Gender,sexualityandfeminismsineverydaylivesGSFEL[15credits]
ThirdYearBAEducationStudies,ModuleSpring2018Convenedby:ProfessorJessicaRingroseand
HannaRetallack
1986: Pro-abortion rights
campaigners at a National March
For Women’s Lives in
Washington DC, 9th March 1986.
Whatdotheseimagesmeanandwhyaretheyimportantfor
debatesongender,sexuality,feminismandeducation?Ifyouare
interestedtofindoutmore,thenthisisthemoduleforyou!!Read
studentsblogsaboutwhattheseimagesmeantothembelow
GSFEL 2017 Lecture Overview
Date
Wednesday
11th January
Time
10-12:00
1. Introducing Gender, Sexuality and
Education: Conceptual frames (Jessica
Ringrose and Hanna Retallack)
10-12:00
2. Waves of Feminism: Sexual Politics and
Education in historical and international
contexts (Hanna Retallack and Camilla
Stanger)
10-12:00
3. E-learning and using social media for
gender activisms: Blogging, Tweeting and
Tumblr (Emilie Lawrence and Jessica
Ringrose)
Wednesday
18th January
Wednesday
25th January
Wednesday
1st February
Session
10-12:00
4. Race and Intersectionality: Mapping the
intersections of gender, sexuality, race,
class and culture in education (Victoria
Showumni and Hanna Retallack)
Blog and Presentation 1 Due
Wednesday
8th February
10-12:00
5. Gender and achievement in global contexts:
from Postfeminism to Girl Empowerment
Industries (Jessica Ringrose and Hanna
Retallack)
Second half of presentations
Half-term/reading week
Wednesday
22nd February
Wednesday
1st March
Wednesday
8th March
Wednesday
15th March
10-12:00
6. Where is gender in school curriculum and
pedagogy? Teacher and youth feminisms in
secondary education (Hanna Retallack and
Jessica Ringrose)
10-12:00
7. Allies and Alliances: Heteronormativity and
LGBTQI communities in the context of
schooling (Ileana Jimenez and Jessica
Ringrose)
10-12:00
8. Gender Related Violence and Higher
Education: Sexism, laddism and rape
culture (Anne Chappel, Brunel University
and Jessica Ringrose)
Blog and Presentation 2 Due
10-12:00
9. Gender, Sexuality, Children, Religion and
Education: Beyond culture clash and moral
panic (Shiva Zarabadi and Jessica
Ringrose)
Second half of presentations
Wednesday
22nd March
10-12:00
10. Mediated Informal and formal Sexuality
Education: Policy, Curriculum, Pedagogy,
Practice and digital media (Jessica
Ringrose and Hanna Retallack)
Discussion of essay topics in Tutorials
Description
Thismodulewillexplorehowgenderandsexualityarepractisedineverydaylife.Weconsiderthe
manyopportunitieswehavetoplayapartinchallengingdifferentformsofgenderinequality
includingthehistoryandcontemporaryexpressionsoffeminismsandeducationandintersectional
issuesofhowgenderandsexualityintersectwithculture,race,religionandclass.Throughafocus
ongenderedlivesinschool,ourcommunities,andrepresentationswithinandthrough(social)
media,studentswillbecomemorecriticalreadersofgenderedrelations,practices,curriculumand
policy(fromsexeducationtouniforms,toiletsandmore).Wewillconsidertheproliferationof
mobiledigitaltechnologyinandaroundschoolingandeducation,andtheoryandmethodsaround
politics,instuitionalchange,andindividualagency,intheintersectionalstruggleforgenderand
sexualityrightsandequalitiesineducation.
Format
•
10weeksof120minutelecturesintroducekeyideas,researchandactivistworkoccurringacross
theglobeoneachtopic.Seminarsare60minutesandfollowupthelectures,byfacilitating
studentreflectionontheirroleinreproducing,resistingandopeningupfurtherpossibilitiesfor
everydayengagementinpromotingmorecriticalapproachestothinkingabout,andpractising
genderandsexuality
SocialMediaEngagement
•
Tweeting:TherewillbeaTwitterhandleforthemodule–withdifferentgroupsofstudents
responsiblefortweetingaboutgender&sexuality-relatedissueseveryweekwewillalsohavea
FacebookGrouptosharenewsandupdates
•
Blogging:Studentsproduce2blogs:ThePersonalisPoliticalandIntersectionality.Theyalso
presenttheirblogsinseminarsessionsinthemodule.Studentswillreceivetrainingonblogging
andfeministsocialmediaactivismandengagementthroughoutthemodule.
