MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Edwin M. Schur

In "Labeling Women: Deviant," the intricate interplay between gender, stigma, and social control is meticulously examined. This thought-provoking exploration delves into the ways in which societal labels and norms are applied to women, shaping their identity and influencing their place in the world. Through insightful analysis and compelling examples, this book challenges readers to reconsider the implications of labeling women as deviant and calls for a more nuanced understanding of the complex forces at play. A must-read for anyone interested in social justice, gender studies, and the dynamics of power in society.

NY. RANDOM HOUSE. 1984. 294p.

By The Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society

The question of who is accountable for the proliferation of antisemitism, hate, and extremism online has been hotly debated for years. Are our digital feeds really a reflection of society, or do social media platforms and tech companies actually exacerbate virulent content themselves? The companies argue that users are primarily responsible for the corrosive content soaring to the top of news feeds and reverberating between platforms. This argument serves to absolve these multi-billion-dollar companies from responsibility for any role their own products play in exacerbating hate. A new pair of studies from ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) and TTP (Tech Transparency Project) show how some of the biggest social media platforms and search engines at times directly contribute to the proliferation of online antisemitism, hate, and extremism through their own tools and, in some cases, by creating content themselves. While there are many variables contributing to online hate, including individual users’ own behavior, our research demonstrates how these companies are taking things from bad to worse. For these studies, we created male, female, and teen personas (without a specified gender) who searched for a basket of terms related to conspiracy theories as well as popular internet personalities, commentators, and video games across four of the biggest social media platforms, to test how these companies’ algorithms would work. In the first study, three of four platforms recommended even more extreme, contemptuously antisemitic, and hateful content. One platform, YouTube, did not take the bait. It was responsive to the persona but resisted recommending antisemitic and extremist content, proving that it is not just a problem of scale or capability. In our second study, we tested search functions at three companies, all of which made finding hateful content and groups a frictionless experience, by autocompleting terms and, in some cases, even auto-generating content to fill in hate data voids. Notably, the companies didn’t autocomplete terms or auto-generate content for other forms of offensive content, such as pornography, proving, again, that this is not just a problem of scale or capability. What these investigations ultimately revealed is that tech companies’ hands aren’t tied. Companies have a choice in what to prioritize, including when it comes to tuning algorithms and refining design features to either exacerbate or help curb antisemitism and extremism. As debates rage between legislators, regulators, and judges on AI, platform transparency, and intermediary liability, these investigations underscore the urgency for both platforms and governments to do more.

New York: The Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society, 2023. 36p.

By Sara Bundtzen

This paper reviews online gender-based violence (OGBV) as existing within a continuum of (on- and offline) violence, emphasising the connections with different extremist ideologies, including the dissemination of terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC). It aims to prioritise a gender perspective in responding to TVEC so that social media platforms can better intervene in and mitigate misogynistic pathways to radicalisation that can begin (or be reinforced) online. The discussion recognises that the mitigation of OGBV and online pathways to radicalisation requires a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach. Whilst there are steps that governments and civil society can and should take, such as overseeing and enforcing emerging regulatory frameworks and voluntary commitments, this paper and its recommendations emphasise the role and actions of platforms.

Outlining the impact of OGBV at micro (individual) and macro (societal) levels, the paper considers the role platforms can play in exacerbating the risks of OGBV, evaluating platform policies, content moderation practices, user interface design and algorithmic recommender systems. In this context, the paper asserts that researching and mitigating the risks of OGBV can enable earlier warning of and intervention in misogynistic pathways to different forms of violent extremism. Reiterating that any mitigation of risks must come in support of users’ fundamental rights, including their right to privacy and freedom of expression, the paper proposes and elaborates on the following key recommendations:

• Enable API access to publicly available data for public interest research;

• Develop gender-disaggregated and standardised transparency reporting;

• Apply a victim-survivor-centred Safety and Privacy by Design approach;

• Enhance cross-platform cooperation and information sharing of OGBV incidents (including actors and tactics);

• Review content moderation policies, processes, and systems to acknowledge the continuum of violence and misogyny as a vector for violent extremism;

• Apply intersectional feminist knowledge in risk assessments of AI-based systems;

• Strengthen and encourage multi-stakeholder dialogue and collaboration.

Berlin: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 31p....2023.

By Catherine M. Roach

At the heart of Stripping, Sex, and Popular Culture lies a very personal story, of author Catherine Roach's response to the decision of her life-long best friend to become an exotic dancer. Catherine and Marie grew up together in Canada and moved to the USA to enroll in PhD programs at prestigious universities. For various reasons, Marie left her program and instead chose to work as a stripper. The author, at first troubled and yet fascinated by her friend's decision, follows Marie's journey into the world of stripping as an observer and analyst. She finds that this world raises complex questions about gender, sexuality, fantasy, feminism, and even spirituality. Moving from first hand interviews with dancers and others, the book broadens into a provocative and accessible examination of the current popularity of "striptease culture," with sex-saturated media imagery, thongs gone mainstream, and stripper aerobics at your local gym. Stripping, Sex, and Popular Culture scrutinizes the naked truth of a lucrative industry whose norms are increasingly at the center of contemporary society.

