropologist Kathleen Richardson and robotics researcher Erik Billing launched the Campaign Against Sex Robots that has since drawn attention to the many ethical questions raised by the prospect of sexual encounters between humans and machines. Such problems do indeed exist. Prototypes of sex robots aiming to hit the market in the near future are definitely hinting towards a questionable understanding of ideals of female beauty and the nature of gender relations. In this context, one can also ask, why almost all sex robots currently developed are ‘female.’ There certainly is a market for robots beyond a heterosexist norm, however the industry acts as if it were nonexistent. Another problem commonly addressed by robot sex critics is that, by treating robots as objects, we run the risk of eventually objectifying humans in a similar way (Gee 2017; Richardson 2015). Richardson even goes one step further, equalling robot sex with slavery and prostitution (Richardson 2016). Consequently, there have been repeated calls for a complete ban. The reasons put Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224; doi:10.3390/socsci8080224 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci92 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 forward are very similar to those of a feminist movement from the 1980s: the fight against pornography (e.g., Dworkin 1989; Morgan 1980). Also, just like in those earlier discussions, the feminist critique finds itself in the odd neighbourhood of anti-feminist conservatives arguing strongly in favour of restricted sexual morals. Starting from a queer perspective building both on the refutation of normative definitions of sex and a general openness to the manifold variants consenting adults can engage in in sexual matters, I shall present a feminist alternative to the outright rejection of sex robots and robot sex. While it may be true that current prototypes of sex robots address virtually exclusively heterosexual male customers, I argue that this does not necessarily oblige feminists to discard the very idea of robot sex altogether. On the contrary, allowing for the general possibility of robot sex, feminists can seize the opportunity to reclaim agency in the arena of human–machine interaction and try to change it in order to satisfy a larger variety of sexual tastes and thus increase the general “coefficient of transversality” (Bosteels 1998, p. 157). Here too, obviously, the argument somewhat resembles earlier—sex-positive feminist—responses to the anti-pornography movement of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Rubin 1984). Proceeding from a new materialist perspective, I will then propose a reconsideration of design options for sex robots. The idea is actually quite simple: Instead of buttressing gender stereotypes and perpetuating a discourse of male domination by silicone means, the industry might as well explore the emancipatory potential held by intelligent machines acting as (virtually) equal counterparts in all types of social interaction. However, this thought does not seem to come natural to many engineers. It has to be promoted. Refusing dialogue with the people who actually develop sex robots, therefore, is a bad idea, if we hope to counter the possible negative effects of humanoid robots on society and try to deploy them for an entirely different purpose: to deconstruct gender stereotypes, to liberate humanism from its anthropocentric limitations, and to redefine our entanglement with the realm of the nonhuman in terms of a diffractive “ethico-onto-epistem-ology” (Barraclough 2018). Feminist new materialism, object-oriented ontology (OOO), and actor network theory (ANT) provide the theoretical backdrop against which I will develop my argument. All three confront the tacit ontologism of our scientific renderings of the world and focus on both the capacity of things/objects to act and the irreducible eventfulness of matter. In this context, the human body as the most obvious factor of being in the world has received renewed interest (Rogowska-Stangret 2017). It is perceived as neither a simple effect of semantic attributions nor as the mere result of discursive practices. Semiotics (e.g., Eco 1987) and social constructivism (Butler 1990) may roughly delineate the field of ‘making sense’ of the world. However, new materialism has elevated matter (animate and inanimate) from its passive role and apprehended it as an actant (Latour 2002a), actively contributing to the very process of its materialization (Barad 2003). Modernist attempts to epistemologically separate subject and object, in this view, making just as little sense as any form of ontological anthropocentrism. Instead, feminist new materialism’s focus on a nondualistic “epistem-ontology” (Barad 1996, p. 118) opens up ways to expanding the diversity of social bonding and community building and confronts us with new challenges for the regulation of social relations. This holds especially true, when relationships are not only transgressing traditional categorizations or species boundaries but connecting biological and technological actors, thus linking the carbon and silicon spheres. Analysing current trends in sex-robotics, I will highlight the paradox that, even though sex robots seemingly reinforce heteronormative gender dichotomies by imitating exaggerated pornographic stereotypes in appearance and behaviour, they also deconstruct traditional man/machine-dualisms—and doing so, open up paths for new constellations of trans-species partnerships beyond “carbon-chauvinism” (Sagan 1973) and the dictate of heteronormativity. 1. Ontologies of Love Technology is always entangled in structures of power, and it is never gender neutral (e.g., (Barad 1996, 2003; Bath 2014a; Ernst and Horwath 2014; Haraway 1988, 2004; Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003; Rommes 2002, 2011; Wajcman 1991, 2004)). While this is obvious for products like deodorants, shavers, clothing, etc., that explicitly address customers of a certain gender, it also holds true for seemingly gender-neutral articles like computers, cars, or smart homes (Berg 1999; van Oost 93 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 2003). Far from being inherent to those ‘things in themselves,’ gender is constantly produced and reproduced through the principles guiding their design and subsequent social interactions during their use (Strathern 1988), thus binding together explicit and implicit notions of gendering in so-called “gender scripts” (Akrich 1992; Bath 2014a; van Oost 2003; Woolgar 1990). These scripts consist of built-in features assigning specific competences and delegating responsibilities to their intended users (Akrich 1992, p. 208); see also (Oudshoorn et al. 2005, p. 86; Rommes 2002, p. 18). As for the sex robots that are currently developed, saying that they are gendered seems a truism. Mirroring a strong Eurocentric male gaze, their design takes semantic coding and stereotyping along hegemonic gender lines to the extreme, basically reducing ‘robot companions’ to large-breasted Barbie dolls with glimpses of artificial intelligence (e.g., (Truecompanion n.d.; RealbotiX n.d.a)). The ‘inner values,’ as praised on one producer ’s homepage, consist in little more than being always “ready to talk or play” (Truecompanion n.d.). This renaissance of male hegemonic ambition and the demand for female submissiveness (or, as some authors put it, “toxic masculinity” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Gildea 2017)) appears as a severe setback for feminist efforts to achieve equality for all humans. Accordingly, the Campaign Against Sex Robots denounces the construction of “machines in the form of women or children for use as sex objects, substitutes for human partners or prostituted persons” (CASR n.d.) in the strongest terms. These moral issues of course need to be addressed and, hopefully, they will eventually be resolved. However, I would like to put them aside for the time being and instead point out that the argument made by the Campaign Against Sex Robots takes one idea for granted: that sexual relationships between humans and robots are in fact possible. This statement needs some elaboration, since Kathleen Richardson and others have argued repeatedly, that there could be no such thing as sex between humans and robots. If sex is a co-experience, involving a mutual, parallel, and simultaneous experience between humans who are radically different from humanmade artefacts, then it follows that penile, digit, or oral penetration of an object does not constitute sex. This is the case whether the penetrated ‘object’ is in fact an objectified human being or an anthropomorphized object (Gildea and Richardson 2017). At first glance, the argument sounds convincing. In fact, from a morally informed point of view, it is flawless. Yet it describes only a small sector of social reality. That becomes clear when, a bit later in the same article, Richardson and Gildea contrast this limited version of sex (“a co-experience . . . between humans”) to masturbation (”a sexual experience you have alone”) and rape (“using a human being like they were a sexual instrument/sexual assault”), arguing that sex with robots cannot be “sex” because “dolls and robots do not have sexed bodies which include reproductive organs, hormones and are not part of a living species” (ibid.). The line of argument is basically ontological, defining ‘real sex’ along a fixed set of distinctive features. Accordingly, unreal sex, or rather ‘not sex’ is characterized by the lack of them. [T]here is no subjectivity behind those glassy eyes. There is no mind with which the human partner can relate. There is a physical form, but no embodied consciousness. There may be a voice, but no internal dialogue. That voice may imply feelings, but they do not express a psychological reality. One can no more relate to a sex robot or sex doll than to a ventriloquist’s dummy (except at least we know that behind the scenes the ventriloquist’s dummy is being manipulated by human hand(s) without it being mystified as ‘neutral’ technology) (Gildea and Richardson 2017). Now, what is the real point here? Obviously, Gildea and Richardson argue in favor of an absolute—one might even say transcendental—definition of sex. The argument is rooted in a decidedly Eurocentric, anthropocentric, and ‘biocentric’ position and takes things for granted that are anything but ontologically indisputable. While most readers probably agree that what Gildea and Richardson define as sex is a wonderful thing to happen, many of us are also aware that not all sexual experiences are equally enjoyable for everybody involved. Many of us probably remember sexual encounters, which, in retrospect, we might have preferred not to have had. Many of us experienced bad sex without considering it bordering on rape. Human sexuality was and is a broad field (Preciado 2000) and, unfortunately, the wonderful “mutual, parallel, simultaneous experience” was over large parts of human 94 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 history and for the majority of humans probably the exception rather than the rule (Foucault 1993; Muchembled 2008). What, then, would be a less normative, more manageable definition of sex? Or, rather, of love? Let me put the question differently: Does loving and feeling loved necessarily require its object to ‘love back’? Or does it suffice, when the loving person assumes that their love is shared? I am leaning towards the latter. David Levy, one of the most outspoken advocates of robot sex, once predicted that within few decades, marriages between humans and robots would be widespread and perfectly normal (Levy 2007, p. 150). This bold statement obviously does not account for the fact that ‘marriages’ between humans are much more than just a vow of trying to make a relationship last. They bind together not just the bridal couple (or triple, or n-ple) but their respective families as well, thus creating complex networks of relatives and in-laws. However, we do not have to go that far to question the necessity of mutuality in loving relationships. Our love for pets and the manifold forms of objectophilia clearly show that the reality of our feelings does not rely on their reciprocation. I do like to believe that my dog in some way or the other loves me, but of course I will never find out, if that is true in an ‘objective’ sense. That, however, does not change the reality of my feelings nor does it deny the very existence of an affectionate relationship between us. I may well be just using the dog as a mirror projecting my own feelings and attitudes back on me. Yet, that does not affect the fact that these feelings result from an interaction with someone or something that is clearly not me. All moral considerations put aside, I therefore suggest a reformulation of the fundamental question. Instead of asking, if robots will ever love us back, we should rather analyze how sexual or emotional scripts may evoke human attachment to a robot. Obviously, people can develop durable relationships with all kinds of counterparts. I have argued elsewhere (Kubes 2019) that, whereas easily identifiable anthropomorphic features may facilitate the establishment of emotional bonds, almost any kind of “anthropomorphic anchoring point” (ibid.) will do. Therefore, while it may well be true that robots will never ‘love’ us—that does not mean that we cannot develop true feelings for them. In fact, a recent study at Stanford University suggests that participants of different genders were measurably aroused when touching a robot in the ‘off-limits’ parts of its body (as compared to only pointing at them or touching its hand or neck (Blakemore 2016)). This does not imply that the participants in the study had sexual thoughts about the robot or were sexually stimulated in any way, but there seemed to have been a strong tendency “to treat the robot like it had social rules that applied to it” (ibid.). These findings are consistent with assumptions from phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty (1964) pointed out that an “unseparated ontology” (“ontologie non séparée”) does not necessarily imply two discrete sentient bodies but may rest on any form of interaction allowing for the reversibility of the sentient and the sensed (“sensant et sensible”; ibid. 188). This “indirect ontology” (“ontologie indirecte” (De Saint-Aubert 2006, p. 201)) creates meaning from the interplay of entities lacking solid ontological ground. It can also occur between a mind and its thoughts on a (solid or imagined) object. Spike Jonze’s movie Her (2013), in which a man falls in love with the virtual assistant on his cell phone, played convincingly on the theme that the body is not important at all when it comes to humans falling in love. Further narrowing down the question of the possibility of affective relationships between humans and (sex) robots, this means that both sides of the equation—humans and robots—are to be thought of as emergent subject/objects, which, in their actual form, only come into being as contingent actants in an ad hoc “assemblage” (Bennett 2005). Not being agents in and out of themselves, they rather represent what Diana Coole called “agentic capacities” (Coole 2005). They allow for the kind of performative metaphysics or “onto-epistem-ology” (Barad 2003, p. 829) that lay the symbolic-material ground for an “agential realism” (Barad 1996, 2003). 2. Feminist New Materialism, ANT, OOO, Diffraction and Robots Western thought has settled in, well believing that humans are inherently different from everything around us. The assumption became even more powerful, when, from the 17th century onward, the religious framework that had governed science before, was bit by bit substituted for a secular one. 95 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 Scientists now no longer held that it was man’s God-given mission to “fill the earth and subdue it,” and to “rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves the ground” (Genesis 1:28), yet the Cartesian disjunction of res cogitans and res extensa (Reinhardt 2016) further entrenched the fundamental opposition between the realms of the human and the nonhuman, between subject and object (Descola 2011). One might even go one step further and claim with Bruno Latour that this separation (or rather its immediate corruption) marks the very birth of modern society. Latour famously defined modernity as a twofold ensemble of practices: one trying to create ontologically detached zones by processes of “cleaning” (Latour 2002b, p. 19); the other fashioning hybrids (or networks) of nature and culture by a move Latour calls “translation” (Latour 2002a). Now the major problem, as Latour describes it, lies precisely in modernity’s seeming success. The interaction of human subjects with the material world constantly generates chimeras that are neither subject nor object but something in-between—or rather both: holes in the ozone layer (Latour 2002b, p. 7), speed bumps (Latour 1994, p. 36), the Berlin key (Latour 1993), etc. Therefore, in order to really understand our being-in-the-world, we have to consider that the world cannot be neatly divided into (human) subjects and (material) objects, but contains an ever-growing portion of hybrids or “quasi-objects” (Serres 1987) that collapse the differentiation between the social and the material worlds, between nature and culture, between mind and matter. It is important to stress that these hybrids are not just humanized things or reified humans, but constitute an ontological order of their own. Consequently, instead of analyzing our intricately tangled world through the bifocal lens of modernity’s subject–object dualism, Latour calls for a three-dimensional approach, complementing the two poles of the system by hitherto forbidden interbreeding of the ‘soft’ and the ‘hard’ components of nature and culture (2002b, p. 75). This has severe implications for research, both in the natural sciences and the humanities. Knowledge—no matter on what—becomes inextricably situated by specific “agential cut[s|” (Barad 2007, p. 185). Agency in such “programs of action” (ibid.) is at least partly detached from humans and instead thought of as shared by an “association of actants” (Latour 1994, p. 35). ‘Objects’ are no longer passively waiting for an intentional ‘subject’ to manipulate them. Rather, they “mediate action” (Verbeek 2005, p. 131) and thus take any notion of an individuated subject acting on equally stable matter ad absurdum. In a similar—yet not quite the same—fashion, feminist new materialism proposes a nonessentializing approach to ontology and privileges (Deleuze and Guattari 1984, p. 4) the production (or “enregistrement”) of the social over its construction. This (re)turn to matter originates from a critical assessment of the linguistic turn and its insistence on the prevalence of discourse over existence. Karen Barad thoroughly explores the “representationalist” tradition (2003, p. 805), describing it as resting upon three problematic separations: subject/object, representation/thing, and epistemology/ontology. Taken for granted by representationalism, these separations imply the possibilities of a neutral observer position, of objective representations, and of an unobstructed access to knowledge. None of this, of course, should be taken as given. Things, as we all perfectly know, all too often seem to have a mind of their own. Jane Bennett (2010) hits a similar vein, when she argues that matter is imbued with a vitality or liveliness allowing it to shape the ways we interact with it. She calls this capacity “thing-power”: Thing-power gestures toward the strange ability of ordinary, man-made items to exceed their status as objects and to manifest traces of independence or aliveness, constituting the outside of our own experience (Bennett 2010, p. xvi). Notwithstanding the above, feminist new materialism does not propose a wholesale renunciation of constructionism. It rather uses it as one of its cornerstones and a counterbalance to its materialist side. That way, it both emphasizes its discontinuity with earlier materialist theories (like for example Marxist historical materialism) and underscores the “co-constitution of material and discursive productions of reality” (Sanzo 2018). In feminist new materialism, the social, the cultural, and the material are not being thought of in terms of superstructure and base but as caught in transformations and interactions that literally stop at nothing: self, matter, space, time, cause, etc.—everything is subject to constant modification, variation, and reconsideration. 96 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 There are different strands of new materialism(s) that all build on Latour’s seminal work which are not always easy to distinguish. I do hold, however, that they represent three clearly discernible schools of thought. Actor network theory (ANT) rightly proceeds from the assumption that nature and culture cannot (as in modernism’s unsuccessful attempt) be completely separated. That is why it puts such emphasis on studying hybrids (or quasi-objects) being made up of both nature and culture. Object-oriented ontology (OOO), on the other hand, insists that not all entities are hybrids, claiming instead that there are objects which completely lack the ‘cultural’ element (such as the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in H2O) and others that are, on the contrary, purely cultural (like the idea of a Judeo-Christian ‘Europe’) (Harman 2018, p. 57). In rejecting the idea that everything is a hybrid, OOO contends that a universal amalgamation would effectively preserve the very constituents (nature and culture) that ANT tries to get rid of (Harman 2018, p. 58). Therefore, while contending that there are (some) hybrids, OOO warns against limiting research to network relations alone. Instead, it puts some sort of a double withdrawal (physical and logical) at the base of its ontology (Harman 2018, p. 187). This, however, conflates physical and phenomenological dimensions and ultimately leads to a deep “antipathy in relations in favor of the things themselves” (Sheldon 2015, p. 194). Feminist new materialism here adopts a more radical stance. If anything, it is relational, claiming that subjects and objects, ideas and matter, representations and things are not inhabiting clearly separable ontological spheres. Where OOO disregards epistemology as a lower-level instrument that only deals with composites involving at least one human constituent, feminist new materialism stresses its indispensability for the very generation of reality. Thus, similar as they may be in many respects, the three branches of new materialism differ decidedly with regard to the role they assign to the association of things and relations. ANT focuses on networks and relations, OOO on things, and, most comprehensively, feminist new materialism on intra-active processes, in which relations precede their relata, which, in turn, modify these relations (and so on ad infinitum) (Sheldon 2015, p. 202). Crucial for this process is “that intra-actions are live” (ibid.). They do not interweave pre-existing objects, nor do they withdraw objects from our access. Rather, they play on the mutual constitution of relations and relata and emphasize their simultaneous co-constitution in an eternal ouroboros. As Sheldon emphatically puts it: “Nature cannot preexist its construction” (2015, p. 197; emphasis in the original), and ontology, one may add, cannot precede epistemology. Both are effects of the same process that has been described as “diffractive” by various authors (Barad 2007; Bath 2014b; Haraway 1992, p. 300). Central to the metaphor is that, in optics, rays of light can ‘bend’ around the corners of an obstacle and through interferential (or diffractive) effects enter the region lying in the obstacle’s shadow. Already back in 1992, Donna Haraway pointed out that interference patterns differ radically from reflections (or, to use a more common term: representations). Diffraction is a mapping of interference, not of replication, reflection, or reproduction. A diffraction pattern does not map where differences appear, but rather map where the effects of differences appear ((Haraway 1992, p. 300); emphasis added). In other words, we cannot observe diffraction where it actually originates (at the obstacle) but only where its effects become visible (in the shadow space). Karen Barad, building on Haraway’s use of the term, employs the metaphor for describing her own methodological approach of reading insights through one another in attending to and responding to the details and specificities of relations of difference and how they matter. ( . . . ) [D]iffraction can serve as a useful counterpoint to reflection: both are optical phenomena, but whereas the metaphor of reflection reflects the themes of mirroring and sameness, diffraction is marked by patterns of difference (Barad 2007, p. 71). In contrast to reflection, diffraction marks differences from within and sees them as part of entangled processes. Therefore, it can focus on differences and relationalities rather than on sameness and mimesis. It does not require preexisting, separate entities but produces “diffraction/difference pattern[s]” by the “material practice of engagement as part of the world in its differential becoming” (ibid., p. 89). Coming back to the dangling possibility of sex robots and robot sex, one lesson from feminist new materialism therefore is that anthropocentrism and mimesis do not have to be the guiding principles 97 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 in those robots’ construction and design. It would thus be fatal to simply abandon all definitory power to the still predominantly male-dominated disciplinary culture of the engineering sciences. Instead, queer interventions on robot sex can (and should!) contribute to nonhierarchical creative and interpretive construction processes that traverse, overlap, and cut across sexual potentials without fitting into a normative unit. Traversing and perforating sexual stereotypes, they might—this at least is my hope—ultimately lead to ‘better’ sex robots that increase their users’ physical and emotional pleasure but refuse fixed identity attributions. 3. From Pygmalion to Harmony to RealDollX The idea of creating an artificial human-like counterpart has been a powerful topos in Western literature (or, as some would have it, a “collective human obsession” (Trout 2017)) for at least two thousand years. Most famously, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with one of his statues. After Pygmalion presented his offerings to the gods during the festive days of Venus, the ivory statue comes alive and Pygmalion marries her. Together, they have a daughter, Paphos (Ovid 2003, pp. 10, 243–97). What as a short plotline sounds like a tale about love, purity, human genius, and divine intervention, at a closer look turns into a narrative about a misogynic endeavor, setting the stage for technocrats’ dreams about marrying robots as well as for the feminist critique of the very attempt to build them. Today, Pygmalion probably would identify as an ‘incel,’ or involuntary celibate. Disappointed, afraid or repulsed by real woman and their ‘vicious nature’ (“vitiis, quae ( . . . ) menti femineae natura dedit”), he creates an ivory simulacrum that is better than the real thing. Pygmalion gives his statue forms so perfect that no naturally born woman could possess (“sculpsit ( . . . ) formamque dedit, qua femina nasci nulla potest”). When he eventually falls in love with the sculpture, he must know that she is not human. Still, he chooses to believe that she reciprocates his feelings. He kisses the statue and is sure his kisses are returned (“oscula dat reddique putat”). Then, during a festival honoring Venus, Pygmalion presents his offerings to the goddess and makes it very clear that, in his view, the order of art and nature has been reversed by his craftmanship. He informs the goddess that he is determined to remain a celibate unless he is given a woman “like my ivory (virgin)” (“similis mea ( . . . ) eburnae”). Accordingly, he does not just ask the gods to give him a wife, he specifically adds that they should take the statue he has made as the model after which this wife should be fashioned. There is a striking difference to other ancient myths on artists and their art. Other than the grapes painted by Zeuxis or Dibutades’ shadow portrait of his daughter’s lover, Pygmalion’s statue does not imitate anything. It does not strive to be as accurate a copy of nature as possible. On the contrary, it improves nature, restoring it the purity and virtuousness that real humans (that is: women) lack in his opinion. Pygmalion’s ivory sculpture is not an image (Abbild) but an archetype (Urbild), a copy that precedes its original and renders any distinction between reality and representation useless, or, as Baudrillard would have it, a third order “simulacrum” (Baudrillard 1982) that brings itself into existence. Just like today’s sex robots, Galatea is not a simple mirror of a human, it is an interpretation of what a human could be that moves “beyond the ephemeral subject–object divide” (Lee 2017, p. 5). Pygmalion’s sexist escapism has inspired authors, painters, and sculptors for centuries. Victor Stoichita provides an extensive account of the multifold variations of the theme, from Ovid right up to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (Stoichita 2008). The idea of the artist actually generating his future wife by the sole means of his art seems to be a widely shared fantasy. Today, however, we are only two steps away from this fantasy becoming real. Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) make it seem only a matter of time until we build machines that will easily pass the Turing test, that will interact with humans on eye-level and that will satisfy our physical and emotional needs through a wide range of behavioral responses. Already today, computers have replaced call center agents so successfully that we often unknowingly communicate with them on the phone without noticing. As algorithms advance, it will become virtually impossible to tell whether we talk to another human being or a voice from a machine. To tell the truth, we do not seem to care too much about that. Thus, 98 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 as far as the human pole of this kind of man–machine interaction is concerned, the difference between humans and machines already has become effectively irrelevant in many contexts. However, despite the widespread attention sex robots receive by the media, fully functional androids are still a long way off. While impressive progress was made in the field of combat robots, research on sex robotics is still in its infancy. What is currently ready to hit the market is little more than an animatronic robotic head with an interchangeable magnetic face and built in AI, mounted on a silicon doll that can be bent into the desired position but cannot move on its own. In order to avoid dents, owners are instructed to store the doll in a hanging position when not in use. This is also true for Harmony and her robotic sister Solana, the most advanced ‘sex robots’ to be found these days—and the two examples that hardly have been absent from any recent media coverage of the topic. Their manufacturers, Matt McMullen and Abbyss Creations, are very straightforward as to the limits of their project. Thus, the recently relaunched website of realbotix.com describes the company’s mission as follows: We’re working to create the next generation of the well-known anatomically correct RealDolls, which we intend to blend with Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, touch sensors, internal heaters, virtual and augmented reality interfaces. These new dolls will have an animated face synchronized with an application that users can talk to and interact with. The purpose behind the project is to create an illusion, or alternative to reality when it comes to a relationship with a doll. These RealDolls will have the ability to listen, remember, and talk naturally, like a living person. They will have hyper-realistic features, warmth, and sensors that react to touch. When interacting with these dolls, we want users to ask themselves, “What is she thinking?” (Available online: https://realbotix.com/FAQ). Much could be said about this mission statement from a feminist point of view; however, I want to stress only a few aspects that are most relevant in our context. First, even though Harmony is ‘the face’ of the public discourse on robot sex, the term ‘sex robot’ is oddly missing in the company’s communication. Instead, robotics is mentioned as just one of several features that shall blend to create a doll, “users can talk to and interact with.” What Harmony (or “RealDollX”) really is, thus, is not a sex robot in the strict sense of the term. It is a sex doll with an animated head and artificial intelligence. That is a significant difference. A doll is only an equal counterpart, if and as long as its user actively attributes that quality to it. There is nothing inherently ‘almost human’ in it—and “doll” in fact sounds much less threatening than “robot.” Accordingly, there is no such thing as a ‘Campaign Against Sex Dolls’—and it is hard to imagine one going viral the way the Campaign Against Sex Robots did. Second, the purpose behind the project is explicitly described as creating an “illusion, or alternative reality”—not a new reality. Asked if they think “an AI RealDoll Robot will ever be able to love us back,” the producers give a disarmingly honest answer: “We hope that we can at least simulate that. That’s the goal. It is our thinking that if one feels loved, then one must be loved, deeply and genuinely” (Available online: https://realbotix.com/FAQ). Love, as understood here, is not Gildea’s and Richardson’s “mutual, parallel and simultaneous experience” (Gildea and Richardson 2017), rather it is something happening exclusively in the eye of the beholder. Freed from ontological restraints, it becomes a matter of interpretation—or, one might say: of epistemology. Finally, there is this strange statement that the doll’s features are “anatomically correct” but “hyper-realistic.” Anatomically correct here probably means that orifices a (male) user might want to use for sexual purposes are where he would expect them to be and share certain features with the corresponding parts of the female body. More interesting, therefore, is the aspect of hyper-realism. Obviously, Realbotix’ goal is not to simply depict or copy reality but to distort and to exaggerate it, and this does not have to stop at the human form and its limitations but can (and maybe should) go well beyond it. Now, the dolls, on which Harmony’s robotic head is to be mounted, may be impressive from an artistic perspective. From a feminist point of view, they are—there is no other way to say it—horrific. The same is true for the accompanying app that comes as a female avatar designed to serve as an interface to the robotic head. Both can be ‘customized’—meaning that the client can choose from a 99 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 selection of skin and lip types, labia, pubic hair (trimmed, ‘natural,’ shaved), nipple shades, breast sizes (all of them perfectly round and oddly defying gravity), and so on. Currently, the selection is pretty much limited to idealized forms doing little to hide their roots in pornographic fantasies. Hermaphrodite versions or ‘Avatars’ are possible; however, the company clearly has boundaries as to manufacturing, for example, sex animals (Lee 2017) or dolls representing children or celebrities. The accompanying app additionally allows one to create a “persona” that best suits the customer. Here, the user can choose from a list of personality traits that affect the way the doll behaves. The number of available personality traits, however, seems to have lost some of its variability over the course of the last two years. While the 2017 prototype of the app still had eighteen qualities to choose from (“intense, unpredictable, moody, shy, jealous, insecure, intellectual, helpful, quiet, talkative, kind, innocent, sexual, adventurous, affectionate, imaginative, sense of humor, happy” (Twitter 2017)), the 2019 version is down to only twelve (“affectionate, spiritual, unpredictable, jealous, intellectual, insecure, moody, sensual, cheerful, funny, helpful, talkative” (RealbotiX n.d.b)). From a gender perspective, one would prefer to not even think about the heteronormative stereotyping clichés dominating the field (and its media coverage) in the first place, but again, Realbotix has produced (as they call it) “The World’s Finest Love Dolls” (realbotix.com) since 1997. Thus, they are entering the field of sex robotics not as innocent newbies but as a company that has played the field of silicon sex dolls for decades. This is where their expertise lies and this is also what largely defines their target group. Therefore, I think it is a fatal mistake, when feminists discussing sex robots and robot sex take the appearance of Realbotix’ dolls as a call to adopt a fundamentally negative attitude from the very start. It clearly resembles earlier feminist critiques of pornography focusing on the most shocking images available in an attempt to deny the very existence of a thing like feminist pornography (e.g., (Dworkin 1989; Morgan 1980; Schwarzer 1994)). Also, just as back then, the critique ultimately contributes to a further solidification of moral principles building on a dualistic order of the sexes. Even if the robots/dolls that are built today give only a very small group of male customers a chance to indulge in their sexual fantasies, that does not make the technology behind them a bad thing. True sexual liberation cannot stop at women (Rubin 1984). In the long run, it must also include men and everybody between and beyond. No matter if we focus on the dolls’ exaggerated physical features or on the presumed long-term effects of sex robots on the fabric of gender relationships or on social power structures in general, confining ourselves to those aspects alone, we are negligently giving away the chance to play a part in shaping a technology with the potential of actually improving many people’s lives. Pleasure is not a bad thing. And I do not think that—generally speaking—there is anything wrong with reaching it by technological means. Just to give a well-documented example: the absolute number of female orgasms in the West obviously has multiplied over the last decades. This is not the least due to the increased acceptance and availability of sex toys. Recent research suggests that, for example, in the U.S. today, more than one in two women owns and uses a vibrator (Herbenick et al. 2009). When Kinsey published his report in 1953, their use was not “appreciable” and found (or admitted) by less than 1% of the informants. Some twenty years later, the Hite report showed this number to have increased to slightly above 14% (ibid.). From here to more than 50% in 2008 was a long way to go. Why did it take so long? One likely reason is that product development and design were almost exclusively left to male engineers and designers. And their ideas, to put it mildly, may not always have reflected women’s ideas about what a sex toy should do and what it should look like. Still in the 1990s, vibrators seemed to fall only in one of two groups: the horribly realistic replica of a penis (remaining a niche product for a sexually adventurous subculture), or disguised as a medical product and sold euphemistically as ‘massage device.’ It was only after Sex and the City’s ‘rabbit episode’ in 1998, that—with a ‘buzz,’ so to speak—vibrators became mainstream. In a tribute to 20 years of the western world having become a “Vibrator Nation” (Comella 2017), even the conservative Forbes magazine claimed that the rabbit vibrator “ushered in a new era of sexual consumerism, one in which 100 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 female shoppers boldly strutted into sex-toy stores looking to purchase the vibrator they’d seen on Sex and the City” (Comella 2018). There is no question that taking vibrators out of the shadows was an important step towards female empowerment and sexual satisfaction beyond heterosexual intercourse. The rabbit and its successors helped millions of women to a better sex life and the development did not stop at the unexpected success of a single product. Today, women can choose from a huge selection of vibrators in all shapes and colors in virtually any drugstore, where they are as openly on display as condoms or lubricants. There are also many other sex toys for women that simultaneously suck, push, rub, lick, vibrate and have nothing in common with the visual appearance and functionality of human genitalia, but nevertheless lead to new forms of female self-determined pleasure. For men, on the other hand, there is nothing even remotely comparable. Of course, there are masturbation aids and sex dolls. However, it is hard to think of anybody wanting to be even loosely associated with them. Entering the search string “masturbator for men” on the webpage of a large online shop and scrolling through the results requires both a firm trust in the good in man and a strong stomach. The image that comes to mind when we think of a person actually buying and using a product like the “MissGem-Silicone-Lifelike-Realistic doll for men” is that of a person who has serious problems. Thus, there is a significant discursive imbalance regarding technological aids for sexual pleasure. Whereas vibrators are widely accepted as a symbol of female self-empowerment and a liberated sexuality, sex dolls, to put it bluntly, are considered a surrogate for pitiable “loser[s]” (Wennerscheid 2019, p. 123) who are afraid of real women. In movie analogies, it is Lars and the Real Doll (2007) instead of Sex and the City. The social framework the users of sex dolls inhabit is commonly considered as one of loneliness, isolation, and uninhibited consumerism. I insist that it would not have to be like that. Sex robots leaving the beaten track of pornographic mimicry and sexist hyperfemininization might, in the end, equally contribute to liberated, transversal, self-empowered new forms of sexual pleasure beyond fixed heteronormative normalizations. After all, sex robots epitomize the decoupling of sexual craving from biological/social sex and/or gender and hold the potential for a radical pluralization of desire relations that no longer excludes nonmainstream forms of sexuality. To realize this potential, however, producers will eventually have to come up with some new design ideas. Vibrators, as we all have learned over the last twenty years, do not have to look like penises. Quite the contrary: they only became mainstream after their design had clearly moved away from naturalistic depictions of male genitalia. Transferring this knowledge to the field of robot sex, the obvious question we have to ask is: why should a sex robot look like a human? Today, photographs from the RealDoll factory show long rows of female dolls hanging from rails on metal hooks. It looks like a scene from a pornographic slaughterhouse, an image, perfectly adding to the dystopian fears of the adversaries of robot sex. Yet again, modelling bodies after male pornographic fantasies is not the only (and certainly not the best) way to design a sex robot. It is my hope that eventually producers will thoroughly reconsider their design options. Starting from the scratch, they might define what the robot shall be able to do (instead of what it shall be like). If, at the end of this process, form really follows function, the result will not look anything near to today’s sex robots. Not more, for sure, than today’s vibrators resemble their lifelike ancestors from the 20th century. The underlying technology itself is neither good nor bad. It is up to us to appropriate it and to explore its utopian potential for different nonmainstream sexual encounters between—among others—consenting humans and machines. 4. Conclusions The critique of sex robots and robot sex is characterized by rigorous uprightness, frequently combined with prudery, moral outrage, and sometimes all-too-hasty assumptions. Many of the arguments put forward against robot sex are logically unsound and can easily be interpreted contrary to the conclusions intended by their authors. If, for example, it is argued that treating robots as objects makes us more likely to objectify other humans, then one could just as convincingly reason that being 101 Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 224 able to show empathy with a machine should actually increase our empathy with our fellow human beings. In addition, if we claim that robot sex equals slavery or prostitution, we ultimately equip the robots with about just that minimal amount of ‘human-ness’ that robot sex’ critics see as a prerequisite for a truly loving relationship. On the other hand, sex robots are neither a one-size-fits-all cure for loneliness, nor are they designated sex teachers that, as Levy once had it, “will turn receptive students into virtuoso lovers” and wipe bad sex from the face of the earth (Levy 2007, p. 307). It is interesting to see how critics and advocates of sex robots share the same false ontological assumptions in assigning almost transcendental qualities to relational agents. In fact, sex robots may accomplish all of the above—but only as one emerging and everchanging side of the equation. Feminist new materialism has convincingly argued that what a thing ultimately ‘is,’ is how it evolves from concrete intra-actions. Accordingly, sex robots are neither inherently evil, nor do they necessarily add to the suppression of minorities or represent hegemonic masculinity at its worst. Critics are absolutely right when they attack the way the female body is stereotypically exaggerated in the dolls and machines that currently dominate the field of sex robotics. Here, some sort of counterbalancing action is indeed required. However, instead of just denouncing those design aberrations as expressions of toxic masculinity and refusing any further debate, a much more effective way to fight them would be to become actively involved in future design decisions. The sex robot industry, to this day, is almost exclusively male-dominated and characterized by a male gaze. Even in pornography, the number of women in decision-making positions is higher than in sex robotics (Lee 2017). It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that its products do not mirror the huge variability of sexual practices and desires that govern our everyday lives. The narrative of sex robots is just crossing from the realm of fiction into the material world. It is therefore all the more important for feminists and queer scholars not to refuse dialogue. It is about time to no longer leave the field to male engineers and their heteronormative fantasies but to become part of a concerted effort to explore “diffractive design” options (Bath 2014b) for sex robots from a gender-queer perspective. Instead of retreating into the growlery, lamenting the dystopian ‘pygmalionization’ of gender relations and sexual practices, we should strive for a sex-positive utopian future, playing an active role in the creation of post-gender pleasure robots and doing our part in changing the narratives about sex, love, and robots. Funding: This research received no external funding. 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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 105 MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel Switzerland Tel. +41 61 683 77 34 Fax +41 61 302 89 18 www.mdpi.com Social Sciences Editorial Office E-mail: socsci@mdpi.com www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel Switzerland Tel: +41 61 683 77 34 Fax: +41 61 302 89 18 www.mdpi.com ISBN 978-3-03921-809-7 Blank Page Feminist New Materialisms.pdf Blank Page work_5va3k4tvxvcljjob2gw32u65jy ---- Jeremy C. Pope: American Family Survey Summary Report 2018 Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities and Challenges Christopher F. Karpowitz & Jeremy C. Pope Co-Directors of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy Project Committee: Doug Wilks (Editor, Deseret News), Christopher F. Karpowitz, Allison Pond (Indepen- dent Project Manager), Jeremy C. Pope, and Jesse Hyde (InDepth Editor, Deseret News)1 We thank Megan Davis (whose help in drafting the report was invaluable), Jacquelyn Asto, Dani Hogan, and Margaret Jarvis for excellent research assistance. In July of 2018, the Deseret News and The Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University fielded a survey on the family in America. This survey was administered by YouGov2 to a sample of 3,000 adult respondents whose characteristics mirror those of the general population. This report details the raw results of that survey and some of the key demographic breakdowns. Download the survey report at http://deseretnews.com/american-family-survey. The overall margin of error for the survey is ±1.9 %. 1We are deeply grateful for the efforts and advice of our advisory committee, Karlyn Bowman (American Enterprise Institute), Marcy Carlson (University of Wisconsin), Sara McLanahan (Princeton University), Richard Reeves (The Brookings Institution), and Brad Wilcox (The University of Virginia). They provided substantial advice and comment that dramatically improved the survey and the report. Errors, of course, are our own. 2Please see section 9 on methodology (below) for a statement about the specific protocols for this survey. http://deseretnews.com/american-family-survey American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 2 Contents 1 Project Overview & Summary 4 2 The State of Marriage and Family 8 2.1 The General State of Marriages and Attitudes about Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2 Relationship Status and Trump Approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.3 Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.4 Family Relationships and Parenting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.4.1 Evaluations of American Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.4.2 Important Issues Facing American Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.4.3 The Financial Stresses Facing American Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.4.4 Money and the Decision to Have Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2.4.5 Family Crises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.4.6 Family Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2.4.7 Parental Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3 American Views on the Ideal Marriage and Family 29 3.1 Shared Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 3.2 Fulfilling Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 3.3 Becoming an Adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4 Parents and Teenagers 35 4.1 Teens and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 4.2 What Worries Parents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 5 Sexual Harassment 40 6 Social Capital and Support Networks 50 American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 3 7 Family and Public Policy 51 7.1 National Government Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 7.2 Local Government Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 7.3 Personal Experience and Support for Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 7.4 Family Experience and Tax Cuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 7.5 Family Background and Support for Planned Parenthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 8 Conclusions 63 9 Appendix: Statement on Methodology 64 10 Appendix: Topline Report 64 American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 4 1 Project Overview & Summary The American Family Survey, now in its fourth year, is designed to understand the experiences of Amer- icans in their relationships, marriages, and families and how those experiences relate to a variety of dif- ferent political and social issues. In addition to examining trends in responses to core questions that have been asked repeatedly, the 2018 survey expands to include new areas of inquiry, including how Americans think about family formation, attitudes about fertility and children, concerns of parents of teenagers, and views about sexual harassment, consent, and the #MeToo movement. One of the key new questions explores how a person’s identity relates to their family life. We find that people place much more importance on their identity as a parent or partner than other identities, such as their religion, political party, or career. This identity does not seem to have a large direct effect on family practices or activities. But those who are more committed to an identity as a parent or as a spouse are definitely more optimistic about their families. Another theme emerging from the 2018 findings is anxiety about the cost of raising a family. These costs stand out as one of the top issues facing families today, and half of Americans say the cost of raising a family is not affordable for most people. Those without children rate the cost of raising a child as a significant factor in their decision about whether or not to have children. Most people with children at home say they worry about their ability to pay at least one bill, and nearly half have faced some kind of economic crisis during the past 12 months. We also used the 2018 American Family Survey as an opportunity to examine attitudes about sexual harassment and consent, and found that men and women think differently about these topics, with men less likely to describe behaviors such as asking for sexual favors or persisting in unwanted attention as "always" harassment. Men are also less likely to define certain behaviors as harassment when asked about a woman doing it to a man rather than a man doing it to a woman. Women are also more insistent on the importance of verbal consent in intimate relationships than are men. With regard to core questions about the state of marriage and family in America, we find substantial continuity with the previous iterations of the American Family Survey. On many core items we find little to no change at all. Survey respondents continue to have positive views of their own relationships and families, though they are far less optimistic about the state of marriage and families generally. In the past, we have found that families across many demographic and ideological groups participate in family activities at similar rates, though attitudes about marriage and family may differ by demographic group. This year’s survey also finds that groups of Americans differ in what they describe as the ideal sequence to have sex, cohabit, marry, and have children, but the actual sequence in which people live out in their own lives is more similar across groups. It also builds on previous findings about the impact of screens on families, with overuse of technology surfacing as one of the top issues facing teens today. Families face many opportunities at this time, and in some ways we see more optimism about people’s personal relationships alongside continued pessimism about the state of marriage more generally. But it is also a time of significant challenges, whether they be economic or otherwise. Below are some highlights from this year’s survey. Views on Marriage & Family The institution of marriage is supported by a majority of Americans—especially the notion that marriage is good for families and children: 64 percent believe it makes them better off financially American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 5 and 59 percent believe the institution is necessary to create strong families. Few people believe that marriage is a burden or out of date. Attitudes about whether or not being legally married is as important as personal commitment to a partner are mixed, but 44 percent believe that being legally married is not as important as personal commitment. People who approve of Donald Trump are more likely than other Americans to be married, but Trump supporters can be found across all relationship types. A surprising finding is that Donald Trump’s support is driven not simply by education, but fairly strongly by marital status. Fifty percent of married men with a college degree and 59 percent of married men without a college degree held a favorable view of Trump, much higher than the unmarried men with a college degree (36 percent) or the unmarried men without a college degree (40 percent). Americans say being a parent and being a spouse or partner are the most important identities to them—more important than religion, race, political party, career, or community. About seven in ten of parents or married persons claim the identity is very or extremely important, compared with only 43 percent for religion and 37 percent for career. Black and Hispanic Americans place an even higher premium on their parental and spousal identities than do white Americans. People with a strong parental identity are more likely to undertake key family activities like eating dinner together or doing household chores together. Overall, Americans appear to be growing less concerned about cultural issues, such as substance abuse and sexual permissiveness. The percentage of respondents saying these types of issues are among the biggest problems facing families has dropped fifteen percentage points since 2015. How- ever, Republicans are still concerned about cultural issues far more than are Democrats or indepen- dents. At the same time, concern about financial stresses has increased, and is concentrated among people with children still at home. When it comes to the prerequisites for having a child, most Americans believe that three things matter: being financially stable, being in a committed relationship (but not necessarily being mar- ried), and having good health insurance. For young people who do not currently have children, the single largest consideration is the cost of raising a child, although relationship status also matters. There is a clear difference between the ideal ordering and the actual ordering of key relationship milestones including sex, cohabitation, getting married, and having children. Republicans and black Democrats favor a more traditional sequence (marriage before sex and cohabitation) than white Democrats, who prefer cohabitation and marriage after sex. But those who prefer a more tra- ditional sequence as their ideal do not tend to realize this in their actual lives. The lived experience of these three groups is similar, with sex typically coming before cohabitation and marriage. Americans believe that it is important for married couples to share similar beliefs about raising children and social values (such as honesty or hard work). They are less concerned about spouses having the same religious beliefs, education level, or political party. Americans tend to emphasize financial milestones — being financially independent from parents, moving our of parents’ home, and being capable of supporting a family — as the key markers of adulthood. These conclusions are gendered, however. More Americans see them as important to “becoming a man” than to “becoming a woman.” In addition, generational differences also matter for these assessments. Compared to younger respondents, older Americans see much larger differences between what it means to become a man and what it means to become a woman. Parents & Teenagers According to parents of teenagers, overuse of technology is one of the most important issues fac- ing teens today. Technology concerns are cited by a majority of parents (53 percent), and this is followed closely by bullying (chosen by 45 percent of parents), but most other issues like drugs, alcohol, pressure to get good grades, and navigating sexual identity (among others) are all of far less widespread concern. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 6 Republican parents are most concerned about overuse of technology. In contrast, Democrats and independents are more concerned about bullying. Republicans are also dramatically more con- cerned about the role of family breakdown and divorce in the lives of teenagers than are other respondents. Parents estimated that their teenage sons spent a little more than 24 hours a week playing video games, while parents of teenage girls estimated that their teenage girls spent a little less than 24 hours a week on social media. A little over one-third of parents say that they are extremely concerned about their teenager’s social life, school trouble and grades, while a quarter of parents are similarly concerned about anxiety and depression. Sexual Harassment & Consent Nearly six in ten women say they have experienced unwanted sexual advances. For men, the comparable number is far lower: less than three in ten. There is also a distinct difference between the views of men and women on which behaviors count as sexual harassment in work settings. Women have higher standards; men have lower standards on average. For example, 7 in 10 women say that “asking for sexual favors” constitutes sexual ha- rassment, compared to about half of men. Most men and women say that “persisting in unwanted attention” counts as sexual harassment, but even there, we find a gender gap (77 percent of women vs. 62 percent of men). The specific nature of the action also matters for assessments of sexual harassment. In work settings, both men and women are less likely to view placing a hand on someone else’s back, making sexual jokes, or commenting on appearance as forms of sexual harassment, but even with respect to those behaviors, there are gender differences in standards. But there is another pattern of gender differences in whether conduct is perceived as harassment. We asked half of our sample about men taking certain actions towards women and the other half about women taking the same action towards men. Respondents are more likely to see many actions as sexual harassment when done by men. For example, about 6 in 10 men and nearly 8 in 10 women think that asking for sexual favors counts as sexual harassment when a man behaves this way toward a woman, but those numbers drop to 4 in 10 men and a little less than 7 in 10 women when we asked about women making the request of a man. Both men and women have this double standard, although men are a little more inconsistent in their standards than are women. People believe strongly in the need for consent. In the cases of intimate touching or having sex, large majorities believe the consent must be verbal, while for kissing or hand-holding it can be nonverbal. Women, in particular, emphasize the need for consent. Politics and Policy Relationship and family experiences can be powerful predictors of people’s attitudes about local policies, in contrast to some of the partisan distinctions that persist on national issues. For instance, single people and people without children are much more likely to favor spending local tax dollars on roads as opposed to schools. Similarly, single people and those without children favor public transportation over spending money on pensions. On the topic of immigration, most Americans agree that citizens should be able to bring non-citizen children, spouses, and parents to this country, though there are predictable partisan differences, and Democrats favor giving the opportunity to siblings and grandparents as well. Majorities of both parties oppose extending the circle to other extended family members. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 7 Americans’ own family experiences shape these attitudes, too. For instance, married people with children are relatively more favorable to bringing children and spouses to the country, while single people are relatively more favorable to bringing extended family members. Regarding migrant families that cross the border without a visa and request asylum, more than 8 in 10 Americans favor keeping parents and children together. Among those who feel this way, a plurality believe such families should be allowed into the country subject to an asylum hearing, although a little over a third believe they should be held together in detention facilities. Sixty-eight percent of Americans think the recent tax cuts will help large corporations and 63 percent think they will help wealthy individuals. By contrast, 37 percent of Americans think that the tax cuts will help low-income individuals and only 35 percent believe they will help their own families. Women are the group that stands out as the least likely to favor the tax cuts: only three in ten women believe they will help their family. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 8 2 The State of Marriage and Family We begin with an overview of the state of marriage among the 3,000 respondents to the 2018 survey. Table 1 provides a summary of the current relationship status of the respondents.3 A little less than half of the sample is currently married, and a little over one third is not currently in a relationship. The remaining respondents report being in a committed relationship, and among that group around two-thirds are cohabiting. While these findings are nearly identical to the results found in previous years, there are distinct differences between demographic groups that are important to explain. Table 1: Current Relationship Status Married Cohabiting In Relationship No Relationship Overall 47 11 6 35 Democrat 42 13 8 37 Independent 38 14 6 41 Republican 59 7 5 29 18-29 19 16 12 52 30-44 47 14 6 33 45-54 56 11 6 27 55-64 57 9 5 29 65+ 62 4 2 32 High School or Less 42 12 6 39 Some College 43 11 7 39 College Graduate or More 59 9 6 26 Low Income (under $40,000) 31 14 8 47 Middle Income ($40-79,999) 56 11 6 28 High Income (above $80,000) 58 8 5 29 White 52 10 6 33 Black 31 13 9 48 Hispanic 42 15 8 35 Asian 53 6 8 32 Republicans are more likely to be married than are Democrats, and both groups are more likely to be married than independents. Because discerning causality is difficult in these contexts, these patterns may be tied to other demographic characteristics, as Republicans tend to be slightly older than Democrats, who tend to be slightly older than independents (the average age of each group differs about five years from the next). Younger respondents are less likely to be in any relationship, while older respondents are consistently more likely to be in a relationship—more than six in ten respondents over age 65 are married. Education and income are also correlated with relationship status. Those who have a college degree (or even more education) are significantly more likely to be married than those with less than a college degree. 3Throughout, we provide numbers in both table and figure formats, but caution the reader that figures are meant to display the pattern of relative results rather than than any particular level. For ease of presentation we have omitted confidence intervals for these numbers, but they vary widely depending upon the sample discussed. Occasionally they are quite small (the overall sample is 3,000), but occasionally they are much larger when a very small sub-group is analyzed. We encourage the reader to contact the authors or download datasets to better understand the data patterns. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 9 Similarly, those with a high income ($80,000 or above) are slightly more likely to be married than middle- income respondents. But the median member of both groups is married, while among those with an income of less than $40,000, only three in ten respondents are likely to be married. And it is not about the marriage contract: those who have a low income are not cohabiting at higher rates, but rather are not in any relationship at all. Except among the youngest respondents, this finding remains after controlling for age. Of course, those people who are cohabiting or married are likely to have a higher household income simply because there are two potential wage earners, but the economic differences are still important to note. 62 28 10 17 4 9 23 46 76 33 8 14 3 11 12 42 75 34 8 12 3 6 14 48 30-44 45-54 55-64 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 Married Cohabiting In a Relationship Not in a Relationship Percentage R el at io ns hi p St at us Income < $40,000 > $80,000 Relationship Status by Income Figure 1: Relationship status by age and income While we have made special mention of the correlation between income and marital status, a lot of other patterns are similar to results from previous years. Among the respondents who had been married at least once, the average age at first marriage was a little over 24 (women typically marry at 23, men typically marry at 26). Cohabitation patterns remain similar. About 43 percent of all respondents (and 40 percent of married respondents) reported that they had cohabited at least once prior to marriage, but this is strongly related to age. Of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29, 33 percent reported cohabiting prior to marriage; a little over half of respondents between age 30 and 64 report cohabiting, and for those aged 65 or older this number drops back down to 30 percent. On average, respondents were 23 when they first lived with a romantic partner, and this also differs by age. Of those between the ages of 18 and 29, the average age when they first lived with a romantic partner is 20. This number steadily increases, with those age 65 and older first reporting cohabitation at 26. Just over a quarter of the sample has experienced divorce at some point in their life. Of the respondents that had been married for at least two years, 24 percent reported that at some point in the last two years they thought their relationship was “in trouble.” Among cohabiters who had been together for at least two years, nearly half indicated that they thought their relationship was in trouble at some point in the last two years. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 10 Table 2: Relationship Troubles by Demographics Percent that thought their relationship was in trouble All 32 Women 35 Men 28 Mother continuously married 30 Mother ever divorced 36 Mother never married 38 Liberal 34 Moderate 35 Conservative 25 High School or less 32 Some College 34 College or more 29 Low income 39 Middle Income 31 High Income 27 18-29 44 30-44 43 45-54 33 55-64 25 65+ 14 Less than 10 years together 44 10-29 years together 32 30-49 years together 13 50+ years together 9 Women were more likely to believe that their relationship was in trouble than were men. The other traditional demographic category that saw a substantial difference was income, where the low-income respondents were about 12 percent more likely to see their relationship this way. A variable we have previously found important was a mother’s marital status, and that remains true this year. Finally, we note that the length of time a respondent had been married or in a relationship with their current partner was highly correlated with whether they thought their relationship was in trouble—those with longer relationships were much less likely to believe that their relationship was in trouble. This latter point is also strongly conflated by age, and younger respondents are definitely more anxious about their relationships. For those under age 45, more than four in ten had recently worried about their relationship. Among older groups the numbers are much lower. Many aspects of American family life have remained consistent over the last four years. Around half of the sample is married, and the average age of marriage is 24, as it was in past surveys. Americans generally have only one cohabitation before marriage. Americans tend to first become a parent at age 25. The one American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 11 exception to this pattern of continuity is the number of children. In the 2015 American Family Survey, the average number of kids was 1.8. This has steadily decreased to 1.6. Admittedly, this may not seem like a large difference, but in the area of fertility it is noticeable. If the pattern continues, the results will be quite substantial and will reflect a major change in American family life. 2.1 The General State of Marriages and Attitudes about Marriage Respondents to the American Family Survey express largely positive views of their own marriage. For the first time in the survey, over half of the sample felt that their marriage was stronger than two years ago, and another 40 percent said that they were generally the same. These numbers represent the hint of an upward trend in evaluations, but are probably best interpreted as stability (see Figure 2). A very small percentage said that their marriage was weaker. This is the same pattern we saw in the previous three years of the survey. 8 6 7 6 44 42 42 40 46 50 49 52 40 39 37 37 40 42 41 41 8 7 8 6 Your Marriage Marriages Generally 2015 2016 2017 2018 2015 2016 2017 2018 0 25 50 75 100 Year Pe rc en ta ge Status Weaker About the Same Stronger Evaluations of Marriage Figure 2: Respondent views of marriages, both their own and of others. This pattern is almost exactly reversed when asked about marriages generally in the United States. When respondents turned their attention to marriages generally, only six percent believed that marriages had gotten stronger in the last two years. Thus, Americans appear to be fairly optimistic about the health of their own romantic relationships, but dramatically more pessimistic about the health of marriages generally. This pattern has held essentially constant over all four years of the American Family Survey. This pattern has no relationship to partisan identity, as around half of respondents in all partisan categories feel this way about their own marriages. The pattern for seeing weakness in other marriages is also broadly similar, though there is a small partisan gap here: 32 percent of Democrat affiliates claim that marriages generally are weaker, while 43 percent of Republicans claim the same. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 12 Finally, we turn to a battery of questions we have consistently studied on people’s beliefs about the importance of marriage. In each iteration of the American Family Survey, we have asked respondents to consider a number of statements about the institution of marriage, questions about how it strengthens families, provides financially, or is a burden, and so forth. Each of the questions is in reference to marriages generally and not an individual’s personal marriage. The trend is displayed in Figure 3. 62 60 52 47 1312 61 65 53 44 1413 63 66 56 50 15 17 59 64 53 44 1414 25 50 75 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year Pe rc en ta ge Statement Needed in order to create strong families Makes families and children better off financially When more people are married, society is better off Being legally married is not as important as personal commitment More of a burden than a benefit Old-fashioned and out-of-date Beliefs about Marriage Figure 3: Respondent beliefs about the importance of marriage. Two statements stand out as being agreed to by large majorities: that marriages make families and children better off financially and that it is needed to create strong families. Though a majority still agrees with the idea that when more people are married society is better off, it is not a large majority. The more controversial idea is that personal commitment is more important than being legally married. This is the number that has moved around the most in the series, but, generally, a little less than half of the sample agrees with this idea, suggesting that personal commitment is a very powerful value for a large number of people. The notions that marriage is more of a burden than a benefit or that it is old-fashioned and out-of-date are consistently not popular. Only about one in seven respondents agrees with these ideas. On balance, we take these results to suggest that the public tends to feel quite positively toward marriage, even those who are not married. They suggest a pattern where, while people are reluctant to judge people’s life choices, they do agree that marriage is a positive institution and that, in general, it makes families and society better off. These results strengthen if we look only at the married. For instance, while 35 percent of the married respondents believe that being legally married is not as important as personal commitment, the number rises to 46 percent when looking at those in no relationship. Those cohabiting (a relatively small slice of the sample) are the group most likely to agree with this statement: 69 percent agree. There are some ideological differences, at least as far as self-labelled ideology goes. Conservatives tend to like marriage more. Liberals are less convinced that it is necessary. Only 35 percent of liberals believe it is needed to create strong families, and only 32 percent believe that it benefits society. But, even among this group less positively disposed toward marriage, only 15 percent believe that marriage is more American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 13 of a burden than a benefit and only 23 percent believe that the institution is old-fashioned and out-of-date. It is fashionable in some quarters to argue that marriage is under assault. And while we agree that it is an institution that is in some respects weaker than it once was, that is not because people dislike the institution. On the whole they like it, though the meaning of that institution varies across the population. 2.2 Relationship Status and Trump Approval In the last AFS we examined the relationship between family status and Trump support and found indi- cations of a relationship between marriage and reported vote.4 This year remains broadly similar. Table 3 displays Trump approval by relationship status. Table 3: Percentage approving of President Trump by category All Respondents Republican Respondents Relationship Status Trump Approvers Non-Trump Approvers Trump Approvers Non-Trump Approvers Married 48 52 86 14 Cohabiting 29 71 71 29 In a Relationship 36 64 84 16 Not in a Relationship 35 65 86 14 It is obvious that Trump’s core group are those that are married. This is the only group that approaches approval of Trump (though even this group is best described as “split”). Those in other relationship statuses all disapprove of Trump at super-majority levels. The final two columns look at Trump approval among Republicans.5 Among Republicans, Trump’s status is so high that only the cohabiting Republicans (not a large group) approve of Trump less than eight times out of ten. And even the cohabiters approve of Trump 71 percent of the time. It seems generally true that Republicans of all stripes—regardless of family status—have broadly made their peace with Trump. While many outlets have highlighted the importance of gender and education to Trump support, rela- tively few note how important marriage is, especially among men. Table 4 shows the importance of this relationship. The only group that approves of President Trump at 50 percent or greater is married men— regardless of education level. All other groups are at least under 50 percent in their level of approval (some quite a bit). While education is obviously important for predicting Trump approval, marriage should not be understated. Table 4: Trump Approval by Gender, Marital Status and Education Men Women Married Unmarried Married Unmarried College Degree 50 36 35 25 No College Degree 59 40 46 31 4In 2017, 59 percent of the Trump voters reported being married, while only 48 percent of Clinton voters reported being married. 5There were not enough Trump approving Democrats to examine the split in that group. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 14 2.3 Identity This year’s report includes a series of identity questions. The specific wording used was, “How important are the following things to your personal identity?” Figure 4 shows the popularity of each item we asked about. The first thing to notice is that relationships and parenting are very important (though it should be noted that we only asked this question of people who were in a relationship or had children). Other identities are simply less popular. Religion and career are also somewhat popular, with race, political party, and community less so. 70 71 43 29 28 37 30 0 25 50 75 100 Spouse Parent Religion Race Political Party Career or Job Community Pe rc en ta ge S ay in g `E xt re m el y' o r 'V er y' Im po rt an t Identity Commitment Figure 4: Respondent identities We introduce it here to both explain the variable (we will mostly be focusing on the spouse and parent identities below), but also to note that one surprising finding (at least to us) was the racial difference by identity. Figure 5 displays the percentage who selected the topmost category for parent, spouse, and then (for purposes of comparison) race. The clear result is that both blacks and Hispanics respond that their parental and spousal identities are “extremely” important to them, and at higher rates than whites. It is important to remember that white respondents are still choosing spousal and parental identities as their most important identities, it is just that blacks and Hispanics see those identities as somewhat more important. In the case of black respondents, the importance of spousal and parental identities are equal to or more important than their racial identity. We offer no strong theoretical reason for that here, although it could be due to the importance of passing along a cultural heritage, the need to protect children or family relationships, or some other factor we cannot guess. So, the proportion of people who value an identity clearly shows that parental and spousal identities are quite important, and that these latter identities appear to be more important to blacks and Hispanics than they are to whites. Another way of showing this is displayed in Table 5, which provides further analysis of American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 15 4546 37 52 61 42 18 46 9 0 25 50 75 100 Spouse Identity Parent Identity Race Identity Pe rc en ta ge S ay in g `E xt re m el y Im po rt an t' Respondent White Black Hispanic Spouse and Parent Identity by Race Figure 5: Respondent identities by race people’s identities in this survey. There, the raw number of identities claimed by respondents are shown, and the differences are instructive. White respondents are consistently below average in the number of identities that they claim relative to the other racial groups. This is true whether or not we examine the global average or simply look at the claimed identities without race included (it seems plausible, and, indeed, the data bear out the claim that whites tend not to see their race as an important identity while members of minority groups do see their race as an important identity). Another group that stands out are atheists. They have more than a half point fewer identities than do the other religious groups, and this is true even when we omit religion from that category. All of this analysis should come with a significant caveat. Though we asked about several different identities, we make no claim that this list is exhaustive or complete. People take their identities from many different sources, so this information should not be read to mean that atheists or whites lack an identity, merely that the identities that we chose to ask about did not appeal to them. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 16 Table 5: The raw number of identities people believed were important to them Overall Average Average Dropping Race Average Dropping Religion Overall 3.9 3.5 3.3 Group White 3.7 3.4 3.1 Black 4.8 4.0 4.0 Hispanic 4.2 3.6 3.5 Religion Protestant 4.2 3.9 3.4 Roman-Catholic 3.9 3.5 3.4 Atheist 2.9 2.7 2.8 2.4 Family Relationships and Parenting Around 60 percent of the sample reported having at least one child.6 Among the respondents who are married, 85 percent have at least one child. Among cohabiters, 54 percent report having a child. The average number of children in this year’s sample is 1.6. However, when limiting the sample to those who have at least one child, this number jumps to 2.6. While there is a large group of Americans who do not have any children (around 40 percent of 2018 American Family Survey respondents), those who do have children tend to have two or three. Among married respondents to the survey, two-thirds have two or more children (see Table 6).7 Among cohabiters, more than half have at least one child. By contrast, two- thirds of respondents who are single or who are in a committed relationship but not yet living together have no children. Of respondents who have children, the average age when they became parents was 25: 24 for women and 26 for men. Table 6: Number of Children All Married Cohabiting In Relationship No Relationship 0 40 15 46 67 67 1 14 18 15 9 9 2 21 30 18 10 12 3 14 20 13 8 7 4+ 12 17 8 6 5 Though most people who are married also have kids, the experience of raising children outside of marriage is common: approximately one-quarter of the sample reported having a child out of wedlock, and 40 percent of the women in the sample who have children are not currently married. When we restrict the findings to women who currently have a child living with them at home, less than 60 percent are married, and of those unmarried women, just over one quarter are cohabiting with their partners. The experience of raising children outside of marriage is especially common among younger women. Of women between the ages of 18 and 29 with a child at home, less than half are married and more than one quarter are cohabiting, compared to women between 30 and 44, where nearly two-thirds are married and about 15 percent are cohabiting. 6These numbers include biological, step-children, or adopted children. They do not include foster children or other unique situations, such as grandparents who are raising their grandchildren. 7In this table, the "In Relationship" category includes those who are in a committed relationship but are not cohabiting or married. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 17 The relationship between marital status and parenting also differs across income categories. As shown in Figure 6, respondents in the lowest income category (respondents with household incomes of less than $40,000) were dramatically less likely to be married and substantially more likely to be cohabiting or in no relationship at all than middle- ($40,000-$80,000) or high-income (above $80,000) participants in the survey. Put differently, the experience of raising children outside of marriage — sometimes with a cohabiting partner, but much more often with no partner at all — is much more common among the poorest Americans. Wealthier Americans, by contrast, tend to raise their children within the context of marriage. This pattern can be seen among fathers and mothers, though among fathers, we see a difference between middle- and high-income respondents that is not as pronounced among mothers. For low-income mothers, raising a child on their own is almost as prevalent as raising a child with the help of a married spouse. 87 77 56 5 7 16 2 4 6 6 13 22 74 70 41 6 9 17 2 3 5 1818 37 Fathers Mothers Married Cohabiting In Relationship No Relationship Married Cohabiting In Relationship No Relationship 0 25 50 75 100 Relationship Status Pe rc en t o f I nc o m e C at eg o ry Low Income (<$40K) Middle Income ($40-80K) High Income (>$80K) Income and Parents' Relationship Status Figure 6: Parents’ Relationship Status by Income Of course, as we pointed out above, people in relationships are likely to have higher household incomes because there are two partners who can be wage earners, but the patterns in Figure 6 are noteworthy for precisely that reason. Raising children in the context of a stable relationship also increases the likelihood that those children will be in a home with a higher income, one where parents can meet the costs associated with raising a child. In addition, among the set of parents that reported being married or cohabiting, high- income respondents were more likely than low-income respondents to choose marriage over cohabitation, though marriage was the preferred choice for all income groups. This year, we also looked more closely at those who had foster children or other children living in their home, and we found that these family arrangements are less common. Around one in ten respondents reported having children living in their home that were not biological, adopted, or step-children. Two percent of the respondents indicated that they had a grandchild living with them. Only one percent (29 total) respondents reported foster children currently living in their home. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 18 2.4.1 Evaluations of American Families Just as we did with marital relationships, we also asked respondents to evaluate the strength of both their own family and families in the United States more generally compared to two years ago. Similar to the results for marriage, respondents of the 2018 American Family Survey were much more optimistic about their own family compared to families generally. When speaking about their own marriage, around 85 percent said that their family relationships were about the same or stronger than they were two years ago, with one-third saying they were stronger. Turning to families generally, one-third said that they were weaker than two years ago, and around half believed they were about the same. When we compare this year’s results to those from previous years, the clear pattern is stability (Figure 7). Over the past four years, respondents’ views of their own families and of American families generally have not changed. 11 10 11 11 53 55 54 52 34 32 30 33 36 34 32 33 44 45 46 46 8 7 8 7 Your Family Families Generally 2015 2016 2017 2018 2015 2016 2017 2018 0 25 50 75 100 Year Pe rc en ta ge Status Weaker About the Same Stronger Evaluations of Families Figure 7: Respondent views of families, both their own and of others. 2.4.2 Important Issues Facing American Families What challenges and issues are American families currently facing? As we have done in previous iterations of the survey, we asked 2018 respondents to indicate the “most important issues” facing families today from a curated list of 12 items. They were asked to select up to three items, which were randomly displayed and were not grouped by topics as they are here. The answers for 2018, along with the percentage change since our first American Family Survey in 2015, are displayed in Table 7. In previous years of the American Family Survey, the most common issue chosen by respondents has been “parents not teaching or disciplining their children sufficiently,” and this pattern continued in 2018 (though the overall percentage choosing this item declined slightly compared to 2015). Apparently, Amer- icans worry a great deal about other parents’ ability to discipline their children. However, meaningful percentages also express concern about economic challenges, such as the costs associated with raising a family or high work demands and stress on parents. Similarly, a little less than one-third of respon- American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 19 Table 7: The Most Important Issues Facing Families % Selecting Change from 2015 Economics 59 +8 The costs associated with raising a family 35 +9 High work demands and stress on parents 29 +7 The lack of good jobs 17 -2 Lack of government programs to support families 13 +5 Culture 53 -15 Decline in religious faith and church attendance 24 +1 The widespread availability and use of drugs and alcohol 18 -9 Sexual permissiveness in our society 17 -8 Crime and other threats to personal safety 10 -9 Family Structure and Stability 79 -1 Parents not teaching or disciplining their children sufficiently 49 -4 More children growing up in single-parent homes 31 +6 Difficulty finding quality time with family in the digital age 23 +2 Change in the definition of marriage and family 16 0 Percentage choosing each item as one of their top three issues. Bolded numbers show percentage choosing at least one item from the relevant category as one of their top three issues. dents worry about children growing up in single-parent homes and just under one-quarter of respondents express concerns about finding quality family time amid digital distractions. 51 68 80 59 61 79 61 51 79 59 53 79 0 25 50 75 100 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year Pe rc en ta ge Category Culture Economics Family Structure Most Important Issues Facing Families Figure 8: Changing concerns about the issues facing American families. When we examine patterns across time, we find stability in the “Family Structure and Stability” category, American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 20 though this is driven in part by the responses to the discipline item (Figure 8). Within this category, we do see some signs of increased concern about children being raised in single-parent homes (a six-point increase since 2015). More substantial changes have occurred in the other two categories. Over time, respondents have become less concerned with the issues listed in the “Culture” category: compared to 2015, the percentage of respondents choosing at least one item from this category has dropped by 15 percentage points. There are significant declines in the percentage of respondents expressing concern about societal sexual permissiveness (an eight-point drop since 2015), the availability of drugs and alcohol (a nine-point drop), and crime (a nine-point decline). Conversely, there has been an eight-point increase since 2015 in the percentage of respondents choosing the “Economics” category. These differences have been driven by increasing concern about high work demands and stress on parents (a seven-point increase since 2015), lack of government programs to sup- port families (five-point increase), and especially the costs associated with raising a family (nine-point change), which is now the second-most commonly chosen item on our curated list. Notably, given the economic recovery over the last several years, there has been a slight decline since 2015 in the percentage of respondents expressing concern about the lack of good jobs. The increasing concern Americans feel about economics is not that parents cannot find good jobs; it is, instead, the demands in both time and money associated with raising children and supporting a family. Consistent with this result, we asked elsewhere in the survey whether the cost of raising children is affordable for most people, and more than half of respondents told us that it was not, regardless of their own income status. Similar to previous years, we find meaningful age and partisan differences in perceptions of the most important problems. Younger respondents were more likely to identify economic concerns as being the most important issue (65 percent of those under 30 selected at least one economic item, while only 45 percent of those 65 or older selected at least one economic concern). For the cultural items, this pattern was reversed. Only 45 percent of respondents under 30 selected a cultural issue compared to 70 percent of respondents 65 or older. Older respondents are also more likely to choose items in the "Family Structure and Stability" category (86 percent of those 65 or older), though younger respondents are also most likely to choose an item in this category (73 percent of those under 30). These patterns are even more striking when we look at results by self-reported partisan identity (Figure 9). Democrats were the most likely to select an economic issue, with nearly 80 percent of them selecting at least one. In contrast, only about one-third of Republicans chose one or more economic issues, with independents between the partisans.8 Republicans were much more likely to choose a cultural item compared to other partisans (72 percent of Republicans vs. 39 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of independents). Similarly, while nine out of ten Republicans and eight out of ten independents selected at least one family structure or stability issue, two-thirds of Democrats did. 2.4.3 The Financial Stresses Facing American Families Given the increasing concern we have seen among Americans about the high cost of raising children, this year we also asked respondents to tell us a little more about their financial worries. Specifically, we asked whether respondents were worried about paying any potential financial bills from a list we provided. This question asked respondents to report their worries about whether they can meet each of these monthly obligations, not whether the absolute cost of each item was high or low. Table 8 shows that respondents with children at home expressed substantially more concern about meeting their financial obligations than those who are not raising children. With respect to every bill on the list, larger percentages of respondents with children at home said they worried about being able to pay their bills, compared to respondents with 8Democrats were also more likely than Republicans to tell us that the cost of raising children was not affordable for most people – nearly two-thirds of Democrats expressed that sentiment, compared to about 40 percent of Republicans. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 21 35 59 78 72 49 39 90 82 68 0 25 50 75 100 Economics Culture Family Structure Type of Issue Pe rc en ta ge Partisanship Democrats Independents Republicans Vote Choice and the Most Important Issues Facing Families Figure 9: Differences in concerns about issues facing American families by party. no children. Overall, nearly three-quarters of respondents with children at home said they worried about paying at least one of the monthly bills on the list, compared to just over half of those without children in the home. Clearly, the concern that Americans expressed about the costs of raising children can be seen in the everyday financial stresses of our respondents. Table 8: Concerns about Paying Bills Children At Home No Children At Home Utilities 34 23 Rent/Mortgage 33 25 Paying Credit Card Bills 33 26 Food 32 25 Health Insurance or Medical Bills 23 20 Transportation Expenses 20 15 Paying Back Loans 20 14 Clothes 17 11 Tuition or Educational Expenses 12 8 Childcare 7 1 Other 3 1 At Least One 73 56 Beyond self-reported stress about paying bills, we also asked respondents whether they had actually experienced several potential economic crises over the past 12 months. Again, we find that respondents with children at home faced greater economic difficulty than those without children (Table 9). Though American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 22 fewer respondents told us they had actually experienced these difficulties in the past year, as compared to the percentage of those who worried about paying monthly bills, these findings, too, show the financial challenges many American families face. More than one-quarter of respondents with children at home said they had failed to pay an important bill in the past year, twice as many as respondents who were not raising children. More than one in five respondents with children at home said they had borrowed money to pay bills, compared to 16 percent of those without children in the home. Overall, 44 percent of families with children said they had experienced a significant economic crisis in the past year, compared to 30 percent of those without children. Table 9: Economic Crises Children At Home No Children At Home Did not pay the full amount of an important bill 26 13 Borrowed money to help pay the bills 22 16 Needed to go to the doctor but could not because of cost 15 12 Hungry but did not eat because couldn’t afford food 14 10 Moved in with others because of financial problems 6 4 Were homeless, even for one night 4 2 At Least One 44 30 We included these same questions in every American Family Survey since 2016, and despite the improving economy, reports of economic challenge have changed little over the past three years. Across all survey respondents, regardless of the survey year, about four in ten told us they had experienced an economic crisis in the previous 12 months. Given the financial stresses reported by respondents to the American Family Survey, this year we also asked all respondents currently in a relationship if they expect their spouse or partner to work for pay. Because such expectations may differ by age, the analysis below is restricted to married or cohabiting respondents who are 60 years old or younger. Figure 10 presents the results. In every case, both men and women were more likely to expect their spouse to work for pay if they reported having children at home. More than eight in ten cohabiting women with children at home told us they expect their partners to work for pay, and among married women, the number increased to nearly nine in ten. These percentages are six to seven percentage points higher than the results among women without children at home. Nearly eight in ten cohabiting men with children at home reported that they expect their partner to work for pay, compared to just over six in ten married men with children at home. These numbers fall by eight to nine percentage points among male respondents without children at home. In other words, married men were significantly less likely than cohabiting men to expect their spouse to work for pay — though nearly two-thirds of married men still expected that their spouse would work. Overall, the results indicate that most men and women today expect that their partners will work for pay, and within each gender and relationship status category, those numbers are highest among respondents with children at home. We also asked our respondents how many hours they typically work for pay each week. Figure 11 presents the average number of hours worked, with results again restricted to respondents who are 60 years old or younger and who are either married or cohabiting. In interpreting the results, we caution that there is a great deal of variation across individuals. For example, the median number of hours worked for married or cohabiting men with children at home is 40, so we are wary of reading too much into the differences between cohabiting and married men. In addition (and unsurprisingly, given that working for pay increases income), respondents with higher incomes generally reported working more hours. This is true regardless of gender or whether the respondent had children at home. For example, low-income American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 23 77 83 71 79 82 89 54 63 Cohabiting Married Female Male Female Male 0 25 50 75 100 Respondent Gender Pe rc en ta ge Children at Home No Children at Home Spouse or Partner Work Expectations Figure 10: Percentage of married or cohabiting Americans (age 60 or less) expecting their spouse to work for pay. women with children at home reported working on average about 13 hours per week, compared to 16 hours for middle-income women and 26 hours for women with high incomes. Despite these differences, the basic patterns in Figure 11 are instructive. Women with children at home tend to work somewhat less than men, but both married and cohabiting women with children at home worked a little under 20 hours a week, on average. A different way of expressing these patterns is that about 47 percent of married women and 42 percent of cohabiting women with children at home worked at least 20 hours a week for pay. By contrast, about eight in ten married men and a little less than two-thirds of cohabiting men with children at home told us they work at least 20 hours a week. Among married and cohabiting respondents under 60 with children at home, a little less than 15 percent said that neither they nor their spouse works for pay at least 20 hours a week; about 38 percent reported that one spouse or partner works 20 hours a week or more and the other works less than 20 hours per week; additionally, nearly half told us that both partners work at least 20 hours per week. In other words, most men and women raising children with a spouse or partner are also shouldering significant work responsibilities. In addition, hours spent working for pay should also be contrasted with hours spent with sole responsi- bility for the care of their children. Married men (again under 60 and with a child at home) told us that on average, they are solely responsible for their children for about six hours per day. By contrast, women reported having sole responsibility for childcare for an average of about 12 hours per day. The numbers are slightly higher for cohabiting men — about eight hours per day — but this is, again, much lower than the 16 hours per day reported by women. Thus, among both married and cohabiting respondents, women American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 24 25 17 27 26 1919 31 34 Cohabiting Married Female Male Female Male 0 10 20 30 40 Respondent Gender A ve ra ge H o ur s W o rk ed Children at Home No Children at Home Average Hours Worked per Week Figure 11: Average self-reported hours worked per week (Americans age 60 or less). reported spending about twice as much time with sole responsibility for childcare than men. Even if we restrict the findings to men and women in relationships where both spouses work more than 20 hours per week, men report less than seven hours of sole responsibility for the children, compared to nearly 11 hours for women. Of course, these are self-reports, and are thus vulnerable to the possibility of over- and under-reporting, but even so, the results indicate clearly that women with children at home tend to feel a much greater childcare burden than do men, while still working about 20 hours per week (on average). Men tend to spend more time working for pay, but self-report considerably fewer hours with sole responsibility in caring for their children. 2.4.4 Money and the Decision to Have Children Financial concerns matter for decisions about having children. We asked all respondents to the survey to consider a list of potential “prerequisites” for having children and to indicate how important it is to complete each item before a person has children. Respondents could indicate whether each factor was “extremely important,” “somewhat important,” or “not important at all.” Figure 12 presents the percent- age of respondents choosing “extremely important.” The upper panel shows the results by respondent gender, and the lower panel shows the results by partisanship. Across all respondents, “being financially stable” is the prerequisite chosen most frequently as “extremely important.” As seen in Figure 12, financial stability ranks third among Republicans (behind being in American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 25 13 15 21 20 25 27 43 41 42 45 51 63 64 65 63 69 Travel Buy a House Graduate from College Get Married Established Career Good Health Insurance Committed Relationship Financially Stable 0 25 50 75 100 Percentage Choosing `Extremely Important' Men Women By Gender 10 14 17 19 25 19 22 23 30 66 34 27 42 41 46 53 49 64 77 59 57 63 62 71 Travel Buy a House Graduate from College Get Married Established Career Good Health Insurance Committed Relationship Financially Stable 0 25 50 75 100 Percentage Choosing `Extremely Important' Democrats Independents Republicans By Partisanship Figure 12: Prerequisites for having children by gender and partisanship. a committed relationship and getting married) and second among men (behind being in a committed relationship), but for all other sub-groups, financial stability is the most important consideration. When we analyze by household income, there are few differences between the poorest and richest respondents: financial stability is valued highly, no matter how much money the respondent makes. It is especially important for young respondents who are most likely to be in their childbearing years. Three quarters of people aged 18 to 29 and two-thirds of respondents between 30 and 44 told us that being financially stable is extremely important, compared to a little more than half of the oldest age cohort. It is clear that Americans count economic concerns as critical to the decision to become parents. In addition, we also asked men and women between the ages of 18 and 29 who do not currently have children (N = 871) what factors, apart from the physical ability to conceive, would be most important to them personally as they make decisions about having children in the future. We gave respondents a list of seven possible factors, and as with the previous question, they could indicate whether each factor was “extremely important,” “somewhat important,” or “not important at all.” Table 10 shows the percentage of respondents answering “extremely important” to each item. The reason most likely to be ranked as “extremely important” by both men and woman was “the cost of raising a child,” which was a consideration named by a majority of women and just under half of men. In the aggregate, respondents placed the greater weight on the cost of child-rearing than their current relationship status or even the desire to raise children. In addition, about one-third of respondents expressed significant worries about the difficulties of balancing family and career. Ranking comparatively lower in the decision to have children were age, family expectations, and religious beliefs. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 26 Table 10: Important Considerations in the Decision to Have Children All Men Women The cost of raising a child 50 48 53 My current relationship status 47 47 47 The desire to raise a child of my own 43 40 48 The difficulty of balancing family and career 34 33 35 The need to have a baby before I’m too old to parent 26 27 25 The expectations of my family 18 20 15 My religious or philosophical beliefs 18 18 18 Despite the financial stresses that families face and that prospective parents worry about, these data should not be interpreted to mean that parents with children at home generally dislike their choice to have children or find their lives unsatisfying. Elsewhere in the survey, we asked respondents to tell us how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement, “Raising children is one of life’s greatest joys.” Nearly 85 percent of respondents with children at home expressed agreement with the statement, compared to 65 percent of respondents who are not currently raising children. More than four in ten respondents with children expressed the strongest possible agreement with the statement, compared to only about one quarter of respondents without children. In response to a question we will discuss in greater detail below, approximately half of respondents with a child at home told us that having kids is “essential” to living a fulfilling life. And when asked how satisfied they are with their families, about 55 percent of respondents with children at home told us they were “completely satisfied,” compared to 43 percent of respondents with no children at home.9 Finally, among childless respondents between the ages of 18 and 49, about one quarter (22 percent of men and 32 percent of women) told us they did not want to have children, compared to four in ten (among both men and women) who said they definitely want to become parents.10 2.4.5 Family Crises In addition to financial concerns, many Americans experience family crises and other life-changing ex- periences. One of the new elements of the 2018 American Family Survey is an exploration of the family stressors people tend to face. We presented respondents with a list of major family experiences and asked if they had experienced any of them in the past year, displayed in Table 11. We found that a little less than one-third indicated that they had experienced some sort of family crisis. By far the most common experience was having an immediate family member die, with 18 percent of respondents saying this had happened within the last 12 months. Around one in ten said that they or their spouse had been laid off, and seven percent said they had an immediate family member arrested. Five percent or less indicated they had experienced fertility problems, been divorced or separated from their spouse or partner, or been deployed (or had an immediate family member deployed) for military service. Overall, these family stres- sors are somewhat less common than the economic stresses we discussed above (though, of course, being laid off certainly counts as an economic challenge). There are, however, some meaningful racial and ethnic differences in the experience of family stressors. Black and Hispanic respondents were more likely in this sample to report that an immediate family 9When we asked how satisfied Americans are with their lives generally, the differences between respondents with children at home and those without were more muted: 32 percent of respondents with children indicated they were “completely satisfied,” compared to 30 percent of respondents without children. 10The remaining one-third said they didn’t know or weren’t certain. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 27 Table 11: Family Stressors All White Black Hispanic Had an immediate family member die 18 16 25 20 Was laid off or spouse/partner laid off 9 8 12 11 Had an immediate family member arrested 7 6 12 9 Had fertility problems 5 5 5 6 Self or immediate family member deployed for military service 4 3 4 7 Divorced or separated 4 4 4 7 At Least One 31 28 38 35 member had died, and they were also more likely to report that they or their partner was laid off or that an immediate family member had been arrested in the past year. Hispanic respondents were also slightly more likely than white or black respondents to say that they or an immediate family member had been deployed for military service or that they had been divorced or separated recently. Overall, black respondents were about ten points more likely and Hispanic respondents about seven points more likely than whites to indicate a significant family stress in the past year. 2.4.6 Family Activities On a more positive note, we asked everyone who was married, cohabiting, or who had children to report how often they took part in various activities families might do together. As shown in Table 12, which presents the percentage of respondents reporting doing each of these activities weekly or more, the fre- quency of the activities varies widely and is difficult to capture in a single descriptive sentence. More than three-quarters of families report having dinner together weekly or more, with around half of them saying they do so daily. We also found that around three-quarters of families participate in activities together at home weekly or more, doing things such as watching a movie or playing games together. More than half do chores together regularly. More than half of the sample said they go out to movies, museums, or other such events at least a few times a year, and about the same percentage say they take time to attend the activities of another family member. Around one-third of families worship together weekly, but more than half said they do so yearly or less. While families do report having arguments, around 65 percent do so a few times a year or less. We found that family activities vary little by general demographics such as ideology, partisanship, vote choice, and whether or not you thought your marriage was in trouble.11 There are also no significant differences between those who experienced an economic crisis or a family crisis and those who did not. We found some mild racial and ethnic differences, with whites being more likely than blacks and Hispanics to say that they eat dinner together as a family at least weekly (81 percent vs. 66 percent for blacks and 74 percent for Hispanics). Hispanics were the most likely (21 percent, compared to 16 percent for whites and 9 percent for blacks) to say that they attend the activities of family members together weekly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given different levels of religiosity, blacks and Hispanics were more likely to say that they workshop together as a family. But on several other dimensions, including having arguments, going out together, and doing household chores together, racial and ethnic differences tended to be relatively small. One thing, however, that mattered a great deal to family activities was the strength of the respondent’s 11The exception is family worship, which is much more common among Republicans (42 percent say they do it weekly or more) than among Democrats (only 21 percent say they do it weekly or more). American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 28 Table 12: Family Activities Strong Weak All Parental Identity Parental Identity Eat dinner together 78 87 72 Participate in activities together at home 72 81 69 Do household chores together 57 65 44 Worship together 31 38 8 Have an argument 18 19 9 Go out together (movies, parks, etc.) 17 20 12 Attend the activities of a family member 15 18 9 parental and spousal identity. With respect to every activity about which we asked, those with strong parental identities (respondents who said that being a parent was “very” or “extremely” important to them) were more likely to participate at least weekly, compared to those with weaker parental identities. For example, more than 80 percent of those who were classified as having a strong parental identity report eating dinner together and participating in activities at home weekly or more. Around 65 percent of this group does household chores as a family at least weekly. However, when we turn our attention to those with weak parental identity, those rates drop significantly — in the case of household chores, by more than 20 percentage points. Most parents with a weak parental identity still report eating dinner together or participating in activities at home on a regular basis, but again much less frequently than those with stronger parental identities. Respondents in this group also worship at much lower rates. Notably, they have arguments less frequently than those with strong parental identities. 2.4.7 Parental Activities Beyond the family activities described above, we also tried to get a better sense of family life by asking parents how they spend their time after their children go to bed. We gave respondents a list of potential activities and asked them to indicate how often each activity occurs after their children’s bedtime. Table 13 presents the percentage of mothers and fathers who reported doing each activity at least once a week or more. Responses are limited to those who currently have children in the home. Table 13: Parental Activities After Children Go to Bed Fathers Mothers Watch television or movie 76 81 Use social media 60 71 Have sex 56 53 Talk on the phone or text 53 66 Read a book 49 52 Do work or homework 37 38 Play video games 35 35 The most common activity for parents is watching television or movies. Three quarters of men and more than eight in ten women report participating in this activity at least once a week or more. Both men and women say that they connect with others through social media, phone, or text on a regular basis, though percentages are about ten points higher for women than for men. A little over half of respondents say that they have sex with their partners at least once a week or more, and about half say that they regularly American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 29 spend time reading books. A little more than one-third of respondents told us that they did work or played video games at least once a week after their children went to bed. These patterns were roughly similar across demographic categories, with a few exceptions. Black and Hispanic parents were about ten percentage points more likely than whites to say that they had sex at least once a week, and they were comparatively less likely (again by about ten percentage points) to say they spend time on social media or reading books. But rates of the other activities we asked about were nearly identical across racial groups. Similarly, differences across income categories or partisan attachments tended to be small. The primary exception was reading books, which about 60 percent of high-income respondents reported doing at least weekly, compared to 50 percent of middle-income respondents and 40 percent of those with lower incomes. All other income or partisan differences were less than ten percentage points. All in all, the experience of parents after children go to bed seems very similar for parents regardless of racial or ethnic differences, income disparities, or partisan allegiances. 3 American Views on the Ideal Marriage and Family In the 2018 American Family Survey, we asked respondents a variety of questions designed to understand how Americans view the ideal marriage and family and how that ideal compares with their lived experi- ences. For example, we randomly assigned half of the respondents in the sample to tell us about the actual order in which they experienced sex, cohabitation, marriage, and children in the current or most recent relationship.12 The other half of survey respondents were asked to indicate the ideal order in which each of the relationship milestones would occur. Figure 13 presents the results, with the average ordering for each milestone shown in the label. Blue labels indicate respondents’ actual order, and gold labels indicate the ideal ordering. Lower numbers in the labels indicate a preference for that milestone to come earlier in the sequence of events. 12Respondents could also indicate that any of those relationship milestones had not yet occurred in their relationships. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 30 2.11 1.74 2.12 2.33 2.15 2.51 3.75 3.37 Sex Cohabit Marriage Child 1 2 3 4 Mean Order R el at io ns hi p M ile st o ne s a a Actual Ideal Relationship Sequence Figure 13: Respondent reports about their ideal and actual relationship sequences. Respondents told us that the ideal sequence of relationship milestones would be sex, moving in together, and marriage occurring at roughly the same point in time, with children coming a distant fourth in the order. But respondents’ actual experience differs from the ideal. On average, respondents had sex first, followed by cohabitation, then marriage, then children. Of course, these are merely averages: individuals may have experienced different orderings. Nonetheless, the central tendency is informative, as is the difference between actual and ideal. We also find important differences in ideal preferences by party and race. These can be seen in Figure 14, which presents results for Republicans, white Democrats, and black Democrats.13 Notably, all three groups reported similar actual relationship sequences: sex first, followed by cohabitation, marriage, and children. But the ideal orderings differ across the three groups. Republicans say that marriage should come first, followed by cohabitation and sex at roughly the same time, with children fourth. This is roughly similar to the ideal ordering for black Democrats, who also prefer marriage first, followed by cohabitation, sex, and then children. The group with a differing ideal ordering is white Democrats: their ideal preference is sex first, followed by cohabitation, marriage third, and children fourth. In other words, white Democrats are the only group for whom their ideal relationship sequence matches their actual behavior (at least at the group level). But this also means that black Democrats and Republicans share a similar, more traditional view of the proper order of relationship milestones, even if many do not fully live up to those self-professed ideals. In addition to these racial and partisan differences, other demographic characteristics also shaped views about the ideal relationship sequence. Americans over age 65 were more likely to say that ideally, marriage should come before sex and cohabitation, for example, while those under 55 felt that the ideal ordering was sex and cohabitation before marriage. For all age groups, however, sex came, on average, first in their actual relationships. Religious differences also mattered. For Americans for who said that religion was an important part of their lives, the ideal was for marriage to come first, while respondents for whom religion 13We do not have enough black Republicans in the sample for reliable analysis. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 31 2.26 1.82 2.25 2.35 1.79 2.36 3.79 3.46 1.72 1.43 2.05 2.22 2.53 2.68 3.82 3.53 2.42 1.74 2.11 2.47 1.91 2.47 3.73 3.07 Republicans White Democrats Black Democrats 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 Sex Cohabit Marriage Child Mean Order R el at io ns hi p M ile st o ne s a aActual Ideal Relationship Sequence by Party and Race Figure 14: Ideal and actual relationship sequences by partisanship and race. was less important told us that marriage should come after cohabitation. Non-religious respondents were also much more likely than religious respondents to say that sex did come first in their actual relationships, though the average religious Americans was still sex first, followed by marriage and cohabitation. Overall, we conclude that while the average actual ordering of relationship milestones is similar across many different types of Americans, there are still important differences in how different groups see the ideal relationship sequence. Older, more religious Americans still hold to a more traditional view of marriage as coming before sex and cohabitation, while norms are different among younger, less religious Americans. Nearly every group feels that children should ideally come after marriage, however. We also asked respondents about other ideals for relationships and family life. For example, Americans indicated that the ideal number of children for a family is about 2 — this was the median response for all sub-groups, including Republicans, Democrats, men, women, religious and non-religious, whites, blacks, and Hispanics. There are some differences in mean preferences across the groups: the average for Democrats, for example, was 2.3, compared to 2.5 for Republicans, though this difference was largely driven by white Democrats, for whom the group average was 2.1, compared to 2.8 for black Democrats. As with the relationship sequence variables, the preferences of black Democrats were actually closer to Republicans than to their white fellow partisans. Differences in the average preferences of men and women were small — 2.5 for men and 2.4 for women. The average for respondents who told us that religion was at least somewhat important in their lives was 2.6, compared to 2.1 for those who said religion was less important to them. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 32 3.1 Shared Values As part of our focus on ideal marriages and families, we asked respondents to consider how important it is for married couples to share different commitments or perspectives, such as the same political party, level of education, political affiliation, or even hobbies and interests. Table 14 presents the results, and entries in the table show the percentage of respondents who told us that each item was either “extremely im- portant” or “very important.”14 Overall, Americans identified shared feelings about children and shared social values (such as honesty or hard work) as by far the most important considerations for couples. More than three-quarters of respondents agreed that couples should have those priorities in common. Religious affiliation and other hobbies and interests comprised the second tier of important commonalities for cou- ples, with education and political party ranking last. Given all the talk about Democrats and Republicans separating into different tribes, it is notable that most Americans do not think it is especially important for married couples to share the same political affiliation. They care far more about broader values like honesty than about narrow political attachments. We find little evidence of dramatic differences in the ordering of these priorities across different demo- graphic characteristics. Republicans do care far more about shared religious affiliation than Democrats or independents, and black and Hispanic respondents care far more about religious affiliation than do whites, especially white Democrats, of whom only 20 percent said that shared religious affiliation was an important priority. Here is another indication that with respect to some elements of marriage and family, black Democrats take a more traditional view and express opinions that are more similar to Republicans than to white Democrats. But other demographic differences were more muted. Women place a greater priority on shared feelings about children and shared social values than do men, but the basic ordering of priorities is the same for both groups. In addition to the results shown in the table, we found few differ- ences across income categories, parental status (whether the respondent had children at home), religiosity (except with respect to the importance of religion), and other demographic characteristics. Table 14: How Important Is It for Married Couples to Share the Same ... ? Political Hobbies and Religious Social Feelings Education Party Interests Affiliation Values about Children Overall 14 21 28 36 76 81 Men 14 21 26 35 73 77 Women 15 21 31 36 80 85 White 11 21 26 33 78 83 Black 21 20 32 44 73 77 Hispanic 21 21 34 38 75 77 Democrats 17 23 29 27 77 83 Independents 12 10 27 28 66 70 Republicans 12 25 28 51 82 86 14Response options were a 5-point scale ranging from “extremely important” to “not important at all.” American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 33 3.2 Fulfilling Life In keeping with our exploration of ideal family life, we asked respondents to consider what facets of life are most essential for fulfillment. Specifically, we asked respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with the notion that the following activities are essential to live a fulfilling life: being married, having kids, having a rewarding career or job, being part of a religious community, being engaged in the local community, gaining a good education, and making a good living. Table 15 presents the percentage of respondents who agreed that each item was essential.15 Respondents clearly prioritized career accomplishments as being essential: making a good living, gaining a good education, and having a rewarding job. Two-thirds or more of respondents said each of those milestones was essential. In the second tier, respondents identified engagement with their local or religious communities as being essential. In the lowest tier was being married and having kids, of which only three to four in ten respondents indicated they were essential. Put differently, many Americans believe that it is possible to live a fulfilling life without marriage or children. Table 15: What Is Essential To Living a Fulfilling Life? Being Having Religious Community Rewarding Make Married Kids Community Engagement Job Education Good Living Overall 31 36 40 47 65 71 77 Men 37 40 40 47 68 70 77 Women 24 33 39 46 61 72 77 White 29 33 37 46 64 71 76 Black 29 35 49 47 63 69 79 Hispanic 37 46 44 47 65 72 77 Democrats 22 31 30 49 67 74 78 Independents 28 33 31 37 55 64 69 Republicans 43 45 58 50 68 72 80 Children At Home 36 49 46 49 65 72 77 No Children At Home 28 30 37 46 64 71 76 Demographic differences in these patterns tended to be small to moderate. Men were more likely than women to say that marriage and children were essential, and consistent with other survey results, Re- publicans, blacks, and Hispanics valued participation in religious communities more than Democrats and whites. People with children at home were more convinced that marriage and children were a necessary part of a fulfilling life as well. But even with these differences, all groups ranked career, education, and income as the most essential aspects of a fulfilling life. 3.3 Becoming an Adult What does it mean to become an adult in America today? This question focuses on the developmental milestones that mark the passage to adulthood and how those markers might differ for men and women. We told respondents that “people have different ideas about what it means to become a man or woman” 15Response options were a seven-point scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree, and for purposes of analysis, we present the somewhat agree, agree, and strongly agree responses together. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 34 and then asked them to indicate which of the following experiences are important to becoming an adult: completing formal schooling, being employed full-time, being capable of supporting a family financially, being financially independent of parents, no longer living in parents’ house, getting married, and having a child. Respondents could indicate that each item was “extremely important,” “somewhat important,” or “not important at all.” Half of our sample was randomly chosen to tell us which of these items were important to “becoming a man,” and the other half offered opinions on the importance of the items for “becoming a woman.” 59 68 52 64 43 64 33 53 40 40 21 22 21 18 65 77 57 67 52 67 36 57 48 40 21 18 20 15 Male Respondents Female Respondents 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 Financially independent from parents Not living with parents Capable of supporting family Full-time employment Completing education Getting married Having a child Percent Choosing `Extremely Important' Becoming a Man Becoming a Woman Becoming an Adult Figure 15: Milestones for becoming a man or woman. Figure 15 presents the percentage of male and female respondents choosing “extremely important.” Yel- low bars indicate the result in the “becoming a woman” condition, and blue bars show the“becoming a man” condition. Among both male and female respondents, markers of financial success — being financially independent, moving out of parents’ home, being capable of supporting a family, and finding full-time employment — were the indicators most commonly chosen as signs of becoming an adult and especially of becoming a man. Respondents saw completing an education as being more important for becoming a woman than full-time employment, and women indicated that getting married and having a child were more important for becoming a woman than for becoming a man. For both men and women, getting married and starting a family were least likely to be seen as indicators of adulthood. In addition, both male and female respondents believe there is a large gender gap when considering the role full-time employment plays in becoming an adult. More than half of respondents thought it was extremely important for becoming a man, but only about one-third of respondents thought that having a full-time job was critical to becoming a woman. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 35 Generational differences also matter for assessments about what it means to become an adult, and these sometimes have gendered implications. As can be seen in Figure 16, for example, about 40 percent of young people told us that full-time employment is needed to be a man, compared to about 34 percent who reported it necessary to become a woman — a difference of only six percentage points. Among respondents over 65 years of age, however, that difference grew to nearly 40 percentage points. Nearly three-quarters of older Americans thought having a full-time job was necessary to become a man, com- pared to the 35 percent who thought it was necessary to become an adult woman — about the same percentage as among the youngest age cohort. In other words, we find a much larger gap between what it means to become a man, as opposed to what it means to become a woman, among older Americans. Similar (though not quite as large) generational differences can be seen in assessments of the importance of being capable of supporting a family, moving out of parents’ home, and financial independence from parents. Older respondents were also more likely than younger to say that completing education is a sign of adulthood, regardless of whether we asked about becoming a man or becoming a woman. At the same time, age mattered little for views about the importance of getting married or having a child as milestones of adulthood. 5964 57 67 62 72 67 82 68 81 3440 32 50 39 56 34 59 35 74 2418 2121 25 17 1513 1814 52 59 47 58 57 65 57 72 62 77 3630 3934 4440 4945 5551 45 58 44 56 50 66 52 70 47 82 2324 1920 2419 1618 2419 Having a child Full-time employment Completing education Getting married Financial independence Not living with parents Capable of supporting family 18-29 30-44 45-54 55-64 65+ 18-29 30-44 45-54 55-64 65+ 18-29 30-44 45-54 55-64 65+ 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 Pe rc en t C ho o si ng ` Ex tr em el y Im po rt an t' Becoming a Man Becoming a Woman Age Differences in Attitudes about Becoming an Adult Figure 16: Differences in attitudes about becoming a man or woman by age cohort. 4 Parents and Teenagers One focus of the 2018 American Family Survey is how parents of teenagers view their children. We asked all respondents with a child between the ages of 12 and 17 (N = 498) to tell us about their views of the most important issues facing teenagers. Respondents chose from a curated list we provided them, and each American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 36 respondent could choose up to four issues. Table 16 presents the results. The most common concern from these parents was overuse of technology, which was the only option chosen by a majority of respondents. In addition, 45 percent of respondents identified bullying as an important issue, and approximately one- third of respondents chose mental health issues, family breakdown and divorce, or pressure to use drugs or alcohol. All other items on the list were chosen by less than a quarter of respondents. Table 16 also shows that mothers and fathers largely agreed on these priorities. The only major differences were that mothers reported substantially more concern about bullying than fathers, but fathers expressed more concern than mothers about teens facing family breakdown and divorce. Table 16: Most Important Issues Facing Teens Overall Fathers Mothers Overuse of technology 53 55 51 Bullying 45 38 51 Mental health issues 36 34 37 Family breakdown/divorce 35 43 29 Pressure to use drugs or alcohol 34 35 33 Poor quality schools 23 21 24 Making decisions about sexual activity 20 20 20 Difficult relationships with family members 15 15 15 Dating and relationships 14 15 14 Pressure to get good grades 14 14 14 Widespread availability of pornography 12 14 11 Safety in their communities 11 9 13 Not enough meaningful work opportunities 10 12 9 Navigating sexual identity 10 11 9 Sexual abuse 9 8 10 Other 2 2 2 Larger differences can be found between Republicans and Democrats, however. These differing assess- ments can be seen in Figure 17, where red bars indicate the percentage of Republicans choosing the issue, blue bars indicate Democrats, and purple bars show results for independents who do not lean toward either party. While overuse of technology was an important concern for respondents of both parties, Republicans expressed comparatively more concern about the issue (64 percent) than Democrats (48 per- cent). In addition, concern about the effects of divorce and family breakdown on teenagers was heavily concentrated among Republicans (54 percent), but of far less concern to both independents (33 percent) and Democrats (17 percent). Republicans were also somewhat more likely than Democrats to express concern about teens’ decisions about sexual activity (23 percent vs. 15 percent) and the availability of pornography (17 percent vs. 10 percent). Conversely, Democrats expressed more concern than Republicans about bullying (48 percent vs. 38 per- cent), mental health issues (44 percent vs. 30 percent), community safety for teenagers (15 percent vs. 9 percent), and work opportunities (14 percent vs. 7 percent). On other issues, such as pressure to use drugs or alcohol, dating and relationships, navigating sexual identity, pressure to get good grades, relationships with family members, and the quality of schools, we see rough agreement (defined here as partisan differ- ences that are about five percentage points or less) between partisans. Notably, given that the survey was administered prior to the Kavanaugh hearings, the difference between partisans in concern about sexual abuse among teenagers was small (11 percent of Democrats, compared to nine percent of Republicans). Other demographic characteristics also mattered, especially in patterns of concern about overuse of tech- American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 37 2 2 1 8 8 11 9 13 9 7 10 14 9 8 15 17 9 10 12 16 15 15 14 14 10 20 15 23 22 15 25 25 20 33 32 36 54 32 17 30 33 44 38 50 48 64 46 48 Other Sexual abuse Navigating sexual identity Not enough meaningful work opportunities Safety in their communities Widespread availability of pornography Pressure to get good grades Dating and relationships Difficult relationships with family members Making decisions about sexual activity Poor quality schools Pressure to use drugs or alcohol Family breakdown/divorce Mental health issues Bullying Overuse of Technology 0 25 50 75 100 Percentage Choosing Issue Party Democrats Independents Republicans Most Important Issues Facing Teenagers by Parental Partisanship Figure 17: How partisans differ in their view of issues facing teens nology. Though technology was the most chosen issue overall, it was far more likely to be chosen by white respondents (59 percent) than by black (35 percent) or Hispanic Americans (48 percent). It was also of greater concern to high-income (64 percent) than to middle-income (46 percent) or low-income people (47 percent).16 Racial and income differences tended to be somewhat more muted on the other issues facing teens, though concern about family breakdown and divorce as an issue for teens was concentrated among high-income respondents, while lower-income Americans were comparatively more concerned about bullying and difficult relationships with family members. 4.1 Teens and Technology We also asked respondents to report their own technology use and, for respondents with a teenager at home, their estimates how much those teenagers use video games and social media. For each parent of one or more teenagers, we randomly selected one of their teenage children and asked them to report their impressions of how much that child used social media and video games. It is important to remember that these are parental estimates of teens’ media use, not actual reports from the teens themselves, which might be quite different. Our aim was to capture parents’ views of the time their teenagers spent online. Parents 16When we test partisanship, race, and income together using multiple regression techniques, all three variables are statistically significant. