Women, Gender, and Politics

N07 - The Treatment of Gender

Date: May 30 | Time: 03:15pm to 04:45pm | Location: Classroom - CL 417 Room ID:15707

Chair/Président/Présidente : Bailey Gerrits (Queens University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Shannon Sampert (University of Winnipeg)

The New / Alt Right, Toxic Masculinity and Violence: John Grant (King's University College, Western University), Fiona MacDonald (University of the Fraser Valley)
Abstract: This chapter explores the politics of masculinity by considering and reflecting on the complex interplay between dominant notions of "being a man" and far right political movements. We regard these movements as deeply populist. Our depiction of populism reveals it to be the predominant political vehicle for masculinity, while masculinity stands as a quotidian expression of populism. It follows that masculinity is central to understanding how men become involved in far right or "alternative" right movements and it is equally central in understanding how they might get out. We distinguish here between different populist masculinities. One type, embodied by men such as Donald Trump and Richard Spencer, is rooted in power and white supremacy and must be opposed in all its manifestations. Another type, which is attracted to and exploited by the first, is embodied by working and middle-class men whose sometimes legitimate grievances about their place in society are captured by the narratives of populist masculinity. Providing a convincing counter-narrative is central to reducing the success of this masculinity and the movements that promote it. Doing so contributes to an immediate political goal of reducing two kinds of violence: the physical violence that members of the alternative right commit upon others – both women and men – and the psychological violence they commit upon themselves to keep their version of masculinity intact.

783.Grant.MacDonald.pdf

Regret, Shame, and Denials of Women’s Voluntary Sterilization: Dianne Lalonde (Western University)
Abstract: Women face extraordinary difficulty in seeking sterilization as physicians routinely deny them the procedure. Physicians defend such denials by citing the possibility of future regret, a well-studied phenomenon in women’s sterilization literature. Regret is, however, a problematic emotion upon which to deny reproductive freedom as regret is neither satisfactorily defined and measured, nor is it centered in analogous cases regarding men's decision to undergo sterilization or the decision of women to undergo fertility treatment. Why then is regret such a concern in the voluntary sterilization of women? I argue that regret is centered in women’s voluntary sterilization due to pronatalism or expectations that womanhood means motherhood. Women seeking voluntary sterilization are regarded as a deviant identity that reject what is taken to be their essential role of motherhood and they are thus seen as vulnerable to regret.

Engendering Fatness and “Obesity”: Affect, Emotions and the Governance of Weight in a Neoliberal Age: Michael Orsini (University of Ottawa)
Abstract: In the field of ‘obesity’, discourses are marked by a jumble of complex moral emotions. Individuals marked as ‘obese’ are pitied for their “careless” lifestyles, treated with compassion for their inability to make better choices, or framed as objects of disgust. Researchers and policy makers, for their part, construct their interventions in ways that reflect their own complex, deep-seated feelings about fat. This paper explores the gendered constructions of fat and “obesity” that circulate in policy discourse, and reflects on how these discourses are structured by a series of emotions and affects that are difficult to dislodge or even understand without a keen attention to their gendered effects or components. As a societal ‘problem’, obesity is difficult to dislodge from the capitalist system of production. As fat studies scholars remind us, in our neoliberal age, paradoxically, individuals are exhorted to consumer more and eat less. And there is a lively debate among feminist and political economy scholars about some of the fatphobic perspectives advanced by otherwise progressive thinkers. Drawing on interviews with obesity researchers, policy makers and people living with ‘obesity’ or who self identify as fat, I am interested in how these different orderings of emotions – what some people call “feeling rules” - help us to think about the ways in which emotions and affects are discursively managed in complex policy environments. Focusing on emotions in the field of ‘obesity’ policy can help us to better understand key concepts that underpin the study of public policy.

Mother-Child Programs in Prison: Disciplining the Unworthy Mother: Lynsey Race (University of Alberta), Lorna Stefanick (Athabasca University)
Abstract: Prison populations worldwide are increasing, disproportionately affecting women and marginalized communities. In Canada, Indigenous people are imprisoned at seven to eight times the rate of non-indigenous Canadians. There was a 33% increase in incarcerated women between 2005-2015; almost two-thirds of these women are mothers. Indigenous woman make up the fastest growing population of Canadian prisoners, representing 34% of federally sentence women, even though they make up less than 4% of women in Canada. The dismantling of the welfare state and the popularization of the “worthy” and the “unworthy” recipients of income support has made motherhood increasingly precarious; women are held criminally responsible for situations that are socially constructed. “Unworthy” mothers are subject to punitive measures from the state, such as incarceration and having their children put into state foster care systems. This paper examines prison mother-child programs (MCPs), where children can reside with their mothers in prison in order to mitigate the profoundly negative impacts of maternal separation. We ask the question: do these programs represent a meaningful response to the needs of mothers who need support, or do they represent another mode of state surveillance and control of marginalized women? We argue that MCPs are an extension of the punitive colonial state that criminalizes those who are victims of structural violence, relegating some women to the bottom of the “unworthy mother” group.