Oxford, UK: Bloomsbury Academic/Berg, 2007. 224p.

By Tim Squirrell and Jacob Davey

Internationally, rising hate and extremism pose an existential threat to human rights and democratic freedoms. LGBTQ+ communities are often the first group to come under attack, and understanding the contours of these assaults matters both for the protection of these communities and to be better able to safeguard human rights and democracy more broadly. In new research by ISD, including four country profiles, we examine the trends in anti-LGBTQ+ hate and extremism with a particular focus on harassment targeting all-ages drag shows. In this report, ISD analyses the narratives, themes, actors and tactics involved in anti-drag activism in the US, UK, Australia and France. It examines the footprint of 274 anti-drag mobilisations: 11 in Australia, 3 in France, 57 in the UK and 203 in the USA. Anti-drag activity was also found in Ireland, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland as well as other European countries during the reporting period, usually in isolated cases. Due to finite resources these instances were not analysed in depth, but would merit further research. This research draws on ethnographic monitoring of over 150 Telegram channels, Twitter profiles and Facebook groups, as well as external resources such as news reports, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) and Crowd Counting and previous reports on anti-drag by GLAAD and the Southern Poverty Law.

Amman; Berlin; London; Paris; Washington DC: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2023. 19p.

By Aoife Gallagher

Research by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) has found that in the year since June 2022, anti-drag mobilisation in the UK has become a key focus for a variety of groups and actors. Anti-vaxxers, white nationalist groups, influential conspiracy theorists and “child protection” advocates have at times formed an uneasy – even fractious – coalition of groups opposing all-ages drag events. The driving force behind these protests is a mix of far-right groups and COVID-19 conspiracists. …This report documents anti-drag activity in the UK by searching news reports, Twitter mentions and messages shared in relevant UK Telegram channels and groups. It outlines the actors involved, the tactics used and the impact of such activity between June 1, 2022 and May 27, 2023.

Amman; Berlin; London; Paris; Washington DC: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2023. 20p.

By David M. Buss

From the Introduction: “Human Mating Behavior delights and amuses us and galvanizes our gossip, but it is also deeply disturbing. Few domains of human activity generate as much discussion, as many laws, or such elaborate rituals in al cultures. Yet the elements of human mating seem to defyunder- standing. Women and men sometimes find themselves choosing mates who abuse them psychologically and physically. Efforts to attract mates often backfire. Conflicts eruptwithin couples, producing downward spirals of blame and despair. Despite their best intentions and vows of life- long love, half of all married couples end up divorcing.

Pain, betrayal, and loss contrast sharply with the usual romantic notions of love. We grow up believing in true love, in finding our "one and only." We assume that once we do, we will marry in bliss and live happily ever after. But reality rarely coincides withour beliefs.Even a cursory look at the divorce rate, the 30 to 50 percent incidence of extramarital affairs, and the jealous rages that rack so many relation- ships shatters these illusions.”

NY. Basic Books. 1994. 265p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Anne Speckhard

In recent years, violent extremist activities have escalated dramatically. Around the world, such groups increasingly target women and women’s rights. Using sexual and gender-based violence, they terrorize communities and destroy the social fabric. Different UN Security Council resolutions have recognized that violent extremism has gender dimensions. These lead to varying consequences for women and girls, men and boys. Women are frequently seen only as victims of violent extremism. But in reality, women play multiple roles. They are on the frontlines of prevention and response. They lead civil society organizations and bolster community resilience. Promoting women as agents of peace recognizes their contributions to peacebuilding and prevention of violence and upholds respect for the human rights of everyone in areas afflicted by violent extremism. Preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) is more effective, sustainable and meaningful if it includes the participation and perspectives of women. This training manual is designed for actors involved in P/CVE in Europe and Central Asia, including state officials, members of non-governmental organizations, community activists, staff of UN agencies, international and regional organizations, to help them understand violent extremism’s gender dimensions. It is designed as a training guide for staff and trainers who are working with different counterparts engaged in P/CVE and want to help create more effective and gender-sensitive responses. The five modules in this guide include learning objectives, explanatory text, warm-up activities, practical exercises, references for further reading, and empirical experiences from Europe and Central Asia.

Istanbul: United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) 2021. 122p.

By E.C. Wilkinson

This thesis looks at the representation of violence in Dutch newspapers during the rise of the mass media in the Netherlands, from 1880 to 1930. Newspaper circulations shot up and newspapers increasingly targeted women readers and the working class. The thesis examines how these changes affected press coverage of sexual and family violence, crimes that involved women either as the victim or the perpetrator. A key question was whether public condemnation of male violence against women increased during this period, as has been argued by some historians.I find that newspaper reporting on partner violence and sexual violence increased after 1880, and the reports became more sympathetic to the women involved. I argue that this was in part because such human-interest stories were thought to appeal to the new target segment of women readers. However, journalists never treated such violence as a social problem and they often romanticized or trivialized assaults by men. Moreover, crime news was mediated by the sources and shaped by distinctive features of the Dutch criminal justice system.