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 38 could report anything between 0 hours per day and 16 or more hours per day.17 Results can be found in Figure 18. As might be expected, adults report considerably more use of social media than video games. On average, men report using social media for about 2.7 hours on a typical day and women report about 30 minutes more at 3.2 hours. Averages for video games are substantially lower – 1.8 hours for men and 1.4 hours for women. Notably, if we restrict the results to only those who are parents of teenagers, use of both forms of technology is higher – 2.9 hours on social media for fathers and 3.9 hours for mothers and 2.0 hours for fathers on video games, compared to 1.8 hours among mothers. 1.8 2.7 1.4 3.2 2.0 2.9 1.8 3.9 3.3 2.6 4.1 2.8 1.7 3.3 2.3 3.7 Estimates for Self Estimates for Teens 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 All Respondents -- Men All Respondents -- Women Dads of Teens Moms of Teens Teen Boys -- Weekdays Teen Boys -- Weekends Teen Girls -- Weekdays Teen Girls -- Weekends Average Hours Media Social Media Video Games Estimates of Media Use Figure 18: Adults, teens, and media use Most parents offered estimates of their children’s media usage. Only about 7.5 percent of parents said they didn’t know how much their children used social media, and only 6.5 percent were unable to give an estimate about video games. Of those who could offer estimates, fathers tended to estimate higher num- bers than mothers for time spent on social media, but fathers and mothers offered very similar estimates of how much time their children spent on video games, especially on weekdays. In addition, parental use of technology is correlated with reports of their children’s use, though the correlation is far from perfect and larger for social media than for video games (r = 0.41 for social media and r = 0.23 for video games). Parents of teenage boys estimated that their sons spent more time on video games than social media, but parents of teenage girls reported that their daughters spent far more time on social media than video games. In addition, and perhaps unsurprisingly, parents said that their children spent more time with technology on weekends than on weekdays, though the differences are not especially large. All told, parents estimated that their teenage sons spent a little more than 24 hours each week playing video games and a little less than 19 hours per week on social media. By contrast, parents of teenage girls said their daughters spent about 13 hours per week playing video games and slightly less than 24 hours a week on social media. Estimates for weekly social media use are not dramatically more than what 17Parents were able to self-report anything between 0-24 hours, so to make the reports comparable, we adjusted all parental reports above 16 hours to a category indicating 16 or more hours. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 39 parents report for themselves – in fact, mothers of teenagers actually report more time per week on social media for themselves than for their daughters. However, parental estimates of boys’ video game usage is significantly higher than fathers’ self reports. 4.2 What Worries Parents In addition to asking parents about one teenager’s technology usage, we also asked parents to tell us their level of concern about that same child with respect to four aspects of the teen’s life: grades and school- work, behavior at school (getting in trouble), the child’s friends and social life, and feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues. Parents could report that they were “extremely concerned,” “somewhat concerned,” or “not concerned at all” about their child. Table 17 shows the percentage of parents expressing the highest level of concern about each category. Table 17: Parental Concerns about Their Teens School Social Life/ Anxiety/ Grades Trouble Friends Depression Overall 36 36 37 27 White 29 34 33 22 Black 43 52 44 39 Hispanic 45 31 41 28 Low Income 40 40 45 32 Middle Income 39 39 36 27 High Income 30 30 31 21 Child Lives with Respondent 35 35 36 26 Child Does Not Live with Respondent 47 50 57 45 High Parental Identity 41 37 40 29 Low Parental Identity 30 35 34 23 As the table makes clear, a significant percentage of parents reported high levels of concern about their teenage children. More than one-third of respondents said they are “extremely concerned” about their teen’s grades, behavior in school, and social life, and more than one-quarter responded that they worry about their teen suffering from anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues. At the same time, the results also show that there are large differences across various demographic categories. For example, black and Hispanic parents reported significantly higher levels of concern about every category than did white parents. In addition, high-income respondents expressed lower levels of concern than those in the middle and lower income categories. Parents whose teenage children do not live with them expressed exceptionally high levels of worry, and those with higher parental identities were also more likely to express concern, especially about their child’s grades. We also asked all those who reported at least some level of concern about anxiety, depression, or another mental health issue how those problems are affecting their teen’s physical, social, and educational health. Specifically, we asked about schoolwork, friendships, family relationships, extracurricular activities, and physical health. Figure 19 presents the percentage of parents who said that their teens’ anxiety or depres- sion is affecting each category “a lot.” We interpret this response as meaning that the parent believes that American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 40 mental health issues are having a large effect. In addition, yellow bars represent parents who told us they were “somewhat concerned” about anxiety and depression, while blue bars indicate that parents told us they were “extremely concerned.” 11 42 8 50 12 49 10 40 12 43 Physical Health Extracurricular Activities Family Relationships Friendships Schoolwork 0 25 50 75 100 Percent Reporting Large Effects Extremely Concerned Somewhat Concerned Parents' Views of the Effects of Anxiety and Depression Figure 19: How parents see the effects of teen anxiety and depression. The figure shows that when parents feel greater levels of concern, they are also more likely to believe that mental health issues are having meaningful effects on school, social and family life, and even the physical health of their child. Between 40 and 50 percent of parents who told us they were “extremely concerned” about their teen’s anxiety and depression thought that these issues were also having a large effect on their teen’s life experience. Among those who said they were only “somewhat concerned” about anxiety and depression, however, parents were much less likely to report large effects. In other words, greater concern about mental health issues is correlated with greater likelihood of parents noticing that other aspects of their teens’ lives are suffering. Of course, in a cross-sectional survey such as this, we do not know whether concern about grades or social life, for example, preceded worries about mental health or whether the worries about mental health prompted parents to notice school or relationship concerns. But we do know that nearly half of parents who are most worried about mental health issues in their children believe that mental health challenges have substantial effects on many aspects of their teenager’s life experience. 5 Sexual Harassment On this year’s survey we asked a number of questions about sexual harassment, ranging from respondent experiences with this to respondent beliefs about the practice and how often they talk about it with their children. Table 18 displays the number of people who received unwanted sexual advances from someone in various American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 41 venues. The first column displays the simple number who have experienced sexual harassment in any venue, while the second and third columns display the number who have experienced sexual harassment at work or from a superior (at either work or school). Focusing first on the general experience, it is noteworthy that the gender difference is so large. Twenty-eight percent of men reported an inappropriate experience while nearly six out of ten women (58 percent) reported an experience, suggesting a rather stark difference between the sexes. It is not, however, the only such difference. Education clearly also plays a role. Only 35 percent of those with relatively less education (high school or less) reported the experience, while those with college experience had clearly experienced more. For college graduates (or more), a majority of the respondents felt they had experienced harassment. Table 18: Experiences with Sexual Harassment Group Percentage Reporting an Inappropriate Experience From Someone at the Same Company From Someone in Authority At School or at Work Total 43 30 19 Men 28 21 12 Women 58 39 26 High School Education (or less) 35 23 15 Some College 46 33 20 College Graduates (or more) 51 36 24 Democrat 47 33 23 Independent 40 28 19 Republican 40 28 15 These patterns tend to broadly hold up when the question becomes more restrictive. Only about two out of ten men felt they had experienced it at work, while the number for women was about twice that number. And when asked about receiving the sexual harassment from a superior, at either work or school, one-quarter of women reported this experience—with just 12 percent of men experiencing this. No matter how the data are sliced, the experience of sexual harassment is a problem that is felt particularly keenly by women, and, typically, by women with more education. There are weak partisan patterns in the data. Regardless of the nature of the question asked, more Democrats report the experience than do Republicans, although the differences are not as stark as the differences by gender. Broadly, it appears that the experience of sexual harassment is one that afflicts many types of people that cut across society, but that it is particularly felt by women, especially those with more education. A similar gendered pattern held up when we asked about whether or not respondents were familiar with “incidents where sexual harassment happened in the” places described in Table 19. In this case we consistently found that women were more likely to be familiar with incidents of sexual harassment regardless of the location. A majority of women were familiar with such experiences in at least one of those locations, while a majority of men were not familiar with such incidents. The differences between genders was never terribly large, typically around five percentage points, but the pattern is unmistakable. It is obvious that people are broadly familiar with sexual harassment taking place around them (though this is more true for women than for men). But how do people define sexual harassment? In an effort to better understand people’s standards we asked a series of questions about what counted as sexual harassment. The specific question wording was split into two groups. Half saw the following: “Would American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 42 Table 19: Percentage Familiar with Incidents of Sexual Harassment by Location Women Men Workplace 38 32 Religious Congregation 10 6 Neighborhood 16 11 School 19 14 Children’s School 5 4 Family 18 10 None of the Above 43 54 you consider it sexual harassment if a man who was not a romantic partner did the following to a woman at work?” The other half saw exactly the reverse: a woman taking the action with respect to a man. For either question, people could respond that a particular action either “always,” “sometimes,” or “never” counted as harassment. Figure 20 shows the responses to this question for a range of activities (with the experiment collapsed) and is broken out by gender given the disparate experiences of men and women in this area. 77 62 71 49 66 40 27 20 29 17 11 8 9 5 5 3 Persisting in Unwanted Attention Asking for Sexual Favors Looking at Private Parts Placing a Hand on Back Sexual Jokes Commenting on Appearance Asking to Go for a Drink Asking to Go for Lunch 0 25 50 75 100 Percentage Responding the Activity `Always' counts as Harassment Gender Male Female Attitudes about Sexual Harassment Figure 20: Attitudes about harassment by gender (collapsing the male to female and female to male treatments) The patterns are instructive. First, it is clear that certain actions are simply less likely to be categorized as inappropriate than other activities. Asking to go for a drink, or for lunch, or commenting on some- one’s appearance are considered “always” sexual harassment by a relatively small number of people.18 18We note that the complexities of this question make it difficult to ask simple questions about. Of course, in some situations it is possible to think of versions of these actions that would count for most people, while it is also possible to think of situations that would not count. We emphasize that these are broad generalizations. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 43 More people consider sexual jokes sexual harassment, and the actions most consistently labelled as such were looking at private parts (presumably clothed in the workplace, although we did not specify in the question), asking for sexual favors, or persisting in unwanted attention. The second clear feature of this graph is that women simply have higher standards for behavior than do men. The only area where men felt an action was “always” sexual harassment was persisting in unwanted attention. Surprisingly (to these authors) only 49 percent of men believed that asking for sexual favors “always” counted as sexual harassment (for comparison, 71 percent of women felt that it “always” counted). While it is dangerous to speculate about respondent motivations or explanations for their responses, it is possible that men rationalize the behavior, possibly on the grounds that it might be wanted some of the time or acceptable in some situations. And it is true that 62 percent of men felt that persistent but unwanted attention counted as sexual harassment (compared with 76 percent of women). That was the only category where a majority of men felt that the behavior always counted. We also examined age and racial differences and generally found that older and white respondents were more likely to believe that an activity counted as sexual harassment. For instance, 66 percent of those aged 65 or older believed asking for a sexual favor always counted as sexual harassment, but the number fell to only 51 percent among those between 18 and 29. Broadly, when we considered the category that responded that these activities never counted as sexual harassment, there were relatively few patterns to the data, though a few things did stand out. With respect to race, of those who responded that all behaviors “never” counted as sexual harassment, only 39 percent were white, while 23 percent were black and 38 percent were Hispanic, suggesting that whites are underrepresented in this group, but there were not dramatic political or other patterns to the data. As a second check on how people feel about these experiences, we embedded an experiment in the questionnaire. Half of all respondents were asked about men doing this to a woman, but the other half were asked about women doing this to a man. Figure 21 displays the differences in how people reacted to that experiment and it serves as important context. While there are essentially no differences between how the public perceives sexual harassment by its direction for the behaviors that only rarely count as harassment, there is a clear bias on the other behaviors: it is more likely to be considered harassment if it is a man doing it to a woman than it is if a woman does it to a man. Who is it that is inconsistent? Broadly, all categories were at least somewhat inconsistent in how they answered this question. Men are simply more likely to be seen as harassers by everyone. However, there is a clear pattern and it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, also related to gender. Figure 22 displays the three actions most commonly considered as always meeting the definition of sexual harassment: unwanted attention, asking for sexual favors, and looking at private parts. The left panel displays men and the right panel displays women. The bars display the differences between the man to woman and the woman to man conditions. The figure shows that there is inconsistency in essentially every case; the size of the inconsistency is just larger among men, who clearly are more likely to say that something is harassment when it is a man doing it to a woman, rather than the reverse. This actually changes how we might see some of the results above. We noted that a majority of men did not see asking for sexual favors as always consisting of sexual harassment. Though that’s true, it is clearly dependent on the context. A majority of men do believe that when a man does this to a woman it is sexual harassment, but a majority does not believe the reverse. Table 20 takes up a slightly different, but obviously related issue. On the survey, we asked about the nature of consent. The specific question wording was, “In your view, does someone need to ask consent before initiating each of these things with a person they are interested in romantically?” In general, people do not believe that verbal consent is required for actions such as holding hands, putting an arm around American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 44 67 72 53 68 48 59 18 29 20 26 9 10 7 7 4 4 Persisting in Unwanted Attention Asking for Sexual Favors Looking at Private Parts Placing a Hand on Back Sexual Jokes Commenting on Appearance Asking to Go for a Drink Asking to Go for Lunch 0 25 50 75 100 Percentage Responding the Activity `Always' counts as Harassment Including Experiment Direction Man to Woman Woman to Man Attitudes about Sexual Harassment by Direction Figure 21: Attitudes about harassment by experimental treatment someone, or a kiss (though that last action does display a slightly different pattern). However, the modal response for all of those categories is that consent is required, just that it could be non-verbal. The last two categories are quite different. Clear majorities believe that intimate touching and sex require verbal consent. However, it should be noted that there is, again, a gendered pattern to this result. Fig- ure 23 displays the proportion of men and women who feel that consent (both verbal and non-verbal) is a requirement for different types of sexual activity. There is a bit over a ten percentage point gap between men and women for each of these two activities; the other actions displayed no such gap. Taken broadly, the results suggest that people generally feel strongly about verbal consent for the more intense forms of sexual contact, but that, again, there is a gap in the intensity of this feeling for men and for women. Figure 24 explores a similar relationship, but examining Trump supporters. There is a discernible, but not enormous, difference in how those who approve of Trump (vs. those who disapprove of Trump or Table 20: Attitudes about Consent Action Yes, consent must be verbal Yes, but consent could be non-verbal No Holding hands 16 43 35 Putting your arm around someone 17 46 30 Kissing someone 34 49 12 Intimate touching 57 32 7 Having sex 67 22 6 American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 45 57 67 39 59 33 47 76 78 66 76 61 70 Male Female Persisting in Unwanted Attention Asking for Sexual Favors Looking at Private Parts Persisting in Unwanted Attention Asking for Sexual Favors Looking at Private Parts 0 25 50 75 100 `A lw ay s' c o un ts a s H ar as sm en t Treatment Man to Woman Woman to Man Consistency in Attitudes about Sexual Harassment Figure 22: Reporting of discussions about sexual topics, by partisanship 73 61 18 27 63 50 27 37 Having Sex Intimate Touching Yes, Must Be Verbal Yes, but Could Be Non-verbal Yes, Must Be Verbal Yes, but Could Be Non-verbal 0 25 50 75 100 Pe rc en ta ge Gender Male Female Consent and Gender Differences Figure 23: Attitudes about consent by gender American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 46 are neutral about him) think about consent. Trump supporters are somewhat less likely to favor verbal consent, although both groups overwhelmingly favor consent of some kind in these two situations (the differences across Trump attitudes are similar for the other categories). While it is common for partisans— or opponents and supporters of the president—to make claims about their political opponents’ lack of a moral compass, these results suggest that on the issues of sexual harassment and the need for consent the differences exist but are not large. 71 62 19 28 60 52 28 37 Having Sex Intimate Touching Yes, Must Be Verbal Yes, but Could Be Non-verbal Yes, Must Be Verbal Yes, but Could Be Non-verbal 0 25 50 75 100 Pe rc en ta ge Approval Trump Approver Non-Trump Approver Consent Attitudes and Trump Approval Figure 24: Attitudes about Consent by Trump Support We also discovered something of a racial aspect to these attitudes, though it is a somewhat complicated relationship. Table 21 displays the percentage of respondents replying “always” to the listed activity, but, in this case, broken out by the most populous racial categories in the sample (they are roughly listed in descending order of the percentage agreeing). Scrutiny of the results reveals an interesting pattern. Though there are never massive differences between any of the races, there is a pattern that whites tend to have more rigorous standards for certain categories that are most commonly listed, especially persisting in unwanted attention and requesting a sexual favor, but they are less likely to respond “always” than are blacks to some of the activities that generate a more middling response. Take, for example, making sexual jokes and placing a hand on someone’s lower back. Though there are differences by the experimental treatment, there is a gap roughly 10 to 15 percentage points, with the black respondents holding the more rigorous standard on those activities. On the answers that generate the fewest “always” responses, the differences between the two groups dissipates. Hispanics tend to be somewhere between the two groups in their assessments of these activities. We will not speculate here on the broader social meaning of these findings, instead merely noting that there are interesting inconsistencies in people’s opinions, that there is a great deal of variation in how people respond to these questions, and that all of it is clearly connected to gender, and, to a lesser degree, race. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 47 Table 21: Percentages replying “Always” for each of the activities listed by Race Activities: Man to Woman White Black Hispanic Persisting in Unwanted Attention 74 64 58 Looking at Private Parts 59 54 51 Requesting a Sexual Favor 68 56 60 Making Sexual Jokes 23 32 29 Placing Hand on Lower Back 23 39 42 Commenting on Appearance 8 12 19 Asking to Go for a Drink 6 9 8 Asking to Go to Lunch 3 5 6 Activities: Woman to Man White Black Hispanic Persisting in Unwanted Attention 68 58 50 Looking at Private Parts 48 43 38 Requesting a Sexual Favor 54 48 37 Making Sexual Jokes 18 30 16 Placing Hand on Lower Back 15 30 19 Commenting on Appearance 7 13 10 Asking to Go for a Drink 7 7 7 Asking to Go to Lunch 4 4 6 Finally, we also asked about whether or not people had talked about sexual matters with their children. Table 22 displays the percentage of people who have had a conversation about each of these topics with their children (the question was only asked of parents). The clear answer is that a little over half of the respondents had done this for all topics except sexual identity which is lower. Table 22: The percentage reporting each type of discussion Discussions Percentage Sex 59 Contraception 53 Consent 54 Sexual Harassment 51 Sexual Identity 42 We examined the demographic correlates of this quite closely and turned up little of any value. There just are not any large differences across groups in the rate of reported behavior. Figure 25 shows the question broken down by partisanship, and there are effectively no differences, except on the question of identity, where Republicans are slightly less likely to have had the conversation. Figure 26 breaks the question down by church attendance (where churchgoing is defined as once a month or more) and it similarly sees no distinctions of any significance. The one demographic pattern that we did find variation in was age, although we interpret this largely as a response to the fact that sexual discussions with small children are generally perceived as less needed or valuable (though we do not draw that conclusion here). Other than that, we found a great deal of variation in who talks to children about sex, but very little to predict who does that. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 48 61 58 54 55 5454 50 52 38 46 0 25 50 75 100 Sex Contraception Consent Harassment Identity Discussion Type Pe rc en ta ge Partisanship Democrat Republican Discussions about Sexual Topics, by Partisanship Figure 25: Reporting of discussions about sexual topics, by partisanship American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 49 58 60 54 52 5454 5151 4241 0 25 50 75 100 Sex Contraception Consent Harassment Identity Discussion Type Pe rc en ta ge Attendance Churchgoer Non-churchgoer Discussions about Sexual Topics, by Church Attendance Figure 26: Reporting of discussions about sexual topics, by church attendance American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 50 6 Social Capital and Support Networks In previous versions of the survey we focused our attention on measures of social capital. This year we specifically asked about networks and whether or not people relied on their family, someone else, or just on themselves. Table 23 reports the percentages of people who rely on each network. Family is the key resource for help with childcare and advice about children. But after that, the most common answer is that people rely largely on themselves, though family is often important as well. The one area where the friend network takes precedence over family relationships (though it is close) is advice about relationships. Table 23: The percentage of people who rely on the given network, or simply rely on themselves Discussions Friend Network Family Network Neither Help with Childcare 9 55 36 Advice about Children 15 47 38 Advice about My Relationship 28 24 48 Financial Help 12 38 49 Taking Care of My House or Property 17 33 51 Transportation to an Important Appointment 16 37 46 We looked for even small correlations with other outcomes on this survey, such as the battery of marriage activities and family activities, and found nothing to report. In general, it does not seem that relying on one’s family has much predictive power for whether or not the family is heavily engaged or not. However, the exception to this rule is that people who are quite engaged with their families tend to think their marriages (and families) are getting stronger, as can be seen in Figure 27. 5 36 58 6 43 48 0 25 50 75 100 Rely on Family Don't Rely on Family Evaluation of Own Marriage and Family Pe rc en ta ge Evaluation Stronger About the Same Weaker Family Connections and Evaluations of Personal Relationships Figure 27: Family connections and evaluations of respondent’s marriage and family American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 51 This extended to other variables like life satisfaction, but not to personal family outcomes that we found. 7 Family and Public Policy One of the goals of the American Family Survey has been to understand the way in which family rela- tionships matter for public policies of many different sorts. In this section we take up a series of areas: national programs, local spending, immigration, the recent tax cuts, and funding for Planned Parenthood to see how family status predicts one’s opinions on these issues. 7.1 National Government Programs In previous years we have looked at several national policies. Two policies we have been keeping track of for some time are Medicaid (and other health subsidies) as well as food stamps. Figure 28 displays the time series for both of these policies. This is the first year that evaluations of the two programs seem to have diverged slightly. In previous years the two were essentially in lockstep, while at the moment it seems that health subsidies and Medicaid have grown slightly more popular. Though the difference is not large, it is a trend that bears watching. 59 60 63 65 59 61 64 60 0 25 50 75 100 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year Pe rc en ta ge Policy Medicaid and Other Health Subsidies Food Stamps Evaluations of Policy Figure 28: Evaluations (100 = more positive) of how Medicaid and Food Stamps affect families American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 52 Table 24: A selection of local policy tradeoffs offered to respondents (a non-exhaustive list); percentages indicate the proportion that would choose the first item in the tradeoff (e.g., the first row references affordable housing against basic services. Tradeoff Examples Democrats Republicans Areas of Partisan Disagreement Affordable Housing over Basic Services 58 37 Public Transportation over Pensions 56 42 Roads over Basic Services 41 60 Roads over Law Enforcement 61 48 Better Schools over Law Enforcement 78 44 Affordable Housing over Better Schools 58 45 Areas of Agreement Roads over Parks 79 88 Roads over Pensions 51 71 Basic Services over Parks 80 80 Affordable Housing over Pensions 73 63 Basic Services over Pensions 69 79 Affordable Housing over Public Transportation 77 70 7.2 Local Government Programs As part of our analysis this year, we wanted to investigate government programs that were not national but rather more local in character. Spending on such items as public parks, local schools, basic services, and law enforcement (to name only a few) have a more direct impact on many people than do the national programs just discussed. To that end we asked a simple tradeoff question about “which option would benefit your family the most?” between such tradeoffs as: roads, parks, pensions, public transportation, better schools, affordable housing, basic services, and law enforcement. There is a partisan split on such concerns in some cases, though not all cases. Table 24 gives an indication of where there were the most strong partisan splits on a few of the local issues we surveyed (in the upper half of the table), as well as a few areas where the partisan splits were less stark (in the lower half of the table). Some of the distinctions make strong political sense: Democrats are not terribly favorable to law enforcement and Republicans really like roads (although not when pitted against law enforcement). But there are potentially surprising results. Neither side favors pensions very often. And even Republicans want spending on affordable housing against most of the tradeoffs. Keeping in mind that partisan splits matter some of the time—but far from all of the time—we now turn to an examination of the attitudes about these tradeoffs (for a few cases) broken out by some limited family status categories. Figure 29 displays the percentage choosing roads over better schools. Democrats are grouped on the left and Republicans are grouped on the right; however, each group is broken out by family status into four categories (that occasionally overlap): single, without children, married, and parents of kids. The difference between Democrats and Republicans can be seen in the height of each group of bars and it is clear that, on average, Republicans are more likely to prefer spending on roads than are Democrats. However, breaking out the party groups by family status, even in these broad categories, also reveals the fissures within each party and how those differences in family status are related to attitudes on this tradeoff. In both parties, it is the single and the non-parent respondents that tend to favor roads. In fact, married persons and parents in the Republican Party look quite similar to single and non-parents in the Democratic Party. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 53 21 27 42 34 39 42 59 54 0 25 50 75 100 Democrat Republican Status Single Without Kids Married With Kids Percentage Choosing Roads over Schools Figure 29: Respondent views on the tradeoff between roads and schools An exhaustive review of the tradeoffs is beyond this report, but we briefly discuss three other tradeoffs and the patterns that they show. When it comes to public transportation vs. pensions (see Figure 30), the group that is, by far, most strongly in favor of public transportation are Democrats, but only those who are either single or without kids (the most urban group). That difference within the Democratic Party overwhelms any differences between the two parties and is much larger than any difference within the Republican Party, where it is true that, though those family status characteristics prefer public transportation more than the married and parents, the internal party disagreement is not so strong. 45 43 71 63 3938 5049 0 25 50 75 100 Democrat Republican Status Single Without Kids Married With Kids Percentage Choosing Public Transportation over Pensions Figure 30: Respondent views on the tradeoff between public transportation and public schools There are cases where the partisan disagreement is substantial. One of those is the tradeoff between American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 54 spending on public parks vs. law enforcement displayed in Figure 31. Democrats uniformly prefer spend- ing money on parks. Republicans are never very enthusiastic about parks in this context. But the variation within each party follows the same pattern and the variation within the Democratic Party is quite sub- stantial. Single Democrats fairly strongly favor spending on law enforcement, while all other Democratic groups are either divided on the question or (in the case of the married) prefer spending on parks. This variation within the Democratic Party is about as large as the variation across the two parties generally. 49 60 50 35 2122 18 14 0 25 50 75 100 Democrat Republican Status Single Without Kids Married With Kids Percentage Choosing Public Parks over Law Enforcement Figure 31: Respondent views on the tradeoff between parks and law enforcement Our final example pits affordable housing against basic services. Here the patterns are quite striking. Single and childless Democrats strongly favor spending money on affordable housing, while married Democrats and those with kids are evenly split. Republicans favor basic services more often, but the group that most strongly favors more affordable housing are Republicans who do not have children. The point of showing these tradeoffs is that much political analysis focuses on the fissures between the parties, but the fissures within the parties are equally interesting, and sometimes more so. Much of what we have shown here may also have to do with choices about where to live (urban dwellers care more about public transportation and so forth), but collectively it shows that whatever factors are driving support for various programs are strongly connected to family status. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 55 52 49 6566 3435 45 34 0 25 50 75 100 Democrat Republican Status Single Without Kids Married With Kids Percentage Choosing Affordable Housing over Basic Services Figure 32: Respondent views on the tradeoff between affordable housing and basic services 7.3 Personal Experience and Support for Immigration As in past years, on this survey we asked about immigration, but we employed a question that is original to the American Family Survey: “Immigrants who legally become naturalized citizens can sponsor family members to come to the United States. Which of the following family members should they be able to sponsor?” Respondents could check off any family relationship they wished, or no family relationships at all. The aim with this question was to get beyond simple pro- or anti- stances and find the more nuanced views of respondents. Figure 33 displays the partisan pattern on this question of who should be allowed to immigrate or not. The clear distinction that Democrats are in favor of more immigration can be seen in the difference across all categories. However, it should be noted that Republicans are actually in favor of immigration in some cases and Democrats are against it in some cases. Republicans tend to favor family immigration for the immediate family—a child and a spouse are selected a majority of the time, with parents coming in right around 50 percent. Democrats favor immigration for these groups as well as siblings and grandparents, but less than a majority of Democrats support immigration for aunts or uncles, nieces or nephews, and cousins (where very few Republicans support immigration). Partisanship was, by far, the best predictor of this type of attitude, but we did find a striking instance of how family background and experience influenced people’s attitudes. Figures 34 and 35 show the exact same graph for Republicans and Democrats, but broken out by a respondent’s experience. Each graph shows a similar pattern. People who are married and have kids are somewhat more likely to support immigration for spouses and children. Single respondents are more likely to favor sponsorship for immigration of all of the other extended family categories. This pattern is exactly the same for both Democrats and Republicans (accounting for the overall partisan difference). Again, while it is difficult to interpret motivations for respondents and their beliefs about questions, these results are consistent with the idea that one’s family experience leads one to think about family connections in different ways. Single persons appear to place more value on the extended family relationships than do married persons with children. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 56 69 84 63 79 50 78 30 66 26 62 12 44 12 45 12 42 0 25 50 75 100 Child Spouse Parent Sibling Grandparent Aunt/Uncle Niece/Nephew Cousin Family Member Pe rc en ta ge F av o ri ng PID Democrat Republican Family Immigration Support Figure 33: Respondent views about which family members should a citizen be capable of sponsoring for citizenship in the U.S.; pure independents are omitted from the graph American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 57 66 70 60 65 56 48 39 29 30 25 19 10 18 10 18 10 0 25 50 75 100 Child Spouse Parent Sibling Grandparent Aunt/Uncle Niece/Nephew Cousin Family Member Pe rc en ta ge F av o ri ng Background Married with Kids Single without Kids Family Immigration Support: Republicans by Family Background Figure 34: Respondent views, among Republicans, about which family members should a citizen be capable of sponsoring for citizenship in the U.S. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 58 80 87 75 82 80 75 70 61 64 58 52 37 53 37 49 34 0 25 50 75 100 Child Spouse Parent Sibling Grandparent Aunt/Uncle Niece/Nephew Cousin Family Member Pe rc en ta ge F av o ri ng Background Married with Kids Single without Kids Family Immigration Support: Democrats by Family Background Figure 35: Respondent views, among Democrats, about which family members should a citizen be capable of spon- soring for citizenship in the U.S. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 59 Since one of the key issues with respect to immigration has been family separation, we asked a series of questions about how to handle immigrant families. The questions were asked in a series as follows. All respondents were first asked, “The federal government has been dealing with the challenge of families that cross the border without a visa and request asylum. Should parents and children be separated at the border or kept together?” The results of this question are in the top third of Table 25. The results show an overwhelming preference to keep families together. For the 17 percent of respondents who favored separation, we asked, “When families are separated, parents are detained. What should happen to the children?” Most of these respondents believed that children should be placed in a detention facility, but slightly over a third responded that such children should be placed with relatives in the U.S. or in foster care if necessary (see the middle portion of Table 25). Table 25: Percentages of people choosing each category in the question series. Should parents and children be separated at the border or kept together? Overall Parents of Children Parents and children should be separated 17 18 Parents and children should be kept together 83 82 When families are separated, parents are detained. What should happen to the children? Children should be placed in a detention facility 64 65 Children should be placed with family members in the U.S. or be placed in foster care, if necessary. 36 35 If families are not separated, what should happen to the families? Parents and children should be kept together in a detention facility until an asylum hearing. 44 50 Parents and children should be allowed to enter the country together, subject to an asylum hearing. 56 50 Finally, for the 83 percent of respondents who favored keeping families together, we asked, “If families are not separated, what should happen to the families?” These results are shown in the bottom of Table 25 and display the closest split. Forty-four percent of all respondents favor keeping the respondents together in a detention facility, while 56 percent of all American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 60 respondents favored allowing the families to enter the country together subject to an asylum hearing. In this case, and it was the only one in the series, there is a slight difference by whether or not a respondent had children. For these respondents the split was perfectly even, with half of parents choosing detention and half of respondents choosing the option of letting the family enter the country. Implicitly, this series of question created four policy categories. Figure 36 displays the preferences given by respondents. It demonstrates that there is a very clear preference in the public favoring keeping families together, there is more division on the appropriate policy assuming that position. Almost half of the respondents favored simply letting families enter the country subject to an asylum hearing, but well over a third favor keeping families together in a detention facility. 11 6 37 46 Separated: Children in a Detention Facility Separated: Children with Relatives or Foster Care Together: Held in a Detention Facility Together: in the Country 0 25 50 75 100 Preferred Immigration Policy on Family Separation Figure 36: Policy Preference on Family Separation These patterns were not ever very different by demographic categories, especially in the case of the first question about family separation. With respect to the second question about how a united family should be treated, younger respondents were slightly more likely to favor the option of letting united families enter the country subject to an asylum hearing, as were minority respondents, but in most such cases all demographic groups favored letting the family enter and the differences were largely of degree. The lone exception to this pattern was among those over age 65. This group preferred keeping family members together at a detention facility. There was a significant, and predictable, partisan split on the issue, although it does not break the overall pattern. Fifty percent of all Republicans favored keeping families together but in a detention facility (their preferred option), while only 26 percent of Democrats favored this option. Seven out of ten Democrats favored letting a family into the country subject to an asylum hearing. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 61 7.4 Family Experience and Tax Cuts How do people feel about the recently passed tax cut bill? On this survey we asked how people felt that the bill affected various groups, described in Table 26. There was a predictable partisan split on the tax bill, with Republicans favoring it much more often than Democrats. Nonetheless, strong majorities of the respondents believe that the tax bill will help large corporations and wealthy individuals. The sample was effectively split down the middle on whether it would help small businesses. Only a minority believed that the bill would help middle- and lower-income persons. The most striking feature is that by the group least likely believed to get any benefit out of the tax bill is the respondent’s own family. Table 26: Beliefs about whom the recent tax cut would “help” Groups Overall Average Large Corporations 68 Wealthy Individuals 63 Small Businesses 49 Middle-Income Individuals 43 Low-Income Individuals 37 Your Family 35 We investigated the degree to which these attitudes varied across the key sub-populations examined in the American Family Survey. While it is true that higher income individuals were more favorably disposed toward the tax cut, we generally found only muted variation by group. Figure 37 breaks down support by key sub-groups: gender, marital status, and whether or not a respondent had children. The clear pattern is that the object of help was the dominant consideration for most respondents. While it is true that women tended to think that the tax cuts would help less across the board, all demographic groups we investigated followed the same basic pattern of believing that various types of business would be helped by the law, as would wealthy citizens. People are simply more skeptical that the policy will help out other groups in society. American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 62 38 42 30 42 62 67 57 69 41 42 34 41 47 49 37 49 67 72 62 74 54 56 41 57 Your Family Wealthy Individuals Lower-Income Individuals Middle-Income Individuals Large Corporations Small Businesses 0 25 50 75 100 Percentage Responding the Tax Cut Helps Each Group Status Men Women Married Parents Attitudes about The Republican Tax Bill Figure 37: Attitudes about the Republican tax bill by gender and family status 7.5 Family Background and Support for Planned Parenthood A final area of public policy we explored on this year’s survey was the recent defunding of Planned Parenthood. Predictably, there is a wide partisan split on this issue (found in many other surveys). We focused on beliefs about how this policy would affect individuals. Table 27 displays the reactions of various groups to how this policy will affect them. Most respondents felt that it would not affect them at all (more than seven in ten). However, it is really subsets of the population—particularly younger women—who are probably most concerned with the services provided by Planned Parenthood. When we subset to those groups we discover far greater percentages who believe that the policy will affect them—or who respond that they “don’t know” if it will affect them. Indeed, only 45 percent of single women under age 45 believe that it will not affect them at all. Despite our efforts to focus on experiences rather than partisan splits, we should note that there was an ineradicable partisan difference on this question. Focusing solely on the population of women under Table 27: Percentage believing that recent defunding of Planned Parenthood will affect them ... Responses All Respondents Men Women Women Under 45 Married Women Under 45 Single Women Under 45 A Great Deal 7 6 8 12 9 13 Somewhat 10 9 10 16 13 18 Not at all 71 74 68 50 59 45 Don’t Know 13 12 13 22 19 24 American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 63 age 45, Democrats in this group believed they would be affected at some level 38 percent of the time, while Republicans believed this only 14 percent of the time. Other control variables like marital status and income did not eliminate the difference. The pattern of answers could be due either to expressive reporting of people who were unlikely to need the services but opposed the policy, or because the Democrats (perhaps because of geographic reasons) use the services of Planned Parenthood more often (likely both factors are in play). Whatever the reason, this is not an area where partisan differences are simply muted. On the contrary, when considering Planned Parenthood funding, there are strong and abiding partisan differences. 8 Conclusions Now in its fourth year, the 2018 American Family Survey reveals a great deal of consistency with previous iterations of the survey (which can all be found here). It is not the case that the American Family is in steep decline, or that it is achieving new highs. Instead, we find that views about relationships and families differ depending on one’s background and experiences. People like marriage. Indeed, it is fair to say that people generally think it is an important benefit—though it must be noted that many people (a little less than half) believe personal commitment is more important than the formal institution. One of the key findings in this survey was the importance of identity. The evidence is clear that parents and married people derive enormous satisfaction from their identities as parents or spouses. In some ways this makes the challenges to family all the more important. When a part of people’s identities are challenged by societal changes, economic instability, personal financial stresses, or depression and anxiety, it reflects a problem that people must take seriously. And even in the midst of what by many indicators is a booming economy, we find that many families experience economic challenges and worry a great deal about them, especially about the high costs of raising children. Though we did not directly ask the question of how it threatens families, the results in this survey on sexual harassment should give policymakers pause, in our opinion. The fact that such a large portion of the public—three in ten men and six in ten women—have experienced an inappropriate experience demands a significant response from society. Though we did not poll on solutions, it is clear that at least part of that solution must be cultural change. The divide in attitudes between men and women merits considerable additional discussion (including discussion of the fact that standards shift when the direction of the attention shifts). Despite the stresses and other difficulties of family life, this survey continues to send a clear message: that people often find deep happiness—even the sources of their identities—inside of families. To quote last year’s report: “This should underscore the value of marriage and children for society. Consistently, we have found that those who enjoy marriage and children—though the latter only inside of marriage—seem better off in a host of ways, even if they perceive threats looming for families.” This year’s survey underscores that people see multiple stresses and sources of tension for families, but that the institution remains resilient in the face of these tensions. It is our aim to continue to study this institution and how it relates to politics and policy in America. We continue to believe that, despite the challenges of the research, family relationships remain one of the most important sources of meaning and happiness for most Americans. Last updated: November 14, 2018 http://national.deseretnews.com/american-family-survey http://deseretnews.com/american-family-survey http://national.deseretnews.com/american-family-survey American Family Survey Summary Report: Identities, Opportunities, and Challenges 64 9 Appendix: Statement on Methodology YouGov interviewed 3332 respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 3000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The frame was constructed by stratified sampling from the full 2016 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year sample with selection within strata by weighted sampling with replacements (using the person weights on the public use file). The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, and region. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles. The weights were then post-stratified on 2016 Presidential vote choice, and a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories), and education (4-categories), to produce the final weight. 10 Appendix: Topline Report What follows is a topline report of all survey questions asked in the 2018 American Family Survey. This topline report was generated by YouGov. Any questions about the survey or the topline should be directed to BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy (csed@byu.edu). mailto:csed@byu.edu BYUC0016 August 2018 Sample 3000 US Adults (18+) Conducted August 03 – 14, 2018 Margin of Error ±1.9% 1 BYUC0016 August 2018 1. How old were you when you first became a parent? 15 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 16 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 17 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4% 18 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% 19 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% 20 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9% 21 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9% 22 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7% 23 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% 24 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% 25 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7% 26 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% 27 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% 28 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% 29 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4% 30 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% 31 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% 32 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% 33 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% 34 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 35 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 36 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 37 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 38 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 39 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 40 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 41 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 42 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 43 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 44 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 45 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 46 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 47 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 48 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 49 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 50 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 51 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 52 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 53 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 54 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 55 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 56 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 57 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 58 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 59 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 60 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 61 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 62 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 63 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 64 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 65 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 66 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 67 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 68 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 69 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 70 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 71 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 72 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 73 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 74 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 75 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 76 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 77 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 78 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 79 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 80 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 2 BYUC0016 August 2018 2. And when you first became a parent, what was your relationship status? Married . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72% Married, but separated from spouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% Living with a partner, but not married . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13% In a committed relationship, but not living with partner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7% Not in a committed relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% Unsure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 3. Was your mother married or single when you were born? Married . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86% Single . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11% Don’t know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% 4. Which of the following best describes what you experienced between birth and age 18? My mother was continuously married to the same person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76% My mother divorced and then remarried . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14% My mother divorced and never remarried . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% 5. Which of the following best describes what you experienced between birth and age 18? My mother never married . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40% My mother married after I was born . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41% My mother married after I was born and then was divorced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19% 3 BYUC0016 August 2018 6. How likely is it that you will still be in the same marriage or relationship two years from now? Very likely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77% Likely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9% Somewhat likely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4% Neither likely or unlikely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% Somewhat unlikely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% Unlikely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% Very unlikely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% Don’t know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4% 7. At any point in the last two years, have you thought that your marriage or relationship was in trouble? Yes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32% No . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68% 8. Would you say that your marriage or relationship is stronger, weaker or about the same as two years ago? Stronger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52% About the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40% Weaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% Don’t know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 9. Turning to marriage generally, do you feel that marriages in the United States are stronger, weaker, or about the same as two years ago? Stronger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% About the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41% Weaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37% Don’t know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15% 4 BYUC0016 August 2018 10. How much do you agree or disagree with the following: Strongly disagreeDisagree Somewhat disagree Neither agree nor disagree Somewhat agree Agree Strongly agree Total Disagree Total Agree When more people are married, society is better off. 4% 5% 5% 32% 12% 18% 23% 15% 53% Marriage is more of a burden than a benefit to couples. 30% 22% 12% 22% 7% 3% 3% 64% 14% Marriage is needed in order to create strong families. 8% 8% 8% 17% 13% 18% 28% 24% 59% Being legally married is not as important as having a personal sense of commitment to your partner. 16% 13% 9% 19% 14% 16% 14% 38% 44% Marriage is old-fashioned and out-of-date. 40% 20% 10% 16% 7% 3% 4% 70% 14% Marriage makes families and children better off financially. 3% 4% 4% 25% 18% 23% 23% 11% 64% 5 BYUC0016 August 2018 11. How much do you agree or disagree with the following: Strongly DisagreeDisagree Somewhat Disagree Neither Agree nor Disagree Somewhat Agree Agree Strongly Agree Total Disagree Total Agree Happy marriages require hard work. 1% 1% 1% 7% 12% 27% 51% 3% 90% Personal happiness is more important than putting up with a bad marriage. 5% 6% 7% 19% 20% 21% 22% 18% 63% It is okay to divorce when a person’s needs are no longer met. 9% 11% 13% 23% 19% 15% 10% 33% 45% Marriage is for life, even if the couple is unhappy. 21% 18% 17% 19% 8% 8% 8% 56% 25% 12. How much do you agree or disagree with the following: Strongly DisagreeDisagree Somewhat Disagree Neither Agree nor Disagree Somewhat Agree Agree Strongly Agree Total Disagree Total Agree All in all, there are more advantages to being single than to being married. 6% 12% 12% 39% 13% 8% 9% 30% 31% Getting married is more important to me than having a successful career. 25% 17% 10% 29% 8% 6% 5% 52% 19% 6 BYUC0016 August 2018 13. Would you say that your family relationships are stronger, weaker, or about the same as two years ago? Stronger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33% About the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52% Weaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11% Don’t know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% 14. Turning to families generally, do you feel that family relationships in the United States are stronger, weaker, or about the same as two years ago? Stronger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7% About the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46% Weaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33% Don’t know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15% 15. What are the most important issues facing families today? Pick up to three items. High work demands and stress on parents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29% Lack of government programs to support families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13% The costs associated with raising a family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35% The lack of good jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17% Decline in religious faith and church attendance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% Sexual permissiveness in our society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17% The widespread availability and use of drugs and alcohol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18% Crime and other threats to personal safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% Change in the definition of marriage and family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16% Parents not teaching or disciplining their children sufficiently . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49% More children growing up in single-parent homes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31% Difficulty finding quality time with family in the digital age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23% Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 7 BYUC0016 August 2018 16. What are the most important issues facing teenagers today? Pick up to four items. Family breakdown/divorce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35% Difficult relationships with family members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15% Sexual abuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9% Mental health issues, including anxiety and depression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36% Pressure to use drugs or alcohol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34% Navigating sexual identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% Dating and relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14% Making decisions about sexual activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% Overuse of technology, such as texting, social media or video games . . . . 53% Widespread availability of pornography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12% Pressure to get good grades or into a good college . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14% Not enough meaningful work opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% Bullying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45% Poor quality schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23% Safety in their communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11% Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 17. How satisfied are you with your...? Completely dissatisfied Somewhat dissatisfied Don’t know Somewhat satisfied Completely satisfied Total Dissatisfied Total Satisfied Not applicable Job 5% 8% 13% 23% 17% 13% 40% 33% Family 4% 7% 9% 31% 47% 11% 78% 2% $mar1_text 4% 5% 6% 25% 58% 9% 83% 1% Life 5% 11% 11% 42% 30% 16% 72% 1% Community 5% 12% 23% 40% 18% 17% 58% 2% 8 BYUC0016 August 2018 18. Thinking about marriages today, how important is it that couples share the...? Not at all important Not too important Somewhat important Very important Extremely important Total Not Important Total Important Same political party 20% 25% 34% 14% 7% 45% 21% Same religious affiliation 13% 18% 33% 20% 15% 31% 36% Same level of education 20% 33% 33% 10% 4% 53% 14% Same interests and hobbies 6% 19% 46% 22% 7% 26% 28% Same social values (i.e. honestly, hard work, etc.) 2% 3% 18% 43% 33% 6% 76% Same feelings about having children. 2% 3% 14% 38% 43% 5% 81% 19. In the past 12 months, did you do any of the following because there wasn’t enough money? Check all that apply. Were you ever hungry, but didn’t eat because you couldn’t afford enough food? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11% Did you not pay the full amount of an important bill (like rent, mortgage, or a utility bill)? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17% Did you borrow or receive money from friends or family to help pay the bills? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18% Did you move in with other people even for a little while because of financial problems? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% Did you stay at a shelter, in an abandoned building, an automobile, or any other place not meant for regular housing, even for one night? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% Was there anyone in your household who needed to see a doctor or go to the hospital but couldn’t go because of the cost? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13% Did you decide to not have a child because it would cost too much? . . . . . . 4% Was there anyone in your household who needed a medication and couldn’t get it because of the cost? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11% None of the above . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63% 9 BYUC0016 August 2018 20. In your current relationship, do you expect your spouse or partner to work for pay? Yes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64% No . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36% 21. Which of the following events have you experienced in the past year? I have experienced this within the last year I have not experienced this within the last year Had an immediate family member die 18% 82% Had fertility problems 5% 95% Was deployed for military service or had an immediate family member deployed for military service 4% 96% Had an immediate family member arrested 7% 93% Was laid off or my spouse/partner was laid off 9% 91% Divorced or separated from spouse or partner 4% 96% 10 BYUC0016 August 2018 22. How often do you do each of the following with your spouse or partner? Never Yearly or less A few times a year About once a month Weekly A few times a week Daily Go out together, just the two of you 7% 6% 17% 23% 26% 16% 6% Have a serious argument 14% 25% 32% 17% 6% 4% 1% Discuss your relationship with each other 12% 10% 20% 19% 18% 14% 8% Discuss finances with each other 5% 3% 12% 25% 25% 20% 10% Sleep in different rooms because you were upset with one another 65% 15% 9% 4% 2% 1% 3% Talk about political or social issues with each other 10% 4% 8% 14% 17% 25% 23% Pray together as a couple, outside of meals 50% 8% 10% 7% 9% 7% 9% Have sex with each other 12% 9% 12% 17% 25% 21% 4% Do nice things for each other, such as making coffee, putting gas in the car, etc. 4% 2% 5% 10% 19% 25% 35% Hide finances or purchases from each other 64% 12% 10% 7% 4% 2% 2% 11 BYUC0016 August 2018 23. When you and your spouse or partner discuss political or social issues, how often do you disagree? Frequently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% Sometimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33% Rarely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47% Never . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11% 24. What kinds of issues do you and your spouse disagree about? Check all that apply. Social issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37% Economic issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% Foreign policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14% Political candidates or elected officials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28% Local politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18% None of the above . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37% 25. When you and your spouse or partner disagree about a political event or issue, how do you tend to resolve that disagreement? Check all that apply. I come to agree with my spouse or partner’s position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% My spouse or partner comes to agree with my position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9% We meet in the middle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26% We agree to disagree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58% We stop talking about that issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28% Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4% 26. In your relationship, which of the following topics do you regularly avoid talking about? Check all that apply. Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14% Extended family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17% Political or social issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15% Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15% Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% None of the above . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56% 12 BYUC0016 August 2018 27. How often does your family...? Never Yearly or less A few times a year About once a month Weekly A few times a week Daily Eat dinner together 5% 3% 7% 8% 11% 21% 47% Attend the activities of a family member (recitals, sporting events, etc.) 17% 16% 33% 18% 9% 4% 2% Do household chores together 15% 5% 9% 14% 25% 17% 15% Go out to movies, museums, sporting events, or parks together 14% 12% 29% 27% 12% 3% 2% Worship together 40% 13% 12% 5% 19% 6% 6% Have an argument 13% 24% 29% 17% 10% 6% 2% Participate in activities together at home (watch TV, watch a movie, play games, etc.) 7% 4% 8% 9% 16% 19% 37% 13 BYUC0016 August 2018 28. On a typical weekday, how much time do you spend using social media? 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18% 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26% 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19% 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 14 BYUC0016 August 2018 29. On a typical weekday, how much time do you spend playing video games on any platform? 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50% 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19% 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12% 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4% 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 15 BYUC0016 August 2018 30. How much do you agree or disagree with the following: Strongly disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Neither agree nor disagree Somewhat agree Agree Strongly agree The cost of raising a child/children is affordable for most people. 15% 18% 20% 20% 14% 9% 4% Children are better off if they have two married parents. 5% 6% 4% 20% 16% 19% 30% It is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking. 12% 9% 8% 18% 20% 18% 16% It is important for parents to pass on their political values to their children. 9% 11% 11% 33% 16% 12% 7% Parents should set boundaries on media consumption for their children. 1% 1% 2% 10% 19% 31% 36% Children need both a male and a female role model in the home. 8% 6% 6% 15% 14% 18% 32% Raising children is one of life’s greatest joys. 3% 2% 3% 20% 15% 25% 32% It’s morally wrong to have a child outside of marriage. 23% 16% 8% 21% 10% 12% 10% 16 BYUC0016 August 2018 31. How important are the following things to your personal identity? Not at all important Not too important Somewhat important Very important Extremely important My role as a spouse or partner 7% 6% 18% 30% 39% My role as a parent 13% 5% 11% 25% 46% My religion 26% 13% 18% 16% 26% My race 28% 23% 20% 14% 15% My political party 20% 23% 29% 17% 12% My career or job 20% 13% 30% 23% 14% My community 12% 19% 40% 20% 9% 32. To live a fulfilling life, it is essential to __ . Strongly disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Neither agree nor disagree Somewhat agree Agree Strongly agree Be married 18% 17% 10% 24% 11% 11% 8% Have kids 17% 14% 8% 25% 14% 13% 10% Have a rewarding career/job 5% 6% 5% 19% 29% 23% 13% Be part of a religious community 19% 12% 7% 22% 13% 14% 12% Be engaged in the local community 6% 9% 8% 30% 27% 14% 6% Have a good education 3% 4% 4% 18% 25% 29% 17% Make a good living 1% 2% 4% 16% 28% 31% 17% 17 BYUC0016 August 2018 33. People have different ideas about what it means to become a man or a woman. How important are each of these experiences in becoming a man? Not important Somewhat important Extremely important Complete formal schooling 16% 45% 40% Be employed full-time 9% 36% 55% Capable of supporting a family financially 7% 28% 66% Financially independent from parents 4% 23% 73% No longer living in parents’ household 8% 26% 66% Get married 41% 39% 20% Have a child 46% 38% 17% 34. People have different ideas about what it means to become a man or a woman. How important are each of these experiences in becoming a woman? Not important Somewhat important Extremely important Complete formal schooling 18% 38% 44% Be employed full-time 22% 43% 34% Capable of supporting a family financially 14% 38% 47% Financially independent from parents 7% 31% 62% No longer living in parents’ household 11% 35% 54% Get married 43% 36% 21% Have a child 44% 35% 20% 18 BYUC0016 August 2018 35. How concerned are you about your teenage child when it comes to...? Not concerned at all Somewhat concerned Extremely concerned Grades and schoolwork 31% 37% 31% Getting in trouble at school/behavior in school 49% 28% 24% Your child’s friends and social life 26% 44% 30% Feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues 33% 33% 34% 36. To what extent do your child’s feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues affect their...? Not at all A little A lot Schoolwork 31% 47% 22% Friendships 29% 39% 33% Family Relationships 29% 36% 35% Extracurricular activities 35% 37% 28% Physical Health 36% 33% 31% 37. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 38. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 19 BYUC0016 August 2018 39. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 40. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 41. How concerned are you about your teenage child when it comes to...? Not concerned at all Somewhat concerned Extremely concerned Grades and schoolwork 29% 34% 37% Getting in trouble in school (behavior in school) 52% 28% 20% Your child’s friends and social life 27% 35% 39% Feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues 33% 35% 32% 42. To what extent do your child’s feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues impact their...? Not at all A little A lot Schoolwork 26% 37% 36% Friendships 29% 44% 27% Family Relationships 26% 47% 27% Extracurricular activities 37% 45% 19% Physical Health 37% 37% 26% 20 BYUC0016 August 2018 43. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 44. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 45. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 46. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 47. How concerned are you about your teenage child when it comes to...? Not concerned at all Somewhat concerned Extremely concerned Grades and schoolwork 30% 28% 42% Getting in trouble in school (behavior in school) 47% 20% 33% Your child’s friends and social life 33% 31% 36% Feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues 24% 34% 42% 21 BYUC0016 August 2018 48. To what extent do your child’s feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues impact their...? Not at all A little A lot Schoolwork 31% 51% 18% Friendships 34% 34% 32% Family Relationships 25% 39% 36% Extracurricular activities 43% 36% 22% Physical Health 39% 35% 26% 49. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 50. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 51. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 52. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 22 BYUC0016 August 2018 53. How concerned are you about your teenage child when it comes to...? Not concerned at all Somewhat concerned Extremely concerned Grades and schoolwork 26% 39% 34% Getting in trouble in school (behavior in school) 35% 37% 28% Your child’s friends and social life 17% 46% 37% Feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues 28% 33% 39% 54. To what extent do your child’s feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues impact their...? Not at all A little A lot Schoolwork 10% 60% 30% Friendships 9% 57% 34% Family Relationships 22% 49% 28% Extracurricular activities 22% 34% 44% Physical Health 26% 33% 40% 55. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 56. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 23 BYUC0016 August 2018 57. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 58. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 59. How concerned are you about your teenage child when it comes to...? Not concerned at all Somewhat concerned Extremely concerned Grades and schoolwork 7% 26% 67% Getting in trouble in school (behavior in school) 22% 20% 58% Your child’s friends and social life 6% 15% 79% Feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues 21% 21% 58% 60. To what extent do your child’s feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues impact their...? Not at all A little A lot Schoolwork 27% 38% 35% Friendships 11% 38% 51% Family Relationships 11% 38% 51% Extracurricular activities 11% 38% 51% Physical Health 11% 44% 45% 24 BYUC0016 August 2018 61. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 62. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 63. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 64. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 65. How concerned are you about your teenage child when it comes to...? Not concerned at all Somewhat concerned Extremely concerned Grades and schoolwork 25% 42% 33% Getting in trouble in school (behavior in school) 33% 33% 34% Your child’s friends and social life 33% 31% 36% Feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues 42% 8% 49% 25 BYUC0016 August 2018 66. To what extent do your child’s feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues impact their...? Not at all A little A lot Schoolwork 21% 37% 42% Friendships - 41% 59% Family Relationships - 41% 59% Extracurricular activities - 14% 86% Physical Health 23% 41% 36% 67. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 68. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 69. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 70. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 26 BYUC0016 August 2018 71. How concerned are you about your teenage child when it comes to...? Not concerned at all Somewhat concerned Extremely concerned Grades and schoolwork - - 100% Getting in trouble in school (behavior in school) - - 100% Your child’s friends and social life - 38% 62% Feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues - - 100% 72. To what extent do your child’s feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues impact their...? Not at all A little A lot Schoolwork - - 100% Friendships - 62% 38% Family Relationships - 62% 38% Extracurricular activities - 62% 38% Physical Health - 62% 38% 73. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 74. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 27 BYUC0016 August 2018 75. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 76. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - 77. How concerned are you about your teenage child when it comes to...? Not concerned at all Somewhat concerned Extremely concerned Grades and schoolwork 28% 44% 27% Getting in trouble in school (behavior in school) 73% - 27% Your child’s friends and social life 28% 27% 45% Feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues 55% 17% 27% 78. To what extent do your child’s feelings of anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues impact their...? Not at all A little A lot Schoolwork 100% - - Friendships 61% 39% - Family Relationships 100% - - Extracurricular activities 100% - - Physical Health 100% - - 28 BYUC0016 August 2018 79. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 80. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend using social media? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 81. On a typical weekday, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 82. On a typical weekend day, how much time does your child spend playing video games on any platform? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 83. How would you rate each of the following government programs on a scale? Place each item along the scale where items on the left mean they are not at all good for families with children and items on the right mean they are very good for families with children. Respondent placed item on scale from 0 - "Not at all good for families with children" to 100 - "Very good for families with children". Food stamps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Child care assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Medicaid and other health insurance subsidies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 84. Have you or your family ever directly benefitted from the following programs? Yes No Don’t know Food stamps 36% 59% 4% Child care assistance 11% 83% 6% Medicaid and other health insurance subsidies 42% 52% 6% 29 BYUC0016 August 2018 85. Which of the following financial expenses do you worry about paying in full each month? Check all that apply. Rent/Mortgage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28% Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26% Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27% Clothes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13% Health insurance premiums or medical bills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21% Transportation expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17% Childcare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% Paying off credit card bills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28% Paying back loans/Interest on loans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16% Tuition or other educational expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% None of these . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39% 86. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to fix local roads Spending money to build more parks 82% 18% 87. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to fix local roads Spending money to improve public transportation 66% 34% 88. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to fix local roads Spending money on pensions 61% 39% 30 BYUC0016 August 2018 89. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to fix local roads Spending money to make housing more affordable 45% 55% 90. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to fix local roads Spending money to have better schools 39% 61% 91. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to fix local roads Spending money on local law enforcement 56% 44% 92. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to fix local roads Spending money on basic services (garbage, water, etc.) 46% 54% 93. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to build more parks Spending money to improve public transportation 38% 62% 31 BYUC0016 August 2018 94. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to build more parks Spending money on pensions 45% 55% 95. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to build more parks Spending money to make housing more affordable 21% 79% 96. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to build more parks Spending money to have better schools 17% 83% 97. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to build more parks Spending money on local law enforcement 40% 60% 98. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to build more parks Spending money on basic services (garbage, water, etc.) 20% 80% 32 BYUC0016 August 2018 99. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to improve public transportation Spending money on pensions 50% 50% 100. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to improve public transportation Spending money to make housing more affordable 27% 73% 101. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to improve public transportation Spending money to have better schools 29% 71% 102. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to improve public transportation Spending money on local law enforcement 47% 53% 33 BYUC0016 August 2018 103. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to improve public transportation Spending money on basic services (garbage, water, etc.) 30% 70% 104. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money on pensions Spending money to make housing more affordable 29% 71% 105. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money on pensions Spending money to have better schools 31% 69% 106. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money on pensions Spending money on local law enforcement 46% 54% 107. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money on pensions Spending money on basic services (garbage, water, etc.) 26% 74% 34 BYUC0016 August 2018 108. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to make housing more affordable Spending money to have better schools 53% 47% 109. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to make housing more affordable Spending money on local law enforcement 63% 37% 110. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to make housing more affordable Spending money on basic services (garbage, water, etc.) 50% 50% 111. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to have better schools Spending money on local law enforcement 67% 33% 35 BYUC0016 August 2018 112. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money to have better schools Spending money on basic services (garbage, water, etc.) 52% 48% 113. Local governments have to make choices about how they spend money. Consider the following trade-offs. Which option would benefit your family the most? Spending money on local law enforcement Spending money on basic services (garbage, water, etc.) 37% 63% 114. Do you pay someone money each month for the following services? Yes No Not applicable Childcare during the workday 7% 62% 31% Cleaning/Housekeeping 11% 78% 11% Landscaping/Yard Work 17% 68% 15% 36 BYUC0016 August 2018 115. In December, Congress passed and President Trump signed a bill that cut taxes. How do you feel that these tax cuts affect the following groups of people financially? Hurts a lot Hurts a little No impact Helps a little Helps a lot Your family 14% 17% 33% 21% 14% Wealthy individuals and families 3% 7% 27% 18% 45% Lower-income individuals and families 26% 12% 25% 20% 17% Middle-income individuals and families 16% 17% 24% 26% 17% Large corporations 3% 6% 23% 16% 52% Small businesses 12% 15% 23% 27% 22% 116. Immigrants who legally become naturalized citizens can sponsor family members to come to the United States. Which of the following family members should they be able to sponsor? Check all that apply. Spouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45% Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50% Parents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39% Grandparents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% Aunt/Uncle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% Niece/Nephew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% Cousins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4% Siblings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25% Any relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% No one . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18% 37 BYUC0016 August 2018 117. Do you personally know any immigrants who are here illegally, sometimes called unauthorized or illegal immigrants? (Note: This survey is confidential and individual responses will never be connected to your name or shared outside the research team.) Yes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22% No . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62% Not sure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16% 118. How often do you associate with the unauthorized immigrant(s) you know? Never . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16% Yearly or less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16% A few times a year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% About once a month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15% Weekly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14% A few times a week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% Daily . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% 119. The Federal Government has recently cut funding for Planned Parenthood. To what extent will this change in funding affect you personally? Not at all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71% Somewhat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% A great deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7% Don’t know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13% 38 BYUC0016 August 2018 120. What do you think is the ideal number of children for a family to have? 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55% 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% 10+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 121. Do you personally hope or desire to have a child someday? Yes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41% No . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27% It depends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23% Don’t know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% 39 BYUC0016 August 2018 122. Apart from the physical ability to conceive, how important are each of these factors for your decisions about having children in the future? Not at all important Somewhat important Extremely important The difficulty of balancing family and career 23% 44% 34% The cost of raising a child 14% 36% 50% The desire to raise a child of my own 21% 35% 43% My current relationship status 24% 30% 47% The need to have a baby before I’m too old to parent 34% 40% 26% The expectations of my family 47% 35% 18% My religious or philosophical beliefs 55% 27% 18% 123. How important do you think it is for a person to do each of these things before having their first child? Not at all important Somewhat important Extremely important Have an established career 9% 47% 44% Get married 23% 35% 42% Be financially stable 3% 30% 67% Buy a house 34% 45% 21% Graduate from college 33% 41% 26% Travel to different places 56% 30% 14% Be in a committed relationship 9% 27% 64% Have a good health insurance plan 5% 38% 57% 40 BYUC0016 August 2018 124. Outside of your family, who would you turn to first if you needed help with each of the following issues? Nearby neighbors Religious organizations Community organizations Co- workers Other friends I generally just rely on myself Help with childcare 5% 4% 8% 3% 26% 54% Advice about children 2% 8% 4% 4% 33% 48% Advice about my relationship 1% 10% 3% 3% 34% 49% Financial help 1% 5% 8% 2% 14% 70% Taking care of my house or other property 13% 3% 4% 2% 20% 58% Transportation to an important appointment 6% 2% 5% 4% 29% 53% 125. And now considering both family and the other people in your life, who would you turn to first if you needed help with each of the following issues? A family member Someone else I just rely on myself Help with childcare 55% 9% 36% Advice about children 47% 15% 38% Advice about my relationship 24% 28% 48% Financial help 38% 12% 49% Taking care of my house or other property 33% 17% 51% Transportation to an important appointment 37% 17% 46% 41 BYUC0016 August 2018 126. The federal government has been dealing with the challenge of families that cross the border without a visa and request asylum. Should parents and children be separated at the border or kept together? Parents and children should be separated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17% Parents and children should be kept together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83% 127. When families are separated, parents are detained. What should happen to the children? Children should be placed in a detention facility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64% Children should be placed with family members in the U.S. or be placed in foster care, if necessary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36% 128. If families are not separated, what should happen to the families? Parents and children should be kept together in a detention facility until an asylum hearing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44% Parents and children should be allowed to enter the country together, subject to an asylum hearing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56% 129. How many close friends do you have that you feel at ease with and can talk to about private matters? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 130. How many relatives do you have that you feel at ease with and can talk to about private matters? mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 131. Do you or your spouse/partner suffer from anxiety or depression? Yes, I do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29% Yes, my spouse/partner does . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% Yes, we both do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% Neither of us do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55% 42 BYUC0016 August 2018 132. Would you consider it sexual harassment if a man who was not a romantic partner did the following to a woman at work? Never Sometimes Usually Always Requesting a sexual favor 11% 9% 11% 65% Making sexual jokes 14% 33% 25% 25% Placing hand on lower back 16% 31% 22% 28% Looking at private parts 13% 11% 16% 57% Commenting on attractiveness/appearance 30% 47% 10% 10% Asking to go for a drink 41% 40% 9% 7% Persisting in unwanted attention after asked to stop 10% 6% 11% 70% Asking to go to lunch 51% 38% 4% 4% 133. Would you consider it sexual harassment if a woman who was not a romantic partner did the following to a man at work? Never Sometimes Usually Always Requesting a sexual favor 15% 16% 14% 51% Making sexual jokes 21% 37% 19% 19% Placing hand on lower back 25% 36% 18% 17% Looking at private parts 16% 16% 18% 46% Commenting on attractiveness/appearance 36% 42% 10% 8% Asking to go for a drink 46% 36% 8% 7% Persisting in unwanted attention after asked to stop 11% 8% 13% 65% Asking to go to lunch 54% 34% 5% 4% 43 BYUC0016 August 2018 134. Have you ever received unwanted sexual advances from someone __ ? Yes No That you felt were inappropriate. (This can be in any circumstances, whether or not work-related.) 43% 57% Who worked for the same company as you. 30% 70% Who had influence over your school or work situation. 19% 81% 135. Are you familiar with incidents where sexual harassment happened in the following places? Check all that apply. Your workplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35% Your religious congregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9% Your neighborhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14% Your school . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16% Your children’s school . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% Your family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14% None of the above . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48% 136. Have you or your spouse ever spoken with your child about the following topics? Yes No Sex (the birds and the bees) 66% 34% Contraception 58% 42% Consent 60% 40% Sexual harassment or assault 57% 43% Sexual identity or orientation 45% 55% 44 BYUC0016 August 2018 137. Have you or your spouse ever spoken with your child about the following topics? Yes No Sex (the birds and the bees) 65% 35% Contraception 58% 42% Consent 60% 40% Sexual harassment or assault 58% 42% Sexual identity or orientation 44% 56% 138. Have you or your spouse ever spoken with your child about the following topics? Yes No Sex (the birds and the bees) 61% 39% Contraception 54% 46% Consent 55% 45% Sexual harassment or assault 52% 48% Sexual identity or orientation 40% 60% 139. Have you or your spouse ever spoken with your child about the following topics? Yes No Sex (the birds and the bees) 60% 40% Contraception 57% 43% Consent 54% 46% Sexual harassment or assault 50% 50% Sexual identity or orientation 42% 58% 45 BYUC0016 August 2018 140. Have you or your spouse ever spoken with your child about the following topics? Yes No Sex (the birds and the bees) 54% 46% Contraception 51% 49% Consent 50% 50% Sexual harassment or assault 49% 51% Sexual identity or orientation 41% 59% 141. Have you or your spouse ever spoken with your child about the following topics? Yes No Sex (the birds and the bees) 53% 47% Contraception 51% 49% Consent 55% 45% Sexual harassment or assault 54% 46% Sexual identity or orientation 45% 55% 142. Have you or your spouse ever spoken with your child about the following topics? Yes No Sex (the birds and the bees) 50% 50% Contraception 47% 53% Consent 48% 52% Sexual harassment or assault 49% 51% Sexual identity or orientation 37% 63% 46 BYUC0016 August 2018 143. Have you or your spouse ever spoken with your child about the following topics? Yes No Sex (the birds and the bees) 44% 56% Contraception 41% 59% Consent 47% 53% Sexual harassment or assault 48% 52% Sexual identity or orientation 32% 68% 144. In your view, does someone need to ask consent before initiating each of these things $met6_insert with a person they are interested in romantically? Yes, must be verbal Yes, but could be non-verbal No Don’t know Holding hands 16% 43% 35% 7% Putting your arm around someone 17% 46% 30% 8% Kissing someone 34% 48% 12% 6% Intimate touching 56% 32% 7% 5% Having sex 67% 22% 6% 5% 47 BYUC0016 August 2018 145. What do you do after your kids go to bed? Check all that apply. Never A few times a year Once a week More than once a week Watch TV or a movie 15% 11% 13% 62% Talk on the phone/Send text messages 30% 15% 17% 38% Play video games 61% 11% 11% 18% Use social media 33% 9% 13% 45% Read a book 29% 21% 18% 33% Have sex 31% 24% 25% 20% Work/homework 53% 15% 14% 19% 146. Urban/Rural Urban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30% Suburban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49% Rural . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21% 147. Gender Male . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49% Female . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51% 148. Age 18-29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22% 30-44 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25% 45-64 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34% 65+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% 48 BYUC0016 August 2018 149. Race White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72% Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12% Hispanic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16% 150. Education HS or Less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40% Some College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31% College Grad+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29% 151. Income LT $40k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38% $40-$80k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29% $80k+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34% 152. Employment Status Employed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61% Unemployed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12% Retired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27% 153. Urban/Rural Urban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30% Suburban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49% Rural . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21% 154. Political Party Democrat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38% Republican . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29% Independent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34% 49 BYUC0016 August 2018 155. Religious Affiliation White evangelical Protestant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15% White non-evangelical Protestant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% Black Protestant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7% Catholics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21% White non-hisp Catholic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12% Hisp Catholic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% Unaffiliated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36% Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12% 156. Religious Attendance Weekly+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26% Monthly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19% Seldom/never . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54% 157. Marital Status Married . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47% Unmarried . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53% 158. Children Children at home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37% Children not at home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% No children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39% 50 Project Overview & Summary The State of Marriage and Family The General State of Marriages and Attitudes about Marriage Relationship Status and Trump Approval Identity Family Relationships and Parenting Evaluations of American Families Important Issues Facing American Families The Financial Stresses Facing American Families Money and the Decision to Have Children Family Crises Family Activities Parental Activities American Views on the Ideal Marriage and Family Shared Values Fulfilling Life Becoming an Adult Parents and Teenagers Teens and Technology What Worries Parents Sexual Harassment Social Capital and Support Networks Family and Public Policy National Government Programs Local Government Programs Personal Experience and Support for Immigration Family Experience and Tax Cuts Family Background and Support for Planned Parenthood Conclusions Appendix: Statement on Methodology Appendix: Topline Report work_6svzzlv4bffefkkwxmulwlwqci ---- Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent in Social Movements Vachhani, S. J. (2019). Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent in Social Movements. Journal of Business Ethics, 164, 745-757. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04403-5 Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record License (if available): CC BY Link to published version (if available): 10.1007/s10551-019-04403-5 Link to publication record in Explore Bristol Research PDF-document This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via Springer Nature at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-019-04403-5. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. University of Bristol - Explore Bristol Research General rights This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/red/research-policy/pure/user-guides/ebr-terms/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04403-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04403-5 https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/daf9e0c2-7ae4-4e2a-92c7-33c73f85c078 https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/daf9e0c2-7ae4-4e2a-92c7-33c73f85c078 Vol.:(0123456789)1 3 Journal of Business Ethics https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04403-5 O R I G I N A L PA P E R Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent in Social Movements Sheena J. Vachhani1 Received: 9 July 2018 / Accepted: 13 December 2019 © The Author(s) 2019 Abstract Using two contemporary cases of the global #MeToo movement and UK-based collective Sisters Uncut, this paper argues that a more in-depth and critical concern with gendered difference is necessary for understanding radical democratic ethics, one that advances and develops current understandings of business ethics. It draws on practices of social activism and dissent through the context of Irigaray’s later writing on democratic politics and Ziarek’s analysis of dissensus and democracy that proceeds from an emphasis on alterity as the capacity to transform nonappropriative self-other relations. Therefore, the aims of the paper are: (i) to develop a deeper understanding of a culture of difference and to consider sexual difference as central to the development of a practical democratic ethics and politics of organizations; (ii) to explore two key cases of contemporary feminist social movements that demonstrate connected yet contrasting examples of how feminist politics develops through an appreciation of embodied, intercorporeal differences; and (iii) to extend insights from Irigaray and Ziarek to examine ways in which a practical democratic politics proceeding from an embodied ethics of difference forms an important advancement to theorising the connection between ethics, dissent and democracy. Keywords Alterity · Democracy · Difference · Feminism · Feminist ethics · Irigaray · Radical politics · Gender · Ziarek Introduction Whilst the field of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have made strides in considering gen- der, Grosser and Moon (2017) note there is rarely explicit reference or substantive exploration of feminist theory to understand gendered differences and issues in business eth- ics. As Borgerson (2007, p. 477) attests, “feminist ethics has been consistently overlooked, misunderstood, and improp- erly applied within business ethics and corporate social responsibility”. Feminist ethics offers rich theoretical and conceptual resources for understanding and representing diverse interests, effectively critiquing corporate business ethics, corporate sovereignty and offering alternative forms of ethics for organizations (Burton and Dunn 1996; Liedtka 1996; Rhodes 2016) by exploring the intersections between relationships, responsibility and experience (Borgerson 2007). In particular, these perspectives offer insight into the politics of difference, namely how gendered differences are constructed and how they enable and constrain the dynamics of corporate power and privilege in organizations (Karam and Jamali 2015). To translate this further into organizational terms, femi- nist ethics and politics offer ways of disturbing organiza- tions, pushing beyond constructed categories assigned to us, such as gender, race and class, and engaging in a politics of disturbance of organizational order “through critique, resistance and opposition to the self-interested sovereignty of business and to the pretense of corporate immutability in the name of capitalism” (Rhodes 2014, p. 726). Importantly, this provides a practical ethics for understanding dynam- ics of oppression and discrimination that go beyond nar- rowly defined and reductive notions of gender in mainstream business ethics and corporate social responsibility literature, such as the focus on instrumental approaches to women’s empowerment, gender equality and corporate leadership (Grosser and Moon 2017; Grosser and McCarthy 2018). This paper thus contributes to debates around democracy and business ethics by showing how dissent, in the form of activist, grassroots organizations, collectives and networks, * Sheena J. Vachhani s.vachhani@bristol.ac.uk 1 Department of Management, School of Economics, Finance and Management, University of Bristol, Howard House, Queens Avenue, Bristol BS8 1SD, UK https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2911-455X http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10551-019-04403-5&domain=pdf S. J. Vachhani 1 3 representing different individuals and groups are able to effectively resist and how feminist movements rethink gen- der, race and class differences and the challenges this entails. “This ethics finds practical purchase in forms of dissent that redirect power away from centres of organized wealth and capital, returning it to its democratically rightful place with the people, with society” (Rhodes 2016, p. 1501). A practi- cal, democratic business ethics on this basis is where the actions and practices of social justice groups hold institu- tions and corporations to account and challenge and disrupt corporate sovereignty (Rhodes 2016). The theoretical critique developed here draws on the feminist philosophy of Luce Irigaray and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek whose work on dissensus and radical democracy offers important theoretical perspectives for a practical and gendered, democratic organizational politics. Irigaray sees “the contemporary ethical project as a recall to dif- ference, rather than equality, to difference between women and men—that is, sexual difference” (Fermon 1998, p. 120). Irigaray contends that overlooking the symbolic organization of power (Fermon 1998) reifies the subordinated position of the feminine and if democracy is to be real, considera- tion needs to be given to the status of women in democratic thinking rather than recourse to a universalised, masculine subject of democracy. Ziarek (2001, p. 172) develops and extends Irigaray’s concern for a radical female imaginary and operationalises the idea that, Although women have won the formal rights of citi- zenship in Western democracies, the liberal discourse of rights has not yet been transformed to express a culture of sexual difference. Without a culture of dif- ference constructed within the larger horizon of eco- nomic equality, women, Irigaray argues, are caught in a double bind between ‘the minimum of social rights they can obtain…and the psychological or physical price they have to pay for that minimum’. In this sense, Irigaray and Ziarek both enable the devel- opment of a practical democratic ethics whereby “women under these conditions require imaginative ways to recon- figure the self, to subvert the melancholy and regression of masculinist economies and envisage a future in which women would not be ashamed of the feminine, would expe- rience it as a positivity worth emulating” (Fermon 1998, p. 120). In light of the challenges many women face to be heard and the effects economic cuts have on the most vul- nerable, women’s democratic participation, modes of dis- sent and the complexities surrounding women’s differences continue to be an important and necessary conversation for advancing ethical debates. Therefore, the contributions of the paper are: (i) to develop a deeper understanding of the politics of differ- ence and to consider sexual difference as central to the development of a democratic business ethics and politics of organizations; (ii) to explore two key cases of contempo- rary women’s social activism that demonstrate connected yet contrasting examples for how feminist politics develop through an appreciation of embodied, intercorporeal dif- ferences and a commitment to holding organizations and institutions to account built on a nonappropriative relation to the Other (Pullen and Rhodes 2014; Ziarek 2001), namely the recent global #MeToo movement (see Tyler 2018; Vach- hani and Pullen 2019) and Sisters Uncut collective, a UK- based direct action collective; and (iii) to extend insights from Irigaray and Ziarek to examine ways in which a radical democratic politics proceeding from an embodied ethics of difference forms an important advancement to theorising the connection between ethics, dissent and democracy. The paper is structured as follows: firstly, the politics of difference are explored and the implications this has for thinking about dissensus, resistance and activism. This is done in the context of business ethics and CSR and outlines the importance of considering sexual difference. Following this, Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference (Irigaray 1993a) and Ziarek’s ethics of dissensus are developed as a way of rethinking the possibilities of democratic engagement with sexual difference at its heart. Ziarek challenges and builds on Irigaray’s work to suggest that a more radicalized view is needed if sexual difference still has a political future and ethical relevance for feminism. Two important examples of grassroots, social activist groups are then discussed that illustrate feminist activism based on recognition and embod- ied ethics of difference. The paper ends by offering a series of observations for developing a democratic culture of dif- ference and what this brings to democratic business ethics (Rhodes 2016) that furthers our understanding of ethics, dis- sensus and radical democracy. The Politics of Difference—Conceptualising Gender Differences and Sexual Difference in the Context of Dissent, Ethics and Democracy Feminist, poststructuralist approaches in particular high- light ways in which categories of the feminine and femi- nine subjectivity and difference become subordinated and constructed in relation to masculine subjectivity (Irigaray 1993a). This subordination of the feminine raises crucial ethical questions that foreground discussions of democratic ethics and feminist politics, namely: What political future(s), if any, does sexual difference have? (Cheah and Grosz 1998, p. 3). What is contended here is that the politics of differ- ence, especially sexual difference, has not been sufficiently attended to in the ethics literature and that feminist ethics, Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent… 1 3 through Irigaray and Ziarek, enriches a reflexive rethinking of dissent and democratic action in organizations. How difference is constructed in business ethics and CSR literature is intimately related to positions of power and needs to be understood in relation to the political and social contexts in which organizations function (Grosser 2016; Grosser and Moon 2005; Karam and Jamali 2015; Keenan et al. 2014). For example, gender equality and wom- en’s empowerment have become popularised as corporate ethical discourses and as part of mainstream CSR agendas, mobilised in terms of competitive advantage and legiti- mised by the business case, namely economic arguments for improving profitability of organizations (Grosser and Moon 2005; Grosser 2016). This agenda has been limiting and conceives of gender difference in narrow, reductive terms and the rise of corporate power and corporate discourses of gender equity provides challenges to feminist movements working to resist these reductive discourses (Grosser and McCarthy 2018). Critiques of corporate business ethics and managerial discourses suggest that differences between individuals and groups are constructed and brought into being in order to be appropriated (Zanoni et al. 2010). Tyler (2018, p. 49) notes these reificatory processes render lived multiplicity, differ- ence and intersectional complexity knowable and therefore manageable categories and characteristics ready to be co- opted as organizational resources. Thus, difference can be defined as “Those points of disidentification and dissimi- larity that come to be experienced or perceived as socially, politically and ethically significant” (Tyler 2018, p. 52) that manifest through context-specific processes (Zanoni et al. 2010) and which reflect, sustain or transform relations of power. Within and evolving from these debates has been a con- cern with sexual difference (Fotaki et al. 2014; Oseen 1997; Pullen and Vachhani 2018; Vachhani 2012) that questions the philosophical, political, practical and social basis on which gender differences are demarcated and constructed within the context of phallocratic and patriarchal culture, namely the prevalence of a singular, hegemonic masculine subject as opposed to a welcoming otherness or alterity (Fermon 1998). The latter is premised on an inter-corporeal understanding of alterity as situated within embodied rela- tions of mutual vulnerability and ethical openness (Pullen and Rhodes 2015; Dale and Latham 2015). In Grosz’s terms, “sexual difference entails the existence of a sexual ethics, an ethics of the ongoing negotiations between beings whose differences, whose alterities, are left intact but with whom some kind of exchange is nonetheless possible” (Grosz 1994, p. 192). Thus, what becomes important are the lived, social dimensions of sexual difference, not as biological differences between bodies but as the ontological status of the sexed body. Irigaray and an Ethics of Sexual Difference Irigaray’s work has been explored in management and organization studies to consider the conceptual potential of a feminist psychoanalytic approach to gendered and sexual differences across a variety of contexts such as leadership, academia and writing practices (Fotaki 2011; Fotaki et al. 2014; Pullen and Vachhani 2018; Vachhani 2018). Fotaki (2011, 2013) shows how sameness and difference become reinforced in academia by masculine discourses that centre around the presence or absence of the phallus that suggests the existence of a singular, hegemonic masculine subject that is unable to recognise a feminine subject. Oseen (1997) and Pullen and Vachhani (2018) challenge corporate women’s leadership discourses in order to enable the creation of “a space for women other than as imitation men or excavated women” (Oseen 1997, p. 170). In comparison, Vachhani (2012) discusses sexual dif- ference by addressing ethical and political dilemmas of the subordination of the feminine in organizations. Recent discussions turn to Irigaray to write differently using femi- nine writing or feminist écriture, that does not suppress and conceal possibilities for understanding difference as a rec- ognition of the feminine (Fotaki et al. 2014; Höpfl 2000; Vachhani 2018). This approach insists on the transformative and activist potential of feminine writing one that offers a practical politics for changing organizations. Despite these advances, less attention has been paid to Irigaray’s later work that focuses attention on civil rights, responsibilities and democracies. Je, Tu, Nous (Iriga- ray. 1993b), Thinking the Difference (Irigaray 1994), and Democracy Begins Between Two (Irigaray 2000b), in par- ticular, draw on the development and practical implications of a theory of sexual difference for feminist politics, sexed rights and democratic culture (Ziarek 2001). Debates sur- rounding the politics of difference have arguably paid more attention to differences between groups which have resulted in the problematic homogenisation of identity and culture of any group to which particular or special rights might be ascribed (Deutscher 2002; see Ashcraft 2009; Grosser 2016; Tyler 2018). As Hekman (1999, p. 11) discusses, a culture of difference involves the idea that differences involve power and, “If we challenge those differences by asserting their opposites, the challenge is necessarily parasitic on the dif- ference itself, not an escape from it.” Drawing on Michele Le Doeuff, Deutscher (2002, p. 9) explains that “respect for cultural and sexual difference is regularly selective, oppor- tunist, and cynical”. Thus, for Irigaray amongst others, sameness and difference need to be reconceived in order to pursue an ethical recognition of political, social and demo- cratic difference to enable social change. Irigaray’s work is important in this regard as she argues for a culture of differ- ence for ‘a self-defined woman who would not be satisfied S. J. Vachhani 1 3 with sameness, but whose otherness and difference would be given social and symbolic representation” (Whitford 1991, pp. 24–25; Irigaray 2000a; Martin 2003) and endorse “politi- cal equality while maintaining concerns about its terms” (Deutscher 2002, p. 9). It is important to note critiques of Irigaray’s work which have primarily centred around being read as essentialist, elitist and inaccessible (Whitford 1991; Deutscher 2002). Despite these critiques, many have read Irigaray’s meto- nymic and poetic writing as figurative rather than literal such that charges of biological essentialism are seen more as a strategic, rhetorical gesture to instal the embodied feminine subject into the text rather than a reflection of biological femininity or womanhood (Fuss 1992; Whitford 1991; Vach- hani 2014). Taking what Fuss calls ‘the risk of essentialism’, that one could argue is largely tactical, Irigaray attempts to inscribe difference and conjure up an ‘other woman’. Butler (1993, p. 35) notes that “Irigaray’s task is to reconcile nei- ther the form/matter distinction nor the distinctions between bodies and souls or matter and meaning. Rather, her effort is to show that those binary oppositions are formulated through the exclusion of a field of disruptive possibilities… those binaries, even in their reconciled mode, are part of a phallogocentric economy that produces the ‘feminine’ as its constitutive outside”. Thought of in this way, an ethics of sexual difference cre- ates new conditions for the articulation of difference (Gatens 1999) in the context of business ethics rather than invoking a monolithic, binary notion of gendered differences between men and women that reasserts or re-inscribes essentialist presumptions or reproduces gendered stereotypes. This calls for emphasis on the fluidity of sexual difference alongside race, class and other differences where such a construction requires an openness to alterity in the context of democracy (Weiss 1998; Ziarek 2001). Fermon (1998, p. 120) writes that “Irigaray warns that if civil and political participation is construed in overly narrow terms, if focus is on economic or judicial ‘circuits’ alone, we overlook the symbolic organi- zation of power—women risk losing ‘everything without even being acknowledged’”. Instead an interval of recogni- tion, which concerns how alterity is not about subsuming the Other, can expand the political and include the concerns and activities of different groups of women (Fermon 1998), through democratic organizational practices and settings such as social movements. Recognition in this sense is the “embodied, practical and cooperative character of the self- other relation” (Harding et al. 2012, p. 57, also cited in Tyler 2018 p. 50) generated through embodied practice. In Democracy Begins Between Two, Irigaray’s (2000b) concern is how to operationalise this approach to sexual difference and situate it within social [and organizational] practice. She initiated a working collaboration with the Commission for Equal Opportunities in Emilia-Romagna, Italy to challenge civic rights, citizenship and otherness. This enables rethinking dissent and resistance as demo- cratic engagement and action in the following way: How women’s movements centre around challenging different forms of political life and their related power relations and values, are about modifying women’s status within democ- racy. However, “when these same movements aim simply for a change in the distribution of power, leaving intact the power structure itself, they are resubjecting themselves, deliberately or not, to a phallocratic order. The latter ges- ture must of course be denounced, and with determination, since it may constitute a more subtly concealed exploitation of women.” (Irigaray 1985b, p. 81; Irigaray 1985a). This approach aims to challenge the context and framework of difference to reconceptualise its bounds and rethink a model of subjectivity (Irigaray 2000b). It also provides important insight into the way in which difference can be tactically, reflexively mobilised in a rethinking of radical democracy in the context of organizational ethics. Ziarek develops this point in Irigaray’s work to argue for an ethics of dissensus to which I now turn. Ziarek and an Ethics of Dissensus If culture, under patriarchy, is concerned with the existence of one subject, the logic of the one and the feminine as its shadow of the other, then a radicalized feminine symbolic or female imaginary must, in part, suspend this state. Sexual difference is then not the positive recovery of truth but “an articulation of the disjunctive temporality characteristic of the emergence of the new modes of life” (Ziarek 2001, p. 158), new imaginary and symbolic identifications that offer the opportunity for change, which can be seen in the cases discussed below. Therefore, what is at stake is an eth- ics and politics of recognition, proceeding from an embod- ied, tactical mobilisation of difference. Irigaray brings this to the fore by claiming a space for a radical female imaginary (Ziarek 1998; Dale 2001) which is developed and extended by Ziarek (2001). Ziarek’s (2001, p. 1) development of an ethics of dissen- sus refers to the “irreducible dimension of antagonism and power in discourse, embodiment, and democratic politics” where “An ethics of dissensus does not transcend politi- cal and subjective antagonisms…but rather articulates the difficult role of responsibility and freedom in democratic struggles against racist and sexist oppression” (Ziarek 2001, p. 2). Ethics can be read as the dilemma between freedom, responsibility and obligation and, for Ziarek, an ethics that concerns an “ethos of becoming” and “ethos of alterity” which lead not only to a nonappropriative relation to the Other, as Levinas argues (see Rhodes 2016), but considers how obligation based on respect for such an alterity and accountability for the Other “can motivate resistance and Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent… 1 3 the invention of…new modes of life” (Ziarek 2001, p. 2). Thus, freedom can be redefined as relational and understood through the ethical and political significance of sexuality and embodiment “as an engagement in transformative praxis motivated by the obligation for the Other” (Ziarek 2001, p. 2) that moves us beyond the binary relation of freedom and responsibility. Ziarek’s work is of importance here for business ethics literature because it seeks to understand ethics as a contested terrain in a way that does not occlude the role of sexual and racial differences. To summarise, rather than seeking ethical resolution or resolving antagonistic relations of power, eth- ics concern embodied relations of dissent that can motivate resistance and an attention to alterity that results in a non- appropriative, nonviolent relation to the Other. This results in seeing ethics as a contested terrain, one that contests the disembodied notion and universalising tendencies of democratic citizenship and addresses the tensions “between ethical responsibility for the Other and democratic strug- gles against domination, injustice, and inequality, on the one hand, and internal conflicts within the subject, on the other” (Ziarek 2001, p. 3). An ethics of dissensus is thus about how we account for the plurality and conflicts of irreduc- ible differences such as class, race and gender which form a more suitable basis for understanding radical democracy and the antagonisms and dissent that it depends on. bell hooks (1996, cited in Ziarek 2001, p. 173) notes that critiquing the universal democratic citizen is not the rejection of common bonds or commonality “but that we want to find the basis of commonality in something other than a notion of shared experience or common oppression”. To distinguish Ziarek and Irigaray further, Ziarek cri- tiques Irigaray’s inability to address the antagonistic dif- ference among women to draw on a broader, more radical- ized notion of sexual difference, one that is more dynamic and open to transformation. Such a theory enables thinking about sexual difference in futural terms and “as a condition of becoming” (Ziarek 2001, p. 151; Pullen et al. 2017). Using Irigaray’s conceptualisation of the negative, Ziarek refers to the work of “disappropriation,” where “the assump- tion of sexual difference reveals the limits of the symbolic positions rather than an identification with a positive identity” (Ziarek 2001, p. 153). The labour of the negative entails how we are never the whole of the subject: “I is never simply mine in that it belongs to a gender…I am objectively limited by this belonging. The reluctance to recognize the importance of sexual difference seems to me to derive from this negative in the self and for the self it entails.” (Irigaray 1996, p. 106). In this sense, Irigaray engages in a politics of impossible differ- ence (Deutscher 2002) where the negative is “the condition of the actualization of the negative in the subject—what she calls ‘taking the negative upon oneself’” and “reveals the internal division and self-limitation of the sexed subject” (Ziarek 2001, p. 153). This marks sexual difference not as a universalised particularity but where “the assumption of sexual difference reveals the limits of the symbolic positions rather than an iden- tification with a positive identity” (Ziarek 2001, p. 153). This recognition of the negative means challenging stereotypes of gender, race and class and ‘norms’ that become naturalised and homogenised in pursuit of a universal democratic subject. So, it is not simply the recognition of the rights of women to construct their own political identities, as advocated by Iri- garay, but a broader and more fundamental contestation of the abstract and universalizing subject of liberal citizenship. This echoes Nancy Fraser’s notion of political justice, which combines the politics of redistribution, such as economic redis- tribution, with the cultural claims of difference (Ziarek 2001). Negative or impossible sexual difference must become radi- calized and foregrounded such that “’the impossible’—contra- dictions, conflicts, incompletion—in the formation of all iden- tities, the labor of the negative in sexual difference prevents the reification of the existing gender and racial stereotypes into political or ‘natural’ norms, thus opening the possibility of their refiguration” (Ziarek 2001, pp. 153–154). This radical- ized view focuses not on the transformation of existing gender identities which would reproduce heterosexual, middle-class subjectivities as political norms but emphasises the impossible as the limit of all political positions (Ziarek 2001). Thus, the ways in which proliferating differences become reified into disembodied political subjects is of crucial ethical concern if we are to advance a democratic business ethics (Rhodes 2016) based on restoring democratic action and dissent to individuals and groups that challenge the corporate status quo. Having explored a number of theoretical claims around difference, notably sexual difference through Irigaray and Ziarek, the next section explains the methodology and two cases, the global #MeToo movement and UK-based direct action collective Sisters Uncut, to suggest that a democratic feminist ethics built on the nonappropriative relation to the Other emerges out of contemporary feminist, social activist movements and from this we can learn lessons for under- standing a radicalized sexual difference. Feminist activism furthers our understanding and potential for radical demo- cratic organizational practices. This is premised on an inter- corporeal understanding of alterity situated within embod- ied relations of mutual vulnerability and ethical openness (Pullen and Rhodes 2014; Dale 2001) and centralises the ethical and political significance of gendered readings of democracy. Methodological Engagement This paper draws on empirical sources from two illustrative cases of feminist, social movements, using online sources such as websites, news stories, online interviews with key S. J. Vachhani 1 3 individuals and commentaries to explore unique and contem- porary examples of social activism from grassroots move- ments. Such a “methodology of dissent” exemplifies aspects of radical democracy and an ethics of dissent explored in the theoretical discussion above in complementary and contrasting ways. This methodological approach has also been termed a “netnography” (Kozinets 2015), which uses social science methods to explore the lived experiences of individuals and the ways in which online communities and networks create “networked sociality”. Combining elements of ethnography and social media research, the aim of net- nography is to understand how “individuals joined into net- works partake in a complex world that not only reflects and reveals their lived experiences but is also, itself, a unique social phenomenon” (Kozinets 2015, p. 1). It focuses atten- tion on new social forms advanced by online, virtual spaces of social interaction and what they make possible (Kozinets 2015, p. 1), combining archival and online communications. Online access to social interaction “demonstrates an evolving ecosystem of social and individual data and cap- tured and emergent communications” and “netnography is positioned somewhere between the vast searchlights of big data analysis and the close readings of discourse analysis’ (Kozinets 2015, p. 4). This approach demonstrates the con- tested and shifting notions of community and collectives that underpin social movements and the potential for empower- ing and self-reflexive research designs in feminist research (Lather 1991; Harding 1987). I draw on elements of this approach to surface contentions, contradictions and tensions in feminist politics by analysing empirical sources from the online presence of feminist social movements. This provides a sense of their practices and how they enable rethinking dissent and protest, analysed through an awareness of sexual difference and in light of tensions in the shift from protest to engagement with the State and other institutions that many feminist social movements face (Walby 2011). The analysis below offers narrative fragments and inter- pretations, not with the intention to present either illus- trative case as an homogenous collective of voices but to use accounts, narrations and stories of their development into collectives as important sites of democratic action and engagement, contexts that are often neglected in discussions in business ethics and CSR. This involves recognition of dif- ferent spaces of dissent and resistance and the fluid bounda- ries between spaces of activism—visible protests, online communication and virtual communities. Such an approach also necessitates exploring supportive and contradictory accounts; collaboration and contestation that shapes feminist social activism (see Just and Muhr 2018, for a methodologi- cal discussion of studying the Women’s March). The cases were chosen for being prominent feminist and intersectional movements: #MeToo as an example of a global phenomenon facilitated by its media presence and use of social media to organize (see Ozkazanc-Pan 2018); and Sisters Uncut for its focus on resistance against austerity at a national level in the UK, using local consensus-driven practices of demo- cratic engagement. The analysis below combines accounts of online and physical sociality in response to resisting sexual and gendered violence. It explores embodied relations in the form of visible events, imagery and iconography and the organizational dynamics and processes of ethical delibera- tion and democratic action. The #MeToo Movement and Sisters Uncut— Dissent in Action at Global and National Levels To develop the first case, the recent #MeToo movement has advanced a global platform for feminist politics (Ozkazanc- Pan 2018). #MeToo gained momentum in 2017 as an inter- national movement against assault and harassment and its global presence has made it an important example of femi- nist activism and politics. Devised as a grassroots campaign by Tarana Burke in 2006, the movement has been mobi- lised into consciousness raising and social activism aimed to empower women through empathy (see https ://metoo mvmt.org/). As a pro-feminist movement, along with the Women’s Marches (see Tyler 2018), it is a salient example of globalised feminist politics, with a remit for inclusion and celebration of difference. Whilst it can be said that these contemporary movements form part of a longer history of feminist activism (Vachhani and Pullen 2019) they also rep- resent new and possibly unique moments in the development of feminist politics. Munro (2013) and Walby (2011) suggest that we may be in a fourth wave or “circuit” of feminism one that is mobilised by social media and the development of online, networked sociality. The platform #MeToo has gained, certainly in the Global North, included the presence of a number of social activ- ists at the 2018 Oscars cefremony and association with a number of high profile women actors and flim directors (see Seales 2018). This demonstrated the movement’s presence in an elite context and world stage. #MeToo founder Tarana Burke along with other feminist activists were named Time’s Person(s) of the Year for their consciousness raising efforts (Vachhani and Pullen 2019). The significant profile of the movement has catalysed debates on the backlash, effects and future of #MeToo (Bennett 2018). This elicited a number of claims around a shift away from the emphasis on celebrity culture and the media industry, such as the case of Harvey Weinstein, towards shaping and critiquing cultural and soci- etal narratives that shape behaviour in more varied organi- zational contexts. This entails moving away from focusing on individuals towards more nuanced, meaningful discus- sions of democratic organizational processes and collective https://metoomvmt.org/ https://metoomvmt.org/ Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent… 1 3 women’s agency (Ozkazanc-Pan 2018) that enables speaking out against harassment and oppression. The purpose of the movement, espoused by Burke, has been to promote empathy and solidarity at an individual and collective level and to mobilise social change (see https :// metoo mvmt.org/). Central to this claim is that the momen- tum gained by #MeToo could change policies and law and promote the development of democratic practices, whether it be re-evaluating sexual harassment policies, destigmatis- ing issues around sexual misconduct in organizations, or addressing policy-based changes around reporting and dis- closure of harassment charges within workplaces. #MeToo has raised a series of issues around women’s agency, dif- ference and how one kind of justice can overshadow other injustices. How #MeToo relates to racial justice campaigns such as Black Lives Matter1 and #SayHerName2 for exam- ple, is yet to be extensively studied as a way of working across intersectional concerns in activist movements.3 Rot- tenberg (2017, n.p.) explains, for Alicia Garza, another cofounder of Black Lives Matter, “The importance of ‘Me Too’ lies in the ‘power of empathy, this power of connec- tion, is really about empowering people to be survivors, to be resilient, and also to make really visible that sexual vio- lence is not about people’s individual actions, that this is a systemic problem’”. However, the public status of #MeToo has raised criti- cisms around the groups of women neglected by such cel- ebrated movements. For example, it has been accused of neglecting disenfranchised groups such as incarcerated women. Rottenberg (2017) offers another critical perspec- tive, asking “Can #MeToo go beyond white neoliberal femi- nism?” Given its inception in 2007 as a grassroots movement aimed to serve sexual assault survivors in underprivileged communities, its resurgence and contemporary shape has been charged with a surprising lack of focus on women from low socio-economic groups. Vachhani and Pullen (2019, p. 43) note, “It might even be that neoliberal feminism has thrived on shaming women to stay silent, fixing themselves rather than working collectively to address institutional and structural sexism and harassment in organizations”. Social movements can only offer the possibilities of social change and transformation if they include women of all backgrounds and whilst such movements might create awareness they may not produce the appropriate tools for dialogue and reflection (Munar 2018; Vachhani and Pullen 2019). Whilst #MeToo has built social awareness and change, there are a number of challenges it raises around the politics of empathy (Pedwell 2014), that is who is offered empathy and what effects this has, alongside how to transfer discus- sion from consciousness raising to the institutional envi- ronment (Munar 2018). Rottenberg (2017, n.p.) notes how #MeToo has shifted “debates about workplace norms” and “created new and surprising alliances”. For example, the transnational reach of #MeToo prompted a group of women lawyers to offer support to survivors in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Hemery and Singh 2019). One lawyer set up #MeToo meetups and explained how it offers sisterhood to women and a forum to listen (Hemery and Singh 2019). However, the focus on individualism, especially the hero- ism of the individual’s resilience may prevent mobilising people politically and collectively. This risks neglecting socio-economic and cultural structures and disarticulating the systemic nature of gendered and sexual violence (Rot- tenberg 2017). The recent focus on celebrity culture also means its historic roots to focus on low income and women vulnerable to violence have been overwritten. “From the outset, the movement had a very specific therapeutic and political vision that helps explain its affective pull, as well as why women feel empowered when speaking about their painful and often traumatic experiences. As Burke puts it: ‘Me Too’ is about ‘using the power of empathy to stomp out shame.’” (Rottenberg 2017, n.p.). The primary tension is how to empower and embolden women to create ethical and responsible dialogue as collec- tives and communities that challenge the language of shame whilst recognising the systemic violence and intersecting systemic oppressions that underpin these acts (ibid 2017). For example, as Flynn (2019) notes, some indigenous cul- tures may not want to speak out for fear of inciting racism or further stereotyping men of their community. The complex dynamics of collective community over individual rights and the transnational dynamics of a complex, global feminist movement illustrate how democratic ethics is a contested terrain; one that engages in an ethics of dissensus as plurality and irreducible differences of class, race and gender (Ziarek 2001). This necessary contestation and deliberation calls for addressing the antagonistic differences between women and sexual difference as a “condition of becoming” (Ziarek 2001, p. 151). 