Assessment for GSFEL
1. 2 blogs (10% each) and 2 presentations (5% each) (=30%)
2. A 3500 word final essay (70%)
1. Blog/Presentation 1: The Personal is Political: In this blog you will critically reflect on
what ‘the personal is political’ means to you. How does this idea bridge the individual,
collective groups and society? How does it help us to rethink what qualifies as a political
issue or action in society?
2. Blog/Presentation 2: Intersectionality: Consider how gender, sexuality, race, class and
other axes of privilege and oppression operate together help understand an educational
issue of your choice
3. 3,500wordessay–discussingaparticularissuerelatedtothemodule,exploringnotonlythe
academicliteratureonthetopic,butalsowhatpublicengagementtherehasbeenonit,and
thenwriteareflectiononhowtheyhaveorcouldmakeacontributiontotheissuethrough
moreprivateorpublicmodesofexpression(worth70%offinalmodulemark).The individual
essay is a traditional argumentative essay focused on a topic or issue from the module
Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Everyday Lives. These will be improved by the
module tutor. Formative feedback will be given through peer support and during
seminar time. Students will receive further guidance on the essay throughout the
module and in a seminar at the end of the module.
CURRENTGSFELSTUDENTBLOGS2017
1. The Personal is the Political: SELFIE CULTURE!
It all starts with making sure you have the right angle, the right lighting, the right pose, and
whatever else you feel is necessary in order to capture that perfect selfie!
We have come to an era where the world has adopted the ‘selfie culture’ signifying nothing
but self-love, self-confidence and self- obsession.
How many selfie’s are on your phone?
How many have you uploaded on Instagram, on twitter or on Facebook?
How we have come to this selfie obsession, is no surprise. From birth, my parents have been
taking photos of iconic moments, such as the first time I sat down. Capturing these moments,
suggests that we have become normalized to having pictures taken of us, of when we are in
the process of growth and development. Having our picture taken by our loved ones from early
life supports the idea, that taking pictures of ourselves is a part of whom we are.
Define Selfie:
The term selfie has various definitions. For
Avgitidou (2003) and Walker (2005), it is believed
to be “digital explorations of identity and selfrevelation,”(pp, 02). In other words, selfies are
important and contain power through allowing
individuals to explore their own bodies and gain
control and agency through turning a negative into
a positive. From what I have seen on apps like
Instagram, one can argue there is a hierarchal
approach in place for which selfies gain the most
likes, comments and shares. These selfies tend to
be of girls with big lips like Kylie Jenner who as
Avgitidou explains, ‘explore their own bodies’ using
social media. It is debatable, whether pictures of
girls who have these features may or may not
cause harm, but does not subsidize the notion that
girls who lack these features do not get the same
level of attention. Regularly seeing selfies of
females with big lips, who become popular because
of their appearance, suggests that society idolizes
this as the ‘perfect selfie’, and as the norm for what
a selfie should look like. This can be identified as
the theory, ‘personal is political’, as a personal
problem of an individual having insecurities due to
not looking a certain way, is being made a political
problem. In other words, the personal problems
woman experience in their lives is not their fault, but
___________________________________________________________________
Bibliography:
Munro, E (2013). Feminism: A fourth wave? Political insight, 4(2), 22-25.
Schwarz, O. (2010) ‘On friendship, Boobs and the logic of the catalogue: Online self-portraits
as a means for the exchange of capital’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research
into New Media Technologies, 16(2), pp. 163–183. doi: 10.1177/1354856509357582.
2. The Personal is Political: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
Gilmore Girls boxset cover
1986: Pro-abortion rights
campaigners at a National March
For Women’s Lives in
Washington DC, 9th March 1986.
Munro (2013: 22) states that the phrase ‘the personal is political’ highlights the impact of sexism and
patriarchy on every aspect of women’s private lives. We come across this in various mediums and I
have chosen to discuss television as it reflects sexism and patriarchy in my private life (Munro, 2013:
23).
My favorite U.S series called Gilmore Girls revolves around Lorelai, a single mother, who chose to
raise her daughter alone at the age of sixteen against the wishes of her conservative family. Teenage
pregnancy is a recurring theme in the show and reflects the cultural backlash Lorelai faces for having
a child out of wedlock. At one point Lorelai is invited to speak at a careers day for the students at her
daughter’s school and in a turn of events, she is put in the hot seat to answer questions about her
teenage pregnancy. When she did not respond to the students by saying that in hindsight, it was not a
good idea to have kept her child and to have raised her daughter alone, she is met with a group of
angry mothers. They perceived her answers to be condoning of teenage pregnancy thereby advocating
it to their daughters.