Leiden, Netherlands: Leiden University, 2020. 293p.

By Torunn Wimpelmann

Since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, violence against women has emerged as the single most important issue for Afghan gender politics. The Pitfalls of Protection, based on research conducted in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2015, locates the struggles over gender violence in local and global power configurations. Torunn Wimpelmann finds that aid flows and geopolitics have served as both opportunities for and obstacles to feminist politics in Afghanistan. Showing why Afghan activists often chose to use the leverage of Western powers instead of entering into either protracted negotiations with powerful national actors or broad political mobilization, this book examines both the achievements and the limits of this strategy.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017. 231p.

By S. Giora Shoham.

This tour-de-force is an innovating, interdisciplinary treatment of sex and love. It draws on biology, mythology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy as well as on the author's own personality theory. Shoham proposes a mother-based sexual development theory which includes a sexual typology arranged on a continuum that stretches from the starkly carnal Casanova to the romantically agonized Don Juan. Dramatic and literary illustrations abound. The “separant” Sisyphean Casanova tries to overcome the rift between himself and the object of his desire by the continuous conquest of female bodies; and the participant archetype Don Juan longs to be possessed by the ultimate woman, by being in love with love. Sex As Bait offers a unique theoretical framework for the maternal proscription of incest, and relates this to the main role of women in the formation of the nuclear family and of human culture. On the psycho-cultural level Sex As Bait presents the development of sexual identity, both male and female, basing itself on a new approach of the oral development of the psyche. Shoham concludes the book with a challenging, if not disturbing, discussion of the sacred and profane aspects of love and their place in the development of human personality and culture.

NY. Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 2012.

Edited by Margaret Jolly and Christine Stewart with Carolyn Brewer.

This collection builds on previous works on gender violence in the Pacific, but goes beyond some previous approaches to ‘domestic violence’ or ‘violence against women’ in analysing the dynamic processes of ‘engendering’ violence in PNG. ‘Engendering’ refers not just to the sex of individual actors, but to gender as a crucial relation in collective life and the massive social transformations ongoing in PNG: conversion to Christianity, the development of extractive industries, the implanting of introduced models of justice and the law and the spread of HIV. Hence the collection examines issues of ‘troubled masculinities’ as much as ‘battered women’ and tries to move beyond the black and white binaries of blaming either tradition or modernity as the primary cause of gender violence. It relates original scholarly research in the villages and towns of PNG to questions of policy and practice and reveals the complexities and contestations in the local translation of concepts of human rights. It will interest undergraduate and graduate students in gender studies and Pacific studies and those working on the policy and practice of combating gender violence in PNG and elsewhere. Canberra:

Australian National University Press, 2012. 308p.

Edited by Petrus Cornelis Spierenburg.

There is growing interest in the history of masculinity and male culture, including violence, as an integral part of a proper understanding of gender. In almost every historical setting, masculinity and violence are closely linked; certainly violent crime has been overwhelmingly a male enterprise. But violence is not always criminal: in many cultural contexts violence is linked instead to honor and encoded in rituals. We possess only an imperfect understanding of the ways in which aggressive behavior, or the abstention from aggressive behavior, contributes to the construction of masculinity and male honor. Pieter Spierenburg brings together eight scholars to explore the fascinating interrelationship of masculinity, honor, and the body. The essays focus on the United States and western Europe from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1998. 279p.

Edited by Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz and Pilar Cuder-Domínguez.

A Mediterranean Approach to the Anglosphere. This Open Access book considers the cultural representation of gender violence, vulnerability and resistance with a focus on the transnational dimension of our contemporary visual and literary cultures in English. Contributors address concepts such as vulnerability, resilience, precarity and resistance in the Anglophone world through an analysis of memoirs, films, TV series, and crime and literary fiction across India, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the US, and the UK. Chapters explore literary and media displays of precarious conditions to examine whether these are exacerbated when intersecting with gender and ethnic identities, thus resulting in structural forms of vulnerability that generate and justify oppression, as well as forms of individual or collective resistance and/or resilience. Substantial insights are drawn from Animal Studies, Critical Race Studies, Human Rights Studies, Post-Humanism and Postcolonialism.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2022. 241p.

By Stacy Banwell.

More Dangerous to be a Woman? Considering examples of old and new wars ranging from the Holocaust, the 1971 Liberation War in Bangladesh; and the armed conflicts in the DRC, Iraq, Syria and Darfur, this book uncovers sexualised, genocidal and reproductive violence against both genders. Crucially, the author showcases examples of male victimisation, and thus redresses gaps within the literature. In particular, as part of an original gendered analysis of the war on terror, Banwell unpacks women’s involvement in sexual violence against male prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Emerald Studies in Criminology, Feminism and Social Change (2020). 221 pages.