1 See https ://black lives matte r.com/. 2 Social movements such as #SayHerName aim to build a substan- tial social media presence that link race-based justice movements. #SayHerName was aimed at resisting police brutality against black women (see http://www.aapf.org/sayhe rname /) and to highlight the mistreatment of Black women in the criminal justice system in the United States. Art and poetry play a significant role in this movement. A particularly poignant example can be found on the #SayHerName website, entitled: Ain’t I A Woman?": The Poetics of #SayHerName (2018 Week of Action), found at: http://www.aapf.org/sayhe rname -video s-1. Included in which is the powerful line “I cannot tell if I’ve been frightened to death or frozen alive”. 3 Patrisse Cullors, a founder of Black Lives Matter, and Tarana Burke have engaged in conversation about the role of class, gender and race-based activism and the issues they face as activists - See https ://www.youtu be.com/watch ?v=_omi9J gKnnw . https://metoomvmt.org/ https://metoomvmt.org/ https://blacklivesmatter.com/ http://www.aapf.org/sayhername/ http://www.aapf.org/sayhername-videos-1 http://www.aapf.org/sayhername-videos-1 https://www.youtube.com/watch%3fv%3d_omi9JgKnnw S. J. Vachhani 1 3 The second case, Sisters Uncut, is a direct action group against domestic violence that fights against different forms of oppression in the United Kingdom. Sisters Uncut pro- vides a contrast to the #MeToo movement which has been criticised for its focus on privileged groups of women. Their powerful feministo states that “austerity is a political choice” (http://www.siste rsunc ut.org/femin isto/).4 Formed in 2014 by a group of intersectional feminists concerned with trans- forming society their feministo states, As intersectional feminists we understand that a per- son’s individual experience of violence is affected by interconnecting and mutually reinforcing systems of oppression….The systems of power and privilege in our society enable and protect the actions of perpe- trators. This creates a cycle of violence, which can only be broken through transforming society. To those in power, our message is this: your cuts are violent, your cuts are dangerous, and you think that you can get away with them because you have targeted people who you perceive as powerless. We are those people. We are Sisters Uncut. We will not be silenced. Sisters Uncut use direct action as a way of revealing struc- tural problems, alternatives and solutions to tackling social issues that take many forms. By occupying spaces, hanging banners to draw attention to social issues, blocking bridges and calling out sexual harassment, “whatever form it takes, its purpose is to be disruptive”. This forms a powerful way of effecting change through dissent and the embodied relations it entails where “Even if you don’t see the exact result you want immediately, over time it can contribute to changing the conversation.” (see http://www.siste rsunc ut.org/faqs/) In contrast to #MeToo, Sisters Uncut have engaged in a variety of resistance-based direct action protests aimed at challenging the status of women, such as: hijacking advertis- ing on The London Underground to protest cuts to domestic violence services; occupying spaces (such as the Visitors Centre at Holloway women’s Prison); flash mobbing South- wark Council offices; blocking Waterloo Bridge to protest cuts to refuge shelters and the disproportionate effects they have on black, disabled and migrant women5; and putting on community festivals. Their activities aim to shine light on issues affecting marginalised and vulnerable groups of women. They challenged the prison industrial complex by raising attention to the vulnerability of women at the Yarls Wood Detention Centre and reclaimed the Visitors Centre of Holloway Prison in 2017 (Holloway Prison was closed in July 2016) in protest of the erasure of the women who suffered there.6 The multiple axes of oppression addressed by Sisters Uncut, and campaigns such as #SayHerName, briefly explored above, suggest a radical democracy aimed at embracing the embodied vulnerabilities of difference. Sisters Uncut arguably offers a more localised and inter- sectional approach than #MeToo. Their focus on collective, direct action is a way of changing how politics is done, sometimes being labelled as modern suffragettes (O’Hagan 2015). Groups have been formed across the country since high profile protests such as lying down on the red carpet at the premiere of the film Suffragette (Kwai 2015) and dying Trafalgar Square fountains blood red (Deardon 2015) alongside key, local achievements such as getting women’s aid reinstated in Doncaster (Spratt 2016). This combina- tion of intervening in public spaces and consciousness rais- ing shows how contrasting avenues of democratic action forces people to confront issues and how politics considers women’s issues (Spratt 2016, n.p.) aimed at creating greater insight and further action against the austerity cuts, state violence and the effects on different vulnerable groups of women. Their aim is to create safe social spaces through values such as community accountability using an Accountability Toolbox with principles of transformative justice as a way of healing if a sister is harmed (see http://www.siste rsunc ut.org/safer space s/). They organize not around the sharing of particular feminist values but on the desire to campaign for better domestic violence services that recognise particu- lar experiences and needs for women (see http://www.siste rsunc ut.org/faqs/). The groups expressly state no hierarchy or leaders, use dialogue and consensus decision-making aimed to give members an equal say and meet to provide inclusive and supportive survivor-centred spaces for women, nonbinary, agender and gender variant people.7 Whilst there are criticisms of consensus building in relation to the co- optation of marginalised groups, consensus decision-making in this context is used as a practical tool for understanding embodied, ethical relations between individuals in pursuit of social change. This is opposed to consensus building in the context of liberal democracies that aims to elide or silence differences. The ultimate aim of such an ethos is to foster dissensus at the heart of a culture of difference. The approach aims to cultivate and sustain creative and dynamic ways of fostering 5 For a list of news articles on action taken by Sisters Uncut in pro- test of austerity cuts, see http://www.siste rsunc ut.org/press /. 6 See http://www.gal-dem.com/servi ces-not-sente nces-siste rs-uncut -occup y-hollo way-women s-priso n/ for further details on the activi- ties of Sisters Uncut and the importance of remembering Holloway women’s prison. 7 For further details, see http://www.siste rsunc ut.org/faqs/. 4 See also UK Uncut for a related anti-austerity grassroots movement using direct action and civil disobedience: https ://www.ukunc ut.org. uk/about /. http://www.sistersuncut.org/feministo/ http://www.sistersuncut.org/faqs/ http://www.sistersuncut.org/saferspaces/ http://www.sistersuncut.org/saferspaces/ http://www.sistersuncut.org/faqs/ http://www.sistersuncut.org/faqs/ http://www.sistersuncut.org/press/ http://www.gal-dem.com/services-not-sentences-sisters-uncut-occupy-holloway-womens-prison/ http://www.gal-dem.com/services-not-sentences-sisters-uncut-occupy-holloway-womens-prison/ http://www.sistersuncut.org/faqs/ https://www.ukuncut.org.uk/about/ https://www.ukuncut.org.uk/about/ Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent… 1 3 discussion, committed to finding solutions that are actively supported (see www.seeds forch ange.org.uk/short conse nsus), in a spirit of creating respectful dialogue between equals using techniques such as active listening, summaris- ing and synthesis to achieve democratic decisions. A “Fish- bowl spokescouncil” can be used, especially for large scale decision-making, an approach aimed to spread power for decision-making across small groups rather than concentrat- ing power in the hands of individuals.8 One member states, “There’s a lot of discussion and it isn’t easy. Consensus is a lot harder than voting, straight up democracy or whatever. But, at the end of the day, people are happier in the long run” (Spratt 2016, n.p.). One frustration noted by members is how Sisters are por- trayed and the co-optation of femininity—“Those of us who do the media side of things are really aware of our image and how it has come across—that we are young and female—the media loves to fetishise young women—even when we do our big marches we’ll have a really diverse group of peo- ple—in terms of ages and races—but the pictures that end up being taken and appear in mainstream media are of young, slim, white able-bodied women—that doesn’t reflect all that we are” (Spratt 2016, n.p.; see also, Charles and Wadia 2017). Spratt surmises that this fetishization may stem from how anonymity is par for the course when engaging in direct action and how it is important that no sister gets more credit than another. One member states, “We see a lot of hierar- chies in activism and in politics…it just perpetuates the kind of structure that we are trying to fight against. We are creat- ing the world we want to see through the way we operate” (Spratt 2016, n.p.). This approach to democratic action, such as consensus-based approaches to decision-making, are used to challenge individuals vying for power, focusing on the structural problem rather than the individual—“It’s not a challenge to the existing ego problems of politics if we rep- licate the very system that perpetuates it. We stay clear of the structures of traditional politics” and “it shows that it’s the same tactics that need to be used everywhere—direct action.” (Spratt 2016, n.p.). Spratt shows how inter-gen- erational feminism plays a part with a strong presence of younger feminists passionate about domestic violence cuts and how they have also attracted those who would not have normally considered protest before joining. The focus on direct action and physical presence are core to Sisters Uncut in contrast with online activism prevalent in contemporary feminism: “But that’s nothing in comparison to being in that room, being in that safe space, taking to the streets, using your body and just being there” (Spratt 2016, n.p.). Ziarek (2001, p. 153–154) notes that attention to the contradictions, conflict and incompleteness of identities thus opens up possibilities to reconfigure norms of gender, class and race and challenge the presumption of a universal demo- cratic subject. Sisters Uncut shows how an intercorporeal understanding of alterity is enabled through embodied rela- tions of dissent, mutual vulnerability and ethical openness (Pullen and Rhodes 2014). These two cases demonstrate contrasting yet connected feminist social movements and their related power rela- tions. However, whilst the advancement of women’s rights help to modify women’s status within democracy, they are also at risk of becoming institutionalised or absorbed into existing structures, thus leaving those structures intact and concealing further exploitation of women (Irigaray 1985b; Walby 2011). #MeToo, as a movement beyond a hashtag, and Sisters Uncut engage in different forms of democratic ethics that challenge the context and framework for under- standing difference, and more fully appreciate the complexi- ties of women’s differences within the structures they are a part (Irigaray 2000b). Sisters Uncut, in particular, provides insight into ways in which difference can be tactically and reflexively mobilised (Tyler 2018) through collective acts as a rethinking of radical democracy, by using shock, pro- tests and accountability-driven practices. Global and local initiatives such as these cases may offer new modes of life, through imaginary and symbolic identifications, as Ziarek imagines. This manifests from an ethics of dissensus that recognises irreducible dimensions of power and political and subjective antagonisms (Ziarek 2001). #MeToo and Sisters Uncut demonstrate a commitment to engage in an “ethos of alterity” which transforms practices of dissent informed by an “obligation for the Other” (Ziarek 2001, p. 2; Robinson 2000). These two cases are connected in their engagement with embodied relations of dissent but offer contrasting contexts and methods by which democratic engagement is achieved to challenge institutional and structural social change. The paper now develops these arguments by examining their relevance for rethinking democratic organizational prac- tices, especially for a democratic business ethics understood through sexual difference. Read through the earlier theo- retical discussion of Irigaray and Ziarek, as Fermon (1998, p. 123) notes, the strategic challenge of sexual difference is a basis for democratic rights, that “will allow women space and time to generate an economy open to women’s interac- tions with each other, to reach beyond sex-neutral citizen- ship to an open future”. In contrasting and connected ways, 8 See www.seedsforchange.org.uk for an elaboration of techniques used for consensus decision-making in collectives and non-hierar- chical activist groups. In a “Fishbowl spokescouncil” groups sit in an outer circle around spokes of a wheel. Groups are clustered behind the spokes and spokespeople (or spokes) from each group can feed back to the spokescouncil to reduce repetition of information. On the basis of the discussion, the spokescouncil can build a series of pro- posals which are discussed back in individual groups to check for agreement or change. http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/shortconsensus http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/shortconsensus S. J. Vachhani 1 3 the cases above speak to a democratic feminist politics built on nonappropriation of the other as a way of building and cultivating a culture of difference, but one that is always at risk of the appropriation of women’s identities. Towards a Democratic Culture of Difference—Feminist Politics and Contemporary Ethics of Dissensus These cases highlight ways in which democratic dissent involves a tactical reassertion of difference, reasserting feminine difference in its multitude. This tactical reasser- tion politicises sexual difference and develops capacities for solidarity and democratic engagement not based on shared experiences of oppression that collapses or elides other forms of lived difference but on shared goals (Vachhani and Pullen 2019). When difference is managed, the problem- atic insistence on identity must lead to “taking stock of the constitutive exclusions that reconsolidate hegemonic power differentials, exclusions that each articulation was forced to make in order to proceed” (Butler 1993, p. 118). This returns us to two key questions that have wider relevance for feminist organization studies and feminist ethics: How do feminist politics expand the terrain on which democratic organizational practices, and democratic business ethics, are understood; and how does the strategic challenge of sexual difference enable us to foster and cultivate a more expan- sive and radicalized notion of difference in organizations that responds to an intercorporeal and embodied ethics? The remainder of the paper offers a number of observations that move these discussions forward to enable a richer theoriza- tion of gendered difference in democratic business ethics. Feminist politics of difference offer ways of disturbing organizations, as intimated earlier, pushing beyond con- structed categories assigned to us and engaging in a politics of disturbance of organizational order through critique and resistance to the sovereignty of business. Accordingly, cor- porate masculinity “is not so much a rejection of the femi- nine, but more a co-optation of it for the purpose of mas- culine public glory” where the feminine “is not absent, but rather is rendered as being at the service of the masculine” (Rhodes and Pullen 2018, p. 494). The embodied ethics and politics of activism seen in fem- inist movements, such as #MeToo and Sisters Uncut, have a dialogic and often problematic relation to formal organiza- tions such as corporations and the State. Approaches that seek to explore the “embodied, practical and cooperative character of the self-other relation” (Harding et al. 2012, p. 57, cited in Tyler 2018, p. 50) and recognition of never fully knowing the Other (Ahmed 2002) require more atten- tion in business ethics, especially the complex relationship between feminist ethics, direct action and the possibilities of a democratic ethics of organization. This challenges the idea that “the corporation has extended the market, if not the civil freedoms on which it was predicated” (Fermon 1998, p. 123). Sexual difference offers a contestation of corporate masculinity and sovereignty and attention to embodied dif- ferences that are constitutive and generative of other differ- ences that need to be addressed (Gherardi 2010). A democratic culture of difference enables fruitfully rethinking democratic business ethics by reconfiguring feminine difference where collective action disturbs corpo- rate sovereignty in business ethics. Irigaray’s elaboration of sexual difference, as developed earlier, establishes rec- ognition and respect for difference as “prior to productive and generative relations” between genders (Fermon 1998, p. 121). These politics defy easy categorization and offer no immediate solutions (Fermon 1998) but dissensus, thought through this lens, is not negative but “a productive means through which democracy can be pursued.” (Rhodes 2016, p. 1510). “Feminism still needs a theory of sexual difference, but a theory that is more dynamic, more democratic and more ethical—a theory capable of foregrounding not only the futurity of democracy and the antagonistic differences among women but also the ethical respect for alterity in all its forms” (Ziarek 2001, p.  152). This prompts us to acknowledge the ethical and political dimensions of dif- ference in its multitude as central to a democratic business ethics. For radical democracy in feminist social movements, “The public sphere is understood as a contested space where agonistic differences should come into productive conflict without recourse to any hope of ideal consensus”. (Rhodes 2016, p. 1510). These social movements challenge individ- ual sovereignty and direct public attention to inequality but beyond this offer the possibility of a collective, democratic ethics of openness and appreciation of self-other relations. They offer hope in bleak times and show the vibrancy of feminist activism and the political spaces and strategies used to frame, structure and enact social change (Grosser and McCarthy 2018). Difference is never accomplished or completed but involves reasserting feminine difference and highlights the importance of alterity, involving “obligation for the Other and the agency of the subject, between responsibility and the struggles against sexist, racist and class oppression, and finally, between the desire for justice and embodiment, affect, and sexuality.” (Ziarek 2001, p. 6). Embodied ethical relations (Thanem and Wallenberg 2015) are central to this endeavour and reconceptualises ethical obligation without collapsing into unconditional responsibility or “an indiffer- ent struggle of heterogenous forces without ethical stakes” (Ziarek 2001, p. 6). A democratic culture of difference, understood through sexual difference, thus offers a conceptual framework Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent… 1 3 through which to re-imagine the constitutive exclusions faced by marginalized or vulnerable groups where “Our desire to install a new kind of social system does not pre- clude us from living in the one that exists” (Irigaray 1993a, b, cited in Fermon 1998, p. 122). Beyond this, an ethics of dissensus enables the confrontation of power and politi- cal differences without “the utopian vision of justice tran- scending antagonisms of race, class, sexuality, and gender” (Ziarek 2001, p. 6). Valuing dissensus as a source of ethics, one that can account for “vulnerability to difference without assuming that such difference can be known”, is central to the development of a practical and democratic business eth- ics (Rhodes 2016, p. 1512). Concluding Thoughts Discourses around women’s empowerment and corporate ethical discourses of equity, such as the business case for gender equality, have arguably come to be seen as part of the corporate business ethics and CSR architecture of organi- zations. However, critiques of these approaches highlight their selective recognition of difference and studies clearly demonstrate how difference is adopted in problematic ways in formal organizations (Grosser and Moon 2017; Karam and Jamali 2015). Feminist social activism and protest offer a new way of understanding gendered differences in busi- ness ethics, where complex events and the tensions and chal- lenges that arise remind us “what is possible when feminists assemble the combined forces of our bodies, practices, and ethics” (Tyler 2018, p. 60). The two cases discussed present opportunities to under- stand the complex dynamics of dissent and radical democ- racy based on intercorporeal and embodied differences that offer “a better place to locate business ethics…in practical modes of dissent and disturbance to corporate sovereignty arising within civil society.” (Rhodes 2016, p. 1509). This could be termed a democratic ethics of difference that takes into account gendered differences and reconceptualises ethi- cal obligation as a challenge to corporate business ethics. Differences can be tactically and reflexively mobilised in rethinking radical forms of democracy, as explored earlier. This tactical reassertion demands questioning the basis on which the feminine is constructed in organizations, it necessitates and leads to an ethical questioning from which arise an ethics of becoming and ethos of alterity, in Ziarek’s terms. It requires an understanding of negation and the impossible: “what divides, as a negativity, is also that which can bring us close: ‘I defend the impossible’ [Irigaray 1996] ” (Fermon 1998, p. 122). We can hope that new possibilities emerge from this endeavour. Activist politics at the heart of feminism have much to teach us about how difference is constructed, man- aged or even negated in formal and informal organizations and this advances thinking about the importance of and ten- sions within democratic business ethics. Tyler (2018, p. 62) recognises that “what is needed, politically and ethically, is a destabilization of the regulatory ideals that shape” differ- ence in organizations. Feminist politics and activism through movements, protests and collective acts promise embodied, ethical and political practices that challenge normative regimes that categorise difference (see Ashcraft 2009). The latter is an “an exploitation of our basic relationality, fore- closing rather than supporting genuine recognition (Tyler 2018, p. 62) and impeding nonappropriative self-other rela- tions. The new ways of organizing seen in contemporary feminist movements challenge systems of oppression and the constitutive exclusions faced by different women with the promise of hope and vulnerability of the embodied and generous ethical relation. Many of us know, when we name a problem, we often become the problem (Ahmed 2015). This means instaling ourselves as problems. The power of dissent and antagonism at the heart of these movements suggest perhaps, beyond Irigaray, a literal labouring against the negative where the disavowal of women’s existence and the negation of the feminine can be recovered as a source of invention and possibilities through the power of dissent, critique and protest. Acknowledgements This article has benefitted from the close atten- tion and insightful critique of the reviewers and special issue editors. Particular thanks go to Alison Pullen and Melissa Tyler for their close attention to the theoretical ideas and for their continued support and wise counsel. I dedicate this article to a new addition to my family who I hope will inherit the fire to fight injustice and live in better times. Funding This article received no funding. Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of interest Sheena J. Vachhani declares that he/she has no conflict of interest. Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals per- formed by any of the authors. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri- bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta- tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. 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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. http://cbswire.dk/can-i-kiss-you/ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/08/sisters-uncut-suffragette-film-premiere-women https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/08/sisters-uncut-suffragette-film-premiere-women http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/metoo-white-neoliberal-feminism-171213064156855.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/metoo-white-neoliberal-feminism-171213064156855.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/metoo-white-neoliberal-feminism-171213064156855.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44045291 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44045291 https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/real-life/sisters-uncut/ https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/real-life/sisters-uncut/ https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764264 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764264 Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent in Social Movements Abstract Introduction The Politics of Difference—Conceptualising Gender Differences and Sexual Difference in the Context of Dissent, Ethics and Democracy Irigaray and an Ethics of Sexual Difference Ziarek and an Ethics of Dissensus Methodological Engagement The #MeToo Movement and Sisters Uncut—Dissent in Action at Global and National Levels Towards a Democratic Culture of Difference—Feminist Politics and Contemporary Ethics of Dissensus Concluding Thoughts Acknowledgements References work_6uidy4syzzgnbmpqj4yt3pefka ----   Open Peer Review Discuss this article  (0)Comments RESEARCH ARTICLE    Effects of stress or infection on rat behavior show robust  reversals due to environmental disturbance [version 2; referees: 2 approved] Samira Abdulai-Saiku ,     Akshaya Hegde , Ajai Vyas, Rupshi Mitra School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 637551, Singapore  Equal contributors Abstract  The behavior of animals is intricately linked to the environment; aBackground: relationship that is often studied in laboratory conditions by using environmental perturbations to study biological mechanisms underlying the behavioral change.   This study pertains to two such well-studied and well-replicatedMethods: perturbations, i.e., stress-induced anxiogenesis and Toxoplasma gondii -induced loss of innate fear. Here, we demonstrate that behavioral outcomes of these experimental manipulations are contingent upon the ambient quality of the wider environment where animal facilities are situated.  During late 2014 and early 2015, a building construction projectResults: started adjacent to our animal facility. During this phase, we observed that maternal separation stress caused anxiolysis, rather than historically observed anxiogenesis, in laboratory rats. We also found that Toxoplasma gondii infection caused an increase, rather than historically observed decrease, in innate aversion to predator odors in rats.  These observations suggest that effects of stress and Conclusion:  are dependent on variables in the environment that often goToxoplasma gondii unreported in the published literature. Keywords anxiety, fear, construction, housing environment, replicability * * *    Referee Status:   Invited Referees      version 2 published 16 Jan 2018 version 1 published 06 Dec 2017  1 2 report report report , Charles University inJaroslav Flegr Prague, Czech Republic 1 , University ofTerence Y. Pang Melbourne, Australia 2  06 Dec 2017,  :2097 (doi:  )First published: 6 10.12688/f1000research.13171.1  16 Jan 2018,  :2097 (doi:  )Latest published: 6 10.12688/f1000research.13171.2 v2 Page 1 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 https://f1000research.com/articles/6-2097/v2 https://f1000research.com/articles/6-2097/v2 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1440-8931 https://f1000research.com/articles/6-2097/v2 https://f1000research.com/articles/6-2097/v1 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0822-0126 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7000-5304 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.13171.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.13171.2 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.12688/f1000research.13171.2&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-01-16    Rupshi Mitra ( )Corresponding author: rmitra@ntu.edu.sg   : Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft Preparation;  : Conceptualization, Investigation,Author roles: Abdulai-Saiku S Hegde A Writing – Original Draft Preparation;  : Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing; Vyas A Mitra : Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – Review & EditingR  No competing interests were disclosed.Competing interests:  Abdulai-Saiku S, Hegde A, Vyas A and Mitra R. How to cite this article: Effects of stress or infection on rat behavior show robust reversals    2018,  :2097 (doi:  )due to environmental disturbance [version 2; referees: 2 approved] F1000Research 6 10.12688/f1000research.13171.2  © 2018 Abdulai-Saiku S  . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the  ,Copyright: et al Creative Commons Attribution Licence which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the   (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver  This work was financially supported by Ministry of Education, Singapore (grant RG136/15 and RG 46/12).Grant information: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.  06 Dec 2017,  :2097 (doi:  ) First published: 6 10.12688/f1000research.13171.1 Page 2 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.13171.2 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.13171.1 Introduction Multiple laboratories have reported that stress causes anxiogenesis in rats1–4. Similarly, well-replicated studies indicate that infection of rats with protozoan Toxoplasma gondii reduces innate aversion to predator odor5–11. Effects of Toxoplasma gondii infection on fear are not absolute. Rather effects of the infection on aver- sion follow a non-monotonous function roughly resembling an inverted-U12. Similarly, effects of stress on anxiety are also open to environmental modifications. Anxiety induced by stress can be reliably prevented if housing conditions of animals are changed1,13 or if animals have opportunity of voluntary exercise14–16. These observations suggest that effects of both the infection and stress on animal behavior are responsive to environmental modifications. In this backdrop, this report describes our serendipitous observations that the direction for both behavioral changes is intricately dependent on the broader environment where animal facilities are situated. The primary aim of our experiments was to study proximate mechanisms of anxiogenesis and innate aversion in rats. We used routine paradigms of maternal separation and Toxoplasma gondii infection that cause anxiogenesis and loss of innate aversion, respectively. However, construction of a building was initiated during the experiment adjacent to the animal holding facility. Results from this quasi-experimental change provided us with an unplanned opportunity to study the effects of change in environment on rat anxiety and defensive behaviors. Methods Animals Adult male and female Wistar Han rats (7 to 8 weeks at the start of the experiments) were procured from InVivos, Singapore. Rats were housed in groups of two per cage (males and females were housed separately) with ad libitum access to food and water (24–26°C; 60–70% relative humidity; 12h light-dark cycle with lights on at 0700h). For all tests, animals were allocated to groups in a random manner. Experiments were conducted by SA-S and AHN who were blind to group allocations. Analysis was conducted by AV who was also blind to group allocations. All procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Nanyang Technology University. All efforts were made to ameliorate any suffering of animals. None of our procedure involved induction of sustained pain requiring pharmacological interventions. Animals were daily observed to confirm lack of sickness related behaviors and weighed weekly. The behavior tests do not involve any use of shock or other painful stimuli. The dose of parasites used in this study does not result in weight loss or sickness behavior in this strain of rats. At the end of all experiments, animals used in the Toxoplasma infection paradigm were sacrificed by decapitation and their brains were removed and flash frozen. In the case of the stress paradigm, animals were sacrificed by cardiac perfusion using cold phosphate buffered saline (PBS) followed by cold 4% paraformaldehyde. Toxoplasma gondii infection and quantification of aversion to cat odor Female rats were either injected with tachyzoites of type 2 Prugniaud strain of Toxoplasma gondii (5x106 tachyzoites in 500 µl phosphate buffered saline, i.p.;) or mock injected with the buffer alone between 2pm and 4pm. Parasites needed for the infection were maintained in vitro in human foreskin fibroblast cultures and were harvested using syringe lysis. Behavioral experiments were conducted seven weeks post-infection; a time- window consistent with chronic phase of the infection. Toxoplasma gondii infection did not cause significant change in body weight of animals (179.1 ± 4.708, n = 8 for uninfected; 183.1 ± 2.706, n = 7 for infected; p = 0.5, independent sample t-test). Aversion to cat odor was quantified in two different manners. For each run of the experiment, there was one uninfected group and one Toxoplasma-infected group. Fifteen animals were used in total for experiment 1 (8 uninfected, 7 infected) and nineteen animals were used in total for experiment 2 (10 uninfected, 9 infected). Aversion was first quantified in a rectangular arena with two opposite and identical arms (Figure 1A; 76 x 9 cm each), separated by a central part (9 x 9 cm in size; white Perspex). Ani- mals were habituated to the arena for three consecutive days for 20 minutes each day. On the subsequent day, cat odors were pre- sented in one bisect of the maze (1 ml each; bobcat urine from Maine Outdoor Solutions, USA). Animals were placed in the center of the maze and exploration time in both bisects of the arena was measured for 20 minutes. Trials were video recorded with offline analysis conducted using AnyMaze (Stoelting, USA). In this batch of animals, each received 500 µl of buffered saline intraperitoneally thirty minutes before the behavioral test. Aversion to cat odor was also quantified in a circular arena (Figure 1A; diameter = 1 m) that was arbitrally divided into four quadrants. Animals were habituated to the arena for three consecutive days for 20 minutes each day. On the subsequent day, cat odor, vanilla essence, water and the bedding from the animal’s home cage were presented in each quadrant of the maze. Animals were placed in the center of the maze and explo- ration time in all quadrants of the arena was measured for Amendments from Version 1 We have expanded the introduction by including prior work related to non-monotonic nature of Toxoplasma effects; and also, environmental responsivity of the maternal separation effect. Figure 1 has been revised to include schematics of test arenas. Figure 2 has been revised to include percentage open arm time as a measure of anxiogenesis. Associated changes have been made in results and figure legends. We have also revised the discussion to include plausible proximate mechanisms including epigenetic changes and monoamines. Latin names have been italicized. Revised manuscript includes body weight of uninfected and infected animals. See referee reports REVISED Page 3 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 Figure 1. Toxoplasma gondii-infected female rats showed increased aversion to bobcat odor in two sequential experiments. Panel A depicts schematics of test arenas used in the experiments later depicted in panels B and C. Ordinate for panel B and panel C depicts time spent by female rats chronically infected with Toxoplasma gondii near bobcat odor. Line graphs depict mean and standard error of the mean for control (black) and infected (gray) female rats. *, p < 0.05; unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-test (n = 8 uninfected and 7 infected animals for panel A; and 10 uninfected and 9 infected animals for panel B). 20 minutes. Trials were video recorded with offline analysis conducted using AnyMaze (Stoelting, USA). Stress paradigm and quantification of anxiety Eight week old breeders obtained from InVivos were allowed to acclimatize for at least 5 days before setting up breeding pairs (one male and one female per cage). Breeding cages were changed once a week as per normal, but with gentle handling of female, in case of pregnancy. Once pregnancy was certain (approx. 2 weeks), male was removed. 19 days after breeding pairs were set up (or if visually heavily pregnant), cages were checked daily for litters. Day of birth is assigned P0. Maternal separation was used as the stress model (P2-P14, daily). 16 animals were used in total; 8 stressed, 8 unstressed. On each of these days, the dam was removed from the cage and placed in a new cage with unsoiled bedding. Pups were then retrieved into another cage with unsoiled bedding, transported to a separate room and put on a heating pad for three hours every morning. At the end of the separation period, pups and then dam were sequentially returned to the original soiled cage. Also, soiled bedding was changed on postnatal day 2, 9 and 14; by returning pups to a clean cage that had been supplemented with a scoop of soiled bedding and nesting material from the original cage. This practice was repeated on postnatal day 18 if the bedding was considered significantly soiled in case of large litter sizes. Pups were weaned on postnatal day 21. Anxiety was quantified when the male pups reached adulthood (7–8 weeks of age). Anxiety was measured using home cage emergence assay (adapted from 12) and elevated plus-maze13. In the home cage emergence assay, a rat placed in its home cage was transported to a well-lit room and habituated for five minutes. The cage was then left open by removal of the lid. The rat was offered a possibility of emerging from the home cage through a wire grid placed within the cage. The latency of Page 4 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 emergence was recorded. Emergence was defined when all four limbs of the rat were placed on the grid. Trials were terminated at the emergence or at five minutes, whichever occurred earlier. Trials were video recorded and scored manually. The elevated plus-maze consisted of a plus-shaped arena with two open (75 × 11cm, 1cm wall, 3–4 lux illumination) and two enclosed arms (75 × 11 cm, 26 cm wall). The arena was elevated to a height of 60 cm above the ground. The animal was placed at the center at the start of the trial. Exploration in open and enclosed arms was quantified for five minutes each. All experiments for the stress paradigm were done using two groups of mice: stressed and unstressed. Statistical analysis The probability of type 1 error was calculated using unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-test. The standardized effect size was calculated using Cohen’s d14; with values above the magnitude of 0.8 interpreted as being of robust scale. Negative d values correspond to the comparisons where mean of experimental treat- ment was greater than that of respective controls. Mean inter- group difference was also calculated with 95% confidence intervals. Data is graphically presented as mean and standard error of the mean (SEM), along with individual values for each animal for each endpoint. Number of animals in each experimental group is noted in the figures. All statistical analysis was conducted using Graphpad Prism. Results Toxoplasma gondii infection increased aversion to cat odor In the first set of animals, aversion to cat odor was quantified as percentage time in bisect containing cat odor relative to total trial duration. Rabbit odor was placed in the opposing bisect as a novel non-predator odor. Inter-group differences did not reach pre-determined threshold for statistical significance (Figure 1B; t 13 = 1.78, p = 0.098). Despite the lack of sufficiently low type 1 error, the effect on mean was of robust magnitude (Cohen’s d = 0.949; ∆ = -11.61% with 95% confidence intervals -25.68 to 2.46%). The maximum of animals from the infected group was below the median of the uninfected animals. The robust effect size and the observation that infected mean was lower than uninfected animals in contrast to the multitude of published studies, led us to plan a further experiment to increase the statistical power. In this second set of animals, aversion to cat odor was quanti- fied in a circular arena congruent to the initial design of reported infection effects. One quadrant contained soiled bedding from home cage of the animal, serving as the home base for explora- tory sorties. Cat odor and a novel vanilla odor were placed in two adjoining quadrants. The ratio of time spent in cat quadrant relative to sum time spent in both cat and novel odor quadrants was calculated (chance = 50%). Toxoplasma infection, in contrast to earlier observations in the similar design, reduced percentage time spent near cat urine (Figure 1C; t 17 = 2.70, p = 0.015). The effect of infection on innate aversion was of robust magni- tude (Cohen’s d = 1.239; ∆ = -16.46% with 95% confidence intervals -29.31 to -3.61%). The maximum of animals from the infected group was again observed to be below the median of the uninfected animals. Serological examination confirmed that all animals in the infected groups sustained chronic infection with Toxoplasma gondii. Early life maternal separation stress resulted in anxiolytic behavior in male rats Animals subjected to early life maternal separation stress were tested in the elevated plus maze and home cage emergence test to determine the effect of maternal separation on anxiety behavior during adulthood. Stressed animals, in contrast to earlier observations in a similar design, exhibited significantly less anxiety compared to unstressed controls. This was evident as increased percentage entries into anxiogenic open arms of elevated plus-maze (Figure 2A; t 14 = 4.21, p = 0.0009). Stress-induced anxiolysis was of robust magnitude (Cohen’s d = -2.104; ∆ = 27.77% with 95% confidence intervals 13.62 to 41.92%). The minimum of animals from the stressed group was higher than all but one animal from the unstressed group. Experimental treatment did not cause significant differences in number of entries made into non- anxiogenic enclosed arms of the maze (t 14 = 1.98, p = 0.07). To preclude effects of entries in enclosed arms on open arm exploration, we further conducted a univariate analysis of variance for percentage open arm entries while employing number of enclosed entries as a covariate. Furthermore, stressed animals spent more time in open arms during the test duration compared to unstressed counterparts (Figure 2B; t14 = 6.69, p < 0.001). This analysis revealed a significant increase in open arm explo- ration due to the stress independent of inter-group differences in enclosed arm entries (F 1,13 = 14.898, p = 0.002). This is congru- ent with significant increase in number of head dips made during the trial by stressed animals (t 14 = 3.41, p = 0.0042; ∆ = 13.25 with 95% confidence intervals 4.94 to 21.56). Stress-induced anxiolysis was also confirmed by home cage emergence test. In this assay, anxiolysis manifests as reduced latency to emerge into a novel environment from home cage. Stress significantly decreased the latency of home cage emergence (Figure 2C; t 14 = 3.14, p = 0.0072). Stress-induced anxiolysis was also of robust magnitude in this assay (Cohen’s d = -1.57; ∆ = -121.4s with 95% confidence intervals -204.2 to -38.5s). The maximum latency of animals from the stressed group was lower than median latency from the unstressed group. Page 5 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 Figure 2. Early life maternal separation stress resulted in increased anxiolytic behavior in male rats. Ordinate depicts number of entries and into the open arm relative to total entries in open and enclosed arms of the elevated plus maze (A and B, respectively) and latency to emerge from the home cage into a novel environment (C). Line graphs depict mean and standard error of the mean for unstressed (black) and stressed (gray) male rats. *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-test (n = 8 animals in each experimental group). Dataset 1. Cat odour avoidance assay http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.13171.d186327 Percentage time spent exploring the cat odour stimulus by uninfected and Toxoplasma-infected rats in both experiment 1 and 2. Dataset 2. Elevated plus maze anxiety test http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.13171.d186328 Escape latency and percentage open arm entries for stressed and unstressed animals. Discussion Experimental treatment in the present report caused robust effects, as evidenced by substantial effect size and clear departure of mean differences from the chance. The direction of these effects is in stark contrast to those observed in previous reports1,6–8,20–22. For example, multiple experiments in several laboratories indicate that chronic Toxoplasma gondii infection causes loss of innate fear to predator odor in male and female rats6–8. Data in the present report, however, argue for a significant increase in innate fear post-infection. Similarly, stress-induced anxiogenesis has been reported across several laboratories and several paradigms. The current dataset, in contrast, exhibits significant anxiolysis post- stress. The cause of this discrepancy cannot be ascertained with confidence. In fact, we have observed stress-induced anxiogenesis and the infection-induced loss of fear in the same animal facility and same animal strain before these experiments1,5–7,13. The only difference between the experimental circumstances has been a construction project that was ongoing during the present experi- ments. The construction started across the road from the animal facility after our preceding baselines were conducted and during the present period of the behavioral testing. In fact, we observed reversal to Toxoplasma-induced loss of fear in female rats in experiments conducted in the animal facility after the cessation of building construction7. It remains unclear if the effects of construction related to the change in ambient vibrational environment or some hitherto unknown variable. Although the acoustic noise in frequency range audible to humans remained unchanged during the period, we are not confident that the construction did not change the acoustic environment in sub-audible frequencies. It is interesting Page 6 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.13171.d186327 http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.13171.d186328 References that the effects observed here do not correspond to a simplis- tic notion of greater baseline stress during the period. Effects of stress on anxiety are often presented to have an inverse U kind of reaction norm, whereby increasing stress enhances its effects on the behavioral and health parameters23–26. We observed an anxi- olysis by experimental stress rather than greater anxiogenesis due to the accumulative stress of the treatment and environmen- tal change. Thus, the present observations reiterate the often complex interactions between environment and behavior that could impose significant bounds on the interpretation of laboratory experiments. Related to this, same transgenic mice are known to exhibit divergent behavioral phenotypes across three experi- mental locations despite careful alignment of experimental protocols27. Proximate mechanisms of atypical observations in the current study remain unknown, although several possibilities can be posited based on the previous literature. Long-term effects of environment on the behavior often take form of epigenetic modi- fications in the brain. Toxoplasma gondii infection, for example, causes DNA hypomethylation in arginine vasopressin promoter within medial amygdala5. Similarly, maternal separation results in robust hypomethylation in insulin signaling pathway within rat hippocampus28. It is thus plausible that environmental disturbance influenced behavior through epigenetic modifications within the brain. Alternatively alterations in central monoamine levels could also cause the behavioral change. Maternal separation increases monoamine levels within hippocampus and amygdala29 while Toxoplasma gondii infection reduced dopamine concentration within nucleus accumbens30. It is plausible that environmental modification changed the nature of monoamine response consequent to the stress or the infection. Conclusions Often, unforeseen changes in the environment near animal facilities can significantly alter the direction of experimental effects in rodent research. This highlights the crucial role of often unreported and unquantified environmental context in the interpretation and replicability of the behavioral data. Data availability Dataset 1: Cat odour avoidance assay. Percentage time spent exploring the cat odour stimulus by uninfected and Toxo- plasma-infected rats in both experiment 1 and 2. 10.5256/ f1000research.13171.d18632731 Dataset 2: Elevated plus maze anxiety test. Escape latency and percentage open arm entries for stressed and unstressed animals. 10.5256/f1000research.13171.d18632832 Competing interests No competing interests were disclosed. Grant information This work was financially supported by Ministry of Education, Singapore (grant RG136/15 and RG 46/12). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. 1. Ashokan A, Hegde A, Mitra R: Short-term environmental enrichment is sufficient to counter stress-induced anxiety and associated structural and molecular plasticity in basolateral amygdala. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2016; 69: 189–96. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text 2. Hillerer KM, Neumann ID, Slattery DA: From stress to postpartum mood and anxiety disorders: how chronic peripartum stress can impair maternal adaptations. Neuroendocrinology. 2012; 95(1): 22–38. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text 3. 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Data Source Page 8 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27230461 http://dx.doi.org/10.5213/inj.1632600.309 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/4895910 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24657739 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2014.03.016 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/4318362 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16137989 http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000086711 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17406592 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2007.44 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/3623971 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24907696 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2014.05.036 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/4821409 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10737052 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(08)62132-9 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25427939 http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000369585 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/4428760 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23064380 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.3234 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/3580862 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26404708 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.4109 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0168-1591(99)00088-X http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26881112 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/4928081 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/4736400 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10356397 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.284.5420.1670 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27643783 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ejn.13404 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/5656998 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28704274 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/FBP.0000000000000324 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25994671 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.0042 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/4455797 http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.13171.d186327 http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.13171.d186328   Open Peer Review Current Referee Status: Version 2 22 January 2018Referee Report doi:10.5256/f1000research.14793.r29863    Terence Y. Pang Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, Australia The authors have satisfactorily addressed the previous concerns I raised.  No competing interests were disclosed.Competing Interests: Referee Expertise: Rodent behaviour testing, anxiety, stress I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. Version 1 19 December 2017Referee Report doi:10.5256/f1000research.14287.r28761    Terence Y. Pang Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, Australia This is a well-written, clearly presented manuscript describing unexpected behavioural phenotypes of two well-established rodent models which routinely lead to rats having anxiolytic or anxiogenic behaviours. In the field of behavioural neuroscience where robustness of results and reproducibility is vital, the reporting of negative or contrary outcomes remains important. This report raises substantial concern for the rodent research occurring across that time period. It is crucial that universities and research institutes be educated on the impact that infrastructure development has on researchers, and the time and financial costs it imposes on research teams/projects.   In the Introduction, which is rather short, it would be useful to include one or two paragraphs referencing evidence that both Toxoplasma infection and maternal separation models are prone to environmental modification. One of the included references (Koe et al., Transl Psychiatry 2016) is an example of environmental modification of a robust maternal separation-induced adult phenotype. See also Sahafi E et al., Physiol Behav 2018 as another example of an external modifier of anxiety behaviour.   This manuscript is limited in that there is no molecular data to be paired with the interesting behavioural Page 9 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.14793.r29863 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7000-5304 http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.14287.r28761 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7000-5304   This manuscript is limited in that there is no molecular data to be paired with the interesting behavioural phenotype. A comparison of monoamine-relevant genes ala Récamier-Carballo S et al., Behav Pharmacol 2017 would have been ideal. But this can be speculated upon in the Discussion. Could also mention the involvement of environment-induced epigenetic changes, see McCoy CR et al., Eur J Neurosci 2016 : DNA methylation changes in the hippocampus.   The major shortcoming of this manuscript is that I am unsure about how one would go about quantifying structural disturbances. Is it based solely on the unexpected behavioural phenotype observed? Or has the phenotypes consistently shifted during the stated period before returning to “normal”? Have there been anecdotal accounts of construction noise in the rodent facility? Is there any data about building vibrations? (Civil engineers would have the equipment to measure structural vibrations).   Assuming the significant external source of variability (as compared to a new experimenter who is a inexperienced at handling rodents and conducting the behavioural tests), it would be useful to include litter sizes and M/F sex ratios. Is there body weight data in the event that feeding behaviour was also altered?   It is unusual to only present EPM data as % entries in open arm. What about total time in open arms as a % of the test duration?   Is it possible to include schematics of the different test arenas for Figure 1? Do the authors have habituation data (total time spent moving, distance travelled) for odor aversion tests? If the infected rats are anxious, they could be observed to display non- or lesser habituation even at baseline in the absence of a predator odor. If this was the case, it would only serve to strengthen the interpretation. Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature? Partly Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound? Yes Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others? Partly If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate? Yes Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility? Partly Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results? Yes  No competing interests were disclosed.Competing Interests: Referee Expertise: Rodent behaviour testing, anxiety, stress I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that Page 10 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018   I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. Author Response 27 Dec 2017 , Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeRupshi Mitra We thank reviewer for suggestions and comments. This has helped us to improve this manuscript during the revision. We have now submitted version 2 of this manuscript to the F1000Research. Introduction has been modified in version 2 to include prior work showing that effects of Toxoplasma infection and maternal separation are subject to environmental modification (references 12 through 16 in the bibliography). We have also revised the discussion to include plausible proximate mechanisms including epigenetic changes and monoamines. Please see paragraphs immediately preceding the conclusions. We now return to the reviewer’s comment about ambivalent nature of quantifying structural disturbances. We have indeed observed return to stress-induced anxiogenesis and Toxoplasma-induced loss of fear once construction project abated. Toxoplasma effects were eventually published (reference 7 in the revised bibliography; DOI:  ).10.1016/j.bbi.2017.04.005 Same set of experimenters conducted experiments before, during and after the construction project. Thus, congruent stress- and infection- effects before and after construction project suggest that the environmental modification brought about by the construction explains atypical effects in the interim. Experimental groups were coded during the experiment. For example, in case of Toxoplasma infection, experimenter did not know infection status of the individual animals; and groups were merely identified with codes during the statistical analysis. Hence we did not notice the reversal until long after the experiment was over, data was analyzed and infection status was confirmed using serology. This precluded systematic investigation of the environmental variables during the period of experiment itself. Although the acoustic noise in frequency range audible to humans remained unchanged during the period, we are not confident that the construction did not change the acoustic environment in sub-audible frequencies. Similarly we did not have opportunity to measure structural vibrations as the project was finished while we were analyzing the data and confirming group assignments using serology. Toxoplasma gondii infection did not cause significant change in body weight of animals (179.1 ± 4.708, n = 8 for control; 183.1 ± 2.706, n = 7 for infected; p = 0.5). This information is now included in methods section of the revised manuscript. We have revised the manuscript to include date for percentage open arm time (  < 0.001) for EPM in figure 2. We have also included schematics ofp test arena in revised Figure 1. Please note that this has changed panel number for figures in the results and legends. Unfortunately, we did not record videos for habituation sessions. We have earlier shown that Toxoplasma infection does not affect locomotion or exploration in open field arena.   No competing interests were disclosed.Competing Interests: Page 11 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2017.04.005   11 December 2017Referee Report doi:10.5256/f1000research.14287.r28765    Jaroslav Flegr Department of Biology, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic The authors present interesting data showing that, most likely, an unknown environmental factor or factors can qualitatively modify the behavioral responses of experimental animals on various standard stimuli (here the maternal separation stress and the   infection), which could result inToxoplasma unexpected results of standard experiments. The methods are clear and with sufficient details described, and the collected data are analyzed, presented and interpreted in a proper way. The authors suggested that the most probable factor that influenced the outputs of their experiments was (acoustical or mechanical) disturbance from a building construction project that had started adjacent to their animal facility during their experiments. This explanation seems to be reasonable, however, it would be a little bit difficult (and expensive) to test its validity. I consider the results (and conclusions) of this study to be not only very interesting, but also very important. It is highly probable that the same or similar phenomena are frequently seen by many researchers, however, they are mostly considered to be just the results of some technical error – “This new student/technician is really terrible, he certainly confused the labels on the cages/test tubes!”. We can just hope that the publication of the present paper will have the “#MeToo effect” – that it will encourage other researchers to publish their own puzzling results. I agree that the inverted-U shape (or U-shape) relations between many physiological variables is mostly responsible for frequently observed opposite reaction of a biological system on the same stimuli. Under one situation (e.g., when no building construction project is going on) the background level of stress is low and adding some stress factor, e.g., infecting animals with  , will shift the behavioral responseToxoplasma toward the maximum of the inverted-U function. Under another situation, when the background level of stress is higher (when the building construction project is going on) additional stress (e.g., the infection with  ) will shift the behavioral response behind the maximum of the inverted-U function, whichToxoplasma will result in an opposite behavioral reaction on the infection. In the review article on the methodological problems of studying the effects of toxoplasmosis using  -human model (Flegr, 2013), IToxoplasma showed that on genetically polymorphic outbred animals, including humans, the same factor often influences some individuals in one way and another individuals in an opposite way, depending on their (unknown) genotype. Very often, we can see that population means of the output variable in the affected individual and in the controls remains the same; however, variance of the output variable in the population of affected individuals grows significantly. For example, comparison of Cattell’s 16PF personality profiles of women showed that infected women had higher intelligence and lower guilt proneness than  -free women. At the same time, they differed in the variance of four other personality factors,Toxoplasma namely protension, surgency, shrewdness and self-sentiment integration (Flegr and Havlíček, 1999). It is therefore very important to study the effects of particular factors not only on population mean of the output variable but also on the variance of this variable. We should never forget that the F-test (or a permutation test performed on squared Z- scores) is not just a pesky technique for testing presumptions of parametric statistical tests, but often it can also be an important and powerful tool for detecting biologically relevant effects of the factor under study. Exactly the same mechanism can explain why males and females so often react to the same factor in an Page 12 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.14287.r28765 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0822-0126   Exactly the same mechanism can explain why males and females so often react to the same factor in an opposite way. In most animal species, males and females are not same. Therefore, many physiological parameters of males and females differ in their (mean) position in relation to the maximum of the inverted-U function. Consequently, they will respond to the same factor by the opposite-direction shifts. For example, 10 of 16 Cattell’s personality factors are shifted in an opposite direction in men and women in reaction to the   infection (Flegr  , 2000; Flegr  , 1996). Similarly, Toxoplasma et al. et al. Toxoplasma -infected men rate the smell of highly diluted cat urine as more attractive while infected women rate this smell as less attractive than their non-infected peers (Flegr  , 2011). It is worthwhile in the context ofet al. the present Abdyla-Saiku   article to mention that our recent study showed the very opposite pattern,et al. namely higher attractiveness of the smell in the infected women and lower in the infected men, when undiluted cat urine was used as the stimulus (Flegr   2017). et al. Back to the present article. It can be published in its present form. I would just suggest that the authors cite the old study (Vyas  , 2007) showing the inverted-U shaped response of infected rats on the smellet al. of cat urine. When describing their experimental setup, the authors should better emphasize the fact that stressed mothers, not stressed pubs were used in all ethological tests. Authors should also double-check whether all Latin names of species and genera are printed in italic, both in the main text and in the References.  References 1. Flegr J: Influence of latent Toxoplasma infection on human personality, physiology and morphology: pros and cons of the Toxoplasma-human model in studying the manipulation hypothesis. . 2013;J Exp Biol  (Pt 1): 127-33   |   216 PubMed Abstract Publisher Full Text 2. Flegr J, Havlícek J: Changes in the personality profile of young women with latent toxoplasmosis.Folia . 1999;   (1): 22-8 Parasitol (Praha) 46 PubMed Abstract 3. Flegr J, Kodym P, Tolarová V: Correlation of duration of latent Toxoplasma gondii infection with personality changes in women. . 2000;   (1): 57-68 Biol Psychol 53 PubMed Abstract 4. Flegr J, Lenochová P, Hodný Z, Vondrová M: Fatal attraction phenomenon in humans: cat odour attractiveness increased for toxoplasma-infected men while decreased for infected women.PLoS Negl . 2011;   (11): e1389   |   Trop Dis 5 PubMed Abstract Publisher Full Text 5. Flegr J, Zitková S, Kodym P, Frynta D: Induction of changes in human behaviour by the parasitic protozoan Toxoplasma gondii. . 1996;  : 49-54 Parasitology 113 ( Pt 1) PubMed Abstract 6. Flegr J, Milinski M, Kaňková Š, Hůla M, Hlavačová J, Sýkorová K: Effects of latent toxoplasmosis on olfactory functions of men and women.  . 2017.   bioRxiv 231795 Reference Source 7. Vyas A, Kim SK, Sapolsky RM: The effects of toxoplasma infection on rodent behavior are dependent on dose of the stimulus. . 2007;   (2): 342-8   |   Neuroscience 148 PubMed Abstract Publisher Full Text Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature? Yes Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound? Yes Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others? Yes If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate? Yes Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility? Page 13 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23225875 http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/jeb.073635 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10353191 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10876065 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22087345 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0001389 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8710414 http://https://doi.org/10.1101/231795 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17683872 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2007.06.021   Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility? Yes Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results? Yes  No competing interests were disclosed.Competing Interests: Referee Expertise: Evolutionary biology, evolutionary parasitology I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. Author Response 27 Dec 2017 , Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeRupshi Mitra We thank reviewer for suggestions and comments. This has helped us to improve this manuscript during the revision. We have now submitted version 2 of this manuscript to the F1000Research. In the version 2, we have included a discussion of non-monotonic response of Toxoplasma in the introduction. We would also like to clarify that we tested stressed pups not their mothers. Pups were maternally deprived before weaning, allowed to reach adulthood and then tested. This has now been made clear during the revision. We have carefully checked and corrected all Latin names.   No competing interests were disclosed.Competing Interests: The benefits of publishing with F1000Research: Your article is published within days, with no editorial bias You can publish traditional articles, null/negative results, case reports, data notes and more The peer review process is transparent and collaborative Your article is indexed in PubMed after passing peer review Dedicated customer support at every stage For pre-submission enquiries, contact   research@f1000.com Page 14 of 14 F1000Research 2018, 6:2097 Last updated: 08 MAY 2018 work_6vsfvrhomrenpmpff4eigc6ez4 ---- Microsoft Word - 12.2.18 with name Revisions Licking Planets and Stomping on Buildings.docx 1 Licking Planets and Stomping on Buildings: children's interactions with curated spaces in virtual reality Dylan Yamada-Rice, School of Communication, Royal College of Art Introduction This visual essay draws upon data from a commercially-funded project on which I was a lead researcher (Yamada-Rice et al, 2017). The study was undertaken to develop a set of best practices for the production of Virtual Reality (VR) content for children. The project combined large-scale quantitative data from a global survey with qualitative methods used to observe and interview a smaller sample of 8-12 year-olds. There was also a health and safety element that tested for changes in vision and balance pre and post VR use. This article draws from the qualitative dataset that investigated children’s interaction with a range of VR content and devices, the aspects that engaged them and how easy it was to use. Like the graphic work of Jones & Woglom (2016) this visual essay is a ‘mutating text’ (p.1) that uses varied visual forms (graphic narratives, screenshots of VR content, line drawings and photography) to connect with and make visible aspects of children’s engagement with spaces and objects in VR. The varied visual media I produced (of which only some are contained in this essay) provided insight into the meaning of the data through their use as either transcription, analysis or as a means of exploring its connection with theory. It is believed that the findings gained from these experimental ways of exploring the data could not have been achieved by using only one visual means. Thus it is my intention to present and discuss some of the variety of visual methods used in order to show how the combination provided ‘material- discursive analysis…a materially rich and complex manner of inquiring into and analyzing’ (ibid, p.2) children’s use of virtual spaces. The findings of which ultimately link with theories of children's geographies that highlight how: ...investigations of people’s sense of place remain an important avenue of inquiry to help understand how people develop relationships with their selves and with their environment. (Bartos, 2013, p.89) This special issue of Children’s Geographies explores this in relation to the specific context of young children in museums. This visual essay makes a contribution to this field by providing knowledge of children's meaning-making and engagement with virtual environments. Children’s use of VR is both directly and more abstractly related to deepening our understanding of young children within curated spaces. Firstly, the museum sector has a growing interest in immersive technologies. VR is already used in a range of ways both to offer virtual experiences within the physical museum (e.g. The Franklin Institute) and to widen participation by offering off-site virtual museum tours (e.g. The British Museum). Additionally, emerging 5G technologies show early signs of making it possible to augment virtual three-dimensional objects into physical spaces. Thus illustrating a possible future in which knowledge about how children engage with virtual curated spaces might need further consideration by the museum sector. At a basic level parallels can be drawn between children’s experiences of traditional museum spaces and that of some VR content explored in the study presented here. 2 For example, Google Earth VR, like many museum spaces, has not been designed specifically for children and the space is highly curated. The Google content takes the user on a tour of famous world landmarks. Like the decisions made by museum curators as to how to group objects within a designed space (McDonald 2002), so too the Google creators have decided which cities the user should visit, and within them which landmarks specifically. At the other end of the spectrum the VR game Job Simulator (Owlchemy Labs) has been designed to encourage interaction with content and appeal to a younger audience. In this way it is comparable to museum collections that have been designed to include hands-on experiences for children. While reflecting on VR content such as that above this article provides insight into how the findings about young people’s engagement with virtual environments from the study I conducted are similar to those of studies that have considered children’s interaction with physical museum spaces. For example, Dick’s (2013) work has shown: …that discovery centres are highly social spaces in which cognitive processing is only one aspect…[and] that the twin dimensions of the social and the sensory are also paramount in governing children’s responses to exhibits. (Dicks, 2013, p.301) The remainder of this article is divided into two sections to provide more in depth illustration and discussion of how the VR study findings support those of Dicks (2013) that as with physical spaces (1) social and (2) sensory means were also paramount to the ways in which children engaged with virtual spaces and content. Sensory Meaning-Making The body, its movement and related senses has been documented as a means by which humans understand new experiences (see e.g. Longhurst et al, 2009). Also Hackett (2014) suggests movement is a ‘key element’ of young children’s multimodal communicative practices, which includes ‘place making activities’ to understand museum spaces and their exhibits (p.5). In order to comprehend the role of movement to children’s meaning-making in VR I produced a series of line drawings of a child’s body when using Google Earth VR. These were traced at periodic intervals from screenshots of the video-recorded observations. The drawings were used to analyse the extent to which children’s movement in VR was similar/ different to how they interact in other spaces. Simplifying the data by removing colour, sound and background details showed similarities with Hackett’s (2014) work in museums that children were ‘zigging and zooming all over the place’. When I animated the line drawings using stop-motion it further visualized how children’s movement in VR is not dissimilar to how a dancer might communicate (Figures 1 and 2): INSERT Figure 1 3 Figure 1: Line drawing used to understand children’s movement in Google Earth VR © Dylan Yamada-Rice INSERT Figure 2 Figure 2: Movement in dance. Image © Laurent Ziegler 4 The transduction of the video data into lines also drew on ideas from Ingold (2007) who writes that lines are an output of a vast variety of human communication practices from sound, to walking and writing. In relation to this Ingold writes: …as walking talking and gesticulating creatures, human beings generate lines wherever they go. (2007, p.1) Thus the production of a series of line drawings placed one on top of the other also made it possible to explore further Ingold’s ideas. By highlighting how the lines of the child’s body moved within the confines of a physical space (depicted by the confines of the page on which I drew) I concurred that as with engagement in other spaces movement, and the lines that appear as a result, are an important parts of human meaning-making endeavors in VR too. Additionally, I produced a comic strip style form of data transcription (Figure 3) that combined children’s specific interactions with virtual elements in the VR content with either their hands or feet. To do so I used varied visual media that included line drawings of hand/ feet gestures, speech bubbles and screenshots of the VR content. This formed a type of multimodal transcript that drew to the fore the importance of sense to children’s meaning-making practices in curated VR spaces. It could be argued that the full-bodied nature of this type of engagement necessitates a certain type of materiality of data analysis and that ‘this and other graphica texts make something possible… [such as] the ways in which different mode of texts [bring about] different ways of thinking’ (Jones & Woglom, 2016, p.3). For as Bennett (2010) writes: ...seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling a fuller range of the nonhuman powers circulating around and within human bodies. These material powers, which can aid or destroy, enrich or disable, enable or degrade us, in any case call for our attentiveness, or even "respect". (Bennett, 2010 p.ix) Graphica production are one way of giving attention to these aspects. INSERT Figure 3 Google Earth interactions 5 6 During the observation sessions of children using Google Earth VR several children showed a desire to taste the virtual planet Earth. This caused children to walk around the physical environment (in which they were using the VR device) with their tongue out, something that was confusing for their parents watching on. Replaying the video- recorded observations and simultaneously conducting a literature review I began drawing graphic narratives related to this data to make better sense of theoretical ideas (e.g. Dewey, 1938; Longhurst et al, 2009; Tuan, 1977; Bennett, 2010) about the ways in which children experience new materials in order to explore why this was happening: INSERT Figure 4 Graphic Narrative (3 pages) 7 8 9 10 Taken out of context the page of the graphic narrative with the Dip Dab sweet seems strange, surreal even. This is exactly how parents reacted when they saw their child’s interaction with Earth in the VR environment. As children crawled, stomped and walked around the room with their tongue out trying to the lick the virtual planet their parents said things like "They don't normally act like this", "I am so sorry, I don't know what has happened to them”, and "Make them stop doing that". The newness of the technology and the perceived separation of the user’s sensory experience to the parent sat outside the immersive virtual environment seemed to exemplify that the way in which adults and children interact with spaces and materials are fundamentally different from one another. Drawing the Dip Dab sweet narrative made it possible to think more deeply about the importance of memory to sense and meaning making: What is more important is that this structure being created in the brain uses as its building materials not only the external input supplied by the sensory organs but also memories that are invoked by this input…memories not only lead the recipient to voluntary ruminate on the past but called upon in succession as the brain receives outside stimuli also act to hash out an image for understanding new information. (Hara, 2007, p.157) Thus the process of producing a graphic narrative allowed me to realise how the medium can be an important way of exploring the connection between data and theory. Like Sousanis (2018), I found that comics are a suitable medium for understanding and displaying complex ideas and stories. The final section explores visual means that were used to understand the importance of social interaction to children’s meaning-making practices in VR. Social Meaning-Making Drawing on Falk and Dierking (1992), Dicks (2013) writes that: …there is now a consensus in visitor research that visitors experience museum environments in highly social ways, in which personal, social and physical context overlap. (Dicks, 2013, p. 312) Likewise, contrary to what might be perceived as an isolated experience, the children in this study engaged with virtual environments in very social ways. Once again comics were used as a medium for understanding the nature of these social interactions. For as, Sousanis (2018) writes the aesthetics of comics can be used for research analysis because ‘the visual form is never a secondary pursuit- from the start, form and meaning are united and equally inform one another’ (p.193). Figure 5 shows how the form of the comic below made it possible to gain insight into two children’s social interaction while one played on the VR game Job Simulator. Firstly, by colour coding the speech bubbles so that white represented the child wearing the VR headset and black for their friend watching their play on a computer monitor while joining in the role-play from outside the virtual environment. Additionally, the decision to include screenshots of the VR content made it possible to comprehend how social interaction was encouraged by the aesthetic style of the game. Thus in combination with the interview data from the child-participants I was able to draw conclusions that the low-modality (unrealistic) images contained in Job 11 Simulator encouraged more role-play than in higher modality content with more realistic imagery. INSERT image 5 Job Simulator 12 13 Such examples show the extent to which children's use of virtual environments are very social and that this was particularly the case with open-ended VR content that used less realistic images. This ties with theoretical ideas of comic artist and scholar McCloud (1993) that has shown how more simplistic imagery allows viewers to transpose their own narratives onto that of the artist’s. Conclusion This visual essay has shown how, as with studies into children’s meaning-making in physical spaces such as museums, but also, educational settings, green spaces and play areas (Hackett et al 2015), young people’s interactions with virtual spaces, objects and texts within them are also experienced through sensory and social means. The findings were represented to allow the reader to contemplate the similarities and differences between how children embody and engage with the 'nonmaterial' of virtual curated spaces as opposed to physical museums and their material objects, and also how this manifests in physical interactions and experiences. Finally, the article sought to show how the combination of ‘drawing and writing facilitated understandings that couldn’t be attained otherwise’ (Sousanis, 2018, p. 190) and as such there remains a need to continue to push for new methods to make sense of data about children’s geographies. Dedication I dedicate this visual essay to my good friend and creative ally Lisa Procter. Lisa gave me feedback on an initial draft but took her life before it was accepted. At a pertinent time when there is widespread concern about the abuse of early career actors in Hollywood and the proceeding #metoo campaign, I would like to pay testament to the way that Lisa spoke out about the psychological and physical harm that exists in universities. Thus I call to arms senior academics to help protect those more junior from all forms of academic abuse of power. 14 References Bartos, A. E. 2013. “Children Sensing Place.” Emotion, Space and Society 9: 89–98. Bennett, J. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham,USA: Duke University Press. Dewey, J. 2009/1938. Art as Experience. Los Angeles: Perigee Books. Dicks, B. 2013. “Interacting with…What? Exploring Children’s Social and Sensory Practices in a Science Discovery Centre.” Ethnography and Education 8 (3): 301–322. Falk, J. H, and L. D Dierking. 1992. The Museum Experience. Washington, D.C.: Whalesback Books. Hackett, A. 2014. “Zigging and Zooming all Over the Place: Young Children’s Meaning Making in the Museum.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 14 (5): 5–27. Hara, K. 2007. Designing Design. Zurich: Lars Muller. Ingold, T. 2007. Lines: A Brief History. London & New York: Routledge. Jones, S., and J. F. Woglom. 2016. On Mutant Pedagogies: Seeking Justice and Drawing Change in Teacher Education. Rotterdam. Boston/Taipei: Sense Publishers. Longhurst, R., L. Johnston, and E. Ho. 2009. “A Visceral Approach: Cooking ‘at Home’ with Migrant Women in Hamilton, New Zealand.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34: 333–345. Macdonald, S. 2002. Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum. Oxford: Berg. McCloud, S. 1993. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: William Morrow. Seymour, J., A. Hackett, and L. Procter. 2015. “Introduction: Spatial Perspectives and Childhood Studies.” In (2015) Children’s Spatialities Embodiment, Emotion and Agency, edited by J. Seymour, A. Hackett, and L. Procter. Palgrave McMillian UK. Seymour, J., A. Hackett, and L. Procter (eds). 2015. Children’s Spatialities Embodiment, Emotion and Agency. Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan. Sousanis, N. 2017. “Thinking in Comics: An Emerging Process.” In (2018) Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice, edited by M. Cahnmann-Taylor and R. Siegesmund, 190–199. New York & London: Routledge. Chapter 16. Tuan, Y. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of experience. Yamada-Rice, D., F. Mushtaq, A. Woodgate, D. Bosmans, A. Douthwaite, I. Douthwaite, W. Harris, et al. 2017.Children and Virtual Reality: emerging possibilities and challenges. Accessed 9 January 2018. www.digilitey.eu Yoshitake, S. 2015. It Might be an Apple. Translated from Japanese. London: Thames & Hudson. work_6vx57kwrsbcgdc2b5ocyvssn34 ---- 702 OCTOBER 2018 • VOL. 50, NO. 9 FAMILY MEDICINE BRIEF REPORTS I ntimate partner violence (IPV) is a silent epidemic affecting one in three women during their lifetime.1 IPV leads to injuries and death from physical and sexual as- sault, sexually transmitted infec- tions, pelvic inflammatory disease, unintended pregnancy, chronic pain, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide.2 The US Preven- tive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends that clinicians routinely screen women of childbearing age for IPV (“B” recommendation),3 but research shows that actual rates of screening in primary care settings are low.4 In addition, there is a wide range of screening strategies across different medical practices, with some clinics assigning nonphysi- cian personnel (ie, nurse/midwife, social worker, medical assistant) to do screening, while others rely on physicians.5 There is no consensus on the optimal screening protocol. A randomized trial of three screening protocols (self-administered survey, nonphysician personnel interview, and physician interview) showed similar rates of IPV disclosure in a controlled environment.6 However, in real-world settings where lack of office protocols and limited time are common barriers for physicians,7-10 results are inconsistent and contra- dictory on the optimal way of deliv- ering IPV screening.11-12 With violence against women in the national spotlight due to the #MeToo movement,13 we set out on a quality improvement initiative to identify opportunities to enhance IPV screening within our university- based network of primary care clin- ics. Our objectives were to determine (1) how often IPV screening was be- ing documented, and (2) whether screening initiated by nonphysician staff or physicians resulted in more documented screens. Methods Setting We examined IPV screening prac- tices in five primary care clinics within a university-based network in Northern California. Collectively, these clinics provide care for 40,000 people and have 52 providers, includ- ing family physicians and general BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a si- lent epidemic affecting one in three women. The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends routine IPV screening for women of childbearing age, but actual rates of screening in primary care settings are low. Our objectives were to determine how often IPV screening was being done in our system and whether screening initiated by medical assistants or physicians resulted in more screens. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective chart review to investigate IPV screening practices in five primary care clinics within a university-based net- work in Northern California. We reviewed 100 charts from each clinic for a total of 500 charts. Each chart was reviewed to determine if an IPV screen was documented, and if so, whether it was done by the medical assistant or the physician. RESULTS: The overall frequency of IPV screening was 22% (111/500). We found a wide variation in screening practices among the clinics. Screening initiated by medical assistants resulted in significantly more documented screens than screening delivered by physicians (74% vs 9%, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: IPV screening is an important, but underdelivered service. Using medical assistants to deliver IPV screening may be more effective than relying on physicians alone. (Fam Med. 2018;50(9):702-5.) doi: 10.22454/FamMed.2018.311843 Identifying Opportunities to Improve Intimate Partner Violence Screening in a Primary Care System Laurel Sharpless, BS; Cathina Nguyen, RN, MPH; Baldeep Singh, MD; Steven Lin, MD From the Division of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA. FAMILY MEDICINE VOL. 50, NO. 9 • OCTOBER 2018 703 BRIEF REPORTS internists. Among the participat- ing clinics, one had an established protocol of medical assistants doing screening, while the other four loca- tions had an established protocol of physicians doing screening. All five clinics subscribed to a policy of IPV screening consistent with the 2013 USPSTF guidelines. Standard proce- dures to support IPV screening and follow-up in the event of IPV dis- closure were identical across clin- ics. The clinics were within 20 miles of one another and served a simi- lar patient population (ie, insured, working, upper middle class, racial- ly diverse). Physician characteris- tics were similar across the clinics (ie, gender, average years of clinical experience). Design We conducted a retrospective chart review in the electronic health re- cord. Our inclusion criteria were: (1) female patient of childbearing age (defined as 18 to 49 years), (2) pre- ventive exam as the reason for visit, and (3) charts completed on or af- ter May 1, 2017. We reviewed 100 charts from each study clinic for a total of 500 charts. Charts were re- viewed in chronological order until the target was achieved. Each chart was reviewed to determine if an IPV screen was documented. If a screen was completed, the reviewer deter- mined whether it was done by the physician or the medical assistant, and what questions were asked. Data were also collected on the pa- tients’ age and the screeners’ gender. The chart review was conducted by a trained clinical scribe (L.S.) using a checklist/spreadsheet developed for the project under the supervision of a faculty mentor (S.L.). Data Analysis Descriptive statistics were used to examine the frequency distribu- tion of patients screened, patients’ age, and screeners’ gender. Pearson χ2 test and Fisher exact test were performed to discover associations between the number of patients screened by clinic site, screener type (physician or medical assistant), pa- tient age, and screener gender. A bi- nary logistic regression model was performed to predict patient screen- ing based on patient age as a con- tinuous variable. All analyses were done using SPSS (IBM SPSS Sta- tistics for Windows, Version 24.0, Armonk, NY: IBM Corp). The Insti- tutional Review Board of Stanford University School of Medicine grant- ed this study a formal exemption. Results Patient and screener characteristics are shown in Table 1; these were similar across the five study clinics. The overall frequency of IPV screen- ing across five primary care clinics within our academic medical cen- ter was 22% (111/500; Table 1). We identified a wide variation in the fre- quency of screening documentation between clinics, ranging from 0%- 74% (Table 2). Screening performed in the clinic where the screener was a medical assistant resulted in sig- nificantly more documented screens than in clinics where the physician was the screener (74/100 [74%] vs 37/400 [9%], P<0.001, Table 3). The most commonly used screening ques- tions were: (1) “Because difficult rela- tionships can cause health problems, we are asking all of our patients the following question: ‘Does a part- ner, or anyone at home, hurt, hit, or threaten you?’” and (2) “Is anyone at home hurting you, threatening you, or making you afraid?” Male screeners were associated with more documented screens than female screeners (16/46 [35%] vs 95/454 [21%], P=0.031), though there was a heavy skew in our female-to- male ratio (Table 4). Patient age was associated with documented screens (age 18-29 years: 24/136 [17%]; age 30-39 years: 36/194 [19%]; age 40-49 years: 51/170 [30%]; P=0.011, Table 5). Binary logistic regression showed that patient age was a significant predictor of being screened for IPV (χ2=8.311, df=1 and P=0.004). Discussion Our study identified opportunities to improve IPV screening in our prima- ry care system—lessons we believe might be helpful to other systems. First, we found a wide variation in the frequency of screening docu- mentation (0%-74%) among clinics within the same primary care net- work. This is despite the fact that standard policies and guidelines to support screening and follow-up in the event of disclosure were identical across clinics. This suggests that pol- icies alone are insufficient and that a universal workflow, training, and screening protocol might be needed to help eliminate disparities in care quality and adherence to evidence- based screening guidelines within a system. Second, we found that IPV screening performed in the clinic where the screener was a medical assistant resulted in significantly more documented screens than in the clinics where the screener was Table 1: IPV Screening Frequency and Characteristics of Patients/Screeners Characteristics n (%) (n=500) Patient Screened Yes 111 (22.2%) No 389 (77.8%) Patient Age 18-29 136 (27.2%) 30-39 194 (38.8%) 40-49 170 (34.0%) Screener Gender Female 454 (90.8%) Male 46 (9.2%) 704 OCTOBER 2018 • VOL. 50, NO. 9 FAMILY MEDICINE BRIEF REPORTS a physician. Though previous stud- ies have shown no difference in the rates of IPV screening and disclosure between physician and nonphysician methods in a controlled setting,6 in our real-world setting, a medical as- sistant protocol was more effective in completing screens. Nonphysician screening has been shown in a recent randomized con- trolled trial to be superior to a phy- sician-only approach for another USPSTF recommendation, namely alcohol abuse screening.14 In a study of 54 primary care clinics in an in- tegrated health care system (Kaiser Permanente Northern California), screening rates were highest in the nonphysician provider and medi- cal assistant arm (51%), followed by the primary care physician arm (9%), and the control arm (3.5%). Their study and ours together add to a growing body of literature suggest- ing that screening by medical assis- tants with intervention and referral by physicians as needed can be a fea- sible model for increasing evidence- based screenings. Our study is limited by its retro- spective, nonrandomized design fo- cused on a single institution. Our chart review methodology may not have captured the true frequency of screening across the system; our re- ported screening frequency of 22% is probably driven by the clinic with a medical assistant screening protocol. Although we found associations be- tween screener gender and patient age with IPV screening, the study was insufficiently powered to exam- ine the clinical significance of screen- er and patient factors. Lastly we only measured the frequency of screening documentation and not the rates of IPV disclosure. Conclusions IPV screening is an important, but underdelivered service. Using medical assistants to perform IPV screening may be a more effective real-world strategy than relying on physicians alone. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The authors thank Dr Harise Stein for her contributions to this work, as well as her many years of research and advocacy on the topic of intimate partner violence. Previous presentations: Part of this manuscript was presented as a poster at the STFM Annual Spring Conference in Washing- ton, DC, May 5-9, 2018. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Address cor- respondence to Steven Lin, MD, 211 Quar- ry Road, Ste 405, MC 5985, Palo Alto, CA 94304. 650-725-7966. Fax: 650-498-7750. stevenlin@stanford.edu. References 1. Smith SG, Chen J, Basile KC, et al. The Na- tional Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2010-2012 State Report. At- lanta, GA: National Center for Injury Preven- tion and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 2017. https://www.cdc.gov/vio- lenceprevention/pdf/NISVS-StateReportBook. pdf. Accessed January 24, 2018. 2. Nelson HD, Bougatsos C, Blazina I. Screening women for intimate partner violence: a sys- tematic review to update the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation. Ann In- tern Med. 2012;156(11):796-808, W-279, W-280, W-281, W-282. 3. Moyer VA; U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Screening for intimate partner violence and abuse of elderly and vulnerable adults: U.S. preventive services task force recommendation statement. Ann Intern Med. 2013;158(6):478- 486. 4. Rodriguez MA, Bauer HM, McLoughlin E, Grumbach K. Screening and intervention for intimate partner abuse: practices and at- titudes of primary care physicians. JAMA. 1999;282(5):468-474. Table 2: Association Between IPV Screening and Clinic Patient Screened Clinic (Screener) P Value Pearson χ2 Clinic 1 (MA) Clinic 2 (MD) Clinic 3 (MD) Clinic 4 (MD) Clinic 5 (MD) Yes (n=111) 74 31 4 2 0 <0.001 No (n=389) 26 69 96 98 100 Total 100 100 100 100 100 Table 3: Association Between IPV Screening and Screener Type Patient Screened Screener P Value Pearson χ2 MA MD Yes (n=111) 74 37 <0.001 No (n=389) 26 363 Total 100 400 Abbreviation: MA, medical assistant. Table 4: Association Between IPV Screening and Screener Gender Patient Screened Screener Gender P Value Pearson χ2 Female Male Yes (n=111) 95 16 0.031 No (n=389) 359 30 Total 454 46 Table 5: Association Between IPV Screening and Patient Age Patient Screened Patient Age P Value Pearson χ2 18-29 30-39 40-49 Yes (n=111) 24 36 51 0.011 No (n=389) 112 158 119 Total 136 194 170 FAMILY MEDICINE VOL. 50, NO. 9 • OCTOBER 2018 705 BRIEF REPORTS 5. Sprague S, Slobogean GP, Spurr H, et al. A scoping review of intimate partner violence screening programs for health care profession- als. PLoS One. 2016;11(12):e0168502. 6. Chen PH, Rovi S, Washington J, et al. Random- ized comparison of 3 methods to screen for domestic violence in family practice. Ann Fam Med. 2007;5(5):430-435. 7. Erickson MJ, Hill TD, Siegel RM. Barriers to domestic violence screening in the pediatric setting. Pediatrics. 2001;108(1):98-102. 8. Cummins A, Little D, Seagrave M, Ricken A, Esparza V, Richardson-Nassif K. Vermont family practitioners’ perceptions on intimate partner violence. Presentation at North Ameri- can Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) 30th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA. 9. Gerber MR, Leiter KS, Hermann RC, Bor DH. How and why community hospital clinicians document a positive screen for intimate part- ner violence: a cross-sectional study. BMC Fam Pract. 2005;6(1):48. 10. McGrath ME, Bettacchi A, Duffy SJ, Peipert JF, Becker BM, St Angelo L. Violence against women: provider barriers to intervention in emergency departments. Acad Emerg Med. 1997;4(4):297-300. 11. McFarlane J, Christoffel K, Bateman L, Miller V, Bullock L. Assessing for abuse: self-report versus nurse interview. Public Health Nurs. 1991;8(4):245-250. 12. Canterino JC, VanHorn LG, Harrigan JT, An- anth CV, Vintzileos AM. Domestic abuse in pregnancy: A comparison of a self-completed domestic abuse questionnaire with a directed interview. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1999;181(5 Pt 1):1049-1051. 13. Zacharek S, Dockterman E, Edwards HS. TIME person of the year 2017: The silence breakers. Time. December 18, 2017. http:// time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence- breakers. Accessed January 24, 2018. 14. Mertens JR, Chi FW, Weisner CM, et al. Physi- cian versus non-physician delivery of alcohol screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment in adult primary care: the ADVISe cluster randomized controlled implementation trial. Addict Sci Clin Pract. 2015;10(1):26. work_6wqbmid5avg5djw7lmkx5xgt6e ---- Volume 53 Number 3: Editorial All Rights Reserved ©, 2019 McGill Journal of Education Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 20:56 McGill Journal of Education Revue des sciences de l'éducation de McGill Volume 53 Number 3: Editorial Volume 53 Numéro 3 : Éditorial McGill Journal of Education Volume 53, numéro 3, automne 2018 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1058409ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1058409ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Faculty of Education, McGill University ISSN 1916-0666 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer ce document McGill Journal of Education (2018). Volume 53 Number 3: Editorial. McGill Journal of Education / Revue des sciences de l'éducation de McGill, 53(3). https://doi.org/10.7202/1058409ar https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/mje/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1058409ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1058409ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/mje/2018-v53-n3-mje04479/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/mje/ Éditorial 406 REVUE DES SCIENCES DE L’ÉDUCATION DE McGILL • VOL. 53 NO 3 AUTOMNE 2018 EDITORIAL The nine articles in this general issue provide fodder for sustained meditation on creating environments supportive of student — and teacher — learning, as seen from various levels, perspectives, and contexts. These are followed by a timely and provocative MJE Forum on the subject of sexual harassment in the academic workplace / environment, to which submission of responses are encouraged for publication in future issues. We conclude with two Notes from the Field, one from the Australian context, and the second one Carter’s portrait of the teaching of theatre and drama in classrooms across Canada: a French translation (by popular demand) of an English Note originally pub- lished in the MJE in 2014. With increasing attention to creating environments in education characterized by health and wellness, Jean-Pierre and Parris-Drummond’s literature review is timely. They searched for scholarly and professional publications published in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada between 1996 and 2016 that presented alternative, non-punitive school practices. Selecting 72 publications, they were especially interested in articles that drew on theoreti- cal frameworks emphasizing empowerment or opportunities-to-learn, and that could offer practical implications for the classroom and school. The review provides a highly useful thematic and critical analysis of the selected articles. Also on the subject of health and wellness, here in higher education, Meunier- Dubé and Marcotte surveyed 211 college students to measure the occurrence of cognitive vulnerabilities and depressive symptoms manifested before and during their transition from secondary school to college. As of the first year, 6,2% of surveyed students reported moderate to severe depression symptoms. Although a higher number of female students reported signs of depression, there does not seem to be any significant gender-related differences in terms of academic and social adaptation. The authors discuss how cognitive vulner- abilities may predict adaptation in this context. In a somewhat related vein, Leduc, Kozanitis, and Lepage are interested in the cognitive involvement of postsecondary students. This involvement is defined as the use of studying and learning strategies that aim for a relatively good McGILL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION • VOL. 53 NO 3 FALL 2018 Editorial 407 understanding of notions addressed in the classroom. The authors translate, adapt, and seek to validate the Cognitive engagement scale survey, widely used in anglophone settings. Their questionnaire, adapted with a counter- translation method, received responses from 647 college and university students from Quebec. The research examines the quality of the survey translated and transposed to a francophone setting. For their part, administrators, policy-makers, and educators working in the Ontarian context may be interested to read Segedin’s evaluation of the impact of the Specialist High Skills Majors (SHSM) program on student outcomes. Comprising the third phase of the Student Success Strategy, the initiative was intended to provide students with flexible alternatives in developing their career pathways. Segedin’s interest stemmed from her work in schools with students who were at risk of dropping out. The article describes the study that Segedin conducted, which involved analysis across student achievement data, school visits, and interviews with teachers and administrators at selected schools. Segedin concludes that the program is beginning to make a difference, even as she also flags areas for improvement. The Myara article provides a historical portrait of pedagogical intervention plans used to support students with disabilities or with adaptation or learning difficulties in Quebec. By drawing from a literature review, she discusses the elaboration, the implementation, and the revision of an intervention plan in order to guide new practices using this tool. Indeed, practices remain varied and far from being optimal due to time and cost-related constraints related to the development, acquisition, and use of an intervention plan as well as the training and collaboration of different actors. Perhaps whatever change in education needs to happen should strive to begin early on: in the primary or Kindergarten classroom. Villeneuve-Lapointe and Charron’s action-research describes second grade teachers’ implementation of invented spelling. Five teachers were first trained to integrate these new practices. Then, the researchers observed each teacher’s classroom twice. The results indicate that because of these new practices, the students were able to verbalize their knowledge of the language. The teachers also created numerous links with other words, notions, and spelling strategies. The authors discuss favorable conditions to spelling practices that can develop writing competencies during the first cycle of primary school. How can teachers become more attuned to the gifts not just that students but that families bring to the Kindergarten classroom? Preston, McPhee and Roach O’Keefe conducted a study with 62 Kindergarten teachers on Prince Edward Island — a robust sample representing 94% of all Kindergarten teachers on the island — in which they asked teachers about how parents were involved in their classrooms and challenges parents faced in becoming involved. In the article, they summarize their analysis of the teachers’ responses, positing Éditorial 408 REVUE DES SCIENCES DE L’ÉDUCATION DE McGILL • VOL. 53 NO 3 AUTOMNE 2018 “family vibrancy” as a needed approach and change in mindset for teachers to draw on families’ strengths in encouraging their involvement in their children’s learning in and outside of the classroom. Professional development, in teacher education and with practicing teachers, remains a key focus — here, effective integration of new technologies using such tools as online communities of practice and the implications of research on implementing effective FSL programs. Tremblay and Dion Routhier are interested in the professional development of teachers who seek to integrate new technologies. The authors collected their data during a university training that focused on knowledge co-creation through the use of an online forum and the subsequent establishment of a community of practice. The discussion of the results highlights engagement factors of an online community of practice for professional development. Three dimensions are identified and analyzed with regards to the integration of new technologies: accessibility, participation, and recognition. Arnett’s longitudinal case study examines four new French as a second language (FSL) teachers’ beliefs regarding the best and worst FSL program for English language learners and students with learning difficulties. Semi-structured inter- views took place at the end of participants’ Bachelor of Education programs. Participants preferred the French immersion (FI) program as means of gain- ing French proficiency. Where participants were grounded in their beliefs of scientific concepts of pedagogy, this study revealed that these beliefs were less likely to change over time when not accompanied by lived experiences. The fact that in several of the responses, participants focused on the nature of a student’s disability as a factor in teacher decision-making revealed some areas of concern for ensuring that students with LDs are meaningfully included in the FSL classroom. “Call It by Its Name” is the advice — and title — that Hurren gives to her highly useful glossary of terms (obfuscations included) tied to the perpetuation of cultures of sexual harassment among faculty members in the academic work- place. Timely given the openings created through the #MeToo movement, this MJE Forum piece represents a provocative, cogent, and creative interruption to this culture by sharing pertinent information in the form of a glossary. We at the MJE (along with Hurren) encourage responses, which can be published in subsequent MJE issues. Responses can assume various forms (see http:// mje.mcgill.ca/about/editorialPolicies#sectionPolicies). Ideas include: More or different glossary terms to share? A video, cellphilm or podcast response? A book review? A story? A critique? A different analysis of the issue? Hailing from Monash University, Russo’s Note draws on experiences from the classroom, introducing cognitive load theory to outline a useful process through which students can become effective peer tutors in the classroom, especially in the area of math. http://mje.mcgill.ca/about/editorialPolicies%23sectionPolicies http://mje.mcgill.ca/about/editorialPolicies%23sectionPolicies McGILL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION • VOL. 53 NO 3 FALL 2018 Editorial 409 In the Notes from the Field entitled “Enseignement du théâtre et de l’art drama- tique au Canada : un portrait,” Carter exposes a highly relevant perspective on theatre and dramatic arts education in Canada. The author identifies elements that warrant further reflection to enable schools to better teach this subject matter. By raising the idea that it would be wise to systematically teach theater and the dramatic arts at the primary and secondary levels, the author raises, by ricochet, the importance of properly training the next generation of teach- ers. Carter’s positioning of this topic is intimately tied to her understanding of herself, to the elaboration of a community of learners, as well as to the development of its resilience. TERESA STRONG-WILSON, VINCENT BOUTONNET, JEROME ST-AMAND & MINDY CARTER Éditorial 410 REVUE DES SCIENCES DE L’ÉDUCATION DE McGILL • VOL. 53 NO 3 AUTOMNE 2018 ÉDITORIAL Les neuf articles composant cette édition régulière permettent de nourrir une réflexion soutenue sur la mise en place d’environnements favorables à l’apprentissage des étudiants — et des enseignants — telle qu’observée à différents niveaux et points de vue ainsi que dans divers contextes. S’ajoute à ceux-ci un texte à-propos et provocateur portant sur le harcèlement sexuel dans les milieux de travail et environnement universitaires présenté dans la section du Forum RSÉM. Nous vous invitons à réagir à ce texte afin de publier vos réponses au sein d’éditions futures. Cette publication se termine avec deux Notes du terrain. La première met en lumière le contexte australien. Quant à l’autre, il s’agit du portrait de l’enseignement du théâtre et de l’art dramatique dans les classes au Canada réalisé par Carter : une note initialement publiée en anglais dans la RSÉM en 2014 et publiée cette fois en français, à la demande générale. Dans le contexte de l’attention croissante accordée à la mise en place d’environnements éducatifs privilégiant la santé et le bien-être, la revue de la littérature de Jean-Pierre et Parris-Drummond arrive à point nommé. Ceux-ci ont recensé les écrits académiques et professionnels publiés aux États-Unis, au Royaume-Uni et au Canada entre 1996 et 2016 et présentant des pratiques scolaires alternatives et non-punitives. Pour sélectionner les 72 publications, ils ont ciblé avec une attention particulière les cadres théoriques mettant l’emphase sur la responsabilisation ou les opportunités d’apprendre et pouvant avoir une incidence concrète en classe ou au sein d’une école. La revue offre une analyse thématique très utile et critique des articles sélectionnés. Abordant également le thème de la santé et du bien-être, mais aux cycles supérieurs, la recherche de Meunier-Dubé et Marcotte ont utilisé deux ques- tionnaires auprès de 211 étudiantes et étudiants au collégial afin de mesurer la présence des vulnérabilités cognitives et des symptômes dépressifs avant et pendant la transition du secondaire au collégial. Dès la première année, 6,2 % des étudiants de l’échantillon rapportent présenter des symptômes dépressifs modérés à sévères. En outre, il ne semble pas y avoir de différences significa- tives reliées au genre quant à l’adaptation académique et sociale même si un nombre plus élevé d’étudiantes déclarent présenter des signes de dépression. Les auteurs discutent alors de la prédiction sur l’adaptation relative à certaines vulnérabilités cognitives. McGILL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION • VOL. 53 NO 3 FALL 2018 Editorial 411 Dans un même ordre d’idées, Leduc, Kozanitis et Lepage s’intéressent à l’engagement cognitif des étudiants postsecondaires. Cet engagement se définit par le déploiement de stratégies d’étude et d’apprentissage qui visent une mai- trise plus ou moins élevée des notions abordées durant les cours. Cet article traduit, adapte et valide le questionnaire Cognitive Engagement Scale largement utilisé en contexte anglophone. Leur questionnaire, adapté avec une méthode de contre-traduction, ont reçu les réponses de 647 étudiants québécois issus de différents collèges et universités. La recherche traite alors de la qualité de cet outil traduit et transposé en contexte francophone. Les administrateurs, décideurs et enseignants œuvrant en contexte ontarien pourraient être intéressés par l’article de Segedin, dans lequel elle évalue l’incidence du programme Majeure Haute Spécialisation (MHS) sur les résultats académiques des élèves. S’inscrivant dans la Phase 3 de la Stratégie visant la réussite des élèves, cette initiative a été mise sur pied pour offrir des alterna- tives de développement flexibles aux étudiants en termes de cheminement de carrière. Segedin a développé un intérêt pour cette problématique suite à son travail auprès d’étudiants présentant un risque de décrochage. L’article décrit la recherche menée par Segedin au moyen d’analyses de résultats d’élèves, de visites d’écoles et d’entrevues réalisées avec des enseignants et des directeurs de milieux scolaires sélectionnés. En conclusion, Segedin souligne que le programme commence à faire une différence et soulève certains aspects néces- sitant une amélioration. L’article de Myara dresse un portrait historique des plans d’intervention sco- laires utilisés pour l’accompagnement des élèves handicapés ou en difficulté d’adaptation ou d’apprentissage au Québec. Elle discute de l’élaboration, de la mise en œuvre et de la révision d’un plan d’intervention en puisant dans une recension des écrits afin de guider de nouvelles pratiques dans les usages de cet outil. En effet, les pratiques restent variées et loin d’être optimales en raison du temps et des coûts encourus pour le développement, l’acquisition, l’utilisation du plan d’intervention ainsi que la collaboration et la formation des différents intervenants. Et si les changements rendus incontournables en éducation devaient se ma- térialiser le plus tôt possible, dans les classes du primaire et du préscolaire? La recherche-action de Villeneuve-Lapointe et Charron décrit la mise en œuvre de pratiques d’orthographes approchées d’enseignantes de deuxième année du primaire. Cinq enseignantes ont participé à une formation afin de favoriser l’intégration de ces nouvelles pratiques. Les chercheures ont ensuite observé à deux reprises chaque classe de ces enseignantes. Les résultats indiquent qu’en raison de ces nouvelles pratiques, les élèves sont en mesure de verbaliser leurs connaissances sur la langue. Les enseignantes créent également de nombreux liens avec d’autres mots, notions et stratégies orthographiques. Il est alors dis- cuté des conditions favorables aux pratiques d’orthographes approchées pour développer la compétence en écriture au premier cycle du primaire. Éditorial 412 REVUE DES SCIENCES DE L’ÉDUCATION DE McGILL • VOL. 53 NO 3 AUTOMNE 2018 De quelle manière les enseignants peuvent-ils devenir plus ouverts non seule- ment à la contribution de chaque élève à la classe de maternelle, mais égale- ment à celle des familles? Preston, McPhee et Roach O’Keefe ont piloté un projet de recherche auprès de 62 enseignants du préscolaire de l’Île-du-Prince- Édouard — un échantillon fiable représentant 94 % du bassin d’enseignants du préscolaire de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard. Ils leur ont demandé de quelle façon les parents s’impliquaient en classe et les défis rencontrés par ceux-ci lorsqu’ils s’impliquaient. Dans cet article, les auteurs résument leur analyse des réponses des enseignants et décrivent l’ouverture à la « vitalité de chaque famille » comme une orientation nécessaire. Ils soulignent également que la mentalité des enseignants doit évoluer pour profiter des forces des familles, en encourageant leur implication dans l’apprentissage de leur enfant, à l’intérieur comme à l’extérieur de la classe. Le développement professionnel, celui des futurs enseignants comme celui des enseignants en fonction, demeure une priorité. Nous nous intéressons ici à l’intégration efficace des nouvelles technologies en utilisant des outils comme les communautés de pratique en ligne et les enjeux de la recherche dans la mise en place de programmes efficaces de français langue seconde (FLS). Tremblay et Dion Routhier s’intéressent au développement professionnel d’enseignantes et d’enseignants visant à intégrer les nouvelles technologies. Les auteures ont collecté leurs données dans le cadre d’une formation universitaire misant sur la coélaboration des connaissances grâce à l’usage d’un forum et la mise en place d’une communauté de pratique ultérieure. La discussion des résultats relève les facteurs d’engagement à une communauté de pratique en ligne pour le développement professionnel. Trois dimensions sont identifiées et analysées au regard de l’intégration de nouvelles technologies : l’accessibilité, la participation et la reconnaissance. Dans le cadre de son étude de cas longitudinale, Arnett s’intéresse aux croy- ances de quatre nouveaux enseignants de français langue seconde (FLS) en ce qui a trait aux meilleurs et pires programmes FLS offerts aux apprenants de langue anglaise et aux élèves éprouvant des difficultés d’apprentissage. En menant des entrevues semi-structurées avec les participants à la fin de leur programme de baccalauréat en éducation, Arnett a réalisé que ceux-ci préfèrent le programme d’immersion française (IF) comme véhicule d’apprentissage du français. Lorsque les participants croient fermement aux concepts scientifiques de la pédagogie, l’étude démontre qu’à moins qu’ils vivent des expériences, il est peu probable que leurs croyances évoluent au fil du temps. Le fait que dans plusieurs des réponses les participants aient mentionné la nature des dif- ficultés d’un élève comme facteur dans leur processus décisionnel soulève des inquiétudes sur l’inclusion authentique en classe de FLS des élèves éprouvant des difficultés d’apprentissage. McGILL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION • VOL. 53 NO 3 FALL 2018 Editorial 413 « Appeler les choses par leur nom » est le conseil et le titre donné par Hur- ren à son très utile glossaire des termes (zones d’ombre incluses) liés à la pérennisation de la culture d’harcèlement sexuel au sein des membres du corps professoral. Dans la foulée de l’ouverture générée par le mouvement #MoiAussi, ce texte du Forum RSÉM tout à fait opportun constitue un arrêt provocateur, convaincant et créatif à cette culture en partageant des informations pertinentes sous forme de glossaire. Nous, membres de l’équipe de la RSÉM (tout comme Hurren), vous encourageons à réagir à ce texte, afin de publier quelques-unes de vos réponses dans des éditions ultérieures de la RSÉM. Ces réponses peuvent prendre diverses formes (voir http://mje.mcgill.ca/about/ editorialPolicies#sectionPolicies). Parmi celles-ci, voici quelques idées : Des termes différents ou additionnels à partager? Une vidéo, un cellphilm ou une balado? Une critique de livres? Une anecdote? Des commentaires? Une analyse différente de la problématique? En provenance de la Monash University, Russo se base sur les expériences vécues en classe pour introduire la théorie de la charge cognitive, mettant en lumière un processus utile par lequel les étudiants peuvent devenir des tuteurs efficaces pour leurs pairs en classe, particulièrement dans le domaine des mathématiques. Dans la note de terrain intitulée « Enseignement du théâtre et de l’art drama- tique au Canada : un portrait », Carter expose un point de vue fort pertinent sur l’enseignement du théâtre et de l’art dramatique au Canada, notamment en cherchant à dégager des éléments de réflexion pouvant aider les milieux scolaires à se positionner par rapport à son enseignement. En soulevant l’idée qu’il serait judicieux d’enseigner systématiquement le théâtre et les arts dramatiques au primaire et au secondaire, l’auteure soulève, par ricochet, l’importance de bien former la relève enseignante. La place que Carter octroie à cette thématique est intimement liée à la compréhension de sa propre personne, à l’élaboration de communautés d’apprenants, ainsi qu’au développement de sa résilience. TERESA STRONG-WILSON, VINCENT BOUTONNET, JEROME ST-AMAND et MINDY CARTER http://mje.mcgill.ca/about/editorialPolicies%23sectionPolicies http://mje.mcgill.ca/about/editorialPolicies%23sectionPolicies work_6xllwsp5kndnlfw67wjjpiz6r4 ---- BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ Lietuvių kalbos institutas EMOCINĖ-EKSPRESINĖ LEKSIKA LIETUVIŲ KALBOS NAUJAŽODŽIŲ DUOMENYNE – NAUJADARŲ RADIMOSI APLINKYBĖS IR DARYBOS BŪDAI ESMINIAI ŽODŽIAI: emocinė-ekspresinė leksika, naujažodžiai, okaziniai dariniai, darybinė analizė, darybos būdas, produktyvumas. ĮVADAS Apie Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyną (toliau – ND, duomenynas) rašyta įvairiais aspektais (plačiau žr. Miliūnaitė 2012a: 3–11; 2015: 161–184; 2018: 1–21; Murmulaitytė 2016a: 1–27; 2016b: 68–88; Aleksaitė 2018: 1–2), todėl šiuokart, nebetęsiant bendrosios duomenyno apžvalgos, gilinamasi į tradicinę naujažodžių sampratą ir rūšis, pateikiamas novatoriškas požiūris į lietuvių kalbos naujažodžius kaip gyvenamojo meto aktualijų ženklus. Duomenyne 2019 m. balandžio mėn. 5 d. buvo 5120 leksikografiškai aprašytų kalbos vienetų. Rasti 572 emocinę-ekspresinę paskirtį atliekantys naujadarai 1 . Stilistiškai žymėti naujadarai duomenyne suskirstyti pagal aštuonis ekspresinius atspalvius: vulgarusis, niekinamasis, menkinamasis, mažybinis, maloninis, juokaujamasis, ironiškasis ir familiarusis (žr. 1 pav.). 1 Daiktavardžiai sudaro 91,8 proc. visos ND fiksuotos emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos, veiksmažodžiai – 4,9 proc., būdvardžiai – 3,3 proc. Atsižvelgus į negausią veiksmažodžių ir būdvardžių empirinę medžiagą, matyti, kad negalima nuodugniai aptarti būdvardžių ir veiksmažodžių darybos būdų, todėl šiame straipsnyje bendrai aprašomi stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų darybos polinkiai. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 2 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 1 PAV. Naujadarų pasiskirstymas duomenyne pagal ekspresinį atspalvį Matyti, kad ND didžiąją emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos dalį (net 69,4 proc.) sudaro neigiamos konotacijos naujadarai, t. y. ironiškąjį, menkinamąjį, niekinamąjį, vulgarųjį ir familiarųjį atspalvį turintys dariniai. Tokį netolygų pasiskirstymą galima paaiškinti psichologinėmis ir socialinėmis priežastimis: lietuvių kalboje (kaip ir daugelyje kitų kalbų) neigiamas emocinis vertinimas išreiškiamas dažniau negu teigiamas, nes visa, kas gera, priimama kaip norma, o ypatingų emocijų dėl normalių dalykų žmonės nereiškia, todėl visa, kas negera, laikoma nukrypimu nuo normos ir įvertinama neigiamos konotacijos naujažodžiais (Jakaitienė 1988: 51; Gudavičius 2000: 130–131). Atmetus ND darybiškai neskaidomus semantinius naujažodžius, pvz., plūgas „menk. viskuo nepatenkintas tamsuolis“, runkelis „menk. tamsuoliu laikomas pesimistiškai nusiteikęs žmogus, priešinamas elitui“, žodžių junginius, pvz., kelių vištelė „menk. vairuotoja moteris, akiplėšiškai ir piktybiškai nepaisanti eismo taisyklių“ (plg. kelių gaidelis, kelių erelis), naudingas idiotas „menk. kas nesavanaudiškai skleidžia įtartinas žinias ir ideologijas, naudingas priešininkams, nesuvokdamas tokio elgesio kenksmingumo“, ir skolinius, pvz., nafris, -ė „menk. išeivis Europoje iš Šiaurės Afrikos“, retarderis „2. iron. perkeltine reikšme – atsilikėlis; politinių Vulgarusis 0,5 % Niekinamasis 6,3 % Menkinamasis 28,3 % Mažybinis 1,6 % Maloninis 3,7 % Juokaujamasis 25,3 % Ironiškasis 33,8 % Familiarusis 0,5 % AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 3 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 procesų stabdis“ (plačiau apie etiškai netinkamus žodžius žr. Župerka 2005: 25–28), tyrimo o b j e k t u pasirinkti 479 kalbos vienetai 2 . Šio straipsnio t i k s l a s – nustatyti pagrindinius emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos, užfiksuotos ND, žodžių darybos būdus ir produktyviausias darybos priemones. U ž d a v i n i a i : 1) išrinkti iš ND emocinę-ekspresinę funkciją atliekančius naujadarus; 2) atlikti darybinę ND stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų analizę; 3) ištirti ir aprašyti stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų darybos būdus ir priemones; 4) nustatyti naujus darybos polinkius ir 5) aptarti stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų (gyvenamojo meto aktualijų ženklų) radimosi aplinkybes. Darbe taikyti darybinės analizės ir skaičiavimo m e t o d a i . EMOCINĖS-EKSPRESINĖS LEKSIKOS SAMPRATA Stilistiškai žymėtą leksiką sudaro emotyvai ir ekspresyvai. Įprastai emotyvai apibrėžiami kaip žodžiai, kuriais reiškiami jausmai, jų „reikšmės pagrindas – teigiamas ar neigiamas emocinis kalbėtojo santykis su pavadinamu dalyku. Tai jo nuomonė apie tam tikro dalyko vertę, ir ta nuomonė pasireiškia ne kaip loginis sprendimas, o kaip kalbančio asmens pojūtis ar jausmas“ (Gudavičius 2000: 126). Dėl stilistinių priežasčių vartojami ir ekspresyvai – tai „žodžiai, kurie pavadinamą dalyką nusako vaizdu“ (Jakaitienė 2010: 164). Pagrindinis emotyvų ir ekspresyvų skirtumas – netapačios poveikio kryptys, mat „emotyvai veikia pašnekovo jausmus, o vaizdingieji žodžiai – vaizduotę, nes jų reikšmė tarsi įsikūnija regimaisiais ar girdimaisiais vaizdais“ (Jakaitienė 2010: 164). Nors mokslinėje literatūroje įprasta emotyvus ir ekspresyvus skirti pagal jų daromą poveikio kryptį, vis dėlto jų griežtai atriboti negalima, nes „kas emocinga kalboje, visuomet ekspresyvu“ (Pikčilingis 2010: 211; dar žr. Volek 1987: 5) ir, atvirkščiai, „vaizdu perteikiama informacija susilaukia dar ir vienokio ar kitokio emocinio vertinimo“ (Jakaitienė 2010: 164–165), todėl straipsnyje stilistiškai žymėtai leksikai pavadinti renkamasi vartoti emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos terminą 3 . 2 Tai yra pirminis emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos tyrimas, kurį atlikus paaiškėjo, kad kai kurie duomenyno naujadarai dar turėtų būti sistemiškai redaguojami stilistikos aspektu. ND tikslas – fiksuoti leksikos naujoves, todėl į bazę, dedant po vieną žodį, iš karto nebūna aiški visa sistema. Tik sukaupus daugiau duomenų, galima matyti, kokios naujadarų grupės išsiskiria, ir šias grupes nuosekliai vertinti stilistiškai. 3 Dėl šios keblios atskyrimo priežasties ND emocinė-ekspresinė leksika smulkiau (į minėtąsias dvi grupes) nėra skirstoma. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 4 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 TRADICINĖ NAUJAŽODŽIŲ SAMPRATA IR RŪŠYS Lietuvių kalbotyros veikaluose naujažodis (neologizmas) paprastai apibrėžiamas kaip naujai kalboje atsiradęs žodis (Urbutis 2009: 36–37; Jakaitienė 2010: 205; Girčienė 2011: 165), nors mokslinėje literatūroje pateikiama naujažodžio samprata įvairuoja (plačiau žr. Girčienė 2012b: 6): vieni skiriamąja naujažodžio ypatybe laiko keliamą naujumo, neįprastumo įspūdį (Palionis 1985: 212), kiti naujažodžiais laiko žodžius, iki tol neįtrauktus į atraminius žodynus (Miliūnaitė 2015: 169) 4 . Mokslininkai polemizuoja dėl naujažodžiui priskiriamos „naujumo aureolės“, „[m]at naujumas kartais gali būti suprantamas pernelyg subjektyviai: vieniems kalbos vartotojams koks nors žodis gali atrodyti jau įprastas, o kiti dar gali jo ir nesuprasti“ (Popova 2005: 9–13, cituojama iš Jakaitienė 2010: 205; dar žr. Kazlauskaitė, Župerka, Macienė 2013: 91). Patikimesnis esti naujažodžių atrankos kriterijus pagal atraminius leidinius, nors lietuvių kalbos atveju toks kriterijus nėra visiškai patikimas – žodynuose esama leksikografinių plyšių, susiduriama su žodynų nesistemiškumo problema (Miliūnaitė 2015: 169). Duomenyne naujažodžiais laikomi žodžiai, kurie nėra įrašyti kaip atraminiais pasirinktuose žodynuose, t. y. Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodyne (6-asis (elektroninis) leidimas, 2011), internetiniame Lietuvių kalbos žodyne ir Tarptautinių žodžių žodyne (Alma littera, 2001) (žr. http://naujazodziai.lki.lt/?Apie_duomenyna; apie protologizmo ir neologizmo skirtumus žr. Aleksaitė 2018: 5–6). Funkciškai naujažodžiai skiriami į dvi pagrindines grupes – referentinius (dar vadinami nominatyviniais, termininiais, būtinaisiais ir kt.) ir ekspresinius (dar vadinami stilistiniais, fakultatyviaisiais ir kt.) (Girčienė 2012a: 249; 2012b: 15; dar žr. Offord 2001: 98; Vaicekauskienė 2007: 34–43). Referentiniai naujažodžiai įvardija naujas realijas, t. y. atlieka referentinę (informacijos perdavimo) funkciją, o ekspresiniai naujažodžiai į tekstą įtraukiami stilistiniais sumetimais, čia svarbiausia emocinė-ekspresinė funkcija (Girčienė 2012b: 15). Referentiniai 4 Tiesa, ND pateikiami ir tokie kalbos vienetai, kurie veikiausiai per apsirikimą nepateko į atraminius žodynus. Jie ND turi žymą nenaujas (nefiksuotas), pvz., meiliavaistis „liaudies medicinos priemonė, sukelianti arba didinanti lytinį potraukį“. Duomenyne nurodoma, kad šis naujadaras – tai „kadaise lietuvių kalboje vartotas, bet į didįjį „Lietuvių kalbos žodyną“ nepatekęs dabartinio skolinio afrodiziakas dalinis atitikmuo“. http://naujazodziai.lki.lt/?Apie_duomenyna AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 5 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 naujažodžiai, kurių pagrindinis skiriamasis bruožas – stilistinis neutralumas (Girčienė 2012b: 41), žodžių darybos veikaluose įvardijami kaip potenciniai dariniai (potencionalizmai). Potencinis darinys – kalbos vartotojui visiškai įprastas, naujai sudarytas ir darybos tipo reikalavimui paklūstantis darinys, šnekos akto metu realizuojamas kiekvienu momentu, kai tik jo prireikia (Plag 2003: 57; Paulauskienė 2006: 24; Urbutis 2009: 316; Vaskelienė 2011: 67), pvz., šalia lietuviams įprastų mėsos pavadinimų (paukštiena, kiauliena, jautiena) prireikus pasidaryta buivoliena (: buivolas) „buivolo mėsa“, kengūriena (: kengūra) „kengūros mėsa“, kupranugariena (: kupranugaris) „kupranugario mėsa“ ir kt. Esminis potencinių darinių skiriamasis bruožas – net ir jų pirmojo pasirodymo metu naujumas dažnai nėra juntamas (Mikelionienė 2000a: 19; Urbutis 2009: 323). Jie kuriami iš būtino reikalo įvardyti naują realiją (Girčienė 2012b: 12), siekiant užpildyti vadinamąsiais „semantines tuštumas“ (Mikelionienė 2000b: 65), priešingai nei ekspresiniai naujažodžiai, kuriais siekiama „naujesnės, ekspresyvesnės ar madingesnės kalbinės raiškos“ (Girčienė 2005: 78). Šie stilistiškai žymėti, arba konotuoti, teksto elementai (Girčienė 2012b: 41; dar žr. Lehrer 2003: 369) kituose veikaluose dar vadinami okaziniais dariniais (okazionalizmais). Okazinis darinys (okazionalizmas) – ekspresyvus, nuo darybos sistemos nutolęs ir individualiame kontekste sustingęs naujadaras (Blažinskaitė 2004: 59; Rozenbergs 2004: 156; Urbutis 2009: 323–324; Jakaitienė 2010: 207; Mattiello 2016: 115), dar įvardijamas autorinio, individualaus, stilistinio, situacinio, kontekstinio, vienkartinio ir neįprastos darybos naujadaro / neologizmo, taip pat žodynų nefiksuoto darinio terminais (Mikelionienė 2000c: 67; 2002: 74; Jakaitienė 2010: 207; Kazlauskaitė, Župerka, Macienė 2013: 92; Miliūnaitė 2014: 247), pvz., menko proto asmenis apibūdina išplautsmegenis, -ė (: išplautas, -a + smegenys) „menk. kas atbukinto mąstymo (išplautomis smegenimis)“, vienavingis, -ė (: vienas, -a + vingis) „menk. kas su vienu smegenų vingiu, t. y. primityvaus mąstymo“, žirniasmegenis, -ė (: žirnis + smegenys) „menk. kas primityvaus mąstymo, neapsišvietęs, netašytas stuobrys“ ir kt. Taigi straipsnyje nagrinėjama ND emocinė-ekspresinė leksika, į kurią patenka nemaža dalis okazinių naujadarų. Galima tolimesnė tyrimų kryptis – panagrinėti, kiek skiriasi okazinių darinių ir referentinių naujadarų darybos polinkiai. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 6 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 NAUJAŽODŽIAI – GYVENAMOJO METO AKTUALIJŲ ŽENKLAI Kalba – vienas iš svarbiausių tautos požymių (Gudavičius 1992: 1), nes „[k]iekvienos tautos kalba saugo įdomią istoriją apie daugelio amžių žmonių pastangas pažinti, suvokti ir pajungti sau juos supantį pasaulį“ (Kopylenko 1995: 19, cituojama iš Gudavičius 2000: 8), kitaip tariant, nuo seno vartojamuose kalbos vienetuose yra išlikęs per šimtmečius susiklostęs tautos pasaulėvaizdis ir pasaulėjauta (Gudavičius 2003: 68). Kalbos ir tautos santykis nagrinėjamas ne tik kalbininkų, bet ir kitų sričių specialistų: „Kalba daugelio kultūrologų, mitologų seniai suvokiama kaip liaudies kultūros, tautos psichologijos ir filosofijos veidrodis, dažnai ir kaip vienintelis šaltinis tautos istorijai ir jos dvasiai pažinti ir yra tiriama šiuo požiūriu“ (Tolstojus 2009: 82). Gimtosios kalbos pasaulėvaizdžiui yra būdingas daugiasluoksniškumas ir daugiaaspektiškumas, nes kalboje išlieka ne tik visuomenei nebeaktualūs pasaulėvaizdžio elementai (seni įsitikinimai, vaizdiniai), bet randasi ir naujų pasaulio suvokimo aspektų (naujo patyrimo, naujų reiškinių, naujų mokslo tiesų) (Mackiewicz 1999a: 21; 1999: 195, cituojama iš Gudavičius 2000: 13), pvz., šalia lietuviams įprastų senovinių namų pavadinimų (gryčia, pirkia, stuba, troba), pasikeitus gyvenimo aplinkybėms (sunykus agrarinei kultūrai ir stiprėjus urbanizacijai), palaipsniui kalboje radosi betonmonstris (: betonas + monstras) „didžiulis, grėsmingai atrodantis betoninis pastatas“, betonoidas (: betonas) „harmoningą aplinką darkantis naujoviškas betoninis pastatas“, dangoraižynas (: dangoraižis) „vieta modernaus miesto centre, kur daug dangoraižių“, naują reikšmę įgavęs stiklainis „menk. naujoviškas stiklinis pastatas arba antstatas (paprastai menkavertis, ne visada pastatytas teisėtai)“ ir žemėraižis (: žemė + raižyti) „giliai po žeme įleistas pastatas, dangoraižio priešingybė“. Panašūs naujadarai teikia vertingos informacijos ne tik apie lietuvių tautos kalboje užfiksuotą pasaulėvaizdį, bet ir apie kalbos pasaulėjautą, kuri perteikia emocinį žmogaus santykį su tikrove (Gudavičius 2000: 16). Būtent laiko aktualijas bei laikinus, situacinius dalykus (Miliūnaitė 2012a: 4) ar net visuomenės raidos lūžius (Girčienė 2012c: 19) žymi naujų žodžių srautas. Duomenyne fiksuota keliasdešimt naujadarų, kuriuos derėtų laikyti gyvenamojo meto aktualijų ženklais, pvz., 2018 m. politikų teikti transporto ir švietimo, maisto srities teisinio reglamentavimo siūlymai nesulaukė visuomenės palaikymo, todėl kalboje radosi stilistiškai žymėtų, laiko aktualijas žyminčių AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 7 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 naujadarų: dyzelheitas (: dyzelis „dyzelinu varomas automobilis“ + -heitas < anglų k. hate „neapkęsti“) „juok. dyzelinių automobilių nemėgimas“ 5 ; maistnešys, -ė (: maistas + nešti) „juok. kas nešiojasi Sveikatos apsaugos ministerijos nerekomenduojamą maistą į mokyklą“ (plg. užkandnešys, -ė) 6 . Į Sveikatos apsaugos ministerijos pateiktas rekomendacijas akimirksniu sureagavę verslininkai mokiniams ir jų tėvams pasiūlė išeitį – tai kalboje kartu su nauja realija radęsis galimas kontaminantas (maišinys) (plačiau žr. Kabašinskaitė: 1998: 5, 63–64, 67; Urbutis 2009: 354–355; Miliūnaitė 2014: 246–264; Murmulaitytė 2018: 60–70) sveikatronas (: sveikas, -a + -tronas) „skatinanti valgyti daržoves užkandžių dėžutė vaikams“ 7 . ND gausu ir daugiau nepasitenkinimą dabartine valdžia rodančių naujadarų, susijusių su Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjunga bei jai prijaučiančiais asmenimis: gandragalviai (: gandras + galva) „menk. Ramūno Karbauskio vadovaujama politinė jėga – Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjunga, kurios simbolis – skrendantis gandras“ 8 , gandragalviškas, -a (: gandragalvis, -ė) „menk. būdingas gandragalviams“, gandramintis, -ė (: gandras + mintis) „menk. Valstiečių ir žaliųjų partijos žmogus ar jai prijaučiantis“ 9 ir gandriniai (: gandras) „iron. Ramūno Karbauskio vadovaujama politinė jėga – Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjunga, kurios simbolis – skrendantis gandras“. Duomenyne fiksuota naujadarų, pasidarytų iš Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjungos 5 Plg. ND teikiamą pavyzdį: Šis reiškinys, kai dalis automobilių bendruomenės išsako vien tik neigiamą nuomonę apie dyzelinius automobilius, jau įgavo bendrinį pavadinimą – dyzelheitas (angl. diesel hate – nekęsti dyzelio), – juokiasi Lietuvos autoverslininkų asociacijos generalinis direktorius Vitoldas Milius (15min.lt 2018 07 31). Beje, naujadaro dyzelheitas nederėtų painioti su fonetiškai panašiu dyzelgeitu (plg. anglų k. dieselgate, rusų k. дизельгейт). Dyzelheitu apibūdinamas „dyzelinių automobilių nemėgimas“, o skoliniu dyzelgeitas (: dyzelis + -geitas (anglų k. -gate < Watergate) dūrinių dėmuo, reiškiantis dažniausiai didelio masto politinį ar su nuslėptais valdžios veiksmais susijusį skandalą) – „Volkswagen“ dyzelinių automobilių taršos duomenų klastojimo skandalas“. 6 Plg. ND teikiamus vartosenos pavyzdžius: Buvo knygnešiai, dabar bus maistnešiai [Moksleivio, kuris buvo supažindintas su nerekomenduojamo mokykloje maisto sąrašu, komentaras. – Red. past.] (facebook.com 2018 09 04). 2018 prasidėjo užkandnešių laikai. Pagal viską, tai tęsis 40 metų [Reakcija į feisbuko diskusiją apie Sveikatos apsaugos ministerijos nurodymus, kokio maisto mokiniams negalima neštis į mokyklą. – Red. past.] (facebook.com 2018 08 31). 