In many ways, this is a political issue as the matter of abortion is implied because if Lorelai was
shamed into saying that she wished she did not get pregnant at age sixteen, her daughter would not
exist. To deny or resent an individual’s existence is to question their right to life which is part of the
pro-life and pro-choice debate concerning abortion. With the current government in the U.S removing
state funding for abortions under their Republican President Trump who follows a conservative
ideology, this exposes a key contradiction in conservative values. Which is that, the conservative
mothers in Gilmore Girls would theoretically be pro-life yet they would not want their daughters to be
in Lorelai’s predicament as a teenager so they would rather have her resent the existence of her child.
The ‘personal’ matter of having children as a teenager, can invite outside opinions because of its
depiction as a scandal as it interferes with the model of a patriarchal society where a child has a
mother and a father. There is also sexism as the absent father in Gilmore Girls is very rarely criticized
whereas Lorelai is judged as a teenage mother highlighting the unfair gender treatment. This extends
to ‘political’ discourses as raising a child is intrusive of women’s right to be in control of their body as
it is predominantly white men in the U.S making these decisions. This overlap of the ‘personal’ and
‘political’ qualifies the abortion debate where one political ideology is imposed on women’s right
over their body in the U.S. I have used Gilmore Girls to discuss this concept because this fictionalized
series dealt with real issues concerning teenage pregnancy and helped me to implicitly understand the
imposing nature of politics on individual’s private lives.
Bibliography
Munro, E. (2013). Feminism: A fourth wave?. Political insight, 4(2), pp. 22-25.
3. The Personal is Political – GAMING CULTURE
Second-wave feminists coined the phrase “the personal is political”; where the
personal problems women face in their lives are a result of systematic oppression.
Throughout, I shall draw upon my experience of gaming and how it has been very
much immersed in this political theory. I can recollect joyous memories of playing video
games. Popular to contrary belief of “girl gamers”, of which is socially constructed
drivel, I was by no means inexperienced. Tomb Raider was my preferred choice, I
valued that I could play as a female protagonist, for the reason that the world of gaming
was (and is) highly dominated by men. The “opportunity” to play as a female character
was minimal. Fast-forward ten years and the gaming industry has included women
into all aspects of production. There are also prevalent female gamers in the gaming
community, however, the gaming industry is still largely dictated by men.
(Figure.1 - Top Google Search: Female Video-game characters)
The matter far extends the participation of women, a Google search of ‘female videogame characters’ (Figure.1) will bombard you with over-sexualised, abnormally large
chested, White and Asian women. This is an emphasis of hegemonic masculinity; the
female characters are fashioned with emphasized feminine traits and body parts to
appease the appetite of the male consumer and to legitimize men’s dominant position
in society. This patriarchal system objectifies women and continues to do so. It is a
superficial level of game-play; an animated concoction of masculine and feminine
fantasy. However, the problem perpetuates to the lives of real women and this is what
is significant.
(Figure.2 - Myself Twitch Streaming)
Twitch is a live streaming video-game platform where
people can interact with an online audience. A couple of
years ago, I decided to give it a go (Figure.2), I believed it
would be entertaining, sharing my passion for games
online with like-minded people. For the most part, online
users were friendly, nevertheless the misogynistic trolls
appeared. “GET YOUR TITS OUT”; “SHE WANTS IT!”
spammed my chat feed. It was in that moment my
personal interest in gaming became political, the derogatory language and the
normalization of rape was insistent. Rape culture is rife in the online gaming and
streaming community, young boys often watch and interact on the Twitch website and
witness men objectify women. Those young boys, following example and behind
anonymity, often join in.
(Figure.3 - Rape culture is not okay, so why am I nasty?)
If you think that I continue to stream games online, you are wrong. I cannot stand for
what the gaming industry has allowed; rape culture, a continued patriarchal system
and misogynistic values. This is a feminist’s nightmare and it is paramount that we
educate young people, who are frequently exposed to video-games, about gender and
sexuality. Efforts have been made in our ‘call-out culture’ to expose these issues with
hashtags trending on twitter; e.g. ‘#gamergate’. However, it is vital that more action is
taken against these issues (Figure.3), it is essential to affirm that rape culture and the
objectification of women is erroneous and needs to be eradicated.