7 Plg. ND pateiktą pavyzdį: „Dėl šios priežasties trečius metus iš eilės vykdome socialinės atsakomybės projektą „Sodinčius“, kurio tikslas – padėti vaikams pažinti daržoves ir vaisius bei tokiu būdu paskatinti mažuosius jų valgyti daugiau. Šiais metais nusprendėme ateiti į pagalbą tėveliams ir dėmesį skirti tam, kad jų vaikai originaliau ir žaismingiau sužinotų apie sveiką mitybą. Sukūrėme specialias užkandžių dėžutes – „Sveikatronus“, kuriuose pavaizduotos daržovės – herojės, tokios kaip pomidoras, brokolis, obuolys, morka ir avietė, simbolizuojantys daržovių ir vaisių super galias. Norėdami, kad vaikai į šias dėžutes įsidėtų sveikus užkandžius, daržovėms, vaisiams ir uogoms davėme specialius pavadinimus, pvz. „morkatronas“, – pasakoja B. Čaikauskaitė (zmones.lt 2018 09 17). 8 Naujadaras pasidarytas pagal analogiją su žodžiu bukagalvis, -ė. 9 Naujadaras pasidarytas pagal analogiją su žodžiu bendramintis, -ė. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 8 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 lyderio Ramūno Karbauskio pavardės: karbauskiada (: Karbauskis) „istorijos, susijusios su Seimo nario Ramūno Karbauskio veikla“, karbauskininkai (: Karbauskis) „Ramūno Karbauskio vadovaujama politinė jėga – Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjunga“ ir karbauskizmas (: Karbauskis) „niek. politiko Ramūno Karbauskio ir jo vadovaujamos partijos ideologija“. Glaudų politikų Sauliaus Skvernelio ir Ramūno Karbauskio bendradarbiavimą įvardija galimas kontaminantas karboskvernelis (: Karbauskis + Skvernelis) „niek. politikų Sauliaus Skvernelio ir Ramūno Karbauskio duetas“. Duomenyne rasta kiek mažiau naujadarų, pasidarytų, remiantis ministro pirmininko Sauliaus Skvernelio pavarde, pvz., skvernelininkas, -ė (: Skvernelis) „premjero Sauliaus Skvernelio šalininkas“ ir skvernelkė (: Skvernelis) „menk. premjero Sauliaus Skvernelio vadovaujamos Vyriausybės siūlomas sąlyginis piniginis vienetas, skirtas socialiai remtiniems žmonėms apsipirkti smulkiose parduotuvėse“ (pasidaryta pagal analogiją su žargonybe vagnorkė 10 ). Naujažodystės – okazinių naujažodžių kūrimo procese, rodant emocinį santykį su Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjungos vadovu, kuriama ir tokių darinių, kurių darybos pamatu pasirenkamas gyvenvietės Lietuvoje pavadinimas – Naisiai, siejami su Ramūnu Karbauskiu: naisiada (: Naisiai) „su TV serialu „Naisių vasara“ ir Valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjungos politine reklama tame seriale susijusios peripetijos“, naisybė (: Naisiai) „iron. ypatybės, reiškiančios neigiamas opozicinių jėgų nuostatas dėl visko, kas susiję su Naisiais kaip Valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjungos simboliu, pavadinimas“ (plg. naisu, naisumas, naisus, -i), naisietija (: naisietis, -ė) „Valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjungos, kurios vienas iš simbolių – Naisiai, rinkėjai“, naisietis, -ė (: Naisiai) „1. Naisių gyventojas; 2. Valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjungos, kurios vienas iš simbolių – Naisiai, narys ar sekėjas“, naisizacija (: Naisiai) „iron. Ramūno Karbauskio idėjų, įgyvendintų Naisių gyvenvietėje, plėtra“ ir naisuva (: Naisiai) „Valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjungos, kurios vienas iš simbolių – Naisiai, atstovai Seime“. Akivaizdu, kad patys aktualiausi dalykai ilgainiui aplimpa dariniais (džn. neigiamos konotacijos) (plg. Miliūnaitė 2000: 8). Stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų kūrėjai atkreipia dėmesį ir į sveikatos apsaugos ministro Aurelijaus Verygos veiklą, ypač neigiamai vertinama jo inicijuota alkoholio kontrolės griežtinimo kampanija, todėl darybos pamatu pasirenkama ministro pavardė ir kuriami ne tik neigiamos 10 Vagnorkėmis (: Vagnorius) vadinti po nepriklausomybės atkūrimo įvesti pirmieji lietuviški pinigai (laikinieji talonai, iliustruoti įvairiais žvėreliais). AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 9 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 konotacijos, bet ir juokaujamieji dariniai, pašiepiantys ar pajuokiantys ne tik patį ministrą, bet ir alkoholio kontrolės griežtinimo kampanijos šalininkus: kontaminantas veryganas, -ė (: Veryga + veganas) „juok. naujadaras blaivininkui, aktyviai palaikančiam alkoholio ribojimus, pavadinti“, verygininkas, -ė (: Veryga) „iron. alkoholio kontrolės griežtinimo šalininkas“, verygizacija (: Veryga) „iron. LR sveikatos ministro Aurelijaus Verygos inicijuotas alkoholio kontrolės griežtinimas“, verygmetis (: Veryga + metas) „iron. LR sveikatos ministro Aurelijaus Verygos inicijuoto alkoholio kontrolės griežtinimo įstatymo įsigaliojimo laikotarpis“ ir kontaminantas žveryga (: žvėris + Veryga) „iron. naujadaras, sukurtas ironizuojant Sveikatos ministro Aurelijaus Verygos inicijuotą alkoholio kontrolės griežtinimo kampaniją“. Draudimo pasekmė – kalboje radęsis okazionalizmas puslapiakarpys, -ė (: puslapis + karpyti) „juok. įstatymo vykdytojas – užsienio žurnalų puslapių su draudžiama alkoholio reklama karpytojas“. Tokių politikos naujadarų „plėtros polinkius, svarbą kalbos vartotojams rodo ne tik <...> vartosenos dažnis, bet ir darybos šakojimasis“ (Girčienė 2013: 85) – tai, kad kuriami ne pavieniai, o gausų darybos lizdą sudarantys nauji dariniai, įrodo, kad lietuvių tauta, kūrybingai naudodamasi žodžių darybos išgalėmis, įvairiai ir gausiai reiškia emocinį santykį su opiomis gyvenamojo meto aktualijomis (plačiau žr. Pikčilingis 1971: 225; Gudavičius 2007: 83). Laikini, situaciniai dalykai (pvz., pavieniai politikų skandalai ir pan.) žymimi tik vienu kitu naujadaru: markauskiada (: Markauskas) „iron. skandalas dėl žemės ūkio ministro Broniaus Markausko žemės ūkio verslo“, nusišalčiūtinti (: *šalčiūtintis : *šalčiūtinti : Šalčiūtė) „iron. nusifotografuoti asmenukei socialinių tinklų ir pramogų pasaulio veikėjos Monikos Šalčiūtės stiliumi“, pakildišinti (: *kildišinti : Kildišienė) „juok. sukompromituoti dėl politiko Ramūno Karbauskio proteguotos buvusios Seimo narės Gretos Kildišienės“, pūkintis (: *pūkinti : Pūkas) „juok. naujadaras, skirtas apibūdinti parlamentaro Kęstučio Pūko veiklai, dėl kurios jam pareikšti įtarimai dėl seksualinio priekabiavimo“ ir kt. Dar keli ryškūs 2018 m. gyvenamojo meto aktualijų ženklai, fiksuoti ND „kaip graži kalbos kūrybos apraiška ir kalbos bei jos kūrėjų išgalių paliudijimas“ (Miliūnaitė 2012b: 8): Sausuva (: sausas, -a) „sausros apimta Lietuva“ 11 (plg. 2017 m. kontaminantą Vilnecija (: Vilnius 11 Plg. ND pateiktą pavyzdį: Lietuvių kančios: pernai – tikra Lietuva, šiemet – jau Sausuva [antraštė] Vietoj laukto lietaus – tik keli lašai. Tuo vakar buvo itin nusivylę daugelis šalies ūkininkų, kurie jau pristigo net šieno galvijams. Ne ką geresnė padėtis ir miškuose, todėl dzūkai kol kas lieka be uždarbio. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 10 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 + Venecija) „juok. Vilnius, kuris dėl vasaros liūties patvinus gatvėms, tapo panašus į Veneciją“), kontaminantas Šiukšliniškės (: šiukšlinas, -a + Viršuliškės) „menk. apšiukšlintas gyvenamasis rajonas (turimos galvoje Vilniaus Viršuliškės)“ 12 , tais metais suaktualėjęs naujadaras vaikmušys, -ė (: vaikas + mušti) „menk. kas muša savo vaikus“. Pasaulyje prasidėjęs #metoo judėjimas lietuvių kalbos naujosios leksikos sluoksnį papildė naujažodžiais mytiūtis, -ė (: mytiu 13 < anglų k. metoo) „seksualinio priekabiavimo auka, paviešinusi šį faktą viešojoje erdvėje su grotažyme #metoo, taip išreikšdama solidarumą su kitomis nukentėjėlėmis“, mytukė (: mytiu) ir mytušnikė (plg. rusų k. митушница, митушник). 2017 m. nesutarimai dėl Vilniaus Lukiškių aikštės paminklo 14 paskatino visuomenę sukurti darinius vytininkas, -ė (: vytis) „Vilniaus Lukiškių aikštės paminklo – vyčio statulos – šalininkas“ ir bunkerininkas, -ė (: bunkeris) „Vilniaus Lukiškių aikštės paminklo, primenančio partizanų bunkerį, šalininkas“ 15 . 2016 m. ne tik Lietuvoje, bet ir daugelyje pasaulio šalių paplito politikos skolinys – trampokalipsė (anglų k. trumpocalypse < Trump (naujojo JAV prezidento Donaldo Trumpo pavardė) + apocalypse) „apokalipsei – pasaulio pabaigos artėjimui – prilygintas Donaldo Trumpo išrinkimas JAV prezidentu“. Tais pačiais metais į ND (kaip didelį nepasitenkinimą lietuvių visuomenėje sukėlęs reiškinys) pateko kalafiorgeitas (: kalafioras „žiedinis kopūstas“ + -geitas Lietaus šalimi vadinamoje Lietuvoje pernai buvo paskelbta ekstremali padėtis dėl užklupusių liūčių, o šiemet – viskas atvirkščiai (lrytas.lt 2018 06 12). 12 Plg. ND fiksuotą pavyzdį: Dėl šiukšlių krūvų Vilniaus Viršuliškes gyventojai jau vadina Šiukšliniškėmis [antraštė] „Atvažiuoja mašinomis ir išmeta, iš visų namų neša ir meta. Žmonių sąmoningumo nepakeisi, bet kai konteinerių nebuvo prie kelio, tokios nesąmonės nebūdavo. Dabar ne Viršuliškės, o Šiukšliniškės, galima taip pavadinti. Jau net 7–8 metų vaikai piktinasi, kodėl niekas neveža šiukšlių“, – kalbėjo moteris (15min.lt 2018 11 05). 13 Žvengiu. ji kovoja su seksualiniu priekabiavimu :-) Jūs pasižiūrėkite į tos mytiu įkurėjos snukį. Arba ir į šią. Tai, normalūs vyrai laikosi atstumo. Nu negražios. Seksualiai nepatrauklios. Perversijos. Apsidžiaugtų jei prie jų papriekabiautų :-D [Kalba netaisyta – Red. past.] (tv3.lt [el. komunikacija] 2018 05 13). 14 Beje, remiantis istoriko Gedimino Kulikausko veikale Lietuvio kodas. Įpročiai ir būdas senovės lietuvio prieš 100 metų pateiktais duomenimis, galima daryti prielaidą, kad lietuvių visuomenei susiskaldyti, nesutarus dėl kokio paminklo ar statinio, – įprasta, nes dar tarpukariu (apie 1931 m.) Kaune visuomenė skilo į dvi grupes „dėl okupacinės carinės valdžios palikimo pačioje miesto širdyje – Petro ir Povilo soboro. Vieniems atrodė, kad pakanka statinį pervadinti į Šv. arkangelo Mykolo bažnyčią ir perduoti Kauno karinės įgulos žinion. Kiti norėjo sulyginti statinį su žeme“ (Kulikauskas 2018: 399; plačiau žr. 2018: 400–414; plg. nesenus vaidus, kilusius dėl Žaliojo tilto skulptūrų). 15 Plg. ND pavyzdį: Valstybės šimtmetį paminėsime „vytininkų“ ir „bunkerininkų“ riaušėmis? [antraštė] Jei kiekvieną ginčą dėl skonio paversime pasaulėžiūriniais karais, visai gali būti, kad Lietuvos valstybės šimtmečio jubiliejų paminėsime „vytininkų“ ir „bunkerininkų“ riaušėmis Lukiškių aikštėje, tyliu Gedimino kalno striptizu ir tokiu visuomenės susipriešinimu, kokio nebuvo nuo 1926-ųjų perversmo laikų (delfi.lt 2017 12 02; Romas Sadauskas- Kvietkevičius). AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 11 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 (anglų k. -gate < Watergate) „juok. skandalas, kurį Lietuvoje žmonės sukėlė dėl itin išaugusių kainų; jo pradžia buvo vieno piliečio pasipiktinimas žiedinių kopūstų kaina (už galvą – 3,49 Eur)“ ir kalafobija (: kalafioras „žiedinis kopūstas“ + fobija (graikų k. phobos) „baimė“) „juok. baimė pirkti žiedinius kopūstus (kalafiorus) dėl pakilusių jų kainų“. 2015 m. nepalankiai įvertintas vyrų nenoras eiti į kariuomenę, todėl radosi ironiškas visuomenės, karybos vartosenos srities kontaminantas verktinis, -ė (: verkti + šauktinis) „iron. kas verkšlena dėl šauktinių kariuomenės ir nori nuo jos išsisukti arba kas tai parodijuoja; kas nepagrįstai dėl ko nors virkauja“. 2014 m. Lietuvos visuomenės dėmesio akiratyje atsidūrė karo, tiksliau, agresyvios politikos, reiškinys, į lietuvių kalbą patekęs kaip skolinys okupendumas (rusų k. окупендум < okupuoti + referendumas) „okupacijos (nekonvencinio karo) sąlygomis 2014 03 16 vykęs Krymo referendumas dėl atsiskyrimo nuo Ukrainos“. 2013 m. duomenyne pateiktas vos vienas gyvenamojo meto aktualijų ženklas – pavienis naujadaras varškianešys, -ė (: varškė + nešti) „juok. kontrabandininkas, per 2013 m. spalį Rusijos pradėtą Lietuvos pieno gaminių blokadą plukdantis varškę per Nemuną į Kaliningrado (Karaliaučiaus) sritį“ (pasidaryta pagal analogiją su knygnešiu). Remiantis 2012 m. ND duomenimis, matyti, kad tais metais buvo kilę tariamos pedofilijos ir banko „Snoras“ skandalai. Buvus pedofilijos skandalą rodo į duomenyną įrašyti tokie naujadarai, kaip kontaminantas kedofilas, -ė (: Kedys + pedofilas) „menk. Drąsiaus Kedžio, kovojusio prieš pedofiliją ir žuvusio neaiškiomis aplinkybėmis, šalininkas“, kedofilija (: Kedys + pedofilija) „Drąsiaus Kedžio šalininkų (kedofilų) sambūrio palaikymas“ 16 , kedofilinis, -ė (: kedofilas, -ė) „susijęs su kedofilija ir kedofilais“ ir kedofilizacija (: *kedofilizuoti) „kedofilijos plitimas“. Tais metais, panaikinus banką „Snoras“, lietuvių kalboje radosi įvairių neigiamos konotacijos darinių, pvz., apsisnorinti (: *apsnorinti : *snorinti : Snoras) „iron. apsikvailinti, svarstant „Snoro“ banko nacionalizavimo klausimus“, nusnorinti (: *snorinti : Snoras) „iron. likviduoti „Snoro“ banką“, snoriada (: Snoras) „iron. 2011 m. suvalstybinto banko „Snoras“ istorija ir visa, kas su ja susiję“ ir net mažybinis darinys snoriukas (: Snoras) „buvusio (2011 m. pabaigoje suvalstybinto) banko „Snoras“ savitarnos kioskelis gatvėje“. Tai, kad naujadarą 16 Tiesa, čia galima įžvelgti ir priesaginę darybą. Naujadarą kedofilija (: kedofilas, -ė) būtų galima laikyti priesagos -ija vediniu. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 12 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 snoriukas bei kitus bazėje fiksuotus darinius iš tiesų galima laikyti gyvenamojo meto aktualijų ženklais, pagrindžia prie mažybinio darinio duomenyno kūrėjų nurodyta pastaba – snoriukas yra „po kiek laiko, matyt, nueisiantis į praeitį šnekamosios kalbos žodis“ 17 . Tokie okaziniai dariniai, „keleto sezonų“ dalykai „nusitveriami kaip aktualijos, bet ilgainiui pasitraukia iš aktyviosios vartosenos“ (Miliūnaitė 2006: 159). Nekyla abejonių, kad ilgainiui aktualūs gyvenamojo meto įvykiai pasimiršta, o juos pavadinę naujadarai be papildomo paaiškinimo – sunkiai suvokiami. Šį teiginį pagrindžia 2011 m. internetinėje žiniasklaidoje sukurtas darinys varškėfobija (: varškė + fobija) „juok. taip pavadintas visuomenės judėjimas, atsiradęs kaip ironiškas protestas prieš žiniasklaidą, kuri išpūtė iki sensacijos faktą, kad apsauginis neįsileido Zitos Čepaitės, nešinos grūdėtosios varškės indeliu, į „Anties“ koncertą Mokytojų namų kiemelyje“. Žinoma, suvokti darybos reikšmę („varškės baimė“) nėra sunku, nes naujadarai kuriami iš esamos kalbinės medžiagos, todėl naujas darinys kalboje turi atramą, yra motyvuotas – pavadindami naują daiktą, dalyką ar reiškinį kartu pasakome, kodėl jį taip pavadinome, pabrėždami vieną ar kitą pavadinamojo objekto savybę ar aspektą (Gudavičius 2000: 101; plačiau žr. Urbutis 2009: 69–72). Duomenyne pateiktą medžiagą pravartu patyrinėti ir etnolingvistikos, ir žodžių darybos aspektais. ND sukaupta medžiaga rodo, kad kalbos vartotojai reaguoja į šių dienų aktualijas ir geba prikurti pačių įvairiausių stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų. Akivaizdu, kad leksika yra visuomenės atspindys, o „kiekvienas kalbos raidos periodas atspindi atitinkamą periodą tautos gyvenime“ (Gudavičius 1992: 5; dar žr. Wohlgemuth 2009: 258). DARYBINĖ DUOMENYNO EMOCINĖS-EKSPRESINĖS LEKSIKOS ANALIZĖ Darybinė ND emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos analizė parodė, kad pagrindiniai stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų darybos būdai yra priesaginė daryba (45,7 proc.), sandūra (31,7 proc.) ir nemorfeminis žodžių darymosi būdas – kontaminacija (sąmaiša) (12,7 proc.) (dar apie kontaminaciją žr. Murmulaitytė 2018: 61). Pastaruoju žodžių darybos būdu naujadarai sudaromi, suliejant nemorfemines esančių žodžių dalis, tačiau lietuvių kalbotyroje tokia „sąmaiša nelaikoma 17 Kai kurie gyvenamojo meto aktualijas žymintys naujadarai, fiksuoti ND, nuo 2017 m. yra įtraukiami į Metų žodžio ir Metų posakio rinkimų sąrašus. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 13 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 tradiciškai suprantamos žodžių darybos proceso dalimi“ (Miliūnaitė 2014: 249; dar žr. Murmulaitytė 2018: 61) – „[ž]odžių darybai terūpi dariniai, o ne fonetiniai ar kitokie perdirbiniai, vienų teksto žodžių keitimas kitais, kontaminacijos padariniai ir panašūs dalykai“ (Urbutis 2009: 324). Menko produktyvumo yra priešdėlinė daryba (5,6 proc.), mišrusis darybos būdas (2,4 proc.) ir galūninė daryba (1,9 proc.) (žr. 2 pav.). 2 PAV. Emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos pasiskirstymas duomenyne pagal darybos būdus Produktyviausio darybos būdo – priesaginės darybos – dariausia priemonė yra vardažodinės ypatybės turėtojų pavadinimų priesaga -(i)ukas, -ė, kuri sudaro 6,8 proc. visų priesaginių darinių 18 , pvz., karštukė (: karštas, -a) „malon. karšta seksuali mergina“, mylimukas, -ė (: mylimas, -a) „malon., mžb. asmuo ar daiktas, prie kurio labai prisirišama, kuris labai mėgstamas ar mylimas (ypač kalbant apie vaikus)“, neįgaliukas (: neįgalus, -i) „malon. neįgalus 18 Viena daresnių kitos kalbos dalies priesagų – išskiriamųjų (rūšinių) būdvardžių darybos kategorijos -inis, -ė (4,5 proc.), pvz., koloradinis, -ė (: koloradas) „menk. susijęs su Georgijaus juostelėmis, jų nešiotojais“, čikenfektorinis, -ė (: čikenfektorius) „iron. susijęs su čikenfektoriumi, t. y. įmone išeivijoje, kur apdorojama viščiukų produkcija; perkeltine reikšme ironizuojant – prasčiokiškas“ ir kt. Priesaginė daryba 45,7 % Priešdėlinė daryba 5,6 % Galūninė daryba 1,9 % Sandūra 31,7 % Kontaminacija 12,7 % Mišrusis darybos būdas 2,4 % AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 14 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 žmogus“ ir kt. Naujadaro beglobiukas, -ė (: beglobis, -ė) „malon. beglobis gyvūnas“ darybą galima interpretuoti dvejopai, priklausomai nuo to, kas būtų laikoma darybos pamatu – daiktavardis beglobis, -ė (priskirtina deminutyvų (mažybinių daiktavardžių) kategorijai) ar būdvardis (priskirtina vardažodinės ypatybės turėtojų pavadinimų kategorijai). Perpus mažiau rasta priesagos -(i)ukas, -ė vedinių, priklausančių veikėjų ir veiksmažodinės ypatybės turėtojų pavadinimams (3,6 proc.), pvz., nemiegiukas, -ė (: nemiegoti) „malon. mažylis, kuriam sunku užmigti (ypač pietų miego)“, nugirstukas (: nugirsti) „juok. nuogirda“ ir kt. Deminutyvų, arba mažybinių priesagos -(i)ukas,-ė vedinių, duomenyne fiksuota vos vienas kitas (2,7 proc.): pabaisiukas (: pabaisa) „mžb. nedidelis pabaisa“ (plačiau apie deminutyvų vartoseną vaikų ir vaikiškojoje kalboje žr. Savickienė 2006: 260; Kamandulytė 2006: 269; apie produktyviausias priesagas vaikų kalboje žr. Dabašinskienė 2010: 44), netipinės darybos nėštukė (: nėščia) „1. malon. besilaukianti moteris, nėščioji“, kurios darybos pamatas – būdvardis, ir kt. Veikiausiai prie specialiosios reikšmės deminutyvų reikėtų skirti naujadarą snoriukas (: Snoras) „mžb. buvusio (2011 m. pabaigoje suvalstybinto) banko „Snoras“ savitarnos kioskelis gatvėje“. Naujadarų linkstama darytis ir su ypatybių pavadinimų (vardažodžių abstraktų) darybos kategorijos priesaga -izmas (6,8 proc.), pvz., priekvailizmas (: priekvailis, -ė) „iron. priekvailių propaguojama ideologija“, runkelizmas (: runkelis) „menk. tamsumu ir pesimizmu pasižyminčių žmonių, vadinamų runkeliais, būvis“; plg. netipišką okazinį darinį nusispjovizmas (: nusispjovė) „iron. tyčinis ir sistemiškas ko nors nepaisymas“, kurio darybos pamatas – priešdėlinis sangrąžinis veiksmažodis. Atskirai reikėtų aptarti dariąją, sąlygiškai prie mėsos pavadinimų priskirtą priesagą -iena (6,4 proc.). Prie šio darybos tipo šliejasi nemažai naujadarų, kuriais pavadinama ne kokio gyvulio ar paukščio mėsa, o kokio nors daikto, dalyko, reiškinio gausa, visuma (žaliava) – darybos pamatu imamas dalies pavadinimas, pvz., dokumentiena (: dokumentas) „menk. abejotinos vertės dokumentų ruošiniai (žaliava)“, internetiena (: internetas) „menk. internete esanti informacija (informacijos žaliava)“, laikraštiena (: laikraštis) „menk. menkavertė, dažnai bulvarinė spausdintinė žiniasklaida“, skaitaliena (: skaitalas) „menk. skaitalas, menkavertė literatūra“, televizijiena (: televizija) „menk. menkavertė televizijos produkcija“, netipiškos darybos verteliena (: vertalas?) „menk. menkavertis vertimas, tikro vertimo teksto žaliava“, žodiena (: žodis) „iron. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 15 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 tuščių žodžių gausa“ (plg. žodeliena) 19 (dar žr. Mikelionienė 2002: 75–76). Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstyne (toliau – DLKT) fiksuoti dar du šiam pogrupiui priskirtini naujadarai, t. y. bulvariena (: bulvarinis, -ė) 20 ir žurnalistiena (: žurnalistas) 21 . Nors priesagos -iena vediniai gali būti priskiriami ir vardažodinės ypatybės turėtojų pavadinimų kategorijai (plg. naujiena, seniena, žaliena; mėnesiena; plačiau žr. DLKG 2006: 121), vis dėlto manytina, kad šių menkinamųjų, ironiškųjų darinių pavadinimai šliejasi būtent prie mėsos pavadinimų – jais įprastai pavadinama kieno nors neapdirbta, nesutvarkyta medžiaga. Remiantis DLKT rastu žurnalistienos ir ND fiksuotais laikraštienos pavyzdžiais 22 , matyti, kad iš minėtųjų priesagos -iena vedinių vartosenoje anksčiausiai atsirado naujadaras laikraštiena, veikiausiai pagal jį ir buvo analogiškai prikurta panašių darinių. Atsižvelgus į ND sukauptus pavyzdžius, galima daryti prielaidą, kad galbūt formuojasi naujas priesagos -iena darybos tipas. Žinoma, daryti apibendrintų išvadų, remiantis tik duomenyno medžiaga, – negalima, todėl šią prielaidą būtina tikrinti, sukaupus ir nuodugniai išnagrinėjus gausesnę nei ND medžiagą. Bent kiek daresnė emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos priesaga yra ypatybių pavadinimų (vardažodžių abstraktų) darybos kategorijos -ystė (4,5 proc.), pvz., pelnagaudystė (: pelnagaudys, -ė) „menk. pelno vaikymasis“, šūdmalystė (: šūdmala) „niek. niekų darymas, paistymas“, žemgrobystė (: žemgrobys, -ė) „menk. nelegalus nuosavybės teisės į žemę įgijimas“ ir kt. Anot ND sudarytojos Ritos Miliūnaitės, „į duomenyną sudėtas naujosios leksikos pluoštas rodo, kad lietuvių kalba telkia savyje daugiau gyvybinių galių, nei esame linkę manyti“ (žr. http://naujazodziai.lki.lt/?Apie_duomenyna). Priesaginės darybos naujadarų pavyzdžiai rodo, kad visuomenė „jaučia kalbos išgales ir moka jas valdyti“ (Miliūnaitė 2012b: 7) – kuriant stilistiškai žymėtus darinius, naudojamos pačios įvairiausios priesagos, pvz., pilstukininkas, -ė 19 Plg. „Prie šio darybos tipo dar šliejasi keletas mokslo terminais einančių naujadarų, kuriais pavadinama kokio nors kūno medžiaga („mėsa“), pvz.: grybiena, mediena, uoliena“ (DLKG 2006: 141). Naujadarai verteliena, žodeliena gali būti analogiškai pasidaryti pagal panašios darybos žodžius, pvz.: dvėseliena, ląsteliena ir kt. 20 „<...> ir save solidžia laikančios spaudos. Grynoji "bulvariena" gal taip net neįžeistų žmogaus, <...>“ („Kauno diena“ 2001). 21 „<...> nes dar daug žmonių maitinosi "laikraštiena", "žurnalistiena", knygų rinkoje viešpatavo komerciniai leidiniai“ („Santara“ 1997). 22 „Po to per kelerius metus mūsų visuomenė buvo maitinama laikraštiena su nuodais“ („Lietuvos aidas“ 1990 08 16; Jonas Juškaitis); Pradžioje, gerbiamas Profesoriau, gal susitarkime, kad kalbėsime ne apie leidinius ar eterio laidas profesionalams, mokslo, meno ar kultūros elitui, o apie tą laikraštieną, žurnalieną bei šouvieną, kurios kasdien pateikiamos masinio skaitytojo stalui („Žurnalistų žinios“ 1999 03 31; Domas Šniukas). http://naujazodziai.lki.lt/?Apie_duomenyna AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 16 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 (: pilstukas) „menk. kas pardavinėja ar geria pilstuką“ (2,7 proc.), žvaigždūnas (: žvaigždė) „iron. vyrai – įžymybės, garsenybės (paprastai iš pramogų pasaulio)“ (2,3 proc.), mėšlainis (: mėšlas) „menk. greitasis nesveikas mėsainių tipo maistas“ (1,8 proc.), stambutė (: stambus, -i) „malon. apkūni, stambaus sudėjimo mergina ar moteris“ (plg. pilnutė) (1,8 proc.), kalbišius (: kalba) „menk. nekoks, pro šalį šaudantis kalbininkas“ (plg. kalbišiūtė) (1,4 proc.), engykla (: engė) „menk. darbuotojus engianti įmonė“ (1,4 proc.), apsisnukiuotojas (: apsisnukiuoti) „iron. muštynių, per kurias duodama į veidą, dalyvis“ (1,4 proc.), trolija (: trolis, -ė) „iron. trolių bendruomenė“ (0,9 proc.), sveikatinė (: sveikata) „juok. vieta, kur prekiaujama sveikatos gerinimo ir grožio priežiūroms priemonėmis“ (0,9 proc.), runkelynas (: runkelis) „menk. vieta, kur susibūrę daug runkeliais pašaipiai vadinamų žmonių“ (0,9 proc.), baisuoklis, -ė (: baisus, -i) „iron., juok. kas baisus, baisiai atrodo, elgiasi ar pan.“ (0,9 proc.), girtuomenė (: girtas, -a) „iron. prasigėrusi visuomenės dalis“ (0,9 proc.), konservatorienė (: konservatorius, -ė) „juok. įtakingo politiko konservatoriaus žmona“ (0,5 proc.), davatkinas (: davatka) „menk. vyras davatka“ (0,5 proc.), švaistytuvės (: švaistyti) „iron. tradicija švaistyti (valdiškus) pinigus“ (0,5 proc.), spuoguočius (: spuogas) „menk. kas spuoguotas“ (0,5 proc.), darnuva (: darnus, -i) „iron. visko, kas darnu, visuma“ (0,5 proc.) ir daugelis kt. Remiantis ND duomenimis, matyti, kad antras pagal produktyvumą žodžių darybos būdas – sandūra (31,7 proc.). Dūrinių darumą pagrindžia ne tik duomenyno medžiaga. Apie tokį „sudurtinių žodžių (lyginant juos su priesagų ir galūnių vediniais) santykinį pagausėjimą“ (Gaivenis 1980: 31) rašyta dar anksčiau. ND vyrauja stilistiškai žymėti dūriniai, sudaryti iš dviejų daiktavardžių (43,4 proc.), pvz., blusturgis (: blusa + turgus) „menk. turgus, kuriame prekiaujama naudotais daiktais arba rankdarbiais“, kiauliagyvis (: kiaulė + gyvis) „menk. nenatūraliu (paspartintu) būdu užauginta kiaulė“, špygsubinė (: špyga + subinė) „vulg. moteris, kurios labai menkas užpakaliukas“, zombadėžė (: zombis + dėžė) „iron. žmones bukinantis televizorius (televizija)“ 23 ir kt. Itin darūs yra dviejų daiktavardžių dūriniai (džn. neigiamos konotacijos), kurių antrasis sandas – -žmogis, pvz., europažmogis (: Europa + žmogus) „iron. federacijos santykiais grįstos Europos Sąjungos gyventojas be valstybės ir tautos“, galvažmogis (: galva + žmogus) „iron. žmogus informacijos perkimšta galva“, kėdžmogis (: kėdė + žmogus) „juok. kas 23 ND pastabose nurodyta, kad „žodis dažniausiai vartojamas kalbant apie rusiškąją propagandinę televiziją“. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 17 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 dirba sėdimą darbą“, miniažmogis (: minia + žmogus) „menk. žmogus iš minios, kuriam būdingas nerūpestingas požiūris į gyvenimą“, projektažmogis (: projektas + žmogus) „iron. gyvenantis iš projektų žmogus“, rinkažmogis (: rinka + žmogus) „iron. žmogus, gyvenantis pagal laisvosios rinkos dėsnius“, sovietžmogis (: sovietai + žmogus) „niek. sovietinei ideologijai tarnavęs žmogus“, šiukšliažmogis (: šiukšlės + žmogus) „1. menk. šiukšlinantis žmogus“, tolerantžmogis (: tolerancija + žmogus) „iron. liberalizmo ideologijos suformuotas tolerantiškumą virš kitų vertybių iškėlęs žmogus“ ir valdžiažmogis, -ė (: valdžia + žmogus) „menk., iron. valdžioje esantis savanaudis žmogus; biurokratas“ (plg. būdvardžio ir daiktavardžio dūrinius: naujažmogis (: naujas, -a + žmogus) „iron. naujo tipo žmogus“, šlykštažmogis (: šlykštus, -i + žmogus) „niek. šlykščiai, bjauriai atrodantis ir (ar) besielgiantis žmogus“). Atskirai reikėtų paminėti ir stilistiškai žymėtų dūrinių darųjį pirmąjį sandą valdžia-, pvz., valdžiadurnis, -ė (: valdžia + durnius) „juok. valdžioje esantis kvailys“, valdžiagalvis (: valdžia + galva) „menk. esantis valdžioje; biurokratas“, valdžiagyvis (: valdžia + gyvis) „niek. niekinamasis valdžios atstovo pavadinimas“, valdžiatvarka (: valdžia + tvarka) „iron. savitvarkos priešingybė, t. y. valdžios institucijų įgalinimas reguliuoti kokią nors visuomenės gyvenimo sritį (pavyzdžiui, žiniasklaidą)“, valdžiasnukis (: valdžia + snukis) „menk. menkinamasis valdžios atstovo įvardijimas“, valdžiavyris (: valdžia + vyras) „iron. valdžioje esantis žmogus“ (plg. daiktavardžio ir veiksmažodžio dūrinius: valdžiagrobis (: valdžia + grobti) „iron. kas užsigrobęs valdžią“ ir valdžiasiekys, -ė (: valdžia + siekti) „juok. kas siekia valdžios (kandidatuoja į Seimą ar savivaldą)“). Šiek tiek mažiau duomenyne esama stilistiškai žymėtų dūrinių iš daiktavardžio ir veiksmažodžio (32,2 proc.) – tai „daugiausia asmenų pavadinimai, kurių antruoju sandu yra nurodoma, kokį tie asmenys darbą dirba ar šiaip veiksmą atlieka, o pirmuoju – į ką tas veiksmas yra nukreiptas, kas eina darbo bei veiksmo objektu“ (DLKG 2006: 162), pvz., spiritonešis, -ė (: spiritas + nešti) „juok. spirito kontrabandininkas“, tautadrebys, -ė (: tauta + drebėti) „menk. kas dreba dėl tautos likimo“, variavagis, -ė (: varis + vogti / vagis) „menk. spalvotojo metalo – vario vagis“, žinialaižys, -ė (: žinios + laižyti) „iron. kas be saiko gaudo žinias internete“ ir kt. Fiksuotas vienas dūrinys seimasėdis, -ė (: Seimas + sėdėti) „juok. kas sėdi Seime (t. y. Seimo narys)“, kurio pirmuoju dėmeniu pasakytas ne veiksmo objektas, o jo vieta (DLKG 2006: 162). Pasitaiko vienas kitas priemonės ar automobilio pavadinimas: galvaplovė (: galva + plauti) „1. iron. kirpyklose naudojama galvos plautuvė“, pupytvežis (: pupytė + vežti) „juok. automobilis, tinkamas AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 18 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 merginoms (pupytėms) vežioti“ ir kt. Iš kitų negausių daiktavardžio ir veiksmažodžio dūrinių galima paminėti naujadarus, kurie savo reikšme primena veiksmažodžių abstraktus (DLKG 2006: 162), pvz., žinialaiža (: žinios + laižyti) „iron. besaikis žinių gaudymas internete“ ir kt. Duomenyne apstu daiktavardžio ir veiksmažodžio dūrinių (neigiamos konotacijos žiniasklaidos pavadinimų), kurių antrasis sandas – -skleisti (-skleidė) 24 : brukalosklaida (: brukalas + skleisti) „menk. brukalą (šlamštą) skleidžianti žiniasklaida“, galiasklaida (: galia + skleisti) „menk. įtakinga žiniasklaida, kuri savo galią pasitelkia tam, kad manipuliuotų žmonėmis, formuotų tam tikrą visuomenės nuomonę“, klaidasklaida (: klaida + skleisti) „iron. klaidinanti, klaidas skleidžianti žiniasklaida“, klikiasklaida (: klikas „spustelėjimas kompiuterio pelės žymekliu“ + skleisti) „menk. populiarumo, vadinamųjų klikų (paspaudimų) besivaikanti žiniasklaida, manipuliuojanti klaidinančia, sensacinga interneto straipsnio antrašte ar paveikslėliu“, melasklaida (: melas + skleisti) „iron. melą skleidžianti žiniasklaida“, mėšlasklaida (: mėšlas + skleisti) „niek. nešvarius dalykus skleidžianti žiniasklaida“, purvasklaida (: purvas + skleisti) „menk., juok., niek., iron. purvą skleidžianti, t. y. ką nors juodinanti, šmeižianti, niekinanti žiniasklaida“, reklamsklaida (: reklama + skleisti) „iron. šališka žiniasklaida, pateikianti tik komerciškai naudingą informaciją“, snargliasklaida (: snarglys + skleisti) „menk. menkinamasis žiniasklaidos pavadinimas“ ir valdžiasklaida (: valdžia + skleisti) „iron. valdžiai tarnaujanti žiniasklaida“ (plg. būdvardžio ir daiktavardžio dūrinį geltonasklaida (: geltonas, -a + skleisti) „menk. geltonoji (bulvarinė) žiniasklaida“). ND duomenys rodytų, kad dūrinių sandai valdžia- (pirmasis dėmuo), -skleisti (-skleidė) ir -žmogis (antrasis dėmuo) – produktyvūs stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų dėmenys. Neatmestina tikimybė, kad šie naujadarai galėjo būti pasidaryti pagal analogiją su žodžiu žiniasklaida. Duomenyne fiksuoti pavieniai dūriniai iš 1) būdvardžio ir daiktavardžio, pvz., klišakalbė (: klišas, -a + kalba) „juok. kalba, maišyta iš kelių kalbų“, linksmakojis (: linksmas, -a + koja) „iron. ironizuojant – linksmas neblaivių statybininkų „šokis“ – darbas statybų aikštelėje“ (pasidaryta pagal analogiją su klumpakoju) 25 ; 2) skaitvardžio ir daiktavardžio, pvz., dvikalėdis (: dvi 24 Šie dūriniai veikiausiai negalėtų remtis dabartinėje lietuvių kalboje paplitusiu daiktavardžiu sklaida, nes pagal žodžių darybos taisykles turėtų keistis sudurtinio daiktavardžio galūnė, pvz., brukalosklaidė (: brukalas + sklaida); plg. šunuogė (: šuo, šuns + uoga) (plačiau žr. LKG 1965: 447–448; DLKG 2006: 154). LKG nurodoma, kad „[d]ariniai, kurių antruoju dėmeniu imamas io kamieno daiktavardis, yra ia ir ė kamienų“ (1965: 448). 25 Naujadarą linksmakojis (: linksmas, -a + klumpakojis) veikiausiai galima laikyti ir kontaminantu. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 19 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 + Kalėdos) „iron. dvejopai – valdžios ir žmonių – švenčiamos Kalėdos“; 3) veiksmažodžio formos (būtojo laiko neveikiamosios rūšies dalyvio) ir daiktavardžio, pvz., apverstsmegenis, -ė (: apverstas, -a / apversti + smegenys) „iron. kas apverstomis smegenimis, t. y. atvirkščiai mąstantis“; 4) veiksmažodžio ir daiktavardžio, pvz., spoksadėžė (: spoksoti + dėžė) „juok. televizorius“, šikpopieris (: šikti + popierius) „fam. tualetinis popierius“, šnypštavynis (: šnypšti + vynas) „menk. pigus gazuotas putojantis vynas“; 5) prieveiksmio ir daiktavardžio, pvz., šiandienžmogis (: šiandien + žmogus) „iron. žmogus, kurio atmintis siekia tik šiandieną ir neturi praeities“; 6) įvardžio ir daiktavardžio, pvz., kitovalda (: kitas, -a + valda / valdyti) „iron. priešingybė savivaldai, kai bendruomenę valdo ne jos, o savo interesais besirūpinanti valdžia“; 7) būdvardžio / prieveiksmio ir veiksmažodžio, pvz., sengyvena (: senas, -a / seniai + gyventi) „menk. žmogus, siekiantis gyventi taip, kaip buvo gyvenama seniau“; ilgasėdis, -ė (: ilgai + sėdėti) „iron. kas ilgai užsisėdėjęs (eidamas kokias pareigas)“. Matyti, kad dūrybos procese remiamasi įvairių kalbos dalių sandais. Dar vienas produktyvus emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos darybos būdas (be minėtosios priesaginės darybos ir dūrybos) – kontaminacija (sąmaiša) (12,7 proc.). Tai nėra gramatinis (morfologinio pobūdžio) procesas, o jo padariniai (kontaminantai, arba maišiniai) – darybiškai neskaidomi (nemotyvuoti) žodžiai (Urbutis 2009: 355). Nors kontaminacija (angl. blending – darybos procesas, kontaminacija, blend – darybos rezultatas, kontaminantas) (Miliūnaitė 2014: 250) yra nemorfeminis žodžių darymosi būdas, tačiau galima daryti prielaidą, kad sąmoninga dviejų žodžių sąmaiša (jų fragmentų jungimas į vieną naujadarą) (Urbutis 2009: 354–355) pamažu plinta lietuvių kalboje 26 . Darybinė ND emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos analizė rodo, kad nevengiama imtis netradicinio žodžių darymosi, o tokių darinių (kontaminantų) ND randasi vis naujų, pvz., biurozauras (: biuras + dinozauras) „iron. keletą dešimtmečių įstaigai (paprastai valstybinei) vadovaujantis asmuo“, kiaulega (: kiaulė + kolega) „juok. kiaulinantis kolega“, klerkvabalis (: klerkas + karkvabalis) „menk. menkinamasis valdininko pavadinimas“, melagienos (: melagingas, -a / melagis, -ė + naujiena) „menk. melaginga, klaidinanti naujiena“, seimonautas, -ė (: seimas + kosmonautas) „iron. Seimo senbuvis, atitrūkęs nuo tikrovės ir nenutuokiantis, kaip 26 Nuo 2014 m. ND kontaminantų padaugėjo apie 2,3 karto, tačiau procentiškai jų dalis duomenyne paaugo labai nežymiai, t. y. nuo 3 iki 4 proc. (Murmulaitytė 2018: 62). AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 20 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Lietuva iš tikrųjų gyvena pagal Seimo kuriamus įstatymus“, vėminutyvas (: vėmė + deminutyvas) „niek. vemti verčiantis deminutyvas (mažybinis maloninis žodis)“ ir daugelis kt. Su priešdėliais stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų daromasi rečiau (4 proc.), pvz., aptamsa (: tamsa) „iron. apšvietos priešingybė“ (naujadaras pasidarytas pagal analogiją su žodžiu apšvieta) 27 , supermamytė (: mamytė) „iron. mama, perdėtai besirūpinanti savo vaikais ir išskirtinai tuo besididžiuojanti“, nukalbinti (: kalbinti) „juok. daug kalbinant iškamantinėti iki paskutiniųjų“, surunkelėti (: runkelėti) „menk. pavirsti runkeliu“, ir mišrusis darybos būdas (2,4 proc.), pvz., galvapjūtė (: galva + pjauti + -tė) „juok. masiškas ilgai vadovaujamus postus užimančių valdininkų atleidimas iš darbo, siekiant atsinaujinimo ir skaidrumo“, valdžiapjūtė (: valdžia + pjauti + -tė) „juok. ilgamečių valstybės įmonių vadovų atleidimo iš pareigų banga“ 28 , trešnėdra (: trešnės + ėsti (ėda) + -ra) „juok. trešnių ėdrūnas“ (naujadaras pasidarytas pagal analogiją su žodžiu žmogėdra) 29 ir kt. Darumu nepasižymi ir galūninė daryba (1,9 proc.). Didžiąją dalį negausių vedinių sudaro pavadinimai pagal lyties skirtumą (galūnės -ė vediniai): šviesulė (: šviesulys) „iron. žinoma (paprastai pramogų pasaulio) moteris“, tėvė (: tėvas) „iron. pagal genderizmo ideologiją – vienas iš vaiką auginančių šeimos narių (nesvarbu, kurios lyties)“, zombė (: zombis) „niek. perkeltine reikšme – bevalė mirusi gyva moteriškosios lyties būtybė“; mūzas (: mūza) „juok. daiktavardžio mūza (deivė, poetinės kūrybos įkvėpėja) vyriškoji giminė“, sesutis (: sesutė) „juok. vyras, dirbantis medicinos sesele“. Pastarieji galūnės -as ir -is vediniai priklauso pavadinimų pagal lyties skirtumą darybos kategorijai, nors gramatikų aprašuose prie šios kategorijos priskirti tik galūnės -ė vediniai. IŠVADOS 1. Darybinė Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyno emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos analizė (tirti 479 kalbos vienetai) parodė, kad pagrindiniai stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų darybos 27 Veikiausiai būtų galima įžvelgti ir priesaginę darybą: aptamsa (: aptemti). 28 Rugiapjūtės analoginių darinių darybą galima interpretuoti dvejopai: įžvelgti mišrią darybą arba dūrybą, t. y. galvapjūtė (: galva + pjūtis) ir valdžiapjūtė (: valdžia + pjūtis). 29 Tiesa, naujadarą trešnėdra (: trešnės + ėdrus, -i) būtų galima laikyti ir sudurtiniu daiktavardžiu. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 21 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 būdai yra priesaginė daryba (45,7 proc.), sandūra (31,7 proc.) ir nemorfeminis žodžių darymosi būdas – kontaminacija (sąmaiša) (12,7 proc.). 2. Produktyviausio darybos būdo – priesaginės darybos – dariausios priemonės yra vardažodinės ypatybės turėtojų pavadinimų priesaga -(i)ukas, -ė ir ypatybių pavadinimų (vardažodžių abstraktų) darybos kategorijos priesaga -izmas: su abiem priesagomis padaryta po 6,8 proc. stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų. 3. ND duomenys rodytų, kad dūrinių sandai valdžia- (pirmasis dėmuo), -skleisti (-skleidė) ir -žmogis (antrasis dėmuo) – produktyvūs stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų dėmenys. 4. Menko produktyvumo yra priešdėlinė daryba (5,6 proc.), mišrusis darybos būdas (2,4 proc.) ir galūninė daryba (1,9 proc.). 5. Tai buvo pirminis ND emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos tyrimas, kurį atlikus paaiškėjo, kad kai kurie ND naujadarai dar turėtų būti sistemiškai redaguojami stilistikos aspektu. Be to, siekiant nuodugniai ištirti emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos darybos polinkius, reikėtų remtis įvairesniais ir gausesniais šaltiniais. 6. Duomenyne pateiktą medžiagą pravartu patyrinėti ir etnolingvistikos, ir žodžių darybos aspektais. Emocinės-ekspresinės leksikos sankaupa rodo, kad kalbos vartotojai reaguoja į šių dienų aktualijas ir geba prikurti pačių įvairiausių stilistiškai žymėtų naujadarų. Okazinių darinių gausa patvirtina tam tikro reiškinio aktualumą. Akivaizdu, kad leksika yra visuomenės atspindys, o bazėje sukaupti naujadarai (gyvenamojo meto aktualijų ženklai) teikia vertingos informacijos apie tam tikrą laikotarpį tautos gyvenime. ŠALTINIAI DLKT – Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstynas. Prieiga internete: http://tekstynas.vdu.lt/tekstynas/ [žiūrėta 2019 m. gegužės mėn.]. ND – Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenynas. [Tęstinis internetinis žinynas nuo 2011 m.]. Miliūnaitė R., Aleksaitė A. Sudarytoja R. Miliūnaitė. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Prieiga internete: http://naujazodziai.lki.lt [žiūrėta 2019 m. kovo–balandžio mėn.]. ISBN 978-609-411-147-1. https://doi.org/10.35321/neol. http://tekstynas.vdu.lt/tekstynas/ http://naujazodziai.lki.lt/ https://doi.org/10.35321/neol AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 22 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 LITERATŪRA A l e k s a i t ė A. 2018: Ypatybių pavadinimai Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne. – Bendrinė kalba 91, 1–27. Prieiga internete: http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/91/Aleksaite_BK_91_straipsnis_apie_pavadinimus.pdf. B l a ž i n s k a i t ė D. 2004: Naujadarai ir perdirbiniai reklamoje. – Kalbos kultūra 77, 56–65. D a b a š i n s k i e n ė I. 2010: The comprehension of derivational morphemes in early childhood: An experimental study for Lithuanian. – Estonian papers in applied linguistics 6, 43–50. D L K G 2006 – Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika. Red. V. 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Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 23 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 K a b a š i n s k a i t ė B. 1998: Lietuvių kalbos liaudies etimologija ir artimi reiškiniai, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas. K a m a n d u l y t ė L. 2006: Vaikiškosios kalbos ypatybės. – Bendrinė kalba 79, 264–271. Prieiga internete: http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/79/Kamandulyte_KK_79_straipsnis.pdf. K a z l a u s k a i t ė R., Ž u p e r k a K., M a c i e n ė J. 2013: Okazionalūs deminutyvai: tipai ir paskirtis kalbiniame akte. – Žmogus ir žodis 1, 90–100. Prieiga internete: http://etalpykla.lituanistikadb.lt/fedora/objects/LT-LDB- 0001:J.04~2013~1371470739998/datastreams/DS.002.0.01.ARTIC/content. K u l i k a u s k a s G. 2018: Lietuvio kodas. Įpročiai ir būdas senovės lietuvio prieš 100 metų, Vilnius: Tyto alba. 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Daktaro disertacija, Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas. M i k e l i o n i e n ė J. 2002: Analogija lietuvių kalbos žodžių daryboje. Potenciniai ir okaziniai dariniai. – Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 46, 73–80. M i l i ū n a i t ė R. 2000: Nauji kalbos reiškiniai: natūralioji ir dirbtinė atranka. – Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 42, 3–14. M i l i ū n a i t ė R. 2006: Apie kalbą ir mus, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos instituto leidykla. M i l i ū n a i t ė R. 2012a: Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenynas. – Gimtoji kalba 6, 3–11. http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/79/Kamandulyte_KK_79_straipsnis.pdf http://etalpykla.lituanistikadb.lt/fedora/objects/LT-LDB-0001:J.04~2013~1371470739998/datastreams/DS.002.0.01.ARTIC/content http://etalpykla.lituanistikadb.lt/fedora/objects/LT-LDB-0001:J.04~2013~1371470739998/datastreams/DS.002.0.01.ARTIC/content http://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/15.2/07.Lehrer.pdf http://www.italian-journal-linguistics.com/wp-content/uploads/4_Analogical-neologisms-in-English.pdf http://www.italian-journal-linguistics.com/wp-content/uploads/4_Analogical-neologisms-in-English.pdf AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 24 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 M i l i ū n a i t ė R. 2012b: Kalbos vartotojai ir naujadarų kūryba. – Gimtoji kalba 9, 3–14. M i l i ū n a i t ė R. 2014: Naujieji kontaminaciniai dariniai lietuvių kalboje. – Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 71, 246–264. M i l i ū n a i t ė R. 2015: Naujažodžių atranka ir pateikimas Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne. – Leksikografija ir leksikologija 5, 161–184. M i l i ū n a i t ė R. 2018: Naujažodžių pateikimas ir paieškos galimybės Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne. – Bendrinė kalba 91, 1–21. Prieiga internete: http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/91/Miliunaite_BK_91_straipsnis.pdf. M u r m u l a i t y t ė D. 2016a: Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenynas ir naujadarų tyrimų perspektyvos. – Bendrinė kalba 89, 1–27. Prieiga internete: http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/89/Murmulaityte_BK_89_straipsnis.pdf. M u r m u l a i t y t ė D. 2016b: Naujažodžių duomenyno leksika pakeliui į Bendrinės lietuvių kalbos žodyną. – Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 75, 68–88. M u r m u l a i t y t ė D. 2018: Kontaminacija ir lietuvių kalbos naujadara. – Kalba ir kontekstai 8 (1), 60–70. O f f o r d M. 2001: French Words: Past, Present and Future, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. P a l i o n i s J. 1985: Kalbos mokslo pradmenys, Vilnius: Mokslas. P a u l a u s k i e n ė A. 2006: Lietuvių kalbos morfologijos pagrindai, Kaunas: Technologija. P i k č i l i n g i s J. 1971: Lietuvių kalbos stilistika 1, Vilnius: Mokslas. P i k č i l i n g i s J. 2010: Stilistikos darbų rinktinė. Moksl. red. R. Koženiauskienė. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras. P l a g I. 2003: Word-Formation in English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. R o z e n b e r g s J. 2004: The Stylistics of Latvian, Rīga: Latvijas Universitāte. S a v i c k i e n ė I. 2006: Komunikacinė pragmatika ir kalbėjimo situacijos tikslas: deminutyvų vartojimo atvejis. – Bendrinė kalba 79, 256–262. Prieiga internete: http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/79/Savickiene_KK_79_straipsnis.pdf. T o l s t o j u s N. 2009: Kalba ir kultūra. – Kalba ir žmonės, 81–100. U r b u t i s V. 2009: Žodžių darybos teorija. 2-asis leidimas, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas. http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/91/Miliunaite_BK_91_straipsnis.pdf http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/89/Murmulaityte_BK_89_straipsnis.pdf http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/89/Murmulaityte_BK_89_straipsnis.pdf http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/89/Murmulaityte_BK_89_straipsnis.pdf http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/89/Murmulaityte_BK_89_straipsnis.pdf http://www.bendrinekalba.lt/Straipsniai/79/Savickiene_KK_79_straipsnis.pdf AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 25 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 V a i c e k a u s k i e n ė L. 2007: Naujieji lietuvių kalbos svetimžodžiai: kalbos politika ir vartosena, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos instituto leidykla. V a s k e l i e n ė J. 2010: Lietuvių kalbos žodyne nefiksuoti dariniai ir jų funkcionavimas Antano Kalanavičiaus poezijoje. – Filologija 15, 151–166. V a s k e l i e n ė J. 2011: Žodynų nefiksuotų darinių funkcionavimas Jono Strielkūno lyrikoje. – Res humanitariae 10, 54–70. V o l e k B. 1987: Emotive Signs in Language and Semantic Functioning of Derived Nouns in Russian, Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Ž u p e r k a K. 2005: Tekstas etinės stilistikos požiūriu. – Žmogus ir žodis I, 25–28. Prieiga internete: http://etalpykla.lituanistikadb.lt/fedora/get/LT-LDB- 0001:J.04~2005~1367153622685/DS.002.0.01.ARTIC. W o h l g e m u t h J. 2009: A Typology of Verbal Borrowings, Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Gauta 2019 07 21 Priimta 2019 12 18 http://etalpykla.lituanistikadb.lt/fedora/get/LT-LDB-0001:J.04~2005~1367153622685/DS.002.0.01.ARTIC. http://etalpykla.lituanistikadb.lt/fedora/get/LT-LDB-0001:J.04~2005~1367153622685/DS.002.0.01.ARTIC. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 26 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 EMOTIVE-EXPRESSIVE LEXIS IN THE DATABASE OF LITHUANIAN NEOLOGISMS: FACTORS INFLUENCING ITS EMERGENCE AND TYPES OF WORD-BUILDING S u m m a r y The aim of the study is to identify the main types of word-building of the emotive- expressive neologisms and to examine the most productive means used in the coining of these new words. The object of the research includes 479 neologisms that perform emotive-expressive function. The word-formation analysis of emotive-expressive lexis included in “The Database of Lithuanian Neologisms” (DN) revealed that: 1. Stylistically connotated neologisms are formed mostly by means of suffixation (45.7 %), composition (31.7 %) and blending (12.7 %), the latter being a non-morphemic type of word-building. 2. The most formative suffixes of the most productive type of formation, i.e. suffixation, are as follows: the suffix -(i)ukas, -ė (6.8 %) in the formational category of names of possessors of nominal characteristics and the suffix -izmas (6.8 %) in the formational category of names of characteristics (nominal abstractions). 3. The data of DN show that the following elements of compounds valdžia- (first component), -skleisti (-skleidė) and -žmogis (second component) are productive elements of stylistically connotated neologisms. 4. Less productive types of word-building are prefixation (5.6 %), mixed type of word- formation (2.4 %) and inflectional derivation (1.9 %). 5. This was the primary research on emotive-expressive lexis, which revealed the necessity to stylistically edit some neologisms in DN. Moreover, seeking to conduct an in-depth analysis on tendencies in formation of emotive-expressive lexis, more diversified and numerous sources should be included. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ. Emocinė-ekspresinė leksika Lietuvių kalbos naujažodžių duomenyne – naujadarų radimosi aplinkybės ir darybos būdai | 27 doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2019.92.04 BENDRINĖ KALBA 92 (2019) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 6. The data available in the database should be analysed not only in terms of word- formation but also from the perspective of ethno-linguistics. Lexis is a reflection of the society and the neologisms (signs of realities of current time) stored in the database provide valuable information about a certain period in the life of nation. KEYWORDS: emotive-expressive lexis, neologism, occasional derivatives, word-formation analysis, types of word-formation, productivity. AGNĖ ALEKSAITĖ Lietuvių kalbos institutas Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius agne.aleksaite@lki.lt work_6xztot4p2bez5anhpxan5epvwm ---- Transnationalizing Radio Research - New Approaches to an Old Medium r e se arch I n g po d c a st pro duc tI o n – an austr alIan po d c a st stu dy about woM e n an d wo r k I n ar e we th e r e ye t? Mia Lindgren The #metoo movement’s viral spread across social media in October 2017 drew unprecedented global attention to the issue of sexism in the workplace. Much of the discussions focused on harassment of women, however the debate also highlighted gender equity issues more broadly, shining the light on women’s experiences at work. Previously, messages about gender equality in profession- al life have not usually garnered such interest in the media. The podcast Are We There Yet? (AWTY), produced in Melbourne during 2016 and 2017, was a response to the lack of podcast content at the time dedicated to topics about women and work. It was decided that a podcast would be an appropriate format – simple to produce and widely accessible – to discuss gender in the workplace. This chapter explores the audio production as a site and model for practice- research in podcast studies. Informed by media scholar Robert MacDougall’s (2011) work, this case study examines the unprecedented opportunities podcast- ing affords us to reinterpret and reimagine our personal and professional lives. It looks at how a collaborative podcast production involving two gender equality and leadership consultants and a radio studies researcher in Melbourne devel- oped into a research venture, providing a practice-informed research model for combining production with rigorous analysis. Mapping the whole chain from production to reception engendered a deeper understanding of the podcast’s content and, going forward, offers one possible research model for scholars in the emerging field of podcast studies. The two novice podcast presenters – Melbourne-based leadership consul- tants Linda Betts and Barbara Dalton – had run face-to-face (‘f2f’) leadership programs for women for over ten years. However, they had no broadcast ex- perience. The research team wanted to examine if a podcast dedicated to the topic of women at work could provide listeners with a shared experience similar to that established in f2f seminars where current gender and organisational research is discussed alongside participants’ own reflections and lived expe- 284 riences. Extensive research exists on the use of podcasts in educational and business settings (Drew 2017; Fernandez et al. 2015; Hatfield 2017; Moryl 2013; Popova et al. 2014; Thielst 2013) and the research team wanted to investigate how podcasting could add to the conversation about gender and work in acces- sible and portable ways. sTo ry Te lli n g wo M e n An d wo r k An initial review identified a small number of international podcasts focus- sing on gender, such as Slate’s long-running (since 2012) Double X Gabfest (Slate 2018). A prominent radio program which is also available via podcast is the stalwart UK-based Women’s Hour, broadcast since 1946 and addressing women’s perspectives on health, education, cultural, and political topics (BBC 2017). US-based podcasts focussing on women are more common, such as US entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso’s Girlboss Radio, involving interviews with ‘boundary-pushing women who’ve made their mark’ (Amoruso 2018), and The Rocket Girls Podcast (Fine 2017), aimed at motivating, guiding, and supporting young women to pursue their passions in science and maths. Since the #metoo movement in late 2017, a number of additional podcasts focussing on women in the workplace have emerged, such as the Harvard Business Review’s six-part series, Women at Work, which includes “conversations about the workplace, and women’s place in it” (Harvard Business Review 2018). There is also US podcast, Women’s Work, which celebrates stories of “creative women who do interesting work” (Oxenreider 2018). In Australia, the ABC launched Fierce Girls in 2018, a podcast about Australian women “who dare to do things differ- ently” aimed at children (ABC 2018). The closest match to the Are We There Yet? podcast is The Broad Experience, a podcast about women, work, and suc- cess (The Broad Experience n.d.) produced by US-based public radio reporter Ashley Milne-Tyte. Despite its Australian origins, it was envisaged that the AWTY podcast could be attractive to international audiences where personal experiences and storytelling would become a lingua franca that could support and engage trans- national audiences and create a shared sense of community. There is a growing body of work focused on podcasting and storytelling (Alexander 2011; Biewen/ Dilworth 2017; Dann 2014; Lindgren 2014b, 2016; McCracken 2017; McHugh 2016, 2017; Norrington 2010). Podcasting has been described as a ‘pull’ me- dium (Berry 2016; McClung/Johnson 2010), where listeners seek out content that interests them and therefore become genuinely engaged with the podcast. MacDougall argues that podcasts create a strong bond between producers and listeners, one that moves, “beyond the way readers of a novel might report sym- pathy for (or may empathize or identify with) various characters” (MacDougall M i a L i n d g r e n 285 2011: 722). This would support the aim of Are We There Yet? which was to pro- duce a podcast that provided the audience with a sympathetic learning space with traits of a classroom or seminar. The production team also wanted the podcast to be solutions-oriented. Presenter Barbara Dalton said she intended Are We There Yet? to be “informative (here’s the research) and also pragmatic (this is what you can do)” (Dalton 2016). rese Arch ApproAch The team produced and analysed the podcast using a practice-research ap- proach, building on this author’s conceptual work into radio documentary forms (Lindgren 2014a) by extending it to the field of podcasting. Adams et al. (2015: 2) describe practice-led research as a “reflexive paradigmatic research structure” led by practice that acknowledges the importance of the researcher’s interaction with the research material. PLR is still a novel approach in radio studies, yet one that offers myriad opportunities for rich and multi-layered scholarly analysis of audio content production providing new understandings of podcast genres and production practices. Four focus groups (N=25) with fe- male listeners were undertaken with an accompanying thematic analysis of the transcripts. Women known to the consultants were invited to listen to the podcast and to then attend a focus group. The main themes identified are dis- cussed briefly later in this chapter. Additional self-reflexive feedback was gath- ered from presenters Betts and Dalton, as reflective practice is a key element of PLR (Gray/Pirie 1995). The research design allowed for in-depth contribution from the production team and listeners, affording a collaborative and compre- hensive approach to understanding both the production and reception of the podcast. pi loT episo d e – g o o d g i r l sy n d ro M e The pilot episode, Good Girl Syndrome, was funded by Monash University in Melbourne to explore analytical models for talk-based podcast content. The 23-minute episode focused on research and societal discourse surrounding belief systems and expectations of women’s behaviour in the workplace. It discussed how women often feel compelled to ‘do the right thing’ and to be agreeable in workplace settings. The research team used a narrative learning approach (Hatfield 2017) to effectively communicate complex issues about gen- der equity and the advancement of women in the workplace. Narratives can be powerful tools for making sense of the world as they “draw us into an experi- ence at more than a cognitive level; they engage our spirit, our imagination, R e s e a r c h i n g Po d c a s t P r o d u c t i o n – a n A u s t r a l i a n Po d c a s t St u d y A b o u t Wo m e n 286 our heart, and this engagement is complex and holistic” (Clark/Rossiter 2008: 65). Stories of women’s experiences in the workplace were shared with listen- ers as short voxpops, in the interview and by the presenters in their informal dialogue. Short audio clips were included to provide additional story examples, such as where Marge Simpson instructing Lisa on how to ignore her own feel- ings in order to fit in, from the US television cartoon The Simpsons (Groening/ Brooks/Simon 1990), created an audio shorthand for the ‘good girl’ culture. This is where women win approval by being helpful and behaving well but at a cost to their agency and leadership potential. The episode included an interview with Melbourne-based writer and femi- nist Karen Pickering who shared her personal experiences of sexism in the workplace when she worked in a bar as a young woman. Ms Pickering recount- ed how a young male supervisor sent her home to apply makeup because she “looked tired”. While this example took place in an Australian pub in the early 2000s, the story remains relevant. Only weeks before AWTY was produced, a UK-based consultancy-firm sent home one of their female staff members be- cause she was not wearing high-heeled shoes at work (BBC News 2016). Ar e we Th e r e ye T? … lesso ns le Ar n ed The format described above for the podcast pilot episode has clear radiogenic traits (Berry 2016) as a talk-style program incorporating talk, audio clips and music. The AWTY presenters followed a script with information about relevant gender research and links to useful readings. This dialogue between the pre- senters ranged from informal ‘banter’ to segments providing evidence-based information to accompany the personal stories. The relationship between the novice podcast presenters Barbara and Linda was noted by the focus group participants. They found that Barbara and Linda’s conversational dialogue sig- nalled a well-oiled team with expert knowledge of the subject matter and long- standing collaborations, bringing their personal – and authentic – experiences into the conversation. Barbara and Linda’s lack of broadcast experience was not seen by focus group participants as an impediment. Thematic analysis of the transcribed focus groups identified a number of key themes emerging for the listeners of the Good Girl Syndrome pilot episode. These are discussed only briefly below due to the scope of this chapter. When M i a L i n d g r e n 287 asked about the experience of listening to the episode and the use of podcast- ing to discuss gender in the workplace, participants noted four main themes: 1. Reflection (encouragement of reflection on self ) 2. Identification (application of information to personal experience, relatabil- ity, emotional connection) 3. Education (the podcast as pedagogical tool, information tool, mentor) 4. Storytelling (the importance of personal narratives, conversational style, podcast listening as journey) These themes relate directly to traits ascribed to podcast forms, such as its hyper-intimacy (Berry 2016), personal storytelling (Lindgren 2016; McHugh 2016) and strong listener attachment, a relationship which MacDougall (2011) suggests is specific to podcasting where it “[...] may be part of an evolution in parasocial phenomena and a fundamentally new form of mediated interper- sonal communication” (716). Analysis of the focus group data suggests the pilot podcast was successful in engaging the listeners and encouraging reflection. Some listeners recognised shared experiences from the podcast stories and ap- plied the information to their own experiences. According to one participant: I found it really enjoyable and it ’s s tuf f that I used to do more with that I don’t have time for. I found it terrif ically interes ting, I found it per sonally challenging, jus t to get back and s tar t thinking more like that. And yeah, I found it to be quite motivating. (par ticipant, focus group 4, 2016) Another participant commented on the informative nature of AWTY and how the audio format provided an engaging form of education: I think there’s lot s of ways you can potentially use it, because the s tories engage and I think working again in health, if you look at things like nearly ever y thing’s in print, your clinical prac tice guidelines are in print, ever y thing’s in print, ever yone’s sick of print, it doesn’t en- gage. (par ticipant, focus group 2, 2016) The solution-based approach of the podcast motivated one focus group par- ticipant to actively change her behaviour when applying for work: “it made me really think about maybe how I need to be not such a good girl in an interview potentially, so coming across a bit stronger rather than that more passive” (par- ticipant, focus group 2, 2016). R e s e a r c h i n g Po d c a s t P r o d u c t i o n – a n A u s t r a l i a n Po d c a s t St u d y A b o u t Wo m e n 288 co n clusi o n The pilot podcast episode Good Girl Syndrome discussed in this chapter begins with the presenters Barbara and Linda explaining the ambition of the podcast as an aural space where they talk about “[…] how being a woman still impacts on our work, pay, and the opportunities we have”. They continue: Many women think what they experience in the workplace is jus t happening to them, but ac tually, it ’s par t and parcel of being a woman at work. By connec ting the dot s and sharing experiences about women in the workplace, we want to give you tools to navigate the ‘oc- cupational hazards of being female’ (Are We There Yet? 2016). This introduction becomes a three-point ‘manifesto’ for a podcast about wom- en and work: 1) listeners are part of a community of shared experiences; 2) those shared experiences are delivered through a narrative approach (by pre- senters and interviewees); and 3) informed by current research and personal experiences, the podcast will provide listeners with solutions and suggestions for actions. All of these points were noted by listeners reflecting on AWTY in the focus groups. Although the main themes noted above could be applied to some specialist radio programs, it is unlikely that you would find in main- stream radio programming schedules a series of programs dedicated to gender equality in the workplace. Furthermore, participants in the focus groups re- ported a high level of identification and reflection generated by listening to the podcast. This aligns with what scholars suggest is podcasting’s ability to create strong communities and engagement with listeners (cf. Berry 2016; McClung/ Johnson 2010; MacDougall 2011). Although the audience focus groups only dis- cussed the pilot episode, their feedback support the proposition that a podcast like Are We There Yet? about women and work could become an informative platform for globally shared knowledges and cultural learning where listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own gendered experiences and the strategies they can adopt in the workplace to make their working lives better. re fe r e n ces ABC Radio: “Fierce Girls”, 2018 (http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/fierce-girls/), accessed 9 April 2018. Adams, Lyndall/Kueh, Christopher/Newman-Storen, Renée/Ferguson, Neil (2015): “Capturing Creative Practice.” In: Australian Council of University and Design Schools Conference 2014: The Future of the Discipline, Victorian College of the Arts and RMIT University October 2-3. M i a L i n d g r e n 289 Alexander, Bryan (2011): The New Digital Storytelling – Creating Narratives with New Media, California: Praeger. Amoruso, Sophia, “Girlboss Radio with Sophia Amoruso”, 2018 (https://itunes.apple. com/us/podcast/girlboss-radio-with-sophia-amoruso/id1041122387?mt=2), accessed 9 April 2018. BBC News, “London receptionist sent home for not wearing heels”, May 11, 2016 (http:// www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36264229), accessed 9 April 2018. Berry, Richard (2016): “Podcasting: Considering the Evolution of the Medium and its Association with the Word ‘Radio’.” In: The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14/1, pp. 7-22. Betts, Linda (2016): self-reflection on production of Are We There Yet? podcast. Unpublished Betts, Linda/Dalton, Barbara/Lindgren, Mia: “Are We There Yet? Women, Work and Equality”, 2016 (http://brdalton2.wixsite.com/arewethereyetpodcast), accessed 9 April 2018. Biewen, John/Dilworth, Alexa (eds) (2018): Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound (Second Edition), North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. Clark, Carolyn/Rossiter, Marsha (2008): “Narrative Learning in Adulthood”. In: New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 119, pp. 61-70. Dalton, Barbara (2016): self-reflection on production of Are We There Yet? pod- cast. Unpublished Dann, Lance (2014): “Only Half the Story: Radio Drama, Online Audio and Transme- dia Storytelling.” In: The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 12/1 & 2, pp. 141-154. Drew, Christopher (2017): “Educational Podcasts: A Genre Analysis.” In: E-Learning and Digital Media 14/4, pp. 201-11. Fernandez, Vicenc/Sallan, Jose/Simo, Pep (2015): “Past, Present, and Future of Pod- casting in Higher Education.” In: M. Li/Y. Zhao (eds), Exploring Learning & Teaching in Higher Education. Berlin: Springer, pp. 305-330. Fine, Melanie, “The Rocket Girls Podcast”, 2017 (https://itunes.apple.com/us/pod- cast/the-rocket-girls-podcast/id1182958423?mt=2), accessed 9 April 2018. Gray, Carole/Pirie, Ian (1995): “Artistic Research Procedure: Research at the Edge of Chaos?” In: Design Interfaces Conference 3. Salford: The European Academy of Design, University of Salford. Groening, Matt/Brooks, James/Simon, Sam (1990): “Moaning Lisa.” The Simpsons, episode 6, season 1, February 11. Harvard Business Review, “Women at Work”, 2018 (https://hbr.org/2018/01/podcast- women-at-work), accessed 9 April 2018. Hatfield, Elizabeth Fish (2017): “Narrative Learning using Podcasts in Interpersonal Communication” In: Communication Teacher 18/1, pp. 1-7. Lindgren, Mia (2014a): “Radio Journalism as Research a Ph.D. Model.” In: The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 12/1-2, pp. 169-182. R e s e a r c h i n g Po d c a s t P r o d u c t i o n – a n A u s t r a l i a n Po d c a s t St u d y A b o u t Wo m e n – 290 Lindgren, Mia (2014b): “‘This Australian Life’: the Americanisation of Radio Storytell- ing in Australia.” In: Australian Journalism Review 36/2, pp. 63-75. Lindgren, Mia (2016): “Personal Narrative Journalism and Podcasting.” In: The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 14/1, pp. 23-41. Lindgren, Mia/McHugh, Siobhan (2013): “Not Dead Yet: Emerging Trends in Radio Doc- umentary Forms in Australia and the US”. In: Australian Journalism Review 35/2, pp. 101-113. Mavenly + Co, “Women, Work and Worth”, 2018 (https://itunes.apple.com/au/pod- cast/women-work-and-worth/id981357804?mt=2), accessed 9 April 2018. McHugh, Siobhan (2016): “How Podcasting is Changing the Audio Storytelling Genre”. In: The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Me- dia 14/1, pp. 65-82. McHugh, Siobhan (2017): “Memoirs for the Ears”. In: Bunty Avieson/Fiona Giles/Sue Joseph (eds.), Mediating Memory, New York: Routledge, pp. 104-122. McClung, Steven/Johnson, Kristine (2010): “Examining the Motives of Podcast Us- ers.” In: Journal of Radio & Audio Media 17/1, pp. 82-95. McCracken, Ellen (2017): The ‘Serial’ Podcast and Storytelling in the Digital Age, Abingdon: Routledge. Milne-Tyte, Ashley, “The Broad Experience” (n.d.) (http://www.thebroadexperience. com/), accessed 9 April 2018. Moryl, Rebecca (2013): “T-shirts, Moonshine, and Autopsies: Using Podcasts to En- gage Undergraduate Microeconomics Students.” In: International Review of Eco- nomics Education 13, pp. 67-74. Norrington, Alison (2010): “Harnessing ‘e’ in Storyworlds: Engage, Enhance, Experi- ence, Entertain.” In: Publishing Research Quarterly 26/2, pp. 96-105. NPR, “Women’s Marches Go Global: Postcards From Protests Around The World”, Jan- uary 21, 2017 (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/21/510940708/ womens-march-on-washington-goes-worldwide-snapshots-from-around-the- globe), accessed 9 April 2018. Oxenreider, Tsh, “Women’s Work”, 2018 (http://womensworkshow.com/), accessed 9 April 2018. Popova, Anguelina/Kirschner,Paul A./Joiner, Richard (2014): “Effects of Primer Pod- casts on Stimulating Learning from Lectures: How do Students Engage?” In: Brit- ish Journal of Educational Technology 45/2, pp. 330–339. Sawer, Marian (2013): “Misogyny and Misrepresentation: Women in Australian Parlia- ments.” In: Political Science 65/1, pp. 105-117. Slate, “Double X Gabfest”, 2018 (https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/double-x-gab- fest/id317166278?mt=2), accessed 9 April 2018. Snyder, Julie (2016): interviewed in “Download this Show”, December 2, 2016, ABC Radio National, (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthiss- how/serial/8085272), accessed March 5, 2018. M i a L i n d g r e n 291 Thielst, Christina Beach (2013[2010]): Social Media in Healthcare: Connect, Commu- nicate, Collaborate, Chicago: Health Administration. R e s e a r c h i n g Po d c a s t P r o d u c t i o n – a n A u s t r a l i a n Po d c a s t St u d y A b o u t Wo m e n work_6yaothgfyvexdp5dlw773h6zem ---- S P E C I A L P A P E R DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 jmla.mlanet.org 107 (3) July 2019 Journal of the Medical Library Association 291 Social justice and the medical librarian* Elaine Russo Martin, FMLA See end of article for author’s affiliation. This lecture discusses social justice and the role that medical librarians can play in a democratic society. Social justice needs to be central to the mission of medical librarianship and a core value of the profession. Medical librarians must develop a new professional orientation: one that focuses on cultural awareness or cultural consciousness that goes beyond ourselves and our collections to that which focuses on the users of our libraries. We must develop a commitment to addressing the issues of societal, relevant health information. Using examples from medical education, this lecture makes the case for social justice librarianship. This lecture also presents a pathway for social justice medical librarianship, identifies fundamental roles and activities in these areas, and offers strategies for individual librarians, the Medical Library Association, and library schools for developing social justice education and outcomes. The lecture advocates for an understanding of and connection to social justice responsibilities for the medical library profession and ends with a call to go beyond understanding to action. The lecture emphasizes the lack of diversity in our profession and the importance of diversity and inclusion for achieving social justice. The lecture presents specific examples from some medical libraries to extend the social justice mindset and to direct outreach, collections, archives, and special collection services to expose previously hidden voices. If medical librarians are to remain relevant in the future, we must act to address the lack of diversity in our profession and use our information resources, spaces, and expertise to solve the relevant societal issues of today. INTRODUCTION I am truly honored to have been selected as the 2018 Janet Doe lecturer. Like the many Doe lecturers before me, being selected brings a host of mixed emotions, varying from amazement, joy, pleasure, and ultimately panic from the weight of the responsibility. The Janet Doe Lecture is an extensive examination of a topic related to health sciences librarianship. The topic is open ended, as long as the subject is under the very broad theme of philosophy or history. Like most of the Doe lecturers before me, I too am not a philosopher nor a historian. My career as a medical librarian has been a journey both literally and figuratively. I have worked on both coasts and in the middle of the country, deliberately relocating to accept more advanced leadership positions. I have outreach experience in three Regional Medical Library network offices: the Pacific Northwest, the Greater Midwest Region, and the New England * The Janet Doe Lecture on the history or philosophy of medical librarianship, presented at MLA ’18, the 118th Annual Meeting Medical Library Association, Inc.; Atlanta, GA; May 18–23, 2018. Julia Sollenberger, AHIP, FMLA, the 2017 Janet Doe lecturer, gave the introduction. Region (in these last two, I led those programs). A defining moment in my career was the opportunity I had to work outside the United States, specifically in Liberia. I started my library career as a library technician in a state medical society library and continued working in different support staff positions while attending library school part-time with the support of the Medical Library Association (MLA) Scholarship. My first professional job out of library school was as a reference/user education librarian, followed by administrative positions as a public services department head, an assistant director, then an associate director, and finally, a library director. The libraries in which I worked were in both private and public academic health sciences centers with a variety of health professional schools and affiliated hospitals. Because of this breadth of experience, the kinds of projects I have worked on, and the diversity of the communities in which I have worked, the 2 9 2 R u s s o M a r t i n DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 Journal of the Medical Library Association 107 (3) July 2019 jmla.mlanet.org topic for this lecture came naturally to me. I did not, like many previous Doe lecturers, experience a long and agonizing road for a search for my topic. For me, it was quite the opposite. In fact, the topic chose me and seemed a natural fit. I fleetingly thought about and quickly dismissed discussing the work I have done and continue to do in promoting research data management as a fundamental new role for medical librarians or my project in public health information access and outreach, specifically my approach to providing real- time access to the literature for the public health workforce who have no affiliation with academic medical libraries. But I must confess my choice of topic comes from contemporary concerns about what is going on in our society today and is influenced by movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, #Metoo, #Enough, #Resistance, #NeverAgain, and #MarchforOurLives, and the proliferation of accepted terms such as “fake news” or “alternative facts.” When I started exploring social justice as my topic, I had some initial doubts as to whether or not I should go forward. I acknowledge that some librarians might feel uncomfortable with the topic and what is to follow. However, given what has gone on to threaten our country’s democratic values and principles, I am more convinced than ever that I had to discuss “Social Justice and the Medical Librarian.” I think most of us would agree that democracy in any country depends on an informed electorate with equal access to quality information, knowledge, and education. Therefore, by definition, the library profession is an integral part of democracy. Specifically, what we medical librarians do—making evidence-based health information available to those who need it in order to help patients, families, and caregivers make better patient-care decisions— connects us to democratic principles and ideals of equal access to information and health care. As Louis Brandeis, a former Supreme Court associate justice and “militant crusader for social justice,” asked and answered, “What are American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own good and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty; and the attainment of the common good though democracy and social justice” [1]. In the United States, we have the means for such democratic ideals, but we have not lived up to the potential [2]. American democracy is in danger because of an increasingly ill-informed public who are easily manipulated with sound bites and Twitter rants that lead to the infringement on the rights of the poor, the disenfranchised, the underserved, immigrants, people of color, women, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) community. With the continuing closures of hospital libraries and relentless budget cuts experienced by many academic medical libraries since 2008, coupled with the proliferation of many alternative options for accessing information, the need for medical librarians is being questioned, and our sheer numbers, ranks, and status are diminishing. If medical librarians are to survive as a distinct profession, then we must consider who we are as individuals, embrace our place as medical professionals in a democratic society, stand up for human rights and social justice, and assert our social responsibility. Few Doe lecturers have touched upon the roles of medical librarians in a democratic society. Henry Lemkau Jr., FMLA, in his 2007 Doe lecture, said, “Our lives are informed and given purpose by the influences that surround us,” and he discussed our profession “in the context of the social and cultural worlds in which we function” [3]. I suggest that this discussion has never been more important than it is today, given the times in which we live (mass deportations, children separated from their families at the border, no sustained solution for the Dreamers, and a government shutdown over the border wall). I would add to the discussion the context of the users, not just the professions, whom we serve. The importance of human values in medical librarianship was first highlighted by Martha Jane Zachert in her 1978 Doe lecture [4]. Previous to her, Doe lecturers defined the values of medical librarianship in terms of collection-building, self- image, organization and retrieval methods, and technological savvy. David Bishop’s definition of diversity, for example, only focused on specialization in the field of librarianship and did not touch on diversity with respect to populations [5]. But it was Zachert who wrote of developing new values for the medical library profession “related to man’s cognitive life and social, as well as to social and cultural institutions and the process of social change.” She identified professionalism as one of our most “enduring values...perhaps the keynote of our value system” [4]. In my view, professionalism goes beyond the tasks we do or what we call S o c i a l j u s t i c e a n d t h e m e d i c a l l i b r a r i a n 2 9 3 DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 jmla.mlanet.org 107 (3) July 2019 Journal of the Medical Library Association ourselves, but rather embodies who we are and what we stand for [5]. For the most part, Doe lecturers have shied away from discussing politics and its effect on their topics or the medical library profession. Estelle Brodman was an exception with a somewhat lengthy discussion of the effect of Hitler’s Nazis, the Vietnam War, racism, and the perils of the “pursuit of power” over the “pursuit of excellence” [6]. The 1989 Doe lecture by Rachael K. Anderson, AHIP, FMLA, was the first to explore the factors that have influenced who has been able to enter our profession, with a particular focus on racial and gender discrimination [7]. Gerald Oppenheimer, in 1988, was most adamant about our profession looking outward and “concentrating on values…which are directed outward to the society in which we live and work” [8]. He went on to describe the debate in MLA between those who felt we should leave human rights to others and those who felt the association should take a more active role in democratic ideals. You may think given the title of my talk that it is also a political talk. Promoting equality and democratic ideals is not partisan. Rather, it is a talk about values and what Barack Obama named democracy with a small “d” [9]. It is a talk about social justice in our everyday work. It is a talk about how we can be relevant to the people we serve by providing information that improves everyone’s health, not just the privileged few. It is a talk about professionalism, and how we can incorporate and promote social justice into our profession, how we can become agents of societal change, and how we practice as medical librarians in the context of the times in which we live. DEFINING SOCIAL JUSTICE —Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. Martin Luther King [10] What do I mean then by social justice in the context of health care and medicine? While social justice and diversity are linked, social justice goes beyond representation. A term hard to define, social justice in medicine is: the open acknowledgement of the dignity and autonomy of and delivery of high-quality medical care, to all members of society, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, geography, origin, or socioeconomic background. [11] It is the idea that health care employees work toward eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care [11]. The 2002 Institute of Medicine report, Unequal Treatment, first detailed a systematic examination of racial and ethnic disparities in health care. It clearly indicated that US racial and ethnic minorities were less likely to receive even routine medical procedures and more likely to experience a lower quality of health services, and called out the social responsibility of physicians toward their patients [12]. Social justice is not just an admirable idea. Social justice is a responsibility of the health care team to provide health services for every person, no matter where they live, what they do, or what lifestyles they lead. The case for social justice medical librarianship comes from our roots in the health professions and medical education. I hope this talk challenges our preconceived notions of the role librarians should play in social justice and suggests some specific actions. There is a growing recognition amongst the health professions and medical educators that there is disparity in the health care delivered to ethnic, racial, gender, and other minority populations [13]. These disparities lead to patient dissatisfaction, noncompliance with treatment, and poorer health outcomes. Diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV are social diseases. There is recognition that the impact of societal and economic factors on the individual needs to be considered just as much as the bacteria of the disease itself [14]. There needs to be a broader awareness of the barriers to accessing health services among underrepresented groups. There also needs to be a comprehensive strategy in addressing them [12]. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) standard 7.6 is one concrete step [15]. All medical schools in the United States and Canada must address the issues of social justice, cultural competency, diversity, and inclusion along with the need for medical students “to recognize and appropriately address gender and cultural biases in health care delivery” as part of the medical school accreditation process. Specifically, medical students must demonstrate an understanding of how culturally diverse perspectives of health and illness affect a person’s response to symptoms, disease, and 2 9 4 R u s s o M a r t i n DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 Journal of the Medical Library Association 107 (3) July 2019 jmla.mlanet.org treatment. The LCME standards also require students to understand how gender and cultural biases affect health care delivery [16]. Medical education is not alone: these themes are reflected in transforming the education of future nurses, public health workers, and other members of the health care team. If medical librarians are to maintain our status as members of the health professional team, then we, too, must take up the call. I would even go so far to say that future survival as a profession depends on it. Rudolf Virchow, who is considered the father of social medicine, wrote in 1848, “Medicine is a social science, and politics nothing but medicine on a grand scale” [17]. Despite this, just like medical librarianship, the medical profession has been slow to respond to society’s issues. The medical professions’ late response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its effect on the LGBTQ community is only one example. Yet as evidenced by the LCME accreditation standards and the increased number of journal articles in Academic Medicine over the last decade, there seems to be a greater awareness among medical educators that teaching social justice to medical trainees and medical school faculty needs to be essential to educating future health professionals. SOCIAL JUSTICE AND MEDICAL SCHOOL CURRICULUM There are examples of medical schools incorporating social justice into their curricular offerings: • Through problem-based learning methods, medical students and faculty at the University of Hawaii have developed the Social Justice Curriculum Project, consisting of self-directed learning, action, and self-reflection [18]. • The University of California Davis Health System offers faculty development training on how to conduct interracial dialogue on race, racism, oppression, and privilege [19]. • In memory of Freddie Gray, faculty at Northeastern Ohio University have designed a curriculum to help trainees and faculty understand unequal access to health care and how physicians can work toward eliminating the injustices contributing to inappropriate care [20]. • The Human Rights and Social Justice Scholars Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is a preclinical training program in social medicine that incorporates service learning experiences with lectures, mentorship, research projects, policy and advocacy projects, and a seminar series [18, 21]. • The Harvard Medical School hosts the “Equity and Social Justice” series of lectures and dialogues focusing on history and context, culture and environment, health disparities, and leadership and skills development. Other medical schools are going beyond the LCME guidelines and are beginning to also provide advocacy training to address social determinants of health. The LEADS Curriculum at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, the Scholarly Concentration in Advocacy and Activism at the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School, and the Health Justice Scholar Track at Georgetown University School of Medicine are early examples that focus on empowering medical students to design and execute advocacy projects for social change. I am fully aware of the criticisms of social justice and social justice education. Some may think it too politically liberal, or too politically correct, or too leftist or activist. Some may feel that they cannot express their conservative views in these settings. The goal of social justice is not to have us conform to one way of thinking but rather to give everyone the opportunity to be engaged, thoughtful community members who think critically about issues affecting the community. This is the tradition of a liberal education without having politically liberal connotations. It is where students, educators, and librarians recognize the complexity of the world and our interconnectedness. It is an opportunity for us all to reflect and think critically about these issues, develop tolerance for ambiguity, appreciate diversity, and respect the different views of others [22]. THE CASE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MEDICAL LIBRARIAN Like medicine, medical librarianship is not only an information science, but a human science. It is the search, retrieval, evaluation, and application of information to meet human needs to help health professionals, students, and patients make informed decisions about their health. Currently, much of what we do in medical libraries still focuses on developing vast libraries of print or online collections, enhancing informatics technology-based S o c i a l j u s t i c e a n d t h e m e d i c a l l i b r a r i a n 2 9 5 DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 jmla.mlanet.org 107 (3) July 2019 Journal of the Medical Library Association skills, and developing evidence-based best practices for delivering reference, education, or other services. While performing activities such as developing data science plans, digitizing special collections, and conducting systematic reviews are important, they need to be done in a social justice context. Through a social justice lens, we would need to introduce more humanistic approaches to our work: refocusing our attention from serving ourselves and what is more efficient or effective for us to do in our libraries and shifting our focus outward. We need to focus on learning what our users want from us, learning how individual users experience the library, and tailoring our services and approach to their individual needs and experience. Social justice librarianship involves developing a personal and professional approach in which the practice of medical librarianship puts the user’s interests and needs front and center. Like medicine, we have been slow to recognize what our social responsibility to those we serve is and that there is no one size fits all to the services we provide. This lecture critically discusses this concept of social justice and proposes that medical librarians must go beyond the traditional approaches to thinking about their work and must develop a deeper understanding of and connection with the social responsibilities of the health professions and people we serve. Medical librarians must develop a new professional orientation—one that fosters a critical awareness or critical consciousness of going beyond the self to others and a commitment to addressing the issues of societal relevant health information. This new professional orientation or identity places information science in a social and cultural context. It is coupled with a recognition of societal injustices with respect to access to health care and health information and a search for appropriate action. I will suggest a framework for medical librarianship social justice, identify the fundamental roles and activities in these areas, and suggest strategies for individual librarians as well as MLA, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL), and schools of library and information sciences (LIS) for developing education and outcomes. It is my hope that, through this lecture, you will gain an understanding of and connection to the social responsibilities of medical librarianship, develop an individual approach to reflective professional practice, and be inspired to action. THE SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION DEBATE While there is more agreement today that health professionals need to be trained in cultural competence, multiculturalism, and social justice, there is a debate regarding the curriculum and the accompanying teaching methods. In academic medicine, proponents of critical consciousness theory view it as a way to help refocus the current methods of health professional education. Medical education focuses on developing procedurally competent physicians. Adding social justice to health education brings physician training back to its original mission of developing socially conscious health providers who focus on the patient-doctor relationship and to “inform an appropriate crucial pedagogy for fostering compassionate, humanistic, socially conscious health professionals who act as agents of change” [23]. The early efforts in social justice medical education curricula stress developing competencies in multiculturalism. These efforts use the categorical approach where attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of specific cultures and groups are defined, outlined, taught, and memorized. While acquiring multicultural competence implies learning about multiple and diverse cultures, it is limiting. It often leads to oversimplifying and stereotyping certain groups. This is an unintended outcome. This realization has led to new teaching methodologies that focus on developing a set of skills to assess individually what factors might affect a patient’s care or developing critical consciousness [11]. Medical educator Delese Wear cautions that it is not enough to be culturally competent and, in fact, multicultural competency–based education can become “a medical education paradigm in which the notion of ‘novelty’ replaces that of ‘equality’ in approaches to treating patients” [20]. Kumagai argues that a competency-based approach to social justice education is not appropriate, as linear modes of learning may help the student accumulate knowledge but not necessarily understanding. He argues for new ways of thinking about how students learn or know. Teaching social justice to support professionalism calls for new content and new teaching methods [24]. 2 9 6 R u s s o M a r t i n DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 Journal of the Medical Library Association 107 (3) July 2019 jmla.mlanet.org The concept of the medical professional who practices actively in the world involves a paradigm shift away from passive learning of new knowledge and skills to more active learning. It requires developing a new professional identity with a reflective orientation to the understanding of self, professional self, others, and the world. It has its roots in “Critical Conscious Theory,” a term proposed by Brazilian activist and theorist Paulo Freire in his 1970 work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Critical consciousness goes beyond critical thinking. It is the “ability to intervene in reality in order to change it.” The link from education to democracy is implicit in Freire’s work. Learners act as subjects in the creation of democracy in education through telling and listening to experiences. Consciousness is a sense of one’s personal and collective identity, an in- depth understanding of the world, and a penchant for action against oppression [25]. Friere saw the act of dialogue as an act of proclaimed equality: dialogue, curiosity, creativity, and critical consciousness actively seek to intervene and change society. He observed the educational system in Brazil, which focused on spoon-feeding or banking and depositing knowledge to the masses, as oppressive. He advocated for more active learning and questioning as a way of freeing the individual. He felt that learners needed to connect to their own personal, cognitive, and emotional experience; to engage with others through dialogue; and to emancipate themselves and others through praxis (applying theory to action). This capacity to connect with one’s position in society and engage in dialogue about inequities depends upon critical consciousness—a reflective reading of the world. From consciousness, learners could act as agents of change. Social justice education is actively learning by doing. Friere’s theory of critical consciousness has been applied to educational change in various disciplines, most recently, medical education: A Friere critical teacher is a problem-poser who asks thought provoking questions and encourages students to ask their own questions…students experience education as something they do, not as something done to them…educators…are challenged to de-privilege their own power and authority and become informed, experienced and knowledgeable facilitators of student learning rather than depositors of information into the mental vaults of learners. [26] Students are both teachers and learners and vice versa. Kumagai expands on Friere’s work as applied to teaching social justice in a medical context. He calls on the teachings of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas and his framework for knowing and communicating. Teaching social justice requires another type of learning, by which individuals (and, indeed, groups and societies as a whole) formulate new ways of understanding reality, of interacting with others, and of perceiving their own identities. Habermas identifies three primary ways in which we generate knowledge. The first is “Work” or instrumental action—knowledge based upon empirical investigation and governed by technical rules. Scientific research is an example of this domain. In librarianship, this may equate to technical work in maintaining systems and collections. The second is “Practical Knowledge.” This domain identifies human social interaction or “Communicative Action.” It is defined by “building consensus or standards” in order to determine appropriate action. Legal and social sciences belong to the “Practical.” In medical librarianship, “Practical” is the way we help develop clinical practice. The last is “Emancipatory,” or “self- knowledge” or “Self-reflection.” This involves: interest in the way one’s history and biography has expressed itself in how one sees oneself, one’s roles and social expectations…Insights gained through critical self- awareness are emancipatory. Knowledge is gained by self- emancipation through reflection leading to a transformed consciousness or changed perspective. [27, 28] For medical librarians, this can include approaching the reference interview from the user’s perspective and having a greater awareness of our own biases prior to providing canned searches or information packets. The medical librarian needs to have empathy for the individual asking the reference question and treat every question as an individual need. Habermas’s framework of knowing is important to consider as we think about a social justice framework for medical librarianship. Although medical training, appropriately so, must focus on developing technical skills and consensus-driven understanding of best clinical practice, not all education to prepare health professionals to work in society arises from these ways of knowing. Implicit in the efforts to introduce more humanistic care into medicine and to address S o c i a l j u s t i c e a n d t h e m e d i c a l l i b r a r i a n 2 9 7 DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 jmla.mlanet.org 107 (3) July 2019 Journal of the Medical Library Association topics as social justice and human values into professional training is a requirement that a new way of knowing does not involve just knowing facts and figures. It involves the personal and professional orientation toward self and others—a way of being in the world—in which the practice of medicine has the patient’s interests at the forefront. This way of being cannot be taught through traditional lecture or classroom settings but must be acquired through reflection, dialogue, and experience [28]. This type of education engages learners and teachers in the exploration of self and others through the use of narratives, reflective writings, comics, art, theater, and film. The emphasis is to engage in reflective interaction with a play, film, or essay; with a patient; and with each other in opportunities to grapple with moments of uncertainty and discomfort, and to go ultimately beyond discussion to action in the world. Medical libraries, schools of LIS, and our medical library associations need to emulate the efforts from our health professional colleagues when it comes to social justice education. We need to introduce more of these ways of learning and concepts into our formal and informal curriculum for medical librarians. DIVERSITY IN LIBRARIANSHIP Let me now turn to diversity in our profession. Though not the same as social justice, diversity is important for achieving it. While the library community considers diversity to be a core value, the library sector has fallen short, despite ongoing initiatives that focus on the recruiting minority librarians. What do we mean when we say diversity, and why does diversity matter? Diversity matters because we want our libraries to be reflective of the diverse communities in which we work and the users we serve. A recent McKinsey analysis of 366 global public companies found that those companies with greater ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to outperform their peers: “Diversity matters because it is an opportunity to be innovative, to leverage gifts and talents of all our people” [29]. For at least the last two decades, many academic libraries have established diversity committees, residency programs, and fellowship opportunities for minorities in order to increase representation in the workforce. In recent years, some academic librarians have worked toward understanding this issue and have spoken out about the shortcomings of efforts to diversify the profession and advocate for social justice [30]. Professional associations have grappled with the issue of diversity and initiated efforts to increase the representative numbers of library employees of color in librarianship. Library organizations have implemented programs toward effecting change in the racial and ethnic makeup of the profession. In 1997, the American Library Association (ALA) began the Spectrum Scholarship Program meant to address ethnic under- representation in the library community. More recently, the Association of Research Libraries began providing a number of diversity initiatives surrounding recruitment and career development of underrepresented ethnic groups, including the “Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce” and the “Leadership and Early Career Development Program,” among others. The Association of College and Research Libraries has in recent years formed a Diversity Alliance. MLA has had a Scholarship for Minority Students and recently formed the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force; AAHSL has acted similarly. Despite these efforts, librarianship remains a primarily white female profession. The Ithaca S+R report, funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, called the “Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Survey,” is the most recent attempt to measure representational diversity in libraries and documents the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the profession. It found that over 75% of employees at academic research libraries were white. And as positions become increasingly senior, they also become increasingly white [31]. The report also found that library leaders or administrators are 89% white and non-Hispanic. It also noted that many non-white staff members work in roles such as technical services, processing, and so on, which are being phased out of libraries as they move from print to electronic collections. One of the study’s coauthors Roger Schonfeld wonders whether “There is in fact a risk that libraries will become not more diverse in the future but potentially less diverse in the future if action isn’t taken” [31]. The report gives credence to minority staff who have faced barriers to advancement. These issues become even more pronounced as the national population has grown markedly more diverse. The US population (2013 figures) is 62% 2 9 8 R u s s o M a r t i n DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 Journal of the Medical Library Association 107 (3) July 2019 jmla.mlanet.org white, with a projection for 2060 that white people will make up only 40% of the population [32]. Using the ALA Diversity Counts data and comparing it to the US Census data for 2013 and US Census projections for 2060, it is clear that we are far from reflecting our country’s diversity. However, diversity has a much broader definition than race and ethnic representation and encompasses combatting discrimination based on age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, religious background, language, or disability. The ALA Diversity Counts data go beyond highlighting the disparity for race and ethnicity. We lack other forms of diversity in libraries as well, though demographic data for areas other than race and ethnicity are less well defined or tracked. The Diversity Counts authors highlight the low employment of librarians with disabilities, given the increase between 1990 and 2000 of people self-identifying as having 1 or more disabilities. While 19% of 21–64 year olds self-identified as having a disability on the 2000 US Census, the percentage of credentialed librarians was 4% [32]. The recent Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) report called “Learners and Disabilities” is similarly discouraging. Only 2.5% of 1,500 medical students self-identified as having disabilities and needing accommodations [33]. The report highlights the barriers that medical students with disabilities experience in their training. Going back to librarians, the Diversity Counts report states, “Credentialed librarians are predominately women, ages 45–54, and white. They are not limited by disability and work full-time” [32, 34]. This lack of diversity in libraries in regard to race, ethnicity, disability, and other factors distance the very communities we seek to serve. And it suggests a proportionally less diverse library workforce on the horizon [34]. We need to ask ourselves why diversity does not happen despite libraries making diversity a priority. Why are these efforts not making any meaningful difference? Why are we bringing people from underrepresented groups into our libraries at the same rate they are leaving the profession [34]? What are the barriers to diversifying employees? When asked this question in the Ithaka survey, library directors recognize there is a problem but identify the problem as something they cannot control. They blame external factors, such as lack of a talent pool or geographical location, rather than internal factors such as unconscious bias in the interview process. [31]. In addition, they identify their libraries as more inclusive than the library community as a whole, whether or not that is the case [31]. Yet, we know that in comparing the percentage of racial and ethnic subgroups in the US population, the distribution in library assistant positions is more or less proportional, whereas the distribution in professional librarian positions is not, the latter skewing heavily to an overrepresentation of white people. Diversity Counts confirms this discrepancy [35]. One strategy may be to look internally for higher education and promotional opportunities for library assistants in our own libraries. Perhaps looking in our libraries and not outside the environment is where the problem really lies. When I was at the University of Illinois at Chicago, for example, the university librarian, Sharon Hogan, sponsored a program for underrepresented minority library assistants to attend the master’s of library and information science (MLIS) program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Selected employees went to school on weekends (tuition free), the library provided transportation, and upon graduation, students/employees were guaranteed a paid professional position in the library system. It should be easier today to implement programs like this, especially since there are so many online LIS degree programs available. Eligible employees could be given educational leave to complete coursework, allowed to use work computers, and receive tuition benefits. Common library hiring processes and practices also contribute to the lack of diversity. We need to examine the criteria for job descriptions, recruitment processes, and hiring practices to open up the pipeline for underrepresented groups to enter the profession and provide opportunities for advancement. While we discuss and say we encourage the recruitment of library workers from diverse backgrounds, our application requirements are not designed to celebrate the experiences of diverse applicants. We need to reframe application requirements, materials, and interview questions in ways that make sense for a variety of applicants’ experiences [36]. S o c i a l j u s t i c e a n d t h e m e d i c a l l i b r a r i a n 2 9 9 DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 jmla.mlanet.org 107 (3) July 2019 Journal of the Medical Library Association SOCIAL JUSTICE IN MEDICAL LIBRARIANSHIP In earlier portions of this talk, I discussed how medical educators and health professional students have incorporated social justice, through critical consciousness, into their work and studies. I have also discussed how our profession has been challenged in achieving success in diversity despite our efforts. Though social justice has not been the focal point for the medical library profession, there are examples in which individual medical librarians have been active in what I would call social justice outreach. One such example is the response of some of our members to the appearance of HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s, a disease that was social and stigmatized the populations it affected. While only a handful of articles about this new disease appeared in peer-reviewed journals in the early 1980s and the disease was never recognized until after the Ronald Reagan presidency, new and different sources of information were developing to fill the void. Gay and community-based organizations primarily in New York and San Francisco, where effects of the disease were most felt, were collecting and distributing information about treatment and prevention; often with the help of medical librarians working with these organizations. The first MLA presentation on this topic, “The AIDS Information Crisis: Confluence of the Roles of Information Creator, Seeker, and Provider,” by David Ginn, which was delivered at the 1987 annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, chronicled the information phenomenon in the gay and community-based organizations and called for the AIDS information gap to be addressed by our profession [37]. At the same time, M. Kent Mayfield, MLA headquarters continuing education program leader, enlisted Ginn and Richard Stevens, AIDS director of the Health Council of South Florida, to develop an AIDS information course outlining the new and expanding types of information that existed in the community setting. In the meantime, Gerald J. Perry, AHIP, FMLA, and Jeffrey T. Huber were publishing important books on AIDS information resources and terminology. Perry later went on to form the LGBT Health Sciences Librarians Special Interest Group (SIG) in MLA. In 1994, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) developed a special funding mechanism for HIV/AIDS community-based information access, in which some of us have partnered over the last twenty plus years, bringing information retrieval, skills development, computer acquisition, and Internet access to this affected community. There are numerous other projects funded by NLM in which medical librarians partnered with community-based organizations to enhance the health information literacy of underserved populations. As they are too numerous to name them all, I will highlight a few I am most familiar with. Projects included partnerships with mental health patients and providers. E-mental health programs, coordinated through the Countway Library with partners at the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and the Dartmouth College and Harvard University Medical Schools, were designed to enhance the health information literacy of seriously ill mental health patients and their families, focusing on co-occurring disease. Persons with serious mental illness have high mortality rates, tend be smokers, experience obesity, and present with multiple physical health concerns. This project focused on information related to physical as well as mental health resources. Another project I worked on while in Worcester addressed the opioid crisis. We worked with the city’s first alternative high school for addicted teens. Medical librarians worked with students, their parents, and their teachers to create a resource room with Internet, computer, and pamphlet materials and sponsored speakers who focused on options for recovery, addiction counseling, and the decriminalization of addiction. When NLM broadened its attention to serving consumers in addition to health professionals, its funding for health information outreach to minorities, underserved, and vulnerable populations through the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) has been and continues to be a critical vehicle for social justice librarianship. Medical librarians partnered with public libraries to provide consumer health collections and access to MedlinePlus, computers, and Internet connections as well as training for public librarians. In 2002, for example, medical librarians from the Yale University Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library partnered with the New Haven Free Public Library to develop a Consumer Health Information Center with collection and information services for the city’s public library users who are traditionally from minority and economically disadvantaged groups. Then Library Director Regina Kenny 3 0 0 R u s s o M a r t i n DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 Journal of the Medical Library Association 107 (3) July 2019 jmla.mlanet.org Marone received a recognition award from the city for her leadership in this project. Another example is the SPIRAL project from Tufts University Hirsch Health Sciences Library. SPIRAL stands for “Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages.” Partnering with the Chinatown community in Boston, Tufts University health sciences librarians and community health center providers developed a free online website with patient health information resources in languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Korean, Thai, and Japanese. Medical librarians working in international librarianship in conjunction with health care providers to expand medical education curricular and accompanying library resources in countries such as Liberia speak to our profession’s commitment to improving health through equal access to information in a global society. The societal impacts of diseases such as Ebola on a country like Liberia are major, threatening the peace process, causing psychological distress, and resulting in numerous losses of life for the citizenry and health care providers, causing a breakdown of the health care and educational systems. Cultural considerations such as burial practices and wide distrust of traditional healers as well as a lack of basic infrastructure (regular electricity, limited Internet access) hindered efforts in the beginning to control the disease. In a country like Liberia, which was recovering from decades of civil war and whose people experienced years where educational institutions could not operate, basic library services such as print textbooks, a manual check-out system, and copy cataloging served the medical school faculty and students well. The Ebola outbreak resulted in the closing of the medical school, but post-outbreak that basic library was continuing to function when the medical school reopened, and luckily, all the staff we worked with survived the crises, though some of the students had died. The Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, is extending the social justice mindset beyond direct outreach services to incorporating a public history perspective to its medical archives and special collections. The project uses a pubic history perspective to apply history to real-world problems. The project, “Equal Access: Stories of Diversity and Inclusion at Harvard Medical School,” focuses on collecting resources that fill in the gaps in the history of medical education. The project includes oral histories and papers from students and faculty who are underrepresented in medicine, including the first women and African American students and faculty. The intention is to use these collections to create a “dialogical” with collaboration and input from the community whose collections are being archived and personal stories recorded in order to more fully interpret and understand the issues surrounding barriers to accessing medical education and why this history is important. The success of these and similar projects depends not on just going into the community and making resources available. All these outreach projects involve getting to know the community and its cultures, developing an equal partnership with the community, showing respect for cultural norms and practices, and then tailoring services to these. Medical librarians’ obligation in providing consumer health information services to the public is a relatively recent phenomenon. MLA’s recognition of the Consumer and Patient Health Information Section, the subsequent Consumer Health Information Specialization, and most recent announcement of nominations for the newly endowed MLA Consumer Health Librarian of the Year Award have cemented what was once regarded as a controversial new role into accepted practice. CALL TO ACTION —A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. Martin Luther King [38] If medical librarians are to remain relevant in the future, I believe we must deal with the lack of diversity in our profession, actively create our future using humanistic approaches, and use our information resources, spaces, and expertise to solve relevant issues of today. These include addressing the social and racial injustices in health care. We can use our library spaces to encourage critical consciousness conversations about the hard issues such as racism, sexism, gun violence, health disparities, climate change, and other societal issues affecting the health of the nation. Our libraries can be the community centers where these conversations, open dialogue, and civil debate should be encouraged and can occur. In S o c i a l j u s t i c e a n d t h e m e d i c a l l i b r a r i a n 3 0 1 DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 jmla.mlanet.org 107 (3) July 2019 Journal of the Medical Library Association addition, we can provide the quality information and data to help participants in these conversations critically evaluate and sift out the fake news from the real news. It is our responsibility to provide access to accurate, trusted information as well as the tools and skills to critically evaluate that information in ways that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. In addition, we need to collect, preserve, and make available information by, for, and about marginalized communities and fill in the gaps in the history of medical education. In 1962, British librarian Douglas John Foskett wrote The Creed of a Librarian: No Politics, No Religion, No Morals, in which he argued “the librarian ought virtually vanish as an individual person, except in so far as his personality sheds light on the working of the library” [39]. I disagree with Foskett. In my opinion, the notion of library neutrality is a myth. Our buying decisions, resources, budgets, and even locations are not neutral. We contribute to certain kinds of inequalities through our acquisitions decisions, our cataloging practices, our classification schemes, our controlled vocabularies, our use of commercial search engines, and even where we are located in our hospitals or academic campuses. We regularly practice self-censorship in book selection by primarily buying from corporate vendors. Neutrality is “a code word for the existing system. It has nothing to do with anything but agreeing to what is and will always be…Neutrality is just following the crowd” [40]. A neutral stance does not care about human rights violations. Neutrality does not account for social and economic inequalities. The notion that the medical library is a social institution that serves as a community center for its users is not neutral. Medical librarians cannot be neutral and be trusted advocates for their communities, especially the underserved. I believe that medical librarians can be forces for social good. This is crucial to our future and to the health of our local communities and a sustainable global community. What can medical librarians do? We need to move beyond awareness to action. We must address the whiteness of our profession and develop real strategies for doing so [36]. We must acknowledge that our libraries have never been and are not neutral. We must bring our libraries closer to the communities we serve. We need to confront the societal responsibilities of LIS and develop curricula that emphasize preparing future librarians for leadership roles in activism, community service and engagement, rights, and justice. We need to shift our focus to the people and communities we serve and de-emphasize collections. Medical librarians in partnership with medical educators can and should provide students with opportunities, resources, and spaces that encourage open dialogue on social issues, broaden their horizons, encourage empathy for patients, and use these experiences to make a difference. Medical librarians should embrace a humanistic approach to professional practice, one that embraces the whole person, not just the physician scientist, and supports curricular efforts that expand the humanities in medicine. We need to offer services, programs, and resources that reflect the diversity of the communities we serve and provide outreach to and advocacy for and with underserved communities in our local communities. We need to support open access publishing and advocate for policies that increase access to information for all [30]. Medical librarians, our professional associations, and LIS schools can take specific actions to promote social justice. We can offer open dialogues and discussions on social justice topics at our library conferences. We can develop hiring practices that recognize a variety of experiences, application formats, and interview styles to encourage diverse applicants to apply. We can commit to opening the pipeline into medical librarianship through innovative pathways for library assistants to attain the MLIS. We can make concerted efforts to hire staff from diverse backgrounds that reflect US census data. We must develop a welcoming and inclusive environment for all employees and library users in our workplaces. We must welcome all comers into our library conferences. We must develop an approach to professional practice that considers user needs and experiences first and offer library services, resources, and programs that reflect the needs of our users, especially those who may be marginalized. We can adopt a public history perspective to building special collections and archives, filling in the gaps. We can adopt and enforce practices and policies that show respect for ALL library users, even when these may be inconvenient for us. We must implement outreach and advocacy programs in equal partnership with underserved populations, respecting cultural norms, in order to increase access to health information throughout the world. In the LIS schools or 3 0 2 R u s s o M a r t i n DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 Journal of the Medical Library Association 107 (3) July 2019 jmla.mlanet.org programs, we need to add courses into the curriculum that focus on diversity and social justice topics; and we need to increase the number of LIS faculty from diverse backgrounds. CONCLUSION —Injustice everywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Martin Luther King [41] Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish said, “Librarians must become active not passive agents of the democratic process” [42]. Social justice and social responsibility are core values of the medical profession. Medical librarians have been an untapped resource for this important work. Diversity, inclusion, and social justice are the defining issues for the present and future of the medical library profession. Positive outcomes from this work will be cementing the relevance of the medical librarian as a member of the health care team. 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AUTHOR’S AFFILIATION Elaine Russo Martin, FMLA, elaine_martin@hms.harvard.edu, Director of Library Services, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA Received March 2019; accepted March 2019 Articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. ISSN 1558-9439 (Online) Elaine Russo Martin, FMLA See end of article for author’s affiliation. This lecture discusses social justice and the role that medical librarians can play in a democratic society. Social justice needs to be central to the mission of medical librarianship and a core value of the profession. Medical librarians must develop a new professional orientation: one that focuses on cultural awareness or cultural consciousness that goes beyond ourselves and our collections to that which focuses on the users of our libraries. We must develop a commitment to addressing the issues of societal, relevant health information. Using examples from medical education, this lecture makes the case for social justice librarianship. This lecture also presents a pathway for social justice medical librarianship, identifies fundamental roles and activities in these areas, and offers strategies for individual librarians, the Medical Library Association, and library schools for developing social justice education and outcomes. The lecture advocates for an understanding of and connection to social justice responsibilities for the medical library profession and ends with a call to go beyond understanding to action. The lecture emphasizes the lack of diversity in our profession and the importance of diversity and inclusion for achieving social justice. The lecture presents specific examples from some medical libraries to extend the social justice mindset and to direct outreach, collections, archives, and special collection services to expose previously hidden voices. If medical librarians are to remain relevant in the future, we must act to address the lack of diversity in our profession and use our information resources, spaces, and expertise to solve the relevant societal issues of today. INTRODUCTION DEFINING SOCIAL JUSTICE SOCIAL JUSTICE AND MEDICAL SCHOOL CURRICULUM THE CASE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MEDICAL LIBRARIAN THE SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION DEBATE DIVERSITY IN LIBRARIANSHIP SOCIAL JUSTICE IN MEDICAL LIBRARIANSHIP CALL TO ACTION CONCLUSION References Author’s Affiliation Elaine Russo Martin, FMLA, elaine_martin@hms.harvard.edu, Director of Library Services, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA Received March 2019; accepted March 2019 work_6z3q4imax5fehaqpuhpyc2gemi ---- Research Article Introduction of Store Brands Considering Product Cost and Shelf Space Opportunity Cost Yongrui Duan, Zhixin Mao , and Jiazhen Huo School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China Correspondence should be addressed to Zhixin Mao; tjzxmao@163.com Received 10 January 2018; Accepted 27 June 2018; Published 16 July 2018 Academic Editor: Huaguang Zhang Copyright © 2018 Yongrui Duan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper studies the introduction of store brands (SBs) when the product cost, shelf space opportunity cost, and baseline sales are taken into consideration. We construct a Stackelberg model inwhich one retailer, acting as the leader, sells anational brand (NB) and itsSBandmaximizesthe categoryprofitbyallocatingshelfspace anddeterminingthe pricesfor the SBand NBproducts.Meanwhile, an NB manufacturer, acting as the follower, maximizes its profit based on the decisions of the retailer. Our results demonstrate that the product cost of the SB (NB) and the shelf space opportunity cost are the dominating factors that determine the optimal pricing strategy. If the two costs are low, then the optimal pricing strategy is the me-too strategy (competitive strategy); otherwise, the optimal pricing strategy is the differentiation strategy. There exists a threshold of the product cost, shelf space opportunity cost, and baseline sales to decide the pricing strategy and introduction of SB. 1. Introduction Store brands (SBs) account for 14% of total retail sales in US supermarkets, and their share ranges from 20% to 45% of total retail sales in the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, and France [1]. Why are retailers eager to introduce SBs? SBs are the exclusive brands for which the retailer is responsible for shelf placement, pricing, quality, packaging, and promotion. In contrast to a national brand (NB), which is provided by the manufacturer, a retailer’s SB product is entirely and inde- pendently controlled by the retailer, including research and development, design, sales, and market management. Retail- ers expand their market share by introducing SB products to extend their product line and to meet demands in different market segments [2, 3]. Moreover, retailers develop their SB products to compete with other retailers and enhance con- sumer loyalty [4]. Retailers also introduce SBs into the origi- nal sales category to obtain profits from their sales and, more importantly, to leverage negotiation power with the manufac- turer [5]. Furthermore, Groznik and Heese [6] demonstrate that retailers are in a position to gain competitive advantages in the supply chain and increase profits by introducing SB products. Lamey et al. [7] also reveal that retailers are more likely to increase their SBs market share when the economy is suffering and shrinks. However, according to Nielsen’s SBs report (the data come from Nielsen global private label report November 2014), the share of SBs in the Asia-Pacific market is generally low, and China’s market share of SBs is only 1–3%. Hence, the SB market potential is extremely large and therefore attractive to growing numbers of retailers in China. Increasing numbers of retailers, including international brand retailers such as Wal- mart, ALDI, and Lidl and domestic brand retailers in China such as Lianhua, Vanguard, and Wumart, have begun to in- troduce SB products. ALDI opened an online store on TMall on Mar. 20th 2017. In ALDI supermarkets, most products are SBs, and generally, for each given category, there is a maxi- mum of two other brands. ALDI’s main competitor, Lidl supermarket, which is famous as an SB retailer in Germany, opened an online store in China on Sep. 28th 2017. Inter- estingly, the two retailers entered China’s market via online stores. Usually, the retailer develops its own SB products (see Figure 1). Manufacturer A sells its NB to the distributor at product price𝑐, and the distributor delivers the NB to retailers at wholesale price 𝑤, and then the retailer sells the NB Hindawi Mathematical Problems in Engineering Volume 2018, Article ID 2324043, 19 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/2324043 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7061-8883 https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/2324043 2 Mathematical Problems in Engineering Manufacturer A Manufacturer B National brand, c Distributor (Manufacturer) National brand, w Store brand, c Retailer Display Off line--Shelf On line—Web Store Customers Store brand, PsNational brand, Pn Figure 1: Supply chain structure. products at retail prices 𝑃𝑛 to the consumers through dis- plays offline (shelf) or online (web store). Now, ALDI, as a powerful retailer, obtains the same quality of goods directly from manufacturer B, and it wants the product itself without any brand premium. Then, it sells these goods as SB products at retail prices P𝑠 to consumers through the same displays. This is why ALDI’s product quality is as good as that of any other retailer, while its prices are not high as others’. There- fore, it is natural to consider the retailer’s purchasing cost and the display method as the dominant factors that affect retail- ers’ profits and price positioning strategies. Motivated by these issues, we propose the following re- search questions: (1) Which factors will affect the price positioning strategy of a powerful retailer that is a leader and has the power to in- troduce SBs? (2) What is a suitable price positioning strategy for a dom- inant retailer following the entry of an SB? (3) Who will benefit from the different price positioning strategies? To answer these questions, in this paper, we propose a Stackelberg model involving an NB manufacturer (this is the distributor in Figure 1) and a retailer selling its SB and the NB. The decision variables include the following: the wholesale price for the manufacturer, the retail prices of both brands, and the shelf space that the retailer allocates to each brand. We assume that the retailer is the leader in the Stackelberg game, and we characterize the resulting equilibrium in terms of price, shelf space, and profit for both players. Generally, there are three-tiered SBs: economy SBs, stan- dard SBs, and premium SBs (PSBs). Consumers generally perceive SBs to be lower quality and higher risk products. Geyskens and Steenkamp [8] note that initially retailers provide low-quality and low-cost SB products mainly as substitutes for NB products. Furthermore, standard SBs imitate the quality of leading NB products for slightly lower prices. With the improvement in the quality of SBs, PSBs have become increasingly common in retail stores. Seenivasan et al. [9] report that “store brands have also gained in consumer esteem, with almost 77% of American consumers considering them to be as good as or better than national brands”. The quality of some SB products has caught up to that of NB products, but SB pricing is usually lower than NB pricing. Nenycz-Thiel and Romaniuk [10] and Hara and Matsubayashi [11] show that the quality of some PSB products has caught up with that of NB products. In response to the introduction of SBs, manufacturers of NBs are searching for ways to expand their business and help retailers introduce their SB products. Hara and Matsubayashi [11] find that, in essence, some NB manufacturers have gradually become original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of premium SBs. In this paper, we study the introduction of standard SBs. To the best of our knowledge, no previous papers have studied the impact of product costs and shelf space opportu- nity costs on the entry of SBs. We fill the gap by proposing pricing strategy games between a retailer and a manufacturer when the retailer introduces SBs. There are two streams of literature, those on product cost and shelf space opportunity cost, that relate to the present research. The frameworks employed in previous papers typically assume that the manufacturer who provides the SB product to the retailer does not play any strategic role, and thus they set the retailer’s purchasing cost of the private brand at zero (see [12, 13]). However, in a recent contribution, Fang et al. [14] study a wholesale price contract between an NB supplier and retailer, and they consider the cost per unit quality (CPUQ), which can determine whether the retailer can introduce the SB and whether the supplier can affect and deter its introduction. In another recent work, Mai et al. [15] study an extended warranty as a means of coordinating the quality decisions for SB products. They consider the unit repair cost and unit production cost, which ensure that the product has a zero probability of failure during the extended warranty period. In contrast, our research shows that the product cost is the dominant factor that affects the price positioning strategy in the introduction of SBs by a powerful retailer. The Stackelberg equilibrium solution will be adopted in this work. Amrouche and Zaccour [13] and Li et al. [16] study the shelf space allocation and pricing decisions in the market- ing channel by applying static and dynamic games. Kurtuluş and Toktay [17] construct a supply chain with two manu- facturers and one retailer and study a three-stage sequential dynamic game. They demonstrate that a retailer, acting as the leader in the supply chain, can use category management and categorize shelf space to control the intensity of competition between manufacturers. However, there they do not consider the impact of SBs or shelf space effects in the demand func- tion. Kuo and Yang [18] develop a competitive shelf space model for NBs versus SBs based on Kurtuluş and Toktay’s settings and find that if the cross-price effect is not too large, Mathematical Problems in Engineering 3 the retailer should position its SB’s quality closer to that of the NB. Kuo and Yang consider the shelf space opportunity cost in operation and channel conflict, but they do not consider product cost. In retailing, the shelf space allocation problem is crucial and has been studied by both operations research and mar- keting scholars for years. Corstjens and Doyle [19] develop a model to address the shelf space allocation problem. Bultez and Naert [20] and Drèze et al. [21] confirm that shelf space has a positive effect on a retailer’s sales and profitability. Irion et al. [22] develop a shelf space allocation optimization model that combines essential in-store costs and considers space- and cross-elasticities to study shelf space management. Valen- zuela et al. [23] propose that consumers hold vertical schemas that higher is better on shelves and that more expensive pro- ducts should be placed higher on a display than cheaper pro- ducts. They test whether retailer shelf space layouts reflect consumer beliefs and illustrate that consumers’ beliefs about shelf space layouts are not always reflected in the real mar- ketplace. These studies all focus on the shelf space allocation of general products; however, they do not consider SBs or analyze the pricing issue. However, the competition for shelf space is prevalent in supermarkets, especially for new product introductions. Drèze et al. [21] demonstrate that re- tailers want to maximize category sales and profits and must allocate a certain amount of shelf space to do so. Moreover, manufacturers want to maximize the sales and profits of their NBs and therefore always want more and better space to be allocated to their NBs. Thus, retailers often earn a posi- tive profit margin on each product they sell in addition to collecting the slotting fees, given that their role goes beyond shelf space leasing [24]. Because the slotting fee includes not only shelf space leasing but also logistics, merchandising, and promotion, among other services, shelf space is so scarce that manufacturers have to provide retailers with slotting fees to secure shelf space for their SBs. Our research assumes that the shelf space opportunity cost represents a slotting fee that is a dominant factor affecting the introduction and price positioning strategy of SBs. In contrast to all of the above research streams, our paper discusses the store brand entry problem under varying prod- uct cost and SB opportunity scenarios. Our results provide guidance for retailers regarding marketing strategies under different product cost, shelf space opportunity, and baseline sales settings. This is one of our contributions to the existing literature. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we construct an economic profit model for the sup- ply chain under study. In Section 3, we derive the Stackelberg equilibrium. In Section 4, we seek the optimal pricing strat- egy by conducting a numerical study with different scena- rios. In Section 5, we conclude the paper. 2. The Model We consider a two-stage supply chain that consists of one retailer and one manufacturer. The manufacturer provides one product in a given category and sells it to consumers through the retailer. The retailer maximizes profit by allocat- ing shelf space to each brand. We normalize the total shelf space available for each category to one. S denotes the share of this space that is dedicated to the SB, and 𝑆 > 0. We assume that the total shelf space is allocated; thus, the share of the NB is 1−𝑆 (see [13]). We assume that the demand for each brand depends on the exposure each receives, as measured by shelf space and the price of each brand. Here, we assume the NB baseline sales are normalized to one and the baseline sales of the SB are captured by the parameter 𝛼𝑠 ∈ (0,1) (see [12]). The demands of the two products are as follows: 𝐷𝑛 = 11 + 𝛼𝑠 ((1 + 𝛼𝑠)(1 − 𝑆) + 𝜓(𝑃𝑠 − 𝑃𝑛) − 𝑃𝑛) (1) 𝐷𝑠 = 11 + 𝛼𝑠 ((1 + 𝛼𝑠)𝑆 + 𝜓(𝑃𝑛 − 𝑃𝑠) − 𝑃𝑠) (2) where 𝐷𝑛 and 𝐷𝑠 represent the demand for the NB and for the SB, respectively. 1 + 𝛼𝑠 represents the total baseline sales (potential market) of the NB and SB [6].𝜓 ∈ (0,1)denotes the cross-price competition between the NB and SB.𝑃𝑛 and 𝑃𝑠 are the reference prices for each, respectively, which is a common assumption in the literature (see [12, 17, 25]). In addition, the demand for each brand increases in its proportion of shelf space. The rationale is that if a product has more shelf space, the probability of being noticed, perceived, and selected by the consumer will increase (see [26–29]). Furthermore, many studies demonstrate that each brand’s demand increases in the competing brand’s price and decreases in its own price (see [12, 18]). According to (1) and (2), the marginal price effect on demand depends on the shelf space allocated to the brand. This specification has been used extensively in the literature (see [30, 31]). In addition, 𝑐 is the unit cost. As in Nenycz-Thiel and Romaniuk [10] and Hara and Matsubayashi [11], we assume that the costs of the SB and the NB are equal. To simplify the computation, we assume that there is no significant quality differentiation between the SB and NB, and the prices of the two products satisfy 𝑃𝑠 = 𝛾𝑃𝑛, 0 < 𝛾 < 1 (3) where 𝑃𝑠 and 𝑃𝑛 represent the retail prices of the SB and NB, respectively. 𝛾 is the price difference coefficient. Parameter 𝑐 represents the cost of the SB and NB. Assuming that the manufacturer and the retailer are profit maximizers, their objectives are as follows: max Π𝑀 = (𝑤 − 𝑐)𝐷𝑛 (4) max Π𝑅 = 𝐷𝑠 (𝑃𝑠 − 𝑐) + 𝑚𝐷𝑛− 𝑘𝑆 2 2 (5) where Π𝑀 and Π𝑅 represent the profit of the manufacturer and of the retailer, respectively, and 𝐷𝑛 and 𝐷𝑠 are given by (1) and (2), respectively. 𝑤 represents the wholesale price, and 4 Mathematical Problems in Engineering 𝑚represents the unit markup from selling unit NB; therefore, 𝑃𝑛 = 𝑤 + 𝑚. Because shelf space is a scarce resource, space allocated to one product means relinquishing profits from another product. If the shelf spaces of NBs are occupied by the SB, there exists the loss of the opportunity cost for the retailer. That means the retailer will forgo the slotting fee for the new NB from manufacturer. Assume that the retailer incurs a shelf space cost, i.e., the opportunity cost 𝑘 of the shelf space, where 𝑘 > 0. The shelf space proportion, 𝑆, is a continuous endogenous variable. The assumption is standard in economics (see [17, 32]). In this paper, we assume that the retailer is the leader and the manufacturer is the follower. The sequence of events is as follows: The retailer (leader) first announces its marketing strategy, including the unit markup value 𝑚 and shelf space proportion 𝑆. The manufacturer reacts to this information by deciding the wholesale price 𝑤. 3. Stackelberg Equilibrium To determine the reaction function of the manufacturer to the retailer’s unit markup value 𝑚 and shelf space proportion 𝑆, we must solve the following optimization problem. First, we consider the manufacturer’s problem. Substituting (1) and (3) into (4) yields Π𝑀 = (𝑤 − 𝑐)(𝜓(𝛾(𝑚 + 𝑤) − 𝑚 − 𝑤) − 𝑚 + (1 − 𝑆)(𝛼𝑠+ 1) − 𝑤)𝛼𝑠 + 1 . (6) First-order conditions are 𝑑Π𝑀 dw = 0 ⇐⇒ 𝑤(𝑚,𝑆) = 𝑐((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1) − 𝛾𝑚𝜓+ 𝑚𝜓 + 𝑚 + (𝑆 − 1)𝛼𝑠 + 𝑆 − 12(𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 2 (7) and 𝑑2Π𝑀 𝑑𝑤2 = 2((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1) 𝛼𝑠 + 1 < 0. (8) Next, we address the retailer’s optimization problem. Substituting (7) into (5) yields Π𝑅 = 14 (−2𝑘𝑆 2+ 𝑅1− 𝑅2 (𝑅3 + 𝑅4)) (9) where 𝑅1 = 2𝑚((𝛾 − 1)𝜓(𝑐 + 𝑚) − 𝑐 − 𝑚 − (𝑆 − 1)𝛼𝑠 − 𝑆 + 1)𝛼𝑠+ 1 𝑅2 = 𝑐(𝛾 − 2)((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1) + 𝛾((𝛾 − 1)𝑚𝜓 − 𝑚 + 𝑆 − 1) + 𝛾(𝑆 − 1)𝛼𝑠(−𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1)2 (𝛼𝑠 + 1) 𝑅3 = ((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 + 𝛾)((𝛾 − 1)𝜓(𝑐 + 𝑚) − 𝑐 − 𝑚 − 1) 𝑅4 = 𝛼𝑠 (−𝛾(𝜓 + 1) + 𝑆(𝛾(−𝜓) + 𝛾 + 𝜓 + 2) + 𝜓) + 𝑆(𝛾(−𝜓) + 𝛾 + 𝜓 + 2). (10) We obtain the following results. Theorem 1. If the price difference coefficient 𝛾 and cross-price competition coefficient𝜓 satisfy𝛾 > (𝐾(𝐾+𝜓−1)−4𝜓+1)/𝐾𝜓, then the retailer’s profit function Π𝑅 is jointly concave in 𝑚 and𝑆, where 𝐾 = [−4𝜓2 + 2√4𝜓4 + 4𝜓3 − 𝜓2 + 6𝜓 − 1]1/3 . (11) Proof. The first- and second-order derivatives of Π𝑅 with respect to 𝑚 and 𝑆 are as follows: 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚2 = − 𝛾2+ (1 − 𝛾)(2 − 𝛾)𝜓 + 2 2(𝛼𝑠 + 1) < 0. (12) 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑆2 = − 𝛾(𝛾(1 − 𝜓) + 𝜓 + 2)(𝛼𝑠+ 1) 2((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1)2 − 1 < 0 (13) 𝜕Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚𝜕𝑆 = −𝛾(𝛾 + 𝜓 + 1) + 𝜓 + 1 2(𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 2 (14) 𝜕Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑆𝜕𝑚 = −𝛾(𝛾 + 𝜓 + 1) + 𝜓 + 1 2(𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 2 (15) The Hessian matrix can be formed as follows: Mathematical Problems in Engineering 5 𝐻 = [[[[ [ 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚2 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚𝜕𝑆 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑆𝜕𝑚 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑆2 ]]]] ] = [[[[[ [ −2 + 𝛾 2+ (2 − 𝛾)(1 − 𝛾)𝜓 2(1 + 𝛼𝑠) 1 + 𝜓 − 𝛾(1 + 𝛾 + 𝜓) −2 + 2(−1 + 𝛾)𝜓 1 + 𝜓 − 𝛾(1 + 𝛾 + 𝜓) −2 + 2(−1 + 𝛾)𝜓 −1 − 𝛾[2 + 𝛾(1 − 𝜓) + 𝜓](1 + 𝛼𝑠) 2(−1 + (−1 + 𝛾)𝜓)2 ]]]]] ] 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚2 = − 2 + 𝛾2 + (2 − 𝛾)(1 − 𝛾)𝜓 2(1 + 𝛼𝑠) < 0. (16) Since𝛼𝑠 ∈ (0,1),𝜓 ∈ (0,1),𝛾 > (𝐾(𝐾+𝜓−1)−4𝜓+1)/𝐾𝜓, 𝐾 = 3√2𝐿 − 4𝜓2 + 6𝜓 − 1, 𝐿 = √4𝜓4 + 4𝜓3 − 𝜓2, then |𝐻| = 𝑘(𝛾 2+ (𝛾 − 2)(𝛾 − 1)𝜓 + 2) 2(𝛼𝑠 + 1) − 3𝛾 2+ (𝛾 − 1)3𝜓 + 6𝛾 − 1 4(𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 4 > 0. (17) 𝐻 is a negative definite integral and the profit function is concave. Setting 𝜕Π𝑅(𝑚,𝑆)/𝜕𝑚 = 0, 𝜕Π𝑅(𝑚,𝑆)/𝜕𝑆 = 0 and letting (𝑚∗,𝑆∗) represent the solutions to the linear systems, then 𝑚∗ = 𝑚1+ 𝑚2+ 𝑚3𝑋 (18) 𝑆∗ = 𝑆1𝑋 (19) where 𝑚1 = (𝛾 + 1)(2(𝛾 − 1)𝑘(𝜓 + 1) − 𝛾) − 𝛾(𝛾 + 1)𝛼2𝑠 𝑚2 = 𝛼𝑠(𝑐(𝛾 − 1)3𝜓 + 2𝑐(𝛾(𝛾 + 2) − 1) + 2(𝛾 + 1) ⋅ ((𝛾 − 1)𝑘(𝜓 + 1) − 𝛾)) . 𝑚3 = 𝑐((𝛾 − 1)3𝜓 + 2(𝛾(𝛾 + 2) − 1) − 2𝑘((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1) ⋅ (𝛾((𝛾 − 3)𝜓 + 𝛾 − 1) + 2𝜓 + 1)) 𝑋 = 2𝑘((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1)(𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 2)(𝛾 − 1)𝜓 + 2) + (−3𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 1)3 (−𝜓) − 6𝛾 + 1)(𝛼𝑠 + 1) 𝑆1 = (𝛾 + 1)(𝑐(𝛾 − 3)((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1) − 𝛾(𝜓 + 4) + (−𝛾(𝜓 + 4) + 𝜓 + 1)𝛼𝑠+ 𝜓 + 1) (20) Substituting 𝑚∗ and 𝑆∗ into (6) yields 𝑤∗ = 𝑤1 − 𝑤2 + 𝑤3𝑋 (21) where 𝑤1 = 𝑘(−2𝛾2 (𝜓 + 1) + 𝑐((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1) ⋅ (𝛾(2𝛾(𝜓 + 1) − 6𝜓 − 1) + 4𝜓 + 3) + 3𝛾𝜓 − 𝜓 − 1) 𝑤2 = 𝛼𝑠(𝑐(𝛾 − 1)3𝜓 + 2𝛾((𝑐 − 1)𝛾 + 3𝑐 + 1) + 𝑘(𝛾(2𝛾(𝜓 + 1) − 3𝜓) + 𝜓 + 1)) 𝑤3 = −𝑐(𝛾 − 1)3𝜓 + 𝛾(−2𝑐(𝛾 + 3) + 𝛾 − 1) + 𝛾(𝛾 − 1)𝛼2 𝑠 (22) and then 𝑃∗ 𝑛 = 𝑃n1 + 𝑃n2𝑋 (23) 𝑃∗ 𝑠 = 𝛾𝑃∗ 𝑛 (24) where 𝑃n1 = −(𝛾 − 1)𝑘𝜓(𝛾𝑐 + 𝑐 + 3) + 𝑐(𝛾 + 1)(𝑘 + 2) + 2𝛾 + 3𝑘 𝑃n2 = 𝛼𝑠 (2𝑐(𝛾 + 1) + 4𝛾 + 3𝑘(−𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1) + 2𝛾𝛼𝑠) (25) 𝐷∗ 𝑛 = 𝐷n1 (𝐷n2+ 𝐷n3)(𝛼𝑠 + 1)(Y1 − Y2) (26) 𝐷∗ 𝑠 = 𝛼𝑠 (𝐷s1+ 𝐷s2) + 𝐷s3+ 𝐷s4(𝛼𝑠 + 1)(Y1 − Y2) (27) where 𝐷n1 = (𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1 𝐷n2 = 𝛼𝑠(𝑐(𝛾2 − 1) + 2(𝛾 − 1)𝛾 − 𝑘(𝛾(2𝛾(𝜓 + 1) − 3𝜓) + 𝜓 + 1) + (𝛾 − 1)𝛾𝛼𝑠) 𝐷n3 = 𝑐(𝛾2 + 𝑘(𝛾2 (−𝜓) + 𝛾 + 𝜓 + 1) − 1) + (𝛾 − 1) ⋅ 𝛾 − 𝑘(2𝛾2 (𝜓 + 1) − 3𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1) 𝐷s1 = −𝑐(𝛾 + 1)((𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 𝛾 + 3) + 3(𝛾 − 1)2 ⋅ 𝑘𝜓2 + (𝛾 − 1)2 (3𝑘 − 2)𝜓 6 Mathematical Problems in Engineering 𝐷s2 = 4𝛾2+ 6𝛾 − 3𝛾𝑘 − (𝛾(𝛾(𝜓 − 2) − 2𝜓 − 3) + 𝜓 + 1)𝛼𝑠 − 2 𝐷s3 = 2𝛾2+ 3𝛾 + 3(𝛾 − 1)2𝑘𝜓2 + (𝛾 − 1)2 (3𝑘 − 1)𝜓 − 3𝛾𝑘 − 1 𝐷s4 = 𝑐(𝛾 + 1)(−𝛾 + (𝛾 − 1)2𝑘𝜓2 + (𝛾 − 1)2 (𝑘 − 1)𝜓 − 𝛾𝑘 − 3) Y1 = (3𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 1)3𝜓 + 6𝛾 − 1)(𝛼𝑠 + 1) Y2 = 2𝑘((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1)(𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 2)(𝛾 − 1)𝜓 + 2) (28) and thus Π∗ 𝑀 = (𝑤∗− 𝑐)𝐷∗ 𝑛 (29) Π∗ 𝑅 = (𝑃∗ 𝑠 − 𝑐)𝐷∗ 𝑛 + 𝑚∗𝐷∗ 𝑛 − 12𝑘(𝑆 ∗)2 . (30) To determine whether the retailer can increase profit through the introduction of an SB, we need to consider the case when the retailer sells only the NB. We assume that the demand for the NB depends on the price of the NB if there is no SB. The following functional forms are assumed: 𝐷𝑛 = 1 − 𝑃𝑛. (31) We assume that 𝑃𝑛 = 𝑤+𝑚, and then we have the follow- ing optimization problem: max Π𝑀𝑜 = (𝑤 − 𝑐)𝐷𝑛 = (𝑤 − 𝑐)(1 − 𝑚 − 𝑤) (32) max Π𝑅𝑜 = 𝑚𝐷𝑛 = 𝑚(1 − 𝑚 − 𝑤). (33) Using an analytical process that is similar to the Stack- elberg equilibrium, we obtain Π𝑅𝑜 = (1/8)(𝑐 − 1)2, Π𝑀𝑜 =(1/16)(𝑐 − 1)2 and the final demand of the product category, 𝐷𝑛 = (1 − 𝑐)/4. Proof. Please see the proof in Appendix A. 4. Numerical Studies The purpose of this section is to reveal the effects of the prod- uct cost and the baseline sales of SBs on profitability and shelf space allocation. 4.1. Scenario 1: Varying Product Cost of SBs. In this subsec- tion, we will study the relationships between the product cost 𝑐 and the parameters, such as the decision variables, demand, price, and profitability of SBs and NBs. Let 𝛼𝑠 = 0.8, 𝜓 = 0.8,𝑘 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.7;0.8;0.9. Figure 2(a) shows that SB shelf space 𝑆 and markup 𝑚 decrease as product cost 𝑐 increases, and conversely the wholesale price of NB𝑤 increases. In Figure 2(b), the demand of SB, 𝐷𝑠, and total demand, 𝐷, decrease as product cost𝑐 increases; meanwhile, the demand of NB, 𝐷𝑛, increases. Figure 2(c) shows that product prices of both NBs and SBs increase as product cost 𝑐 increases. That is to say, most of the decision variables and other parameters (except the demand for the NB) are sensitive to product cost 𝑐, and any slight change in the product cost results in a great change in the parameters (such as 𝑆, 𝑚, 𝑤, 𝐷, 𝐷𝑠). In Figures 3 and 4, we aim to study (1) the relationship be- tween the product cost 𝑐 and the profit of the retailer and manufacturer when the SB is introduced, as well as (2) the profit of the retailer and manufacturer before and after the in- troduction of SB. Figure 3(a) shows that the retailer’s total profit decreases as product cost 𝑐 increases. There exists a cost threshold c = 0.425 (where 𝛼𝑠 = 0.8, 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑘 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.7 𝑜𝑟 0.9). The retailer should use a different pricing strategy for differ- ent product costs. If the cost is less than the threshold, the me-too strategy is preferred; if the cost is larger than the threshold, the differentiation strategy can increase profit. In other words, when the product cost 𝑐 is high, the retailer uses a differentiation strategy; however, the me-too strategy is better when the product cost 𝑐 is low. Figure 3(b) demonstrates the profit before and after the introduction of SB when 𝑐 changes. It shows that the total profits of the retailer decrease as product cost 𝑐 increases. There exists a cost threshold c̃ = 0.389 (where 𝛼𝑠 = 0.8, 𝜓 =0.8, 𝑘 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.8) such that if the cost is less than the threshold, the introduction of the SB is profitable; if the cost is larger than the threshold, the introduction of the SB will not increase profit, and the retailer will not have enough incentive to introduce the SB. However, the retailer is less affected when differentiation strategies are used. Within the range [0, c̃], the retailer uses differentiation strategies, and its total profit will reach a minimum value and then rise again. That is, differentiation strategies are used for the price decision, and the introduction of SB will bring more profits for the retailers, due to the existence of big price differential. This conclusion is different from the previous research; Sayman et al. [33] do not find the significant effect of price differential; in present paper, we demonstrate that the significant effect exists when considering the product cost. Figure 4 demonstrates that the manufacturer’s profits will be very low when the retailer introduces the SB. However, the manufacturer’s total profits increase as product cost 𝑐 increases. Furthermore, when the retailer introduces the SB and the product cost increases, the manufacturer’s total profit is higher than before. However, this situation will not occur because it is not profitable for the retailer when parameter 𝑐 is too high; the retailer, as a leader, will not introduce the SB in this interval. To put it differently, the retailer will prudently consider whether to introduce the SB. 4.2. Scenario 2: Varying Shelf Space Opportunity Cost of SBs. In this subsection, we will study the relationships between the shelf space opportunity cost of SB 𝑘 and the parameters, such as decision variables, demand, price, and the profitability of SBs and NBs. Let 𝛼𝑠 = 0.8, 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.7;0.8;0.9. Mathematical Problems in Engineering 7 c 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, 𝜅=0.1, 𝛾=0.8 Parameter 0.5 1.0 1.5 m∗ S ∗ w ∗ (a) c 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, 𝜅=0.1, 𝛾=0.8 Demand 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 Dn ∗ Ds ∗ D ∗ (b) c 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, 𝜅=0.1, 𝛾=0.8 Price 0.5 1.0 1.5 Pn ∗ Ps ∗ (c) Figure 2: Variable results for different values of 𝑐. c 0.2 0.4 0.425 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, 𝜅=0.1 (ΠR) ∗ 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (a) c 0.2 0.4 0.389 0.6 0.8 1.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, 𝜅=0.1 −0.05 (ΠR) ∗ −(ΠRO) ∗ 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (b) Figure 3: Retailer’s total profit for different values of 𝑐. 8 Mathematical Problems in Engineering c 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, 𝜅=0.1 (ΠM) ∗ 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (a) c 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, 𝜅=0.1 (ΠM) ∗ −(ΠMO) ∗ −0.10 −0.05 0.05 0.10 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (b) Figure 4: Manufacturer’s total profit for different values of 𝑐. The results in Figure 5(a) show that when in the high- competition situation (𝜓 = 0.8) with high baseline sales of SBs (𝛼𝑠 = 0.8), increasing the opportunity cost parameter of shelf space 𝑘 leads to a sharp decrease in the retailer’s shelf space proportion 𝑆, a slow decrease in the unit markup value 𝑚, and a sharp increase in the wholesale price 𝑤. Figure 5(b) demonstrates that increasing the opportunity cost of shelf space 𝑘 causes a sharp decrease in the retailer’s demand for SBs but an increase in the manufacturer’s demand for NBs and, subsequently, a sharp increase in the total demand for the product category. Figure 5(c) indicates a slow increase in the sales price for both SBs and NBs when 𝑘 increases. In Figures 6 and 7, we aim to study (1) the relationship between the opportunity cost of the shelf space 𝑘 and the pro- fit of retailer and manufacturer when the SB is introduced, as well as (2) the profit difference of the retailer and the manu- facturer before and after the introduction of SB. Figure 6(a) shows that the retailer’s total profits decrease as the opportunity cost of the shelf space 𝑘 increases. Mean- while, the retailer should use a different pricing strategy when the opportunity cost takes a different value. Particularly, there exists a threshold k = 0.252 (where 𝛼𝑠 = 0.8, 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.7 𝑜𝑟 0.9), such that if the opportunity cost of the shelf space is less than the threshold, the retailer uses the me- too strategy; if the opportunity cost of the shelf space is larger than the threshold, a differentiation strategy is optimal. Figure 6(b) visualizes the difference in profit before and after the introduction of the SB; the retailer’s total profits decrease as opportunity cost parameter of shelf space 𝑘 increases. There exists a threshold k̃ = 0.374 (where 𝛼𝑠 = 0.8,𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.8). When the opportunity cost parameter𝑘 is high, the retailer uses a differentiation strategy; on the other hand, the competitive strategy (me-too strategy) is better when parameter 𝑘 is low. Mathematical Problems in Engineering 9 k 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, c=0.1, 𝛾=0.8Parameter 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 m∗ S ∗ w ∗ (a) k 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, c=0.1, 𝛾=0.8Demand 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 Dn ∗ Ds ∗ D ∗ (b) k 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, c=0.1, 𝛾=0.8 Price 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Pn ∗ Ps ∗ (c) Figure 5: Variable results for different values of 𝑘. Figure 7 demonstrates that the manufacturer’s total profit increases as the opportunity cost of shelf space 𝑘 increases. That is to say, when the retailer introduces SB, the manufac- turer’s total profit is higher than before. However, this situa- tion will not occur because the retailer is not profitable when parameter 𝑘 is high; in this interval, the retailer, as a leader, will not introduce the SB. 4.3. Scenario 3: Varying Baseline Sales of SBs. Let 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑘 = 0.8, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.8; we draw the plots for the relation- ships between the baseline sales of SBs, 𝛼𝑠, and parameters such as the decision variables, demand, price, and profitability of SBs and NBs. Figure 8(a) indicates that in a high-competition situation where 𝜓 = 0.8 and the low-cost parameters 𝑘 = 0.1, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.8, an increase in the baseline sales of SB 𝛼𝑠 leads to a slow increase in the SB’s proportion of retail shelf space, 𝑆, and a sharp increase in the unit markup value, 𝑚. Meanwhile, the manufacturer’s wholesale price, 𝑤, increases slowly as baseline sales of the SB, 𝛼𝑠, increases. Figure 8(b) demonstrates that increasing the baseline sales of SBs 𝛼𝑠 causes a sharp increase in the retailer’s demand for SBs, a de- crease in the manufacturer’s demand for NBs, and, subse- quently, an increase in the total demand for the product category. When the retailer, as a leader, introduces the SB, actual sales increase as the baseline sales increas. That is to say, as the baseline sales of the SB increase, the retailer can increase the proportion of shelf space allocated to the SB; meanwhile, the retailer is better off because it can obtain more profit from the manufacturer’s product. In this situation, the increase of the wholesale price can be perceived as compensation for the shelf space occupied by the SB, and the manufacturer deliberately increases the wholesale price to offset the manufacturer’s loss from NB sales. Meanwhile, Figure 8 also demonstrates that as 𝛼𝑠 increases, the retailer can increase the SB’s proportion of shelf space. The actual demand of the SB increases more quickly than that of the shelf space, which aligns with the conclusion in Eisend [28], that a small increase in shelf space elasticity can also promote a rapid growth in product sales. In Figure 9, we study the relationship between the retail price of SB (NB) and the baseline sales of the SB 𝛼𝑠. Figure 9(a) shows that in a high-competition situation where 𝜓 = 0.8 and the low-cost parameters 𝑘 = 0.1, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.8, the prices of both the SB and NB increase as the baseline sales of the SB 𝛼𝑠 increase. Figure 9(b) demonstrates that when the retailer introduces SB and implements the me-too strategy (competitive strategy), the price of the NB is lower than the differentiation strategy, which aligns with the conclusion in Gabrielsen and Sørgard [34], that the introduction of SB leads to price concessions from the NB. 10 Mathematical Problems in Engineering k 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.252 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, c=0.1 (ΠR) ∗ 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (a) k 0.2 0.4 0.374 0.6 0.8 1.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, c=0.1 (ΠR) ∗ −(ΠRO) ∗ 0.1 0.2 −0.2 −0.1 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (b) Figure 6: Retailer’s total profit for different values of 𝑘. Eventually, it will be beneficial for consumers to purchase the NB. In Figure 10, we study the profitability of retailer in different marketing environments. Let 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑘 = 0.1;0.35, 𝑐 = 0.5;0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.7;0.8;0.9. As 𝛼𝑠 increases, the retailer’s total profit increases; however, there is a significant difference when the retailer uses different pricing strategies. (1) When 𝑐 or 𝑘 is small, the retailer uses the me-too strategy, and the profit of the retailer will increase. (2) When 𝑐 or 𝑘 is large, then the differentiation strategy (i.e., 𝛾 = 0.7) results in more profit than the me-too strategy (i.e., 𝛾 = 0.9). In Figure 11, we study the difference in profit before and after the introduction of SB. The result shows that if retailer introduces the SB, there exists the threshold 𝛼𝑠 = 0.455 (where 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑘 = 0.1, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.8), such that (1) under the differentiation strategy, if 𝛼𝑠 is greater than 0.492 (where 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑘 = 0.1, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.7), it will be profitable to introduce the SB; (2) under the me-too strategy, if 𝛼𝑠 is greater than 0.414 (where 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑘 = 0.1, 𝑐 = 0.1, and𝛾 = 0.9), it will be profitable to introduce the SB. In Figure 12, we study the differences in profit before and after the introduction of SB. The result demonstrates that when the retailer, as the leader, introduces the SB, the manufacturer will gain little profit; however, a comparison of the profit before and after SB is introduced shows that the profit of the manufacturer reduces considerably. In other words, when the retailer is the leader, the introduction of the SB is detrimental to the manufacturer, and this result aligns with Kuo and Yang [18]. In addition, Figure 12(a) demonstrates that when the retailer uses the me-too strategy (𝛾 = 0.9), as 𝛼𝑠 increases, the manufacturer’s profits gradually decrease. When the retailer uses the differentiation strategy (𝛾 = 0.7), as 𝛼𝑠 increases, the manufacturer’s profits gradually increase. Thus, if the retailer, Mathematical Problems in Engineering 11 k 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, c=0.1(ΠM) ∗ 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (a) k 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.00.5 𝛼s=0.8, 𝜓=0.8, c=0.1 (ΠM) ∗ −(ΠMO) ∗ 0.05 0.10 −0.10 −0.05 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (b) Figure 7: Manufacturer’s total profit for different values of 𝑘. 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1, 𝛾=0.8Parameter 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 m∗ S ∗ w ∗ (a) 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝛼s 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1, 𝛾=0.8 Demand 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 Dn ∗ D ∗ Ds ∗ (b) Figure 8: Variable results for different values of 𝛼𝑠. 12 Mathematical Problems in Engineering 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1, 𝛾=0.8 Price 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Pn ∗ Ps ∗ (a) 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1 (Pn) ∗ 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (b) Figure 9: Price for different values of 𝛼𝑠. as the leader, introduces the SB, the manufacturer is eager to increase its profit when the retailer adopts a differentiation strategy. Therefore, when the SB and the NB have roughly the same product quality, a differentiation strategy helps to cultivate consumers’ preferences and to improve consumer loyalty to the SB. Furthermore, the differentiation strategy is more conducive to the introduction of other categories of the SB. 4.4. Scenario 4: Manufacturer as the Leader in the Supply Chain. Figure 13 demonstrates the results when the manu- facturer is the leader (please see the proof in Appendix B). It indicates that in this case, although the shelf space proportion 𝑆 is greater than 0 (where 𝜓 = 0.8, 𝑘 = 0.1, 𝑐 = 0.1, and 𝛾 = 0.9), the actual demand for the SB is less than 0. That is, the SB should be introduced only when the retailer is the leader and has sufficient power. When the manufacturer is the leader in the supply chain, the retailer does not have an incentive to introduce the SB. 5. Conclusion In this paper, we investigate the introduction of an SB product when the retailer is the supply chain leader. In particular, our aim is to answer the following questions: (1) What is the price positioning strategy of the SB—the differentiation or the me-too strategy—when the product cost and the shelf space opportunity cost are considered? (2) What are the factors that influence the pricing position of the retailer? (3) Who will benefit from the different price strategies? To answer these questions, this paper examines a two-echelon supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer. The retailer sells an NB product produced by the manufacturer and an SB product. The retailer needs to determine the price markup of the NB, the price of the SB, and the shelf space allocated to the SB. The manufacturer needs to determine the wholesale price of the product. To this end, we formulate a Stackelberg game model in which the retailer is the leader and the manufacturer is the follower. Our contribution is twofold. On the one hand, we prove the condition that an optimal solution exists. On the other hand, to distinguish the factors that influence the introduc- tion and pricing position strategy of the SB, we conduct an experimental analysis of the parameters. Our results indicate that if both the product cost of the SB and the shelf space opportunity cost are low, then the optimal pricing strategy is the me-too strategy (competitive strategy). Otherwise, the optimal pricing strategy is the differentiation strategy. To the best of our knowledge, previous papers have not studied the impact of product cost and shelf space opportunity cost on the entry of SBs. With regard to retailers, our findings have a number of managerial implications: (1) according to the numerical analysis, there is a significant effect of the price differential between the SB and NB; that is, an SB with a price positioned as close as possible to the NB price will not generate more profit for the retailer when the SB is a standard SB. This conclusion is different from those of previous research [33]. This is because our research considers the role of product cost, and we observe a significant effect. (2) There exist thresholds c̃ and k̃ of costs such that if the cost is less than the threshold, the introduction of the SB is profitable; if the cost is larger than the threshold, then the introduction of the SB will not increase profits, and the retailer will not have sufficient incentive to introduce the SB. According to our numerical analysis, the introduction of an SB and the optimal pricing strategy cannot be fully captured Mathematical Problems in Engineering 13 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1 (ΠR) ∗ 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (a) 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.5 (ΠR) ∗ 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (b) 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.35, c=0.1 (ΠR) ∗ 0.05 0.10 0.15 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (c) Figure 10: Retailer’s total profit for different values of 𝛼𝑠. by only one parameter. That is, the product cost and shelf space opportunity cost are the dominant factors affecting the introduction of an SB. The conclusion contrasts with the findings of previous research (see [12, 17]). This is because the effect of shelf space is reflected not only in the demand function but also in the profit function. (3) There also exists a threshold of baseline sales such that if the baseline sales of the SB are less than the threshold, the introduction of the SB will not increase profits, and the retailer will not have sufficient incentive to introduce the SB; if the baseline sales are larger than the threshold, the introduction of the SB is profitable. (4) The numerical analyses also show that the manufacturer is better off when the retailer adopts a differentiation strategy and enlarges the price differential. However, the retailer’s pricing strategies are dependent on the product costs and shelf opportunity cost. In addition, the retailer uses a me-too strategy; in this case, the prices of both the NB and the SB are lower, and consumers will therefore be better off when they purchase either the NB or the SB. This study has several shortcomings that are worthy of further investigation in the future. First, we assume that the product cost for each brand is the same. In reality, most products do not have the same cost. Therefore, it would be interesting to extend our model to include different costs, Second, our model does not consider competition between retailers or between manufacturers. In fact, with 14 Mathematical Problems in Engineering 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1 (ΠR) ∗ −(ΠRO) ∗ 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 −0.10 −0.05 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 𝛼s (a) 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.5 (ΠR) ∗ −(ΠRO) ∗ −0.10 −0.05 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (b) Figure 11: Comparison between the periods before and after the introduction of the SB in 𝛼𝑠. 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.00.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1 (ΠM) ∗ 0.005 0.010 0.015 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (a) 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1 (ΠM) ∗ −(ΠMO) ∗ −0.06 −0.04 −0.02 0.02 0.04 0.06 𝛾 = 0.9 𝛾 = 0.8 𝛾 = 0.7 (b) Figure 12: Comparison between the periods before and after the introduction of the SB in 𝛼𝑠. Mathematical Problems in Engineering 15 𝛼s 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 𝜓=0.8, k=0.1, c=0.1, 𝛾=0.9 S & Ds 0.2 0.4 −0.4 −0.2 S ∗ Ds ∗ Figure 13: Demand and shelf space proportion for the SB for different values of 𝛼𝑠. the improvement of SB quality, retailers have their own SBs, and SB competition needs to be considered even though the resulting model would certainly be difficult to analyze. Appendix A. Retailer Sells Only the NB The scenario before introducing the SB: We assume that the demand for the NB depends on the price of the NB if there is no SB. The following functional forms are assumed: 𝐷𝑛 = 1 − 𝑃𝑛 (A.1) 𝑃𝑛 = 𝑚 + 𝑤 (A.2) ΠMO = (𝑤 − 𝑐)𝐷𝑛 (A.3) ΠRO = 𝑚𝐷𝑛. (A.4) First, we consider the manufacturer’s problem. The first- order optimality conditions are 𝑑ΠMO 𝑑𝑤 = 0 ⇐⇒ 𝑤(𝑚) = 12 (𝑐 − 𝑚 + 1). (A.5) Substituting (A.1), (A.2), and (A.5) into (A.4) yields ΠRO = −12𝑚(𝑐 + 𝑚 − 1). (A.6) The concavity of ΠRO and the first-order condition yields 𝑑ΠRO 𝑑𝑚 = 1 2 (−𝑐 − 2𝑚 + 1) = 0 ⇐⇒ 𝑚∗ = 1 − 𝑐2 . (A.7) Then, substituting (A.7) into (A.5) yields 𝑤∗ = 14 (3𝑐 + 1) . (A.8) Therefore, 𝑃𝑛∗ = 𝑤∗+ 𝑚∗ = 14 (𝑐 + 3) (A.9) 𝐷𝑛∗ = 1 − 𝑃𝑛∗ = 1 − 𝑐4 (A.10) Π𝑅𝑂∗ = 𝑚∗ (𝐷𝑛)∗ = 18 (𝑐 − 1) 2 (A.11) Π𝑀𝑂∗ = 𝑤∗ (𝐷𝑛)∗ = 116 (𝑐 − 1) 2 . (A.12) B. Manufacturer Stackelberg The manufacturer is powerful and is a leader in the specific product category. Π𝑅 = (𝛾(𝑚 + 𝑤) − 𝑐)(−((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 + 𝛾)(𝑚 + 𝑤) + 𝑆𝛼𝑠+ 𝑆) + 𝑚((𝛾 − 1)𝜓(𝑚 + 𝑤) − 𝑚 − (𝑆 − 1)(𝛼𝑠 + 1) − 𝑤)𝛼𝑠 + 1 − 𝑘𝑆2 2 (B.1) 16 Mathematical Problems in Engineering We obtain the following results. Theorem B.1. If the baseline sales of the SB 𝛼𝑠, shelf space cost𝑘, and cross-price competition coefficient𝜓satisfy2𝑘𝜓 > 𝛼𝑠+1, then the retailer’s profit function Π𝑅 is jointly concave in 𝑚 and𝑆. Proof. The first- and second-order derivatives of Π𝑅 with respect to 𝑚 and 𝑆 are as follows: 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚2 = − 2(𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 1) 𝛼𝑠 + 1 < 0 (B.2) 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑆2 = −𝑘 < 0 (B.3) 𝜕Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚𝜕𝑆 = 𝛾 − 1 (B.4) 𝜕Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑆𝜕𝑚 = 𝛾 − 1. (B.5) The Hessian matrix can be formed as follows: 𝐻 = [[[[ [ 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚2 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚𝜕𝑆 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑆𝜕𝑚 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑆2 ]]]] ] = [[[ [ −2(1 + 𝛾 2 + (−1 + 𝛾)2𝜓) 1 + 𝛼𝑠 −1 + 𝛾 −1 + 𝛾 −𝑘 ]]] ] 𝜕2Π𝑅 (𝑚,𝑆) 𝜕𝑚2 = − 2(1 + 𝛾2+ (−1 + 𝛾)2𝜓) 1 + 𝛼𝑠 < 0. (B.6) Since 𝛼𝑠 ∈ (0,1), 𝜓 ∈ (0,1), 𝑘 > 0, 2𝑘𝜓 > 𝛼𝑠 + 1, then |𝐻| = 2𝑘(𝛾 2+ (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 1) 𝛼𝑠 + 1 − (𝛾 − 1) 2 > 0. (B.7) 𝐻 is a negative definite integral and the profit function is concave. By the concavity of ΠR, the first-order condition yields 𝜕Π𝑅 𝜕𝑚 = 0 ⇐⇒ 𝑚(𝑤,𝑆) = 𝑐𝛾𝜓 + 𝑐𝛾 − 𝑐𝜓 + 𝛼𝑠 ((𝛾 − 1)𝑆 + 1) + (𝛾 − 1)𝑆 − 2𝛾 2𝑤𝜓 − 2𝛾2𝑤 + 3𝛾𝑤𝜓 − 𝑤𝜓 − 𝑤 + 1 2(𝛾2 (𝜓 + 1) − 2𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1) (B.8) 𝜕Π𝑅 𝜕𝑆 = 0 ⇐⇒ 𝑆(𝑤,𝑚) = −𝑐 + (𝛾 − 1)𝑚 + 𝛾𝑤𝑘 . (B.9) Thus, 𝑚(𝑤) = −−𝑐𝛾 + 𝑐𝛾𝑘 + 𝛼𝑠 (−𝛾𝑐 + 𝑐 + 𝑘 + (𝛾 − 1)𝛾𝑤) + (𝛾 − 1)𝑘𝜓(𝑐 − 2𝛾𝑤+ 𝑤) + 𝑐 − 2𝛾 2𝑘𝑤 − 𝑘𝑤 + 𝑘 + 𝛾2𝑤 − 𝛾𝑤 (𝛾 − 1)2 − 2𝑘(𝛾2 + (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 1) + (𝛾 − 1)2𝛼𝑠 (B.10) 𝑆(𝑤) = −−𝑐(𝛾 2+ (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 𝛾 + 2) + 𝛾 + (𝛾 − 1)𝛼𝑠 + 𝑤(2𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 𝛾 + 1) − 1 (𝛾 − 1)2− 2𝑘(𝛾2 + (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 1) + (𝛾 − 1)2𝛼𝑠 . (B.11) Then, Π𝑀 = (𝑤 − 𝑐)(𝜓(𝛾(𝑚 + 𝑤) − 𝑚 − 𝑤) − 𝑚 + (1 − 𝑆)(𝛼𝑠 + 1) − 𝑤)𝛼𝑠 + 1 . (B.12) Substituting (B.10) and (B.11) into (B.12) yields Π𝑀 = (𝑀1 + 𝑀2 + 𝑀3)(𝑐 − 𝑤)𝑀4 (B.13) where 𝑀1 = (𝑐((𝛾 − 1)2𝑘𝜓2 + (𝛾 − 1)2𝑘𝜓 + 𝛾(𝛾 − 𝑘 + 2) + 1)) 𝑀2 = 𝛼𝑠(𝑐(𝛾 + 1)2 + 𝑘(2𝛾2 (𝜓 + 1) − 3𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1) − (𝛾 − 1)𝛾𝛼𝑠− 2(𝛾(𝛾 + 𝛾𝑤 + 𝑤 − 1))) Mathematical Problems in Engineering 17 𝑀3 = 𝛾 + 𝑘(2𝛾2 (𝜓 + 1) − 3𝛾𝜓 − 𝑤(−𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1)2 + 𝜓 + 1) − 𝛾(𝛾 + 2(𝛾 + 1)𝑤) 𝑀4 = (𝛼𝑠+ 1)((𝛾 − 1)2 − 2(𝑘(𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 1)) + (𝛾 − 1)2𝛼𝑠) . (B.14) The first-order optimality conditions are 𝑤∗ = 𝑤1 + 𝑤2 + 𝑤3𝑤4 (B.15) where 𝑤1 = 𝑐((𝛾 + 1)(3𝛾 + 1) + (𝛾 − 1)((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1)(𝑘(2𝜓 + 1))) 𝑤2 = 𝛼𝑠((3𝛾 + 1)(𝑐(𝛾 + 1)) + 2𝛾 + 2𝛾2 (𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘 − 1) − 3𝛾𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘 − (𝛾 − 1)𝛾𝛼𝑠) 𝑤3 = 𝛾 + 𝛾2 (2(𝑘(𝜓 + 1)) − 1) − 3𝛾𝑘𝜓+ 𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘 𝑤4 = 2(2𝛾(𝛾 + 1) + 𝑘(−𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1)2 + 2(𝛾(𝛾 + 1))𝛼𝑠). (B.16) Substituting (B.15) into (B.10) and (B.11) yields 𝑚∗ = −𝑐(𝑚1+ (𝑘 2 (𝑚2− 𝑚3))) + 𝛼𝑠 (𝑐 ∗ 𝑚7+ (𝛾(𝑚11− 𝑚10))𝛼𝑠 − 3 ∗ 𝑚6+ 𝑚8+ 𝑚9) + 𝑚4+ 𝑚5− 𝑚6 𝑚12∗ 𝑚13 (B.17) where 𝑚1 = 3(𝛾(𝛾 + 1))(𝛾 − 1)2 + 𝑘((𝛾(−5𝛾3+ 18𝛾 − 16))𝜓 + 𝛾(−6𝛾3− 5𝛾2 + 𝛾 − 7) + 2(𝛾 − 1)4𝜓2 + 3𝜓 + 1) 𝑚2 = −2(𝛾(𝛾((𝛾 − 5)𝛾 + 8) − 7))𝜓 + 𝛾(2(𝛾 − 1) ⋅ 𝛾 + 3) − 6𝜓 − 1 𝑚3 = 3(𝛾 − 1)2 (𝛾(2𝛾 − 3) + 3)𝜓2 − 4(𝛾 − 1)4𝜓3 𝑚4 = 𝑘2 (−4𝛾4 (𝜓 + 1)2 + 12𝛾3 (𝜓(𝜓 + 1)) − 𝛾2 (𝜓(11𝜓 + 8) + 4) + 2𝛾(𝜓(𝜓 + 1)) + (𝜓 + 1)2) 𝑚5 = 2𝑘(𝛾(𝛾(𝛾(2𝛾(𝜓 + 1) − 5𝜓 − 2) + 4𝜓 + 3) − 𝜓 + 1)) 𝑚6 = (𝛾 − 1)2𝛾2 𝑚7 = 6(𝛾(𝛾 + 1))(𝛾 − 1)2 + 𝑘((𝛾(−5𝛾3+ 18𝛾 − 16))𝜓 + 𝛾(−6𝛾3− 5𝛾2 + 𝛾 − 7) + 2(𝛾 − 1)4𝜓2 + 3𝜓 + 1) 𝑚8 = 𝑘2 (−4𝛾4 (𝜓 + 1)2 + 12𝛾3 (𝜓(𝜓 + 1)) − 𝛾2 (𝜓(11𝜓 + 8) + 4) + 2𝛾(𝜓(𝜓 + 1)) + (𝜓 + 1)2) 𝑚9 = 4𝑘(𝛾(𝛾(𝛾(2𝛾(𝜓 + 1) − 5𝜓 − 2) + 4𝜓 + 3) − 𝜓 + 1)) 𝑚10 = 3𝑐(𝛾 + 1)(𝛾 − 1)2 + 3𝛾(𝛾 − 1)2 − 𝛾(𝛾 − 1)2 ⋅ 𝛼𝑠 𝑚11 = 2(𝑘(𝛾(𝛾(2𝛾(𝜓 + 1) − 5𝜓 − 2) + 4𝜓 + 3) − 𝜓 + 1)) 𝑚12 = 2((𝛾 − 1)2 − 2(𝑘(𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 1)) + (𝛾 − 1)2𝛼𝑠) 𝑚13 = 2𝛾(𝛾 + 1) + 𝑘(−𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1)2 + 2(𝛾(𝛾 + 1))𝛼𝑠 (B.18) 𝑆∗ = 𝑆1𝑆2 − 𝑆3 (𝑆4 + 𝑆5) 𝑆6𝑆7 (B.19) where 𝑆1 = 𝑐(𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 𝛾 + 2) − 𝛾 − (𝛾 − 1)𝛼𝑠 + 1 𝑆2 = (𝛾 − 1)2 − 2(𝑘(𝛾2 + (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 1)) + (𝛾 − 1)2𝛼𝑠 𝑆3 = 𝛾2 (𝜓 + 2) − 2𝛾𝜓 + 𝛾 + 𝜓 + 1 18 Mathematical Problems in Engineering 𝑆4 = 𝑐((𝛾 + 1)(3𝛾 + 1) + (𝛾 − 1)((𝛾 − 1)𝜓 − 1)(𝑘(2𝜓 + 1))) + 𝛾 + 𝛾2 (2(𝑘(𝜓 + 1)) − 1) − 3𝛾𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘 𝑆5 = 𝛼𝑠((3𝛾 + 1)(𝑐(𝛾 + 1)) + 2𝛾 + 2𝛾2 (𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘 − 1) − 3𝛾𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘𝜓 + 𝑘 − (𝛾 − 1)𝛾𝛼𝑠) 𝑆6 = 2((𝛾 − 1)2 − 2(𝑘(𝛾2+ (𝛾 − 1)2𝜓 + 1)) + (𝛾 − 1)2𝛼𝑠) 𝑆7 = 2𝛾(𝛾 + 1) + 𝑘(−𝛾𝜓 + 𝜓 + 1)2 + 2(𝛾(𝛾 + 1)) ⋅ 𝛼𝑠. (B.20) Thus, 𝑃𝑛∗ = 𝑤∗ + 𝑚∗ (B.21) 𝑃𝑠∗ = 𝛾𝑃𝑛∗ (B.22) 𝐷𝑛∗ = 11 + 𝛼𝑠 ((1 + 𝛼𝑠)(1 − 𝑆 ∗) − 𝑃𝑛∗ + 𝜓(𝑃𝑠∗− 𝑃𝑛∗)) (B.23) 𝐷𝑠∗ = 11 + 𝛼𝑠 ((1 + 𝛼𝑠)𝑆 ∗− 𝑃𝑠∗+ 𝜓(𝑃𝑛∗− 𝑃𝑠∗)) (B.24) Π𝑀∗ = (𝑤∗− 𝑐)𝐷𝑛∗ (B.25) Π𝑅∗ = 𝑚∗𝐷𝑛∗ + (𝑃𝑠∗− 𝑐)𝐷𝑠∗− 12𝑘(𝑆 ∗)2 . (B.26) Data Availability The data used to support the findings of this study are in- cluded within the article. Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. Authors’ Contributions All authors made substantial contributions to this paper. Yongrui Duan developed the original idea and provided guidance. Zhixin Mao designed the game and calculated the process. Jiazhen Huo provided additional guidance and advice. All authors have read and approved the final manu- script. 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SAFER, M.D.1 This review of recently published pharmaceutical industry–sponsored comparative psychotropic drug trials aims to classify apparent design and reporting modifications that favor the sponsor’s product. The modifications have been grouped into 13 discrete categories, and representative examples of each are presented. Strong circumstantial evidence suggests that marketing goals led to these adjustments. The consequences of marketing influences on comparative psychopharmacology trials are discussed in terms of conflicts of interest, the integrity of the scientific literature, and costs to consumers, as well as their impact on physician practice. —J Nerv Ment Dis 190:583–592, 2002 Occasionally, a pharmaceutical product enters the market that has some distinct advantages over its predecessors. Soon thereafter, other companies manufacture and patent a similar drug, referred to as a me-too drug. Then, an intense competition for market share develops for which the drug’s price is not the central issue (Kessler et al., 1994; Tarabusi and Vickery, 1998). An important aspect of this com- petition is the publication of clinical trials showing the superiority of one drug over another that has a niche in the same market. The purpose of that re- search is not only to show the relative superiority of the company’s product, but also to show the draw- backs of the competing drug. The resulting publication of pharmaceutical com- pany–sponsored comparative drug research now oc- cupies a big share of the medical literature. It is fueled by marketing aims, so it is no wonder that an estimated 89 to 98% of comparative drug treatment studies funded by pharmaceutical companies yield results that are favorable to their company’s product (Cho and Bero, 1996; Davidson,1986). Furthermore, such sponsored research generally shows their product to be safer than its rival (Mandelkern, 1999; Rochon et al., 1994b). To achieve the aim of demonstrating comparative superiority, certain design adjustments and reporting modifications are frequently utilized. These can in- clude the following: 1) using a dose of the comparable drug that is outside of the standard clinical range, 2) altering the usual dosing schedule of the competing drug, 3) using misleading research measurement scales, 4) picking endpoints post hoc, 5) masking un- favorable side effects, 6) repeatedly publishing the same or similar findings for impact, 7) selectively high- lighting findings favorable to the sponsor, 8) editorial- izing in the abstract, 9) publishing the obvious, 10) statistical obfuscation, 11) selecting subjects and a time frame designed to achieve a favorable outcome, 12) withholding unfavorable results, and 13) masked sponsorship. These research modifications will be presented in this review in more detail with examples. Then, the broader and untoward ramifications of competitive drug company–sponsored clinical research will be presented. This review of the psychopharmacology literature, primarily from the U.S., is selective and does not aim to present a comprehensive or a balanced perspec- tive of all pharmaceutical company–sponsored psych- otropic research. Some have argued that bias in the literature is not infrequent and includes placebo- controlled registration trials and some government- sponsored research (Conley, 2001; Gorelick,1998; Moynihan, 2002). Nonetheless, this report focuses on industry-sponsored comparative trials because these contain far more numerous and prominent examples of design and reporting modifications and because industry-sponsored studies now dominate the compar- ative drug trial literature (Angell, 2001; Davidoff, 2002). Design Adjustments and Reporting Modifications Using Doses Outside the Usual Range for Competitive Advantage An obvious example of drug company–sponsored research designed to prove a point is that of a sec- 1Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, 7702 Dunmanway, Dundalk, MD 21222. Send reprint requests to Dr. Safer. 0022-3018/02/1909 –583 Vol. 190, No. 9 THE JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 2002 by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins DOI: 10.1097/01.NMD.0000030522.74800.0D 583 ond-generation neuroleptic compared to a relatively high dose of haloperidol. At least eight studies spon- sored by three different drug companies have com- pared their second-generation neuroleptic drug to a fixed high dose of haloperidol of 20 mg per day (Chouinard et al., 1993; Deo et al., 1990; Emsley 1999; Goldstein et al., 1999; Marder and Meibach, 1994; Simpson and Lindenmeyer, 1997) or to an av- erage haloperidol dose greater than 20 mg per day (Lapierre et al., 1990; Patris et al., 1990). Using such an unusually high dose virtually ensures that the second-generation product will have fewer extrapy- ramidal side effects (EPS) than haloperidol. In com- parative studies between second-generation neuro- leptics, unusually high fixed or average doses of risperidone (7.2 and 8 mg/day) have also been used to achieve similar results (Peuskens et al., 1999; Tran et al., 1997b). Doses of haloperidol exceeding the customary lev- els of 4 to 10 mg/day produce no better clinical results than do doses above that range (Baldessarini et al., 1988; Mc Evoy et al., 1991; Rifkin et al., 1991), but they induce more EPS (Mc Evoy et al., 1991; Rosebush and Mazurek, 1999: Stone et al., 1995; Wong et al., 1999) and lead to far more treatment drop-outs (Beasley et al., 1999; Chouinard et al., 1993; Tollefson et al., 1997b; Van Putten et al., 1990). Likewise, doses of risperidone above 6 mg/day pro- duce more side effects and no greater therapeutic results than standard doses of 4 to 5 mg/day (Love et al., 1999; Nyberg et al., 1999). Furthermore, a recent meta-analysis clearly revealed that doses of haloper- idol greater than 12 mg/day produced significantly fewer favorable symptom scores than haloperidol at doses of less than 12 mg/day (Geddes et al., 2000). Substantially Altering the Dose Schedule of the Comparison Drug for Competitive Advantage Commercially sponsored studies comparing two antidepressant drugs often schedule an unusually rapid and substantial dose increase in the one not manufactured by the sponsoring company. For ex- ample, in comparative studies of antidepressants, the dose of fluoxetine was increased to 40 mg/day in over one half of the subjects at 3 weeks (Geerts et al., 1999), to an average of 47 mg/day during weeks 4 to 8 (Rudolph and Feiger, 1999), and to an average of 40 mg/day in 10 of the 21 subjects at 4 weeks (Armitage et al., 1997). Likewise, sertraline was in- creased to an average of 148 mg/day at 6 weeks (Feiger et al., 1996), and paroxetine was increased to 50 mg/day in one third of the cases by 7 weeks (Kiev and Feiger, 1997). Doses and dose schedules beyond the usual range, particularly early in treatment, char- acteristically bring an increased rate of side ef- fects—as was the case in the studies referred to above. Sometimes in comparative studies, the company- supported protocol used a relatively low dose of its own sponsored drug or the competing drug to accen- tuate efficacy or side effect differences from its rival. Examples include a slightly high but reasonable mean dose of 15.7 mg/day of olanzapine compared with a clearly substandard mean dose of 201 mg/day of clo- zapine for weeks 2 through 18 (Bitter et al., 2000), and a low mean dose of 102 mg/day of fluvoxamine compared to a moderately high mean dose of 34 mg/day of fluoxetine after week 7 (Rapaport et al., 1996). Another skewed design can be achieved by altering the customary timing of the drug adminis- tration. For example, in one study comparing parox- etine with amitriptyline, the amitriptyline was ad- ministered twice daily, which led to a prominent degree of daytime sleepiness (Christiansen et al., 1996). Using Self-Serving Measurement Scales and Making Misleading Conclusions From Measurement Findings Some researchers use unpublished rating scales, and as a group, these are said to constitute “a major source of bias in randomized controlled clinical tri- als” (Marshall et al., 2000). Clearly, industry-spon- sored researchers use rating scales that will attain the most favorable result for their product (Sheehan, 1999). In studies of risperidone versus placebo and haloper- idol, drug company–sponsored researchers utilized the “worst EPS score” to compare differential EPS changes (Chouinard et al., 1993; Lemmens et al., 1999; Marder and Meibach, 1994; Simpson and Lindenmeyer, 1997). They reported that after a brief washout period, risperidone at doses of 2 to 6 mg/day given to chroni- cally medicated schizophrenic patients evidenced the same degree of EPS as placebo. The company’s mar- keting personnel widely circulated this result (Janssen Pharmaceutica Research Foundation, 1996; Borison et al., 1992), which misled many to assume that risperi- done at doses of 2 to 6 mg/day did not cause EPS, because obviously a placebo given to treatment-naive subjects would not cause them. However, risperidone can indeed cause EPS in customary doses (Ho et al., 1999; Lane et al., 2000; Mullen et al., 1999; Rosebush and Mazurek, 1999). Using a “worst EPS score” can give quite different and potentially misleading results compared to final total EPS scores or last recorded SAFER584 observations (Tollefson et al., 1997a). Fortunately, most investigators at this time now use total and last observation scores to evaluate EPS rating changes from baseline (Bondolfi et al., 1998; Marder et al., 1997; Wirshing et al., 1999). Another example involves defining treatment suc- cess using a 20% or greater decline in a symptom severity rating score. Patients with schizophrenia may achieve a 20% decline in the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale scores and yet remain “profoundly dis- abled” (Gilbody et al., 2002). A further example in- volves defining treatment success as at least a 25% decline from baseline on a rating scale score for symptom severity for youths with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In an industry-spon- sored study, the majority of the groups that received the company product and methylphenidate achieved this goal and were thus deemed equivalent in their response. However, the cutoff score was so modest that 32% of the placebo subjects also met this stan- dard (Heilgenstein et al., 2000), which was more than double the customary placebo response in ADHD stimulant studies (Greenhill et al., 2001). Pre- sumably, if a standard symptom reduction cutoff score had been used, the reported drug equivalency would not have been achieved. Selecting the Major Findings and Endpoints Post Hoc Kessler (1992) refers to comparative drug studies wherein “the putative advantage is related to an endpoint that was not the primary hypothesis tested by the study” (p. 950). He adds, “such claims of superiority often depend on an analysis of multiple endpoints, a practice often referred to as data dredging.” Thus, it is unclear whether a seven-week study had been originally designed to be an eight- week study. More suggestive is the side effect com- parison of venlafaxine and fluoxetine that was done one week into treatment (Silva, 1998), which sug- gests that something was left out that would apply to a more meaningful assessment period. As Schooler (2000) pointed out in her review of two industry-sponsored comparative drug trials, “perhaps in each case the researchers examined all the scores and reported only those that looked best for their drug” (p. 13). Carpenter (2001) likewise noted that industry studies “showing a superior effect of the spon- sor’s drug may be the result of scores of analyses searching multiple variables and reporting those that show an advantage” (p. 13). Tamminga (2000) similarly observed that in industry-sponsored stud- ies “the distinction between the a priori hypothesis and the secondary analyses is often lost” and a “whole rash of secondary analyses are used to present the results” (p. 5). Masking Unfavorable Side Effects Reports of sexual side effects from selective sero- tonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants range from 2% to 73% depending primarily on whether side effects were elicited merely by open- ended questioning or by a detailed inquiry (Modell et al., 1997; Montejo-Gonzalez et al., 1997; Zajecka et al., 1999). Reports by sponsoring pharmaceutical companies tend to downplay sexual side effects of SSRIs by using open-ended or nonspecific questions about side effects (Zajecka et al., 1999). In one in- stance, a drug company–sponsored review covering over 3,000 subjects treated with SSRIs simply did not list any sexual side effects on its 23-item side effect table (Preskorn, 1997). At the opposite ex- treme, researchers from competing companies em- phasize the high rate of sexual side effects with SSRIs when their drug has a lower rate. These in- vestigators ask specific questions in order to bring out the high rate of sexual side effects that charac- terize SSRI treatment so as to favor their product’s side effect profile (Croft et al., 1999). Repeatedly Publishing the Same or Similar Positive Studies to Increase the Impact Obviously, pharmaceutical manufacturers want to make sure that reports of their drug’s advantage over competing drugs in sponsored research receive wide circulation. Their supported researchers consequently submit relatively similar findings to different journals, each with a slightly different emphasis but stressing the main themes. They also publish reviews of these same findings (Gilbody and Song; 2000; Huston and Moher, 1996). Examples repeatedly showing an EPS advantage with one second-generation neuroleptic over high-dose haloperidol include prominently over- lapping articles by one pharmaceutical company–sup- ported team (Beasley et al., 1999; Lane et al., 2000; Tollefson et al., 1997b; Tran et al., 1997a,1998) and a very similar duplication of articles from another firm’s second-generation neuroleptic—which is well described by Huston and Moher (1996). Still another pharmaceutical company followed this same pat- tern, sponsoring five studies comparing sertraline or fluoxetine with bupropion SR in order to reiterate the point about their drug having fewer sexual side effects than SSRI drugs (Coleman et al., 1999; Gil- DESIGN AND REPORTING MODIFICATIONS 585 body and Song, 2000; Kavoussi et al., 1997; Segraves et al., 2000; Walker et al., 1993). An editorial in JAMA by Rennie (1999) discussed in depth this problem of publication duplication. Selectively Highlighting Findings Favorable to the Sponsor The selective reporting of the findings in industry- sponsored trials has merited criticism from experi- enced investigators (Carpenter, 2002; Davidoff et al., 2001). In this regard, Schooler is quoted as follows: “They emphasize those parts of the data that are most favorable to their drug” (Moukheiber, 2001, p. 268). As an example, in the placebo-controlled clin- ical trial comparing the effect of two antidepres- sants with each other to reduce anxiety symptoms, the abstract totally ignored the fact that the placebo effect for anxiety was in most respects comparable to that of the two antidepressants and that it re- sulted in far fewer side effects (Trivedi et al., 2001). Likewise, two studies mentioned an early treatment response of the sponsor’s drug in their abstract but did not mention that this relative benefit was no longer present by the end of the study (Claus et al., 1992; Wheatley et al., 1998). Editorializing for the Sponsor in the Abstract In the seven-week study comparing fluvoxamine and paroxetine, the patients receiving paroxetine were given (at week 7) a substantial mean dose of 36 mg/day, whereas patients receiving fluvoxamine were given a relatively low mean dose (at week 7) of 102 mg/day. Certain side effects were understand- ably higher in the paroxetine group. In their conclu- sions, the authors advised, “when a patient has dif- ficulty tolerating one SSRI, the clinician may choose to change to a different agent within the same class” (Kiev and Feiger, 1997). In another study, risperidone treatment was shown to be comparable in efficacy and side effects to pimo- zide in the treatment of Tourette’s disorder. Two rela- tively minor differences favored risperidone, leading the authors to conclude that “risperidone may become the first-line treatment of Tourette’s disorder, owing to a more favorable efficacy and tolerability profile” (Bruggeman et al., 2001, p. 50). Publishing the Obvious to Emphasize a Point It is known from placebo-controlled clinical trials that certain second-generation antidepressants have far fewer sexual side effects than SSRIs. Thus, it is not necessary to repeatedly compare that side effect between these drugs; the result is obvious before- hand. Likewise, it has long been known that tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) are a risk for older adults with heart disease (Roose, 1992). Thus, the compar- ison of paroxetine with nortriptyline in older adults showing more cardiovascular problems with the lat- ter drug (Nelson et al., 1999) does not add new information to the literature. In this respect, Shimm and Spece (1991) express concern about “scientifi- cally uninteresting and inconsequential clinical tri- als” (p. 150). Kessler et al. (1994) view such scien- tifically unnecessary trials as “thinly veiled attempts to entice doctors to prescribe a new drug being marketed by the company. . .” (p. 1351). Touting Nonsignificant but Favorable Differences and Negating Dropout Differences Statistically Medical journal supplements provide numerous other examples of studies with small and modest- sized samples that report an advantage of one drug over another but avoid analyzing the difference statistically (Bero et al., 1992; Greene et al., 2000; Hotopf et al., 1997; Rochon et al., 1994a). One exam- ple of this frequent pattern is from a paroxetine- clomipramine comparative study. A statistically in- significant difference was used to justify the author’s conclusion that paroxetine was “better tol- erated” (Lecrubier and Judge, 1997). One technique to accentuate a nonsignificant but supposedly favorable finding in a comparative study is to view it only in terms of relative risk (without pre- senting a range or confidence interval). This technique applied to a small sample often misleads and has re- portedly influenced physician prescribing patterns (Bobbio et al., 1994; Brett, 1989, Feinstein, 1992). When there is a substantial dropout of subjects before the end of a clinical trial, industry-sponsored researchers commonly use the last observation car- ried forward method to include the dropout data in the total results. This approach assumes a steady trajectory of the available findings from the drop- outs—which is seldom the case (Allison and Casey, 2001). Consequently, it is usually preferable to avoid this form of statistical analysis (Schooler, 2000). Selecting Subjects and Altering the Duration of Trials to Achieve a Favorable Outcome Treatment resistance in schizophrenia research is not well defined (Brenner et al., 1990). Comparisons of SAFER586 second-generation neuroleptics with one another and with haloperidol in short-term drug company–spon- sored clinical trials of so-called treatment-resistant schizophrenic patients have resulted in findings that suggest that a number of second-generation neurolep- tics (aside from clozapine) are very beneficial for these patients. Surprisingly, after only 6 and 8 weeks of treatment, 35% to 65% of patients so identified were found to respond to each of the new medications. However, these studies included a sizable number of patients whose treatment resistance was highly ques- tionable (Marder, 1999). Bondolfi et al. (1998), for ex- ample, included both treatment-resistant and treat- ment-“intolerant” patients, and one half of the patients studied by Breier and Hamilton (1999) were outpa- tients (presumably less emotionally disturbed than inpatients). The relatively brief clinical trials with olanzapine and risperidone suggested that these drugs were as effec- tive with treatment-resistant patients as clozapine, the present “gold standard” of such treatment (Conley et al., 1999a). However, it must be noted that clozapine treatment may take up to one year to achieve maxi- mum benefit (Lieberman et al., 1994). When drug treat- ment comparisons of an even longer duration (1 to 2 years) are made with chronically impaired schizo- phrenic patients, clozapine to an even greater extent produces the best results (Conley et al., 1999b). Withholding Unfavorable Results Drug company–sponsored clinical drug trials are for the most part not publicly recorded (Rennie, 1999), so that unfavorable trials can be kept from publication (Friedberg et al., 1999; Goldberg, 1999; Gwynne, 1999; Hillman et al., 1991; Lauritsen et al., 1987). This unfortunately is still a fairly common practice (Quick, 2001). The sponsoring company’s control of publication is aided by confidentiality agreements signed by the investigators before any project is financed (Goldberg, 1999; Gwynne, 1999; Dickersin et al., 1987; Rennie, 1997; Shenk, 1999). Masking Sponsorship In multisite clinical trial studies, the pharmaceuti- cal company designs the research— usually in con- sultation with some of the outside team—and then all the clinical investigators carry out the protocol (Council on Scientific Affairs, 1990). In some in- stances, the designers of the research do not put their names on the study, which makes the role of the pharmaceutical company less clear. This prac- tice has been referred to as “ghost authorship” (Flanagin et al., 1998; Rennie and Flanagin, 1994). Related to this concern is the fact that some authors still do not disclose the financial sponsorship of the research (Krimsky et al., 1998). Broader Drawbacks of Research Linked to Promotion Lowers the Scientific Quality of Published Research Friis (1999), in a lead editorial for Acta Psychiat- rica Scandinavica, wrote that “the need of a com- pany to increase sales of a new drug easily creates a climate in which it is virtually impossible for the company’s own research department to produce un- biased studies of that drug” (p. 157). The research department, in the view of some, might then “. . .rep- resent a subgroup of the marketing division, with the aim of producing scientific arguments for promoting sales.” Drug company–sponsored symposia (published as supplements) are far less carefully peer reviewed than standard research reports, and their papers are consistently appraised as more misleading than are others in the published medical literature (Bero et al., 1992; Cho and Bero, 1996; Rochon et al., 1994a). Leads Physicians to Alter Their Prescribing Options Studies show that drug company promotion of their own sponsored published research findings— often containing a selective presentation of the relative mer- its of their products and the drawbacks of competitive products—successfully influences physician prescrib- ing practices (Chren and Landefeld, 1994; Spingarn et al., 1996; Ziegler et al., 1995). The use of “design- adjusted,” drug company–sponsored medical publica- tions that superficially appear like more scientifically solid research has been shown specifically to mislead physicians, resulting often in the prescription of rela- tively expensive and sometimes less appropriate drugs (Bero et al., 1992; Caudill et al., 1996; Spingarn et al., 1996). Drug company–sponsored articles reporting positive clinical trials in medical journals frequently convey to physicians the impression that their prescribed phar- maceuticals produce more favorable results than is the case in community practice. For example, studies of brief and extended drug company–sponsored clinical trials with olanzapine (N �2000) report a dropout rate due to weight gain of less than one half of one percent (Littrell et al., 2000; Tollefson et al., 1997b; Tran et al., 1999), which suggests that it was not a problem. Yet a DESIGN AND REPORTING MODIFICATIONS 587 nationwide survey of 277 psychotic outpatients treated primarily with atypical neuroleptics reported that weight gain caused at least 25% of the medication nonadherence (Weiden et al., 2000), particularly for the obese, who were three times more nonadherent for this reason than were those of normal weight (Weiden, 2001). A second example of a misleading dependence on sponsored clinical trial data pertains to desmopres- sin for the treatment of nocturnal enuresis. In a com- pany-supported comparative clinical trial, both a bed- wetting alarm and desmopressin had relatively similar results during the treatment period, but no follow-up assessments were made (Longstaffe et al., 2000). How- ever, two independent studies reporting the aftermath of similar comparative trials revealed that 3 to 12 months after the treatment ended only 10% to 18% who were treated with desmopressin ceased their enuresis, versus 42% to 56% who had been treated with the alarm (Monda and Husmann, 1995: Schulman et al., 2000; Wille, 1986). Adds Unnecessarily to the Cost of Prescription Drugs A me-too drug is a drug that has slight chemical differences from a frequently prescribed innovator drug so that the latter’s patent is not infringed. Me- too drugs represent over 75% of all new drugs and are among the most heavily marketed (Garattini, 1997). The cost of marketing prescribed drugs in the U.S. was over 12 billion dollars in 1993, which ex- ceeds the pharmaceutical industry’s expenditure for basic research (Woosley, 1994). The cost of pharma- ceuticals has risen far more than other products in the U.S. economy and is a particular burden for those senior citizens whose only medical coverage is Medicare (Soumerai and Ross-Degnan, 1999). Tends to Have a Corrupting Effect on Researchers The enticement of making a large amount of money by participating in drug company–sponsored clinical trials is not to be underestimated (Eichenwald and Kolata, 1999a; Eichenwald and Kolata, 1999b). Along with this involvement and financial aid go ever-present pressures to endorse or support the company’s prod- uct (Nemeroff, 1998). Tends to Distort the Knowledge Base and the Terminology in the Field The findings from a large number of comparative clinical trials that are financed by pharmaceutical companies are commonly included in literature re- views and meta-analyses. Many are scientifically weak. Their inclusion in a review may well alter the conclusions of a reviewer (and therefore the read- er). For example, Stahl (1999) and Ho et al. (1999), citing a drug company–sponsored study, accept the reported but misleading finding that “low”-dose ris- peridone has the same likelihood as placebo to in- duce EPS. Likewise, certain terms that reflect a drug compa- ny’s claim may enter into common medical usage. For example, the term ‘mood stabilizer’ is commonly applied in pharmaceutical company–sponsored studies to certain anticonvulsant and neuroleptic drugs as though they benefited mood beyond their acute and short-term anti-manic effects (Sobo, 1999). The sheer weight of the company’s many suppos- edly favorable studies has its own impact. The pos- itive comparative findings of company-financed clin- ical trial research are widely disseminated and aggressively promoted. The fact that these findings are published in nationally circulating medical jour- nals suggests to physicians and to the public that they have high-level approval from within the med- ical establishment. Limits Research Autonomy Confidentiality agreements between the researcher and the sponsor delay research reporting and occa- sionally impede publication of findings deemed unde- sirable by the sponsoring company (Blumenthal, 1996; Chalmers, 1990; Dickersin et al., 1987; Phillips and Hoey, 1998; Rennie, 1997, Shuchman, 1998). Influences Physicians to Decrease Their Prescriptions of Less Costly Medications That Have Equivalent Efficacy Once second-generation neuroleptics became viewed as first-line medication treatments, physi- cians increasingly bypassed their neuroleptic prede- cessors— ones that, though still very useful, are no longer promoted. First-generation neuroleptics as a group cause far less weight gain than their succes- sors (Allison et al., 1999) and their side effect pro- files are much better established. A recent meta- analysis of available data comparing conventional with second-generation neuroleptics by the National Schizophrenia Guideline Development Group of Great Britain concluded that they had equivalent efficacy and tolerability. Therefore, the group rec- SAFER588 ommended that “conventional antipsychotics should usually be used in the initial treatment of an episode of schizophrenia unless the patient has previously not responded to these drugs or has unacceptable extrapyramidal side effects” (Geddes et al., 2000). In support of this, a four-week, independently funded study recently revealed that modest average doses of haloperidol (3.7 mg/day; N � 212) were equally as effective as average doses of risperidone (3.2 mg/ day; N � 34) for neuroleptic-naive psychotic pa- tients, and that at these doses, the two neuroleptics had similar results on the development of EPS (Rosebush and Mazurek, 1999). In like manner, independent reviewers have con- cluded that tricyclic antidepressants—whose pro- portional use has prominently decreased in the 1990s (Hirshfeld, 1998)—are as efficacious for the treatment of depression as SSRIs (Anderson, 2000), although they are far more hazardous in overdose. Furthermore, for certain depressive subtypes (e.g., melancholia), the first-generation antidepressants appear to be more effective than SSRIs (Parker et al., 2001). Nonetheless, both second-generation an- tidepressants and second-generation neuroleptics are routinely reported to be “first-line agents” by opinion leaders who wield great influence when they present industry-sponsored studies at profes- sional meetings. Conclusion The concerns raised herein relate largely to the very expensive, often misleading, and commonly wasteful drug trial comparisons of similarly effec- tive drugs that are sponsored by major pharmaceu- tical companies. In response to these concerns, nu- merous articles and editorials written over the last two decades in medical journals have focused on: “conflicts of interest,” “scientific misconduct” (Chalmers, 1990), “is medicine for sale?” (Angell, 2000a), “commercial sources of influence” (Avorn et al., 1982), and “the industrialization of clinical re- search” (Rettig, 2000). Furthermore, ethical practice guidelines have been written by the Food and Drug Administration and professional medical organiza- tions to limit conflicts of interest between physi- cians and pharmaceutical company representatives (Goldfinger, 1990; Zappala, 1998). Although legal restraints have curtailed some exces- sive industry financial incentives to physicians, the financial power of the big pharmaceutical companies continues to make them far and away the dominant vendors of clinical research (Bodenheimer, 2000; Silversides, 1998). 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Pro- gram effects have been difficult to measure, but, because women frequently quit their jobs after being harassed, programs that reduce harassment should help firms retain current and aspiring women managers. Thus, effective programs should be followed by increases in women managers. We analyze data from 805 companies over 32 y to explore how new sexual harassment programs affect the representation of white, black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women in management. We find support for several propositions. First, sexual harassment grievance proce- dures, shown in surveys to incite retaliation without satisfying complainants, are followed by decreases in women managers. Second, training for managers, which encourages managers to look for signs of trouble and intervene, is followed by increases in women managers. Third, employee training, which proscribes specific behaviors and signals that male trainees are potential perpetrators, is followed by decreases in women managers. Two propositions specify how management composition moderates program effects. One, because women are more likely to believe harassment complaints and less likely to respond negatively to training, in firms with more women managers, programs work better. Two, in firms with more women managers, harassment programs may activate group threat and backlash against some groups of women. Positive and negative program effects are found in different sorts of workplaces. sexual harassment | workforce diversity | grievance procedure | harassment training In 1998, the Supreme Court vetted the two most popular cor-porate sexual harassment programs, sexual harassment griev- ance procedures and training. By then, 95% of companies had grievance procedures and 74% had training (1). It is hard to know whether these programs have helped, because harassment program effects, and harassment itself, are notoriously difficult to measure. Training and grievance systems may appear to backfire because, by increasing recognition of harassment, they increase complaints (2, 3). Surveys may not pick up harassment in workplaces where it is common because rampant harassment can foster psychological denial (4). While harassment is hard to measure, and thus program effects are hard to gauge, some studies suggest that grievance procedures and training may not reduce harassment. Early evidence came from surveys of federal workers in 1980, 1987, and 1994. Training and grievance proto- cols were virtually unknown in 1980, but, by 1987, three-quarters of federal workers had completed training, and, by 1994, four- fifths knew how to file a grievance. Did harassment decline? When asked about six specific forms of harassment, 42% of women reported in both 1980 and 1987 that they had been harassed in the past 2 y. In 1994, 44% reported the same (5–7). Much of the subsequent research also suggests that sexual ha- rassment grievance procedures and training may be managerial snake oil. We review this research to develop predictions. To assess whether harassment grievance procedures and training for managers and employees have reduced harassment we estimate the effects of these programs on the share of women in management. Because it often causes women to leave their jobs (4, 7, 8), harassment should reduce women in management. Programs that reduce harassment should increase women in management. We develop five predictions based on laboratory and field studies. The first concerns sexual harassment grievance proce- dures, which give victims a formal avenue for filing complaints. Survey research points to four problems. First, women distrust grievance procedures and rarely file complaints (9). Second, formal complaints rarely lead to the transfer or removal of the harasser (9, 10). Third, women who do file complaints face retaliation—66% of them, according to one survey of federal workers (11). Finally, the adversarial grievance process itself can harm victims; studies comparing women who file complaints to women who keep quiet show worse career, mental health, and health outcomes for those who file (7, 8). Grievance procedures should make it more likely that women will leave their jobs, re- ducing women in management. The second prediction concerns sexual harassment training for managers which, while little studied itself, resembles bystander intervention training in important ways. It treats trainees as victims’ allies, reviewing how to prevent harassment, recognize its signs, intervene to stop it, and use grievance processes (12). “If you see something, say something” curriculum has been studied extensively among college students and military personnel. A metaanalysis of campus field studies finds that it increases reported trainee efficacy, intention to intervene, and helping be- havior (13). One study showed increased intention to intervene and Significance Do corporate sexual harassment programs reduce harassment? Those that do should boost the share of women in management, because harassment causes women to quit. Sexual harassment grievance procedures incite retaliation, according to surveys, and our analyses show that they are followed by reductions in women managers. Sexual harassment training for managers, which treats managers as victims’ allies and gives them tools to intervene, are followed by increases in women managers. Training for em- ployees, which treats trainees as suspects, can backfire. Programs work better in workplaces with more women managers, who are less likely than men to respond negatively to harassment com- plaints and training. Employers should select managers—men and women—committed to eradicating harassment. Author contributions: F.D. and A.K. designed research, performed research, and wrote the paper. The authors declare no conflict of interest. This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND). Data deposition: Our Stata code and the blinded survey data have been deposited in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) database, http://doi. org/10.3886/E109781V3. 1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: frank_dobbin@harvard.edu. This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. 1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental. Published online June 3, 2019. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818477116 PNAS | June 18, 2019 | vol. 116 | no. 25 | 12255–12260 SO C IA L SC IE N C ES D o w n lo a d e d a t C a rn e g ie M e llo n U n iv e rs ity o n A p ri l 5 , 2 0 2 1 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1073/pnas.1818477116&domain=pdf https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://doi.org/10.3886/E109781V3 http://doi.org/10.3886/E109781V3 mailto:frank_dobbin@harvard.edu https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818477116 confidence about intervening after a year (14). Four months out, Army trainees were more likely to report having intervened to stop sexual assault or stalking (15). We expect manager training to provide managers with tools to address harassment, and thus to be followed by increases in women in management. The third prediction concerns employee training, which typically reviews harassment law, specifies verboten actions, and outlines complaint processes and punishments (16). The message is that employees are potential perpetrators, not victims’ allies. Most lab- oratory experiments examine this type of training. It can improve recognition of harassment and knowledge about employer policy and complaint processes (17, 18). However, men who score high on “likely harasser” and “gender role conflict” scales—the men trainers hope to reform—frequently have adverse reactions to this sort of “forbidden behavior” training, scoring higher afterward (19, 20). Thus, any positive training effects may be reversed by backlash. We expect employee training to be more likely than manager training to have adverse effects. Two final predictions address how the gender composition of management moderates program effects. The fourth concerns how managers respond to harassment grievances and training. Research shows that men often don’t believe women who com- plain of harassment, thinking they have overreacted or have extortion in mind. Women are less likely to buy into to these “harassment myths” (21–23). Thus, we expect that women managers will handle reports of harassment better than men, which will improve the efficacy of grievance procedures. Men may also respond poorly to sexual harassment training. Training has been shown to make men less likely to see coercion of a subordinate as sexual harassment, less likely to report harassment, and more likely to blame the victim (18). This is not so for women. Training can also incite backlash against women and activate gen- der stereotypes (24). Training, like grievance procedures, should be more effective in workplaces with more women managers. The fifth prediction modifies the fourth and concerns group threat. For Blalock, when members of the dominant group feel threatened, they may resist the group perceived as a threat (25). He describes a tipping point beyond which the majority group resists. Where might that tipping point be? Kanter argues that, when women hold 15 to 35% of jobs, they overcome the disad- vantages of being “tokens”—they can create alliances, for instance—but that, above 35%, they become a “potential subgroup” (26). We do know that, where sex ratios are highly skewed (below 15% women, or above 85%), gender salience is high and so is harassment (27, 28). Cohen, Broschak, and Haveman find that increases in women in upper management improve matters for women in lower and middle management up to a point; the peak is about 25%, at the midpoint of Kanter’s range (29). Thus, increases in women managers, up to about 25%, may improve harassment program effects. Do all groups of women activate group threat? Research on intersectionality suggests that perceived threat may depend on a group’s location in the race/gender hierarchy. White women carry one dominant status (white) and one subordinate status (female). Minority women carry two subordinate statuses, and, in certain contexts, they elicit less backlash for dominant behavior than white women do (30, 31). Moreover, white women hold more manage- ment jobs than any other group of women, and their sheer numbers may activate threat (26). Thus, we expect group threat to affect white women more than black, Hispanic, or Asian-American women. In sum, we expect positive effects of manager training and negative effects of grievance procedures and employee training. We do not expect the negative effects to simply wipe out the positive effects, because these effects are conditional on women in management, and thus these effects should appear in different workplaces. Higher numbers of women managers should catalyze positive effects of manager training and prevent adverse effects of grievance procedures and employee training. This should hold for the three groups of minority women, because they are less likely to activate group threat. However, for white women, group threat should reverse this pattern—higher numbers of women managers should prevent the positive effects of manager training and activate the negative effects of grievance procedures and employee training. Data and Methods We assess effects of the introduction of harassment grievance and training programs on women in management by combining data from two sources, a retrospective survey of corporate policies and programs and an annual de- mographic census of employers. Data cover the period in which employer harassment programs spread (1971–2002), which makes it possible to esti- mate the effects of program adoption (32). This was before the widespread use of online training. Data on establishment harassment programs, and other management practices and policies, come from our own retrospective survey, administered by the Princeton Survey Research Center in 2002. The survey provides time- varying information for a national sample of 805 private sector employers. Princeton’s Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects approved the research protocol (the authors were, respectively, Professor of Sociology and doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Princeton at the time). Each respondent received a letter covering the purpose of the study; the topics to be covered; and the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the principal investigator and Survey Research Center. The letter explained that participation was voluntary and could be terminated at any time, and that all data would remain confidential. Phone interviewers asked for verbal consent to participate before starting the interview. The survey covered organizational practices—no personal information was collected. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) annual census of private sector workplaces with more than 100 workers provides gender, race, and ethnic composition for surveyed workplaces by occupational cat- egory (33). The EEOC data are confidential, by statute, but the EEOC makes them available to academic scientists through Intergovernmental Personnel Agreements. Time series data on external labor market characteristics come from Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) surveys. Our Stata code and the blinded survey data are available through Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. We will provide the key for matching establishments with the EEOC’s workforce data to researchers with access to those data. Fig. 1 reports the prevalence of sexual harassment grievance procedures, sexual harassment training for managers, and sexual harassment training for employees for the 805 employers in our analysis. By 2002, 98% of employers had grievance procedures, 82% had training for managers, and 64% had training for employees. Only 18% of the observations (workplace years) have all three practices, permitting us to disentangle their effects. 1991 1996 2001 P er ce nt o f w or kp la ce s w ith e ac h pr og ra m 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1971 1976 1981 1986 Sexual harassment grievance procedure Sexual harassment training for managers Sexual harassment training for employees Fig. 1. Percent of workplaces with sexual harassment grievance procedures, training for managers, and training for employees. Maximum n = 805. The figure is based on employer years included in the analysis. Not all workplaces are represented in each year because 1) some workplaces were established during the period and 2) some crossed the EEOC reporting thresholds (100 workers, or 50 workers for federal contractors). 12256 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818477116 Dobbin and Kalev D o w n lo a d e d a t C a rn e g ie M e llo n U n iv e rs ity o n A p ri l 5 , 2 0 2 1 https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818477116 Fig. 2 reports change over time in the representation of each group of women in management jobs in the sample of 805 employers. In the average sampled workplace, white women made up 15% of managers in 1971 and 26% in 2002. Black women rose from 0.4 to 1.8%; Hispanic women rose from 0.1 to 1.1%; and Asian-American women rose from 0.1 to 0.9%. These fig- ures understate national gains for women in management because the sample excludes several groups of employers that saw greater gains in women on average, including newly established firms and public sector workplaces. We examine changes in the share (log odds) of white, black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women in management following the adoption of sexual harassment grievance procedures, training programs for managers, and training programs for employees. Coefficients estimate the average effects of new programs across all of the postadoption years that we observe. The number of years observed depends on when an employer adopted. For each program, we have an average of a least 7 y of postadoption data (Fig. 1). We report panel data models with fixed effects and robust SEs (see SI Appendix for a detailed methodological discussion). The fixed-effects specification accounts for organizational features that do not vary over time, such as industry. In the models, we control for a host of human resources, diversity, work−life, and general harassment policies and programs, as well as for demographic characteristics of the focal workplace and of the state and the industry workforces. To capture environmental changes not covered by variables in the models, we include a time trend, interacted with both state and (two-digit) industry (see SI Appendix for full models). Results Results are presented in Figs. 3–6. Fig. 3 shows average change in the share of each group in management, over the years each program was in place, for workplaces that created grievance procedures, manager training, and employee training. The bars represent 95% confidence intervals around the point estimates. Following the creation of sexual harassment grievance procedures, the share of Asian-American women in management declines. Coefficients for other groups are not statistically significant— confidence intervals cross the 0 threshold. Sexual harassment training programs for managers are followed by significant in- creases in white, black, and Asian-American women in man- agement. Sexual harassment training programs for employees are followed by significant reductions in white women in man- agement. While these results are broadly consistent with pre- dictions, if program effects are moderated by women in management, as we predict, the noninteracted effects tell only part of the story. To assess how harassment program effects are moderated by women managers, we interact program variables with binary variables representing the second, third, and fourth quartiles of total women in management. The first quartile has observations with 0 to 6.7% women managers; the second, 6.7 to 16.7%; the third, 16.7 to 37.5%; and the fourth, 37.5 to 100%. In Fig. 4, we report the point estimates for changes in the share of white and minority women in management following the introduction of sexual harassment grievance procedures in workplaces at different quartiles of women in management. We show noninteracted program coefficients for workplaces in the first quartile of total women managers. For those in the other quartiles, we report the linear combinations of the program co- efficients and the program × quartile interaction coefficients (as described in SI Appendix). For white women, effects of sexual harassment grievance pro- cedures are negative and marginally significant (P < 0.10) among workplaces in the fourth quartile of women managers. This is consistent with the group threat thesis. For all three groups of minority women, grievance procedures show significant negative effects in workplaces with few women managers—those in the first quartile. These negative effects decline as women in management rise. For black and Hispanic women, the negative effects disappear after the first quartile, and, for Hispanic women, the effect turns positive in the fourth quartile. For Asian-American women, nega- tive effects persist through the third quartile. Management allies, then, appear to help minority women. Where men dominate, grievance procedures make matters worse for all three minority groups. However, where women hold more management jobs (the fourth quartile begins at 37.5%), negative effects disappear for black and Asian-American women, and positive effects appear for Hispanic women. In Fig. 5, we present the estimates of changes following the creation of sexual harassment training programs for managers, by each quartile of total women in management. For white women, manager training shows positive effects in workplaces with few women in management that decline in the higher quartiles. Positive effects are significant among workplaces in the first two quartiles of total women managers (P < 0.05). This lends support to our predictions that 1) manager training will reduce harassment but, 2) at high levels of women in manage- ment, harassment programs catalyze group threat. 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 P er ce nt b la ck , H is pa ni c, a nd A si an -A m er ic an w om en P er ce nt w hi te w om en White women Black women Hispanic women Asian-American women Fig. 2. Average percent of women managers, by race and ethnicity, among the 805 sampled workplaces. Data come from the EEOC’s annual workforce census, the EEO1 survey. The figure is based on employer years included in the analysis. See Fig. 1 note for inclusion criteria. −0.10 −0.05 0.00 0.05 0.10 Grievance procedure Manager training Employee training Workplace sexual harassment programs E st im at ed c ha ng e in s ha re o f g ro up in m an ag em en t White women Black women Hispanic women Asian−American women Fig. 3. Estimated changes in the share of white and minority women in management following the adoption of sexual harassment grievance pro- cedures, manager training, and employee training. Values on the vertical axis represent change in the log odds of the group in management. Ninety- five percent confidence intervals are shown. Dobbin and Kalev PNAS | June 18, 2019 | vol. 116 | no. 25 | 12257 SO C IA L SC IE N C ES D o w n lo a d e d a t C a rn e g ie M e llo n U n iv e rs ity o n A p ri l 5 , 2 0 2 1 https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental For black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women, training shows significant positive effects only in workplaces in the fourth quartile of women in management. This finding is consistent with our prediction that, for groups of women least likely to activate group threat, according to the intersectionality literature, man- ager training is most effective in organizations with large con- tingents of women managers, because women are less likely to respond negatively to training than men. We consider an alternative mechanism—that manager train- ing signals that employers favor equality and thereby increases manager commitment to hiring and promoting women (34). If that were the main mechanism, we would expect manager di- versity training to show the same effect as harassment training. It does not (see “diversity training” in full models in SI Appendix). It might be that we do not observe positive effects for white women among workplaces in the fourth quartile because there is no room for white women to grow. However, few workplaces in the fourth quartile have reached the limit—0.37% of observa- tions have 100% women managers. Thus, in Fig. 5, we find the predicted positive effects in the fourth quartile for the three minority groups. In any event, the noninteracted coefficient for the fourth quartile should pick up any limits on further growth, and the interaction should pick up the unique effect of women in management in the presence of manager training (full results reported in SI Appendix). Note that linear interactions between total women managers and all three harassment programs pro- duced significant negative coefficients for white women (SI Appendix). Manager training shows the greatest promise of the three pro- grams we examine. In the average workplace in the first quartile of total women managers, manager training is followed by an esti- mated 16% increase in white women in management. For black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women in workplaces in the fourth quartile of women managers (more than 37.5%), manager training is followed an estimated 14 to 16% increase in each group. Sexual harassment training for employees, which typically re- lies on forbidden-behavior curriculum, shows none of the posi- tive effects that training for managers shows. This is consistent with research finding that, while such training can improve knowledge about harassment, it can exacerbate gender role hostility and propensity to harass among men. In Fig. 3, without quartile interactions, we saw a negative effect of employee training on white women in management. In Fig. 5, we see that employee training is followed by reductions in white women managers in workplaces where women hold the most manage- ment jobs. Employee sexual harassment training in workplaces with more women managers appears to trigger backlash against white women. Can manager training improve the effects of grievance pro- cedures? We tested this possibility by interacting grievance procedure with manager training and found no effect. Nor did we find an effect when interacting grievance procedure with employee training (SI Appendix). It does not appear that either kind of training improves grievance procedure effects. Conclusion Sexual harassment remains a cancer on the workplace despite the widespread adoption of grievance procedures, manager training, and employee training. Figuring out whether these programs actually reduce harassment, and whether they can be tweaked to work better, should be a priority. To that end, we build on a long tradition of research in psychology and sociology that has, as yet, had little impact on employer practice. We ask, in particular, whether harassment programs make workplaces more hospitable to women, increasing their numbers in management. Previous studies suggest that grievance procedures may backfire, that manager training may help, and that employee training is un- likely to do much. First, surveys show that people who file griev- ances frequently face retaliation and rarely see their harassers fired or reassigned. We find that new grievance procedures are not fol- lowed by increases in white women in management, and are fol- lowed by reductions in black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women. Second, field research on the type of training that best approximates manager training—bystander intervention training— suggests that it increases the intention to intervene, confidence about intervening, and actual intervention. We find that new manager training programs are followed by increases in white, black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women in management. Third, field and laboratory studies of training for employees, typically with forbidden-behavior curriculum, show some positive effects on men’s knowledge about harassment, but also some adverse effects— increasing victim blaming and likelihood of harassing. We find that −0.2 −0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 1st quartile 2nd quartile 3rd quartile 4th quartile Workplaces by percent total women in management, quartiles E st im at ed c ha ng e in s ha re o f g ro up in m an ag em en t White women Black women Hispanic women Asian−American women Fig. 4. Estimated changes in the share of white and minority women in management following the adoption of sexual harassment grievance pro- cedures, for workplaces in the first, second, third, and fourth quartiles of total women in management. Values on the vertical axis represent change in the log odds of the group in management. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown. −0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 1st quartile 2nd quartile 3rd quartile 4th quartile Workplaces by percent total women in management, quartiles E st im at ed c ha ng e in s ha re o f g ro up in m an ag em en t White women Black women Hispanic women Asian−American women Fig. 5. Estimated changes in the share of white and minority women in management following the adoption of sexual harassment training for managers, for workplaces in the first, second, third, and fourth quartiles of total women in management. Values on the vertical axis represent change in the log odds of the group in management. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown. 12258 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818477116 Dobbin and Kalev D o w n lo a d e d a t C a rn e g ie M e llo n U n iv e rs ity o n A p ri l 5 , 2 0 2 1 https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818477116 new employee training programs are followed by reductions in white women in management. Research also suggests that these programs will be more ef- fective in workplaces with more women managers—women are more likely to believe harassment complaints and less likely to react negatively to training. We find that, for minority women, women managers improve the effects of grievance procedures and manager training. However, research also shows that, when women’s gains in management threaten men’s dominance, group threat can lead men to resist efforts to accommodate women. White women are most likely to activate group threat, and not only because of their numbers in management. Intersectionality studies also show that dominance by white women more often elicits backlash than dominance by minority women. We find that, for white women, positive effects of manager training dis- appear, and negative effects of grievance procedures and em- ployee training appear, in workplaces with the most women managers. In further analyses, we found that growth in women managers up to about 12% improved harassment program ef- fects for white women, but growth beyond that did not (see decile analysis results and full discussion in SI Appendix) (26, 29). Taken together, the findings indicate that the positive effects of manager training are not counteracted by the negative effects of grievance procedures or employee training, because the effects appear in different sorts of workplaces. For all three groups of minority women, in workplaces with more women managers, manager training helps; in workplaces with fewer women managers, grievance procedures hurt. For white women, in workplaces with more women managers, grievance procedures and employee training hurt; in workplaces with fewer women managers, manager training helps. It appears that harassment programs have made things worse for certain groups of women in certain workplaces, and better for other groups of women in other workplaces. The findings hold implications for employers, pointing to both problematic and promising program features. They reinforce victim surveys suggesting that grievance procedures incite re- taliation and rarely satisfy victims. Even in workplaces with manager training, which is generally effective, grievance procedures do no good. How might employers improve complaint handling? On surveying the research, the EEOC’s Select Taskforce on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace recommended that employers offer alternative complaint systems less likely to blow back on victims, such as independent ombudspersons who can hear complaints confidentially and talk through victims’ options (35, 36). Tech start- ups have devised their own alternatives, including virtual ombuds- persons and reporting systems. Online reporting may address a common #MeToo and #WhyIDidn’tReport criticism—employer confidentiality clauses prevent victims from learning that their ha- rasser has done it before. Online, victims can report harassment when they choose to but embargo reports until others complain about the same harasser. The findings point to the promise of harassment training that treats trainees as allies rather than as potential perpetrators. Our comparison of manager and employee training is key here. Manager training, like bystander intervention training, gives trainees the tools to recognize and address harassment. It has the broadest positive effects. By contrast, employee training, which most often uses legalistic forbidden-behavior curriculum, shows null or adverse effects. Training is where the lion’s share of the corporate antiharassment budget goes. Employers might do better to offer bystander training to everyone. In studies on college campuses and in the military, this approach has been shown to increase the intention to intervene and self-reported interventions among college students and enlisted men (13, 15). Bystander training may offer the best hope for avoiding the demonstrated adverse effects of forbidden-behavior training. The analyses point to the promise of putting more women in management, and many firms have replaced men felled by #MeToo with women. However, men still dominate the middle and upper echelons. As long as managers at the top come from the middle, change may be slow. For now, employers might consider research suggesting that male managers with the right attitudes can, like women managers generally, improve program effects. The US Armed Forces implemented a multipronged strategy to fight sexual harassment and assault. Women who reported that their unit leaders made an “honest and reasonable effort to stop harassment” found both grievance handling and harassment training to be more effective. Those women also reported reductions in personal experiences of harassment and in overall workplace harassment (37). That study, in a context where virtually all leaders are men, suggests that leaders with the right stuff can prevent harassment programs from backfiring. Employers might select managers for promotion up the ranks, be they men or women, who have proven records as allies to harassment victims. The findings don’t suggest a clear path to countering group threat. Where women have made inroads in management, all three programs appear to incite backlash against the group of women whose dominance most threatens men: white women. In workplaces in the top quartile of total women managers, back- lash wipes out positive program effects or creates negative effects. Again, management allies may be the key. Perhaps selecting male managers who will believe harassment victims and respond positively to training will help, because these may be the very men who won’t react negatively to group threat. However, we clearly need more research on group threat and how to prevent it. Women in leadership could spark a virtuous cycle, in which women leaders make harassment programs more effective, and effective programs help employers to retain and promote women. However, that virtuous cycle may never get underway in the face of group threat. The lessons we draw from the corporate world hold implications for harassment programs in academia, which is second only to the military in rates of harassment. A 2018 National Academies of Sciences report on harassment suggests that the problems with corporate sexual harassment grievance procedures and training are mirrored in the academy (38). There, as in the corporate world, women rarely file grievances, because they distrust procedures and fear retaliation. There, as in the corporate world, training can −0.2 −0.1 0.0 0.1 1st quartile 2nd quartile 3rd quartile 4th quartile Workplaces by percent total women in management, quartiles E st im at ed c ha ng e in s ha re o f g ro up in m an ag em en t White women Black women Hispanic women Asian−American women Fig. 6. Estimated changes in the share of white and minority women in management following the adoption of employee sexual harassment training, for workplaces in the first, second, third, and fourth quartiles of total women in management. Values on the vertical axis represent change in the log odds of the group in management. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown. Dobbin and Kalev PNAS | June 18, 2019 | vol. 116 | no. 25 | 12259 SO C IA L SC IE N C ES D o w n lo a d e d a t C a rn e g ie M e llo n U n iv e rs ity o n A p ri l 5 , 2 0 2 1 https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1818477116/-/DCSupplemental backfire, leading to backlash among men. While it may not be surprising that the corporate world has not built sexual harassment programs on the knowledge base that academia has produced, it is surprising that academia itself has not done so. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank the National Science Foundation for funding. 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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2018). 12260 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818477116 Dobbin and Kalev D o w n lo a d e d a t C a rn e g ie M e llo n U n iv e rs ity o n A p ri l 5 , 2 0 2 1 http://doi.org/10.3886/E109781V3 https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818477116 work_746bbd3ejzbgxnmaw6jj43y6ta ---- For Peer Review Unleashing talent in mental health sciences: gender equality at the top Journal: BJPsych Manuscript ID BJPsych-18-0670 Manuscript Type: Editorial Date Submitted by the Author: 06-Jul-2018 Complete List of Authors: Breedvelt, Josefien; Mental Health Foundation, Research Rowe, Sarah ; University College London, Division of Psychiatry Bowden-Jones, Henrietta; CNWL Foundation Trust, National Problem Gambling Clinic Shridhar, Sunita; NHS Havering CCG, Maylands Practice Lovett, Kate; royal college of psychiatrists, College Officers Bockting, Claudi; AMC, Department of Psychiatry Lingford-Hughes, Anne; Imperial College London, Centre for Psychiatry Strathdee, Geraldine; NHS England, NHS Improvement Tracy, Derek; Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, AMH; Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, Keywords: Gender, Equality, Psychiatry, Workforce Cambridge University Press BJPsych For Peer Review Unleashing talent in mental health sciences: gender equality at the top Josefien J F Breedvelt*, Sarah Rowe, Henrietta Bowden-Jones, Sunita Shridhar, Kate Lovett, Claudi Bockting, Anne-Lingford Hughes, Geraldine Strathdee, Derek K Tracy Author affiliations Ms Josefien J F Breedvelt MSc, The Mental Health Foundation, London Dr Sarah Rowe PhD, University College London Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones FRCPsych, CNWL Foundation Trust, London Dr Sunita Shridhar MBBS, Maylands Practice, Essex Dr Kate Lovett FRCPsych, Royal College of Psychiatrists, London Professor Claudi L H Bockting PhD, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, Department of Psychiatry, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Professor Anne-Lingford Hughes PhD, Imperial College London. Professor Geraldine Strathdee FRCPsych, NHS Improvement. Dr Derek K Tracy FRCPsych, Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust London and King’s College London *Author for correspondence: Ms Josefien Breedvelt, the Mental Health Foundation, London. jbreedvelt@mentalhealth.org.uk Summary Society is undergoing a shift in gender politics. Science and medicine are part of this conversation, not least as women’s representation – and pay - continues to drop as one progresses through more senior academic and clinical levels. Naming and redressing these inequalities needs to be a priority for us all. Main article 2018 is the centenary of women’s suffrage in the UK. This sits in the contemporary landscape of the #MeToo movement, debate on the persisting gender pay gap and representation of women at board level. Where are we in science, medicine, and psychiatry? A recent podcast recorded at the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1) hosted academics, clinicians, and policy advisors discussing work by Carter et al. (2) on women in academic environments. That paper noted how women were less likely than men to ask questions at seminars and conferences. It opened podcast conversations on participants’ reflections and perceptions of this, and the related ethos and culture of their employers. This matters enormously. Women were described as “literally less visible” by Carter and colleagues, and it appears to map onto career progression. Women are continuing to outnumber men at tertiary education, but only in more junior positions. In Europe, across all Page 1 of 7 Cambridge University Press BJPsych For Peer Review academic subjects they account for: 59% of undergraduates, 47% of PhD graduates, 45% of fixed-term contract postdoctoral researchers, 37% of junior and 21% of senior faculty positions (3). In the UK, women account for one fifth of overall professorship and head of institution positions (4). The issue is particularly problematic in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), where women have historically been under- represented; Hewlitt et al. (5) finding that leave rates for women in these subjects peak about 10 years into their careers. Within academic medicine, the picture has been improving over the past decade, though there is variation by specialty. Primary care has the highest rate of women clinical academics (about 46%); at about 30%, psychiatry is not the worst (surgery is), but sits just about in the top half, above radiology and below paediatrics (6). The academic output of women has been shown to be less often cited, and they suffer from underrepresentation in authorship (7-9). A recent paper in Nature found an inverse relationship between journal impact factor and women who were either first or last author (10). It is not clear which factors are at play; there are the aforementioned issues of fewer women in senior academic positions, but also concern about reviewer bias. There is mixed evidence about the effects of double blind reviewing, and concern that even with such measures authors can often be identified (11). In clinical life in the UK we see a similar picture. Over half of Foundation Doctors are women, dropping to 36% at Consultant level (12); at 43% this is somewhat better specifically in Psychiatry, and this represents an increase of 3% over the last 5 years. However, this figure hides considerable variation between clinical subspecialties: women make up about 37% of consultants in Forensic psychiatry, whereas within child and adolescent mental health this climbs to approximately 64%. It is important to note that non- training, non-consultant grades make up 24% of medical workforce within psychiatry, where women continue to be over-represented at 54% (13). This report does not include linked data on ethnicity. Given the known impact of intersectionality on women’s opportunities this missing data is clearly crucial for further research in identifying areas for targeting policy. We know that psychiatry relies heavily on international medical graduates, 65% of whom are BME. GMC data show 37% of the overall psychiatry medical workforce are from BME backgrounds (14). Full equality by numbers (forgetting whole time equivalents) is estimated to take another two decades (12). In primary care women account for more than 50% of the workforce, but only 16% of CCG Chairs (12, 15). The ‘leaky pipeline’ persists, with reducing women representation with seniority. A loss of talent and diversity, a loss to the individuals concerned, and a loss to academic and clinical institutions. In management and leadership roles, implicit and explicit bias may be an issue, with different attributes and skills frequently ascribed to men and women (16). In evaluations and reference letters, the language used is often less favourable to women (17), who are frequently lauded for their ‘hard work’ rather than their ‘brilliance’ (18,19). It has been argued that women more commonly take on ‘less rewarded’ roles such as sitting on committees, having organizational responsibilities, mentoring others, and teaching. These Page 2 of 7 Cambridge University Press BJPsych For Peer Review duties receive less acknowledgement and take time away from other important areas, hindering promotion (20). The truth remains that even in 2018, women are far more likely to take on a ‘double shift’, having the bulk of domestic responsibilities as well as a professional life (21). Differences are also reflected in pay. Across the whole NHS there is an overall pay gap of 8.6% in favour of men (22); amongst doctors this is even wider, women earning an average 34% less, which has expanded over the last decade. This year the BBC reported on how 95 of the 100 highest earning doctors in the UK were men, with full-time consultants earning on average £14,000 more than women in equivalent positions (23). Some of the contributing factors to these figures are well recognized, including higher rates of flexible training, part time working, and subsequently additional time required to attain higher positions. However, fewer women are applying for, and receiving, clinical excellence awards (CEAs). Data for this vary locally, but it has been proposed as one of the drivers to change the existing award scheme (24). Interestingly, this does not appear to be as pronounced for local CEAs in academia, with approximately equal percentages of men and women holding them. However far fewer women in academia held national CEAs - just under a quarter, compared with over 40% of men – though, importantly, they were equally likely to be successful at attaining one when they applied (6). Women appear not to be putting themselves forward for these awards: at the very top of the scale, six and a half times more men than women have a platinum award. What should we be doing about this as a profession? Awareness of the issues, measuring, benchmarking and challenging them, and looking for mechanisms for local redress are a start. The Athena SWAN charter is noteworthy in higher education for supporting institutes to improve measures of equality such as progression of students into academia, career journeys of staff, and the work environment. Within the RCPsych, respect is a defined key organizational value which includes challenging inequality. To ensure that a commitment to narrowing the gaps in gender equality run through all college policy the College has recently appointed its first Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. There are recognized criteria for good leadership, including targeting leadership biases (16), which can allow departmental or organizational evaluation to ensure an environment that encourages women’s leadership to flourish. An example is the Aurora Leadership Scheme that promotes exposure, mentoring, and meaningful management opportunities. Those in senior positions – men as well as women - have particular responsibilities and means to support the next generation of diverse talent to reach the top. We have seldom had so many medical Royal Colleges, including our own, led by women, and our current National Mental Health Director and previous National Clinical Director for Mental Health have high visibility. The President of the Royal College of Physicians, Professor Jane Dacre, is leading an independent review into the gender pay gap for doctors that will keep this conversation alive. Page 3 of 7 Cambridge University Press BJPsych For Peer Review However, there are limits to what any organisation can achieve, unless more fundamental societal causes of inequality are not addressed. Men are a crucial part of this conversation; for too long many men saw inequity as a “women’s issue” – it is a societal issue, including welfare policy and cultural attitudes and practice in terms of child care and part-time working (25). Other intersectional issues can scarcely be done justice in a single editorial, but we are reminded that only 2% of professors in the UK are female and from black and minority ethnic backgrounds (26). Goldin (27) argued that the largest advance to career attainment gap in the labour market is to improve temporal flexibility. Changes in how jobs are structured, with more flexibility in work hours, and less reward for working long hours might help. Indeed, this is one of the key pillars of Nordic policies for gender equality, which alongside investment in gender equal workplaces and free childcare have contributed to creating some of the most gender equal labour markets. Equality is not just about having a level playing field, it is about unleashing talent. As well as being the ‘right thing to do’, the aforementioned Nordic model has been shown to have contributed considerably to economic growth, re-emphasizing the societal loss from inequity. Work by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), the primary community of leading and emerging women entrepreneurs and executives in Silicon Valley (28), has shown that greater senior female leadership improves perceived line management support, employee engagement, and organisational dedication, whilst reducing staff burnout. We finish by throwing a couple of challenges to the BJPsych and the academic publishing sector: we would welcome a review of the processes and commitments toward female representation on publication and in leadership positions. Secondly, a quick look at the stats show that most journals still have unequal representation of women at editorial board level. Looking at the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Annual Review of Psychology, JAMA psychiatry and the BMJ, between 22 and 50 percent of editorial boards are female. To adopt another of 2018’s hashtags, as #immodestwomen we say that’s better than it was a decade ago, but not good enough. We hope that the BJPsych, with about a third of women on the board, will lead the way in creating equality. Declaration of Interest The authors confirm they have no relevant interests to declare. References 1 The Royal College of Psychiatrists. Women, science, medicine and psychiatry [Internet]. 2018 [cited 2018 Jul 3]. Available from: https://soundcloud.com/rcpsych/women-science- medicine-and-psychiatry/s-JfwrG 2 Carter A, Croft A, Lukas D, Sandstrom G. Women's visibility in academic seminars: women ask fewer questions than men [blog on the Internet]. London: LSE; 2018 Jan 17 [cited 2018 Page 4 of 7 Cambridge University Press BJPsych For Peer Review Jul 2]. Available from: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/01/17/women- ask-fewer-questions-than-men-in-academic-seminars/ 3 European Commission. SHE Figures 2015 [Internet]. Brussels: European Commission; 2016. [cited 2018 Jul 3]. Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/pub_gender_equality/she_figures_2015-final.pdf 4 Equality in higher education: statistical report 2017 [Internet]. Equality Challenge Unit [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: https://www.ecu.ac.uk/publications/equality-in-higher- education-statistical-report-2017/ 5 Hewlett SA, Buck Luce C, Servon LJ, Sherbin L, Shiller P, Sosnovich E, Sumberg K. The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology [Internet]. New York: Harvard Business Review; 2008. Product no. 10094. [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: http://rachelappel.com/media/downloads /w_athena_factor.pdf 6 Medical Schools Council. Survey of Medical Clinical Academic Staffing Levels 2017 [Internet]. London: Medical Schools Council; 2017. [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: https://www.medschools.ac.uk/media/2026/medical-clinical-academic-staffing-levels- 2017.pdf 7 Roberts SG, Verhoef T. Double-blind reviewing at EvoLang 11 reveals gender bias. J Lang Evol. 2016;1(2):163-167. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzw009 8 Filardo G, da Graca B, Sass D, Pollock B, Smith E, Martinez M. Trends and comparison of female first authorship in high impact medical journals: observational study (1994-2014). BMJ. 2016;352:i847. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i847 9 Jagsi R, Guancial E, Worobey C, Henault L, Chang Y, Starr R, et al. The “Gender Gap” in Authorship of Academic Medical Literature — A 35-Year Perspective. NEJM. 2006;355(3):281-287. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/nejmsa053910 10 Ournals HIGHRJ, Shen YA, Webster JM, Shoda Y, Fine I. Persistent underrepresentation of women’s science in high-profile journals. BioRxiv. 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/275362 11 O’Hara B. Peer Review Week: Should we use double blind peer review? The evidence…. [blog on the Internet]. London: British Ecological Society; 2016 Sep 22 [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: https://methodsblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/peer-review-week- should-we-use-double-blind-peer-review-the-evidence/ 12 NHS. Analysis of the representation of women across the hospital and community health services workforce [Internet]. [place unknown]: NHS Digital; 2018. [cited 2018 Jul 4]. Available from: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/find-data-and- publications/supplementary-information/2018-supplementary-information-files/analysis-of- Page 5 of 7 Cambridge University Press BJPsych For Peer Review the-representation-of-women-across-the-hospital-and-community-health-services- workforce 13 Royal College of Psychiatrists. Census 2017: Workforce figures for consultant and specialty doctor psychiatrists [Internet]. London: Royal College of Psychiatrists; 2017. [cited 2018 Jul 4]. Available from https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/RCPsych_workforce_census_report_2017.pdf 14 General Medical Council. The state of medical education and practice in the UK [Internet]. [place unknown]: General Medical Council; 2017. [cited 2018 Jul 4]. Available from: https://www.gmc-uk.org/-/media/about/somep-2017-final- full.pdf?la=en&hash=3FC4B6C2B7EBD840017B908DBF0328CD840640A1 15 Sealy R. NHS Women on Boards 50:50 by 2020 [Internet]. [place unknown]: University of Exeter Business School; 2017. [cited 2018 Jul 4]. Available from: http://www.nhsemployers.org/~/media/Employers/Publications/NHS%20Women%20on%2 0Boards%20report.pdf 16 Weissbourd R. Leaning Out: Teen Girls and Leadership Biases [Internet]. Cambridge: Harvard Graduate School of Education; 2015. [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/files/gse-mcc/files/leanout-report.pdf 17 Boring A, Ottoboni K, Stark PB. Student evaluations of teaching are not only unreliable, they are significantly biased against female instructors [blog on the internet]. London: LSE; [date unknown] [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/02/04/studentevaluations-of-teaching- gender-bias/ 18 Schmader T, Whitehead J, Wysocki V. A Linguistic Comparison of Letters of Recommendation for Male and Female Chemistry and Biochemistry Job Applicants. Sex Roles. 2007;57(7-8):509-514. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9291-4 19 Trix F, Psenka C. Exploring the Color of Glass: Letters of Recommendation for Female and Male Medical Faculty. DAS. 2003;14(2):191-220. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926503014002277 20 Grove J. Female professors ‘pay price for academic citizenship.’ Times Higher Education World University Ranks [newspaper on the Internet].; [cited 2018 Jul 3]. Available from: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/female-professors-pay-price-academic- citizenship 21 Office for National Statistics. Women shoulder the responsibility of 'unpaid work' [Internet]. Office for National Statistics; 2016 Nov 10. [cited 2018 Jul 3]. Available from: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworking hours/articles/womenshouldertheresponsibilityofunpaidwork/2016-11-10 Page 6 of 7 Cambridge University Press BJPsych For Peer Review 22 Schlepper L, Appleby J. The gender pay gap in the English NHS [blog on the internet]. London: Nuffield Trust; 2018 May 30 [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/the-gender-pay-gap-in-the-english-nhs#staff- and-pay-groups 23 Hotten R. Top 10 worst excuses for not appointing women executives. BBC News [Internet]. 2018 May 31 [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44310225 24 NHS. Employer FAQS on the local clinical excellence awards [Internet]. [place unknown]: NHS Employers; 2018 Mar 22 [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: http://www.nhsemployers.org/your-workforce/pay-and-reward/medical-staff/consultants- and-dental-consultants/local-clinical-excellence-awards-arrangements-from-1-april- 2018/local-clinical-excellence-award-employer-faqs 25 Ovseiko PV, Chapple A, Edmunds LD, Ziebland S. Advancing gender equality through the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science: an exploratory study of women’s and men’s perceptions. BMC. 2017;15(12):1-13. 26 Universities UK. Patterns and trends in UK higher education 2017 [Internet]. London: Universities UK; 2017. [cited 2018 Jul 4]. Available from: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/facts-and-stats/data-and-analysis/Documents/patterns- and-trends-2017.pdf 27 Goldin C. A grand gender convergence: It’s last chapter. AER. 2014;104(4):1091-1119. 28 Clerkin C. What women want – And why you want women – In the workplace [Internet]. North Carolina: Center for Creative Leadership; 2017. [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/WhatWomenWant.FINAL_.pdf Page 7 of 7 Cambridge University Press BJPsych work_75qpmqfq3vh5vin5cctunlrm3a ---- S0887536719000199jed 2..17 EDITORIAL Introduction to Indigenizing and Decolonizing Feminist Philosophy Celia T. Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren This special issue of Hypatia aims to cultivate and encourage theorizing about Indigenous1 philosophies and decolonizing methodologies. Although feminist theoriz- ing has explored the diverse legacies and experiences of marginalized voices, including Indigenous concerns, philosophy has failed to acknowledge and systematically examine its own role in perpetuating colonial oppression. This special issue aims to explore how Indigenous philosophy might transform feminist theorizing. For the purposes of this issue, the terms Indigenous, Native, or First Nations people refer to peoples who have developed and maintained cultural ties in a specific region prior to colonial contact. Hence, the issue frames Indigenous identities within the context of resisting colonial domination and advocating political stances of sovereignty and self-determination. Moreover, it is important to understand the intersections and distinctions between the terms Indigenizing and decolonizing. Though not all projects of decolonization may specifically address Indigenous issues, it is important to see how decolonizing methodologies play a role in advancing Indigenous projects and perhaps developing coalitions among multiple communities affected by colonialism. A Hypatia issue dedicated to Indigenizing and decolonizing feminist philosophy is both unique and timely. It has been over sixteen years since Hypatia dedicated an issue to Indigenous feminism in Anne Waters’s 2003 edited issue, Indigenous Women in the Americas. Indigenizing and decolonizing feminist philosophy is a timely issue as well, given the leadership roles of women in contemporary Indigenous activism, including resistances at Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and Mauna Kea in Hawaiʻi. Moreover, in examining the intersections of Indigenizing and decolonizing frameworks, we aim to expand feminist theorizing on questions of sovereignty, allyship, dangers of cultural appropriation at university institutions, and activism. Feminism, in general, has historically been a contested movement that has generated skepticism among Indigenous women, in which any potential alliance between Indigenous women and feminism as a liberating framework of analysis and activism is regarded with caution. Sandy Grande characterizes a “Whitestream” feminism that fails to recognize intersectionality and props up settler-colonial ideology within models of social justice (Grande 2004). Theorists such as Lisa Hall, Joyce Green, and Kim Anderson have further articulated problems of white feminism that undermine efforts of solidarity between Indigenous women and feminism (Green 2007; Hall 2009; Anderson 2010), thereby inciting Indigenous resistance to feminist analyses, such as feminism’s relationship with sovereignty, feminism’s appeal to a universal category of women based on gender identity or shared oppression, and feminism’s relationship to undermining traditional gender norms of Indigenous communities. Given this, many Indigenous scholars reject feminism as a platform for advancing Indigenous © by Hypatia, Inc. 2020 Hypatia (2020), 35, 2–17 doi:10.1017/hyp.2019.19 perspectives. Feminist philosophy is also more susceptible to these criticisms as the tra- dition of philosophy has historically emphasized a white, European, Western tradition. Feminist philosophy has followed suit in its inception as a subfield in philosophy in which dominant scholarship in feminist philosophy has been centered around a partic- ular brand of white feminism, that is, feminist philosophical analysis written by and focused on white women’s experiences. Moreover, philosophy, and by extension femi- nist philosophical analysis, has historically been deeply influenced rather unknowingly or knowingly by settler-colonial ideology. Both Margaret (a European descendant set- tler) and Celia (a Filipina American settler) recognize the limitations of our own efforts in editing this issue on “Indigenizing and Decolonizing Feminist Philosophy” as a potentially self-defeating task, as both co-editors are settlers in Indigenous lands in the US mainland and Hawaiʻi islands teaching at settler university institutions. The challenges of creating a space within feminist philosophy for Indigenous and decoloniz- ing methodologies informs the trajectory of this special issue, keeping in view the “moves to innocence,” as Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang remind us of well-intentioned settlers seeking initiatives to diversify academia but rather naively perpetuating further instances of settler ideology (Tuck and Yang 2012). Moreover, we recognize that the majority of contributors to the special issue are settlers. This, of course, is unsettling for us as coeditors, and we recognize the limitation of this issue due to the minimal presence of Indigenous scholars represented within it. It should be noted that this col- lection should not be taken as the paradigmatic model of Indigenizing and decolonizing feminist philosophy. Furthermore, it should be noted that we still have a long way to go in making space for Indigenous feminism in feminist philosophy. However, we did find that the authors who have contributed to this special issue center Indigenous scholar- ship as their starting point in developing philosophical frameworks that address con- cerns within settler contexts. Though both the coeditors come to this special issue with a shared interest in moving feminist philosophy outside the hallowed halls of “whitestream” feminism, we recognize our own limitations and contradictions as set- tlers in relation to this project. Key Critical Terms Before we engage in the challenges and future possibilities in making a space for Indigenous feminist philosophical analysis, it is important to situate the project with some key terms: settler-colonial ideology, decolonization (methods/praxis), and Indigenous/Indigenizing. Some Indigenous scholars identify with the term Indigenous feminism and understand this term as working alongside the aims of feminism in gene- ral and examine feminism’s role more specifically within the context of Indigenous women’s experiences, which are defined by the specific ways in which patriarchy, cap- italism, racism, and heteropatriarchy are defined by coloniality (Goeman and Denetdale 2009; Hall 2009). Others, such as Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, suggest the term Native feminist analyses, which focuses on the theoretical frameworks that are deployed to further challenge colonial hierarchies, rather than Indigenous feminism, which tends to focus on an identity label (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 2013). In making a space for Indigenous feminism in feminist philosophy, it is important to keep both nuanced viewpoints as the backdrop to guiding the larger mission of feminism inspired by Barbara Smith’s unvarnished statement: “Feminism is the political theory and prac- tice that struggles to free all women. . . . Anything less than this freedom is not femi- nism, but merely female self-aggrandizement” (Smith 1980, 48). Hypatia 3 Settler colonialism has been aptly defined by Tuck and Yang as “settlers who come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain” (Tuck and Yang 2012, 5). Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill—referencing Patrick Wolfe’s definition of settler colonialism as a structure and not an event that happened in the past (Wolfe 1999)—argue that “settler colonialism must be understood as a multi-fronted project of making the First Peoples of the place extinct; it is a relentless structure, not contained in a period of time” (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 2013, 13). Hall states that “colonialism takes place through gendered and sexualized forms that reconstitute both individual and commu- nal indigenous identities in stigmatized and disempowering ways” (Hall 2009, 15). Hence, settler colonialism intersects with patriarchy and leads to damaging conse- quences for Indigenous women. Feminist philosophy must take seriously how land and sovereignty play a role in how philosophical analyses might perpetuate systems of colonial domination. Ultimately, settler colonialism seeks to perpetuate a deep era- sure, an eradication of Indigenous presence and its cultural claims to the land. Decolonization is the remedy against the harms caused by settler ideology. Though some decolonizing methodologies may in fact treat decolonization as a metaphor, and thereby are not genuinely engaged in practices of decolonization, according to Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang in their important anthology, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View, “decoloni- zation studies emphasize the ways that colonization and decolonization are time- specific and land-specific” (Smith, Tuck, and Yang 2019, xi). Moreover, “decolonizing studies at the border attend to how coloniality shapes and severs human and non- human relationships across land, nation-state, waters and time” (xii). This allows for comparative critical analysis between Indigenous studies and Chican@ studies, Black studies, Pacific Island studies, diasporic studies, and Muslim/Arab studies. Finally, “decolonizing studies, when most centered in Indigenous philosophy, push back against assumptions about the linearity of history and the future, against teleological narratives of human development, and argue for a rendering of time and place that exceeds col- oniality and conquest” (xiii). Decolonizing methods and practices in feminist philoso- phy would necessarily involve ensuring that Indigenous culture and presence become prominent features of the feminist philosophical canon through active engagement and genuine inclusion of Indigenous perspectives that transform feminist philosophical theorizing. This would entail that a radical self-examination of unreflective settler- colonial bias, the hidden gendered and colonial logics, would be interrogated and trans- formed to a decolonized feminist philosophical analysis that aims to ensure that Indigenous communities flourish. Finally, according to Smith, Tuck, and Yang, citing Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Native American studies is defined as “the study of Indigenous lives and issues by Indigenous peoples” (Smith, Tuck, and Yang 2019, xi). This entails that feminist phi- losophy ought to consider the philosophical insights generated by Native scholars about their cultural cosmologies and metaphysics, epistemologies and ethical frame- works. Rather than seeking sources from the traditional white, European canon as the starting point in thinking about decolonial possibilities and cultivating socially just futures, feminist philosophers ought to seek out sources of Indigenous scholars.2 Moreover, this would also entail feminist philosophy becoming more curious about the land, ocean, and sky: the actual places of settlement that nonnative feminist philos- ophers are occupying. One method that Indigenous scholars have pointed to in their philosophical traditions is place-based frameworks. Vine Deloria, Jr. has defined 4 Celia T. Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren Indigenous as “to become of place” and hence to Indigenize ethics or education would mean to center analysis of how place operates to relate us to the larger community of beings within nature. For example, Indigenous epistemologies are understood as ways of knowing that emerge from our relationships with the land, the ocean, and the sky, which in turn guide our ethical actions appropriately in the world. According to Deloria, Indigenous thought conceives of relationships as informed through a person- centered model of metaphysics, rather than the Western machine-model of metaphys- ics. Knowing nature as persons—as opposed to inanimate objects—orients our ethical and political relationships to the wider community of nature (Deloria 2001, 2). Manulani Meyer has further clarified Indigenous as “that which has endured/thrived” (Meyer 2016).3 Hence, cultural continuity through a revitalization of Indigenous lan- guage, cultural expression, and epistemologies is essential to ensure that an Indigenous community’s well-being continues to thrive. Adhering to values of reciproc- ity and interdependency rather than dualistic values that separate and alienate the knower from the world cultivates thriving relationships to the wider communities of nature. Knowledge-acquisition in this sense would mean to develop a cultural and envi- ronmental literacy of the land, ocean, and sky. Meyer refers to this indigenizing shift as “cultural empiricism” (Meyer 2003, 11), knowledge generated by our embodied senses mediated by indigenous cultural traditions and ways of knowing. Smith, Tuck, and Yang echo this sentiment and foreground their 2019 anthology with the wisdom: “Water is Life, Land is our first teacher.” To Indigenize and Decolonize Feminist Philosophy Why Indigenize and decolonize feminist philosophy? Who is making the call to Indigenize and decolonize feminist philosophy? Will this call fall on the deaf ears of a feminist philosophical community comprised mostly of scholars writing about and centering settler experiences? It is important to keep in mind Tuck and Yang’s concerns that if we are to take seriously the call to Indigenize and decolonize feminist philosophy, then challenging settler ideology and making space for Indigenous futures where Indigenous lives will not be rendered invisible ought to be at the center of our commit- ment within feminist philosophy (Tuck and Yang 2012). Some of the challenges of Indigenizing and decolonizing feminist philosophy involve the concern that there might not be enough interest in feminist philosophy to take up this project. It is too specialized and nuanced and there might not be enough feminist philosophical scholars to appropriately and adequately take up this call to action. This challenge is concerning for Indigenous scholarship, which again is relegated to the periphery in feminist philos- ophy. Subjects that are more “universal” in experience might be able to capture a wide range of interlocutors, and these types of topics tend to be more popular in conceiving feminist philosophical scholarship. This brings up the second challenge of Indigenizing and decolonizing feminist phi- losophy: who is making the call to Indigenize and decolonize feminist philosophy? If feminist philosophy has not made a hospitable place for Indigenous feminist scholars (not to mention women of color), then who is the effort to Indigenize and decolonize feminist philosophy appealing to? Given the paucity of Indigenous feminist philosoph- ical scholarship represented in conferences and journals, who is this call actually serv- ing? Going beyond a quantitative framework, both Margaret and Celia believe that numbers should not determine the direction of feminist philosophy. Moreover, under- represented topics ought to inspire feminist philosophers to consider unexamined Hypatia 5 dogmatic assumptions within their own analysis. On the one hand, to Indigenize and decolonize genuinely might frighten or alarm settler feminist philosophers, as it would mean giving up settler privilege of land, property, and intellectual presence in creating liberatory strategies toward social justice. It wouldn’t mean just to include Indigenous perspectives, but also to give up power and control of feminist philosophical theorizing and adopt and welcome alternative methods of analysis. On the other hand, given the interdisciplinary nature of Indigenous scholarship, the call might perhaps solicit nonphilosophers to situate their work within the frameworks of feminist philos- ophy. This might mean that feminist philosophy ought to be open to other methods of knowing through ceremony, dance, harvesting herbs for medicine, building a sustain- able community garden, building voyaging canoes, swimming, surfing, sailing and fish- ing in the ocean, and more specifically transforming accepted practices in academia by decentering the need to invite yet another white feminist philosopher as a keynote speaker to a conference in order to legitimate and give credibility to the need for Indigenizing and decolonizing feminist philosophy. More specifically, Indigenous and decolonizing philosophical analysis is essential to move feminist philosophy out of a space of self-aggrandizement. Mishuana Goeman and Jennifer Denetdale argue that though there are strains of feminist analysis that assume racial hierarchies and settler privilege that work against the capacities of Indigenous communities to thrive, Native feminist analysis is crucial and useful to the project of decolonizing Native people (Goeman and Denetdale 2009). Following these Indigenous feminist scholars, feminist philosophy must also “make space for indigenous feminism” as Joyce Green aptly identifies (Green 2007), which will mean that theories of decolonization or Indigenizing projects must contribute to Indigenous communities’ ability to thrive. Lacking this commitment amounts to a fail- ure to achieve genuine social justice in feminist philosophy. As Goeman and Denetdale, and Hall, argue, there is no monolithic definition of what feminism is (Goeman and Denetdale 2009; Hall 2009); Indigenous perspectives are able to inform and determine the meaning of feminism within Indigenous communities. Moreover, academic research, including feminist philosophy, can be transformed in genuinely linking theory and praxis through careful readings and actual engagement with Indigenous research methodologies. Article Summaries This special issue of Hypatia aims to transform and decolonize feminist philosophy by creating a space dedicated to Indigenous knowledges and perspectives. Creating this space involves a more inclusive notion of feminist philosophical analysis not bound by disciplinary structures of argumentation, but open to creative genres such as poetry, literature, film, dance, and textiles. We have organized the articles into four thematic sections: Decolonizing University Institutions; Indigenous Ways of Knowing; Ambiguities and Incommensurability; and Undermining Settler Futures, Making Space for Indigenous Futures. We conclude with three Musings, each of which provides an important perspective on Indigenizing and decolonizing feminist philosophy. The two articles in the first section trace the history and logic of colonialism in the academy and in knowledge-production. Showing that university institutions remain rooted in colonial logic, the authors of these articles contribute to decolonizing the structures of knowledge and the university by offering alternative structures and meth- odologies rooted in relationality. In “Uprooting Narratives: Legacies of Colonialism in 6 Celia T. Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren the Neoliberal University,” Melanie Bowman and María Rebolleda-Gómez (2020) pre- sent a twofold argument about colonialism in universities. First, they argue that knowl- edge itself is shaped by colonialist values, specifically alienation, improvement, and capitalism. Second, they argue that colonialist values circumscribe diversity efforts ren- dering them “essentializing, tokenizing, and superficial” (pg 19). Using the example of wild-rice research and the conflict between the Anishinaabe community and the University of Minnesota, Bowman and Rebolleda-Gomez (2020) trace the way that wild rice has been commodified through research that defines it in terms of its biolog- ical identity. Abstracting wild rice from its relational context, they argue, alienates it from its context and contributes to its commodification. They demonstrate that colo- nialist values permeate the wild-rice research program from its initial move of separat- ing it from the Anishinaabe community and their traditional ways of harvesting and understanding wild rice in its local ecological context, to the outcome of the research program, which perpetuates values of productivity, capitalism, and colonial agricultural expansion. They argue that in addition to knowledge being shaped by colonialist values, these values shape the production of knowers as well. When alienation, productivity, and colonialism are the primary values guiding research, researchers/knowers are separated from what they are studying; this alienation, along with the values of individualism and productivity, remove knowers and knowledge from their context, including the power structures and relations of colonialism. Abstracting knowers from their contexts, and separating knowers from what they are studying, results in a type of individualism that separates diversity from its social and political context and thus obscures the rela- tions of power that structure the university and its projects. Not recognizing these power relations does a disservice to Indigenous people as they are simply inserted into a dominant framework that recognizes neither multiple ways of knowing, nor the colonial power structures that shape both knowledge and knowers. Thus, decoloniz- ing methods are necessary to undermine the hegemonic structures of colonialism in the university. But decolonizing knowledge is not sufficient. Within the university, funda- mental changes to the structures of the institution must be advocated for, and outside the university, decolonization must include activism around restoring sovereignty to Native peoples and advocating for land restoration. Exploring the ways that white settler subjectivity is constructed as nonrelational through denying our vulnerability and accepting paradigms of the gift as an exchange, in the second article in this section Laurie Gagnon-Bouchard and Camille Ranger (2020) draw upon Sami scholar Rauna Kuokkanen’s reinterpretation of the gift as rela- tional. Beginning with an example of the failure of epistemic dialogue in knowledge- construction, the authors seek to provide an account under which epistemic dialogue could flourish. Presented as a failure of epistemic dialogue, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) emerged from the ostensible inclusion of Indigenous peoples in the construction of knowledge. However, the inclusion of TEK failed to fully include Indigenous perspectives because it did not embrace a relational ontology. As the authors note, the logic of mastery, as articulated by ecofeminists Val Plumwood and Juliette Singh, precludes real epistemic dialogue based as it is on dualisms and domination. In this case the separation of nature from culture furthers colonial goals, and knowledge is used in the service of dominating nature. Moreover, the logic of mastery associates some groups of people with nature, for example, women and Indigenous peoples, and this contributes to their subordination. In order to overcome the logic of mastery, the authors draw upon Kuokkanen’s notion of the gift. In contrast to the classic idea of Hypatia 7 the gift as exchange, Kuokkanen develops a notion of the gift as relational; rethinking the gift as relational reflects an acknowledgment of the relational, interdependent nature of the world and the importance of relations of reciprocity and responsibility rather than exchange. If these features were appropriately valued in academia, it would be a more hospitable place for Indigenous people. Acknowledging our vulnerability and adopting this new model of the gift as relational could serve to transform universities and academic institutions. The next two articles, by Rebekah Sinclair (2019) and Susana Matallana-Peláez (2020), focus on Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Sinclair showcases how Indigenous logic differs from settler binary logic, and Matallana-Peláez provides rich examples of Indigenous logic as embodied in Indigenous philosophies and manifested in the com- munity through spirals that represent the continuum of life. Like Bowman and Rebolleda-Gomez (2020), Sinclair questions the scientific concept of biological identity and individualism, revealing that the scientific concept of the individual cannot be clearly defined within binary logic. She contrasts classical (binary) logic with Indigenous (paraconsistent) logic; the former is based on accepting the principle of noncontradiction whereas the later allows for true contradictions. Moreover, whereas classical logic claims to be neutral with regard to the world, it actually has particular ontological commitments that limit its ability to accurately reflect real states in the world. Sinclair offers several examples in support of paraconsistent logic. Paraconsistent logics are found in Indigenous creation stories, as well as in ways of knowing and understanding the world as two things at once. As Sinclair states: “these contradictions are not fictional, but represent ontological facts about the nature of bodies and relationships, the way power and violence work, and the kinship among humans, land, and nonhuman lives that two-valued systems simply cannot name” (pg 66). The limitations of classical logic are further revealed when applied to the issue of biological individuality. Sinclair points out the contradictions in three of the criteria for individuality. If one uses spatial boundaries where the parts of a thing are attached to one another and to nothing else, fungus and aspen groves count as individuals. Using genotype as the criterion for individuals does not solve the problem either, as clones share the same genotype, and Portuguese man o’ wars are made up of genetically dis- tinct parts but are attached to a single digestive tract. Finally, the scientific criteria for biological individuality cannot be understood in terms of immune-self-definition as this fails to account for an individual’s resistance to cancer or autoimmune diseases. The failure of classical logic to capture the complex realities of the world indicates the lim- itations of binary logic with its assumptions of noncontradiction, duality, and individ- ualism. Indigenous logic, by contrast, is better able to capture the complexity of the world, in part because the underlying ontology of Indigenous logic is relational, fluid, and pluralist. Sinclair concludes that Indigenous logic not only represents the world better, but can play a political and ethical role in decolonizing as Indigenous logic supports and validates truth claims made by Indigenous peoples about land res- toration, ecological harms, treaty rights, and violence against women. Resistance to colonization takes many forms; Indigenous knowledges can serve as the grounding for political resistance. In Colombia, the Indigenous Nasa communities of Corinto launched a project to Liberate Mother Earth (LME). The LME movement sought to de-barbwire (desalambrar) Mother Earth thus reclaiming land from the barbed-wire enclosures of private property. This process of de-barbwiring, Susana Matallana-Peláez argues, is also a philosophical standpoint rejecting the Eurocentric divide between culture and nature. Matallana-Peláez embraces the rejection of this 8 Celia T. Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren division in favor of an idea of “continuum”: the Nasa people recognize that heart and land are one and the same. She notes that in relational ontologies there is consubstan- tiality and commensurability between humans and nature. Using examples from the Nasayuwe language as well as from Nasa textiles and dance, she shows the continuity between humans and the natural world. This continuity is evidenced by images of botanical drawings that incorporate human elements and textiles that incorporate spi- rals. The spiral has long been associated with continuous growth, expansion, and non- linear development; it occurs naturally in shells, snails, and even the shape of galaxies. The spiral appears in a variety of textile designs of the Nasa, especially the sash or chumbe. Spirals represent ontological continuity, and the idea that all life has a common origin and kinship connection. Spirals, and the continuity of life they represent, appear in ritual dance as well. Matallana-Peláez describes the snail dance done at the annual festival celebrating Mother Earth. Participants in the snail dance form a spiral line, and continue the spiral movement by dancing around one another in turn. The pervasiveness of the spiral in ritual dance, textiles, language, and botanical representations of the natural world all serve to underscore the Nasa philosophy that life is a continuum that cannot be divided up into parts. This philosophy of continuity and wholeness undergirds the movement to liberate Mother Earth by removing the barbed wire that artificially and arbitrarily separates the land into units. Connections between the movement to liberate the earth and to resist other forms of domination such as patriarchy follow from the rejec- tion of dualism and domination in favor of holism and relationality. The Nasa move- ment to liberate Mother Earth is a decolonization project based upon their Indigenous philosophy; embracing this philosophy has wide-reaching implications for undermining the gender binary and contributing to women’s liberation. Questions of voice, silence, motherhood, and mentoring are central to feminist thinking about the ways we engage in the world in our interpersonal relationships. The next two essays engage with issue of incommensurability between the views and experiences of settlers and Indigenous peoples and between white women and women of color dwelling in the ambiguity of unresolved colonial violence. This incom- mensurability arises because of the difference in social locations in relation to decolo- nizing and Indigenizing projects. In her article, Shelley Park (2020) explores the intergenerational and interracial relationships of mothering through analyzing Australian artist Tracy Moffat’s film, Night Cries. Expanding on the ways that colonial violence shapes interpersonal relationships, Park also looks at mentoring relationships in academia between older white feminists and younger feminists of color. In Night Cries, an Aboriginal woman takes care of her dying, white, adoptive mother. Scenes from the film depict the ambiguity of a relationship enabled by a history of racism and colonialism, which removed Aboriginal children from their homes and stripped them of their culture. Park explores the complexities of colonial power relationships in the private space of the home as exemplified in the care work performed by the daughter; complicated by a colonial history that is still implicated in their present-day relationship, the Aboriginal daughter is by turns resentful and genuinely caring while engaging in the domestic labor of feeding, bathing, and carrying her mother to the out- house. Moffat’s Night Cries portrays the ways that colonial violence infiltrates the domestic sphere and carries into present interpersonal relationships. Colonial violence may be unwittingly reenacted in the arena of mentoring, too. When senior, white, feminist colleagues in philosophy mentor junior colleagues of color they may be participating in the process of assimilation as they share strategies Hypatia 9 for success in what is currently a white-dominated discipline. Noting the toll that aca- demia has taken on many feminists of color, Park warns that senior white feminists need to interrogate diversity projects; if they recruit women of color without changing the racist and colonialist structures of the university, diversity projects may be harmful to those they are seeking to support. Instead, white, senior colleagues can participate in undermining the structures of racism, sexism, and colonialism that make the university an inhospitable place for all but white men. Left unexamined, intergenerational and interracial practices of mothering and mentoring may replicate the colonial violence rather than create supportive relationships of care. Park offers several suggestions for avoiding this appropriation by colonialism, including interrupting business as usual, improvising, and experimenting. Just as colonialism recuperates and appropriates well-intentioned practices of moth- ering and mentoring, it also sets the conditions for what can be heard and understood. Introducing the concept of coloniality of silence, Martina Ferrari (2019) points out the ways that silence is rendered flat and unintelligible by a colonial framework of meaning. Voice has been privileged in feminist discourse, and the recent #MeToo movement amplifies this demand to speak up and speak out. Ferrari explores the meaning of silence in the face of sexual assault for Ernesto Martinez, a gay, Latinx man. For Martinez, silence constituted a form of resistance, a way of being that did not engage in violence. In the face of demands to speak up, silence is viewed as passivity or even complicity. Yet that reading misses the complexity and nuance of the ways that silence may function for the oppressed. The imperative to speak up imposes a normative framework where voice is valorized and silence is dismissed or misread. The demand to speak in a way that one can be understood in the dominant colonial framework mir- rors the way that colonialism operates in imposing language on the colonized. Invoking Spivak’s “Can the subaltern speak?” Ferrari points out the paradox of demanding the subaltern to speak. On the one hand, if the subaltern speaks in her native language, her speech lacks uptake by the colonizers. On the other hand, if the subaltern speaks in the language of the colonizer, she has sacrificed her culture and language. Thus, the coloniality of language and speech inhibits communication between the colonized and the colonizers because the colonized remain unintelligible to the colonized unless she speaks to them in their language, in which case she capitulates to the dominant framework, losing her own framework of sense and meaning. Through this imposition of the dominant language, coloniality erases the communicative and knowledge- validation practices of the colonized. Moreover, this epistemic move has ontological consequences, as it renders invisible not only the knowledge of the colonized, but the colonized themselves through a process of dehumanization. Ferrari draws on Ophelia Schutte’s work to think through possibilities and limitations of cross-cultural communication. Schutte’s view that there is a lack of complete translatability leaves open the possibility of communication without the demand for transparency; likewise, allowing for incommensurability between systems of meaning leaves room for deep silence, which is inherent to the process of meaning itself. The last four essays address the responsibilities of settlers to recognize the ongoing and material harms of colonialism to Indigenous peoples and to mitigate those harms through political action in solidarity with Indigenous communities by undermining set- tler futurities to make space for Indigenous futurities. Examining the role of apology, shame, testimony in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and activism around the water protectors at Standing Rock, the articles in this section call for polit- ical action, including repatriation of land, repoliticizing the concept of genocide, and 10 Celia T. Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren working in allyship to secure a more just future for Indigenous peoples. Elizabeth Paquette (2020) calls for repoliticizing the meaning of genocide, rights, and actions, which she sees as essential for the process of reconciliation. She argues that the concept of cultural genocide as currently employed by the Canadian government separates cul- tural genocide from physical genocide, and by doing so, may trivialize cultural genocide. Moreover, the ongoing effects from actions the Canadian government considers cultural genocide, such the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families to attend residential school, also resulted in physical genocide because of the mistreatment of Indigenous children in the residential schools. Paquette notes that as many as 50% of children in residential schools died from malnutrition, starvation, diseases, and the gen- erally poor conditions in the residential schools. Lest one think that the effects of col- onization are in the past, Paquette provides statistics about its disproportionate and ongoing effects on Indigenous peoples, including greater suicide rates, homicide rates, numbers of Indigenous children in foster care, and numbers of women and chil- dren trafficked for prostitution. All of this points to the fact that colonization is not a thing of the past, but continues to have real effects on Indigenous people. Given this, apologies from the Canadian government are not enough to ameliorate the harms per- petrated by colonialism; action must be taken to address the ongoing injustices to Indigenous communities. Simply apologizing evokes a “settler move to innocence” wherein settlers believe that recognizing and apologizing for harms to Indigenous peo- ple exonerates them of guilt and responsibility. Similarly, having a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to hear testimonies is not far-reaching enough without structural changes to address the injustices. Recognizing that cultural genocide cannot be separated from physical genocide is one step in repoliticizing it. Next, Paquette elucidates the ways that culture is rendered nonpolitical even in political theories, such as liberal multiculturalism, that aim to embrace and include culture. She demonstrates how Charles Taylor’s well-known the- ory of liberal multiculturalism fails to politicize culture because it is always subordinate to, and contained by, the political. Drawing on Stephanie Lumsden’s expansive account of reproductive justice, which includes “sexual self-determination, parental rights, cul- tural integrity, and an intimate relationship with the land, [all of which] is essential to [Indigenous] sovereignty” (pg 155) and culture, Paquette shows that connection to the land, environment, and reproduction repoliticizes culture and offers a promising route for Indigenous futurity. Issues of reconciliation and recognition return in Sarah Kizuk’s article (2020). Kizuk examines the limitations of settler shame, claiming that shame cannot do the work of reconciliation. She draws on the work of Sarah Ahmed and Glen Coulthard to demon- strate that a politics of recognition falls short of the type of reparative justice necessary to right the wrongs of colonialism. To move toward a decolonized justice, settlers must go beyond feeling shame and recognizing the harms colonialism has wrought; they should engage in material actions, such as the repatriation of the land to Indigenous peoples. Janice Keil in Ontario, Canada has begun the process of repatriating her land to the Alderville First Nation. Although Keil says she was motivated by shame, Kizuk distinguishes this shame that spurs material action from settler shame that is self- referential and deployed to make settlers feel good about themselves. Keil’s willingness to repatriate her land disrupts settler futurity, which continues the erasure and displace- ment of Indigenous peoples, and instead opens up possibilities for Indigenous futurity. The transfer of land is being done without government mediation, but directly between Keil and tribal leaders, thus disrupting mainstream notions of political sovereignty. Hypatia 11 Practical actions such as this foster solidarity and contribute to a process of decoloni- zation that will help make Indigenous futurity possible. Possibilities for allyship between settlers and Indigenous peoples are further explored in Andrea Sullivan-Clarke’s article (2019), where she looks at the activism around stop- ping the pipeline through Sioux territory (#NODAPL). Sullivan-Clarke distinguishes being an ally from being an active bystander—active bystanders speak up to keep situ- ations from escalating. The concept of allyship has been criticized by Rachel McKinnon, who claims that “ally” has been taken up as an identity and that this identity can then be used to undermine members of oppressed groups’ claims to epistemic authority, resulting in epistemic injustice. Sullivan-Clarke believes that the concept of active bystander does not go far enough because it does not make epistemic demands on an individual to know about an oppressed group’s culture, history, or experience. Moreover, she notes that often allies are also members of an oppressed group. She argues for a decolonized notion of ally. Using examples of the support of Veteran’s Stand for Standing Rock (VSSR) and Black Lives Matter (BLM) for the water protectors at Standing Rock, Sullivan-Clarke makes a case for reclaiming a decolonized notion of allyship along with the concept of active bystander, as both are necessary to fully capture the actions of solidarity and support shown by VSSR and BLM for the water protectors. A decolonized notion of allyship would require that allies attend to the experiences, culture, and needs of Indigenous people; this requires an epistemic commitment on the part of the ally to learn about the people, the land, and the issue. Allies with a real commitment to active support and openness to learning can undermine settler futurity and help to create the conditions for Indigenous futurity. The Musings in this issue are invited essays from one of the keynote speakers, and two of the invited panelists at the FEAST 2017 conference whose theme was “Decolonizing and Indigenizing Feminist Philosophy.” In the first person, these essays draw upon the life experience and knowledge of their authors; they bring in personal narratives, poetry, and literature to paint a fuller picture of their engagement as Indigenous women and women of color as they negotiate what it means to be a feminist or to engage in feminist philosophy. Kim Anderson’s essay traces her trajectory from her time as a young mother and beginning scholar to the present, in which she identifies as a “middle-aged Indigenous ‘academic auntie’” (pg 204). Anderson (Cree-Metís) is a pioneer in Indigenous feminist studies, and she recounts some of the factors that made Indigenous women reluctant to take up the banner of feminism: “a presumed focus on equality that implies sameness with men; the perception that feminism excludes men from our overall struggles as peoples; the view that feminism is about rights vs. responsibilities with an emphasis on individual autonomy; and the feeling that it rep- resents an attack on ‘traditional’ responsibilities, including mothering” (pg 205). Reflecting back on her journey as a mother, an Indigenous woman, and a scholar, Anderson sees these as interwoven. Turning to elders/aunties for parenting advice and pursuing research on child welfare led her to explore the topic of Indigenous female empowerment. These interconnections weave their way through Anderson’s essay as she reflects on the meaning of “women” and “home.” Currently in a department of home economics, Anderson traces the history of home and mothering through its colonial past to an Indigenous future. She notes that the home was an important site of colonial power as maternal feminists and social reform- ers were dispatched as missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to bring 12 Celia T. Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren white, Christian values to Indigenous communities. Oblivious of what Indigenous com- munities could teach them about women’s power as it was exercised in matrilineal soci- eties, or the importance of community as manifested in extended kinship structures and shared housing, middle-class white women imposed the dominant values of heteropa- triarchal family norms on Indigenous households. Racist standards of mothering and childrearing were entangled with eugenics projects that justified the removal of Indigenous children from their homes, and the sterilization of Indigenous women. Circling back to her own story, Anderson points out that individual and institutional histories are messy and complex; telling the stories is an important part of the work to move forward. Anderson’s current position involves Indigenizing the department of home econom- ics. She reflects on what that means for her as an academic auntie: teaching and men- toring the younger generations, caring for the well-being of the community, leadership and community-organizing, and creating safe space, among other things. For Anderson, leadership and community-organizing has included artivist projects such as making a human medicine wheel with colleagues to raise awareness about the missing and mur- dered Indigenous women in Canada, and performance art in resistance to celebrations of Canada’s sesquicentennial. Indigenizing the department will involve reforming the curriculum to include both the history of colonialist projects, and Indigenous knowl- edges and practices that resist colonialism. Her office is a safe space where students from various departments come to drink tea and relate stories of experiencing racism or heterosexism on campus. Seeking to expand this safe space and to make room for Indigenous ceremonies, rituals, and gardens, Anderson is spearheading a project to build a “Grannie’s cabin” in a wooded area of campus. Near the cabin there will be a garden that will provide Indigenous students with food to take home. As part of this initiative, Indigenous elders will tell stories and provide teachings linking Indigenous knowledge to the issue of working toward Indigenous food security. Anderson redefines home and women’s place in it as participating in activism and engaged care for the well- being of the Indigenous community and its members. The grandmothers situate Lorraine Mayer’s reflection on her identity and her rela- tion to feminist philosophy (2020). Beginning with the stories of her French grand- mother and her Cree grandmother, Mayer bemoans the patriarchal history that obscures her grandmothers’ names, but not her grandfathers’, attributing this erasure to the male-dominated system of colonialism. This erasure of her Cree grandmother’s name and history from genealogical documents led Mayer to explore feminism in spite of her skepticism about feminism as an Indigenous woman. In 2015 she attended the “Hypatia and the Status of Women” conference, finding it inhospitable. She did not feel welcome and was appalled at the lack of knowledge and concern of the conference audi- ence to what was happening to Indigenous Canadian women. She relates that even though this foray into feminist philosophy was disappointing, while there she also met some wonderful women philosophers who invited her to attend the Feminist Ethics and Social Theory conference in 2015 where she chaired a session on Indigenous philosophy. However, she wondered about her limited role as chair, rather than presenter because as the only Indigenous scholar on the panel she had much to contribute to the discussion. Discussions at that conference brought up issues of the marginalization of women of color, the continuing domination of white-stream feminism, and the recalcitrance and whiteness of philosophy as a disci- pline. Given these experiences, Mayer was reluctant to attend future feminist confer- ences. In spite of this she accepted an invitation to organize a panel for FEAST Hypatia 13 2017, whose theme was Decolonizing and Indigenizing Feminist Philosophy. Mayer invited her students to be on her panel so that they could share their experiences with the cultures and languages of their Indigenous communities. The three students came from different communities, Beverly from the Opaskywiak, Glen from the Anishinaabe, and Grace from Brochet. The panel focused on teaching Indigenous phi- losophy and was structured as a talking circle with everyone introducing themselves and identifying the communities they were from; the session began with a prayer. Each stu- dent told her or his story while other conference participants listened and learned. Because of their deep, firsthand knowledge of their languages, cultures, and communi- ties, the students were able to offer rich insight into Indigenous philosophy and ways of life. As Mayer recounts: “They spoke from the heart, not the head. They spoke of com- munity and living philosophy. They were able to explain the lack of gendered terminol- ogy in our languages. They were able to articulate an egalitarian world and the value of childbirth. They were able to bestow a native philosophy upon us that only speakers can know” (pg 218). Mayer reports that she was pleasantly surprised by the acceptance and openness at this conference, and looks forward to more spaces such as this where she can share Indigenous philosophy and her stories. In her essay, Yomaira Figueroa (2020) lays out the contours of Afro-Latina decolo- nial feminist thought. As part of an invited panel on Decolonizing Feminism, Figueroa intended to discuss the “overlapping arcs of decolonial feminisms,” but the devastation of Puerto Rico caused by Hurricanes Irma and María prompted a reflection closer to home. Figueroa employs the concept of destierro to explore the complex relations among different and sometimes overlapping groups of indigenous, Latinx, and Caribbean peoples. Destierro is usually translated into English as “exile,” but its mean- ing is actually closer to the word “banishment” with connotations of being unwillingly, forcibly uprooted from the earth and land. Figueroa sees destierro as “a vector of dis- possession constitutive of colonial modernity” (pg 223). It can provide a way to think through various forms and movements of resistance based on experiences, histo- ries, and ties to the land. Resisting banishment by reclaiming land, and also lived experiences, including cul- tural and literary productions, can highlight the ways that land, home, and body are intimately connected. Colonizing thought, methodologies, and practices deny the rela- tional understandings underlying Indigenous philosophy. Moreover, this relational understanding, Figueroa points out, is necessary to work in coalition with other oppressed groups. “Relationality is a methodology of complex coalition-building, of learning one another’s histories, and of understanding why difference can fragment communities in search of liberation” (pg 223). Because destierro tears people away from their land, land-based practices, and epistemologies, collective resistance to it offers a promising strategy for decolonizing practices and reclaiming land, as well as revaluing land-based practices and knowledges; this revaluing may contribute to Indigenous futures in which land is repatriated, and Indigenous knowledges, languages, cultures, and practices thrive. Conclusion: Imagining Indigenous and Decolonizing Futurities within Feminist Philosophy This special issue is about a future for feminist philosophy, imagining our discipline in ways that make space for Indigenous feminism. Smith, Tuck, and Yang define their work in Indigenous and Decolonizing Education as one relating to a futurity, “a word 14 Celia T. Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren that imbibes the future with what we are doing now to bring about different futures” (Smith, Tuck, and Yang 2019, 23). Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua echoes this insight and characterizes futurities as “ways that groups imagine and produce knowledge of the future” (Goodyear-Kaʻōpua 2019, 86). However, through settler-colonial bias, Indigenous futures have been undermined. Hall argues that Indigenous scholarship is easily erased or brought within problematic terms such as API (Asian Pacific Islander), which renders Pacific Islanders absent as a distinct people (Hall 2009, 23). Moreover, settler-colonial metaphysical determinism uncritically argues that Indigenous peoples, such as Native Hawaiʻians, would have eventually been colonized, and if the US hadn’t done so, some other superpower would have. In this sense, it seems that Indigenous futures are intentionally suppressed by a settler logic of imperial occupation. In contrast, Goodyear-Kaʻōpua suggests that Indigenous futurities “tend away from controlling and possessive modes of knowing. Instead, they frequently include ways of relating that involve putting our bodies in motion in various kinds of non-human rhythms that engage multiple senses” (Goodyear-Kaʻōpua 2019, 87). This would involve developing a literacy of the land and/or ocean. Opposed to an understanding of land based on a Western proprietary model that emphasizes ownership through capitalistic values, Hawaiʻian Indigenous scholars have been theorizing that the task of sovereignty is to establish better relationships with the land, ocean, and sky through embodied prac- tice with nature. Various Indigenous scholars have discussed the development of land lit- eracy (Goodyear-Kaʻōpua 2013; Styres 2019) as a decolonial and Indigenous approach to sovereignty. J. Kehaulani Kauanui points us toward a distinctly Native Hawaiʻian decolo- nial “erotic autonomy” that engages the embodied dimensions of sexuality and land. This offers a decolonial expression of sovereignty that goes beyond a proprietary relationship to the land but nonetheless aims to ensure that Indigenous presence and cultural and sex- ual expressions are able to thrive within occupied lands (Kauanui 2018, 192). Karin Ingersoll’s work in developing a seascape epistemology articulates an oceanic literacy that views knowledge as arising from embodied activities with the ocean. What follows from these encounters with the ocean generates an ethics and a politics that resists settler configurations defining ocean as mere property or as a resource to consume, and ensures that Indigenous presence endures and thrives (Ingersoll 2016, 95). Following land and oceanic literacies, Indigenous and decolonizing futurities for feminist philosophy need to be mindful of the highly situated and contextual project that cultivating Indigenous futurities might look like in a settler-dominant terrain within feminist philosophy. Incommensurability based on the divergent commitments of Indigenous and feminist scholars should be a starting point in repositioning one’s stance in relation to the legacies of settler colonialism in feminist philosophy. It will require situating feminist philosoph- ical analysis anchored within the visions and values of Indigenous communities, which have been hidden behind settler ideological frameworks and deterministic imperial visions. The articles in this special issue offer brief vignettes that introduce new ideolog- ical frameworks, imagine new directions, and navigate toward better and more vibrant Indigenous futurities within feminist philosophy, while acknowledging the limits of our own settler-colonial biases. Notes 1. We capitalize “Indigenous” to follow the NAJA (Native American Journalists Association), which dis- tinguishes Indigenous referring to people from reference to indigenous plants, species, animals, and so on. Hypatia 15 2. Tuck and Yang 2012 point out many sources of Indigenous research that should be on the reading lists of feminist philosophers. 3. Manulani Meyer also presented a version of the concept of “Indigenous” understood as “to thrive” dur- ing a panel presentation on “Sustainability, Resistance and Education” at the Pacific Association of Continental Thought held at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in September 2016. References Anderson, Kim. 2010. Affirmations of an Indigenous feminist. In Indigenous women and feminism: Politics, activism, and culture, ed. Cheryl Suzack, Shari M. Hughndorf, Jeanne Perreault, and Jean Barman. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Arvin, Maile, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill. 2013. Decolonizing feminism: Challenging connections between settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy. Feminist Formations 25 (1): 8–34. Bowman, Melanie, and Maria Rebolleda-Gómez. 2020. Uprooting Narratives: Legacies of Colonialism in the Neoliberal University. Hypatia 35(1): 18–40. Deloria, Jr., Vine. 2001. Power and place: Indian education in America. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing. Ferrari, Martina. 2019. Questions of Silence: On the Emancipatory Limits of Voice and the Coloniality of Silence. Hypatia 35(1): 123–142. Figueroa, Yomaira. 2020. After the Hurricane: Afro-Latina Decolonial Feminisms and Destierro. Hypatia 35(1): 220–229. Goeman, Mishuana R., and Jennifer Nez Denetdale. 2009. Introduction: Native feminisms: Legacies, inter- ventions, and Indigenous sovereignties. Wicazo Sa Review 24 (2): 9–13. Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Noelani. 2013. The seeds we planted: Portraits of a native Hawaiian charter school. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ——. 2019. Indigenous oceanic futures: Challenging settler colonialisms and militarization. In Indigenous and decolonizing studies in education, ed. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang. New York: Routledge. Grande, Sandra. 2004. Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Green, Joyce, ed. 2007. Making space for Indigenous feminism. Halifax, N.S.: Fernwood Publishing. Hall, Lisa Kahaleole. 2009. Navigating our own “Sea of Islands”: Remapping a theoretical space for Hawaiian women and Indigenous feminism. Wicazo Sa Review 24 (2): 15–38. Ingersoll, Karin Amimoto. 2016. Waves of knowing: A seascape epistemology. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Kauanui, J. Kehaulani. 2018. Paradoxes of Hawaiian sovereignty: Land, sex, and the colonial politics of state nationalism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Kizuk, Sarah. 2020. Settler Shame: A Critique of the Role of Shame in Settler–Indigenous Relationships in Canada. Hypatia 35(1): 161–177. Matallana-Peláez, Susana. 2020. Desalambrando: A Nasa Standpoint for Liberation. Hypatia 35(1): 75–96. Mayer, Lorraine. 2020. From the Outside Looking In: One Woman’s Acimowin. Hypatia 35(1): 214–219. Meyer, Manulani Aluli 2003. Ho’oulu: Our time of becoming: Hawaiian epistemology and early writings. Honolulu: ‘Ai Pōhaku Press. —— 2016. Connecting education and the environment: Mobilizing sustainability in education, research, policy and practice. SEPN Conference presentation, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. June. Paquette, Elisabeth. 2020. Reconciliation and Cultural Genocide: A Critique of Liberal Multicultural Strategies of Innocence. Hypatia 35(1): 143–160. Park, Shelley. 2020. Unsettling Feminist Philosophy: An Encounter with Tracey Moffatt’s Night Cries. Hypatia 35(1): 97–122. Ranger, Camille, and Laurie Gagnon-Bouchard. 2020. Reclaiming Relationality Through the Logic of the Gift and Vulnerability. Hypatia 35(1): 41–57. Sinclair, Rebekah. 2020. Exploding Individuals: Engaging Indigenous Logic and Decolonizing Science. Hypatia 35(1): 58–74. Smith, Barbara. 1980. Racism and women’s studies. National Women’s Studies Association: Selected Conference Proceedings. Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 5 (1): 48–49. 16 Celia T. Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang. 2019. Indigenous and decolonizing studies in educa- tion: Mapping the long view. New York: Routledge. Styres, Sandra. 2019. Literacies of the land: Decolonizing narratives, storying, and literature. In Indigenous and decolonizing studies in education, ed. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang. New York: Routledge. Sullivan-Clarke, Andrea. 2019. Decolonizing “Allyship” for Indian Country: Lessons from #NODAPL. Hypatia 35(1): 178–189. Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. 2012. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1 (1): 1–40. Wolfe, Patrick. 1999. Settler colonialism and the transformation of anthropology: The politics and poetics of an ethnographic event. London: Cassell. Celia T. Bardwell-Jones is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. She is currently the chair of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program. Her research interests include topics on feminism and pragmatism, transnational identities, ethics, race, immigration, and Indigenous epistemol- ogies, with an emphasis in the geographies of the Pacific. She teaches courses that incorporate an interdis- ciplinary and a social-ethics approach to metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of nature. She is the co-editor, along with Maurice Hamington, of the anthology Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism (Routledge, 2012). Her publications have appeared in The Pluralist, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, and numerous anthologies on subject matters of identity and decolonial methodologies. (celiab@hawaii.edu) Margaret A. McLaren teaches philosophy, and in the sexuality, women’s, and gender studies program at Rollins College where she holds the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Chair of Philosophy. Her most recent book, Women’s Activism, Feminism, and Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 2019) develops a social-justice model for transnational feminism emerging out of women’s grassroots activism in India. She is also the author of Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity (SUNY Press, 2002), and the edi- tor of Decolonizing Feminism: Transnational Feminism and Globalization (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017). Her articles on women and human rights, feminism, cooperatives and economic empowerment, and Foucault have appeared in several journals, including Hypatia, Social Theory and Practice, Journal of Developing Societies, Forum on Public Policy, and Philosophy Today, as well as in a number of book anthologies. (mmclaren@rollins.edu) Cite this article: Bardwell-Jones CT, McLaren MA (2020). Introduction to Indigenizing and Decolonizing Feminist Philosophy. Hypatia 35, 2–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2019.19 Hypatia 17 https://www.celiab@hawaii.edu https://www.mmclaren@rollins.edu https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2019.19 Introduction to Indigenizing and Decolonizing Feminist Philosophy Key Critical Terms To Indigenize and Decolonize Feminist Philosophy Article Summaries Conclusion: Imagining Indigenous and Decolonizing Futurities within Feminist Philosophy Notes References work_7bch7bcvengddgywvbdibikm2a ---- Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226; doi:10.3390/socsci8080226 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci Article Moving with Touch: Entanglements of a Child, Valentine’s Day Cards, and Research–Activism against Sexual Harassment in Pre-Teen Peer Cultures Suvi Pihkala *, Tuija Huuki and Vappu Sunnari Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, FI-90014 Oulu, Finland * Correspondence: suvi.pihkala@oulu.fi Received: 17 May 2019; Accepted: 22 July 2019; Published: 26 July 2019 Abstract: In this paper, we respond to feminist new materialist scholars’ calls to explore what research in the field of gendered and sexual violence can be, do, and become. This paper explores the microprocesses of change within the more-than-human child–card entanglements as part of our research–activist campaign addressing sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures. Drawing on one of our creative workshops, we generate three analytical readings that map touch. We focus, first, on the intra-action of bodies, objects, and abstractions that reconfigures painful experiences of harassment for recognition; second, on the affective charge in moments and movements of response and resistance; and third, on what else touch can become when it travels across time–space domains as part of our research–activism. Re-engaging with our research–activism, we propose that different kinds of touch converge into a sensing-feeling, inherently ethico-political, matter-realizing apparatus that reconfigures painful experiences of gendered and sexual harassment for recognition, response, and resistance. Connecting to feminist new materialist endeavors to envision and enact response-able research, we propose that ‘moving with touch’ helps us shed light on the microprocesses of change in generative ways—that is, in ways that recraft response-abilities and invite movement. Keywords: Barad; children; creative methods; feminist new materialisms; research–activism; response-ability; sexual harassment; touch 1. Introduction Sexual harassment was brought to renewed attention in 2017, prompted by the global ‘#MeToo’ movement. Having spent nearly 20 years exploring gender and sexual power plays among children in school settings, our research team—including Tuija, who was following the debate closely—was deeply affected by the discussion, which mostly ignored the ways sexual harassment connects to and permeates children’s peer cultures. This combination of the ‘hashtag feminism’ (Mendes et al. 2018) against sexual harassment, the public debate, and our numerous research encounters with children marked the ‘beginning in the middle’ of our research–activist project. Theoretically, our research– activist approach was inspired by feminist new materialist and, in particular, ‘phEmaterialist’ work (e.g., Renold and Ringrose 2019), which have generatively merged feminist research with Deleuzian/Spinozian activist philosophies (e.g., Braidotti 2013) and the theories of micropolitics of change (Manning 2016; Massumi 2015) and affect (e.g., Blackman and Venn 2010) in order to envision ways of doing educational research capable of generating material changes in wider social spheres (e.g., Renold 2018; Ringrose et al. 2019). The creative arts-based research-activist project, titled #MeToo Postscriptum, that shaped the direction of this article, was designed and implemented by two of the authors—Tuija and Suvi— during the weeks before Valentine’s Day in 2018. It emerged from Tuija’s broader ongoing research Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 2 of 13 and from a long continuum of research on gendered and sexual force relations by the authors (Huuki and Renold 2016; Huuki et al. 2010; Holford et al. 2013; Pihkala and Huuki 2019; Sunnari et al. 2002; Sunnari 2010). Although it is often discussed only in relation to adults, research shows that sexual harassment—verbal, physical, material, emotional, or psychological sexual abuses of power—also affect young people in multiple, contradictory manners as normalized, everyday hetero-sexisms circulating within young peer cultures, media, and the wider social and cultural discourses (Gillander Gådin 2012; Holford et al. 2013; Meyer 2009; Renold 2013; Stein 2007; Sunnari 2010; Sunnari et al. 2002). However, young people are left with insufficient support for navigating these often contentious terrains of gender and sexuality (Renold 2013). Drawing inspiration from child-led activism in Wales (Renold 2018, 2019; Renold and Ringrose 2019), the #MeToo Postscriptum campaign engaged children aged 10–12 years in creative workshops to explore their experiences of sexual harassment and to communicate those experiences to decisionmakers and the public. In this paper, we return to and re-engage with one of the workshops, a workshop with a group of eight girls,1 and map the iterative intra-action of Valentine’s Day cards, girls, experiences of past harassment, the research–activist campaign, and our own engagements and entanglements during the campaign. In re-engaging with the workshop, we employ touch as a steering concept that reanimates and enlivens within and through three analytically enacted moments at focus in this paper. Drawing on Barad’s (2007) agential realism, with the first moment, we map more-than-human touch, focusing on the materiality of the workshop. We render visible how bodies, tables, movement, space, objects, postscripts, past, present, and research–activism intra-act, generating conditions of possibility for painful experiences to reconfigure for recognition. Then, we map what else touch can do, focusing on the affective charge in the moments and movements of response and resistance in the intra-action of past experiences, Valentine’s cards, and a makeshift mailbox. Our third and final analysis maps what else touch can become as it gathers up and holds together across time–space domains, reaching towards, sticking to us, and traveling to wider change-making terrains. Mapping and moving with touch enable us to become open to the microprocesses and micropolitics of change and, as explored in this paper, to the ways in which painful experiences of harassment can be reconfigured for recognition, response, and resistance. As invested and interested in co-constructing and theorizing response-able, everyday practices of change-making (Huuki 2019; Pihkala et al. 2018; Pihkala 2018), this paper contributes to the recent calls to envision response-able research and practice and to illuminate and theorize the microprocesses of change in our research endeavors (Ringrose et al. 2019; Renold 2018). ‘Moving with touch’ within our creative research–activism sheds light on the affordances of feminist new materialism-inspired approaches that are attuned to materiality, relationality, and becoming. We argue that our research– activism, predicated on creative, multimodal, more-than-human sense-abilities, fostered conditions in which unwanted, painful, silenced, and unaddressed experiences could be reconfigured for recognition, response, and resistance in ways that exceed the limits of humanistic and talk-based modes of engagement. Beginning from within entanglements and relationality, as opposed to pre-existing subjects and objects, enables us to attend to the material-discursive practices of body, object, gesture, movement, silence, voice, space, history, feeling, and touch and how these human and more-than- human elements intra-act, producing particular and contingent outcomes (Barad 2007). We maintain 1 Informed by our long-term work with children around sensitive topics of gender and sexual harassment, the workshops were held in single-sex groups with the aim of ensuring safe possibilities for the participants to explore and communicate their experiences of their friendship and relationship cultures. Within the scope of this research, it was not possible to address the children’s experiences of gender, but grounded in our long- term research on gender and power in child peer cultures, we were familiar with the specific context of our research–activism in Finland. In this context, issues of gender are sensitive, unaddressed, and often silenced, which make them difficult to address. The grouping by assumed gender aligned with the accustomed and dominant practices of the schools. It was based on our previous experiences of working in mixed-gender groups where the sensitivity and difficulty of the topic causes anxiety and dominant modes of gender expression become enforced. In order to work with and rework gender dichotomies, the groups were thus divided by assumed gender. However, our approach during our engagements with the children remained sensitive to the children’s diverse gender expressions. Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 3 of 13 that working from within such entanglements enables elbow room for the unexpected and emergent and prompts us to not limit our inquiry to interpretations and instead invest in how research can be made to matter in the world (Ringrose et al. 2019). By thinking with theory and moving with touch, we make a speculative gesture towards theorizing what else touch can be, do, and become. Methodologically, mapping different kinds of touches causes them to converge into a sensing-feeling, inherently ethico-political, matter-realizing apparatus that yields a nuanced account of the intra-active moments when subtle shifts of change occur. It does so in generative ways—that is, in ways that recraft response-abilities and incite and invite movement. 2. Each Intra-Action Matters: Envisioning the Microprocesses of Change in Research against Sexual Harassment in Pre-Teen Peer Cultures This paper connects to the expansive work inspired by feminist new materialist theories related to affect, materiality, and the relationality of human and more-than-human others (e.g., Barad 2007; Braidotti 2013; Dolphijn and Tuin 2012). This work has elicited heightened attunement and thoughtfulness in feminist research and social sciences more widely with respect to how bodies, objects, and discourses affect one another and are affected upon and how power, agency, and change, for example, are imagined (Fox and Alldred 2016; Ringrose et al. 2019). In phEmaterialist work, the reimagination of how gender, power, and sexuality matter in children’s lives and, importantly, how change and transformation could be evoked (Renold and Ringrose 2019), has prompted—to use a term borrowed from Barad (2007) and Haraway (2008)—response-able research and pedagogy (Renold 2018; Ringrose et al. 2019; Taylor 2018). This call also acts as our motivation and inspiration to move with touch as we work to attune to and capture the subtle shifts of change within our research–activism. In gauging such ‘microprocesses of change’ as they occur, we employ three pivotal threads from Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemology. Barad (2007) introduced the idea of agential realism, proposing that the world and things ‘come to matter’ through agential cuts enacted through ongoing intra- action; that is, objects, abstractions, discourses, and even space and time do not pre-exist their relatings. This means that phenomena, such as gender and sexual harassment as the object of our inquiry and activism, too, must be understood to become intelligible through specific and contingent material-discursive arrangements or apparatuses of bodily production (Barad 2007). It is perhaps particularly in the matterings of gender and sexuality—and sexual harassment—where Barad’s thinking works to make visible the agential force of discursive practices upon matter, and vice versa. In this paper, intra-action, then, heightens our attention in relation to the dynamic ontological entanglements of human and more-than-human others—that is, how bodies, objects, movement, time, discourse, feelings, and gestures intra-act within and through the workshop. Furthermore, for Barad (2007), time does not work in a mode of linearity. This challenges the ways we understand change, which can no longer be perceived to follow from a past that once was but, rather, emerges through the iterative differentiating and reworking of a past that was never left behind and a future that is already present (Barad 2007). In this sense, each intra-action matters as a more-than-human and more-than-present encounter that holds the possibility ‘to breathe life into ever new possibilities for living justly’ (Barad 2007, p. x). Considering the past experiences of pain, hurt, silence, and denial materializing for recognition through our research–activist apparatus against sexual harassment, Barad’s thinking helps us attune to the intra-active entanglements anew. It helps us consider how, as we move, craft, and talk with the children, the intra-active entanglements of bodies, things, moments, and places come together and hold the possibility for making a difference in how sexual harassment matters. There is a breathtaking intimacy to this, as Barad (2014) writes. She brings the ethico-onto-epistemology of agential realism in touch with touch, stating that ‘touching, sensing, is what matter does, or rather, what matter is: matter is condensations of response-ability’ (Barad 2014, p. 161, italics removed). Indeed, the ethicality at the marrow of mattering—as captured in the hyphenated notion of ‘response-ability’ (Barad 2007; Haraway 2008)—is ‘always already integral to the world’s ongoing intra-active becoming and not- becoming’ (Barad 2010, p. 265). It is an invitation and an obligation to enable and welcome the response of the other that inhabits ‘each meeting’ (Barad 2007). Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 4 of 13 Enriching our thinking about the intra-active entanglements of our research–activist encounters with touch and response-ability enables us to imagine the intra-activity at stake as materially crowded, affectively charged, and temporally rich—more-than-human and more-than-present— entanglements that are ethical from the get go. This thinking also reanimates ‘our responsibility to be in touch’ (Barad 2014) in our research–activist endeavors. As we maintain, how we co-compose the materials, creative practices, and human and more-than-human others matters. It matters to the ways we can help children identify and share with others their experiences and concerns related to sexual harassment and how we can foster possibilities for change in children’s peer cultures. Indeed, Barad (2007, p. 89) asks us to ‘tak[e] responsibility for the fact that our practices matter; the world is materialized differently through different practices’. This ethics as ‘always-already’—response- ability (Barad 2007; Haraway 2008)—casts a challenge and obligation to ‘cultivate the capacity to respond’ (Haraway 2016, p. 7) and to reimagine the ethico-political potentiality in ‘each meeting’ in our attempt to both make inquiries into and co-compose conditions for co-flourishing. 3. Method and Materials: Moving with Touch As part of the #MeToo Postscriptum campaign, we organized and implemented 17 arts-based workshop sessions focusing on gendered and sexual harassment in pre-teen peer relations with a total of 150 children aged 10–12 years at schools in Finland. When organizing the workshops, we endeavored to create specific conditions that provide access to new ground and enable safe and creative intra-action (Barad 2007), so as to allow the participants to explore the ambivalences, contradictions, pains, and pleasures embedded in the gendered and sexual power relations of pre- teen peer cultures. Such conditions could be understood to constitute what Massumi (2015) calls ‘enabling constraints’, which propose a specific object of concern without, however, imposing preconceived notions about the final destination or outcome (Massumi 2015, p. 73). Enabling constraints, as we built upon them here, are carefully and purposefully made arrangements that cultivate conditions of response (Barad 2007; Haraway 2008) and that simultaneously mark our response-ability and accountability with respect to the becomings and not-becomings we help enact (Barad 2007). The workshops involved activities related to the topic of sexual harassment. During the workshops, the children engaged in discussions and exploration of gendered and sexualized peer cultures and sexual harassment, created and drew Valentine’s Day cards, and—if they chose to do so—wrote their own experiences of harassment in the postscripts of their cards.2 In addition to the workshops with the children, a pop-up stand was set up in a university café to allow student teachers and faculty members to partake the campaign by sharing their own childhood experiences of harassment. Through our research–activism, our aims were to generate data on children’s experiences of sexual harassment in peer relations,3 communicate those experiences with children to wider audiences, and engage in political debate and social transformation. As part of the latter, after the workshops, the research team collected and sent the cards to every member of the Finnish Parliament and published excerpts from the notes and cards on the campaign website (Huuki and Pihkala 2018). The cards with the postscripts were intended to remind decisionmakers and the Finnish public of the need for systematic and consistent work to address sexual harassment, which affects not only adults but also children. The human and more-than-human ‘participants’ of the 2 Occurring in advance of Valentine’s Day, in our project, the #MeToo became linked with the postscript section of a Valentine’s Day card. The postscript worked to make visible the often-ignored nature and the silence regarding sexual harassment in pre-teen peer relations (Pihkala and Huuki 2019). Using the hashtag connected the project to the momentum afforded by the digital feminist activism of the #MeToo movement (Mendes et al. 2018). 3 As part of our wider interest in investigating gender and sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures, the workshops were video-recorded, accumulating a total of 27 h of audio–visual recordings, 108 pages of transcripts, 15 pages of extended field notes, and 210 digitalized cards, of which the data for this paper involve 2 h and 36 min of audio–visual recordings from the workshop session in question. Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 5 of 13 campaign, such as the children, researchers, public, the decisionmakers, hands, chairs, tables, space, paper slips, pens, and arts and crafts; and the multiple modalities of the creative activities, such as the movement, crafting, speech, and writing, were understood as active and lively coplayers that came together in unexpected ways, as well as through our purposeful material, research–activist engagements that aimed to foster possibilities for the children to explore, address, and communicate their experiences of harassment. The ethical considerations in relation to the project were ongoing before, during, and after our engagements with the children. As a ‘spin off’ and part of Tuija’s ongoing research project,4 the #MeToo Postscriptum campaign had obtained a statement from the Ethics Committee of Human Sciences at the University of Oulu, Finland and followed the policies of the schools in all matters of child protection. The workshop participants were recruited by contacting local schools and teachers interested in participating in the campaign. Information letters and consent forms were sent to the children and their legal guardians to be signed before participation. These letters included research- based information about gender and sexual harassment as the theme of the workshops, as well as information about the creative activities of the workshops and the campaign. They also included details about the use of the produced data and the possibility that the notes could be shared publicly and in research publications. These issues were discussed again with the children in the beginning of every workshop and additionally brought up whenever it seemed important. The activist orientation of the project was materially present in the creation of the Valentine’s Day cards as the children themselves chose the members of parliament to whom their cards would be sent. The children were able to withdraw at any time or negotiate their own way of participating. For example, in some of the workshops, a few of the participants created cards that they did not want to share as part of the campaign. Those cards, or any cards that were ambiguous with respect to the children’s consent, were excluded from the project. Even when carefully considering ethics as part of our praxis, engaging children in research– activism involves ongoing response-ability with respect to the project as it unfolds and, for example, becomes public. We maintain that staying with the complexities and trouble (Haraway 2008, 2012, 2016) involved is important, as the entangled constellations of research and activism can produce processes of social change and transformation both within the lives of the children and within the wider terrains of social and educational policies and practices. Particularly in relation to sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures, which is a silenced and often unaddressed topic in schools, asking what matters to the children themselves is important. This, along with the premise of moving beyond merely stating the state of things in research on children’s peer and relationship cultures (e.g., Huuki and Renold 2016; Renold 2018), guided our research–activist aim of helping children’s experiences and voices to be heard, sensed, and felt so as to cultivate conditions for co-flourishing. Building upon the project, in this paper, we generated an analysis focusing on and departing from one of the workshops. The data are comprised of video-recordings of a workshop with eight girls, postscript notes in which the children described their experience and collaborative reflections, and personal field notes taken by the research team members. When returning to the data, our aim was not so much to gain access to some undisputable truth about the workshop. Rather, the data helped us slow down—touch, sense, feel, and think—with the material, affective, and temporal entangledness involved. Over the course of the research process—while we were engaged in the workshops, cataloguing the research materials, publishing results, and returning to the data to write this paper—the data were iterated upon, continuously reassembled, and engaged in diffractive encounters that ‘pulled in’ different times and spaces. Theory is ‘put to work’ (Dolphijn and Tuin 2012) in the three analytically enacted moments— that is, moments enacted by us through agential cuts (Barad 2007) within particular, contingent apparatuses of knowing (see also Lenz Taguchi and Palmer 2013). In this paper, such cuts were inspired by touch. Touch, as it unfolded for us here, carries resemblance to affect, as in ‘being affected’. It is also a bodily practice and a mundane moment, for example, a pen touching a paper or 4 Project ‘Gender-based violence in pre-teen relationship cultures: How history, place, affect and arts interventions matter’, grant number 295000. Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 6 of 13 a hand holding a paper slip. It is these affective and material tenors of touch that invited our attention. However, informed by and diffractively engaging with Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemology, discussed previously in this paper, touch became removed from its human orbit. Thus, in the three analytical sections below, we map, first, more-than-human touch focusing on the materially crowded moments within the workshops. In the second section, our focus becomes drawn to the affective charge, and we explore what else touch as a mode of material feeling and thinking does in moments of response and resistance. In the final analytical section, we focus on what else touch can become as it gathers up and holds together across time–space domains as part of our research–activism. By mapping and moving with touch, we engage touch as a more-than-human and more-than-present player that intra- actively engages in the material-discursive practices within and through which sexual harassment ‘comes to matter’ and, as we explore, potentially a player that engenders conditions of possibility for subtle shifts, marking and making differences that matter in the hurt, silence, normalization, and denial of gender and sexual harassment by enabling the opening up to change and transformation towards co-flourishing. 4. Research–Activist Encounters Below, we provide two accounts of the workshop. The accounts that we offer regarding the workshop must not be understood as a set of passive props but, rather, as a space–time entangled, affectively charged environment through and within which ‘what is “in” the foreground [is allowed] to acquire the shape that it does’ (Ahmed 2010, pp. 239–40). In addition to describing the process of the workshop, we attune to the affective atmosphere (Stewart 2011) of the entanglements of the girls, the notes, movement, gestures, utterances, tables, chairs, and a makeshift mailbox, which will then be iterated in the following three analytical sections. 4.1. The Workshop Similar to all the workshops, this workshop began with the children—eight girls in total— gathered in a circle of chairs. Two student teachers led the session, and Suvi participated. The student teachers read research-based statements about children’s friendship and relationship cultures. Every time the participants agreed with the statement, they would stand up and switch seats. If they disagreed, or were unwilling or unable to take a stand, they would remain in place. The movement of one girl would easily stir movement in others. Sometimes, amidst bodies anchored in place to be, then again, on the move, discussions would unfold, causing us to linger on a topic for longer. Sometimes the topics would ‘touch’ the girls in a particular way, generating giggles or evoking stories—things the participants knew—about the ongoing relationships and romantic undercurrents within their peer relations. Those ‘knowings’ were sometimes voiced aloud and other times evident only in quick glances and smiles. After the introduction to the topic of sexual harassment, the children were told about the research–activist campaign in more detail. They were instructed to craft Valentines’ Day cards and, if they chose, to write about harassment they had experienced. Slips of paper with examples of some of the experiences disclosed in previous workshops with young people were put on the wall to prompt reflection. The notes described contentious and troubling touches and experiences with just a few words or a sentence, such as ‘I have been slapped on the butt’ or ‘some boys in our class groped between girls’ thighs with a ruler’. Soon, the children began to collect materials to create their Valentine’s Day cards. They gathered in a close group around one of the tables, chatting while they cut and folded the base of the cards and decorated them with drawings, tapes, stamps, glitter glue, and colors. When the cards were nearly ready and the participants began to contemplate their postscripts, the atmosphere shifted. If they had previously been gathered together, they seemed to scatter around the classroom, taking their newly crafted cards or empty slips of paper with them. For some of the children, it seemed difficult to think of something to write. This was expected, as not all children are caught up in same ways within the flows of peer and relationship cultures. Others hunched over their cards to shelter the affective, intimate, precarious space in which their experiences of harassment could be safely figured in words, Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 7 of 13 written down, attached to the card, and eventually, slipped into a makeshift mailbox that was set up on one of the tables. Once placed in the mailbox, the notes and cards became part of the campaign. Some of them were curated for publishing online, and all of them were mailed to decisionmakers. Gradually, the workshop session came to a close as the children left the classroom to get lunch, leaving the research team with the video recordings and the to-be-written research notes, the box of cards, and lingering affects—as we will elaborate upon below—which became reassembled within the broader research–activist apparatus of change-making regarding sexual harassment (Pihkala and Huuki 2019). 4.2. A Girl with a Note In the latter half of the workshop, one girl caught Suvi’s attention. At this point, the girl had already put her Valentine’s Day card in the makeshift mailbox. She was one of the first participants to finish her card, but it did not include a postscript. Suvi remembered telling her that this was okay, as we could use such cards if someone else had several bits of stories to share. After completing the activity, she returned to the table where the others were still making their cards. Later, the girl began to meander around the room, walking from one table to the next and looking at the arts and crafts on the tables. We do not know what made her get up. Perhaps she was prompted by the fact that others had begun to find more private spaces to write, or perhaps the request to share experiences was made more insistent by the movement of bodies and shift in attention. The girl halted by one of the tables, on which we had spread the notes that were previously hung on the wall to evoke discussion and reflection. She continued on but returned, pausing a bit longer by the table and whispering with another girl who had joined her there. Having looked at the notes for a while, the girl asked, ‘Could one write something like that?’ as she pointed to one of the notes. Suvi confirmed that she could and encouraged her to write something down if she still wanted to. Without saying much more, she took an empty slip of paper, returned to the table where she had been before, and began to write. Moments later, the girl rose and walked to the makeshift mailbox, clutching the paper note, which was a little less than half the size of an A4 paper, close to her chest. Then, carefully doubling the paper without folding it, as if to keep her writing sheltered from others, she reached towards the makeshift mailbox and slipped her note in. She stepped to the side, looked back at the box and then walked away, hands casually in her jumper pockets, but it felt that what just happened was anything but casual. After the workshop ended and we returned to our office to catalogue the cards, Suvi noticed that very same paper note, remembering the color and size. She remembered how the girl moved and halted at the table, the pointing, the card, and the curve of the note as she slipped it into the makeshift mailbox. All the details were pulled into that moment of recognition in the office. In her note, which, as part of the campaign, became entangled in the wider mosaic of experiences of harassment, the girl shared her painful experience from a few years back. Even though she sheltered the note from the eyes of her classmates, her slipping it into the makeshift mailbox, instead of the cards to be excluded from the project, gestured perhaps a political moment and movement of speaking out. We have not identified her experience in its singularity to ensure the girl’s anonymity and because our focus is not on the experience described on the note but, rather, on the microprocesses of change and the subtle shifts that unfolded within and through the workshop. However, to respect this movement from silence to speaking out and speaking up, we have elsewhere made parts of the children’s notes public (see Huuki and Pihkala 2018; Pihkala and Huuki 2019). 5. Past–Present Child–Card Entanglements of Response-Ability In this section, we map touch through the three analytically enacted moments. Each section, while entangled in nature, draws attention in specific ways to the productivity of the materiality, affective charge, and movements across time–space domains, as has been elaborated previously. Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 8 of 13 5.1. Mapping Touch as More-Than-Human The design of the workshops—its different modalities and creative activities, as elaborated previously in this paper; the size and composition of the group; and the attention to more-than- human—were co-constructed so as to enable an atmosphere that ‘touches’ enough to enable ‘responsiveness’, that is, to help children explore, communicate, and address experiences of harassment that easily tend to be overcast by deafening silence when addressed in the primary school classroom. During the workshop, the girls gathered together, moved about, and stayed still while crafting with papers, pens, glitter glue, tapes, and colors. The notes laid out on the table carried traces of experiences of harassment, connecting the workshop to the collective history of felt and sensed touches of sexual harassment, be it physical, verbal, or otherwise, enfolded in this entanglement of child-bodies, notes, circles, tables, and the campaign. This intra-action of bodies, movements, and materials opening up to the unexpected and emergent is our first analytical cut. For Barad (2014), touching is not centered on a human being, nor is it only affective. It is ontological and epistemological. Touching is what matter does. With this understanding of touch, the girls’ movements and haltings, rummaging through the arts and crafts materials, writing and drawing, and re-membering (Barad 2010) past experiences fail to return to any one individual alone. Similar to the girl with the pointed finger tentatively asking if it could be ‘something like that’, the ‘it’ that comes to matter fails to return to an individual imagination or recognition only. Rather, within the intra-active entanglement of glitter glue, colors, paper slips, past-presents, and engaged bodies— sitting and moving in a circle and sharing experiences—it is not only the girls that touch and are touched. Thinking along the lines of Barad, both the girls and the matter—things, moments, and places—wander and wonder, curiously sensing and touching their im/possibilities, imagining, and inventing (Barad 2014, 2015). In these moments of moving, halting, inciting, and inviting human and other than human bodies, matter, in its curious and imaginative ‘self-touching’ form (Barad 2014), reconfigures the girls’ experiences for recognition in new ways. As bodies move within the circle of chairs; smiles appear; pens touch paper; bodies shift and sway in proximity and distance; gazes fall on notes; and past experiences make themselves present, touches subtly shift and rework hurtful, painful, unaddressed, and deep-seated experiences—even an experience from two years ago—for recognition, bringing something within reach that was not present before and perhaps reachable in a way that was not possible before. 5.2. What Else Touch Can Do: The Affective Charge in Response and Resistance Our second analytical moment enacts a cut that draws focus to the affective charge in the intra- action of notes, bodies, and a makeshift mailbox. We return to the girl who clutched the note to her chest, carefully sheltering it from others, while also sharing it with others once she slipped it into the makeshift mailbox on the table. In the affectively charged mo(ve)ment of this ‘held-shared’ note from the intimacy of the girl’s chest to the public space of the makeshift mailbox, being touched does something else; it reconfigures conditions of possibilities for touching in response. When we returned to and re-engaged with this moment, we were caught by its force, as well as by our own visceral responses during the campaign. To elaborate, we had set up a pop-up stand in the university café to engage student teachers and faculty members in the campaign. The pop-up stand enabled passers-by to craft their own Valentine’s Day cards and include their stories of harassment during childhood as postscripts. While sitting by a table in a busy café, we also wrote down our experiences. More than once, we found ourselves confronted with the difficulty and discomfort of doing so. An array of charges passed through our bodies: who sees me; who passes by; who sees the painful experience that comes to matter and is made to matter in this moment. We understand such charges as sensed-felt resonances and dissonance between the sensitivity of the experience, deep-seated anxieties related to our experiences of harassment and abuse, and the publicity both in that moment and inherent in the promise of the campaign, which invited us to explore intimate experiences and make them matter for others. It is through those embodied affective encounters and similar experiences shared by colleagues that we began to speculate about the ways Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 9 of 13 the intra-active moment with the girl, the note, the moving–holding hands, and the makeshift mailbox was iteratively reconfigured from within the material and affective entanglements of the research–activist campaign. As we sensed-felt while writing our own notes about harassment, in this moment, with the girl and the note and the materiality and affects of our research–activist workshop, touch was a sensed- felt resonance that intra-acted with the cards, the pens, the tables, the public space of the café, the passing bodies, and the rhythm of academic work and time and opened up towards a possible other world, generating new patterns of diffraction. Perhaps this touch is what Clare Hemmings (2012) calls affective dissonance, the incongruity of ontology and epistemology and of being and knowing, which is felt as a visceral force, such as uncertainty, shame, upset, decidedness, and courage. This force marks the sense and feel of something coming within reach that was not there before in a way that invites engagement. For Hemmings (2012, p. 151), it is such dissonances that hold political possibility and the promise of movement. The movement within this entanglement of the girl—and, indeed, us as well—the note, and the embodied practice of holding the note close while reaching towards the makeshift mailbox unfolds as a mo(ve)ment of response, response-ability, and resistance. We contend that what touch as a more-than-human player does in this moment is that it co- constitutes a site and space of response—a space enfolded with affects, things, places, and moments and unfolding towards resistance. Amplified by our own responses to writing down our pasts, we understand that the ability to be moved and affected to reach in resistance and to disturb the norms of what can be said, what can be resisted, what can be disrupted—be it the heterosexist normativities or intra-generational trauma (Huuki and Lanas 2019)—is frail and precarious. Yet, we maintain that the intra-active entanglement of the cards, the words written in the postscripts, the makeshift mailbox, and the promise and possibility of action enfolded in it allowed the past experience of hurt— the recognition—to reconfigure and to be not only known but to be resisted. 5.3. What Else Touch Can Become: Gathering Up and Holding Together/Apart across Time–Space Domains As we curated the cards for the campaign website, the note became reanimated, making sense- able the response-ability and accountability it crafted by inviting and obliging us to care about it and to be careful with it without certainty if the ‘it’ is the card, the ‘data’, the words written in the cards, the girl who wrote it, the upsetting experience described in the note, the hurt embedded within it, or perhaps the academic writing about ‘it’. The intra-active entanglement of the child, cards, creative practice, research, and activism diffracts, sending out ripples that, no matter how small, hold the potentiality for ‘consequential meanings’ (Haraway 1997). This touch of the girl’s response held its grip when we selected excerpts from the cards to publish on the campaign website and when the upset and hurt became realigned in the title of a news article in a national newspaper, (re-)making us as (modest) witnesses, complicit, and response-able (Haraway 1997, 2008). For Haraway (2008, p. 36), this is exactly what touches can do: they shape and ramify accountability, where ‘[a]ccountability, caring for, being affected, and entering into responsibility are not ethical abstractions’ but mundane practices of becoming with. As explored earlier in this paper, due to the affective charge sensed and felt by us while writing notes about our childhood experiences of harassment, there was a familiarity that resonated from the entanglement of the girl, the note, and the makeshift mailbox. It would be rather easy to foreground how we were emotionally affected by the girl’s story and how the touch–affect jumps back and forth, first during the workshop and again in the office, from us to the girl and from the girl to us or to all those ‘others’ who we can imagine being touched. Perhaps it was the familiarity in the dissonance of holding close and disclosing that we recognize, of keeping hidden but wanting to seize the opportunity to disrupt conventional silences around touches that hurt—to reach and touch in resistance. The sense of familiarity moves us to speculate that we were not merely slightly grazed by this one experience and the touches surrounding it; rather, in being touched by the girl’s experience, matter, time, and space realigned and reinvented itself in a reiterative practice of reconfiguring (Barad 2007). In effect, we argue that touch, as mapped here, reaches and holds across and beyond Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 10 of 13 space–time domains. Our adult researcher bodies hold and carry ‘impressions’ of our own past touches—such as a re-membered slap—which, as Barad (2010) notes, never left us. New touches stick to us, such as the touch–affect from the girl. These touches did not just stick and jump but became more-than-human and more-than-present players in this research–activist constellation. Each touch invents new matter forms by gathering up and holding together/apart the past and present (Barad 2010), the researcher-adult, the researcher-child, the girl with the note, the researcher with a note, and, perhaps, also the pre-teen girls that have been and will be affected by sexual harassment in their peer relations. Neither the girl being touched nor we, who were being touched by the girl-being-touched, were contained in the ‘touch-encounter’. Thinking along the lines of Barad (2007), we enter into relations of response not because of what touches us from afar but because there were never separate parts to begin with. Indeed, response-abilities are not crafted from a graze. In other words, they are not created by ‘knowing’ the girl’s troubling experience but from the capacity of us be(com)ing (with) in touch (see Pihkala 2018), that is, the capacity of touch to draw times, spaces, and matter into new relations, inviting touch in response. 6. Microprocesses of Change and the Possibilities of Moving with Touch Knowing what we know and feeling what we feel, any of the notes from our research–activist campaign might be swarming with as many affects, times, and embodied materiality as surround the workshop or the girl with the note as discussed in this paper. Nonetheless, in this particular entangled practice of engagement, this girl touched us, took hold of us, and pulled us to move with touch in response. Furthermore, slipped into the makeshift mailbox, the girls’ notes, ‘crafted from and carrying their experience’ (Renold 2018, p. 38), became ‘knotted’ with the wider change-making apparatus against sexual harassment: the campaigns, personal accounts, public debate, and (digital) feminist activism that have enabled young people to speak out against ‘rape culture’ in new ways (Mendes et al. 2018). To claim how the campaign mattered to the girls—or any of the participants— would be speculative at best. However, the children’s need to address and explore their concerns related to gender and sexual peer cultures has been tangible time and time again as the children have voiced the need for safe spaces where sensitive topics could be discussed. For this, engaging children with creative activities can enable subtle shifts and minor gestures (Manning 2016) towards sustainable alternatives in peer relations when imagined worlds are materialized through crafting, drawing, and writing. The research–activist encounters of our creative workshop against sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures is materially rich, affectively charged, and temporally entangled. In gauging the microprocesses of change as they occur, we mapped touch and explored what else touch(es) can do. As we mapped in our analysis, the entanglement of the group of girls, Valentine’s Day cards, past, and present involved different kinds of touches in different registers, such as embodied, corporeal touches of gropes and slaps; verbal touches; material touches of pen on paper; present touches that leave impressions and linger; past touches that carry the residues of the past; the touch–affects that slip through cognition shooting straight through our bodies in resonances and dissonances; and the onto-epistemological touches that sense the virtual in an exploration of the possible, quantum, and queer touches, as discussed by Barad (2015). Just as touch seems to settle in senses, it is already on the move, reaching, holding, and gathering. The childhood slaps and gropes reached the Valentine’s Day cards in a café, the child-bodies reached a researcher-child, a finger reached for a pile of notes, a hand reached for the makeshift mailbox, the mailbox reached us, and the otherwise-made-possible reached the body-in-reach. We maintain that there is a particular benefit in thinking of the microprocesses of change with touch. For one, mapping touch, as we did here, enabled us to capture the subtle shifts in the children’s unaddressed, silenced, normalized, hurtful experience. Rather than being here and there—or this or that—touches intra-acted within and through the workshop as more-than-human and more-than- present players and converged into an inventive, imaginative, sensing-feeling, matter-realizing apparatus, which activated recognition of, response to, and resistance against sexualized and Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 226 11 of 13 gendered force relations. Thinking along the lines of Barad (2014), this is what touch—when thought of in the quantum mode—can do: sense and feel and gather up and hold together/apart (Barad 2014, 2015). Drawing matter into new relations, characterized by indeterminacy waiting to remake momentary alliances, touch reworks and recrafts response-abilities (Barad 2014; Haraway 2008). For another, the ethico-political tone of touch is intimate and entangled. With touch, it is impossible to keep one’s distance or disavow how we are touched and how the ways we touch shape and co-constitute the conditions of possibilities for touching in response and resistance to the ‘other’. Our experience of being touched by the girls’ experiences and our research–activism, which brought disparate matters and modalities together, generating the imaginative, creative, sensing-feeling apparatus, knotted us in webs of manifold more-than-human and more-than-present touches that diffractively reconfigured ever-new possibilities for change. For us, as researchers and activists, thinking with touch engages theory in ways that moves and transforms relations, engagements, and accountabilities. We contend that this is the way feminist new materialist touch works: it is not only ‘put to work’ (Dolphijn and Tuin 2012) but becomes enacted when objects, bodies, abstractions, and moments intra-act—how they sense and feel, imagine and invent, reach in response, gather up, and hold together. Finally, thinking about our research–activism with touch draws attention to the affective, material, and temporally entangled encounters that contest and remake what is possible, producing ‘differences that matter’. While the anatomy of these encounters cannot be laid bare, engaging them with new conceptual companions—as we did in this paper—can help enrich the ways we think, feel, and practice research in ways that can make a difference. Indeed, moving with touch aligns with more-than-theoretical approaches to what research can do. It speaks to the power and potentiality of and responsibility to participate in co-composing research encounters that invite and enable response to the other. This demands that we carefully co-compose thick, material, and affective encounters that invite and enable children, researchers, and others to sense, feel, think, imagine, wander, and wonder with—to become with (Haraway 2008)—the postscripts, cards, pens, papers, space, and time and, through subtle shifts, make new kinds of, more livable, worlds. To close with a tentative gesture, mapping what touches do encouraged us to also imagine a touch that is of a world-making kind (Haraway 2008) and one that creates accountability and response-ability (Barad 2014). With this, we maintain that moving with touch is an open-ended endeavor but one imbued with conviction. Touch not only brings other beings, spaces, and times together (or to matter) but also leaks out to other worlds by reaching in response and resistance, touching and carefully holding those other visions, worlds, and possibilities. At the same time, we are not left untouched; as we reach out, response and resistance stick to us. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, S.P. and T.H.; Investigation, S.P. and T.H.; Methodology, S.P. and T.H.; Writing—original draft, S.P.; Writing—review & editing, T.H. and V.S. Funding: This research was partly funded by Academy of Finland, grant number 295000. Acknowledgments: We would like to acknowledge communal and visual artist Anna Koivukangas for suggesting the title #MeToo Postscriptum to us when we were planning the project. We wish to thank the student teachers involved in the workshops as well as the teachers and most importantly the children and schools without whom the #MeToo Postscriptum would not have been possible. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest. References Ahmed, Sara. 2010. Orientations Matter. In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Edited by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 234–57. Barad, Karen. 2007. 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Available online: https://maifeminism.com/introducing- phematerialism-feminist-posthuman-and-new-materialist-research-methodologies-in-education/ (accessed on 25 July 2019). Ringrose, Jessica, Katie Warfield, and Shiva Zarabadi. 2019. Introducing Feminist Posthumanisms/New Materialisms & Educational Research: Response-able Theory-Practice-Methodology. In Feminist Posthumanisms, New Materialisms, and Education. Edited by Ringrose, Jessica, Katie Warfield and Shiva Zarabadi. London: Routledge, pp. 1–15. Stein, Nan. 2007. Locating a Secret Problem: Sexual Violence in Elementary and Secondary Schools. In Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2nd ed. Edited by Laura O’Toole, Jessica R. Schiffman and Margie L. Kitter Edwards. New York: New York University Press, pp. 323–32. Stewart, Kathleen. 2011. Atmospheric Attunements. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29: 445–53. doi:10.1068/d9109. Sunnari, Vappu. 2010. “I Cannot Speak about It”. Physical Sexual Harassment as Experienced by Children at School in Northern Finland and Northwest Russia. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag. Sunnari, Vappu, Jenny Kangasvuo, and Mervi Heikkinen, eds. 2002. Gendered and Sexualised Violence in Educational Environments, 2nd ed. Oulu: Oulu University Press. Available online: http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514268946/isbn9514268946.pdf (accessed on 25 July 2019). Taylor, Carol A. 2018. Each Intra-Action Matters: Towards a Posthuman Ethics for Enlarging Response-Ability in Higher Education Pedagogic Practice-Ings. In Socially Just Pedagogies: Posthumanist, Feminist and Materialist Perspectives in Higher Education. Edited by Rosi Braidotti, Vivienne Bozalek, Tamara Shefer and Michalinos Zembylas. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 81–96. © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). work_7boq7sc6fjdvjmoztxkcyofhv4 ---- Guidance for Male Mentors to Support the Safety and Success of Female Mentees COMMENTARY Guidance for Male Mentors to Support the Safety and Success of Female Mentees Lucas G. Hill, PharmD, a S. Andrea Laguado, PharmD b a The University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy, Austin, Texas b The University of Arizona/Banner University Medical Center South, Tucson, Arizona Submitted January 26, 2019; accepted June 6, 2019; published December 2019. Women constitute the majority of students at US schools and colleges of pharmacy but make up only a minority of senior faculty members. In academic pharmacy, male mentors play an essential role in supporting the professional success of female mentees. These male mentors must recognize their role in creating safe and equitable environments for female mentees to learn and collaborate. They should respect the unique experiences and concerns of female mentees, particularly regarding sexual violence and harassment, and conduct themselves in a manner that prioritizes safety. They should also strive to develop the same interpersonal connections with female mentees that they work to develop with male mentees, realizing that maintaining inequitable personal distance from women undermines their professional suc- cess. Specific suggestions for balancing the potentially competing concepts of mentee safety and personal connection are offered by the authors, a male faculty mentor and female student mentee pair. Keywords: mentorship, harassment, professional development, professionalism, faculty development INTRODUCTION In fall 2018, women accounted for 63.0% of profes- sional students and 54.4% of full-time graduate students in UScollegesandschoolsofpharmacy.1 Althoughissuesthat threaten the personal safety and professional success of our female students would warrant thorough consideration even if they constituted a small proportion of learners, the fact that they constitute the majority makes addressing such issues even more pressing. One in five women will be raped during her lifetime, and one in four women in college have already experienced unwanted sexual contact. 2,3 More than 80% of women have experienced sexual harassment or assaultinsomeform.4 Thedisproportionatesexualviolence and harassment faced by women is being publicly recog- nized globally through the #MeToo movement.4 A survey by LeanIn.org found evidence of a potential backlash to the #MeToo movement as 60% of male man- agers reported being uncomfortable mentoring, working alone, or socializing with a woman at work.5 This finding raises concerns that male mentors in academic pharmacy may be hesitant to engage with female mentees. While women make up 50.3% of full-time pharmacy faculty members, they represent only 33.0% of full professors and 37.5%of deans and associate deans.6 The advancementand professional development of future pharmacists and aca- demicians can be powerfully influenced by a single mentor. Diminished access to male mentors could be disastrous for female students and junior faculty as a minority of experi- enced mentors are female. We recognize that most male mentors in academic pharmacy strive toprovide equitable supportto allmentees regardless of demographic profile. However, even well- meaning mentors can make subtle mistakes that impact female mentees negatively. We propose that two core principles can support the development of respectful and supportive mentoring relationships between members of the opposite sex: establish a safe environment, and think before speaking or touching. We reject the notion that protection of the male mentor should be the primary con- cern given that there is scarce evidence demonstrating any risk of false harassment or assault claims.7 Furthermore, we contend that development of a personal connection with a mentor can be extremely valuable. Members of the millennial generation, to which both authors belong, desire personal connection with mentors that extends beyond the classroom.8,9 It is through these casual interactions that strong personal bonds are formed, propelling mentees’ careers forward.10 The principles outlined in this commentary are intended to support the development of safe, respectful, and beneficial relationships between male mentors and female mentees. We acknowledge that our cisgendered, Corresponding Author: Lucas G. Hill, The University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy, 2409 University Ave., Stop A1910, PHR 2.222G, Austin, TX 78712. Tel: 512-232- 7832. Email: lucas.hill@austin.utexas.edu American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2019; 83 (10) Article 7533. 2041 b y gu es t on A pr il 5 , 2 02 1. © 2 01 9 A m er ic an A ss oc ia ti on o f C ol le ge s of P ha rm ac y ht tp :/ /w w w .a jp e. or g D ow nl oa de d fr om http://LeanIn.org mailto:lucas.hill@austin.utexas.edu http://www.ajpe.org heterosexual, interethnic, faculty mentor – student mentee perspective does not represent the full range of mentoring dynamics in academic pharmacy. However, we hope it may provide some insight for mentoring relationships in which there are complex power dynamics influenced by other gender identities, romantic preferences, or cultural backgrounds, including faculty mentor – faculty mentee relationships. Establish a Safe Environment. Because sexual harassment and violence are com- mitted against men far less often than women, men can be ignorant of the dangers women face in mundane situa- tions. For example, a male student may not be concerned about meeting in a female professor’soffice at 5:30 PM on Friday. However, a female student might be hesitant to meet with a male professor in a private space at a time when there might be no other personnel in the office suite or building. Male mentors bear a responsibility to con- sider these concerns proactively when advising female mentees. Many factors could affect a female student’s percep- tion of safety in this situation. For this reason, we suggest gaining a female mentee’s consent regarding a meeting location and time. This could be as simple as replying to a meeting request email with, “I am available to meet on Friday at 5:30 PM. Does that work for you? Let me know if you prefer a location other than my office.” Compare this to, “I am available Friday at 5:30 PM in my office.” Which email empowers the mentee to express a preference for an alternate time or location? If a male mentor realizes he has overlooked these concerns upon the female mentee’s ar- rival, he should remember that it is never too late to ask for consent. He might even suggest a specific alternative to ensure the student knowstheoffer is genuine.For example, “It slipped my mind that everybody would be gone for the day. Would you prefer if we moved out to the courtyard?” As a mentoring relationship progresses, male mentors and female mentees may find themselves in increasingly casual and private situations. Consider an example of a male mentor with one female and one male student mentee set to present a platform session together at a regional conference located a few hours away. The male mentor identifies it as an opportunity to develop a greater personal connection in the mentoring relationships and sends a group email offering to transport the mentees in his per- sonal vehicle. The female mentee accepts, but the male mentee declines. If you were the male mentor in this ex- ample, how would you proceed? Proceeding with the trip without discussing the new dynamic is discouraged, as it does not prioritize the female mentee’s perception of safety. Fabricating an excuse to avoid transporting the female mentee is also suboptimal because it models dishonest, avoidant behavior that may undermine the mentoring relationship. We suggest the best answer is to give the mentee an opportunity to rescind her acceptance of the transportation offer. For example, the male mentor might say, “I was not planning to subject you to four hours alone in the car with a professor. You are still welcometoridewithme,butIwouldnotbeoffendedifyou made different plans.” Communicating this through email or another medium that gives the mentee time to consider her feelings carefully before replying is ideal. Male men- tors who do not feel comfortable driving alone with the female mentee should avoid making the initial group car- pool suggestion. In addition to establishing an environment that is physically safe, a mentor should create a sense of intel- lectual security and empowerment that recognizes po- tential differences between sexes. The ultimate goal of the mentor should be to create an environment in which the female mentee feels valued, encouraged to express her views, and empowered to advocate for herself. Consider the example of a female mentee who is collaborating with a male peer and male mentor to produce a manuscript.The female studentmay beless assertive thana male studentin a discussion of manuscript authorship based on an un- derstanding that assertive women are often viewed more negatively than passive women by collaborators.11 In an effort to ensure appropriate credit is given to each co- author, the supervising author should initiate a proactive discussion with all co-authors regarding their contribu- tions and order of authorship. Regardless of the final order of authors, engaging in this exercise could allay a female mentee’s concern that gender solidarity or implicit bias is driving the decision. Think Before Speaking or Touching. Seventy-seven percent of women experience verbal sexual harassment, which can range from unwanted comments like, “Give me a smile,” to more offensive remarks referring to their bodies or sexuality directly. 4 These types of sexual harassment faced by medical, nursing, and dental trainees have been documented, though similar documentation for pharmacy trainees is unavailable.12-14 In addition to comments made in the presence of female mentees, male counterparts may en- gage in sexualized discussion of a female mentee or col- league in private. These comments contribute to a hostile work environment for women. Male mentors must take a proactive stance to address inappropriate comments of this sort from colleagues. Non-sexual comments regarding a person’s size such as, “You are so little, I just want to put you in my pocket!” American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2019; 83 (10) Article 7533. 2042 b y gu es t on A pr il 5 , 2 02 1. © 2 01 9 A m er ic an A ss oc ia ti on o f C ol le ge s of P ha rm ac y ht tp :/ /w w w .a jp e. or g D ow nl oa de d fr om http://www.ajpe.org can also be detrimental to a female mentee and the de- velopment of trust in a mentoring relationship.15 Male mentors should generally avoid remarking on the physical appearance of female mentees and should also be mindful of the way they speak about other women in the presence of those mentees. For example, a male mentor may be discussing potential new team members for a project and dismiss a female candidate as too emotional to handle critical feedback. 16 This comment could undermine the female mentee’s trust in the male mentor. Physical contact between a male mentor and female mentee is a particularly difficult issue to address in a con- sistent manner as personal dynamics and cultural customs can lead to substantial variation in what may be considered appropriate. To allow for more clarity, physical contact for the purpose of education should be distinguished from physical contact in a personal or emotional context. Re- garding education, faculty members should observe the same decorum of asking prior to touching that is recom- mended when examining a patient. The request should also be accompanied by an explanation of the extent and pur- pose of the proposed contact. For example, we suggest a male mentor ask, “May I touch your leg to demonstrate an assessment for peripheral edema? I will only touch below the knee and will hold my fingers in place here [pointing] for a few seconds while supporting your leg from behind. This will allow me to observe whether there is any pitting characteristic consistent with excessive fluid.” We advise that male mentors should not initiate physical contact in a personal context, though there may be situations in which doing so is acceptable. Consider the case of a mentee who hopes to complete a postgraduate residency but does not match with a program. If the mentor has developed a close relationship with her, he might identify that placing a hand on her shoulder or engaging in a brief hug would be comforting. However, a substantial risk of misjudgment exists in this scenario. If the male mentor is not absolutely certain, he should either ask for consent or avoid acting on the impulse. Inappropriate physical contact can be upsetting and isolating for female mentees. 17 Both authors have ob- served, experienced, and heard numerous instances of such behavior. Some examples of unnecessary and inap- propriate contact include prolonged touching of the mentee’s arm or back while speaking; standing very close or directly against the mentee in an uncrowded space; using the mentee as an armrest and playing with her hair; and making obvious conversational excuses to touch the mentee. In one case ofthe latter, a male mentor told a story about another woman’s necklace while tracing the outline of a necklace on a female mentee’s upper chest. In addi- tion to actual physical touch, objectifying female mentees by staring at their bodies is an unacceptable intrusion. 18,19 Male mentors should not engage in any of these behaviors and we encourage them to educate colleagues who do. CONCLUSION Though women represent a growing proportion of mentors and most students in academic pharmacy, men still occupy most positions of leadership. Men throughout aca- demic pharmacy have a responsibility to serve as effective mentors for female mentees. In order to do so, they should prioritize female mentee safety while pursuing personal connections that are equitable to those they engage in with male mentees. We contend this can be achieved by estab- lishing safe physical and intellectual environments, consid- ering the language used when communicating with or about women, and avoiding inappropriate or unwanted physical contact. We recognize that generational, geographical, and cultural norms may influence optimal implementation of these suggestions. Further research is needed to assess the prevalence of sexual harassment and other behaviors that undermine the safety and success of female mentees in academic phar- macy. This research could inform programs at colleges of pharmacy that seek both to prevent misconduct and to mitigate its impact. At this time, we suggest administra- tors in colleges and schools ofpharmacy should promote a proactive dialogue around this issue with faculty mem- bers, preceptors, staff members, and other personnel who supervise students. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to thank Ms. Sarah Ashlock for pro- viding editorial support. REFERENCES 1. Academic Pharmacy’s Vital Statistics. AACP Website. https:// www.aacp.org/article/academic-pharmacys-vital-statistics. Accessed June 5, 2019. 2. Black MC, Basile KC, Breiding MJ, et al. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report. CDC Website. http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/ NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf. Published November 2011. Accessed June 5, 2019. 3. Gross AM, Winslett A, Roberts M, Gohm CL. An examination of sexual violence against college women. Violence Against Women. 2006;12(3):288-300. 4. Kearl H. The Facts Behind the #MeToo Movement: A National Study on Sexual Harassment and Assault. Stop Street Harassment; 2018. http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2018/01/Full-Report-2018-National-Study-on-Sexual-Harassment- and-Assault.pdf. Accessed June 5, 2019. 5. What women are up against at work: key findings. LeanIn website. https://leanin.org/sexual-harassment-backlash-survey-results#key- finding-1. Accessed June 5, 2019. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2019; 83 (10) Article 7533. 2043 b y gu es t on A pr il 5 , 2 02 1. © 2 01 9 A m er ic an A ss oc ia ti on o f C ol le ge s of P ha rm ac y ht tp :/ /w w w .a jp e. or g D ow nl oa de d fr om https://www.aacp.org/article/academic-pharmacys-vital-statistics https://www.aacp.org/article/academic-pharmacys-vital-statistics http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf.%20Published%20November%202011 http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf.%20Published%20November%202011 http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Full-Report-2018-National-Study-on-Sexual-Harassment-and-Assault.pdf http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Full-Report-2018-National-Study-on-Sexual-Harassment-and-Assault.pdf http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Full-Report-2018-National-Study-on-Sexual-Harassment-and-Assault.pdf https://leanin.org/sexual-harassment-backlash-survey-results#key-finding-1 https://leanin.org/sexual-harassment-backlash-survey-results#key-finding-1 http://www.ajpe.org 6. Profile of Pharmacy Faculty, 2017-18. AACP Website. https:// www.aacp.org/system/files/PPF_1718-final.pdf. Published February 2018. Accessed June 5, 2019. 7. Lisak D, Gardinier L, Nicksa SC, Cote AM. False allegations of sexual assault: an analysis of ten years of reported cases. Violence Against Women. 2010;16(12):1318-1334. doi:10.1177/ 1077801210387747 8. Zemke R, Raines C, Filipczak B. The Millennials: Be Careful What You Ask For; and, A Field Guide to Mentoring Millennials. In: Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Boomers, Gen Xers, and Gen Yers in the Workplace. New York, NY: AMACOM, American Management Association; 2013. 9. Piper LE. Generation Y in healthcare: leading millennials in an era of reform. Frontiers of Health Services Management. 2012;29(1):16-28. doi:10.1097/01974520-201207000-00003 10. Shaw ME, Fulton J. Skills for Mentorship. In: Mentorship in Healthcare. Keswick, Cumbria: M & K Publishing; 2015. http:// eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/ehost/ ebookviewer/ebook?sid51ce976d1-382c-4099-a781- fa15a00ed4a4@sessionmgr102&vid50&format5EB. 11. Lease SH. Assertive behavior: a double-edged sword for women at work? Clin Psychol Sci Pract. 2018;25:e12226. 12. Bechard M, Arget M, Lerner J, et al. 2018 RDOC National Resident Survey. https://residentdoctors.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/ 10/National-Resident-Survey-2018-R8.pdf. 13. Bronner G, Peretz C, Ehrenfeld M. Sexual harassment of nurses and nursing students. J Advanced Nursing. 2003;42(6):637-644. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.2003.02667.x 14. Pennington A, Darby M, Bauman D, et al. Sexual harassment in dentistry: experiences of Virginia dental hygienists. J Dental Hygiene. 2000;74(4):288-295. http://link.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona. edu/apps/doc/A69291264/AONE?u5uarizona_main&sid5AONE&xid5 e7841d05. 15. Douglas KM, Sutton RM. “A Giant Leap for Mankind” but what about women? the role of system-justifying ideologies in predicting attitudes toward sexist language. J Language and Social Psychology. 2014;33(6):667-680. doi:10.1177/0261927x14538638 16. Fischbach A, Lichtenthaler PW, Horstmann N. Leadership and gender stereotyping of emotions. J Personnel Psychology. 2015;14(3):153-162. doi:10.1027/1866-5888/a000136 17. Barnett JE. Mentoring, boundaries, and multiple relationships: opportunities and challenges. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning. 2008;16(1):3-16. doi:10.1080/13611260701800900 18. Guizzo F, Cadinu M. Effects of objectifying gaze on female cognitive performance: the role of flow experience and internalization of beauty ideals. British J Social Psychology. 2016;56(2):281-292. doi:10.1111/bjso.12170 19. Fredrickson BL, Roberts T-A. Objectification theory: toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly. 1997;21(2):173-206. doi:10.1111/ j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2019; 83 (10) Article 7533. 2044 b y gu es t on A pr il 5 , 2 02 1. © 2 01 9 A m er ic an A ss oc ia ti on o f C ol le ge s of P ha rm ac y ht tp :/ /w w w .a jp e. or g D ow nl oa de d fr om https://www.aacp.org/system/files/PPF_1718-final.pdf https://www.aacp.org/system/files/PPF_1718-final.pdf http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=1ce976d1-382c-4099-a781-fa15a00ed4a4@sessionmgr102&vid=0&format=EB http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=1ce976d1-382c-4099-a781-fa15a00ed4a4@sessionmgr102&vid=0&format=EB http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=1ce976d1-382c-4099-a781-fa15a00ed4a4@sessionmgr102&vid=0&format=EB http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=1ce976d1-382c-4099-a781-fa15a00ed4a4@sessionmgr102&vid=0&format=EB https://residentdoctors.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/National-Resident-Survey-2018-R8.pdf https://residentdoctors.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/National-Resident-Survey-2018-R8.pdf http://link.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/apps/doc/A69291264/AONE?u=uarizona_main&sid=AONE&xid=e7841d05 http://link.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/apps/doc/A69291264/AONE?u=uarizona_main&sid=AONE&xid=e7841d05 http://link.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/apps/doc/A69291264/AONE?u=uarizona_main&sid=AONE&xid=e7841d05 http://www.ajpe.org work_7gpx7smatfcrliea74cw73qrru ---- To push for stardom or not: A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry IIMB Management Review (2010) 22, 80e92 INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT BANGALORE IIMB available at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/iimb To push for stardom or not: A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry Trichy V. Krishnan a,*, A. M. Sakkthivel b a Faculty of Marketing, NUS Business School, Mochtar Riady Building, Biz 1, 8-19, 15, Kent Ridge Drive, Singapore 119245, Singapore b Department of Business Administration, Sur University College, Sur, Sultanate of Oman, Oman Available online 26 June 2010 KEYWORDS Tamil movie; Stars; Rookies; Positioning; Game theory; Producers * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ65 65 E-mail addresses: krishnan@nus. com (T.V. Krishnan), drsakkthi@gma om (A.M. Sakkthivel). 0970-3896 ª 2010 Indian Institute of rights reserved. Peer-review under res of Management Bangalore. doi:10.1016/j.iimb.2010.05.001 Abstract There is a trend today among successful rookies (SRs) in the Indian Tamil film industry to try to get on a fast track to stardom, running the risk of failure or being replaced with a new entrant. The study examines the rationale for this, and the options available to the actor and the producer. Using a Decision Theory oriented approach we develop and solve a model, and using the data collected in the field we assign values to the parameters in the model and derive the current equilibrium in the market. We also conduct a numerical analysis to see which factors most affect the decision. We find that the strategy may pay off for the SR when the probability of success is neither too high nor too low and when the producer invests in a film that pays attention to all its facets, and not just the lead role. ª 2010 Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. All rights reserved. Introduction The motion picture or movie industry is a key and perhaps the most vibrant component of the Indian economy. The number of movies produced annually in India is higher than that produced in Hollywood, USA. While Hollywood 16 3008; fax: þ65 6779 5941. edu.sg, bh.kumar@elsevier. il.com, sakkthivel@suc.edu. Management Bangalore. All ponsibility of Indian Institute produces around 550 movies a year, the Indian movie industry produces more than 1000 movies ever year1. Around four million Indians ‘go to movies’ on any given day, and this number swells during festivals and holidays. Of the film producing cities in India, Mumbai (Bollywood) and Chennai (Kollywood) stand out in terms of their history, the availability of a large number of movie production houses, studios, actors, directors and other technical people. While Mumbai produces largely Hindi movies, Chennai produces Tamil and, to a smaller extent, Telugu movies. Our research focuses on the Tamil movie industry which on an average 1 Data and information given here and elsewhere in this manu- script are taken from the various trade journals and the interviews conducted by the authors with various industry experts, actors, directors and producers in the Tamil film industry. We interviewed some of the well known and highly knowledgeable personalities such as Mr. M. Saravanan, proprietor of the AVM Productions, Chennai, Mr. S.V. Sekar, a playwright and actor, Mr. Venkatprabu, a young and upcoming director, and Mr. Sangili Murugan, a producer and script-writer. We take this opportunity to thank all of them. mailto:krishnan@nus.edu.sg mailto:bh.kumar@elsevier.com mailto:bh.kumar@elsevier.com mailto:drsakkthi@gmail.com mailto:sakkthivel@suc.edu.om mailto:sakkthivel@suc.edu.om http://www.elsevier.com/locate/iimb 3 To some degree, these fans are like die-hard consumers of Apple products who would not hesitate to buy any new product from Apple although some of these products might eventually fail in the market place. Said differently, these fan bases guarantee some minimum of ticket sales for the movies that cast their favourite actors even though the movie may fail eventually. If on the other hand the movie turns out to be good, these fans would indulge in repeat-buying and spread such a good word of mouth around that the movie would become a major hit, drawing huge sums of money for the producers. 4 Some of Kollywood’s successful rookies in the past 10 years include Jeeva, Simbu, Dhanush, Bharath, Arya, Vishal and Karthi. 5 We are citing a website which mentions a particular actor rejecting a movie role because the director refused to employ the lead heroine. http://cinema.dinamalar.com/tamil-news/1710/ cinema/Kollywood/Jeeva-in-Go-movie.htm. While this particular A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry 81 releases one Tamil movie every four days i.e. 90 movies in a year. A movie is a multi-dimensional product and the success of a movie depends on several factors such as the story line, the script, the performance of the actors, the direction and music, and other technical aspects concerning light, sound and other hi-tech features including computer graphics. However, it seems an undisputable fact that in the Kolly- wood industry, the lead actor plays a major role in scripting the success of a movie. Some of the lead actors, by starring in many successful movies over time, establish a larger-than-life image with the public, and get to become movie ‘stars’. A few such stars were even able to use their movie image to become popular politicians and secure coveted positions in the government by winning elections. This goes to show the loyalty exhibited by fans towards their favorite actors, which in turn underscores the importance of an actor in a movie’s success. The high importance attached to the actors has one significant external impact. Many new faces come knocking on the doors of the industry in their aspiration to become actors, and although the success rate of a movie with a new face is relatively very low, producers are willing to give them a chance because they are inexpensive and readily avail- able2. In fact, out of the total 90 movies produced in a year, 30 movies cast new faces. Given the high rate of movie production in Kollywood, one can always see a few ‘rookies’ or new faces scoring a successful hit on their debut. While this may often be attributed to luck, each successful rookie creates excitement in the industry because each is a poten- tial future star. However, it is widely acknowledged that some of these successful rookies actually start believing that they are destined to be stars, and their resulting behaviour creates a new set of dynamics in the industry. Movie producers tend to view this disfavourably because stars are expensive. Let us explain this further. It is important to note that successful rookies are different from actual stars. Stars are established actors who have acted in many successful movies in the past, and are characterised by two attributes: image and fan base. Image is the position the star has carefully crafted over the years (i.e. the type of role he plays in the movies, the type of dialogues he delivers, the type of songs he allows in his movie, the type of fights he engages in, etc.) and he rarely plays a role that could mar this positioning. The star’s fan- base tends to support any movie starring this actor, ensuring some minimum of tickets sales for an average 2 It takes roughly six months to a year to make a movie. Given the long time involved, the directors are usually very worried about the time commitment from the actors. An established actor may find it difficult to commit to long stretches of time for a movie shooting but a new face will have no such problems. This eases the movie making process for the director, and reduces the cost of the movie production significantly. movie and huge returns for a successful movie3. Compared to an established star, a successful rookie lacks history, having come into acting recently, with the two or three hits, but without a concrete image or a sizeable fan base yet. The movie industry looks at the rookie cautiously but with interest. Although he could potentially become a star in future, he could also fail and become a non-entity in the movie world4. Why is studying the role of successful rookies inter- esting? The current state of the movie industry is different from the past. In the 1970s, 1980s and even in the early 1990s, rookies had to work hard for many years before gradually turning into stars. Today’s successful rookies, however, want to run on a faster track and achieve star status quickly. For example, some of the successful rookies focus on proactively building fan bases and promoting themselves intensely through various media channels to project their image ahead of themselves. Some want the producers and directors to cast them in risky big-budget movies, use lead heroines, and use other tactics that would project them as stars5. They also start demanding large salaries, which poses a dilemma for the producers: Are these really potential stars trying to grab the future quickly, or lucky early-winners who might not last for long? The successful rookie is in a dilemma too. He would like to move up to the next stage and become a star which would guarantee him a stable place in the industry. However, if his bid for stardom is premature and he fails in the attempt he might have to exit the movie industry altogether because of the ill-will created with the producers6. Staying the course may be an easier option but incident may not have anything to do with the behaviour we research in this paper, such incidents show that the recent successful rookies do take their careers seriously and try to shape them proactively. 6 As mentioned elsewhere, when we met with some of the producers and directors including Mr. M. Saravanan of AVM Productions, Mr. Sangili Murugan (producer and script-writer), Mr. S.V. Sekar (actor and playwright), Mr. Venkat Prabhu (director) and Mr. Dhinesh (production manager and director), many of them, if not all, told us that the star-level treatment demanded by some of the successful rookies was a big problem for them to handle and so they look out for new faces all the time. Note however that not all of the successful rookies indulge in creating such ill-will. For reasons of confidentiality we cannot provide more particulars on this. http://cinema.dinamalar.com/tamil-news/1710/cinema/Kollywood/Jeeva-in-Go-movie.htm http://cinema.dinamalar.com/tamil-news/1710/cinema/Kollywood/Jeeva-in-Go-movie.htm 82 T.V. Krishnan, A.M. Sakkthivel the revenues are low and the possibility of failure still exists. Further, there is the constant threat of new faces coming into the market place. Producers on the other hand can choose between successful rookies and new faces. While opting for a successful rookie would increase the costs, settling for a new face, while keeping the costs low would increase the probability of failure. 7 Our research question is as follows. Why do successful rookies try to get on a fast track to stardom? Why don’t they stay the course for a few more years, prove themselves and let their history make them stars? What should a producer do in terms of hiring an actor for his movie given that there are successful rookies and new faces in the market? We use a decision model oriented approach to answer these ques- tions. We use the data collected in the field to assign values to the various parameters in the model, and thereby derive the current equilibrium in the market. We also conduct a numerical analysis to see which factors most affect the decision. The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In the next section we look at the extant literature to see if there are any research findings that have a bearing on our research. In Section 3 we develop the model, solve it and derive the key results using numerical analysis and find out what factors really drive successful rookies to behave like potential stars. In Section 4 we conclude the paper, giving directions for future research. Literature survey Serious research on the film industry can be said to have commenced in the marketing area in the 1990s. Over the past few years, the growing professionalism exhibited in the film industry has attracted many researchers to start looking at the strategies employed in this industry with an academic eye. Some of the topics that interest researchers are: finding the determinants of a successful film, evalua- tion of a ‘right’ production budget, and understanding the impact of award nominations, reviewers’ ratings and word of mouth on the box-office collections (Brewer, Kelley, & Jozefowicz, 2009). Smith and Smith (1986) conducted an early study on the film industry to identify the determinants of a successful film. Numerous studies followed to further explore the determinants of a successful film, impact of different variables on the success of films, consumer adoption pattern of a new film, and impact of initial booking on the financial success of films (De Vany & Walls, 1997; Prag & Casavant, 1994; Sawhney & Eliashberg, 1996). Ravid (1999) analysed film revenues with respect to the various production costs involved but could not draw any 7 Normally it costs around a few tens of crores of rupees for a big budget movie. The movies made with established actors are big budget not only because of the high salaries paid to the lead actors but also due to the extravagant ways they are designed in to accommodate the image of the stars. With a new face, the movie would be relatively inexpensive to make (Rs 0.5e1 crore i.e. 5 million to 10 million.) This information was gleaned from our discussion with some of the producers, and various reports pub- lished in the Tamil cine journals. major conclusion. However, De Vany and Walls (1996) conclude that a movie is so highly complex a product that it would be difficult to determine whether it would be a hit or a miss. In other words, one can say that in spite of the considerable research in the extant literature a lot of uncertainty rides on a movie’s success. However, one factor that does appear to have an impact on the success of a movie is the lead actor. A study con- ducted by Bagella and Becchetti (1999) concluded that the popularity of established actors significantly increased the chance of success of a film. This has a direct bearing on our research because this is true of the Tamil movie industry too, as we will show later. Eliashberg, Elberse, and Leenders (2005) studied the effect of employing estab- lished actors and stars on the financing of movies and found that stars enable easier financing of movies. In another study, it was found that the lack of appeal of the lead actors and critics’ reviews would lead to performance risk which in turn would lead to financial risk (Desai, Leob, & Veblen, 2002). While analysing the economics of movie making, Vogel (1990) finds that producers tend to control cost of production and reduce their risk exposure because of the high failure probability in the movies. Taken in our research context, one could say that employing a new face is one way producers would attempt to reduce the cost of production. In sum, the extant literature indicates that the success of a movie is still highly unpredictable but employing an established actor will enhance the probability of success, while at the same time producers are always on the look out to reduce their cost of production. Although much of this research pertains to Western movie productions, the results very well apply to the Tamil movie industry which is the focus of our research. In our study, we use these find- ings and ask a question that is very relevant to the Tamil movie industry. We ask why a successful rookie would try to push himself to become a star (thus incurring a huge investment risk for the producer) and how a producer would act strategically given that he has the choice of hiring an inexpensive new face in place of the recently successful but ambitious rookie. We study the resulting interaction between the two players in a stylised decision model framework. Model for studying interaction between producer and rookie There are two players acting strategically in our model. These are the producer of a movie (PR) who is ready to invest in a new movie, and the successful rookie (SR). We will first describe the strategies of the SR and then take up the PR for analysis. Strategies of the successful rookie The evolution process and the decision nodes of the strat- egies of a successful rookie are depicted in Figure 1. The SR has to decide if he wants to move himself up to star status immediately or wait for a period and prove himself once again and then try to move up in the second period. Thus, there are potentially two stages or periods. It is important SR H L Hit Fail SR is a star SR is doomed! Hit H L Hit Fail SR is a star SR is doomed! Producer (PR) hire the SR? Hit SR is me-too star Fail Fail SR is me-too star Stage 1 Stage 2 SR SR H L Hit Fail SR is a star SR is doomed! Hit SR is a me-too star Outcome Producer (PR) hire the SR? PR hire SR? PR hire SR? PR hire SR? PR hire SR? Legend: H: High L: Low SR: Successful Rookie PR: Producer Figure 1 Strategies of the successful rookie: evolution process and decision nodes. 8 This is akin to any new product introduced in a consumer market. A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry 83 to note that each stage represents not just a year but a time span where the SR activates his specific strategy. At each stage, the SR has two options. In the first option, he can treat himself as a star and demand a high salary and ask the PR to make the movie to suit his aspiration. This typi- cally means that the PR makes a high budget movie that projects the SR as a star. But the PR may not sign the SR for his movie because of the high cost involved and may go for a new face. In the second option, the SR can ask the PR to treat him as just a successful rookie, settle for a lower salary and let the producer decide on the movie project. Let us call these High and Low options. There are three possible destinations for the SR at the end of this evolution process in his career. They are: becoming a star, becoming a me-too star and resulting in a total failure. The two stages we have assumed will determine his final destiny. Our discussions with movie producers and actors pointed to certain characteristics that define this evolution process. We use them to build our model. The three characteristics that we learnt about are: (1) If the SR takes the High strategy at any of the two stages and scores a box-office hit he would become a star. (2) If the SR takes the High strategy at any stage but fails to score a box-office hit, or if he takes the Low strategy in both the stages and fails in both the stages, he is deemed to be a total failure. (3) In other cases, he would become a me-too star. There are several points to note here. First, these char- acteristics are born out of the invaluable experience of the producers and actors, and hence are expected to hold in general although there could be exceptions. Second, looking at Figure 1 we see that out of the total nine possible outcomes of this two-stage process, three point to ‘star’, three point to ‘me-too star’ and three to ‘total failure’. Although it looks like all three destinations are equally likely, this is not really so because the probabilities associated with each outcome are vastly different. For example, the prob- abilities associated with the ‘star’ outcome are very low. A third implication of the assumed evolution process is that an SR can never become a star unless he projects himself as one at some stage. The rationale is quite simple. Star status is obtained only if an actor achieves a clear, consistent and unique image in the public space, which cannot be achieved unless the actor takes a stand and announces it openly and with confidence to the market8. For example, Vijay, an actor who recently acquired star status, projected himself as ‘a star who would act only in action-oriented movies’, seeking only masala movies in the Tamil movie industry, i.e. those with a certain standard of music and dance sequences, ‘thrills’, engrossing fight scenes, a certain level of romance and a story to stitch all these together. It was only with this declaration of intent, we were told, that the producers were ready to invest in mega-budget movies starring him in the lead role. That image made Vijay a star. In contrast, Dha- nush, a recent SR, has not been able to clearly define a position or find a unique and consistent image so far in spite of achieving three box-office hits with his first three movies. Two stages of the successful Rookie’s evolution process We will now explain the two stages and the evolution process of a successful rookie’s journey in detail. 84 T.V. Krishnan, A.M. Sakkthivel Stage 1: If the SR chooses the High strategy, there will be a lower probability of the PR using him instead of a new face. If the PR does enrol the SR and if the movie is a box- office hit then the SR will be a star. The evolution process ends here. But if the movie fails in the box-office, the PR is less likely to consider him in the near future because he would have lost money and faith in the SR. So, the SR is doomed. The process ends here. Thus, if the SR chooses the High strategy, regardless of the outcome of the movie performance the process will end in stage 1 itself. There will be no stage 2. If on the other hand the SR chooses the Low strategy, there will be a higher probability of his getting enrolled by the PR. If the SR is signed up, and if the movie is a box- office hit then the SR will have a higher probability of getting signed up in stage 2 also by the PR. He will not however become a star because the movie was not pro- jecting him as a star to begin with, but the chances of becoming a star in the next stage increases. If on the other hand the movie fails in the box-office in stage 1, the PR may still be willing to give the SR another chance in the second stage because his monetary losses through the SR in stage 1 were not considerable, and more importantly, he knows that the failure of the movie cannot be attributed to the SR alone. Thus, with a Low strategy option in stage 1, the SR is destined to move on to stage 2. Stage 2: (Note that stage 2 sets in if only if the SR had taken the Low strategy in stage 1.) If the movie had been a box-office hit in stage 1, then the SR once again faces two options: go for High strategy or stick to the Low strategy. With the High strategy, the probability of the PR signing the SR is higher than in stage 1 because the SR’s movie has been a success in stage 1. A box-office hit in a stage 2 movie would propel the SR to become a star. If the movie is not a box-office hit, it would doom the SR to total failure. If the movie had been a box-office hit in stage 1, and if in stage 2 also the SR chooses the Low strategy, then the probability of being hired by the PR gets to be much higher. In this case, given his success in the first stage, regardless of the result of the movie in stage 2 the SR would become a me-too star, whose status is lower than that of a star but not a total failure. If the movie had been a failure in stage 1, the SR once again faces two options: go for High strategy or stick to the Low strategy. With the High strategy, the probability is much lower than in stage 1 for the PR to sign him because of the failure of the movie in stage 1. However, a box-office hit in stage 2 would propel the SR towards stardom. If the movie is not a box-office hit, it would doom the SR to total failure. If the movie in stage 1 had been a failure, and in stage 2 also the SR chooses the Low strategy, then the probability of being hired by the PR is still positive but somewhat lower than in stage 1. If the ensuing movie becomes a box-office hit then the SR is a me-too star. If, however, the movie fails to become a box-office hit, it would doom the SR to total failure. 9 Although other actors including reigning stars and other SRs are available we assume that the PR looks into only the focal SR and a new face. Later we will see how relaxing this assumption would affect the results. Strategies of the producer At each stage, the PR will simultaneously make a decision on whether or not to hire the SR given the SR’s strategy. The PR has two options at any stage. He can hire the SR or go for a new face. His choice will depend on the probability of success with either, the returns expected and how he updates these probabilities in stage 2 based on what happened in stage 1. We develop the PR’s and the SR’s strategies and the associated profits in the following section. Strategies and associated profits (payoff) Let us first take the PR and see with what probability he would hire the SR at either stage. Note that the PR has to choose between the SR and a new face9. In deciding between the SR and a new face, it is assumed that the PR follows the principle that is captured in the Hotelling’s location model (Hotelling, 1929). In this location model, there are two competing firms located on two ends of a market street trying to attract the customers who are uniformly situated along that street. For our case, we have a similar situation. We have the producer as the customer, and the SR and the new face as the two competitors trying to appeal to the PR’s movie. We assume a unit length [0, 1] as the market street, with the SR positioned at 0 and the new face at 1. We can say that the unit distance between the SR and the new face represents all other market factors that go into the PR’s movie. These include the genre of the story (investigative, romance, action, etc.), music (will it be a musical?), lead heroine, fight sequence, etc. Suppose the PR has decided to make a movie that is a certain combination of all the other factors and that the only missing factor is the actor. We further assume that this particular movie can best be done if the PR can get an actor whose profile suits neither the SR nor the new face but someone in between the two. Let that ‘ideal’ actor for this movie be at a distance x from the SR on this unit dimension. Said otherwise, this point represents the actor that the PR will be thinking about for the movie he has in his mind. However, he has to choose either the SR who is at a distance of x units away from his ideal actor or the new face who is at a distance of 1-x from this ideal actor. Either way he incurs some misalignment cost, which we will explain later in more detail. If the SR wants to choose the High strategy, we assume the following for the PR: Cost to hire the SR at High strategy Z H Cost to make the movie that hires at H Z CH Probability that the movie would be a box-office hit Z Pr Revenue from the movie Z R if it is a box-office hit, Z 0 otherwise. Without loss of generality we assume that with a new face the PR will incur the following: Cost to hire a new face Z 0 Cost to make the movie that hires a new face Z Cb A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry 85 Probability that the movie would be a box-office hit Z Pb Revenue from the movie Z Rb if it is a box-office hit, Z 0 otherwise. Consider the point x from the 0 end. At this point: Profits to PR by hiring the SR (who is a High) Z Pr R � [H þ CH] � 2xt, Profits to PR by hiring the new face Z Pb Rb � Cb � 2 (1 � x)t, Where t is the cost of misalignment of a movie with respect to the actors at the end of the line. As mentioned earlier, the ideal actor needed is at distance x from the SR. By choosing the given SR instead, the PR is introducing a misalignment. He has to incur some cost to remove this misalignment and this cost is represented by ‘2tx’ in our model. This is also called travelling cost in the economics literature. We typically make the cost to be ‘2tx’ instead of ‘tx’ to indicate that the PR ‘travels’ from the ideal point to the SR and comes back to the ideal point to make the movie. However, it does not really matter whether the cost is modeled as ‘tx’ or ‘2tx’. If the PR chooses the new face instead, this alignment cost would be ‘2t (1 � x)’. It is important to appreciate the fact that a higher value for t implies that the PR is very particular about addressing this misalignment i.e. he is relatively less worried about what the SR costs. This in turn implies when t is high the High/ Low strategies of the SR would have less impact on the PR’s evaluation of the probability of hiring him than if t is of a smaller value. For the time being we will keep this as simply t. Based on these two equations we can show that there exists a point x1 where the PR’s profits are the same either way. Let x1j High be the probability that the PR would hire the SR who chooses the High strategy, and this is given by: x1jHighZ1 2 þ 1 4t ½ðPrR � PbRbÞ � ðH þ CH � CbÞ� ð1Þ note that Pb is less than Pr because these are actually the ‘expected’ probabilities as seen by the PR, which we assume to be common knowledge (see also our discussion in Section 2). Similarly, it is commonly believed that Rb is less than R because the SR will have a wider market reach than a new face, but CH is greater than Cb. It is easy to derive the corresponding probability if the SR chooses to be L. x1jLowZ1 2 þ 1 4t ½ðPrR � PbRbÞ � ðL þ CL � CbÞ� ð2Þ where, Cost to hire the SR at Low strategy Z L Cost to make the movie that hires L Z CL Probability that the movie would be a box-office hit Z Pr Revenue from the movie Z R if it is a box-office hit, Z 0 otherwise. Note that L < H and CL < CH by construction. It is interesting to note that Pr and R are the same in expressions 1 and 2, i.e. regardless of how the movie is made and whether the SR is being projected as a star or an SR, the probability of success and returns from the movie are assumed to be the same. This is in line with industry wisdom: since the SR has no established image or fan base yet, the success of the movie would depend on how the audience like the film, and this would be independent of the type of SR. However, if the movie becomes a box-office hit, the image projected in the movie for the SR would propel him to stardom. So, the movie success is the cause here and is assumed to be exogenous to how the SR is treated or the movie is made to accommodate the expec- ted image of the SR. This assumption leads to the following expression: x1jHighZx1jLow � 1 4t ½ðH þ CHÞ � ðL þ CLÞ� ð3Þ Thus, the SR will always find himself to be more easily acceptable to the PR if he adopts a Low strategy as against adopting the High strategy. Note that as t increases the probability of hiring the SR who chooses the High strategy also increases. This is because, as mentioned earlier, when t is of larger value the importance paid to the actor’s costs goes down. For stage 1, expressions 1 and 2 give the probability that the SR will be hired by the PR. As explained earlier, if in stage 1 the SR adopts the High strategy there is no stage 2. We therefore focus on the SR adopting the Low strategy in stage 1. If the movie thus produced in stage 1 is a box-office hit, then the PR would like to place a higher probability on the SR in stage 2 because he has learnt something more concrete about the SR’s capability as a potential future star. We capture this by the following expressions: x2S1jHighZ1 2 þ 1 4t ½ðfPr þ eð1 � PrÞgR � PbRbÞ � ðH þ CH � CbÞ� ð4Þ x2S1jLowZ1 2 þ 1 4t ½ðfPr þ eð1 � prÞgR � PbRbÞ � ðL þ CL � CbÞ� ð5Þ where x2S1jHigh and x2S1jLow are the probabilities that the PR would hire the SR in stage 2 when the SR had given a box-office hit in stage 1. Here, e is the learning parameter which takes the value between 0 and 1. Suppose, in stage 1, the movie was a failure. Then, the PR would modify the probabilities as follows to evaluate the probabilities of hiring the SR in stage 2: x2F1jHighZ1 2 þ 1 4t ½ðPrð1 � eÞR � PbRbÞ � ðH þ CH � CbÞ� ð6Þ x2F1jLowZ1 2 þ 1 4t ½ðPrð1 � eÞR � PbRbÞ � ðL þ CL � CbÞ� ð7Þ where x2F1jHigh and x2F1jLow are the probabilities that the PR would hire the SR in stage 2 when the SR’s movie failed in stage 1. Having developed the strategies of the PR, we turn our attention to the SR. Let P(High1) and P(Low1) represent respectively the total profits accruing to the SR from adopting High strategy in stage 1 and Low strategy in stage 1. 86 T.V. Krishnan, A.M. Sakkthivel PðHigh1ÞZðx1jHighÞ½H þ PrPs�; ð8Þ where x1jHigh is the probability that the SR will be hired by the PR in stage 1 (given by expression 1), H is the fees charged by the SR, Pr is the probability that the movie is going to be a box-office hit and Ps is the total discounted profits the SR will be acquiring as a star in future. Suppose the SR chooses Low strategy in stage 1. Then, total profits to him are: PðLow1ÞZðx1jLowÞ½L þ PrEðSR2jSuc1Þ þ ð1 � PrÞEðSR2jFail1Þ�; ð9Þ where x1jLow is the probability that the SR will be hired by the PR in stage 1 (given by expression 2), L is the fees charged by the SR for the movie in stage 1, Pr is the prob- ability that the movie will be a box-office hit, E(SR2jSuc1) is the expected profits to the SR in stage 2 following the successful movie release in stage 1, (1 � Pr) is the proba- bility that the movie in stage 1 will be a failure at the box- office, E(SR2jFail1) is the expected profits to the SR in stage 2 following the poor outcome of his movie in stage 1. Here we use the expected operator to indicate the options to choose from in stage 2. Let us focus on stage 2 now. Suppose the SR has a box- office hit in stage 1. Then, he has two options in stage 2: High and Low, and the probability of getting hired (i.e. over a new face) by the PR is higher in either strategy because of the success in the previous stage. The SR will choose the strategy that will get him the better returns. Let P (High2jSuc1) and P(Low2jSuc1) denote the profits to SR in stage 2 in choosing the High and Low strategy respectively, given that he had a box-office hit in stage 1. These are given by: PðHigh2jSuc1ÞZðx2S1jHighÞ½H þ PrPs� ð10Þ where x2S1jHigh is the probability that SR will be hired by PR in stage 2 if SR had given a box-office hit in Stage 1 and wants to be projected as a star in this stage (given by expression 4), H is the fees charged by the SR in stage 2, Pr is the probability the movie in stage 2 will be a box-office hit, and Ps is the total discounted profits the SR will be acquiring as a star in future. Similar to expression 10, we produce the profits to the SR if he chooses Low strategy. PðLow2jSuc1ÞZðx2S1jLowÞ½L þ aPs� ð11Þ where x2S1jLow is the probability that the PR will hire the SR if the movie in stage 1 was a box-office hit and does not want to be projected as a star in stage 2 also (given by expression 5), L is the fees charged for the movie in stage 2, aPs is the total discounted profits the SR will be acquiring as a me-too star in future. Note that whatever happens to the movie in this situation, the SR will turn out to be a me- too star. This status enables the SR to earn in the long future a fraction of the earnings earned by a star, and this fraction is given by a, where 0 < a < 1. Going by the industry, a is roughly 30e80%. We can now state the expected returns to the SR in stage 2 following his box- office hit in stage 1. EðSR2jSuc1ÞZmaxfPðHigh2jSuc1Þ; PðLow2jSuc1Þg ð12Þ Suppose the SR has a failed movie in stage 1. Then, he has two options in stage 2: High and Low, and the probability of getting hired (i.e. over a new face) by the PR is lower in either strategy because of the failure in the previous stage. The SR will choose the one that will get him the better returns. Let P(High2jFail1) and P(Low2jFail1) denote the profits to the SR in stage 2 in choosing the High and Low strategy respectively, given that he had a failed movie in stage 1. These are given by: PðHigh2jFail1ÞZðx2F1jHighÞ½H þ PrPs� ð13Þ where x2F1jHigh is the probability that the SR will be hired by the PR in stage 2 if the SR’s movie had failed in stage 1 (given by expression 6), H is the fees charged by the SR in stage 2, Pr is the probability the movie will be a box-office hit in stage 2, and Ps is the total discounted profits the SR will be acquiring as a star in future. Similarly, we produce the profits to the SR if he chooses Low strategy. PðLow2jFail1ÞZðx2F1jLowÞ½L þ PraPs� ð14Þ where x2F1jLow is the probability that the PR will hire the SR if his movie in the previous stage had failed (given by expression 7), L is the fees charged for the movie in stage 2, Pr is the probability that the movie will be a box-office hit, and aPs is the total discounted profits the SR will be acquiring as a me-too star in future. Note that only if the movie is a box-office hit, will the SR turn out to be a me-too star; otherwise, he will be doomed to be a total failure. As mentioned earlier, the me-too star status enables the SR earn in the long future a fraction of the earnings earned by a star, and this fraction is given by a, where 0 < a < 1. Going by the industry, a is roughly 30e80%. We can now state the expected returns to the SR in stage 2 following his failed movie in stage 1. EðSR2jFail1ÞZmaxfPðHigh2jFail1Þ; PðLow2jFail1Þg ð15Þ Outcome of the process: a numerical analysis The focus of this research paper is to find out what the SR would do: project himself as a star or stay the course of the SR status and try to move up to star status in the next stage after proving himself again. This involves comparing expressions 8 and 9 and then concluding whether the SR would act as a star (i.e. choose High strategy) or stay the course (i.e. choose the Low strategy). However, the profit functions and the other functions they in turn depend on are really complicated expressions with many industry parameters built in, and hence an analytical solution is very difficult, if not impossible, to get. Hence, we resort to numerical analysis and focus on those parameters that are of high interest to the industry. We have the following parameters in the model: Cost to hire the SR Z H (High strategy), L (Low strategy) Cost to make the movie Z CH (if the SR asks for High strategy), CL (if the SR chooses Low strategy) Probability that the SR’s movie would be a box-office hit Z Pr Table 1 Values assigned to the parameters of the numerical analysis. t 0.5e1.5 e 0.1, 0.3 Pr 0.1e0.8 Pb 0.1 Returns to PR hiring SR: R 4 Returns with a new face: Rb 3 High strategy SR cost: H 0.5e4 Low strategy SR cost: L 0.1 Cost of movie with SR Z H: CH 1.2 Cost of movie with SR Z L: CL 1.2 Cost of movie with a new face: Cb 0.8 A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry 87 Revenue from the movie Z R if it is a box-office hit, 0 otherwise. Cost to hire a new face Z 0, Cost to make the movie that hires new face Z Cb Probability that the movie with a new face would be a box-office hit Z Pb Revenue from the movie with a new face Z Rb if it is a box-office hit, 0 otherwise. e Z learning parameter which updates the PR’s proba- bility of box-office hit of a movie with the SR. t equals; cost of misalignment (explained earlier). PsZ discounted total future profits to the SR if he becomes a star. a Ps Z discounted total future profits to the SR if he becomes a me-too star, where 0 < a < 1. Of the numerous parameters, Pr, e, H, a and t play a primary role, while the rest of the parameters can be thought of playing a secondary or reference role. For example, H and CH can be clubbed together, and so there is no need to consider CH separately. Since it is the difference between H and L that matters in evaluating the difference between the various probabilities in expression 1 through 6, we can keep L fixed and do what-if analysis on H alone. Following this, since L and CL can be clubbed together, we do not need to analyse CL separately. Similarly, it is the difference between Ps and aPs that matters, and hence we need to focus only on a for the analysis. The returns to the PR, i.e. R and Rb, are actually scale parameters and do not affect the qualitative nature of the outcomes. Also, given the focus on Pr the role of Pb is reduced to a reference point. Hence, we focus on five parameters, namely, t, e, Pr, H, a for our numerical analysis. Based on the numerous discussions we had with producers, actors, and other important people in the industry, we assigned values to the parameters (Table 1). For example, in the industry, stars actually charge anywhere between five and 30 times the salary of an SR. We have L at 0.1 and test for various H, ranging from 0.5 to 4, which converts to a multiple of 5e40. Similarly, the probability of success of a movie with an SR and that with a new face were derived from the actual data we collected10. The parameters whose values are given as a range (i.e. t, e, Pr, H, a) are the parameters to be used as what-if vari- ables in the analysis. We now discuss the results of our numerical analysis. Our objective is to find out if the SR would adopt a star-like position in stage 1 or not. In other words, we want to find out under what conditions he would choose to adopt High strategy in stage 1. Tables 2e4 present the results. In these tables, we use the terms ‘High’ to mean that the SR is adopting the High strategy in stage 1, and ‘Low’ to mean that the SR is adopting the Low strategy in stage 1. Result 1: impact of Pr and H We kept t Z 1, e Z 0.1, a Z 0.8 (rather a high fraction) and evaluated what the SR would do in stage 1 under different 10 This is explained in detail in a later section. combinations of Pr and H. Since Pr is bounded and H has a natural limit (because L was kept at 0.1) we believe we cover a very wide range of the combinations. Note that each cell represents an industry scenario. Since we do not know the exact situation in the Tamil movie industry, we test over a wide range of possible scenarios. Also, although we covered more combinations in the actual analysis, in the interests of space we are providing only a few here. However, the results we could infer from these combina- tions are applicable to all the combinations. Consider the row pertaining to Pr Z 0.20 and the column pertaining to H Z 1.2. If the industry practice is such that a star charges a fee of 1.20 (i.e. roughly 12 times that of a regular SR) and the probability of the SR- cast movie making a box-office hit is 0.20, then armed with this knowledge and the PR’s probability evaluation of hiring him under different strategies, the SR would find it profitable to act like a star in stage 1 i.e. adopt a High strategy. Consider the same row but the column H Z 1.4. Under this industry scenario, the SR would find it profit- able to play the Low strategy i.e. by accepting a salary of L and asking the PR to project him as a regular rookie. His reason for doing this is that if H is high, the probability that the PR would move away from hiring him and go instead for a new face increases dramatically. When H is relatively smaller (i.e. up to 1.3) the prospects of star status are more attractive and the SR goes for the High strategy in stage 1. Exactly at what point of H the SR would decide to resist the temptation to be treated like a star and ask to be treated like a normal rookie depends on the probability of his movie becoming a box-office hit. Recall that if it turns out to be a failure the SR would be doomed. For example, looking at the two rows pertaining to Pr Z 0.1 and Pr Z 0.15 and the column pertaining to H Z 1.3 we see that if the Pr is low the SR would ask to be treated like a normal rookie. If the probability is low the SR is aware that the audience is less likely to make his movie a box-office hit and hence he would not risk asking for star treatment. However, looking at the two rows pertaining to Pr Z 0.50 and Pr Z 0.55 and the column pertaining to H Z 1.3 we see that the higher probability of success is actually making the SR adopt the Cost of a new face 0 PS (total future returns for a star) 20 a 0.3, 0.8 Table 2 SR choosing high or low: Impact of combinations of Pr (probability that the SR’s movie would be a hit) and H (Cost of hiring SR with high strategy) under {t Z 1; e Z 0.1; a Z 0.8} setting. Pr H Z 0.5e1.1 H Z 1.2 H Z 1.3 H Z 1.4 H Z 1.5 0.1 High High Low Low Low 0.15 High High High Low Low 0.2 High High High Low Low 0.25 High High High High Low 0.3 High High High High Low 0.35 High High High High Low 0.4 High High High High Low 0.45 High High High High Low 0.5 High High High Low Low 0.55 High High Low Low Low 0.6 High Low Low Low Low 88 T.V. Krishnan, A.M. Sakkthivel Low strategy of asking to be treated like a normal rookie. The rationale behind this would be as follows: If he chooses the Low strategy in stage 1, he is very likely to get a box- office hit which would push up the chances of the PR hiring him in stage 2. This would make the overall probability of the second stage box-office hit much higher; moreover, even if the second stage results in an unsuccessful movie, the SR has some chance of making it to the me-too star status. Given that a Z 0.8 the me-too star status is not unsatisfactory. However, a needs to be sufficiently high. We will discuss the case of low a later. Thus we find that if a is not low, the parameter Pr is a double-edged sword. If Pr is too low, it discourages the SR from taking the High strategy in stage 1 because of the poor chances of making it; if too high, it encourages the SR to move on to stage 2 by adopting the Low strategy in stage 1 and thus enhances his overall expected returns in stage 2 much higher than opting for High in stage 1. Extending this result one can argue that only when the probability of his movie being a box-office hit is in the mid-range will we find Table 3 SR choosing high or low: Impact of combinations of Pr ( hiring SR with high strategy) under {t Z 1.5; e Z .1; a Z 0.8} se Pr H Z 0.5e1.0 H Z 0.6e1.6 H Z 1.7e1.8 0.1 High High High 0.15 High High High 0.2 High High High 0.25 High High High 0.3 High High High 0.35 High High High 0.4 High High High 0.45 High High High 0.5 High High High 0.55 High High High 0.6 High High High 0.65 High High High 0.7 High High High 0.75 High High Low 0.8 High Low Low 0.85 Low Low Low the SR adopting the High strategy in stage 1. In other words, neither a poorly performing SR nor a very strongly per- forming SR would rush in to move up to star status. It is those SRs in the ‘grey area’ who would try to act like stars too early in their careers. Result 2: impact of t and Pr Recall that a high value of t implies that the PR would spend a lot of money in aligning the actor to suit his ideal movie, and hence the importance of the SR’s salary (H or L) and the probability of success (Pr) get reduced in his evaluation of whether to hire the SR or not. We will see the impact of this t on the SR’s strategic decision in stage 1. The results are seen in Table 2 (t Z 1) and Table 3 (t Z 1.5). Consider the columns pertaining to H Z 1.5 in Table 2 and H Z 0.6e1.6 in Table 3. Both columns pertain to H Z 1.5. Consider all the rows pertaining to 0.1 through 0.6. Table 2 shows that the SR would choose Low strategy in stage 1 while Table 3 shows that the SR would choose High strategy in stage 1. The only difference between the two tables in the value assigned to parameter t. In Table 2 t Z 1 while in Table 3 t Z 1.5. What does this imply? With a higher value for t, the PR pays less importance to the SR’s salary in hiring him and hence the SR would automatically push up his cost i.e. would project himself to be a star. This is an important result because it implies that the SR would be more likely to project himself as a star if the PR is investing in a movie that pays a lot of attention to all the attributes of the movie and not just to the cost of the actor. Note that the probability of success of the movie still remains the same but the producers put more focus on all the dimensions of the movie and are going for the ‘right’ actor for the movie. Result 3: impact of a and Pr In Tables 2 and 3, used to describe the first two results, we had assumed rather a high value for a (0.80).If we assume probability that the SR’s movie would be a hit) and H (Cost of tting. H Z 1.9 H Z 2.0 H Z 2.1 H Z 2.2 High Low Low Low High Low Low Low High High Low Low High High High Low High High High Low High High High Low High High High Low High High High Low High High High Low High High Low Low High High Low Low High Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Table 4 SR choosing high or low: Impact of combinations of Pr (probability that the SR’s movie would be a hit) and H (Cost of hiring SR with high strategy) under {t Z 1; e Z 0.1; a Z 0.30} setting. Pr H Z 0.5e1.5 H Z 1.6 H Z 1.7, 1.8 H Z 1.9 H Z 2.0 H Z 2.1 H Z 2.2 H Z 2.3 H Z 2.4 H Z 2.6 0.1 High Low 0.15 High High Low 0.2 High High High Low Low 0.25 High High High High Low Low Low 0.3 High High High High High High Low Low 0.35 High High High High High High High Low Low 0.4 High High High High High High High High Low Low 0.45 High High High High High High High High High Low 0.5 High High High High High High High High High Low 0.55 High High High High High High High High High Low 0.6 High High Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low 11 These statistics do not include the cost of making a movie starring superstars. These superstar movies are called mega-budget movies and costs tens of crores of rupees. A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry 89 a low value for a, say 0.3, the results can be seen in Table 4. Comparing Table 2 (a Z 0.80) and 4 (a Z 0.30) and considering therein columns pertaining to H Z 1.5 we see that across all the values of Pr, the SR in the scenario of a Z 0.80 chooses to act as a rookie in stage 1, while in the scenario of a Z 0.30 he chooses to act as a star in stage 1. A low a means that if the SR becomes a me-too star instead of a star he would get only 30% of what a star would totally get in the future. In this industry scenario where the me-too star status is not bright, the strategy of moving to stage 2 is not as lucrative as it is in the industry scenario that has a Z 0.8. This will encourage the SR to choose High strategy if everything else remains the same across the two scenarios. This result complements results 1 and 2. For example, result 3 implies that result 1 will hold only if a is sufficiently high. How high that should be depends on the values the other parameters take in a specific situation. Result 4: impact of e The parameter e tells how the market updates the prob- ability of success of the SR’s movie in stage 2 using the result in stage 1. This is important only if the SR chooses the Low strategy in stage 1. The updating is done in both cases: if the movie at stage 1 is a box-office hit the probability of another box-office hit in stage 2 is Pr(1 þ e) while if it is a failure in stage 1 the probability of it being a box-office hit in stage 2 is Pr(1 � e). So, the net effect of the updating parameter, as seen strategically by the SR, is not going to be significant. Our numerical analysis also showed that there is no significant change in the SR’s decision in stage 1 when we changed the updating parameter from 0.1 to 0.3. Having discussed four key results, we now consider the situation in the Tamil movie industry. Does it point to a condition that encourages the SR to project himself as a star before he actually becomes one? Actual market conditions Let us focus on the probability of a movie becoming a box- office hit with a new face (i.e. Pb) and that with the SR (i.e. Pr). We collected data on the Tamil movies released in the period 1981e2003 and analysed the success rate with new faces and established faces respectively. Out of the approximately 2100 movies released we could gather information on around 1660 movies. There were 256 new faces introduced in the industry in the period 1981e2003, which makes it roughly 14 new faces per year. Of the 1660 movies, 216 movies had failed new faces. These two facts imply that the success rate of a movie with a new face is 40/256 Z which is 15.6% (Anandan, 2005). Our discussions with the producers and directors revealed that the prob- ability figure would be much lower if we were to get information on all the movies released in the 1981e2003 period. Based on this, we estimated Pb around 0.10; this is what we used in all of our numerical analyses, including Table 2. The probability of a movie becoming a box-office hit with an SR (i.e. Pr) is more difficult to evaluate because one cannot exactly mark when an SR actually became a star or a me-too star. We looked into the rate of hit movies that came out of a new face in (a) the third and fourth years of his career, (b) the fifth and sixth years of his career and (c) the seventh and eighth years of his career. Assuming that an unsuccessful new face would have most likely exited the industry within the first two years and most certainly within the first five years, and that the SR might be evolving into a star around the sixth to eighth year of his career, we took the mean of these three averages. This came out to be in the range of 0.22e0.28. Thus we put the value of Pr around 0.25. Based on our discussion with the producers and various reports published in the cine journals, we found that it takes roughly around Rs 0.5 crore (5 million) to 1 crore (10 million) to make a movie with a new face while it could take around Rs 3 crores (30 million) to 5 crores (50 million) to make a movie with a star or an SR projecting himself to be a star11. Thus, the cost of making a movie for the SR projecting himself to be star is three to 10 times the cost of making a movie with a new face. In our numerical simula- tions, we had assumed a value of 0.1 for the movie with a new face, and hence the parameter H can be said to have 90 T.V. Krishnan, A.M. Sakkthivel a value between 0.3 and 1 (the method of evaluating H has been discussed in a previous section). If we take Pb Z 0.1, Pr to be around 0.25 and H to be in the interval 0.3e1, then from Tables 2, 3 and 4 see that the SR would find it optimal to project himself to be a star. This is true of both the high and low values of a. Thus, we can conclude that the market conditions in the Tamil movie industry are such that the SR would want to project himself to be a star. Model refinement (Markov Chain) The model proposed above is a simplified picture of the seemingly odd behaviour of successful rookies in the Tamil movie industry. Clearly, there are other ways to model the rationalisation of this behaviour, and we discuss one of them below12. An actor may pass through several stages before becoming a star eventually, but many taking that long route end up as me-too stars. Being an SR, one can take this long, traditional route or take a short cut and ask to be treated like a star immediately. Consider the long route first. Suppose the SR has a goodwill of n units acquired from his early movie successes. Further, if he could increase these n units to N units over time, he will be considered a star. For every movie he acts in during this period, there is however a probability P1 that it would be a hit movie and 1 � P1 that it would be a flop. With every success during this run, he will gain 1 unit of goodwill and with every failure he will lose 1 unit. This is very similar to the Gambler’s Ruin Problem (Stigler, 1990). The probability that the SR would eventually reach star status is given by (1 � kn)/(1 � kN) where k Z (1 � P1)/P1, provided P1 is not half but between 0 and 1. Note here that n Z 0 and N are absorption states. See Ross (1996) for the derivation and details. If P1 is lower than 0.5 this probability becomes zero, implying that the SR would only become a me-too star earning a return of a Ps (where 0 < a < 1 and Ps is the total returns to a star; see the previous sections for more details), while if P1 is greater than 0.5 the probability of reaching star status (and thus earning the Ps returns) increases with P1. For example, let us say that the amount of goodwill units available with the SR is four and that to reach star status there should be 25 units accruing to the SR. In that case, if P1 is 0.55 then the probability that he would become a star in the long run is also 0.55, but then if P1 is 0.70 the probability of the SR becoming a star in the long run increases to 0.98. In the latter case, by providing the SR with such a high probability of becoming a star, the long route would become the natural choice. On the other hand consider a low P1 (below 0.5). With the short route the expected returns are very small but with the long route there is always ‘some’ returns offered by the me-too star status, and so the long route again would be more advan- tageous. Thus, with either P1 high or low, it is better for the SR to take the long route while for other intermediate 12 We thank a reviewer for encouraging us to look at using the Markov Chain method. values, the short route is better. This conclusion is very similar to what we arrived at in the previous section13. Another way to evaluate the strategies in this Markov model is to ask how long it would take the SR to reach the star stage and see if the SR can wait that long. The expected number of periods the actor would take to reach N goodwill points starting from n units is given by: 1ð1�KÞ2[{2 k Nþ1 � (N þ 1)k2 þ N � 1} � {2knþ1 � (n þ 1) k2 þ n � 1}], where N is the star stage, n is the SR stage, kZ (1 � P1)/P1 (see Sheldon Ross, 1996). What is the impact of a large N? If P1 is less than 0.5 then the expected number of periods he needs to become a star is an exponential func- tion in N and so it almost becomes impossible for the SR to achieve the star status in his lifetime. He would very likely end up as a me-too star. On the other hand, if P1 is higher than 0.5 the expression almost becomes linear in N and so a good performing SR would be able to reach star status sooner. Now, we can include the discount rate and then compare the returns with what the SR could achieve by taking the shorter route. We however leave the develop- ment of a full model for future research. Conclusions, managerial implications and caveats In this research we took the Tamil movie industry into focus and analysed the strategic decision making process of a successful rookie. There are many factors one could analyse in this industry and we decided to focus on the one that we found out to be critical, based on our discussions with producers, directors and actors. When his first few movies become successful, a rookie generally pushes himself to become a star and demands ‘star’ treatment from the producers but that is perceived as an arrogant posture by many producers in the industry because stars are typically formed after a long and gruelling movie experi- ence. This very often leads to producers opting for new faces. Although the successful rookies are aware of this, they still try to push for stardom. In our research, we built a decision making model based on our in-depth discussion with some prominent producers and actors and analysed the conditions under which the successful rookies could strategically chase stardom, and when they could not. Our analysis showed that when the probability of success of an SR’s movie is assessed to be neither too high nor too low, the rookie would push himself to become a star immediately. A very low probability would discourage him because his failure in such an attempt would doom him forever, and a high probability would encourage him to prove himself further to the producers and to ensure higher returns in the long run. So, only those facing a moderate probability of scoring a hit would demand star treatment. A second finding is that the SR is more likely to project himself as a star if the producer invests in a movie that pays 13 Note that we use these numbers for demonstration purposes only. Also, note that the P1 we use here is different from Pr we used in the previous sections since the frameworks are different. A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry 91 attention to all the attributes of the movie (i.e. good story, stage setting, music, director, etc.) and looks at the perfect fit between the movie and the actor. Thirdly, if the industry is such that the me-too stars in the long run cannot make more than a small percentage of what a star makes, the successful rookie would try to become a star sooner because by waiting his chances of good returns from a me- too star status are not very high. This counter-intuitive result is born out of the possibility that the successful rookie finds the other alternatives to be such failing prop- ositions that he prefers to project as a star even though he is aware the risk is high. Applying the proposed model to the Tamil movie industry and evaluating the various parameters, we find that it is perfectly plausible for a new actor with two or three quick hits to put himself up to achieve star status. Although such a strategy may look optimal for an SR it may nevertheless appear to a producer that the SR has over- reached himselfdone of the producers we interviewed stated his preference for a new face or a proven star and not an ‘arrogant’ SR, who would demand an inordinate amount of money and attention. What are the managerial implications of our findings? First, the industry should understand that the seemingly odd behaviour of successful rookies can be explained rationally and handled through a rational approach. Instead of looking for a new face for a movie, producers can look for ways to work with SRs; for example, SRs can be asked to share the risk in the production of the expensive movies that the PRs undertake to suit the aspirations of the SRs. Or, they can be asked to share their future revenues if the current movie pushes the rookie to stardom. Anyway, by understanding the factors driving the SRs to demand star status, producers can find ways to address their concerns and thereby reduce their own reliance on the new faces. Secondly, SRs should be aware that they take the short cut from fear of an uncertain future coupled with the continuous stream of new faces in the industry. Once they become aware of their situation and their motives, they could look for solutions and explain their point of view to producers, reducing ill-will all around. Thirdly, since the probability of achieving a hit deter- mines an SR’s demand for star treatment to a great extent, successful rookies facing a moderate probability of success can start asking how they can improve the odds and thereby reduce the need to demand star treatment. Fourthly, a good movie is based not just on the contribu- tion of the actor but on a full package that includes the script, story, dialogues, setting, etc. Our finding says that if a producer is thinking about hiring an SR for such a well thought-out movie then the demand for high salary or star treatment from the SR would become less relevant in the bigger scheme of things, and there would be more likelihood of the SR getting hired than in a movie where the actor is the only important part. This in turn suggests that the SR should seek out only those movies that pay attention to the whole package and not just to him! While this may appear counter- intuitive when an SR wants to be projected as a star, the strategy may work on the ground (as the recent success of an SR like Karthi has shown) and is in line with reasoning. The Indian movie industry is coming of age, with production houses replacing independent producers. These production houses are companies that are professionally managed, and our findings will give them additional insights into this industry and thus help in their decision making process when they deal with various actors. However, there are some caveats. First, there could be other ‘irrational’ reasons for the SR’s demand for star treatment. For example, as borne out in our interviews, before becoming SRs, actors who enter the industry as new faces often encounter numerous problems, getting slim gains in return. Hence, even a minor success encourages them to initiate action to overcome this sense of insecurity. Also, the young age and inexperience of these successful rookies (most of them are in their early twenties) make them vulnerable to the fallout of sudden wealth and fame. Secondly, our model has only one SR, and does not take into account factors such as the competitive spirit between the SRs, which might make them demand star treatment with more vigour. Another element that our model does not take into consideration is the role played by the currently reigning stars who might seem a better bet to the producers than an SR, at the same cost. However, reigning stars carefully pick movies that suit their image and hence avoid acting in too many movies in a given year. Thus, the producers are left with the option of an SR or a new face for many of their movies. We believe that our results provide interesting insights that are useful for both producers and actors. 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To push for stardom or not: A rookie’s dilemma in the Tamil movie industry Introduction Literature survey Model for studying interaction between producer and rookie Strategies of the successful rookie Two stages of the successful Rookie’s evolution process Strategies of the producer Strategies and associated profits (payoff) Outcome of the process: a numerical analysis Result 1: impact of Pr and H Result 2: impact of t and Pr Result 3: impact of α and Pr Result 4: impact of ε Actual market conditions Model refinement (Markov Chain) Conclusions, managerial implications and caveats References work_7i6bh5oa6ferrjficigl57mqsy ---- #foodie: Implications of interacting with social media for memory ORIGINAL ARTICLE Open Access #foodie: Implications of interacting with social media for memory Jordan Zimmerman and Sarah Brown-Schmidt* Abstract Background: Social media is an increasingly popular outlet for leisure and social interaction. On many social media platforms, the user experience involves commenting on or responding to user-generated content, such as images of cats, food, and people. In two experiments, we examined how the act of commenting on social media images impacts subsequent memory of those images, using Instagram posts as a test case. This project was inspired by recent findings of laboratory studies of conversation which found that describing a picture for a conversational partner boosts recognition memory for those images. Here we aimed to understand how this finding translates to the more ecologically valid realm of social media interactions. A second motivation for the study was the popularity of food- and dieting-related content on Instagram and prior findings that use of Instagram in particular is associated with disordered eating behaviors. Results: Across two experiments, we observed that commenting on Instagram posts consistently boosted subsequent recognition and that correct recognition increased with comment length. Stable individual differences in recognition memory were observed, and “unhealthy” food images such as chocolates were particularly well remembered; however, these memory findings did not relate to self-reported eating behavior. Conclusions: Taken together, our findings show that the way in which we engage with social media content shapes subsequent memory of it, raising new questions about how our online lives persist in memory over time, potentially shaping future behavior. Keywords: Social media, Memory, Elaborative encoding, Food, Disordered eating Significance Statement Engaging with other persons through social media plat- forms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Ac- cording to Instagram’s “Year in Review” publicity mate- rials, in 2018, the heart emoji was used over 14 billion times, and the hashtag #metoo was used 1.5 million times (Instagram, 2018). Food-related content is particu- larly popular on Instagram, with #foodporn tagged on over 206 million posts, #foodie on over 133 million posts, and #vegan on over 83 million posts. A notable feature of Instagram is that users add comments such as “OMG YUMMM,” or hashtag comments such as #food (used over 354 million times) and #fitspo (used over 67 million times). The sheer number of communicative acts demands a better understanding of the cognitive impli- cations of this type of social media engagement. The present research builds on prior studies of conversa- tional interactions which show that describing a picture to a communication partner boosts memory for that image. Here we asked if commenting on Instagram posts similarly boosts memory for those posts. Across two ex- periments, we observed that commenting on Instagram posts consistently boosted subsequent recognition and that correct recognition increased with comment length. Stable individual differences in recognition memory were observed, and “unhealthy” food images such as choco- lates were particularly well remembered, but these mem- ory findings did not relate to self-reported eating © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. * Correspondence: sarahbrownschmidt@gmail.com Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203, USA Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00216-7 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1186/s41235-020-00216-7&domain=pdf http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5647-0875 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ mailto:sarahbrownschmidt@gmail.com behavior. Taken together, our findings show that the way in which we engage with social media images shapes subsequent memory for them, raising new questions about how our online lives persist in memory, poten- tially shaping future behavior. Introduction Engaging with other persons through language and media is both common and impactful. According to the American Time Use Survey (US Department of Labor, 2019), in 2018, American civilians aged 15 years and older engaged in leisure and sports activities 5.27 h/day, on average, including 38 min/day socializing and com- municating and 2.8 h/day watching television. Although the amount of time Americans spent engaging with so- cial media per se is not reported, “playing games and computer use for leisure” was also popular, with an aver- age of 28 min/day, though notably, this varied consider- ably by age, with 15–19-year-olds reporting 62 min/day and 20–24-year-olds reporting 58 min/day. Blank and Lutz (2016) examined a UK sample and reported that social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram are becoming increas- ingly ubiquitous and that, at the time of their study, Instagram was the fastest-growing of these sites. Accord- ing to Instagram’s “Year in Review” publicity materials, in 2018, the heart emoji was used over 14 billion times on the platform, and the hashtag #metoo was used 1.5 million times (Instagram, 2018). In its 2017 “Year in Review,” Instagram reported a “global community of 800 million” (Instagram, 2017). One motivation for the present re- search is the popularity of food-related content on Insta- gram, such as #foodporn (tagged on over 206 million posts), #vegan (tagged on over 83 million posts), @food- network (9.3 million followers), @foodgod (3.4 million followers), and @feelgoodfoodie (2.1 million followers). The popularity of social media makes it increasingly important to understand how engaging with this type of media shapes cognition. Previous research suggests that memory for social media content is high among the gen- eral population: Memory for Facebook microblogs is sig- nificantly higher than memory for sentences from books, news headlines, and even human faces (Mickes et al., 2013). The popularity of health- and dieting-related con- tent on Instagram in particular emphasizes the import- ance of understanding how the act of viewing and interacting with these images impacts the viewer. Poten- tially relevant to this question are cognitive processes underlying disordered eating, phenomena that are thought to be complex and multidimensional, being shaped by the external environment and social culture (Culbert, Racine, & Klump, 2015; Levine, Smolak, & Hayden, 1994; Stevenson, Doherty, Barnett, Muldoon, & Trew, 2007). Indeed, some prior work indicates a relationship between the use of media and disordered eating habits (Harrison & Cantor, 1997; Turner & Lefevre, 2017; also see Mejova, Hamed Haddadi, Anasta- sios Noulas, & Ingmar Weber, 2015). Here, we examined the cognitive processes that occur when engaging with social media content on Instagram. A notable feature of the Instagram platform is that in- stead of simply browsing through the content, users can also add comments to the images they see (and see others’ comments as well). These comments often fea- ture evaluations or descriptions of the image, as in “This pasta looks sooo darn good!,” “OMG YUMMM,” or “#foodie.” This act of commenting was the primary focus of the present research. Our research question was in- spired by recent findings from the study of conversation that the act of describing an image for another person boosts memory for that image (McKinley, Brown- Schmidt, & Benjamin, 2017; Yoon, Benjamin, & Brown- Schmidt, 2016;). For example, Yoon et al. (2016) exam- ined situations in which pairs of participants viewed four images at a time (on separate computer screens) and took turns describing the images to each other in a task in which the listener had to locate that image and click on it. Despite the fact that the image descriptions were fairly simple (e.g., “the argyle sock,” “the bunny,”) over a series of experiments, speakers consistently exhibited better recognition memory than listeners for these refer- enced images. Further, memory for viewed but nonde- scribed images was considerably worse than memory for images that the speaker had described. In a converging finding, McKinley et al. (2017) examined the length of image descriptions and found that longer descriptions promoted better recognition memory for those images. This observed memory benefit for describing images likely owes to the fact that the labels were generated and produced by the speakers, both of which benefit memory (i.e., the “generation effect” and “production effect”; Faw- cett, Quinlan, & Taylor, 2012; Macleod, Gopie, Houri- han, Neary, & Ozubko, 2010; Slamecka & Graf, 1978; Zormpa, Brehm, Hoedemaker, & Meyer, 2019; also see Knutsen & Le Bigot, 2014). Action memory is similarly better for self-performed actions than for observed ac- tions (Koriat, Ben-Zur, & Druch, 1991). These findings can more generally be considered a type of elaborative encoding effect (Bradshaw & Anderson, 1982), where the elaboration of the image with descriptive phrases promotes encoding of that image in memory. Although it is clear that generating image descriptions for a partner in laboratory tasks with carefully selected images promotes image recognition, an unanswered question is how this might translate into more typical experiences with images in social media contexts. To this end, the present article presents the results of two experiments examining how the act of engaging with Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 2 of 16 social media posts, by commenting on the images, impacts subsequent memory for those posts. Due to the aforementioned prevalence of food- and dieting- related content on this platform and associated com- ments generated by users (e.g., “We love cucumbers! #instafood #yummy”), we examined several categories of food and non-food-related images and used an established questionnaire to inquire about partici- pants’ eating behaviors. We then modeled the data using a quantitative technique that allowed us to examine whether there were stable individual differ- ences in memory for images in general and in mem- ory for food in particular. If so, we would then be positioned to ask whether a person’s eating behaviors relate to their memory for food-related content on social media. This research question is motivated by previous evidence of selective processing and atten- tional biases for pictorial stimuli among individuals with eating disorders (Giel et al., 2011; Nikendei et al., 2008; Shafran, Lee, Cooper, Palmer, & Fairburn, 2007; Stormark & Torkildsen, 2004; also see Castella- nos et al., 2009), as well as by findings that use of so- cial media platforms by young adults is marginally associated with depressive symptoms (Lup, Trub, & Rosenthal, 2015; cf. Aalbers, McNally, Heeren, Wit, & Fried, 2019). Of note is that platforms such as Insta- gram are used to share information relevant to eating disorder behavior (see Chancellor, Pater, Clear, Gil- bert, & De Choudhury, 2016), and use of Instagram in particular has been associated with higher rates of orthorexia nervosa (an obsession with eating healthy; Turner & Lefevre, 2017). If individuals who experi- ence disordered eating interact with social media on a daily basis and process social media differently on the basis of their symptomology, this could have major implications for how social media platforms affect an already vulnerable population. Experiment 1 The aims of Experiment 1 were twofold. First, we tested whether previously observed benefits of generating pic- ture descriptions (McKinley et al., 2017; Yoon et al., 2016; Zormpa et al., 2019) would generalize to the ubi- quitous practice of commenting on social media images. Second, we evaluated whether there were stable individ- ual differences in memory for these images, particularly those related to food. If so, this would allow us to take the first step in investigating if and how eating behaviors shape memory for food in social media. Methods This experiment was preregistered with the Open Sci- ence Framework Registries (https://osf.io/s5ez8). Participants Participants were recruited thorough an online platform (Amazon Mechanical Turk; www.mturk.com) and were compensated $4.50 for participating. Criteria for partici- pation were a HIT approval rate of 95% or greater, loca- tion as the United States, and number of approved HITS as 100+. Criteria for inclusion in the study were that the participant was a self-reported native English speaker (learned from birth) and that they completed at least 80% of the study. To achieve the final planned sample size of 100 participants, 106 participants completed the study. Six participants were removed for reporting being other than a native speaker of English (n = 5), and one was removed for completing the study twice with the same Internet Protocol (IP) address (the second partici- pation in the study was excluded). Thus, the final sample size was 100. The average age of the sample was 37 years (range, 22 to 70). Participants reported gender as female (n = 46), male (n = 53), or genderqueer (n = 1). Materials The materials were assembled by perusing a large number of Instagram posts gathered from Instagram accounts cre- ated by the first author for this purpose. We focused on gathering images from one of five categories. Posts featur- ing dogs, cats, or nature were used as control images. Posts featuring food served as critical stimuli and were further divided into the categories of “healthy” and “un- healthy” food. Note that categorization of the food images into “healthy” and “unhealthy” was based on group discus- sion and our intuition about popular cultural beliefs rather than quantitative analysis of nutritional properties. Ex- ample “healthy” food images included berries, seafood, and salad. Example “unhealthy” food images included brownies, cheeseburgers, and cake. Posts that originated from private accounts were edited so that the usernames were obscured by overlaying the username with text such as “pics123.” In total, the materials used for the study were 200 Instagram posts, 40 in each of the 5 categories. We intentionally used a 3:2 ratio of control to food-related im- ages in order to obscure the focus on food-related images. The 200 Instagram posts were rotated across condi- tions using four lists, counterbalancing which images were shown to participants in the exposure phase (“old” images at test) and which were not shown to partici- pants during exposure (“new” images at test). For old images, we also rotated across lists whether the partici- pant commented on them or not. To create list 1, half of the images in each of the five categories (“healthy food”, “unhealthy food”, cats, dogs, and nature) were randomly selected to be shown to participants in the exposure phase (100 old items); the other half were to be “new” items at test. For each category, half of the “old” images were assigned randomly to the commenting condition, Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 3 of 16 https://osf.io/s5ez8 and half were assigned to the no-commenting condition. List 2 then swapped which were commented on and which not. Lists 3 and 4 swapped which were old and new. As a result, on each list, the new items were drawn from among the same categories as the images viewed in the exposure phase. Consequently, there was never a novel item from a completely new category that was not previously encoded. For example, across the whole ex- periment (study and test), participants saw five total im- ages of pizza, some of which were new items and some of which were old (which ones were old vs. new depended on the list). Please see the Appendix for a list of all of the food stimuli in the study for list 1. Each par- ticipant was randomly assigned to complete the trials on a single list (list 1, n = 27; list 2, n = 29; list 3, n = 23; list 4, n = 21). Procedure Exposure phase After consenting to participate, partici- pants were given the following instructions: “In the fol- lowing section, you will see a series of Instagram posts. Some will require you to generate an original comment, while others will not. Please think of appropriate and thoughtful comments for the pictures you will see, and simply attend to the posts that do not require comments. Treat the following experience as you would scrolling through your own social media feed.” The instructions did not mention that there would be a subsequent memory test. Participants then clicked to the next screen and began viewing a series of 100 Instagram posts, one per page. The posts were presented in a different random order for each participant. For half of the posts, the partic- ipants were prompted to provide a comment using the same phrasing as on the Instagram platform (i.e., “Add a comment….”). For comment trials, there was no restric- tion on the length of the comment, though the participant needed to type something in order to proceed to the next trial. These trials were self-paced. Test phase After viewing the 100 Instagram posts, par- ticipants were then asked to complete a series of 17 math problems. This task took about 5 min and was intended to bring memory performance off ceiling be- cause recognition memory performance for pictures can be high (Shepard, 1967); this is a method used in our prior work with success (Yoon et al., 2016). Participants were then told, “In the following section, your memory will be tested on the images you were previously shown. If an image is presented that you have previously seen (one you saw in the first part of the study), select ‘OLD.’ If an image is presented that is new and not previously shown, select ‘NEW.’” They viewed a series of 200 im- ages, half of which were old and seen in the exposure phase (20 images from each of the 5 categories), and half of which were new (20 new images from each of the 5 categories). The images were shown one at a time in a dif- ferent random order for each participant, and the partici- pant was asked to respond “old” or “new” for each image. Additional measures Following the recognition memory task, participants completed the Eating Disorder Examination Question- naire (EDE-Q). The EDE-Q is the self-report version of the Eating Disorder Questionnaire, which is used to de- termine the frequency and severity of behavioral features and the psychopathology of eating disorders. The ques- tionnaire provides a global score of severity as well as four subscale scores that correspond to certain aspects of psychopathology. The four subscales are restraint, eat- ing concern, shape concern, and weight concern. The range of ratings for each item is 0 to 6, with 6 being the most frequent or severe. To obtain a subscale score, the average of the ratings for the relevant items is calculated. To obtain a global score, the sum of the four subscale scores is divided by 4 (Fairburn, Cooper, & O’Connor, 2014). This examination is reported to be a valid meas- ure of eating disorder symptomology (Mond, Hay, Rod- gers, Owen, & Beumont, 2004), and higher values on each of the scales reflect higher symptomology. Finally, participants were asked to report their age, gender, and ability in the English language. Predictions Recent studies in our laboratory revealed that following conversation, partners had better memory for pictures that they described themselves than for ones their partner described (McKinley et al., 2017; Yoon et al., 2016). If this generation benefit extends to written comments in online communication, we hypothesized that memory would be better for Instagram posts for which individuals generated original comments than for posts that were passively viewed. Further, we expected that the likelihood of correct recognition would increase the longer the comment. This pattern of findings would be expected if posting comments on social media pro- moted elaborative encoding of the post (Bradshaw & Anderson, 1982), compared with simply viewing them. There is, however, good reason to think that com- menting may not benefit picture memory. Social media images are often selected to be glossy and captivating, and recognition memory for pictures tends to be good (Shepard, 1967). Thus, ceiling effects may obtain, such that commenting has no effect on memory despite the use of a filled delay between study and test. Another possibility is that an elaborative encoding benefit of commenting trades off with an attentional shift toward the “Add a comment…” box where the comment is typed, and inward toward one’s own reflections on the Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 4 of 16 image. Memory for item and context can trade off (Gopie & MacLeod, 2009; Jurica & Shimamura, 1999; Koriat et al., 1991), such that manipulations that benefit item memory impair or have no effect on context mem- ory. If so, commenting may boost memory for the com- ment, but not the picture; in linguistic terms, it would be the reference and not the referent that receives the boost. Such a pattern of findings would circumscribe the scope of generation-based memorial benefits following conversation, pointing to a distinction between reference and referent. In addition to effects of commenting, we tested the hy- pothesis that individual differences in memory for food vs. nonfood could be predicted by self-reported disor- dered eating behaviors. Support for the idea that mem- ory for food might be linked with disordered eating comes from findings of attentional processing differ- ences for food-related stimuli in persons with an eating disorder (Giel et al., 2011; Nikendei et al., 2008; Shafran et al., 2007; Stormark & Torkildsen, 2004) and a link be- tween hunger/satiation and attentional processing of food-related stimuli (Mogg, Bradley, Hyare, & Sui, 1997; Placanica, Faunce, & Job, 2002; Stockburger, Schmälzle, Flaisch, Bublatzky, & Schupp, 2009). These findings, along with evidence of a relationship between the use of media and disordered eating habits (Harrison & Cantor, 1997; Turner & Lefevre, 2017; also see Mejova et al., 2015), led to the predictions (1) that there would be stable individual differences in memory for food (vs. nonfood) images and (2) that these individual differences would be related to a measure of disordered eating behavior. Critically, however, examining the relationship between this digital generation effect and behaviors associated with disordered eating first requires us to demonstrate reliable individual differences in memory for the images and for food-related images in particular. To preview, while per- sons did exhibit stable individual differences in recogni- tion memory, the difference in memory between food and nonfood items was itself not a stable property of the indi- viduals we tested. Unfortunately, this prevented us from testing hypotheses relating memory for food-related Insta- gram posts to disordered eating behaviors. Results Each participant commented on 50 of 100 viewed Insta- gram posts, followed by an old–new recognition memory test. Performance in the recognition memory task is illus- trated using a measure of memory sensitivity (d′) in Fig. 1. The primary analyses focus on memory for the posts, an- alyzed using a logistic mixed-effects approach to a signal detection theoretic analysis (see Fraundorf, Benjamin, & Watson, 2013; Wright, Horry, & Skagerberg, 2009). In addition, we characterize the relationship between the form of the comments and memory and finally explore whether there are stable individual differences in these effects. Memory for Instagram posts A logit-link mixed effects model for memory judgments (old = 1; new = 0) was fit to the 19,999 recognition mem- ory judgments in this dataset; note that one data point was lost due to computer error. Planned analyses of fixed effects include orthogonal Helmert codes for item type (old vs. new) and whether the image had been com- mented on (comment vs. no comment). We also con- sider two different effects of image type using a dummy- coding scheme where the control images (nature, dogs, or cats) were dummy-coded as baseline, allowing us to test if memory for healthy food differed from baseline Fig. 1 Experiment 1: Illustration of memory sensitivity (d′) by condition. Error bars indicate by-participant standard deviation Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 5 of 16 and separately whether memory for unhealthy food dif- fered from baseline. Note that the effects of item type and commenting can be interpreted as simple effects at the reference level (control images), and interactions with item type test whether these effects differ for healthy and for unhealthy food. The model included participants and items as crossed random effects. An initial model that included only the random intercepts revealed that there was very little variance in the intercepts by item, though slightly more variability among participants. On the basis of lack of item variability and the lack of hypotheses regarding in- dividual item differences, we did not attempt models with random slopes by item. While our analysis plan was to relate a person-level covariate (EDE-Q score) to the memory data, attempts to include random slopes by persons for each of the fixed effects were met with con- vergence failures. Using a backward-fitting approach (Barr, Levy, Scheepers, & Tily, 2013), we simplified the model until we identified a model that included random slopes by person for the effects of item type (old vs. new), and commenting (for old items, whether the par- ticipant commented on the image). While this model failed to converge, refitting the model with different op- timizers using the allFit function (Bates et al., 2018) re- vealed consistent estimates for each of the fixed effects to two decimal places, except for the intercept and the (nonsignificant) interaction between commenting and healthy food, which were consistent across optimizers only to one decimal place. For the random effects, esti- mates for the by-person random intercept and slopes were consistent to two decimal places, except for the by- participant random slope for item type (old vs. new) and commenting, which were consistent only to one decimal place. This model was taken to be satisfactory and is presented in Table 1. The intercept term in the model was not significant, indicating there was no evidence for a significant re- sponse bias (participants responded “old” and “new” at similar rates). A significant effect of item type (z = 22.11, p < .0001) indicated good memory for the previously viewed images. A significant effect of commenting indi- cated that for previously viewed images, they were more likely to be correctly recognized if the participant had commented on them (z = 18.09, p < .0001). These effects were qualified by interactions with item type. Healthy food was remembered less well than control images (z = − 2.87, p < .01), whereas unhealthy food was remem- bered better than control images (z = 2.69, p < .01). In addition, the effect of commenting was smaller for un- healthy food images than for control images (z = − 2.22, p < .05), possibly due to the fact that memory was over- all better for the unhealthy food images. Effect of comment length on memory for Instagram posts This exploratory analysis investigated whether the length of the Instagram comments modulated memory for those images. This analysis was restricted to old items for which participants generated a comment, as the pre- dictor variables are defined for those items only. The number of words per comment ranged from 1 to 45 (median = 3, mean = 4.18). On average, comments were longer for pictures that would ultimately be correctly recognized (mean number of words = 4.30, SD = 3.24) than for pictures that were not recognized (mean = 2.86, SD = 2.13). A logit-link mixed effects model for memory judgments (old = 1; new = 0) was fit to the data. Fixed ef- fects include a centered measure of the number of words used to comment on the picture. The same dummy- coding scheme as in the primary analysis was used, where control images (nature, dogs, or cats) were dummy-coded as baseline, allowing us to test if the effect Table 1 Experiment 1: Memory by condition, model with random slopesa Fixed effects Estimate SE z Value p value (Intercept) 0.086 0.076 1.128 .259 Commenting (commented items = 0.5, noncommented items = −0.5, new = 0) 2.613 0.144 18.090 <.0001 Item type (old vs. new) (commented = 0.5, noncommented = 0.5, new = −1) 2.786 0.126 22.114 <.0001 Commenting * Healthy food −0.122 0.146 −0.836 .403 Commenting * Unhealthy food −0.335 0.151 −2.218 <.05 Item type * Healthy food −0.218 0.076 −2.869 <.01 Item type * Unhealthy food 0.217 0.081 2.692 <.01 Random effects Variance SD Correlations Item (intercept) 0.206 0.454 Subject (intercept) 0.389 0.623 Item type (old vs. new) 1.343 1.159 0.27 Commenting 1.285 1.134 −0.12 .47 aNumber of observations: 19,999, 200 items, 100 participants Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 6 of 16 of comment length was different for healthy food and for unhealthy food (compared with baseline). Note that the effects of the number of words can be interpreted as sim- ple effects at the reference level (control images) and in- teractions with item type test whether these effects differ for healthy food and for unhealthy food. Participants and items were included as random inter- cepts. A null model was initially fit to the data and indi- cated very little variability by items but some variability by participants. Thus, the effect of commenting was in- cluded as a by-participant random slope. This model converged. Models with more complex random effects structures failed to converge with warnings indicating singular fits. Thus, results of this converged model were taken to be satisfactory and interpreted (Table 2). The significant intercept term indicates that for these commented-on images (all of which were old), correct recognitions were more likely than not (z = 18.94, p < .0001). A significant effect of word count (z = 6.09, p < .0001) shows us that for each additional word pro- duced in the comment, the odds ratio of correct recogni- tion was 1.37 times greater at test. A significant interaction between word count and healthy images (z = − 2.43, p < .05) indicated that the effect of commenting was smaller for healthy food images than for control im- ages (dogs, cats, or nature). Participant variability and Individual differences In order to ask questions about individual differences in these processes, it is first necessary to determine whether the models provided evidence that there were stable (reliable) individual differences in our memory measures. To this end, for the analysis of recognition memory presented in Table 1, we extracted the by- person random effects as well as the standard errors of those random effects using the “arm” package in R (Gel- man, Su, Yajima, Hill, et al., 2018). Following Cho, Shen, and Naveiras (2019), we calculated the model-based reli- ability of the item type (old vs. new) and comment ef- fects. Rho can be interpreted as the ratio of the estimated variance theta over the observed variance theta, with values closer to 1 indicating better reliability. Rho for the item type effect was fairly high, .882, indicating stable individual differences in memory for the pictures. Rho for the effect of commenting was less reliable, .654. As noted above, more complex models including ran- dom slopes for image type (healthy and unhealthy food) failed to converge, and refitting these models revealed inconsistent fits with different optimizers as well as sin- gularities (random effects parameters being at or near zero), indicating poor model fit. Together, these findings indicate that there was some consistent variability by persons in their memory for the images and in the effect of commenting on those pictures. However, we were not able to extract a stable measure of individual differences in memory for healthy or unhealthy food in particular (above and beyond overall measures of memory), making it impossible to conduct planned analyses of the rela- tionship between memory for food and the EDE-Q measure of eating behavior. For the second analysis of the relationship between comment length and memory (Table 2), inspection of the random effects indicated that while there was some variability in the by-person intercept (reflecting the cor- rect recognition rate) the effect of word count on correct recognition varied little across participants. Model-based estimates of reliability (Cho et al., 2019) indicated a me- diocre rho value for the by-person intercept (.557); the extremely small variance for the random slope for word count resulted in a negative rho (− 2.842). These findings indicate that there was very little evidence for reliable in- dividual differences in these effects, and they were not explored further. The person-level covariates in this sample include par- ticipant age, and the EDE-Q measures (restraint, eating concern, shape concern, weight concern, and the global score). Descriptive statistics for these variables are shown in Table 3. We took an exploratory approach to examining bivari- ate correlations between the EDE-Q measures (restraint, eating concern, shape concern, weight concern, and the global score), participant age, and the memory measures (by-person random effects for response bias, overall memory, and the effect of commenting). These correla- tions were computed and interpreted with respect to a Bonferroni-adjusted alpha level of .0013. The bivariate correlations revealed the expected relationships among the EDE-Q subscales and the overall global score (Table 7 in Appendix). In addition, the by-person random ef- fects for memory and commenting were positively re- lated (r = .487, p < .0001), indicating that participants with better memory also tended to benefit more from commenting on the images. There was also an unex- pected positive correlation between the memory random Table 2 Experiment 1: Effect of comment length on correct identification of old images Fixed effects Estimate SE z Value p Value (Intercept) 2.969 0.157 18.936 < .0001 Word count 0.313 0.051 6.085 < .0001 Words*Healthy −0.137 0.057 −2.425 <.05 Words*Unhealthy −0.090 0.059 −1.530 0.126 Random effects Variance SD Correlations Item (intercept) 0.318 0.564 Participant (intercept) 1.206 1.098 Word count 0.026 0.162 0.290 Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 7 of 16 effect and age (r = .356, p < .001). The lack of stable indi- vidual differences in memory for healthy and unhealthy food in particular prevents examination of a relationship between those food types and scores on the EDE-Q. Discussion The results of Experiment 1 revealed, for the first time, that the process of commenting on social media images boosts memory for those images. This effect can be interpreted as a type of generation effect (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). Further, the fact that longer comments pro- duced better recognition extends prior findings from studies of in-laboratory image descriptions (McKinley et al., 2017) to a class of images – Instagram posts – that are both ubiquitous and socially relevant. This effect can be considered a type of elaborative encoding effect (Bradshaw & Anderson, 1982) such that the more elab- orately the participant commented on the post, the bet- ter the memory. The memorial benefit for commented- on pictures may be enhanced in part by a longer time spent on trials where participants generated a comment. (Unfortunately, the study software did not provide infor- mation about timing.) If so, such a timing difference would reflect properties of the natural phenomenon we intended to study: commenting on social media images. Here we have shown that the memorial boost conferred by generating comments in communication extends to a new type of item with a high degree of social relevance: social media. Experiment 2 The primary aim of Experiment 2 was to replicate the findings of Experiment 1. Second, we aimed to examine whether interacting with Instagram posts, in particular posts about food, would be particularly memorable for a sample of participants who are at a higher risk for exhi- biting disordered eating behaviors. While we did not find consistent individual differences in food-related Instagram posts in Experiment 1, the participant sample may have been too broad to capture the population of interest. Lifetime prevalence of eating disorders in US adults is higher in women than in men and in younger adults (Hudson, Hiripi, Pope Jr, & Kessler, 2007; Udo & Grilo, 2018; also see Cheng, Perko, Fuller-Marashi, Gau, & Stice, 2019). Experiment 2 is therefore a replication of Experiment 1, but with a participant sample restricted to young females. Methods The project was preregistered with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/dqrge). Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1, with two exceptions. First, we restricted the sample to participants who identified as fe- male and who were between the ages of 18 and 30. Sec- ond, we asked participants additional questions about their education level. Participants As planned, we present an analysis of data of 150 partici- pants. We used a 50% larger sample in this study be- cause whereas the results of Experiment 1 showed a large generation effect, attempts to fit models with more complex random effects structures were met with con- vergence issues. Thus, the larger sample size was se- lected with the aim of reducing convergence issues. We used Amazon Mechanical Turk Premium qualifi- cations to select a sample of female participants, aged 18–30. As in Experiment 1, criteria for participation is a HIT approval rate of 95% or greater, location as the United States, and number of approved HITS as 100+. Criteria for inclusion in the study were that the partici- pant was a self-reported native English speaker (learned from birth) and that they completed at least 80% of the study. Repeated HITS from the same IP address (includ- ing IP addresses from Experiment 1) are excluded (the initial HIT is included). Five additional participants completed at least 80% of the study but were excluded due to missing demographic information (n = 3), reporting gender as male (n = 2), or reporting as a non-native English speaker (n = 1). We also note that despite using Premium qualifications to select participants who were between the ages of 18 and 30, of the 150 participants included in the analysis, 17 partici- pants reported an age of 31 or 32. Inclusion of these 17 participants in the final sample results in an average age of 26.2 years (SD = 3.3) versus 25.5 if they are excluded. As this was unanticipated and the central tendency does not shift much by including them, we chose to include these 17 participants in the final sample rather than remove them in a post hoc decision. The majority of participants (89%) had completed at least some college. Table 3 Person-level covariates in Experiments 1 and 2, with means and standard deviations by participants in parenthesesa Experiment 1 Experiment 2 N 100 150 Age 36.77 (10.59) 26.17 (3.31) Education – 3.13 (1.40) Restraint 1.38 (1.6) 1.84 (1.85) Eating concern 0.65 (0.95) 1.03 (1.19) Shape concern 1.78 (1.66) 2.59 (1.88) Weight concern 1.65 (1.52) 2.37 (1.74) Global score 1.39 (1.33) 1.96 (1.51) aNote that the education measure was not included in Experiment 1. The Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire measures are calculated for 143 participants in Experiment 2. See text for details Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 8 of 16 https://osf.io/dqrge Materials The materials were identical to Experiment 1, except that we additionally asked about participants’ educational ex- perience. Specifically, at the end of the study, participants were asked the highest level of school they had completed or the highest degree received, the year they graduated from college, the year they received an undergraduate or bachelor’s degree, and whether they were currently en- rolled in school, along with the level of current enroll- ment. These questions were included in order to better characterize the sample, as prior work aims to understand the social and physical factors that contribute to unhealthy eating behaviors among college students (LaCaille, Dau- ner, Krambeer, & Pedersen, 2011). Predictions We expected to replicate the finding that recognition memory for commented-on posts would be better than posts that were passively viewed and that the likelihood of correct recognition would increase with lon- ger comments. If participants were to demonstrate reliable individual differences in memory for food-related images in particular, this would allow us to then test the hypoth- esis that higher rates of disordered eating behaviors would result in better memory for food-related images. To pre- view, however, we again found that participants exhibited stable individual differences in recognition memory but that differences in memory between food and nonfood items was itself not a reliable measure. Results As in Experiment 1, our primary analyses focused on memory for the posts, analyzed using a logistic mixed- effects model. In addition, we characterized the relation- ship between the form of the comments and memory, and finally we explored whether there were stable individual differences in these effects. For illustration purposes, the memory data are plotted using a measure of memory sensitivity (d′) in Fig. 2. A logit-link mixed effects model for memory judgments (old = 1; new = 0) was fit to the 29,999 recognition mem- ory judgments; note that one data point was lost due to computer error. Planned fixed effects include orthogonal Helmert codes for item type (old vs. new) and whether the image had been commented on (comment vs. no com- ment). Effects of image type were coded using the same dummy-coding scheme as before, comparing memory for nonfood (baseline) with memory for healthy and un- healthy food. As before, the effects of item type and com- menting can be interpreted as simple effects at the reference level (control images), and interactions with item type test whether these effects differ for healthy and for unhealthy food. As in Experiment 1, a null model indi- cated very little by-item variability but some by-subject variability. Attempts to include the full random slopes structure by person were met with convergence failures. A backward-stepping procedure was used to remove random slopes one by one to improve model fit. The final model resulted in warnings, but refitting the model using the all- Fit function indicated that estimates for the fixed effects were identical to two decimal places for each of the opti- mizers, indicating satisfactory model fit for inferences re- garding the fixed effects. This model (Table 4) included random intercepts for subjects and items and a random slope for the item type effect by subjects. A significant effect of item type (z = 30.23, p < .0001) indicated good memory for the previously viewed im- ages. A significant effect of commenting indicated that previously viewed images were more likely to be cor- rectly recognized if the participant had commented on them (z = 37.41, p < .0001). These effects were qualified Fig. 2 Experiment 2: Illustration of memory sensitivity (d′) by condition. Error bars indicate by-participant standard deviation Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 9 of 16 by interactions with image type. Unhealthy food was re- membered better than control images (z = 8.81, p < .0001). As in Experiment 1, the effect of commenting was smaller for unhealthy food images, compared with control images (z = − 3.22, p < .05); this interaction may be due to the overall better memory for unhealthy food in the first place. Effect of comment length on memory for Instagram posts Given the observed positive relationship between com- ment length and recognition in Experiment 1, this planned analysis was expected to reveal a positive rela- tionship between comment length and successful recog- nition. As before, the analysis was restricted to old items for which participants generated a comment. The num- ber of words in the comments ranged from 1 to 35 (mean = 4.12, median = 3). On average, comments were longer for pictures that would ultimately be correctly recognized (mean number of words = 4.15, SD = 1.90) compared with pictures that were not recognized (mean = 3.40, SD = 2.32). A logit-link mixed effects model for memory judgments (old = 1; new = 0) was fit to the data. Fixed effects included a centered measure of the number of words used to comment on the picture. The same dummy-coding scheme as in the primary ana- lysis was used, comparing control images with healthy and unhealthy food. Note that the effect of the number of words can be interpreted as a simple effect at the ref- erence level (control images) and interactions with item type test whether this effect differs for healthy and for unhealthy food images. Participants and items were included as random inter- cepts. A null model was initially fit to the data and indi- cated very little variability by items but some variability by participants. Thus, the effect of comment length was included as a random by-participant slope. This model converged. Attempts to fit more complex models with interactions with image type were met with convergence warnings indicating singular fits; thus, the results of this model were taken to be satisfactory and interpreted (Table 5). The significant intercept term indicates that for these commented-on images (all of which were old), correct recognitions were more likely than not (z = 23.34, p < .0001). A significant effect of word count (z = 4.61, p < .0001) shows that for each add- itional word produced in the comment, the odds of correct recognition were 1.20 times greater. The remaining fixed effects were not significant, indicating similar memory performance across the image types. Participant variability and individual differences The final model of recognition memory in Experiment 2 included a random slope for the item type effect by per- sons (Table 4). As indicated above, models that included more complex random slopes failed to converge, indicat- ing that there was not strong support for consistent indi- vidual differences in memory for healthy and unhealthy food over nonfood images. We calculated the model- based reliability for the by-participant effect of item type (old vs. new). As in Experiment 1, Rho for the item type Table 4 Experiment 2: Number of observations: 29,999, 200 items, 150 participants Fixed effects Estimate SE z Value p Value (Intercept) 0.127 0.067 1.894 .058 Commenting (commented = .5, noncommented = −.5, new = 0) 2.419 0.065 37.408 <.0001 Item type (commented = .5, noncommented = .5, new = − 1) 2.736 0.091 30.225 <.0001 Commenting * Healthy food −0.211 0.125 −1.684 .092 Commenting * Unhealthy food −0.433 0.135 −3.218 <.01 Item type * Healthy food 0.062 0.064 0.961 .336 Item type * Unhealthy food 0.625 0.071 8.806 <.0001 Random effects Variance SD Correlation Item 0.1949 0.4415 Subject 0.4497 0.6706 Item type (subject) 1.0073 1.0036 0.09 Table 5 Experiment 2: Effect of comment length on recognition of old images Fixed Effects Estimate SE z Value p Value (Intercept) 3.119 0.134 23.344 < .0001 Word count 0.182 0.039 4.612 < .0001 Words*Healthy 0.033 0.050 0.662 .508 Words*Unhealthy −0.002 0.050 −0.048 .962 Random Effects Variance SD Correlation Item (intercept) 0.560565 0.74871 Participant (intercept) 1.212417 1.1011 Word count 0.008459 0.09197 0.43 Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 10 of 16 effect was fairly high, .863, indicating stable individual differences in memory for the pictures. For the model of the effect of comment length on correct recognition (Table 5), inspection of the random effects pa- rameters indicated that while there was some variability in the by-person intercept (reflecting individual differences in correct recognition), the effect of word count on correct recognition varied little across participants. Model-based estimates of reliability (Cho et al., 2019) indicated a poor rho value for the by-person intercept (.572); the extremely small variance for the random slope for word count re- sulted in a negative rho value (− 4.23). These findings indi- cated that there was very little evidence for reliable individual differences in these effects; thus, we do not ex- plore them further. Measures of individual differences in this sample include the same EDE-Q measure as in Experiment 1, as well as age and education level. EDE-Q scores for seven participants were missing, and those participants were excluded from this analysis. Descriptive statistics for the remaining 143 partici- pants are shown in Table 3. The EDE-Q scores were higher in this sample than for the participants in Experiment 2, con- sistent with prior work indicating a higher incidence of disor- dered eating in women (Cheng et al., 2019; Hudson et al., 2007). Education level was recoded as a numeric variable ranging from 0 to 6 to reflect highest level of educational achievement attained (0 = less than high school degree; 6 = post-graduate degree). Exploratory bivariate correlations between the EDE-Q measure, participant age, education level, and the by- person random effects for response bias and overall memory were computed and interpreted with respect to a Bonferroni-adjusted alpha level of .0013. The bivariate correlations revealed the expected relationships among the EDE-Q subscales and the overall global score (Table 8 in Appendix). None of the other relationships were significant. As in Experiment 1, the lack of stable indi- vidual differences in memory for healthy and unhealthy food in particular prevents examination of a relationship between those food types and scores on the EDE. Discussion Experiment 2 repeated Experiment 1 on a sample of young adults who reported their gender as female. Con- sistent with the literature on disordered eating behaviors, the average EDE-Q scores for this group were higher, though still within 1 SD of published norms (Fairburn et al., 2014). Despite these differences, the central results of Experiment 1 were replicated. We replicated the find- ing that the process of commenting on social media im- ages boosts memory for those images, and we replicated the finding that longer comments result in more correct recognitions. We also replicated the curious effect that unhealthy images were correctly recognized more often than control images and that, in turn, the effect of com- menting was smaller for unhealthy food images. While the experiment failed to provide strong evidence for sys- tematic individual differences in memory for food- related Instagram posts, thus preventing our relating food-specific memory to EDE-Q scores, we replicated the finding that there were stable differences in overall memory for the pictures. This finding indicates that fu- ture work could use this paradigm as a starting point to build an explanatory model of individual differences in memory for social media images. General discussion Our most robust finding is that the act of commenting on an Instagram post boosts memory for that post and, fur- ther, that the odds of correct recognition increase the lon- ger the comment. This finding, which was consistent across five image categories (“healthy” and “unhealthy” food, cats, dogs, and nature) indicates that the way in which a user engages with content on social media shapes memory for it. The Instagram platform is designed to allow users to engage with content by commenting on it (with emojis, text, and other in-app actions such as “lik- ing” or sharing). Our findings indicate that engaging in this way promotes the ability to later recognize those im- ages. Another notable feature of the Instagram experience is that users select what types of accounts to follow. While we did not explore the implications of choosing what con- tent to view, the fact that the observed relationship be- tween commenting and memory was apparent for all image types indicates that whatever content the user chooses to follow, when they choose to engage with that content, it is likely to impact memory. We investigated memory for images of food in particular due to their popularity on Instagram (e.g., #foodporn, #foodie). Prior arguments that individuals with disordered eating process food-related stimuli differently from healthy participants (Nikendei et al., 2008; Shafran et al., 2007), along with the fact that platforms such as Instagram are commonly used to share information relevant to disordered eating be- havior (see Chancellor et al., 2016), make it important to understand how interacting with these types of stimuli im- pacts the user. The present findings provide clear evidence against the idea that there are stable individual differences in memory for food, at least in a nonclinical sample. Instead of an individual trait, the observed memory benefit for “un- healthy” food over control images may be a more general phenomenon, potentially related to the fact that food, par- ticularly high-calorie food, is rewarding (see Frank et al., 2010; Simmons, Martin, & Barsalou, 2005). While we do not find consistent individual differences in memory for food in particular, it is important to con- sider the fact that some users may curate their content in order to view primarily food- and/or dieting-related Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 11 of 16 content. Our findings show that engaging with social media images through commenting extends the user ex- perience beyond the in-the-moment experience of the platform, promoting subsequent ability to recognize that content later. Thus, an important question for future work is whether the observed memory effects impact future real-world behaviors associated with that content, particu- larly in clinical samples. Social media users will retain memory for whatever content they choose to view; thus, choices over what to view may be relevant to consider- ations of how social media use impacts the user. Finally, the lack of reliable individual differences in memory for food, despite a consistent finding across experiments of better memory for unhealthy food vs. control, may owe to the fact that low between-participant variance may be ne- cessary to produce a stable experimental effect – the “reli- ability paradox” (Hedge, Powell, & Sumner, 2018). We also found that the “unhealthy” food images, which included posts featuring items such as cake, cheeseburgers, and pizza, were remembered better in both experiments than our control images, which in- cluded cats, dogs, and nature pictures. This unexpected finding may relate to the attention-captivating properties of high-calorie food (Castellanos et al., 2009), along with arguments that thinking about the survival relevance of a stimulus boosts memory for it (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2010). A limitation of this explanation, however, is that Nairne and Pandeirada (2010) found that it is processing an item’s relevance to survival that boosts memory, re- gardless of whether those items were in fact relevant to survival. Of course, explaining this item-specific effect would require further study and ruling out other expla- nations related to specific item properties. This project was inspired by previously observed bene- fits of generating picture descriptions for subsequent recognition memory (McKinley et al., 2017; Yoon et al., 2016; Zormpa et al., 2019). Here we show that this result extends to the socially relevant domain of social media images. Consistent with the present results are findings that sharing personal memories on social media plat- forms improves memory for memories that were shared compared with those that were not shared (Wang, Lee, & Hou, 2016; see Stone & Wang, 2019, for discussion). One issue that Stone and Wang (2019) raised is that in- formation that persons choose to share may be inher- ently more memorable. We note that in the present research, participants did not choose what to comment on; yet, we similarly observed a benefit to memory for engaging with the images. However, other research indicates that engaging with media and technology more generally can impair mem- ory. For example, the use of media to record or share thoughts during an experience harms subsequent mem- ory for that experience compared with not using media to memorialize the experience (Tamir, Templeton, Ward, & Zaki, 2018). Similarly, the act of photographing objects can harm memory for those objects (Henkel, 2014). The presence of smartphones nearby in the room impairs performance on working memory tests (Ward, Duke, Gneezy, & Bos, 2017), suggesting that even the potential to disengage may harm one’s ability to fully process the current experience. Further, frequent use of social media is associated with poorer academic out- comes (Feng, Wong, Wong, & Hossain, 2019) and with memory failures (Sharifian & Zahodne, 2019). The present finding that engaging with social media through commenting improved memory for it is not ne- cessarily inconsistent with this evidence of technology- related memory impairment. The difference in findings may relate to the fact that extracting the self from an ex- perience long enough to memorialize it with media de- tracts from the experience itself. By contrast, generating a comment about a social media image may enhance the experience of the image through elaborative encoding (Bradshaw & Anderson, 1982). Commenting on social media images may also invite rehearsal (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006) or offloading (Storm & Stone, 2015) ef- fects, promoting recollection (for discussion, see Marsh & Rajaram, 2019; Stone & Wang, 2019). Thus, the im- pact of engaging with technology on memory may de- pend on the user experience and whether the experience interferes with the processing of the to-be-encoded event in the first place. More generally, understanding the cognitive implications of engaging with the Internet and social media may require a better understanding of how usage patterns change with time and with increased use (see Storm, Stone, & Benjamin, 2017). Conclusion The tremendous popularity of social media as an outlet for leisure and social interaction makes it increasingly im- portant to understand how engaging with social media shapes cognitive processes. Consider the fact that on Instagram alone, the comment #foodporn has been used over 206 million times, #food over 354 million times, and even #omgyum over 38,000 times. The results of two ex- periments show that generating comments such as these changes the way those images are memorialized, offering an ecologically valid replication and extension of prior work (McKinley et al., 2017; Yoon et al., 2016). The fact that “unhealthy” food images such as chocolates were par- ticularly well remembered raises new questions about the impact of engaging with food-related content on subse- quent cognition. Taken together, our findings show that the way in which we engage with social media content shapes subsequent memory for it, raising tantalizing ques- tions about how our online lives persist in memory over time, potentially shaping future behavior. Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 12 of 16 Appendix Table 6 Descriptions of the “healthy” and “unhealthy” food items for List 1 in the studya Healthy food (old) Unhealthy food (old) 1. Diced watermelon with lemon 1. Chocolate filled donuts 2. Grilled shrimp + broccoli 2. Pepperoni pizza, stuffed crust 3. Salad with avocado and brown rice 3. Slice of Oreo cheesecake 4. Strawberry yogurt + whole strawberries 4. Cinnamon rolls 5. Grain bowl with tofu + broccoli 5. Whole chocolate cake filled with candy 6. Sliced fruit with fruit juice 6. Chocolate- and Oreo-covered strawberries 7. Toast with smoked salmon and zucchini 7. Fudge brownies with pretzels 8. Corn, avocado, and tomato salad 8. Slice of red velvet cake 9. Acai bowl topped with berries and banana 9. Peanut butter brownies with M&Ms 10. Salmon, veggies, and quinoa 10. Bacon double cheeseburger 11. Sautéed vegetables 11. Cheese and jalapeño pizza 12. Tomato, cucumber, and avocado salad 12. Pecan praline French toast 13. Spaghetti squash 13. Chicken wings + ranch dressing 14. Tropical smoothie bowl 14. Chocolate cannolis 15. Bowl of berries and kiwi 15. Milkshakes with whipped cream 16. Vegetable kabobs 16. Ice cream cookie sandwich 17. Vegetable sandwich 17. Whole Nutella cake 18. Bowl of strawberries, raspberries, and mangos 18. Cheesy pizza missing a slice 19. Fruit and nut granola 19. Oreo candy bar 20. Sautéed shrimp + orange slices 20. Six whole chocolate cakes Healthy (new) Unhealthy (new) 1. Bowl of watermelon, kiwi, and orange 1. Slice of chocolate cake 2. Rice bowl with tofu, greens, and tomato 2. Cheesy pizza 3. Fruit and nut cereal with milk 3. Whole chocolate layer cake 4. Tropical fruit bowl + flowers 4. Whole chocolate truffle cake with cream 5. Grilled shrimp + asparagus 5. Chocolate-drizzled brownies 6. Breakfast porridge with banana and mango 6. Bacon cheeseburger with fries 7. Fruit + nut yogurt bowl 7. Oreo cookie milkshakes 8. Bowl of strawberries, raspberries, and watermelon 8. Box of chocolate-covered donuts 9. Pumpkin + spinach pasta serving 9. Cookie dough + sprinkles on ice cream 10. Vegan dish of chicken, veggies, and brown rice 10. Box of stuffed bagel bites 11. Fruit kabobs 11. Cookies and cream brownies 12. Cauliflower rice, cucumber, and salmon bowl 12. Basil pizza 13. Bowl of mangos, kiwi, blueberries, and dragon fruit 13. Multiple Oreo candy bars 14. Grain bowl with veggies, greens, and salmon 14. Cheese pizza on the beach 15. Banana and almond butter granola 15. Large jalapeño and pepperoni pizza in a box 16. Blueberries 16. Barbecue sandwich with fries 17. Avocado + egg Cobb salad 17. Chocolate and Kit Kat candy bar whole cake 18. Caprese avocado toast 18. Fried chicken + fries and dip 19. Smoothie bowl with strawberries, cocoa nibs, and bananas 19. Donut topped with candy, sprinkles, and cookie dough 20. Cinnamon and raisin oatmeal 20. Cadbury Creme Egg stuffed brownie aAcross the four lists, we counterbalanced which items were old vs. new Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 13 of 16 Table 7 Experiment 1: bivariate correlations between person-level covariates of age and Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire subscales and global scale, as well as correlations with model-derived by-person estimates for response bias, memory, and the effect of commentinga Bias Memory Comment Restraint Eating Shape Weight EDE global Age Bias 1.000 Memory 0.288 1.000 Comment −0.226 0.487 1.000 Restraint 0.088 0.034 0.043 1.000 Eating 0.275 −0.126 − 0.255 0.579 1.000 Shape 0.236 0.004 − 0.093 0.675 0.812 1.000 Weight 0.197 −0.016 − 0.103 0.644 0.795 0.958 1.000 EDE global 0.229 0.021 −0.097 0.821 0.828 0.953 0.939 1.000 Age 0.055 0.356 0.309 0.042 −0.052 0.055 0.014 0.038 1.000 Correlations that are significant at a Bonferroni-corrected alpha level of .0013 (for 36 comparisons) are marked in boldface. The Eating Disorder Examination Ques- tionnaire (EDE) included the following scales: Restraint, Eating, Shape, Weight, EDE global Table 8 Experiment 2: bivariate correlations between person-level covariates of age, education, and Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire subscales and global scale, as well as correlations with model-derived by-person estimates for response bias and memorya Bias Memory Education Restraint Eating concern Shape concern Weight concern Global Age Bias 1 Memory 0.122 1 Education 0.048 0.046 1 Restraint 0.010 0.006 −0.097 1 Eating concern −0.072 0.028 −0.129 0.664 1 Shape concern −0.034 0.034 −0.095 0.689 0.783 1 Weight concern −0.073 0.008 −0.077 0.690 0.771 0.946 1 Global −0.043 0.020 −0.107 0.851 0.867 0.950 0.946 1 Age 0.087 −0.037 0.183 0.082 −0.086 0.021 0.007 0.016 1 Correlations that are significant at a Bonferroni-corrected alpha level of .0013 (for 36 comparisons) are marked in boldface. The Eating Disorder Examination Ques- tionnaire (EDE) included the following scales: Restraint, Eating, Shape, Weight, EDE global Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 14 of 16 Abbreviation EDE-Q: Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire Acknowledgements Thank you to Lisa Fazio for helpful conversations about this research project. Authors’ contributions The authors jointly conceived of, designed, and ran the experiments; analyzed the data together; and wrote the paper together. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript. Funding Preparation of the manuscript was supported in part by National Science Foundation grants BCS 15-56700 and BCS 19-21492 to SBS. Availability of data and materials The raw, de-identified data associated with this article are available at (https://osf.io/8gafu/). Materials are available upon request. Ethics approval and consent to participate The research procedures were approved by the Vanderbilt University Human Research Protections Program, and all participants consented prior to participation in this research. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Received: 18 September 2019 Accepted: 18 February 2020 References Aalbers, G., McNally, R. J., Heeren, A., Wit, S. D., & Fried, E. I. (2019). Social media and depression symptoms: a network perspective. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(8), 1454–1462. Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255–278. Bates, D., Mæchler, M., Bolker, B., Walker, S., Christensen, R. H. B., Singmann, H., ... Green, P. (2018). 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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Zimmerman and Brown-Schmidt Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2020) 5:16 Page 16 of 16 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2006.04.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2006.04.005 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2016.1221115 https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.2.257 Abstract Background Results Conclusions Significance Statement Introduction Experiment 1 Methods Participants Materials Procedure Additional measures Results Memory for Instagram posts Effect of comment length on memory for Instagram posts Participant variability and Individual differences Discussion Experiment 2 Methods Participants Materials Results Effect of comment length on memory for Instagram posts Participant variability and individual differences Discussion General discussion Conclusion Appendix Abbreviation Acknowledgements Authors’ contributions Funding Availability of data and materials Ethics approval and consent to participate Consent for publication Competing interests References Publisher’s Note work_7josria3pjclxoibbx6evagjvu ---- Risk, uncertainty and the theory of planned behavior: 1 Examining consumer risk perceptions of prototypical brands versus me-too brands Vanessa Quintal and Ian Phau ABSTRACT This study examines brand familiarity, extrinsic attributes, self-confidence and perceived quality for their effects on perceived risk between prototypical and me-too brands. Factor analyses and path analysis were used in testing hypotheses. Brand familiarity produced a significant positive effect, while extrinsic attributes produced a significant negative effect on perceived equivalent quality for both the pioneer and me-too brands. Respectively, the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players produced significant positive and negative effects on perceived risks for pioneer and me-too brands. Managerial implications include strategic use of me-too brands and management of competitive advantages of pioneer brands with perceived prototypicality. Keywords: prototypical brands, consumer risks, brand strategies, competitive advantage, me-too brands 2 INTRODUCTION Branding is the marketer’s response to the risks consumers perceive in the marketplace (Laroche et al., 2004; Rubinstein, 1996). A pioneer brand is defined as the first entrant into a market (Robinson and Fornell, 1985) that creates a significantly new product category in the consumer’s mind (Carpenter and Nakamoto, 1989; Liang, Cherian and Fu, 2010). Pioneer advantage or the competitive advantage accrued to the pioneer brand (Scherer, 1985; Kamins, 2003; Liang, Cherian and Fu, 2010; Sinapuelas and Robinson, 2012) results from several economic and psychological factors. First, the market learns more about pioneer brands since as the first entrant in the product category, they appear novel and attention-seeking. Second, pioneer brands are distinctive and unique, making awareness and recall easier. Third, pioneer brands generate a favorable image as they more closely match the consumer’s self-image (Alpert and Kammins, 1995; Alpert et al., 2001; Carson, Jewell and Joiner, 2007; Lowe and Alpert, 2012). In 2002, Apple’s launch of the Apple iPod created an entirely new market segment and propelled it to its pioneer brand status in the portable music market. It currently holds 70% of the market share, and Apple has sold over 350 million units since the iPod's introduction in 2002 (Travlos, 2012; Sloan, 2012). Me-too brands represent challengers to the competitive advantage held by pioneer brands. The success of me-too brands may be attributed to their lower costs and higher quality through improved technology (Bohlmann et al., 2002; Hern et al., 2003; Carson, Jewell and Joiner, 2007; Sinapuelas and Robinson, 2012). Me-too brands are also not tied to tradition and monopolies, are innovative, pay attention to their customers and are not perceived to be arrogant and complacent. Prior to 2001, as the me-too brand and 3 underdog competitor to software giant Microsoft, Apple revolutionized the market by offering a creative alternative to Microsoft’s industry standards (Centaur Communications Limited, 2007a, 2007b). Me-too brands are reported to have responded faster to the launch of a branded product, thus shortening the phase in which a unique concept can expect to reap premium prices and high margins (Centaur Communications Limited, 2007a, 2007b). While research has examined pioneer and me-too brands (e.g., Alpert and Kamins, 1995; Holt, 2002; Lowe and Alpert, 2012), there are gaps in explaining why some people intentionally avoid established brands (Kamins, 2003; Lee et al., 2009; Cromie and Ewing, 2009), while others continuously support me-too brands when risks about product quality, variety, price and even one’s “face” (McGinnis and Gentry, 2009) abound. The aim of the study is to examine several antecedentsrelated to consumer behavior for their differential effects on the dimensions of perceived risk between the pioneer (Apple iPod) and me-too brands (other brands of MP3 players) and to try to evaluate the relevance of these antecedents which help to explain this difference. As such, initiatives relating to the competitive advantage of pioneer prototypical brands versus me- too brands can be the blueprint of the design of the branding, advertising and product development strategies. 4 RELEVANT LITERATURE AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT The model for the current study was adapted and extended from research conducted by Mieres et al. (2006) by focusing on pioneer and me-too brands for their impact on perceived risk. Perceived risk is defined as a subjective expectation of a potential loss occurring (Barkworth et al., 2002; Dholakia, 2001; Michaelidou and Christodoulides, 2011; Simcock et al., 2006; Sweeney et al., 1999). Some researchers suggest perceived risk arises from six different types of potential loss (e.g., Jacoby and Kaplan, 1972; Roselius, 1971; Forsythe et al., 2006; Javadi et al., 2012; Molina-Castillo, Lopez-Nicolas, and Soto-Acosta, 2012). Financial risk is a potential loss of money associated with the item purchase. Performance risk refers to a probable loss due to item failure after purchase (Eggert, 2006; Boksberger et al., 2007). Psychological risk reflects the possible loss of self-image or self-concept as the result of purchasing the item. Social risk is the potential loss of esteem, respect and/or friendship offered to the consumer by significant others due to the item purchase (Boksberger et al., 2007; Roehl and Fesenmaier, 1992). Physical risk refers to the potential loss of health or appearance as a result of using the item purchase (Forsythe et al., 2006). Time risk reflects a possible loss of time and effort associated with purchasing the item (Fuchs and Reichel, 2011; Murray and Schlacter, 1998). Each of these six dimensions of perceived risk is considered in the current study. Brand familiarity reflects the ‘share of mind’ the consumer ascribes to a particular brand and the extent of a consumer’s direct and indirect experience with the brand (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987; Kent and Allen, 1994; Ha and Perks, 2005; Delgado-Ballester et al, 2012). It is determined by strength of associations that the brand name evokes in 5 consumer memory and in this way, captures the consumer’s brand attitude (Campbell and Keller, 2003). It is likely that brand familiarity will positively influence perceptions of brand quality (Griffith and Gray, 2002; Low and Lamb, 2000; Petruzzellis et al., 2011) since consumers who are familiar with a brand tend to develop more favorable assessments of its quality. Therefore: H1: As consumers become more familiar with the brands of MP3 players in the market, their perceptions of the equivalent quality of these brands will increase. The degree of familiarity consumers have with a brand is expected to negatively impact on their perceived financial, performance, psychological, social, physical and time risks (de Chernatony, 1989; Richardson et al., 1996; Park and Stoel, 2005; Inci et al., 2011). It is possible that as consumers become more familiar with a brand, they are more comfortable with assessing it, which reduces the risk they perceive in the brand. Consequently: H2: As consumers become more familiar with the brands of MP3 players on the market, their perceptions of risk associated with these brands will decrease. An extrinsic cue is associated with the product; however an extrinsic cue can change without altering the characteristics of the product itself (Alonso, 2002). Generally, consumers rely upon the product’s brand, physical appearance, purchase price (Dawar and Parker, 1994; Rao and Monroe, 1989) and country of origin (Fandos and Flavian, 2006; Kim, 2008) to determine its product quality. It is likely that reliance on a brand’s extrinsic attributes will negatively influence the degree to which brand quality is perceived (Enneking et al., 2007; Espejel et al., 2007; Kumar and Grisaffe, 2004; Perrin- 6 Martinenq, 2004). Consumers who become more certain about a brand’s quality, depend less on its extrinsic attributes to purchase it. Therefore: H3: As consumers rely more on the extrinsic attributes of the brands of MP3 players on the market, their perceptions of the equivalent quality of these brands will decrease. When consumers hold little information about a brand’s intrinsic attributes, their reliance on the brand’s extrinsic attributes is expected to positively impact on the perceived financial, performance, psychological, social, and physical and time risks the brand poses (Griffith and Chen, 2004; Hsu and Lin, 2005; Aqueveque, 2006; Vieceli and Shaw, 2010). The more consumers rely on a brand’s extrinsic attributes for reassurances about its ability to meet expectation, the more likely they are to perceive of the risks associated with the brand. Consequently: H4: As consumers rely more on the extrinsic attributes of the brands of MP3 players on the market, their perceptions of risk associated with these brands will increase. Self-confidence is considered a personality trait (Bearden and Teel, 1980; Tafarodi and Swann, 1996) that refers to the degree of self-assurance a consumer has in a specific marketing situation (Hellén and Sääksjärvi, 2011; Kamins et al., 2007; Locander and Hermann, 1979; Marc de Korte, 1977). It also reflects the level of self-belief the consumer possesses in protecting themselves from being misled in marketing exchanges (Gerbing et al, 1994). Consumers’ self-confidence in a brand is likely to correlate positively with their perceptions of its quality (Rothman, 1980; de Chernatony and Riley, 1998; Ling, Shieh, and Liao, 2012.). It is possible that consumers who demonstrate more confidence in a brand will be more inclined to perceive its higher quality. Therefore: 7 H5: As consumers become more confident about the brands of MP3 players on the market, their perceptions of the equivalent quality of these brands will increase. Finally, perceived quality is an attitude that results from the comparison of consumer expectations with the actual performance (Parasuraman et al., 1985; Snoj et al., 2004). Consumers’ perceptions about a brand’s quality are expected to influence the risk they perceive in the brand. It is likely that perceived quality will negatively impact on the perceived risk a brand poses (Snoj et al., 2004; Sweeney et al., 1999). This is expected in situations when consumers perceive that the me-too brands on the market have similar high quality and therefore, associate less risk with these brands. However, since the me- too brands offer similar high quality on the market for a considerably lower price, purchasing a pioneer brand with its premium pricing may pose to be a bigger risk for the pioneer brand. Consequently: H6a: As consumers become more acquainted with the equivalent quality of the MP3 players on the market, their perceptions of risk associated with the pioneer brand will increase. H6b: As consumers become more acquainted with the equivalent quality of the MP3 players on the market, their perceptions of risk associated with the me-too brands will decrease. METHODOLOGY Research design and sample Since lead users of MP3 players constitute young adults (Eggemann et al., 2002; Lenhart et al., 2010), the university student market was targeted. This is one of the most coveted 8 consumer segments due to its market size, the role of university students as trendsetters, the lifelong brand loyalties acquired during these formative years, their position as early- adopters, their influence over parental purchasers and the probability of a higher standard of living associated with an university degree (Noble et al., 2007; Wolburg and Pokrywezynski, 2001). A self-administered survey was used to collect the data through an intercept method in the campuses of three state universities in Australia. Every fifth individual who crossed a designated point at different locations of the campus was approached. Measuring consumers’ attitudes and perceptions in a mall or shopping related environment would allow population of interest (in this case student users) to relate to what the research intends to measure, which in this case are attitudes and consumer purchase intention (Cowan, 1989). This is an improvement on ecological validity as most previous research focused on student samples (Wang et al., 2005). Measures The survey comprised four sections. The first two sections assessed the respondents’ perceived risk in purchasing the pioneer and me-too brands respectively. Section three asked respondents about their brand familiarity, self-confidence, extrinsic attributes and perceived equivalent quality of the pioneer and me-too brands. Finally, respondents were asked to provide demographic information. Existing scales from Laroche et al. (2004) and Mieres et al. (2006) selected for their reliability in buying situations (α ≥ 0.83) were anchored by strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7) and adapted to ensure relevance to the current study. 9 Perceived risk for the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) were measured by 20 items respectively. Four statements each measured perceived social risk (e.g., I am afraid that an Apple iPod / another brand of MP3 player would negatively affect what others think of me) and perceived physical risk (e.g., I am afraid that an Apple iPod / another brand of MP3 player would not be safe for me or my family). Three statements each measured perceived financial risk (e.g., If I were to purchase an Apple iPod / another brand of MP3 player for myself within the next 12 months, I would be concerned that the financial investment I would make would not be wise), perceived performance risk (e.g., The thought of purchasing an Apple iPod / another brand of MP3 player causes me to be concerned for how really reliable that product will be), perceived psychological risk (e.g., The thought of purchasing an Apple iPod / another brand of MP3 player gives me an unwanted feeling of anxiety) and perceived time risk (e.g., Purchasing an Apple iPod / another brand of MP3 player could involve an inefficient use of my time). Brand familiarity/experience with the MP3 players was measured by eight items (e.g., I am quite familiar with MP3 player brands other than the Apple iPod). Self- confidence in choosing MP3 players was measured by five items (e.g., I consider myself capable of choosing a good MP3 player brand). Extrinsic attributes of MP3 players that determine quality was measured by seven items (e.g., the more expensive the MP3 player, the better the quality). Perceived quality between the MP3 players was measured by four items (e.g., There is not much difference in terms of quality between the Apple iPod brand and the other brands). Finally, seven questions related to gender, age, marital status, occupation, home ownership, education and income measured demographics. 10 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS Of the 362 surveys, 96 percent (348 surveys) administered were usable. This response rate was considered to be acceptable for a self-administered survey of this nature (Pinhey and Brown, 2005). Age and gender characteristics were representative of the general student population in Australia. First, the 44 items related to risk perceptions of the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) were factor analyzed using a VARIMAX rotation to establish their structure and dimensionality. The initial analysis suggested a preliminary nine-factor solution which explained 65 percent of the total variance with a KMO score of 0.88 and a Bartlett’s test of Sphericity of 0.001. Due to cross-loadings and communalities of less than 0.5, the factor analysis was rerun iteratively. This resulted in 10 items being removed which identified factors that maintained independence from one another. As can be seen in Table 1, the final solution highlighted seven factors which maintained the total variance explained at 65 percent with a KMO score of 0.88 and a Bartlett’s test of Sphericity of 0.001. The seven factors identified brand familiarity, extrinsic attributes, perceived quality, perceived social/physical risk, perceived financial/performance risk, perceived time risk and perceived psychological risk. Then, the 44 items related to risk perceptions of the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) were factor analyzed. Again, the initial analysis suggested a preliminary nine-factor solution which explained 67 percent of the total variance with a KMO score of 0.88 and a Bartlett’s test of Sphericity of 0.001. When the factor analysis was rerun 11 iteratively, 13 items were removed. As can be seen in Table 2, the final solution highlighted seven factors which improved the total variance explained to 69 percent with a KMO score of 0.86 and a Bartlett’s test of Sphericity of 0.001. The seven factors also identified brand familiarity, extrinsic attributes, perceived quality, perceived social/physical risk, perceived financial/performance risk, perceived time risk and perceived psychological risk. ~~Insert Table 1 here ~~ ~~ Insert Table 2 here ~~ Next, confirmatory factor analysis tested the measurement properties of each of the seven constructs related to the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) respectively. Items with high modification index values due to correlated error terms and low loadings were omitted (Jöreskog and Sörbom, 1993). As a result, 10 items were deleted from the measures related to the Apple iPod (pioneer brand), leaving 23 items, and four items were deleted from the measures related to the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands), leaving 27 items. As can be seen in Appendix 1, composite reliabilities for the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) were 0.85 and 0.91 for brand familiarity; 0.63 and 0.72 for extrinsic attributes; 0.61 for perceived quality; 0.89 and 0.92 for perceived social/physical risk; 0.85 and 0.81 for perceived financial/performance risk; 0.81 and 0.85 for perceived time risk and 0.88 and 0.92 for perceived psychological 12 risk respectively, suggesting the constructs demonstrated some reliability (Hair et al., 2006). The composite reliabilities and the average variance extracted (AVE) scores, as can be seen in Appendix 1, suggested that the various constructs had good measurement properties (reliability and convergent validity) for the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). Further, an examination of the squared correlations between the various constructs found a maximum value of 0.45 (between perceived time risk and perceived psychological risk for the me- too brands), which was well below the AVE scores for both constructs (0.66 and 0.78). Consequently, discriminant validity for the constructs could also be assumed in all cases (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). As can be seen in Table 3, independent groups t-tests suggested differences in respondents’ risk perceptions between the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands). When it involved the me-too brands, respondents held significantly higher perceived social/physical risk (p ≤ 0.01), perceived financial/performance risk (p ≤ 0.001) and perceived psychological risk (p ≤ 0.001) than the Apple iPod. However, perceived time risk (p ≤ 0.05) was significantly higher for the Apple iPod than the me-too brands. ~~ Insert Table 3 here ~~ Finally, path analysis examined the model’s hypotheses. As can be seen in Figure 1, the model for the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) fitted the data well (RMSEA ≤ 0.06; NFI ≥ 0.92; CFI ≥ 0.95 and AGFI ≥ 0.96). The model for the other brands of MP3 players 13 (me-too brands) fitted the data reasonably well (although RMSEA ≤ 0.09, the other indices of NFI ≥ 0.95; CFI ≥ 0.96 and AGFI ≥ 0.97 were acceptable), as can be seen in Figure 2. Further, no modification indices suggested other paths between the models’ constructs should be considered. Since perceived risk and perceived quality are identified as formative constructs, items measuring the respective two constructs were summed to create composites, as suggested by Jarvis et al. (2003). The error for each formative construct was then set to 0.15 times the variance of the item, as suggested by Jöreskog and Sörbom (1993). Brand familiarity and extrinsic attributes are identified as reflective constructs with more than three items. The items for each reflective construct were combined using a partial disaggregation approach to minimize measurement error problems (Bagozzi and Heatherton, 1994). Partial disaggregation is accomplished by randomly aggregating items that relate to a given construct into two or three composite measures so all of the items related to the latent variable correspond in the same way to that latent variable; thus any combination of the items should yield the same model fit (Dabholkar et al., 1996). As expected, brand familiarity produced a significant positive effect on the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players for both the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) (b = 0.24, p ≤ 0.001) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) (b = 0.66, p ≤ 0.001). This suggested respondents who were well versed with the brands of MP3 players available on the market also discerned that these brands had similar qualities, supporting H1. However, brand familiarity did not produce the hypothesized significant negative effect on any of the dimensions of perceived risk for both the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands), which did not support H2. http://www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VGN-4K428J8-1&_user=41361&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2007&_rdoc=7&_fmt=full&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236043%232007%23999859998%23636423%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=6043&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=9&_acct=C000004498&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=41361&md5=0fe407234a46773e210066b2aa15e127#bib5#bib5 http://www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VGN-4K428J8-1&_user=41361&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2007&_rdoc=7&_fmt=full&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236043%232007%23999859998%23636423%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=6043&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=9&_acct=C000004498&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=41361&md5=0fe407234a46773e210066b2aa15e127#bib5#bib5 http://www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VGN-4K428J8-1&_user=41361&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2007&_rdoc=7&_fmt=full&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236043%232007%23999859998%23636423%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=6043&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=9&_acct=C000004498&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=41361&md5=0fe407234a46773e210066b2aa15e127#bib30#bib30 14 ~~ Insert Figure 1 here ~~ Extrinsic attributes, as predicted, produced a significant negative effect on the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players for both the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) (b = -0.29, p ≤ 0.001) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) (b = -0.61, p ≤ 0.001). This suggested respondents who placed importance on external cues such as a premium brand, packaging and pricing were less inclined to perceive that the MP3 players on the market shared similar qualities, supporting H3. However, extrinsic attributes did not produce the hypothesized significant positive effect on any of the dimensions of perceived risk for both the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands), which did not support H4. As hypothesized, the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players had significant positive effects on perceived social/physical (b = 0.83, p ≤ 0.001), financial/performance (b = 0.59, p ≤ 0.001), time (b = 0.76, p ≤ 0.001) and psychological (b = 0.87, p ≤ 0.001) risks for the Apple iPod (pioneer brand), supporting H6a. When it involved the Apple iPod, respondents appeared to perceive more risk about whether the pioneer brand would meet expectation and social approval for the time and money expended in purchasing it. Also as expected, the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players had a significant negative effect on perceived financial/performance risk (b = -0.31, p ≤ 0.001) for the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands), supporting H6b. With the number of me-too brands that offer equivalent quality on the market, respondents seemed to find more assurance and perceive less risk in purchasing these brands. No significant effects 15 were observed for the other three dimensions of risk, although there was directional support from each of these risk dimensions. Finally, since the self-confidence construct did not load as an independent and separate factor from the initial factor analysis, it was not included in the measurement model and H5 remained untested. ~~ Insert Figure 2 here ~~ DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The primary aim of the current study was to examine the differential effects brand familiarity, extrinsic attributes and perceived quality had on perceived social/physical, financial/performance, time and psychological risks for the Apple iPod (pioneer brand) and the other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands). The constructs demonstrated reliability as well as convergent and discriminant validity and the majority of the hypotheses were supported as can be seen in the measurement models in Figures 1 and 2. Me-too brands posed significantly higher social/physical, financial/performance and psychological risks for respondents. However, time risk was significantly higher for the pioneer brand. This augurs well for the Apple iPod as it suggests that in spite of the aggressive competition mounted by the me-too brands on the market, consumers are still able to discern the competitive advantage offered by the pioneer brand, although they are taking more time to decide on its purchase. 16 As expected, brand familiarity produced a significant positive effect on the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players for both the Apple iPod and the other brands of MP3 players. This may present a future problem for the Apple iPod since savvy consumers who shop around and become familiar with the different MP3 players on the market appear to see no difference in the quality of the brands. Consumer familiarity with the me-too brands may be a reason why unit sales for the Apple iPod are expected to tumble by 12 percent to about 48 million in 2009 (Hesseldahl, 2008). Extrinsic attributes, as predicted, produced a significant negative effect on the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players for both the Apple iPod and the other brands of MP3 players. This augurs well for the Apple iPod since consumers who place high importance on its premium brand, packaging and pricing are less inclined to perceive that all the MP3 players on the market share similar qualities. Neither brand familiarity nor extrinsic attributes had any significant effect on the dimensions of perceived risk for the Apple iPod and the other brands of MP3 players. This suggests consumers do not draw upon their experience with the pioneer and me-too brands nor do they use the brands’ tangible cues to help allay any risks associated with purchasing them. As reported in the previous paragraphs, it is likely that consumer perceptions of quality may hold stronger influence in helping them cope with purchase risks (Snoj et al., 2004; Sweeney et al., 1999). As hypothesized, the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players produced significant positive effects on perceived social/physical, financial/performance, time and psychological risks for the Apple iPod. Consumers who perceive the equivalent quality of the MP3 players on the market appear to associate more risk with the Apple iPod. 17 Possibly, since the pioneer brand costs more to purchase, consumers may be more concerned that it might not live up to expectation or meet the approval of significant others for the time and effort taken to purchase it. The Apple iPod may need to consider the implications of guarantees and extended warranties to allay such perceived risks. Also as expected, the perceived equivalent quality of the MP3 players produced a significant negative effect on the perceived financial/performance risk for the other brands of MP3 players. Conceivably, consumers may perceive that the real quality in the me-too brands stems from the value-for-money they offer and the lower risk they pose. Since the key issues of cost and performance appear to be addressed by the equivalent quality of the me-too brands on the market, the other dimensions of risk may not be applicable to this savvy market segment. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH The sample’s size and geographic distribution limited generalizability of the findings. For the model to have general and cross-cultural applicability, it requires replication using different countries and cultures (Noble et al., 2009) to strengthen confidence in the results (Alpert et al., 2001). The product MP3 which is used in this study is at the end of its life- cycle. It does make sense to replicate this study with other products as smart phones and tablets which can be more appropriate with the current market. From the research, it is apparent consumers hold the pioneer brand in high regard, acknowledging that the brand meets social approval and provides assurance in terms of its high standards of performance and safety for the price it commands. This augurs well 18 for pioneer brands as it demonstrates they are able to maintain their competitive edge. However, consumers seem reluctant to take the time to accumulate information about the pioneer brand’s attributes, particularly when the financial outlay required by the pioneer brand is high. It may be worthwhile to explore the time/money tradeoff that consumers encounter in such situations. Given their time-poor lifestyles, are consumers willing to sacrifice leisure time by searching for information to reduce their risks (Laroche et al., 2004) or not sacrifice leisure time by buying pioneer brands at premium prices for the assurances they give? Consumer reliance on extrinsic cues to determine brand quality and manage perceived risk requires further investigation, specifically in the area of cross-cultural research. Many researchers consider that Asian consumers are more brand conscious, sensitive to extrinsic cues (Na et al., 2007) and desirous of social approval from their collectivistic communities (Tafarodi and Swann, 1996). In Asian societies, it is likely the relationships between extrinsic cues, brand quality and perceived risk will be more pronounced than findings in the current study. Understanding how the suggested model works in China and Japan could help pioneer brands address perceptions of risk, quality and social acceptance and maintain their competitive edge in these large and culturally- sensitive consumer markets. In previous studies, females were found to be more risk-avoiding than their male counterparts (Levin et al., 1988; Verma and Sharma, 1990). Yet, it is possible that better education and improved social status may empower more women to be less susceptible to fear and anxiety and to perceive less risk (Carr, 2001). Further research is required to 19 examine the impact gender has on the perceived risk associated with purchasing consumer electronics, which has traditionally been a male-dominated area. Consumer retrieval of pioneer brands and identification of pioneer status are important issues for which additional sets of real product categories should be tested. A number of additional issues remain to be addressed in future research. For instance, what is it about ‘The Original’ that makes this term more powerful than other terms that communicate pioneer status (including ‘The Pioneer’)? Why do consumers misperceive pioneer status? What leads them to misidentify a particular brand as a pioneer? 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Journal of Advertising Research, 41, 33-53. 27 Table 1: Rotated component matrix for the pioneer brand 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Factor 1: Perceived social/physical risk May be dangerous for me or some of my family. 0.88 May make others look down upon me. 0.84 May negatively affect what others think of me. 0.84 Would damage my health. 0.83 Would not be safe for me or my family. 0.82 I think an Apple iPod may cause me some physical harm. 0.72 The demands on my schedule are such that purchasing an Apple iPod could create more pressures on me. 0.61 Factor 2: Brand familiarity I know the MP3 players well. 0.84 I am very familiar with MP3 players. 0.83 I know the different available MP3 player brands well. 0.83 I know the available MP3 player brands well. 0.79 I am well informed about MP3 players. 0.79 Compared with most MP3 player buyers, I consider myself a good buyer. 0.75 I have plenty of experience using MP3 players other than the Apple iPod. 0.65 When deciding on a MP3 player brand, I feel confident of my choice. 0.63 When I choose a MP3 player brand, I do not usually doubt my choice. 0.56 Factor 3: Perceived psychological risk Gives me a feeling of unwanted anxiety. 0.75 Causes me to be concerned for how really reliable that product will be. 0.67 Causes me to experience unnecessary tension. 0.61 As I consider purchasing an Apple iPod soon, I worry about whether it will really ‘perform’ as it is supposed to. 0.57 Makes me feel psychologically uncomfortable. 0.57 Factor 4: Perceived financial/performance risk I would not get my money’s worth. 0.85 The financial investment I would make would not be wise. 0.80 It would not provide the levels of benefits that I would be expecting. 0.76 Factor 5: Extrinsic attributes If you want quality, you have to pay for it. 0.74 The better-known the MP3 player’s brand name, the better the quality. 0.73 A cheap MP3 player makes me suspicious of the result. 0.71 The absence of a well-known MP3 player brand name makes me suspicious. 0.65 Factor 6: Perceived time risk An inefficient use of my time. 0.82 Important time losses. 0.79 Important financial losses. 0.52 Factor 7: Perceived equivalent quality The Apple iPod brand and the other MP3 player brands are practically the same quality. 0.76 There is not much difference in terms of quality between the Apple iPod brand and the other brands. 0.74 I do not think other MP3 player brands are of lower quality than the Apple iPod brand. 0.61 KMO score = 0.88; Bartlett’s test of Sphericity = 0.001 Eigen value 8.49 5.23 2.46 2.29 1.33 1.26 1.19 Variance extracted 24.98 15.37 7.23 6.72 3.90 3.70 3.50 Coefficient alpha 0.92 0.90 0.82 0.85 0.71 0.81 0.61 28 Table 2: Rotated component matrix for the me-too brands 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Factor 1: Brand familiarity I know the different available MP3 player brands well. 0.85 I am very familiar with MP3 players. 0.84 I know the MP3 players well. 0.83 I know the available MP3 player brands well. 0.80 I am well informed about MP3 players. 0.77 Compared with most MP3 player buyers, I consider myself a good buyer. 0.75 I am quite familiar with other MP3 players other than the Apple iPod. 0.72 I have plenty of experience using MP3 players other than the Apple iPod. 0.68 When deciding on a MP3 player brand, I feel confident of my choice. 0.57 Factor 2: Perceived social/physical risk Would damage my health. 0.90 May be dangerous for me or some of my family. 0.89 Would not be safe for me or my family. 0.88 May negatively affect what others think of me. 0.78 I think another brand of MP3 player may cause me some physical harm. 0.75 May make others look down upon me. 0.74 Factor 3: Perceived financial/performance risk I would not get my money’s worth. 0.87 It would not provide the levels of benefits that I would be expecting. 0.84 Causes me to be concerned for how really reliable that product will be. 0.69 Factor 4: Perceived psychological risk Causes me to experience unnecessary tension. 0.79 Gives me a feeling of unwanted anxiety. 0.76 Makes me feel psychologically uncomfortable. 0.75 Factor 5: Extrinsic attributes The better-known the MP3 player’s brand name, the better the quality. 0.77 If you want quality, you have to pay for it. 0.75 A cheap MP3 player makes me suspicious of the result. 0.70 The absence of a well-known MP3 player brand name makes me suspicious. 0.63 Factor 6: Perceived time risk An inefficient use of time. 0.77 Important time losses. 0.75 Important financial losses. 0.64 Factor 7: Perceived equivalent quality The Apple iPod brand and the other MP3 player brands are practically the same quality. 0.78 There is not much difference in terms of quality between the Apple iPod brand and the other brands. 0.78 I do not think other MP3 player brands are of lower quality than the Apple iPod brand. 0.60 KMO score = 0.88; Bartlett’s test of Sphericity = 0.001 Eigen value 7.46 5.56 2.80 2.01 1.43 1.12 1.09 Variance extracted 24.05 17.92 9.02 6.48 4.60 3.61 3.51 Coefficient alpha 0.91 0.93 0.78 0.92 0.71 0.83 0.61 29 Table 3: Descriptive statistics for the dimensions of risk associated with pioneer and me-too brands Apple iPod (pioneer brand) Other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) Perceived social/physical risk 2.11 a (1.20) 2.40 b (1.41) Perceived financial/performance risk 3.41 a (1.45) 4.05 b (1.40) Perceived time risk 3.23 a (1.43) 2.98 b (1.35) Perceived psychological risk 2.56 a (1.30) 2.95 b (1.48) Sample size 343 343 Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses. Means denoted by a different subscript letter are significantly different from one another (p ≤ 0.05) using independent groups t-tests 30 Figure 1: Measurement model for the pioneer brand Fam .61 exp1,exp4 e2 .78 .89 iPRSocPhy e9 .96 fam4,ssc5 e1 .98 Ext .35 EXATT3 e6 .37 EXATT6 e5 .59 .07 iPQe3 .97 .28 .87 iPRPsy e11 .81 iPRTime e13 .36 EXATT4 e7 .60 .85 iPRFinPerf e15 .61 .10 Per Qual .69 Per Soc Phy .76 Per Psy .57 Per Time .35 Per Fin Perf .26 .94 .93 .90 .92 e4 e8 e10 e12 e14 Weight Model: All parameters constrained Chi Square = 75.743 d.f. = 32 rmsea= .063 cfi= .953 nfi= .923 gfi= .957 .83 .87 .76 .59 .24 -.29 31 Figure 2: Measurement model for the me-too brands Ext .61 oExtrin2 e2 .78 .41 oExtrin1 e1 .64 Fam .79 oFAM2 e6 .74 oFAM1 e5 .89 .18 oPQe3 .90 .18 .71 oFAM3 e7 .85 .81 oPRFinPerf e15 .86 .67 Per Qual .09 Per Fin Perf .43 .90 e4 e14 Weight Model: All parameters constrained Chi Square = 44.441 d.f. = 11 rmsea= .094 cfi= .959 nfi= .947 gfi= .966 -.31 -.61 .66 32 Appendix 1: Constructs means, standardized deviations and correlations Items M SD Construct Reliability AVE Score BF EA PEQ PSP PFP PT PP Apple iPod (pioneer brand) Brand familiarity (BF) 4 4.12 1.28 0.85 0.60 1.00 Extrinsic attributes (EA) 3 4.80 1.17 0.63 0.36 0.18 1.00 Perceived equivalent quality (PEQ) 3 3.83 1.12 0.61 0.34 0.20 -0.14 1.00 Perceived social/physical risk (PSP) 4 2.11 1.20 0.89 0.68 0.17 -0.15 0.16 1.00 Perceived financial/performance risk (PFP) 3 3.41 1.45 0.85 0.65 0.06 -0.14 0.23 0.38 1.00 Perceived time risk (PT) 3 3.23 1.43 0.81 0.59 0.07 -0.12 0.23 0.51 0.48 1.00 Perceived psychological risk (PP) 3 2.56 1.30 0.88 0.70 0.14 -0.12 0.16 0.67 0.42 0.53 1.00 Other brands of MP3 players (me-too brands) Brand familiarity (BF) 7 4.04 1.29 0.91 0.58 1.00 Extrinsic attributes (EA) 4 4.70 1.10 0.72 0.39 0.14 1.00 Perceived equivalent quality (PEQ) 3 3.83 1.12 0.61 0.34 0.26 -0.15 1.00 Perceived social/physical risk (PSP) 4 2.40 1.41 0.92 0.74 0.11 -0.06 -0.04 1.00 Perceived financial/performance risk (PFP) 3 4.05 1.40 0.81 0.58 -0.11 0.14 -0.12 0.23 1.00 Perceived time risk (PT) 3 2.98 1.35 0.85 0.66 0.02 -0.01 0.04 0.60 0.41 1.00 Perceived psychological risk (PP) 3 2.95 1.48 0.92 0.78 0.10 -0.01 0.01 0.62 0.39 0.67 1.00 work_7ljiyfogbzhwpa4bwqvrgdsggi ---- Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-53-15-2020 © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Drawing everyday sexism in academia: observations and analysis of a community-based initiative Marie Bocher1, Martina Ulvrova1, Maëlis Arnould2, Nicolas Coltice3, Claire Mallard4, Mélanie Gérault5, and Alice Adenis6 1Institute of Geophysics, Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland 2Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 3Laboratoire de Géologie, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France 4Earthbyte Research Group, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia 5Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, USA 6Dataswati, Massy, Ile-de-France, France Correspondence: Did this really happen?! team (mail.didthisreallyhappen@gmail.com) Received: 30 November 2019 – Accepted: 3 February 2020 – Published: 2 April 2020 Abstract. Sexist behaviour in the workplace contributes to create a hostile environment, hindering the chance of women and gender non-conforming individuals to pursue an aca- demic career, but also reinforcing gender stereotypes that are harmful to their progress and recognition. The Did this re- ally happen?! project aims at publishing real-life, everyday sexism in the form of comic strips. Its major goal is to raise awareness about unconscious biases that transpire in every- day interactions in academia and increase the visibility of sexist situations that arise within the scientific community, especially to those who might not notice it. Through the web- site didthisreallyhappen.net, we collect testimonies about ev- eryday sexism occurring in the professional academic envi- ronment (universities, research institutes, scientific confer- ences. . . ). We translate these stories into comics and pub- lish them anonymously without any judgement or comments on the website. By now, we have collected over 100 tes- timonies. From this collection, we identified six recurrent patterns: (1) behaviours that aim at maintaining women in stereotypical feminine roles, (2) behaviours that aim at main- taining men in stereotypical masculine roles, (3) the ques- tioning of the scientific skills of female researchers, (4) situ- ations where women have the position of an outsider, espe- cially in informal networking contexts, (5) the objectification of women, and (6) the expression of neosexist views. We first present a detailed analysis of these categories, then we report on the different ways we interact and engage with the Earth science community, the scientific community at large and the public in this project. 1 Introduction As in the rest of society, sexism is still pervasive in academia (Troy, 2019). Most STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields are traditionally male- dominated and the diverse expressions of gender bias tend to maintain this status quo (Williams et al., 2014; Asplund and Welle, 2018). This is the case for Earth and Planetary Sci- ences where women represent between 32 % and 42 % of the academic community (according to numbers on American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting participation from 2014 to 2016 (Ford et al., 2018), on European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly and AGU Fall meeting par- ticipation in 2018 (Popp et al., 2019) and a volunteer-based survey of the gender of abstract first authors at the EGU Gen- eral Assembly 2019). Gender bias contributes to this underrepresentation in three ways. First, it can lead to discrimination during recruit- ment (Moss-Racusin et al., 2012; Sheltzer and Smith, 2014), promotion (Régner et al., 2019), grant evaluation (Kaatz et al., 2016) and the article reviewing process (Lerback and Hanson, 2017) although their role in the underrepresentation of women in academia has been contested (Ceci et al., 2014). Second, it can lead to an underestimation of female achieve- Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 16 M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia ments, merits and performance (Dutt et al., 2016; Chávez and Mitchell, 2019). Finally, sexist behaviours and sexual harassment have a deterrent effect for female and gender- nonconforming individuals when considering attending spe- cific events or even pursuing an academic career (John et al., 2016; Clancy et al., 2017; Biggs et al., 2018; Moss-Racusin et al., 2018; Dyer et al., 2019). Ignoring gender bias does not make it disappear. On the contrary, in a statistical analysis of the national promotion scheme of french CNRS researchers, Régner et al. (2019) showed that women’s promotion was less frequent when aca- demic committees did not believe in the existence of gender bias. That corroborates other studies showing that individuals who believe that they are objective show more bias (Uhlmann and Cohen, 2007). Likewise, merely stating that an institu- tion is meritocratic has been shown to lead to more gender bias in promotion decisions (Castilla and Benard, 2010). Institutional measures that address the mechanism of gen- der bias and improve gender diversity in academia are well documented (e.g. Moss-Racusin et al., 2014; Monroe et al., 2014; Greider et al., 2019; Buitendijk et al., 2019; Williams, 2019). However, one necessary condition of the application of such measures is that the Earth science community at large, and especially those in a situation of power are con- vinced that they are needed and that they are a priority. That is why we consider that the recognition and apprehension of gender bias (implicit or explicit) is still a crucial factor to reach gender parity and equality of treatment in the Earth science community. The project Did this really happen?! (DTRH) emerged from the need to share experiences of gender bias, first as Earth scientists, within our laboratory and with our direct col- laborators and colleagues (Bedford, 2018). We are a team of seven scientists, of which six are early-career women, formed in 2016 around a research project studying the dynamics of the Earth’s mantle convection and plate tectonics. Initially, we started discussing gender biases during internal group meetings and realised that we had all encountered similar sexist jokes since the start of the project. To dig deeper into this topic, we invited two members of the local university diversity and equality service: Philippe Liotard and Chloé Schweyer to our discussions. In the meantime, the principal investigator (PI) of the project was solicited to talk about the management of his team at an EGU General Assembly ses- sion and we decided to present our experiences as a mostly feminine research team (Coltice and Bocher, 2016). In 2017, we presented a second poster at the same session (Arnould et al., 2017), on which we decided to draw comics about the sexist situations faced by each of us, thanks to the talent of Alice Adenis (Adenis, 2019) who had joined the team in the meantime. This was initially a way to draw people’s attention to our stories. Given the success of the poster and the comic strips, we decided to extend the project by collecting sex- ist stories from the academic community, and turning these stories into comics. In doing so, we want to give greater vis- ibility to this problem, which many scientists face. One of the challenges to bring awareness about gender bias issues is that prejudice tends to be minimised by peo- ple who are not concerned or benefit from it. For exam- ple, males tend to doubt and question studies showing gen- der bias more than women do (Handley et al., 2015). More anecdotally, this is illustrated by a comment we received on our facebook page: “Having been to lots of science confer- ences (and being a man) I have never encountered this sort of attitude, but I guess it exists, unfortunately.” Moreover, although efforts have been globally conducted to improve male-female equity, the results of Haines et al. (2016) seem to indicate very limited changes in gender stereotypes since the 1980s. Based on our experience, we acknowledge that it is difficult to recognise gender-stereotypical behaviours: such behaviours are deeply anchored in our society, our cultural habits, our education and are, therefore “internalised by both men and women” (Hentschel et al., 2019). However, iden- tifying a situation as sexist is the first step to interventions (Ashburn-Nardo and Abdul Karim, 2019; Valian, 2019). We believe that comics and illustrations of what everyday sexism looks like provide a complementary approach to statistics of real-life experiences and accounts of controlled experiments to raise awareness about unconscious biases. The core of the Did this really happen?! project is de- scriptive: we want to show concrete examples of everyday sexism in academia, following the idea that it is easier and more recreational to read a comic strip rather than a plain text about a sexist behaviour. Although our collection of comic strips does not cover the whole range of sexist situ- ations encountered in academia, we believe it can serve as a support for further discussions on the topic. We collect tes- timonies of sexism happening in academia via the website https://didthisreallyhappen.net/ (last access: 9 March 2020, DTRH team, 2019a), and translate them into comics. The process of creating a comic strip from collected testimonies and an analysis of the testimonies received so far are pro- vided in Sect. 2. We have also experimented with differ- ent ways to communicate on the project in various contexts to improve consciousness on sexist biases. We report on our communication and community engagement activities in Sect. 3 and comment on their impact. Further, we put our project in a larger context of describing the different types of sexism in academia and finding strategies to minimise gender biases at different levels in our society in Sect. 4. 2 Treatment, classification and analysis of received testimonies Testimonies of everyday sexism in academia are mainly col- lected through our website platform, although the first testi- monies were gathered from our own experiences. Figure 1 shows the procedure to process a testimony. It ensures that Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ https://didthisreallyhappen.net/ M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia 17 Figure 1. Procedure of creation of a comic strip from the testimony of a given contributor. All comics are hand-drawn by Alice Adenis – distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. DTRH stands for Did this really happen?!. the comic strips are depicting the situation as experienced by the contributor who contacted us while preserving their anonymity. First, we collectively assess the validity of each received testimony using three main criteria: (1) the story de- picts a situation of sexist bias, (2) the story is different from the comic strip that has already been published (3) it is pos- sible to tell this story within a short strip of maximum five drawings. Upon acceptance of each testimony, we write a sto- ryboard for artist Alice Adenis who draws the corresponding comic strip. Before and after the drawing stage, we exchange with the contributor to verify the realism of the expressions of all characters in the cartoon and the faithful depiction of the drawn situations. We also ensure that the desired level of anonymity is respected. After final approval of the comic strip by the contributor and members of the team, it is pub- lished and advertised on both our website and social media. In this section, we present a description and propose a clas- sification of the different types of sexism that appear in the collected testimonies. Since we rely on voluntary self-report and advertise our initiative through personal and professional networks, this classification should not be interpreted as an exhaustive list of all existing sexist biases, but rather as a synthetic way to interpret the testimonies that we received so far. 2.1 Received stories and proposed classification Between 2016 and 2019, we received 103 testimonies, from which we accepted 89 stories. So far, 24 stories have been turned into comic strips and published online on our web- page. Two of them (2.2 %) were written by men while 87 stories (representing 97.8 % of all accepted contribu- tions) were shared by women. Interestingly, most of the re- ceived testimonies are proposed by both early-career scien- tists (post-doctoral fellows and PhD students) and full profes- sors (Fig. 2). One plausible explanation is that full professors are the ones who likely encountered more sexist situations during their career and that early-career scientists are more preoccupied with and more aware of gender biases due to the recent birth of international feminist movements such as #MeToo that received a lot of public attention. The analysis of the testimonies points to sexist behaviours being the expression of gendered stereotypes that are still strongly anchored in our scientific community as they are in www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 18 M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia Figure 2. Career level of the authors of the accepted testimonies. FP stands for full professor, PhD for PhD student, Postdoc for postdoc- toral fellow, AP for assistant or associate professor, Bs for bachelor student, Private sector for contributors working outside academia and Ms for master student. the rest of the society. One of the most fundamental and still deeply rooted dichotomies associated with masculinity and femininity is the agency versus communality opposition (e.g. Haines et al., 2016; Hentschel et al., 2019). According to so- cial role theory (Eagly and Wood, 2012), men would be more agentic (meaning that they are more likely characterised by assertiveness, independence, instrumental competence and leadership competence), while women would be more com- munal (they would be more inclined to feel more concern for others, sociability and emotional sensitivity). Such stereo- types do exist in the scientific environment, as we show in the following sections. New ways of expressing prejudice against women are modern sexism (Swim et al., 1995) or neosexism (Tougas et al., 1995). Becker and Swim (2011) explain that both terms describe covert forms; the first one recognises that gender bias exists but its importance is minimised; the second one arises from the pressure between gender egalitarian beliefs and negative feelings against women. These different types of sexism take form through per- sisting stereotypes, which appear in the testimonies we re- ceived. The distinct gender biases associated with each story can be described using several classifications. Binary classifi- cations include but are not limited to: (1) implicit (automatic and unconscious) versus explicit (conscious and willingly re- ported, e.g. Miller et al., 2014), (2) descriptive (characteris- tics that women/men are believed to have) versus prescriptive (characteristics that women/men should have, e.g. Burgess and Borgida, 2000) and (3) benevolent (expression of sex- ism that appear to be positive, e.g. chivalry or the “women- are-wonderful effect” conceptualized by Eagly and Mladinic, 1994) versus hostile (sexist view expressed in term of hostile action or derogatory comments , e.g. Glick et al., 2000) sex- ist behaviours. Williams et al. (2014) identify four main gen- der biases encountered by women: (1) the Prove-It-Again, where women have to make more effort to establish their place compared to their male colleagues, (2) the Tightrope, where women struggle between adopting a masculine be- haviour to be respected, seen as competent but unpopular and adopting a feminine behaviour to be liked but seen as incompetent, (3) the Maternal Wall, related to challenges with motherhood and (4) the Tug of War, related to the com- petition between women as a result of the aforementioned pressures. We propose a different classification that is based on finding recurrent patterns in the testimonies we collected but shares similar categories with the existing classifications. We identify six classes of sexist attitudes: (1) confining fe- males to stereotypical roles, (2) confining males to stereo- typical roles, (3) questioning female competencies, (4) keep- ing women as outsiders in networking contexts, (5) objecti- fying women and (6) neosexism as a backlash of antisexist policies. A more detailed analysis of these categories is pro- vided in the following sections. We acknowledge the fact that this categorisation can be subjective. For instance, most fe- male/male stereotypes are defined as opposites, so oftentimes we observe that in a given situation, both male and female stereotyping are at stake. Moreover, these categories are not exclusive, and several situations fall into several categories. 2.2 The expression of female stereotypes 69 % of the accepted stories (61 of them) involve behaviours that keep females into traditional roles. These roles are of- ten not in relation to academic work. Many testimonies ex- press the fact that within their research environment, women scientists are put back to a gendered condition defined upon physical stereotypes, among which are attractiveness (“Pretty face” and “Sympathetic and good looking” comic strips), wearing a bra (unpublished testimony), and being or becom- ing a mother (“anyway you will soon be busy with children” being one quote among others). Other testimonies highlight cases establishing a domina- tion relationship. One expression of such a bias is the fact that women are automatically categorised below males in the hierarchy. Sometimes male scientists associate female pro- fessors or editors to students (“Who’s your advisor?” comic strip, cf. Fig. 3). Testimonies describe female senior profes- sors in a meeting being automatically chosen to take notes (for instance “Who’s taking notes?” comic strip). Sometimes, a female scientist is reduced to the wife/girlfriend of a man (“Grad school husband” comic strip). We also received testimonies involving the traditional stereotype of females not being interested in science, or not having biological abilities for science by nature (“Confer- ence wake up” comic strip for instance). Instead, a lot of testimonies show the stereotype of women being more quali- fied to do administrative tasks (such as taking notes, “Who is taking notes?” comic strip, or preparing the practical aspects of a field trip, “Field trip takeover” comic strip). Likewise, women tend to be assigned household-type tasks (cleaning the laboratory, preparing the meals or bringing the coffee dur- Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia 19 Figure 3. “Who’s your advisor?” comic strip that falls into the “Fe- male stereotypical roles” category. In this case, a female is consid- ered at lower grade based on her appearance and gendered condition (DTRH team, 2019a; Adenis, 2019). All comics are hand-drawn by Alice Adenis – distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. ing workshops, meetings and field trips, “Field trip takeover” and “Who is taking notes?”). The 61 testimonies with such stereotypes show repetitions of the same situations for different age classes, countries and situations (conference, laboratory, teaching, meeting). 2.3 Male stereotypes We identified 34 stories where descriptive or prescriptive stereotypes on males were at play (38 % of the stories). Such stereotypes include seeing men as physically superior and competent individuals, and therefore better fitted for field- work than women: a testimony reported for example that male researchers were encouraged to do a field trip while fe- males’ capabilities were questioned. Positive masculine traits like being a leader and a decision-maker are at play in the “First author” comics, where a reviewer wrongly attributes the first authorship of the article they are reviewing to a male coauthor instead of the actual female first author. Figure 4. Example of “Male stereotypes” and “Women as outsiders in networking contexts” categories. Peers are laughing at a male col- league who supports his wife’s career evolution. At the same time, a female scientist finds herself outside of the male fraternity circle. Comic strip title: “His wife got promoted” (DTRH team, 2019a; Adenis, 2019). All comics are hand-drawn by Alice Adenis – dis- tributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. The dominance of male researchers is also argued using er- roneous biological arguments such as: “It’s normal that men are more aggressive during discussions because they have more testosterone” (“Conference wake up” comic strip) or “Men and women are just better at different things. It’s biol- ogy.” (unpublished testimony) suggesting that men are better in STEM fields. Failure to comply with stereotypical roles leads to strong reactions, such as in the comic strip entitled “His wife got promoted” (Fig. 4): the news that a man has relocated due to his wife’s promotion is received with mockery by male colleagues, and he is considered as weak because he does not conform with the traditional male dominant role of the breadwinner. Another common mechanism is to interpret male behav- ior and decisions as necessarily motivated by sexual inter- www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 20 M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia Figure 5. Example of the “Questioning female competence” cat- egory. A male colleague is putting the physical appearance of his female peer ahead of her qualification while playing down her scientific competence. Comic strip title: “Professor likes blondes” (DTRH team, 2019a; Adenis, 2019). All comics are hand-drawn by Alice Adenis – distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. est, such as in the comic strips entitled “Professor likes blon- des” (Fig. 5) and “A man’s world”. Phrases such as: “Did you come with your harem” are used by peers to express men’s power and sexual dominance when a male PI is working with a feminine team, and de facto normalise predatory sexual be- havior. 2.4 Questioning female competence We identified 57 % of the accepted stories exhibiting ques- tioning competencies of a female scientist (51 stories). A fe- male researcher has to prove again and again her excellence in science and give more evidence that she is as competent as her male colleagues and deserves her position. This is partly a result of conflicting views on being feminine and being an expert in the field. Such a deeply rooted stereotype manifests itself in particular when it comes to obtaining distinguished recognitions from the community in the form of an award or a grant for example. Success is perceived with doubts and con- tested: “You know why you won the award? That’s because they had to fill a female quota!” (“Female quota” comics). Questioning of female professional qualities is especially striking in cases where success is attributed to the physical appearance of the female researcher. “Have you ever won- dered if people just stop by [your poster] because of your pretty face?” (“Pretty face” comic strip) is an example of the depreciation of scientific success during a conference. “There were sure a lot of facts and figures in your talk, little lady.” (comics “Little lady”) is a condescending remark that a fe- male researcher received after her talk, exposing her credi- bility and competencies. Female scientists are too often con- fronted with being judged by their appearance rather than scientific competence. “Oh, I guess he (the professor) likes blondes” (comic strip “Professor likes blondes”, Fig. 5) that suggests that this male professor was working with a female researcher only because of her look. Such comments come directly from close colleagues who work in the same research group, but also more indirectly from peers within the scientific community at large. An ex- ample of the latter is: “I never thought the author of this paper could be a woman!” (comic strip “Authorship”). This points towards the ubiquity of this social bias. In addition, a recurring pattern in the stories arises when a man explains to his female colleague something in which the female scientist excels at herself and is very often even more competent. This so-called “mansplaining” (which in- volves males believing their expertise is more relevant than their female counterpart), is shown for example in the “Con- ference classics” comic strip. 2.5 Women as outsiders in networking contexts We observed that about a quarter of testimonies (19 stories) depict situations in which female scientists are considered as marginal in the scientific community or as a different type of human beings. A recurrent situation shows male scientists meeting a group of people in which there is one or several women. Men greet each other but either overlook women or salute them in a different way, sometimes non-professional (e.g. “Nice headphones” comic strip). Another recurrent situation in testimonies concerns the presence of one or two women in panels, boards or infor- mal gatherings among a majority of men. In such a context, stories depict how male scientists interact with each other ig- noring female scientists. The “His wife got promoted” comic strip or decisions made during an informal chat in the men’s restroom (received testimony) are examples. Indeed, broth- erhood is an important factor that reinforces males’ position and leaves women outside this circle. Some partial explanations of these situations are expressed in testimonies citing male scientists wondering how women behave, feel or react, as if they would be a different kind of human being. Again, this shows how work relationships can Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia 21 Figure 6. A female scientist finds herself isolated from the research community at a conference due to needs related to motherhood. Ex- ample of “Women as outsiders in networking contexts” stereotype. Comics title: “Breastfeeding at conferences” (DTRH team, 2019a; Adenis, 2019). All comics are hand-drawn by Alice Adenis – dis- tributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. drift towards relationships which put female scientists back to their gendered condition, and also to their condition of be- ing a mother in some cases. Some actions related to mother- hood only reinforce their outsider position (e.g. “Breastfeed- ing at conferences” comic strip, Fig. 6). To express breast milk, women often have to make do with rooms that are not designed for it. In the storage room, the lactating mother of the “Breastfeeding at conferences” comic strip is in a posi- tion of being somewhere she should not be, like an outsider herself. And even more when someone comes by without respecting her intimacy. The underrepresentation of females creates situations in which such basic needs are not catered for. 2.6 Objectification of women Female researchers are sometimes perceived as objects while their scientific qualification and mental capabilities are com- Figure 7. A young female scientist is reduced to her physical ap- pearance. Example of the “Objectification of women” category. Comic strip title: “Good looking young woman” (DTRH team, 2019a; Adenis, 2019). All comics are hand-drawn by Alice Adenis – distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. pletely neglected and ignored. In 16 stories (making up 20 % of the accepted stories), women are sexualised and primarily judged based on their appearance. Their personality, exper- tise, and decision power are put aside while their attractive- ness and appearance-based perceptions are highlighted by peers. This is the case for the “Pretty face” comics mentioned earlier. Another example is when a professor tells his stu- dent: “You are a sympathetic, good-looking young woman.” (“Good looking young woman” comics, Fig. 7) as her only positive attributes. In addition, we identified misogynous behaviour in a few stories. In one of them, a female body is shamed (unpub- lished story) and sexual comments are made towards females (“A man’s world” comic strip). Beyond any doubt, such be- haviour should not be tolerated and accepted neither in the academic environment nor in any societal environment for that matter. www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 22 M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia Figure 8. A young female is receiving an award for being among the top three students of her year. Her merit is questioned and at- tributed to an imaginary female quota. Example of the “Modern sexism and Neosexism” category. Comic strip title: “Female quota” (DTRH team, 2019a; Adenis, 2019). All comics are hand-drawn by Alice Adenis – distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. 2.7 Modern sexism and neosexism Although awareness of ordinary sexism in science remains to be achieved, scientists are able to recognise the symp- toms: an imbalance between women and men for jobs and awards. Therefore, institutions have proposed diverse ways to counter this imbalance. However, such policies have their drawbacks, prescribing females to numbers for quotas or giv- ing an opportunity for scientists to attribute the success of a woman to her gender, even for a selection process that does not perform positive discrimination. 10 % of the testimonies (eight stories) depict situations in which scientists attribute any type of recognition of a woman’s work to a result of an antisexist policy. For instance, an award, an invitation to join a project or to give a seminar would have come to fill the female quota (“Being invited” and “Female quota” comics, Fig. 8). In the testimonies, competencies are overlooked and women are considered as a minority that would be so much promoted that men would not be able to get awards, grants or jobs anymore. In a testimony depicting an astronomy class composed of 2 women and 5 men, a classmate says “are they practising some kind of affirmative action this year?” (un- published testimony). One special situation is proposed in the comic “Nature cover” in which a scientist suggests that the presence of women in the editorial board of Nature would ex- plain why the manuscript of a female scientist gets published. It reverses the traditional sexist situation, claiming women are biased against men. Again, in a work context, most of these situations put fe- male scientists back to their gendered condition, but this time behind an institutional shield. 3 Our engagement and communication activities Our communication activities essentially consist of an online presence directed to everyone (via our website and through social media) and more specific actions geared towards the scientific community (such as participating in conferences or laboratory seminars) as well as a large non-scientific public (participation in radio programs or round table discussions). These activities are an integral part of the project since our comic strips are based on true stories reported by members of the STEM community. 3.1 Nature of our engagement and communication actions Although the project started in Lyon, France, all members of Did this really happen?! have moved away since then, bring- ing the project into new institutions, where we propose lo- cal presentations and discussions at various occasions. Each member of the group takes any opportunity to talk about the project during a large variety of actions, which has resulted in spreading the project and its main message to a broad au- dience. Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia 23 Since the beginning of the project Did this really happen?! in 2016, we participated in 8 major Earth and Planetary sci- ence conferences (hosted by the AGU, the EGU, the Aus- tralian Geoscience Council Convention and the European Planetary Science Congress), by presenting either a poster or an oral contribution in the equality and diversity sessions (Coltice and Bocher, 2016; Arnould et al., 2017; Adenis et al., 2018; Gérault et al., 2018; Ulvrova et al., 2019a, b). We also co-organised a short course on gender unconscious biases in Geosciences, using the comics as illustrations of unconscious bias behaviour (Alves de Jesus Rydin et al., 2018, 2019). Taking part in these international conferences is highly valuable since it allows us to have a diverse and broad audience as well as meeting and exchanging with other in- ternational scientific and institutional actors of diversity and equality. The development of our project has highly bene- fited from shared experience with other local, international or institutional members of the scientific community (like the Égalité group at IPGP, France, Égalité group, 2019, and WOMEESA, Australasia, WOMEESA, 2019, 500 Women Scientists, 2019, pod in Zurich and EqualiTea at ETH Zurich, EqualiTea, 2019c). We also published a blog post on uncon- scious biases in Geosciences (Bocher and Adenis, 2018), and were interviewed for an article about the birth of our project (Bedford, 2018). All the fore-mentioned actions have mainly been directed to the Earth and Planetary science community to which we all belong. We also made efforts to reach other scientific and non-scientific audiences. First within our university of origin, in Lyon, with the organisation of a day of discussion and con- ferences around gender equality in science in January 2018 (Sexes égaux, sciences égales?, 2018), and intervention on Radio Brume, a Lyon-based university radio (Sciences pour tous, 2019). We also participated in the Swiss radio show CQFD (Pourquoi il faut plus de filles en sciences, 2019b). We connected with other activists in academia through the participation to an evening on equality in Science (Bocher et al., 2019a), by co-organising Breaking Gender Barriers dis- cussion series (500 Women Scientists, 2019), through the I, scientist conference (Bocher et al., 2019b) and the opportu- nity to present our initiative to the employees of the the Re- searchGate company in Berlin. We were also solicited for an interview by the radio of the Hungarian University of Pest (Ulvrova et al., 2019a). 3.2 Statistics on our online presence Since the launch of our website in January 2018, which marks the start of our internet presence, we have compiled some statistics about the growth of our project (Table 1). We use these to measure and analyse the impact and evolution of our project. Our website has a central role in our initiative since we use it to publish our comics and news about our actions and to collect testimonies on gender bias in academia from the STEM community. Since the launch of the website, the an- nual number of visits has remained stable. In 2018 it reached 19 643 views (6377 unique visitors) and we gathered 18 625 views (5965 unique visitors) in 2019 (as of 15 November 2019). The website has 39 subscribers. While most of our visitors are from Europe (more than 21 800 views, of which 6355 from France, 3941 from Germany and 3938 from the UK), North America (more than 12 000 views, of which 10 847 from USA) and Oceania (more than 2300 views, of which 2073 from Australia) where the members of the group are located, we are starting to reach people from Africa, Asia and South America. For example, India is currently the 10th country with the largest number of views of our website (508 views). We use Facebook and Twitter to advertise our actions and our newly posted comics. Those media evince high poten- tial to reach a large audience including scientific and non- scientific public, making our comics accessible and visible to people from countries that we cannot reach via conferences or institutional seminars. On Twitter, 77 % of our audience is female, while the proportion of female visitors reaches 70 % on Facebook. Our tweets have been viewed 3170 times on average each month (72 932 views in total between January 2018 and November 2019), although there are large monthly variations (Fig. 9). Major accounts re-tweeting our project often belong to scientific institutions, individual scientists active on Twit- ter but also to independent media, artists, and associations ac- tively promoting more diversity and equality. So far, on both social media, the most represented countries are still from Europe (more than 34 % on Twitter and more than 60 % on Facebook), North America (34 % of our audience on Twitter and 23 % of our audience on Facebook) and Oceania (more than 6 % on Twitter and more than 9 % on Facebook). But our project has also reached other countries. For instance, in November 2019, our account has been cited by an influen- tial female Indian author on Twitter and interest from Indian accounts has increased since then. On Facebook, over the period from 15 May to 15 Novem- ber 2019, 12 accounts received content from our page per day on average, with seven accounts receiving content about our website through their social connections. Among them, three accounts engaged with our page per day on average (via clicking or commenting on our project). 3.3 Impact of our actions We first started to present our own insider experience as a feminine research team in Earth sciences, so the Earth sci- ence community was at first the main contributor to our project. However, the whole academic community is wel- come to collaborate on our project by sending us their sto- ries and the diversity of the contributors has increased as the project gained momentum. This way, scientists from diverse fields are involved in the project that further fuels the inter- www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 24 M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia Table 1. Statistics on our web-based presence. Data collected on 15 Nov 2019 Website Facebook Twitter Total values > since creation 38 268 72 932 > since (date) 4367 (since 19 May 2019) No. of subscribers and followers 39 via the website/email 496 followers/464 likes 712 followers/84 likes No. of references to our work (re-tweets/references etc.) more than 20 references to our website 14 links and 2001 references to our website 2036 references to our web- site Characteristics of the visitors/tweeters > dominant gender of the viewers Unknown 70 % female 77 % female > dominant nationalities North America, Europe, Australia North America, Europe, Australia North America, Europe, Australia Figure 9. Evolution of the monthly number of views on Twit- ter and on the website https://didthisreallyhappen.net/ (last access: 9 March 2020, DTRH team, 2019a), and the number of accepted stories (as a function of their date of reception) since the website launch in January 2018. There is a correlation between the high number of views, presentations of the project at international con- ferences and peaks of reception of testimonies that we accepted. Also, note that the number of views increased significantly after De- cember 2018 as we are getting more attention in the past year. EGU stands for the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, AGU for the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, and EPSC for the European Planetary Science Congress. est of the broader academic community in the Did this really happen?! initiative. Our comic strips describing sexist behaviours are freely available to download (under a Creative Com- mon Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Inter- national License) and print. Their aim is to foster reflections and conversations on gender equality. Recently, we have cre- ated a 12-page booklet assembling some of the published comics. We distributed the booklet assembling some of the published comics (available in the Supplement) during con- ferences (EGU General Assembly 2019, EPSC 2019 and I, Scientist 2019) to all interested scientists, who brought those printed comics in their laboratories. Moreover, we con- duct informal discussions, small presentations, and work- shops within our respective institutions and laboratories to raise consciousness about gender inequality in science and promote adequate professional relationships between female and male scientists. From our experience, these discussions have often proved beneficial since the comics trigger reflec- tions on depicted sexist situations and people also start to reflect on their own behaviour. This is a necessary and crit- ical step forward in apprehending sexist biases, aggressions and microaggressions in everyday life. Finally, we also dis- cuss our project while visiting other laboratories. This partic- ipates in increasing consciousness about gender inequality in various workplaces. The number of views on the project’s website and our so- cial network accounts varies through time. We observe a sig- nificant increase of the number of views and received testi- monies after international conferences (Fig. 9). This shows the impact of our interventions, and how the word of mouth propagation participates to the spreading of our project. The content of our website has been reused or cited more than 30 times on forums (Vis mon job de géologue et chercheure au CNRS, 2019), opinion pieces (Valian, 2019) or institutional websites (Equal Opportunity Committee CRC- TR211, 2019). It has also been retweeted or cited more than 2000 times on both Facebook and Twitter. With those social media, it is possible to reach a large audience that is more di- verse (in terms of occupation, origin, and ideas) compared to the conferences or local institutions. For example, the largest peaks of views of our project (such as the one in Decem- ber 2018, Fig. 9) not only coincide with presentations of our project at conferences but also with the advertisement of our website by influential people on social media. Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ https://didthisreallyhappen.net/ M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia 25 3.4 Reactions to our actions The majority of the feedback that we have received is very encouraging: “Great initiative. I am a PhD candidate in geo- dynamics from India. . . I recently came across your poster in EGU. . . Cudos [sic] to the entire team for taking such an innovative initiative in fighting sexism”. Many female re- searchers also identify themselves with situations depicted in our comics. For example, we received: “Dear Colleagues, I just discovered your site via twitter . . . looking at your comics [Breastfeeding at a conference] I just can’t believe it, it exactly happened to me as well. Thanks for representing it so well.” Others acknowledge the fact that our comics made them more mindful of sexist behaviours around them: “You know what? I did not realise until I read your article that I was being discriminated by people from my lab and during congress. I am used to it. . . So sad. . . ” Such reactions show that our comics can help to bring awareness of unconscious biases simply by showing such situations. Sometimes people react to our comics by saying that they have never encountered, witnessed or recognised sexist atti- tudes depicted in the strips. Another type of reaction com- prises people that are pessimistic about their own situation and that suffer due to gender stereotypes: “I am a woman and I have 3 children, I [am] completely disappointed, it is toooo much and always what I am doing in the lab is not enough and moreover not appreciated. At home as well whatever I did with my children it is not enough, I need to spend more time with them but I can not. I feel like I am a bad mom and a bad scientist. I need more time to read, to think about what I am doing, to play with my children, to write the thesis, to find a fund after my PhD. I need motivation !!!! I need more 24 h per day to complete my duties!! In my next life, I will never be a woman”. Finally, some of the comments point out that our comics often do not provide any reaction (other than anger, shock and surprise, which almost every time happened to be the real reactions of our contributors) nor provide any solution to the depicted situations: “these cartoons run the risk of portraying women as helpless victims. I think women often do not know how to respond either to doubts cast on their abilities or praise of their abilities. It would be helpful to provide women with possible answers” (Bedford, 2018). We discuss these legitimate concerns in the next section. 4 Discussion We presented the results of two years collecting testimonies on everyday sexism in academia, translating them into comic strips and reporting on our observations (online, during con- ferences and in research laboratories). The aim of the project is twofold: revealing common patterns of sexism in academia and educating ourselves and others on these instances. Both aspects of the project, the collection of testimonies on one side, and the communication around the project on the other side, are done simultaneously and thus influence each other. Communication on the project is our primary way to gather testimonies, and, in return, new testimonies allow us to reevaluate the different instances of sexism one can en- counter in academia. This process makes it possible to gather evidence of everyday sexism within various academic com- munities while encouraging the members of these communi- ties to actively identify everyday sexism when they experi- ence it. One limitation of our analysis is the inevitable sources of bias in the testimonies collected: we rely on contributors ac- tively reporting to us. We observe that the participation to the project is biased from (1) the academic discipline of the con- tributors, (2) their place of work, (3) their gender and (4) the type of sexism reported. Our contributors tend to come from the Earth science com- munity and mainly work in Europe, USA, and Australia, which are places where members of the project are currently working. Our ongoing efforts to eliminate this bias include participating in conferences that are not specific to the Earth Science community (e.g. the I, Scientist conference), and also growing our influence on social networks. The third bias observed is the gender bias in both con- tributors and the public reached through social networks: so far, we have mainly reached women (more than 70 % of the views on our social media accounts, and 97.8 % of accepted testimonies come from women). The very low percentage of male testimonies might mean that men are not noticing ev- eryday sexism, or do not identify it as such. The second hy- pothesis seems to be supported by the study of Becker and Swim (2011) who found that American male college stu- dents encountered the same amount of sexist remarks as their female counterparts, but, on average, considered them less sexist. Drury and Kaiser (2014) provide an extensive review of male detection of sexism and intervention. In particular, they identify two characteristics that tend to play a major role in male observer’s detection of sexism and intervention: the rejection of legitimising beliefs (i.e. the belief that one’s success is due to internal factors such as talent, hard work, and other intrinsic qualities) and the communal orientation (i.e. the tendency of individuals to focus on the well-being of others without expecting direct benefit from it). We suppose that the same mechanisms should lead men to contribute to our project, and thus plan on modifying the presentation of our project to appeal to both aspects (rejection of legitimising beliefs and communal orientation) by clarifying (1) how sex- ist bias might affect the career of women, and (2) how our project can contribute to changing behaviours in academia. The results described in Hardacre and Subašić (2018) and Subašić et al. (2018) point towards one potential additional solution. They show that although framing the inequality is- sue as a common problem for both genders rather than as a women’s issue increases the legitimacy of leaders, an impor- tant aspect to convince men and women to take action is to www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 26 M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia have the support of male leaders. We plan to integrate these adjustments in future presentations of the project. The fourth bias concerns the type of sexism that is re- ported. The study of Williams et al. (2014) provides statistics of recurrent gender bias experienced by women in academia, based on interviews conducted on sixty women in the USA. This study offers a reference to which we can compare the testimonies that we received and allows us to identify poten- tial blind spots. However, we cannot compare directly the proportions given in their studies with our numbers since their classification is different, and the numbers provided re- fer to the proportion of women that have encountered a given bias, while we report on the proportion of a given bias within the testimonies collected. In agreement with Williams et al. (2014), we find a preva- lence of the “prove it again” bias, which corresponds to the category that we named “Questioning Female compe- tence” (66.7 % of interviewees versus 57 % of collected tes- timonies). Most of the behaviours that we identify as “be- haviours that aim at maintaining women in stereotypical fem- inine roles” (69 %) belong in their studies to the “Maternal Wall” (64 %) and to the “reported pressure to take on dead- end traditionally feminine roles” (34.1 %). We also identified several types of bias that were not re- ported as such in Williams et al. (2014). First, we chose to include instances in which the pressure is on men to con- form to typically masculine stereotypes. We consider that, in order to move beyond the stereotypical gender role assign- ments, it is also important to address it and include men in the conversation, as argued earlier in the discussion. Secondly, Williams et al. (2014) report on a sense of isolation among women of colour, but much less among white women. We identified 19 stories that depicted women as outsiders, but we did not collect information on the skin colour of contrib- utors. Finally, 10 % of our stories reported modern sexist or neosexist views, a category which is absent from Williams et al. (2014). On the contrary, several biases reported by Williams et al. (2014) are underrepresented in our testimonies. For ex- ample, they report that 55.3 % of women scientists witnessed “tug-of-war” patterns, which are tensions between female professionals arising from gender bias, such as the “queen bee syndrome” (Staines et al., 1974), when a senior fe- male professional is tougher towards female subordinates. We have not received any testimony describing this pattern. Overall we received very few testimonies in which women behave in a sexist manner, while sexist bias in women exists and can be higher than men’s in some instances (Ellemers et al., 2004). Several studies have shown that ambiguous sexist behaviour was harder to detect when the perpetrator was a woman (Baron et al., 1991; Sterk et al., 2018), which could explain the absence of such testimonies. Williams et al. (2014) also report the prevalence of sexual harassment en- countered (34.5 % of interviewees) while only 2 received tes- timonies qualify as sexual harassment (although 20 % of our testimonies contained behaviours related to the objectifica- tion of women). One plausible explanation is self-censorship, according to the personal discussions we had with potential contributors who had endured or witnessed sexual harass- ment in the workplace. They often feared to be recognised and also considered that comics are not the adequate support for these terrible stories. Considering these aspects, our project should be seen as an incomplete picture of what everyday sexism can look like in academia, the statistics reported in Sect. 2 do not necessarily reflect the proportions of different types of sexism experi- enced by women in academia. For our future interventions, we plan to draw examples from the aforementioned literature to fill the gaps in stereotypes representation and encourage our audience to consider all types of sexism. Comic strips are a good way to give visibility to issues that are usually overlooked. Our project is centred on sex- ism in academia but could be extended to consider other types of prejudices, both independently from sexism, but also from an intersectional point of view (Crenshaw, 1989). Bernard and Cooperdock (2018) provide an alarming syn- thesis on the state of ethnic diversity in Earth Sciences in the US, with no apparent improvement for the past 40 years. It is difficult to estimate the situation in Europe given the absence of unified ethnic statistics for historical and data protection reasons (Simon, 2012), but there is no reason to expect a better representation of people of colour. Con- cerning the situation of LGBTQ in science, although the general society’s opinion has made progress in some coun- tries, a survey of UK physical scientists reported that 28 % of LGBT+ respondents “considered leaving their workplace because of the climate or discrimination towards LGBT+ people” (Dyer et al., 2019). This proportion rose to almost 50 % for trans scientists. Representing in a graphic form the struggles that the LGBTQ community faces could help the rest of academia connect, empathise and become more inclu- sive. Likewise, comics could be an efficient way to convey the experience of disabled scientists and bring cognizance on intentional and unintentional ableism, for example during conferences (Fleming, 2019). Beyond the specific discrimi- natory behaviours that are based on stereotypes against these different categories, we expect to find common ground in the situation of feeling like an outsider and being asked to prove again and again competence in science. For people to con- tribute to our project in these directions, we need to rethink our communication strategies, but also put more resources and energy into this project, which is challenging since we all act on a voluntary basis and have no dedicated time or funding for it. The primary goal of our comics is to depict the situation to our readers. Oftentimes, the contributors are left surprised and shocked by the sexist comments or attitude, and there is a risk of consistently representing women as helpless vic- tims. The bystander intervention approach shows great re- sults in empowering women and men to fight against un- Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia 27 conscious biases (Powel, 2011). Initiatives like ADVANCE- Geo bring these much needed strategies to our commu- nity (ADVANCEGeo, 2020). We also participate in this ef- fort through complementary activities and discussions within our laboratories and at conferences. The communication on our project uses three main modalities: (1) advertisement through social media, (2) traditional communication prac- tices of academia (mobility of researchers, visit of collabora- tors, international conferences) and (3) institutional Equality- Diversity-Inclusion (EDI) initiatives. We reflect hereafter on the importance of each of these modalities to spread our mes- sage and develop common strategies of change with other activists. Over the last two decades, the ease of sharing information to a wide audience online, especially using social media, has allowed the rise of powerful feminist movements, aiming at talking about sexual harassment and aggressions, rape cul- ture and everyday sexism, the most well known and ground- breaking being the #Metoo movement. Within academia, courageous researchers raised their voices to speak out about their harassment experiences and push institutions to act (see for example Jahren, 2016, Wadman, 2017, and Wadman, 2018). Alongside exposing these dreadful stories, we believe it is also important to put a focus on more mundane instances of everyday sexism and microaggressions, in the spirit of the international everyday sexism project, for example (Ev- eryday Sexism Project, 2019b). The dynamics of the online community and solidarity of different initiatives and activists helped us tremendously to amplify our message, as reported in Sect. 3. Additionally, this project has developed in its current form because the necessary spaces existed within the academic world for it to emerge and grow. Two factors played a ma- jor role in the inception of this project. First, the presence of the equality-diversity and communication services at the University Claude Bernard of Lyon (Mission égalité – di- versité, 2019a) and the availability of two of their members, Philippe Liotard and Chloe Schweyer, were crucial to our evolution from a group of scientists experiencing gender bias to activists for gender equality and diversity and inclusion in academia. With their help, our informal exchanges on the everyday sexism that we experienced played the role of a consciousness-raising group, as they were used by second- wave feminism to identify a common pattern of oppression in the society (Sarachild, 1968). The second element was the solicitation from ERC program officer Claudia Alves de Jesus-Rydin to present our experience as an ERC-funded team at the EGU General Assembly, in a session entitled “Promoting and supporting equality of opportunities in geo- sciences” (Coltice and Bocher, 2016). Both of these factors led us to release the first set of comics, one year later, at the same EGU session (Arnould et al., 2017). Likewise, other spaces and periods created within the aca- demic life allowed us to develop our project and raise our am- bitions. Most of us are currently working as researchers. We leverage our collaboration relationships, and take advantage of visits of and to other researchers to communicate on the project, informally, but also during scientific presentations. More importantly, the relative increase of the diversity of backgrounds of academic employees and the change in men- talities makes it more common to have dedicated Equality- Diversity-Inclusion groups within laboratories and institu- tions. These groups play a crucial role in spreading infor- mation and creating initiatives from the local scale to the in- ternational scale. Holmes (2015) uses the framework of Risman (2004) to understand the barriers that women face in academia, with three levels at which women can find barriers to their pro- fessional development: the institutional, the interactional and the individual levels. Generally, institutions develop solu- tions to these different types of barriers with a mainly top- down approach (Buitendijk et al., 2019). However, the devel- opment of our project shows how institutional structures can create opportunities for individual or grass-root actions to emerge and grow. Research has shown that diversity, equality and inclusion improve when all the members of an institution feel they are actors of change (Dobbin and Kalev, 2016). For it to be possible, it is important that institutions support and encourage grass-root initiatives that promote EDI. 5 Conclusions The project Did this really happen?! was created in 2016 by a team of seven scientists working on the geodynamics of Earth’s mantle and lithosphere. After having faced sex- ists microaggressions, discussions arose internally to address these everyday issues. We chose to report on these sexist sit- uations through comic strips. This communication tool has the benefit of being approachable and engaging while show- ing the situations without the need for explanations or inter- pretations. Between 2016 and 2019, we have received 103 testimonies, from which 89 have been accepted, and 23 pub- lished. From this sample of sexist biases collected from the scientific community, we are now able to analyse with more details the types of stereotypes that are still common in our research environments. We have classified the stories into six non-exclusive categories of sexist biases: (1) those which maintain females to stereotypical roles, (2) those which con- fine males to stereotypical roles, (3) those which question fe- male competencies, (4) those which keep women as outsiders in networking contexts, (5) those which objectify women and (6) those which show the backlash of antisexist policies. We found that although all these sexist biases are well repre- sented, whatever the age of the contributor, the country, and the context in which these situations took place, the major- ity of the comics (70 %) follows a situation in which women scientists are defined upon physical stereotypes. The second most common feature is the questioning of female abilities (61 %). Male stereotypes are present in almost half of the www.adv-geosci.net/53/15/2020/ Adv. Geosci., 53, 15–31, 2020 28 M. Bocher et al.: Drawing everyday sexism in academia comics (41 %) while the other categories are less represented. Although modern sexism is not represented abundantly in the comics, it provoked the most controversial feedback that we have received on this project. The large number of testimonies depicting recurring sexist situations suggests that such behaviours are still widespread, and we advocate for more vigilance and actions to fight against sexism in the workplace. These comics can help to point out (un)conscious biases at work. While women are currently more sensitive to these questions (based on the on- line presence, they represent more than 70 % of our audience on social media and more than 95 % of our contributors), one of our objectives is to encourage men to take an active role in addressing sexism by testifying. The short term goal of the team is to produce a more com- plete picture of everyday sexism in academia by producing new comics from the received testimonies. We will also im- prove our diffusion and communication materials so as to increase the accessibility of the project and to promote their use by research institutions. To do that, we will provide open- source presentations and workshops, including comics and bibliography on gender equality. We also plan to design a short movie on “unconscious bias in academia” to improve the visibility of our cause. Another main objective is to lever- age the increasing number of followers to extend the scope of the project to other discriminations. We intend to encour- age discussions with other minorities but are also using our everyday proximity with the students to increase their sen- sitivity on sexists bias and inappropriate behaviours in the academic world. We encourage them to be proactive and are confident as this generation already stands up for what they believe in and embraces equality and inclusion values. Data availability. In order to preserve the anonymity of contribu- tors, the data used for this article cannot be shared. Supplement. The supplement related to this article is available on- line at: https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-53-15-2020-supplement. Author contributions. AA drew all the comics. All authors partici- pated in the collection of testimonies and communication activities. MU, MA, MG, NC and MB participated in data collection and the statistical analysis of the project. MB, MU, MA, NC, and CM con- tributed to the redaction of the article. Competing interests. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Special issue statement. This article is part of the special issue “Di- versity and equality in the geosciences (EGU2019 EOS6.1 & US4, AGU2018 ED41B, JpGU2019 U-02)”. It is a result of the EGU General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7–12 April 2019. Acknowledgements. All comics are hand-drawn by Alice Adenis – distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. 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All rights reserved. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Last year, I was delighted by the surprising news that our students established a new club (dong-ari) to study feminism. Even though I was fascinated by this news, I realized that I was ignorant of this new educational need until now. In fact, I kept thinking that feminism and inclusiveness are very important in our lives, but sadly, is mostly rejected as premature by the Korean medical community. However, inspired by our students, I reflected on my own medical education. Surprisingly, I became aware of a clear need for inclusiveness and “political correctness” in medical education. Students have courageously started to point out faculty members’ politically incorrect remarks. Furthermore, they view the issue not just with resentment but also from an academic perspective; more and more students are familiar with feminist studies, thanks to their liberal pre-medical education, and gender equality education during elemen- tary and secondary school. They seek greater gender sensitivity in society, including the medical community [1]. Indeed, the entire Korean society is now dealing with the #MeToo movement. Although all politically incorrect remarks amount to sexual harassment, in- creased gender sensitivity on the part of students and the general public requires faculty members to critically reflect on their behavior. These circumstances raise the questions: “Are we, the medical community and educators of that community, well prepared for the future? Can we remain trust- worthy? What should we do, what should we teach and what should we fix?” We are at a critical point in medical education, where we need to reinforce trust among students, patients, their families, and medical care providers. These objectives can be achieved by address- ing the new educational need for political correctness. In this article, I will posit that medical education should be critically examined and reformed in order to achieve political correctness. This aim is consistent with the fundamental goal of the medical profession to be trustworthy and to create “the healing relationship [2].” In other words, in order to stay medically correct, we should be politically correct. Of course, this starts in class. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.3946/kjme.2018.100&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-09-01 Claire Junga Kim : Political correctness for medical correctness 258 Korean J Med Educ 2018 Sep; 30(3): 000-000. Political correctness may be defined as “the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against [3].” What politically incorrect events, behaviors, or language are found in medical education? To name a few ex- amples: describing homosexuality explicitly or implicitly as a disease; ridiculing sexual identity; belittling female medical professionals and patients; stereotyping based on sex; dismissing certain groups of people as “impolite” without an effort to understand their conflict with behavioral norms in clinical settings; and ignoring the existence of relationships other than heterosexual gender-conforming couple. These problems are aggra- vated by the fact that there is no discussion during medical education of the unique characteristics of any social minority, and by the absence of a policy prohibiting any form of discrimination, including hate speech. It should be so obvious as to not require repeating that political correctness is necessary in a society where every individual has equal rights. Inspired by students’ awareness, I attempt to show why political correctness is necessary in medical education; it is because political correctness in medical education is the precondition for medical correctness. First, as professionals who took the oath to care for the sick and not to harm them, we should pay attention to whether medical care is provided to those in need and at the same time does not cause unjustifiable harm. Politically incorrect medical education betrays this ideal since it leads to discriminatory medical service. When medical professionals define something that is not a disease as a disease, or consider certain groups of people inferior to others, the affected people cannot achieve the levels of health that they would have achieved other- wise. In fact, access to health care is determined not only by the ability to pay; it can also be influenced by what values medicine explicitly/implicitly advocates. For example, doctors who believe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) identity is a disease cannot provide valid medical care to these patient groups; consequently, both medical care utilization and the health of LGBTQ people suffer. This limitation is also observed in case of LGBTQ medical professionals: the heterosexual male-centered subculture of medicine [4] may marginalize and hinder them from functioning to their full potential. This not only constitutes an un- healthy environment for such medical professionals, but also fails to create an inclusive medical practice for patients. This failure is caused by LGBTQ patients feeling that they are not welcome by medical pro- fessionals, just as LGBTQ professionals themselves are prevented from expressing their own values and identities in their medical practice and cannot assure their patients of equal care. Thus, if one seriously considers the harm that medicine may cause, one inevitably concludes that political incorrectness in medi- cine leads to medical incorrectness. Due to the normative power that medicine and medical professionals enjoy, medical professionals may cause harm when they treat patients. Although the discussion of “do no harm” in Korea has largely been focused on physical harms such as pain during futile treatments, the harm that medical professionals may cause includes psychological harm such as stigmatization. We classify patients as normal and pathological, and sub-categorize the latter category for understanding and treatment purposes. These acti- vities in medicine may accompany the harms that I alluded to, but can be justified by the fact that we make those classifications and categorizations for the treat- ment of patients and there is a reasonable prospect for successful treatment. In other words, abuse of the normative power of medicine without such justification Claire Junga Kim : Political correctness for medical correctness 259 cannot be accepted. For example, pathologizing specific conditions such as sexual orientation cannot be justified because the resulting stigmatization cannot be justified for the treatment purposes. Our mission as medical teachers is to teach students to understand the dual nature of our power and to further the ideals of the Hippocratic Oath. Second, we should be politically correct in order to avoid medical incorrectness because political incor- rectness may produce scientifically skewed knowledge. Contrary to the belief in the absolute objectiveness of science, it is a well-known fact that science has a value-driven bias. This bias applies to medical science as well [5]. For example, Martin [6] has pointed out how stereotyped male-female roles have influenced “science.” When scientists’ views are biased as a result of the social structure, their questions, research methods, and con- clusions are so distorted that they cannot capture the scientific truth. In addition to stereotyping, assuming that a certain group of people doesn’t even exist is also detrimental to medical science. Because such assump- tions hinder research of that group, we lack sufficient knowledge of what that group needs in order to achieve physical, mental, and social well-being [7]. These all prevent us from being medically correct since they blind us. Needless to say, medical faculty members play a crucial role in determining the culture of schools and hospitals. If we as medical faculty members practice political correctness, we can change our culture and bring about medically correct research, practice, and delivery of healthcare. Furthermore, since this is of paramount importance, professional bodies and academic associations must provide systematic policy-level lead- ership and recommendations. The Korean Society of Medical Education, of course, should assume this responsibility. In terms of medical education, three activities are crucial: open discussion of the issue, integration into education, and declaration of policy. First, we should start open discussion on political correctness in medical education and share the results. Occasionally, the em- phasis on political correctness results in total silence on the subject. There is a tendency to avoid sensitive subjects, such as the differences between men and women or the gender-nonconforming population. How- ever, as noted, when we avoid discussing something, it becomes as if it does not even exist and any valuable knowledge or service the discussion may provide becomes unattainable. Therefore, we need a forum for open discussion on the issue of political correctness in medical education. In this regard, students can play a pivotal role in the discussion. Their keen perception is a valuable resource. Second, a course that integrates political correctness into medical education is needed. Medical students are already asking for education on diversity and gender equality [1]. This demand is clear evidence suggesting a new educational need [8]. Increased public awareness on this issue also shows the critical need for a systematic approach to teaching and learning political correctness in order to remain trustworthy professionals. Last, but not the least, a policy-level approach by academic associations and professional bodies is needed. In various ways, such as publishing recommendations or reports, or commenting on public issues, academic associations or professional bodies can reconfirm to their members and the public their mission as a healing profession. Being politically correct is an undeniable need in today’s medical education. Enhanced awareness on the part of public and students deserves respect from doctors and educators. And this is crucially related to the ideals of medical professionals. Again, being politically correct is not just about maintaining a polite discourse— Claire Junga Kim : Political correctness for medical correctness 260 Korean J Med Educ 2018 Sep; 30(3): 000-000. it is also about being medically correct. ORCID: Claire Junga Kim: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6889-5478 Acknowledgements: None. Funding: None. Conflicts of interest: No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported. Author Contributions: Whole process, ranging from conception of the work to critical revision, was done by the author. References 1. Desirable pre-med curriculum. Student presentation on self-learning fare: team leadership project meeting; December 3, 2017; Seoul, Korea. 2. Pellegrino ED, Thomasma DC. The virtues in medical practice. New York, USA: Oxford University Press; 1993. 3. English Oxford Living Dictionaries. Definition of pol- itical correctness in English. Web Site. https://en. oxforddictionaries.com/definition/political_correctness. Accessed March 28, 2018. 4. Cheng LF, Yang HC. Learning about gender on campus: an analysis of the hidden curriculum for medical students. Med Educ. 2015;49(3):321-331. 5. Dijkstra AF, Verdonk P, Lagro-Janssen AL. Gender bias in medical textbooks: examples from coronary heart disease, depression, alcohol abuse and pharmacology. Med Educ. 2008;42(10):1021-1028. 6. Martin E. 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We argue that in the United States and throughout the industrialized West, left- and right-wing activists use digital and legacy media differently to achieve political goals. Although left-wing actors operate primarily through “hashtag activism” and offline protest, right-wing activists manipulate legacy media, migrate to alternative platforms, and work strategically with partisan media to spread their messages. Although scholarship suggests that the right has embraced strategic disinformation and conspiracy theories more than the left, more research is needed to reveal the magnitude and character of left-wing disinformation. Such ideological asymmetries between left- and right-wing activism hold critical implications for democratic practice, social media governance, and the interdisciplinary study of digital politics. A ctivism is a fixture of contemporary politics, both democratic and otherwise. At its core is the drive to enact or pre- vent political, cultural, and/or social changes by a range of means. Although nonelite citizens have advanced activist claims against the powers that be for millennia (1), in the 21st century, digital media offer un- precedented tools for activists around the world to help realize their sociopolitical visions. In this review, which focuses on the United States but also incorporates evidence from other countries, we argue that both the ideological left and right use the ad- ditional channels and low-cost parti- cipation afforded by digital media to reach potentially sympathetic publics. However, despite some similarities, re- cent research indicates that left and right differ sharply in how they use di- gital media. Whereas the left generally combines on- and offline protest ac- tions with transmedia branding, an ap- proach known as “hashtag activism” (2), the right tends to eschew offline protest (notwithstanding a few prominent excep- tions), preferring instead a combination of “trolling” or manipulating mainstream me- dia, protest against and even strategic exit from platforms owned by “Big Tech,” and cooperation with ideologically friendly me- dia outlets. Moreover, available evidence suggests that the right has invested far more than the left in disinformation and conspiracy theories as core components of its activist repertoire, although a lack of sim- ilar research on the left makes comparisons difficult. These asymmetric trends hold im- portant implications both for scholarship and for democratic practice. Low cost, high benefit: Clicktivism and political participation Since the start of social media’s diffusion throughout Western societies, concerns have been raised about its efficacy for political par- ticipation. One prominent early objection was that “slacktivism” or “clicktivism,” low-cost sym- bolic actions such as sharing, “liking,” changing one’s profile image, and generally posting ac- tivist content on social media, projects an impression of efficacy without actually being effective (3). The two assumptions underlying this objection are, first, that such digitally mediated symbolic behaviors are generally not consequential in and of themselves and, sec- ond, that they substitute for more impactful actions such as voting or offline protest. Later, we will turn to recent research on how digital activism can be highly impactful on its own, contributing to phenomena such as disinfor- mation. Meanwhile, empirical research has consistently failed to support the proposition that digital action substitutes for offline action (4–6). That is, people who are strongly inte- rested in politics tend to express that interest through both online and offline behaviors. Dig- ital political activities–including low-cost ones– are a complement to, not a substitute for, their offline counterparts. Inversely, those who are uninterested in politics tend to avoid it both online and offline. Specifically, Lane et al. found that sharing information about politics on social media predicted offline political ac- tivities such as attending political meetings, contacting public officials, and donating money to political campaigns (4). de Zúñiga et al. (5) found that the use of social media to address community problems, which they call “social media social capital,” predicted the propensity to engage in similar activities offline. And a meta- analysis of 106 survey studies of young people's civic and political use of digital media in >35 countries found thatthe use of digital media for political purposes was positively correlated with offline political and civic engagement (6). The unanimity of the literature on this point has led some to declare that the clicktivism debate is conclusively settled (7). However, this conclusion is premature given several im- portant questions that lack solid empirical answers. One of the most pressing begins with the observation that political engage- ment is issue specific: An individual can be engaged with one or more issues and disen- gaged from others. The clicktivism question then evolves from whether low-cost digital ac- tivities exhaust one’s engagement with politics in general to whether such activities may do so for specific issues that lie beyond the person’s usual interests. For example, whereas liking, sharing, and posting memes about environ- mental topics may be just one of many ways an environmentalist engages with her pet issue, it may be the only way she does so for, say, Black Lives Matter when that movement is trending nationally on Twitter. The pat- tern of punctuated equilibrium that typ- ifies social movement activity on social media implies that some variant of this will be true at least some of the time. To continue with the Black Lives Matter example, a study that tracked related tweets over a 1-year period overlapping the movement’s birth showed a few sharp peaks of interest (most prominently in August, November, and December of 2014 and in April and May of 2015) separated by lengthy periods of much lower activity (Fig. 1) (8). This is typical of such movements’ social media activity and indeed of social me- dia in general (9). Logically, the bursts of attention that create such peaks must be provided by people (or bots, a non-negligible possibility) who engage for a short time and then depart, leaving a com- mitted core of activists to sustain the baseline conversation. Whether such participation is considered clicktivism is more a question of philosophy than empiricism. On the one hand, the degree of individual commitment is un- doubtedly low, but on the other, the aggregate crests of attention generated by thousands or millions of such actions can catapult a protest movement from obscurity to international pro- minence (10). As Freelon et al. document (8), grassroots attention on social media played a substantial role in spreading the initial pub- lic awareness of Black Lives Matter’s existence and goals, which was an essential precursor to its widespread acceptance by the American DEMOCRACY IN THE BALANCE Freelon et al., Science 369, 1197–1201 (2020) 4 September 2020 1 of 5 “Digital political activities–including low-cost ones–are a complement to, not a substitute for, their offline counterparts.” 1Hussman School of Journalism and Media, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. 2Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. 3Department of Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. *Corresponding author. Email: freelon@email.unc.edu o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ public in mid-2020 (11). Our hypothetical en- vironmentalist may not have engaged with Black Lives Matter at all if low-cost online actions were unavailable; thus, rather than substituting for higher-cost street-level activ- ism, online actions broaden symbolic support for movements (12). Our main arguments on clicktivism can be summarized thusly: There is a continuum of online activist participation ranging from post- ing and liking content to high-level decision- making as a full-time activist. Even more, as the remainder of this review clearly reveals through the lens of recent empirical research, low-cost digital activities can sum to sub- stantial effects ranging from publicizing movements for mass audiences to circulating disinformation that undermines democratic deliberation and processes. A number of American activist movements have substan- tially furthered their goals through digital means over the past decade, including Oc- cupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo/ #TimesUp, far-right anti-immigration advo- cates, and the mens’ rights movement. Sim- ilar results have been observed outside of the United States (10, 12, 13). To add a right-wing example to the Black Lives Matter case de- tailed above, Benkler et al. explain how far- right media, activists, and social media users successfully introduced the term “globalist,” an anti-Semitic dog whistle, into the journal- istic mainstream (14). This effort began with white nationalist sites such as VDARE and continued through Breitbart (a far-right site that avoids explicit white nationalism), Fox News, and the Trump administration after the 2016 election, finally ending up as a synonym for “neoconservative” in The New York Times. The online-only media outlets at the begin- ning of this chain rely heavily on social media sharing to boost their messages (15). In the United States, this is the main way they attract the attention of Fox News, which is more di- rectly networked with more traditional media outlets and the Trump administration. Over- all, this example demonstrates how far-right actors can insert their preferred terminology and ideas into more “respectable” outlets that would otherwise try to avoid such associa- tions. Other studies have demonstrated that sites such as Breitbart (and their European counterparts) serve similar “bridging” func- tions between far-right and legacy media (16, 17). In these and other ways, slacktivism has been a consequential component of con- temporary social movements and will likely continue to be so in the future. The empirical record has very little to say on the question of ideological asymmetries in slacktivism, mostly because left-wing protests have been studied far more than right-wing protests (18). Based on what we know about how most areas of life typically work online, we might expect that right-wing actors would use online and offline means to pursue their interests similarly to the way that those on the left do. One survey-based study found that for American respondents with low political interest, “easy political behaviors [such as liking and commenting on social media] can be gateway behaviors to more significant po- litical activities,” but that ideology was not a significant predictor of this tendency (19). Left- and right-wing digital strategies and ecosystems One of digital media’s most important contrib- utions to activism is how they have opened new pathways to reach target audiences. Be- fore the digital age, protesters who wished to project their messages nationally or interna- tionally had only one viable option: attracting the news media’s attention, which they usually did through street protests. Mailing lists and alternative media extended their reach only moderately. Today, digital media afford activ- ists across the political spectrum two general methods of promoting their causes. The first is to circumvent the news media entirely and appeal directly to digital platform users. This method offers the advantage of placing mes- sage control mostly in the hands of activists and sympathetic partiesbut by definitionmostly reaches people who are already platform users. Second, activists use digital platforms to attract journalists’ attention (because most use social media extensively as a gauge of public opin- ion and as a source of stories) (20) in the hopes that they will cover their movement. The ad- vantage here is that news outlets can reach in- dividuals outside of the digital spheres within which activists operate, as well as those who are not digitally active at all, but may also alter activist messages in ways that are not always favorabletomovements(21). These twomethods are not mutually exclusive; many of the best- known activist movements in recent years have used both (2, 8, 22). Although activists on both sides use digital media to reach audiences directly and indi- rectly through the news media, the left and the right have each evolved their own dis- tinct style of doing so. The dominant style on the left has been labeled hashtag activism (2, 23, 24) and bears three main distinguish- ing characteristics. The first and foremost of these is the creation of a declarative hashtag to serve as the movement’s unifying slogan; e.g., #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and #Fightfor15 became shorthand for a host of demands and priorities. The limited amount of attention that most people decide to allocate to news in general and activist appeals in particular gua- rantees that only a few protest hashtags will attain national or international prominence. Such hashtags often come to the public’s at- tention through news coverage of shocking and disruptive events, such as Michael Brown’s death at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO (#BlackLivesMatter), the disclosure of Harvey Weinstein’s decades- long history of sexual predation (#MeToo), and a series of American fast-food worker strikes in 2012–2013 (#Fightfor15). Second, such hash- tags are buoyed by the widespread engage- ment of nonelites, ordinary citizens who relate to the hashtag’s core message or simply want to declare their support. This is what causes them to “trend” on social media and thereby trigger the third element: attention and support from elite third parties. Most prominent among these are mainstream news outlets, which are often thefirstelitestopublicizeactivisthashtags.Others include celebrities, businesses, and politicians, all of whom hold disproportionate power to direct attention to movements. Examples in- clude hip-hop artists Talib Kweli and Common (#BlackLivesMatter), ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s (#BlackLivesMatter), actress Alyssa Milano (#MeToo), and Senator Bernie Sanders (#Fightfor15). Although much hashtag activism research is U.S. focused, the phenomenon has alsobeenobservedincountriessuchasArgentina (25), Bangladesh (26), France (27), and India (27). The right engages with these dual pathways very differently. Several fundamental differ- ences with the left explain this. First, American conservatives’ mistrust of the mainstream news media has been intensifying for decades (28, 29), a pattern that seems to be common on the right across Europe and India as well (30–32). The sense that traditional news out- lets are irredeemably biased against con- servatives is one of the driving factors in the establishment of right-wing media ecosystems, the roots of which in the United States reach back at least to the 1930s (33). Second, con- servatives have more recently developed an analogous belief that “Big Tech,” a pejorative term for the companies that produce and main- tain the internet’s most widely used commu- nication platforms and hardware, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon, is also biased against them (34). These two beliefs have led the right to interact with the news media and tech platforms in more radi- cally oppositional ways than the left despite the latter’s critiques of those institutions. Dis- taste for (and being deplatformed from) Big Tech has prompted some far-right users to de- camp to platforms more accepting of their politics, including Telegram, Gab, and Voat (35). Third, since 2016, the center-right’s pres- ence on social media has diminished substan- tially (14, 36, 37), leaving the far right as the dominant conservative presence. Together, these short- and long-term trends have shifted the right into a world apart from the left and center, and its activist tactics reflect that re- ality. Figure 2 quantifies this phenomenon by depicting the percentages of “fragmented” Freelon et al., Science 369, 1197–1201 (2020) 4 September 2020 2 of 5 o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ users that retweeted media outlets along the ideological spectrum in 2017. Outlets with pre- dominantly far-right audiences attracted nearly four times more fragmented users (those that disproportionately retweeted within one parti- tion) than the second most fragmented partition. Conservative mistrust of the mainstream media has inspired two distinctive tactics for interacting with two kinds of media outlets. Those that lack an explicitly conservative out- look often find themselves targeted by media manipulation, an umbrella term that refers to a repertoire of bad-faith tactics intended to attract journalistic attention (22). One of the most prominent of these, known as “trading up the chain,” involves planting a sensation- alistic hoax, conspiracy theory, or extreme viewpoint in a small or local news outlet that may not fact-check it (22, 38). This story may then be repeated by larger outlets, either be- cause of its content or because an elite (such as Donald Trump) has endorsed it. Whether the underlying claim is presented as true or debunked, the goal of spreading it further is fulfilled. By contrast, right-wing activists’ in- teractions with ideologically friendly outlets are understandably far less contentious. What Benkler et al. have called the American “right- wing media ecosystem” is a densely interlinked region of the media network that stands far apart from other media in terms of digital, professional, and ideological connections (14, 16). Its reach on social media platforms is extensive, in most cases larger than its left- wing equivalent (14). The ostensibly more journalistic outlets in this network, such as Fox News and the Daily Caller, regularly le- gitimize content surfaced by the more radical outlets, which include Infowars, Gateway Pundit, and Breitbart. The right-wing media ecosystem’s favored topics during the Trump administration have prominently included un- compromising opposition to non-Western im- migration, the evils of the so-called “deep state,” and attacks on the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation (14). Two other tactics used disproportionately by right-wing actors are specific to social plat- forms. The first is the strategic manipulation of platform algorithms to increase attention to desired messages. Much as the gatekeep- ing function of legacy journalism shaped the norms, practices, and patterns of news cov- erage of social movements, social platforms’ emphasis on user engagement affects what information is displayed to individual users, for example, by giving greater reach to emo- tionally charged content, videos, and visual graphics over text (39). Thus, successful online activists must understand how social plat- forms algorithmically sort content to ensure that their own is given priority. Although both left- and right-wing actors engage in such tactics, preliminary evidence suggests that the right has been more successful. For instance, platforms such as YouTube have recommen- ded increasingly extreme far-right content to viewers of more moderate right-wing channels to maximize user engagement with the site (40). Similar techniques include optimizing search engine keywords so that interested parties will more readily find ideologically biased results (41) and the use of fake accounts and bots to imply widespread consensus on social media (42). Because journalists often rely on engagement metrics such as Twitter’s “Trending Topics” to determine which stories should be covered and how they should be framed, successful algorithmic manipulation may help to set legacy media agendas (22). Second, in response to deplatforming, shadow banning, and content moderation by Big Tech, some right-wing actors have migrated to “alt- tech” equivalents that offer more permissive moderation. These include social media sites dedicated to right-wing communities, such as 4chan and 8chan, the Twitter alternatives Parler and Gab, and the YouTube alternative BitChute, as well as more ideologically neutral platforms such as Discord and Telegram (35). Although alt-tech platforms are much smaller than their mainstream counterparts, they al- low partisan and fringe communities to exist without opposition from alternative viewpoints. Studies have demonstrated a high prevalence of hate speech on 4chan (43), Gab (44), and BitChute (45), which is typically moderated on more mainstream social platforms. These spaces allow more extreme viewpoints to thrive, whereas mainstream social media pri- marily host less extreme content designed to reach wider audiences (22). The most relevant implications of the dif- ferences between how left- and right-wing ac- tivist networks reach their respective audiences derive from their very different relationships with the platforms they use. The left largely engages directly with traditional and social media, using them as primary communication venues to develop and distribute activist mes- sages. These outlets and platforms present themselves as what Cass Sunstein called “gen- eral interest intermediaries” (46), information environments that admit a wide range of per- spectives. Consequently, left-wing ideas tend to connect with individuals and institutions along a much broader range of the ideological spectrum than the right, including much of the center (14). By contrast, the right has created and used its own ideologically exclusive media ecosystem and digital platforms even as it continues to engage with the best-known tech platforms and news outlets out of necessity. These developments in turn (along with other nondigital factors) fuel what scholars have called “asymmetric polarization,” the proposition Freelon et al., Science 369, 1197–1201 (2020) 4 September 2020 3 of 5 June 2014 July August September October November January 2015 February March April MayDecember Tw ee ts p os te d pe r da y 0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 Million Initial protests after Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri Death of Freddie Gray in police custody in Baltimore, Maryland Decision to not indict New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo, whose chokehold killed Eric Garner Decision to not indict Darren Wilson Fig. 1. Daily tweets about police violence and Black Lives Matter, June 2014 to May 2015. Reproduced with permission from (8). See (58) for the data and code used in creating this figure. DEMOCRACY IN THE BALANCE o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ that conservatives have grown more extreme over the past few decadesthanliberals(14, 37, 47). Asymmetric polarization’s broader consequences include less common ground between opposing political sides, increasingly extreme policies when conservatives are elected, and more opportunities for ideologically branded mis- and disinformation to spread on the right, which we discuss further in the next section. Emerging research on asymmetric disinformation Since the 2016 U.S. and U.K. Brexit elections, scholars, the news media, and international publics have become increasingly concerned with the problem of false and misleading political content (14, 22, 48, 49). This general pheno- menon has multiple variants with a variety of labels, including the ubiq- uitous and ambiguous “fake news,” which we avoid. Here, we will focus on disinformation, which we define as “all forms of false, inaccurate, or misleading information designed, pre- sented and promoted to intentionally cause public harm or for profit” (48). Unlike misinformation, which refers to misleading content spread inadver- tently, disseminators of disinformation knowtheirmessagesaredeceitful.Actors behind such deceptive content seek to spread conspiracy theories, false rumors, hoaxes, and inflammatory opinions to promote their ideological viewpoints, decrease trust in mainstream insti- tutions, and recruit others to their causes (22). The relevant literature offers three types of evidence in support of the proposition that disinformation is more prevalent on the right than on the left, although to our knowledge this has not been directly tested. First, evidence from psychological studies indicates that conserva- tive individuals are more likely than liberals to prefer the kinds of closed media environ- ments (sometimes called “echo chambers”) that facilitate the spread of mis- and disinfor- mation (50), believe conspiracy theories when cued by official denials of conspiratorial causes (51), and tolerate the spreading of disinforma- tion by politicians (52). Second, analyses of false news diffusion on social media have generally shown a tendency for conservatives to share such content more than liberals (53, 54). Third, the most visible mainstream news media out- lets, upon which the left relies much more heavily for political information than the right, have a long history of fact-checking norms that largely prevent disinformation from thriv- ing there (14), which is why understanding how the news industry operates helps individ- uals avoid disinformation (55). Existing research provides numerous exam- ples of conservative-targeted disinformation, in which right-wing media ecosystems around the world are often centrally implicated (49, 56, 57). In the United States, the alt-right, unapologetic white nationalists, and others on the rightmost fringe attract relatively small audiences and must rely on media outlets at higher levels of the ecosystem to help circulate their disinformation and other extreme ideas broadly (14). The fringes are not always suc- cessful; in particular, conspiracy theories im- plicating a Washington, DC, pizza parlor as the center of a Democrat-controlled pedophilia ring and accusing a left-wing activist of mur- dering a counterprotester at the 2017 Unite the Right rally were not endorsed by the ecosys- tem’s upper echelons (14, 38). The ranks of disinformation stories that achieved greater notoriety include the Seth Rich conspiracy, in which a Hillary Clinton staffer was allegedly murdered because of what he knew about her emails. (Rich was killed in Washington, DC, on 10 July 2016 by unknown assailants, but no credible evidence links his death to Clinton.) The story originated among fringe ecosystem users on Twitter and Reddit in the weeks after Rich’s death (14). Sean Hannity covered the conspiracy multiple times in 2017 on his eponymous Fox News program, although the network eventually retracted the story. More recently, our analysis shows thatthe top ranks of the Twitter network discussing the debunked 2020 documentary Plandemic (which makes unsubstantiated and scientifically unsound allegations about COVID-19) in April and May of 2020 prominently includes right-wing media ecosystem members such as GatewayPundit (@gatewaypundit) and commentators for Fox News (@greggutfeld) and Infowars (@liberty- tarian) (58). In this way, the right-wing media ecosystem circulates sensationalistic content to an ideologically friendly audience free of the sorts of editorial practices that would prevent the spread of false information. The goal, as with much disinformation, is to support the in- group and denigrate the outgroup, even at the expense of verifiable truth. Perhaps because of the implications of the research reviewed above, very few studies have directly investigated online left- wing disinformation or conspiracy theories at scale. The studies show- ing a conservative-leaning asymmetry in social media false news sharing largely draw their data from before the 2016 election (53, 54). If liberals have changed in their susceptibility to dis- information in the ensuing years, pos- sibly because of incentives introduced by strong anti-Trump animus, we do not yet know. This could be a case of failing to find that which is not sought. The implications of such research are highly relevant to democratic practice: For one, they will help us understand the extent of the problem, who is most acutely affected, and under what con- ditions. Understanding the ideological and psychological antecedents of dis- information susceptibility is an impor- tant first step in targeting interventions to counteract it. To the extent that we as citizens value a democracy free of fraudulent attempts at opinion manip- ulation, we should investigate all con- texts in which it might lurk. Two existing studies, along with our own analysis of recent Twitter data, offer some evidence that left-leaning disinformation may not be as rare as the literature suggests. First, research published by Buzzfeed in October 2016 found that although conservative Facebook pages posted nearly double the proportion of false or partly false content as liberal pages, such content garnered much higher median shares per post on left-wing pages than on right-wing ones (59). (We should note that this report only analyzed six Facebook pages in total, its data were not made public, and it is possible that false content on right-leaning pages accrued more shares in total given that there was more of it.) Second, a recent study found that tweets posted by Russian disinfor- mation agents masquerading as left-wing African American activists attracted more attention on a per-tweet basis than either those by conservative identities or non-Black left-leaning identities (60). This demonstrates a level of vulnerability to disinformation on Freelon et al., Science 369, 1197–1201 (2020) 4 September 2020 4 of 5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Far left Center left Center Center right Far right P er ce nt ag e of f ra gm en te d us er s 41,176/41,176/ 325,771325,771 8998/8998/ 187,861187,861 106,008 /106,008 / 224,381224,381 632/632/ 54,93254,932 632/ 54,932 12,343/12,343/ 260,248260,248 12,343/ 260,248 41,176/ 325,771 8998/ 187,861 106,008 / 224,381 Fig. 2. Percentages of fragmented users retweeting media outlets across five ideological partitions. The denominator for each percentage is the number of users who retweeted (shared content from) at least one media outlet in that partition, whereas the numerator is the number of users for whom at least 80% of their retweets were of outlets in that partition (i.e., “fragmented” users). This figure depicts the behavior of the 1.82 million unique Twitter users in the dataset who retweeted three or more media accounts. The dataset upon which this figure is based comes from (37) and contains >88 million tweets about six major news issues throughout 2017. Media outlets and corresponding ideological classifications come from (14). See (58) for the data and code used in creating this figure. o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/ the left that is not often acknowledged. Third, we find that tweets mentioning the key words “anonymous” and “trump” posted between 31 May 2020 (when the Anonymous hacktivist collective released a cache of documents pur- porting to prove, among other accusations, that Donald Trump was involved in child sex trafficking) and 2 June 2020 were retweeted >1.1 million times, more than double the total retweet count for Plandemic in our analysis above (58). In contrast to the Plandemic net- work, the most-retweeted users on this topic are overwhelmingly nonelites with few fol- lowers (except for @youranoncentral, which is ostensibly controlled by Anonymous), not well- known liberals or mainstream news outlets. We acknowledge that these findings are pre- liminary and raise pressing validity questions— many of the attention metrics boosting these stories could have been generated by bots, for example—but we include them here for lack of more rigorous research on the matter. Taken together, we believe that they suffice to justify further investigation into disinfor- mation aimed at the left. Conclusion and future research This review offers three main sets of conclu- sions. First, people participate in online activ- ism along a wide spectrum of commitment levels, from liking and sharing content, to the back-and-forth of political discussion, to involvement as core movement leaders. Low- cost online actions do not harm activist goals; on the contrary, they help to boost activist topics and concerns to the levels of public visibility necessary to enact or prevent change. Both the left and right benefit from this basic dynamic of online activism. However, there is still much to learn about how clicktivism op- erates; for example, we still do not know how frequently hashtag-based conversations or signal-boosting extreme perspectives change people’s minds or behaviors. Second, the left and right generally engage in two distinct styles of online outreach: hashtag activism and online advocacy spearheaded by the right- wing media ecosystem, respectively. The iso- lation of the far right from the rest of the ideological spectrum results in asymmetric polarization and complicates the process of governing ideologically diverse polities. Key areas for future research here include mea- suring the relative capacities of these two styles in reaching, persuading, mobilizing, and antagonizing elites and nonelites on both sides. Third, disinformation distribution ap- pears to be one of the key functions of right- wing media ecosystems. However, the marked lack of research on left-wing disinformation leaves many questions about how it operates, who is most at risk, and how serious a problem it is, making such research an urgent priority. The very limited number of studies on right- wing online protest and activist hashtag use is similarly glaring. Moving forward, research- ers should endeavor to discover whether our current empirical understanding of left- and right-wing activism online represents reality faithfully or is a product of systematic gaps in case selection. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. C. Tilly, L. J. Wood, Social Movements 1768–2012 (Routledge, 2013). 2. S. J. Jackson, M. Bailey, B. F. 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Hameleers, Politics Gov. 8, 146–157 (2020). 58. Data, code, and documentation used to conduct the original empirical analyses for: D. Freelon, A. Marwick, D. Kreiss, False equivalencies: Online activism from left to right, Harvard Dataverse (2020); 10.7910/DVN/ZH1EWA. 59. C. Silverman, L. Strapagiel, H. Shaban, E. Hall, J. Singer-Vine, BuzzFeed News, 20 October 2016; https://www.buzzfeednews. com/article/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-analysis. 60. D. Freelon et al., Soc. Sci. Comput. Rev. (2020). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of K. Adams and M. Reddi. Funding: The empirical analysis shown in Fig. 1 was supported by grant no. 201600019 from the Spencer Foundation. The empirical analysis shown in Fig. 2 was supported by grant no. GR-2018-55703 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Author contributions: D.F. wrote the initial draft of this review and conducted all original empirical analyses. A.M. and D.K. contributed to writing and editing the review. Competing interests:The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data, code, and documentation used to conduct the original empirical analyses in this review (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, and the “plandemic” and “anonymous trump” analyses) are available on the Harvard Dataverse (58). 10.1126/science.abb2428 Freelon et al., Science 369, 1197–1201 (2020) 4 September 2020 5 of 5 DEMOCRACY IN THE BALANCE o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://doi.org/ https://cmsimpact.org/blmreport https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html http://doi.org/ http://doi.org/ http://doi.org/ https://kennyjoseph.github.io/papers/dsj.pdf https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/KF-Twitter-Report-Part1-v6.pdf https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/KF-Twitter-Report-Part1-v6.pdf https://10.1145/3351095.3372879 https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids/ https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids/ http://doi.org/ https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/15670 https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/15670 http://doi.org/ https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.01984 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/final-report-high-level-expert-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/final-report-high-level-expert-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/final-report-high-level-expert-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation https://10.7910/DVN/ZH1EWA https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-analysis https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-analysis http://science.sciencemag.org/ False equivalencies: Online activism from left to right Deen Freelon, Alice Marwick and Daniel Kreiss DOI: 10.1126/science.abb2428 (6508), 1197-1201.369Science ARTICLE TOOLS http://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6508/1197 CONTENT RELATED http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1147.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1192.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1188.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1183.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1181.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1179.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1176.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1174.full REFERENCES http://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6508/1197#BIBL This article cites 30 articles, 4 of which you can access for free PERMISSIONS http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions Terms of ServiceUse of this article is subject to the is a registered trademark of AAAS.ScienceScience, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. 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No claim to original U.S. Government Works Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of o n A p ril 5 , 2 0 2 1 h ttp ://scie n ce .scie n ce m a g .o rg / D o w n lo a d e d fro m http://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6508/1197 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1174.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1176.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1179.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1181.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1183.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1188.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1192.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1147.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6508/1197#BIBL http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions http://www.sciencemag.org/about/terms-service http://science.sciencemag.org/ work_7qyju2ba45gdlil2fd6wcjkwzm ---- [PDF] Top 10 Things Women Anesthesiologists Must Do for Academic Promotion | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.1097/AIA.0000000000000196 Corpus ID: 47013148Top 10 Things Women Anesthesiologists Must Do for Academic Promotion @article{Pai2018Top1T, title={Top 10 Things Women Anesthesiologists Must Do for Academic Promotion}, author={S. Pai}, journal={International Anesthesiology Clinics}, year={2018}, volume={56}, pages={96–109} } S. Pai Published 2018 Medicine International Anesthesiology Clinics As gender equality and equity continue to progress, shining a spotlight on academic promotion for women in anesthesiology may help to ensure equal academic advancement for future anesthesiologists, regardless of their gender. Academic promotion can be simply explained as the stepwise process of advancing in rank from instructor to assistant professor, associate professor, and then professor. Yet, even without considering gender, the process of academic promotion is complex, with significant… Expand View on Wolters Kluwer medschool.umaryland.edu Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 3 Citations View All Topics from this paper Mechlorethamine tocopherylquinone 3 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Gender-Based Disparity in Academic Ranking and Research Productivity Among Canadian Anesthesiology Faculty Eric N. Esslinger, Michael van der Westhuizen, S. Jalal, S. Masud, F. Khosa Medicine Cureus 2020 PDF View 1 excerpt Save Alert Research Feed Fostering belonging in academic anaesthesiology: faculty and department chair perspectives on supporting women anaesthesiologists. M. Lane-Fall, E. Gordon, E. Valentine, Stephanie A Black, P. Kapur, L. Fleisher Medicine British journal of anaesthesia 2020 2 Save Alert Research Feed Peer review for the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia in 2016 and 2017: a retrospective analysis by reviewer and author gender Kate Goldstone, C. Edgley, S. Mehta, K. Leslie Medicine Canadian Journal of Anesthesia/Journal canadien d'anesthésie 2019 2 PDF Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 34 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Twelve tips to promote gender equity in international academic medicine H. Ibrahim, Dora J. Stadler, S. Archuleta, J. Cofrancesco Political Science, Medicine Medical teacher 2018 6 Highly Influential View 6 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Gender disparity among US anaesthesiologists: are women underrepresented in academic ranks and scholarly productivity? A. Pashkova, P. Svider, C. Y. Chang, L. Diaz, J. A. Eloy, J. Eloy Medicine Acta anaesthesiologica Scandinavica 2013 68 Highly Influential View 3 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Experiencing the Culture of Academic Medicine: Gender Matters, A National Study L. Pololi, Janet T. Civian, R. Brennan, Andrea L. Dottolo, E. Krupat Medicine Journal of General Internal Medicine 2012 148 Highly Influential PDF View 4 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Recruitment, Promotion, and Retention of Women in Academic Medicine: How Institutions Are Addressing Gender Disparities. P. Carr, C. Gunn, A. Raj, Samantha E Kaplan, K. Freund Medicine Women's health issues : official publication of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health 2017 57 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Trends in Gender Distribution Among Anesthesiology Residents: Do They Matter? S. Rose, C. Burkle, B. A. Elliott Medicine Anesthesia and analgesia 2006 15 View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed The Status of Women in Academic Anesthesiology: A Progress Report C. Wong, M. C. Stock Medicine Anesthesia and analgesia 2008 38 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Women in Leadership: Why So Few and What to Do About It. C. Surawicz Medicine, Psychology Journal of the American College of Radiology : JACR 2016 43 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Inadequate progress for women in academic medicine: findings from the National Faculty Study. P. Carr, C. Gunn, Samantha A. Kaplan, A. Raj, K. Freund Psychology, Medicine Journal of women's health 2015 158 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Career development for women in academic medicine: Multiple interventions in a department of medicine. L. Fried, C. Francomano, +6 authors J. Stobo Medicine JAMA 1996 243 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Status of Women in Academic Anesthesiology C. J. Wilkinson, H. W. Linde Medicine Anesthesiology 1986 25 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 3 Citations 34 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE work_7rvsxubhajapvmbpziwa3htz3m ---- Janez Str aj n ar, dipl. sociolog Zveza društev rnedicinskih sester Slovenije Prof. Ljudrnila B o k a I Inštitut za slovenski jezik, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU Ljubljana Zdravstveni obzornik in slovenska medicinska beseda* UDK 616-083:001.4:050 IZVLEČEK- Prvi del članka obravnava vse- binsko zasnovo in raz voj Zdravstvenega obzorni- ka, strokovnega glasila medicinskih sester Slove- nije. V drugem delu so zajete pomembnejše značilnosti vsebinskega, strokovnega, jezikovnega in oblikovnega urejanja glasila ter kronološki pre- gled rabe strokovnega izrazja v člankih, ki so obravnavali tudi pomen določenih strokovnih izrazov. Sklepni del nakazuje nekatere aktualne naloge v zvezi z oblikovanjem strokovnega izrazja za področje zdravstvene nege, ki spremljajo teore- tično in praktično spoznavanje in uvajanje metode procesa zdravstvene nege. Uvod ZDRA VSTVENI OBZORNIK AND SLOVENE MEDlCAL TERMINOLOGY. AB- STRACT- Part One outlines the contents and the development of Zdravstveni Obzornik, which is the official journal of Slovenian nurses. Part Two deals with the important features of the editorial objectives concerning the contents, the professional issues,. the technical terminology and the form of the journal, including a chronological list of terms dealt with in some articles. In conclusion, the author indicates certain tasks concerning the introduction of new terminology in the field of nursing, which are related to the theoretical and practical aspects of the nursing process method. Centralni higienski zavod, leta 1961 pa takratni Zavod LRS za zdravstveno varstvo v Ljubljani je v obdobju 1954-61 izdal osem letnikov strokovnega časopisa MEOICINSKA SESTRA NA TERENU, ki ga štejemo za predhodnika sedanjega Zdravstvenega obzornika. Namenjen je bil predvsem spodbujanju razvoja patronažne službe in uveljav- ljanju metode polivalentne zdravstveno-socialne obravnave varovancev, hkrati pa je opravljal temeljno nalogo strokovnega izpopolnjevanja medicinskih sester. Z razvojem medicine je namreč postalo timsko delo eno izmed temeljnih načel tudi v zdravstveni dejavnosti, stalno izobraževanje vseh pa velika potreba. Urednica časopisa je bila medicinska sestra Cit a Bole, lektor pa Franjo Tominec. Vsebinska zasnova in razvoj Zdravstvenega obzornika Po nekajletni prekinitvi, ko medicinske sestre niso imele svojega strokovnega glasila, je leta 1967 izšla prva številka strokovnega glasila z naslovom ZORA V- STVENI OBORNIK. Glasilo je prvi dve leti (1967-68) izhajalo v treh, kasneje (1969-77) v štirih, od leta 1978 dalje pa v šestih številkah na leto. Izdajatelji glasila * xv. jubilejno spominsko srečanje prof. dr. Janeza Plečnika SLOVENSKA MEDICINSKA BESEDA, ki so ga od 5. do 7. decernbra 1984 pripravili Inštitut za patologijo, Inštitut za anatornijo, Inštitut za' histologijo in ernbriologijo in Inštitut za sodno medicino Medicinske fakultete Univerze Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljani. Avtorja sta terno predstavila v okviru obravnave posebnih vidikov rnedicinske terminologije. Med Razgl 1984; 23; Suppl 7: 649-60. 3 so do leta 1974 bili Zveza društev medicinskih sester Slovenije, Društvo otroških sester ter Društvo fizioterapevtov in delovnih terapevtov v Ljubljani, od leta 1974 dalje pa glasilo izdaja samo Zveza društev medicinskih sester Slovenije. Program ska zasnova Zdravstvenega obzornika je opredeljena v uvodu prve številke. Vsebinsko naj bi se osredotočil na temeljna vprašanja zdravstvenega varstva: na utrjevanje zdravja in preprečevanje bolezni, na nego bolnika in medicinsko rehabilitacijo. Obravnaval naj bi tudi socialno in psihološko' tematiko, seznanjal zdravstvene delavce s srednjo in višjo izobrazbo z novimi dosežki v medicini, obnavljal in dopolnjeval njihovo teoretično in praktično znanje ter opozarjal na pomembnejše oz. prednostne naloge vsakdanje prakse. Poilai".p1aČ3na"SO!o>"in.i Naslovna stran prve številke Zdravstvenega obzornika, ki je začel izhajati leta 1967. Leto l 1%7 Šl. I Prva glavna in odgovorna urednica glasila je bila medicinska sestra Cita Bole, v uredniš- kem odboru pa so poleg nje bile še Ivana Dolenc, Anica Gradišek_ in Cilka Potok:ar. Prvi letnik je imel 148 stran i, izšel pa je z naklado 2000 izvodov. Zdravstveni obzornik je bil v začetku nekaj let instruktivno informativno glasilo za medicinske sestre, fizioterapevte in delovne terapevte, po letu 1974 pa je dobil vlogo in oznako informativnega, strokovnega in poklicnega glasila slovenskih medicinskih sester. Od leta 1977 dalje je Zdravstveni obzornik strokovno glasilo medicinskih sester Slovenije, kar je navedeno tudi na novi naslovni strani. Glasilo naj bi vplivalo na stroko vni napredek in kvaliteto poklicnega dela medicinskih sester, jim omogočilo ustrezno orientacijo v sodobni zdravstveni problematiki in njenem reševanju ter spodbujalo društva medicinskih sester in strokovne sekcije pri Zvezi društev medicinskih sester Slovenije k neposrednemu delu med članstvom. Hkrati naj bi bilo glasilo strokovno učno gradivo za dijake in študente medicinskih šol. Vsebinsko zasnovo glasila, njeno dopolnjevanje in spreminjanje ponazarjajo stalne rubrike, ki v prvem ddu vsebujejo tudi strokovne članke o razvoju zdrav- stvene nege, v drugem pa aktualne novosti, probleme in dogodke iz življenja in dela medicinskih sester. 4 Prvi letniki glasila (1967-69) so imeli naslednje rubrike: Članki, Mejniki našega zdravstva, Zgodovinski portreti, Organizacija zdravstvene službe, lz druš- tvenega življenja, Osebne vesti, Beležke ob knjigah in Zanimivosti. 2. !etnik (1968) je dobil prvo spremembo naslovne strani, 3. letnik (1969) pa še rubriko Novosti - izkušnje - pobude. Od 4. do 10. letnika (1970-76) se je glasilo le malo spremenilo. Posamezne rubrike so bile opuščene, nekaj pa je bilo uvedenih le občasno: Članki, Leposlovje, • Spomini iz NOV, Novosti - izkušnje - pobude, Organizacija zdravstvene službe, lz društvenega življenja, Osebne vesti, Beležke ob knjigah in Zanimivosti. Prva sprememba naslovne strani Zdravstve- nega obzornika (1968-1976), ki jo je obli- koval arhitekt Mitja Omersa. Obseg posameznih letnikov in naklada gla- sila pa je bila po letih njegovega izhajan;a naslednja: 1968: 156 strani, 2500 izvodov; 1969: 244 strani, 3000 izvodov; 1970: 256 strani, 3800 izvodov; 1971; 284 strani, 4100 izvodov,' 1972: 268 strani, 4400 izvo- dov; 1973: 292 strani, 4800 izvodov; 1974: 30·,: stran i, 5200 izvodov; 1975: 316 strani, 5500 izvodov; 1976: 352 strani, 5900 izvodov. CtlaBole: Un'l'Je--'I1Illpnftl:a...--. Dr.D8nicaMlltUč....••. U&rfnkaSenekovlč ~.,bobdl- SIa'l1ca Poptnlk-Tolelč otnlIIinbolal:n •. Dr,JoIe8tropDlk" I'rIpnnbo ••••••••D ~JR"dI*a"' •. IOl Prlm.4r.EmanPertJ.: ~ lIJe .•..•.. lOl lIlra Prldpr:=.=" ..us h IIdn zamd& SRB" :IIl!RoT8tVSlOn. ••• tYO(N.J.) Koů:n:RIe -.lop prI mra..-__ 1IIo~ok>.. . . . . . "' &m.po1k,d,r, NIlw 8adDlkar: o •••••••••• ~ •. ai..-k b' ',n bmll\...-~-.....-.--Prtm.dr.UirkoXUUn:b-""lDe ••.• 'rIJ-J& III'&lDI bolo:ml ••• ,....._. '" b~Ih1jenJII.IJ5 :::L-:=;.=:•• __ ..... 1. IWoIIle Oll ImJIpb • 151 ~ "UI,lM,lH Od 11. do 14. letnika (1977-80) se je število rubrik zmanjšalo, ne koliko pa se je spremenilo tudi njihovo zaporedje: Članki, Osebne vesti, Novosti - izkušnje - pobude, Organizacija zdravstvene službe, lz društvenega življenja, Beležke ob knjigah in Zanimivosti. 11. letnik (1977) je dobil novo naslovno stran (druga sprememba), ki jo je oblikoval arhitekt Mitja Omersa. Članki v prvem delu glasila so se začeli vedno na novi strani, dobili so tudi povzetek (od leta 1981 dalje izvleček) v slovenskem in angleškem jeziku, stal no obliko in sekundarno opremo. Od 13. letnika (1979) dalje imajo članki tudi oznako univerzalne decimalne klasifikacije (UDK), glasilo pa je dobilo slovensko in angleško kazalo, oznako UDK in letno kazalo. Od 15. letnika (1981) dalje ima glasilo stalno notranjo ureditev, vsebinsko pa je razdeljeno na tri dele: Članki, Novosti - izkušnje - pobude z rubrikami: Razvojno-raziskovalno delo, Strokovno izpopolnjevanje in Organizacija dela ter lz društvenega življenja z rubrikami: Poročila o delu, Strokovna srečanja, lz urada Mednarodne zveze medicinskih·sester, Osebne vesti, Sporočilo, Slikovno sporočilo (od let a 1981 dalje), Beležke ob knjigah, lz Biomedicine Slovenice (od leta 1981 5 dalje) in Zanimivosti. Glasilo svoje temeljne naravnanosti ni spremenilo, kaže pa se čedalje večja težnja od kronikalnega beleženja dogodkov k prečiščenemu strokovnemu in vsebinskemu konceptu. 1 leto XI 1 9 7 7 Druga sprememba naslovne strani Zdrav- stvenega obzornika (od leta 1977 dalje), ki jo je ob 10-letnici njegovega izhajanja pri- pravil arhitekt Mitja Omersa. Glasilo je dobilo slovensko in angleško ka- zalo, strokovni članki pa stalno obliko: vsi so se začeli na novi strani, dobili so povzetek (od leta 1981 dalje izvleček) v slovenskem in angleškem jeziku ter bibliografsko nave- deno literaturo. Ustalila se je tudi oblika in velikost tiska, precej pa se je povečalo tudi slikovno gradivo. Obseg letnikov in naklada glasila se je z leti njegovega izhajanja .še povečevala: 1977: 360 strani, 6500 izvo- dov; 1978: 440 strani, 7000 izvodov; 1979: 428 strani, 7400 izvodov; 1980: 424 strani, 7650 izvodov; 1981: 440 stran i, 6600 izvo- dov; 1982: 440 strani, 7000 izvodov; 1983: 456 strani, 7000 izvodov in 1984: 440 stra- ni, 7000 izvodov. Zdravstveni obzornik letos (1984) že osemnajsto leto uspešno uresničuje svojo programsko zasnovo: seznanja predvsem medicinske sestre, pa tudi druge zdrav- stvene delavce z delom, razvojem, problemi in uspehi na področju zdravstvene nege, jih seznanja s pomembnejšimi novostmi s področja medicine, biomedicine in družboslovja ter z njihovo društveno in družbeno dejavnostjo, povezuje strokov- njake na področju zdravstvene nege ter omogoča izmenjavo strokovnih, organiza- cijskih, pedagoških in samoupravnih izkušenj iz dela, pomembno prispeva k vzgoji, izobraževanju in stalnemu strokovnemu izpopolnjevanju medicinskih sester in zdravstvenih tehnikov, razvija sistematično in metodično proučevanje področja zdravstvene nege ter oblikuje trajne dokumente s tega področja (1). Kvaliteta strokovnega dela (člankov) v prvem delu glasila se je z leti postopno izboljševala, povečal se je tudi njihov obseg ter število naročnikov. Postopno se je večal tudi obseg posameznih letnikov - od začetnih 148 strani (in 2000 izvodov) leta 1967 na 440 strani (in 7000 izvodov) leta 1978. Takšen obseg in naklado ima tudi osemnajsti letnik Zdravstvenega obzornika. Pomembnejše značilnosti nrejanja Zdravstvenega obzornika in tradicionalno opredeljevanje zdravstvene nege Bibliografski pregledi Zdravstvenega obzornika po petletnih obdobjih (2, 3, 4) vsebujejo poleg pregleda vsebine po medicinskih strok ah v skladu z UDK in bibliografskimi navodili tudi vse pomembnejše podat ke o urejanju in izdajanju 6 glasila: o izdajateljih glasila, urednikih in uredniških odborih, sestavi piscev, notranji ureditviglasila, obsegu posameznih letnikov, njihovi nakladi idr. Doku- mentirajo torej zdravstvena prizadevanja v posameznih obdobjih, hkrati pa so zanimiv prispevek k zgodovini zdravstvene kulture na Slovenskem. V posameznih številkah Zdravstvenega obzornika najdemo tudi krajše zapise o vsebinskem, strokovnem in oblikovnem urejanju glasila. Glavni in odgovorni uredniki glasila so bili: Cita Bole (1967-69), Neža Jarnovič (1970-74), Anica Gradišek (1975-78), Marija Miloradovié (1979-83), Marija Šipec (od 1984 dalje), uredniki pa Neža Jarnovič (1975-79) in Janez Strajnar (od 1980 dalje). Lekturo so opravljali: Franjo Tominec (1967-79), Irena Celec (1980-81) in Ljudmila Bokal (od 1982 dalje). Franjo Tominec je jezikovno uredil tudi vseh osem letnikov strokovnega časopisa Medicinska sestra na terenu. Svojega dela ni omejil samo na jezikovni pregled prispevkov za objavo. Z izrednim posluhom za lep jezik, dobrim poznava- njem medicinskega izrazja in dolgoletnimi izkušnjami jih je oblikoval v bolj pregledne zapise o delu medicinskih sester in drugih zdravstvenih delavcev. Medicinska sestra Neža Jarnovič je bila celo desetletje osrednja oblikovalka glasila: opravljala je uredniško in strokovno redakcijo glasila, zbirala strokovne članke, pritegnila k sodelovanju znane zdravnike, spodbujala medicinske sestre k pisanju, jim svetovala, pomagala ter popravljala prispevke za objavo (5). Za Zdravstveni obzornik so glede na objavljene članke o vsebinskem in metodičnem razvoju zdravstvene nege pri nas značilna tri obdobja: od 1. do 8. letnika, od 9. do 14. letnika in od 15. letnika dalje. Za prvo obdobje, od 1. do 8. letnika (1967-74), je glede na široko programsko zasnovo - glasilo so izdajale tri društvene organizacije - značilna raznovrstnost krajših prispevkov, ko so imeli predvsem informativno vlogo. Kot avtorji so sodelovali številni znani zdravniki, fakultetni učitelji in medicinski publicisti (Marij Avčin, Janez Fettich, Milko Bedjanič, Janez Milčinski, Mirko Karlin, Zlata Stropnik, Lev Milčinski, Vito Lavrič, Eman Pertl idr.), medicinske sestre (Majda Šlajmer-Japelj, Mira Pridgar, Dina Urbančič, Neža Jarnovič, Marija Miloradovié, Anica Gradišek, Stana Kavalič idr.), fizioterapevti in delovni terapevti (Ivana Dolenc, Metoda Kramar, Elizabeta Milič, Marinka Skušek itd.) ter drugi strokov- njaki (Slavica Pogačnik-Toličič, Milica Bergant, Jožica Pirc idr.). V članku O negi bolnika po smernicah Svetovne zdravstvene organizacije, ki ga je leta 1969 iz nemščine prevedla Breda M6schl, prvič zasledimo razlago izrazov: • nega bolnika v najširšem pomenu besede - kot samostojna naloga medicin- ske sestre, ki mora »... posamezniku, bolnemu ali zdravemu, pomagati pri izvajanju tistih opravil, ki prispevajo k zdravju, zdravljenju ali k spokojni smrti, torej opravil, ki bi jih bolnik opravil sam brez pomoči, če bi razpolagal s potrebno močjo, voljo in znanjem«, • služba nege bolnika zajema vse tiste dejavnosti v zdravstvu, ki so v organizi- rani obliki na razpolago bolniku; izraz nega zajema tudi zdravega človeka, obsega torej preventivne in kurativne ukrepe ter rehabilitacijo, • sestrska dejavnost označuje vsa delovna področja medicinskih sester, kjer so te zaposlene., 7 • natančneje so definirani tudi izrazi: sistem za razdelitev različnih poklicev na področju nege bolnika, osnovno, nadaljnje in podiplomsko izobraževanje medi- cinske sestre (6). Kasneje sledi tudi razlaga izraza sestrstvo, s katerim »zajamemo bolnika kot celovito psih0-somatično osebnost ter pri tem razvijamo in podpiramo fizično, psihično in socialno komponento zdravja ... « (7). To so temeljni izrazi s tega strokovnega področja. Kaže se skrb, da bi jih natančneje definirali, obenem pa se z angleškimi ustrezniki, ki so ob naštetih izrazih navedeni v oklepaju, še čuti nesamostojnost prevajalca pri iskanju ustrez- nega izraza. Opredelitev področja nege bolnika je pregledno razložila tudi Stana Kavalič (1970), ki prvič navaja bolnikove potrebe, ob katerih se medicinska sestra uveljav- lja kot strokovnjakinja za navedeno področje in samostojno opravlja svoje naloge (8). Delovno področje medicinskih sester še ni enotno poimenovano. Kadar gre za nebolnišnično nego, nekateri avtorji uporabljajo tudi izraze: nega bolnika na domu, domača nega bolnika in laična nega. Drugo obdobje, od 9. do 14. letnika (1975-80), se začenja z objavo metodoloških smernic za raziskovalno delo (9) in prvimi poizkusi študijskega proučevanja bolniške nege - nege bolnika v ožjem pomenu besede, ki se nanaša na osebo v določenem stanju, zato izraz z izpeljavo iz besede bolnik kaže to najožjo povezavo. Razčlenjevanje je vplivalo tudi na poimenovanje ožjega delovnega področja medicinske sestre - področje bolniške nege, v objavljeni temeljni vsebinski zasnovi glasila (1975) pa najdemo tudi nedosledno delitev na »področje bolniške nege in nebolnišnična dejavnost medicinske sestre« (10). Ob metodoloških novostih, ki so se uvedle na tem področju, srečamo izraze: zdravstveni team - skupno poimenovanje vseh zdravstvenih delavcev, ki sodelujejo pri zdravljenju bolnika; negovalni (sestrski) team - poimenovanje za srednje in višje medicinske sestre; služba domače nege (1976) - »dejavnost, ki naj bi ustrezala določenim potrebam in interesom starejših ljudi na njihovih domovih«. Obenem se priporoča, da naj se namesto izrazov strežništvo, hišna pomoč in laična nega na domu, ki so preohlapno definirani, uporablja izraz domača nega. V prevodih člankov iz angleščine se pojavljajo izrazi: nega, bolniška nega, nega bolnika (kot eno - ali večpomenski izrazi), sestrska stroka, sestrsko osebje in sestrska dejavnost. • Strokovna nega na bolnikovem domu je leta 1977 opredeljena kot nega bolnika na domu. Ta je leta 1980 razdeljena na strokovno nego bolnika na domu in domačo nego (občasno se še uporablja tudi izraz laična nega na domu). Klasifika- cija progresivne nege s stopnjami: intenzivna nega, polintenzivna nega in standardna nega temelji na obsegu bolnikovih potreb po negi. Stopnje označujejo bolnikovo stanje, ki napreduje proti ozdravitvi. Obravnava bolnika na domu je glede na bolnikove potrebe, čas negovanja in število negovalcev označena kot 1., ll. in 111. stopnja domiciliarne nege. Pri obravnavi raziskovalnega dela medicinskih sester (od 1979 dalje) se pri 8 opredeljevanju izvajalca nege dosledno uporabljajo izrazi: zdravstveni team, nego- va/ni team, konec leta 1980 pa najdemo tu di obliko zdravstveni tim. Ob lO-letnici izhajanja je glasilo imelo skoraj 6000 naročnikov. Postalo je obvezno študijsko gradivo za dijake in študente zdravstvenih šol, učni pripomoček za strokovne izpite ter gradivo za strokovno izpopolnjevanje. Dve tretjini glasila so zavzemali strokovni članki, tretjina pa je bila namenjena društvenim rubrikam. Močno se je razširil tudi krog sodelavcev - zdravnikov in še posebej medicinskih sester s čedalje bolj kvalitetnimi strokovnimi, primarnimi in preglednimi članki. Priročnik so leta 1981 napisale začasne sve- tovalke Regionalnega urada za Evropo Sve- tovne zdravstvene organizacije: Nicole Del- motte, Jolanta Gorajek, Hanneke van Maa- nen in Penny Prophit. Naslov izvirnika je The nursing process - teaching manual, pre- vedla pa ga je Majda Šlajmer-Japelj, koor- dinatorica mednarodne študije o procesu zdravstvene nege v Jugoslaviji. Barvno naslovno stran priročnika je po na- vodilih urednika Janeza Strajnarja oblikoval Nedžad Žujo - štiriindvajset krogov simbo- lizira čas (neprekinjeno delo medicinskih se- ster), v katerega je »ujeto« znanje (izstopa- joči štirje krogi pomenijo temeljna znanja iz procesa zdravstvene nege), urejeni krogi pa obdajajo znak Zveze društev medicinskih sester Slovenije. Ta je namreč priročnik iz- dala v marCu 1984 z naklado 3000 izvodov. Priročnik je temeljno gradivo za teoretično in praktično spoznavanje in uvajanje metode procesa zdravstvene nege pri nas. Za tretje obdobje, od 15. letnika dalje (od 1981 dalje), je značilna večja količina in kvaliteta člankov medicinskih sester. Številne so ob študiju na II. stopnji pripravile za ubjavo svoje seminarske in diplomske naloge, v katerih obravnavajo različne vidike zdravstvene nege, socialno-medicinsko problematiko ter strokovno dejavnost medicinskih sester. Pomemben vir člankov in prispevkov za stal ne rubrike so tudi številni seminarji strokovnih sekcij Zveze društev medicinskih sester Slovenije. V posameznih številkah glasila prevladujejo članki s področja zdravstvene nege, še posebej pa so aktualne informacije o poteku mednarodne študije Proces zdravstvene nege. Le-te imajo stalno mesto v rubriki Razvojno- raziskovalno delo. Pri izbiri člankov za objavo je uredništvo dajalo prednost člankom, ki so bili tudi metodično dobro zasnovani - glede načina razkrivanja in utemeljevanja problema, prikazovanja in razpravljanja o rezultatih obravnave, opreme člankov in pravilnega citiranja ugotovitev drugih avtorjev. Uredništvo je več časa namenjalo tu di individualnemu delu z avtorji pri reševanju strokovnih, terminoloških in jezikovnih popravkov ter pripravilo okvirna navodila za sodelavce in dopisnike Zdravstvenega obzornika. 9 Zdravstveni obzornik je izdal tudi dve tematski številki: Delo in izobraže- vanje medicinskih sester (1981, 7000 izvodov) in Živeti s hemofilijo (z barvno prilogo; 1983, 8000 izvodov). V prvi tematski številki za opredeljevanje stroke in njene meto dike prvič zasledimo rabo izrazov: zdravstvena nega, zdravstvena nega bolnika oz. varovanca in proces zdravstvene nege z več fazami: ocena negovalnih potreb in možnosti, načrtovanje vsebine in metode dela, izvajanje načrta nege z dokumentiranjem in vrednotenje s povratno informacijo (11). Razloženi so v nadaljevanju. Ob obravnavi Strokovnih navodil za organiziranje in izvajanje zdravljenja in nege bolnika na domu (12, 13) se je leta 1982 pokazala potreba po enotni rabi in ustaljevanju strokovnega izrazja. Zato je bilo pri Zvezi društev medicinskih sester Slovenije dogovorjeno, da se uporabljajo izrazi: • zdravstvena nega - namesto dosedanjega izraza nega bolnika v najširšem smislu, s katerim poimenujemo strokovno področje, ki dobiva značilnosti samo- stojne vede medicinskih znanosti; opravljajo jo zdravstveni delavci na tem pod- ročju, namenjena pa je vsem varovancem, zdravim in bolnim; izrazi sestrska nega, zdravniška nega in medicinska nega so neprimerni, ker so preozko vezani le na izvajalca ali delitev strokovne dejavnosti; • zdravstvena nega bolnika - namesto izraza bolniška nega (nega bolnika v ožjem smislu) za vso strokovno dejavnost, ki je v organizirani obliki namenjena bolniku; po krajevnem kriteriju je to lahko zdravstvena nega bolnika v bolnišnici (v stacionarjih zdravstvenih organizacij in socialnih zavodov) ali zdravstvena nega bolnika na domu v osnovnem zdravstvenem varstvu; primerna pa je tudi raba izrazov z določnejšo opredelitvijo bolnika po ožjem strokovnem področju, organ- skem sistemu ali zdravstvenem problemu, npr. zdravstvena nega onkološkega bolnika, zdravstvena nega srčnega bolnika, zdravstvena nega bolnika s subarahnoi- dalno krvavitvijo itd.; Z izrazom domača nega poimenujemo dejavnost, ki jo opravljajo v nebolniš- ničnem okolju neprofesionalni izvajalci, zajema pa: samooskrbo (samopomoč bolnika) in nego, kijo opravljajo svojci, sosedsko pomoč, ki jo prostovoljno nudijo občani, in pomoč na domu, ki jo opravljajo socialni zavodi s storitvami zunanje dejavnosti in gospodinjski servisi (13). Uredništavo Zdravstvenega obzornika aktivno sodeluje tu di pri opredeljeva- nju in usklajevanju delovnih program ov strokovnih sekcij Zveze društev medicin- skih sester Slovenije, spodbuja usmerjeno in sistematično obravnavo področja zdravstvene nege, saj tu di manjše število seminarjev lahko z objavo kvalitetnih člankov v določeni meri zagotovi stalno strokovno izpopolnjevanje, ter opozarja na dokumentirano vrednost strokovnega glasila. Procesno opredeljevanje zdravstvene nege in strokovno izrazje Zveza društev medicinskih sester Slovenije je marca 1984 v okviru svoje založniške dejavnosti izdala prevod priročnika iz mednarodne študije pri Regional- nem uradu za Evropo Svetovne zdravstvene organizacije PROCES ZDRA V- STVENE NEGE, ki bo temeljno gradivo za teoretično in praktično spoznavanje in 10 uvajanje metode procesa zdravstvene nege pri nas. Priročnik pomeni prelomnico v dosedanjem obravnavanju varovancev: metoda pojasnjuje sistem značilnih ukre- pov in posegov v zdravstveni negi, ki so namenjeni zdravju posameznika, družine in družbene skupnosti; sistematično delo upošteva individualne posebnosti potreb varovancev, zato so pri obravnavi oz. zdravljenju aktivno soudeleženi; kritično presojanje in odločanje o načinu, obsegu in trajanju zdravstvene nege pa poteka na podlagi dokumentiranih dejstev, ki se lahko stalno preverjajo. METODA PROCESA ZDRAVSTVENE NEGE NACRT ZDRAVSTVENE NEGE UGOTAVLJANJE IN MERLJIVI ClU I OPRAVLJENI NA~RTO- OOSELKI GlEOE RAZVRŠtANJE POTREB IN NAtRTOVANI VANI IN NENA~RTO- NA OPREDEUENE POSEGI VANI POSEGI CIUE O O O O