Plurality is a student-led journal based at the University of Edinburgh, started in 2023 we aim to create an inclusive and thought-provoking space to encourage both new and experienced writers to publish their research. The publication specializes in analyzing disciplines through an intersectional lens and publishes pieces which question how the intersectional experiences of gender can impact our knowledge and experience of the world.
Overcoming Inferiority through the Past-Orientalisation and the Present-Occidentalisation
This article examines the erasure of Japan’s premodern homosexual culture, known as nanshoku, through the lens of Orientalism. It argues that the decline of nanshoku through Japan’s westernisation following the Meiji Restoration (1868) entailed a process of "past-Orientalisation" and "present-Occidentalisation." While Edward Said theorised Orientalism as a Western discourse that subjugates the "Orient," this study extends his framework to analyse how Japan internalised Orientalist logic to distanse itself from its own past. By historicising its own sexual past as an "Othered" element belonging to an inferior “Orient” (“past-Orientalisation”), Meiji Japan sought to align itself with the dominant Western cultural and ideological framework ("present-Occidentalisation"). Drawing on the discourse of Orientalism and expanding its application to Japan’s internalisation of Oriental inferiority, this study explores how Japan’s restructuring of its sexual norms was not merely a process of westernising the past norms but a subjective redefinition of its own identity. This article further contends that this pattern persists in contemporary Japanese society, where discourses on gender and sexuality essentialise Western paradigms. By illustrating how Japan’s internalisation of Western ideology contributed to the persistent suppression of its cultural autonomy over sexuality, this article contributes to the discourse on how societies in the non-West have shaped modernity under the enduring legacy of Orientalist frameworks.
Copyright (c) 2025 Yuna Watanabe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Witnessing Erasure: Diasporic Memory and the Algerian Struggle Against French National Amnesia
The concept of diaspora, often entangled within the nation-state's rigid boundaries, presents a crucial yet often overlooked lens to denaturalise ossified narratives associated with the linear progression towards the centralised ‘neutral’ state. In crossing borders and boundaries, the Algerian diaspora in France occupies a liminal space that continuously reimagines, challenges and deterritorialises notions of ethnicity, citizenship and belonging. Pierre Nora’s seminal work ‘Lieux de Mémoire’ provides an important theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between locations, events and symbols as central to the collective memory of the nation. It is notable that he, being a member of the French settler community in Algeria, was deeply entwined with the history of French colonial rule. However, Nora’s works often anchor themselves in a collective memory that has sanitised the traces of empire as if deemed unworthy of remembrance or simply considered marginal. Whilst Nora’s works are central to the field of memory studies, his perspective risks perpetuating a vision of France that obscures the foundational violence of its colonial enterprise and the enduring liminality of its post-colonial subjects. Although post-colonial perspectives have gained traction within and amongst French academic circles, they often challenge key aspects of French national character. The relegation, erasure and essentialization of ‘non-European’ history are not merely semantic, but emblematic of institutionalised reductionism and dismissal. Ideas of progress and modernity are presented as inherent and universalistic. I propose this constitutes a dual process of historical erasure, firstly the erasure and essentialization of ‘non-European’ history and secondly the erasure of the memory of the atrocities committed during French colonial rule. This dynamic ultimately affirms the positional superiority of France through disseminating a worldview that privileges Western epistemologies. This dual process of erasure is particularly pronounced when understanding the experiences of the Algerian diaspora whose presence actively challenges the memories and imaginaries of French colonial rule and modern claim of neutrality. The Algerian diaspora dispels the myth of a static, territorially bound nation-state by merely existing within French borders. The post-memories and mythification of Algeria in the consciousness of second and third-generation Algerians challenge the assimilationist policies of the French state whilst unsettling what ‘home’ means for these communities. Thus, diasporic memories are a form of resistance, recasting the past in a light that illuminates the pluralistic and often contentious nature of identity and belonging.
Copyright (c) 2025 Melissa Kocacinar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Beyond Victimisation: Exploring Narratives on Northern Nigerian Women in the Context of Boko Haram
This essay examines the portrayal of northern Nigerian women in the context of Boko Haram and the related conflict, arguing that they have been predominantly framed through a narrative of victimisation, overshadowing their agency and diverse experiences. It first explores the historiography of northern Nigerian women before Boko Haram, highlighting their marginalisation in both historical and international discourse. It discusses how the limited accounts, shaped by colonial and Western perspectives, depicted these women primarily as oppressed and in need of external intervention, thus solidifying a restricted, homogenised portrayal of their experiences. The essay then focuses on the 2014 Chibok Girls’ kidnapping, which brought global attention to northern Nigerian women and reinforced their portrayal as victims. This perception was intensified by Boko Haram’s use of women as suicide bombers and the human rights violations committed by all sides of the conflict, further reinforcing the view of women as passive victims trapped in a cycle of violence. Finally, the essay highlights limited but important sources that discuss northern Nigerian women’s agency, including their voluntary association with Boko Haram and active roles in counterinsurgency and peacebuilding efforts, challenging the dominant narrative. By exploring these examples, this essay underscores the multifaceted roles these women have played in the conflict and emphasises the importance of incorporating their agency into discussions to move beyond reductionist portrayals and fully appreciate their diverse experiences and contributions to conflict dynamics.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Braun https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
“I Ran to the Comments”: Social Media Culture, Hate-Speech, and Hyperreality
While social media has allowed our world to become more interconnected and informed on global issues than ever. It has also aroused much criticism in the way it facilitates unrestricted hate-speech and violent rhetoric, especially towards historically oppressed groups. While the abundance of hate-speech online may be credited to the facelessness facilitated by internet profiles that negates accountability, this essay argues that there is a more cognitive and deeper explanation for how people are able to engage so violently with one another online. It will explain this through the framework of Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation”, elaborating that this discourse on social media exists within a hyperreality in which people are trained to jump to comment in a discriminatory way as soon as they witness the existence of a represents historical traits of otherness. The essay situates this idea of otherness in literature concerning the social architecture of gender, race and sexuality. Due to this process of reproduction of information, people are able to comment so aggressively as they are not witnessing another human being but instead, through the hyperreality they are only witnessing an image of a historically category of other, and thus they do not authentically engage with what they see but instead play into the simulation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ruby Scott https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
How to Understand Jinv’s Resistance towards Heteronormativity in China
This paper explores the intersectionality of the Chinese political, social, cultural, and digital landscape, which is reflected in jinv’s resistance to heteronormativity. Jinv refers to a group of Chinese radical grassroots feminists active on social media. The production of a Chinese woman ideal constructed through Confucian ideals, social norms, and policies that expect women to marry and bear children is explained, alongside an analysis of jinv’s localised response and resistance on social media. The paper also discusses the potential limitations of jinv’s resistance, particularly its emphasis on individual agency over structural problems, and briefly suggests possible reasons for such a limitation. The essay concludes by suggesting that a broader understanding of Chinese cultural and social environments, as well as further research into jinv as a unique feminist group, is essential to fully understand jinv’s feminist struggle.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tongyu Hu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
To Witness Submission in Human Conditions: A Gendered Redefining of Levinas’ Responsibility in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight.
Emmanuel Levinas presents the human condition as fundamentally shaped by responsibility (Morgan 114). In this, we are born with a “debt contracted before any freedom and […] consciousness,” paid off in an endless passivity to the needs of those around us (Morgan 125–29). While he frames this as a universal philosophy, extending beyond social structures and institutions towards an abstract ‘meaning’ (Morgan, 130), he articulates submission using gendered language:—‘Eros, the feminine, modesty, the caress’ (Morgan 125). This has since been the target of gendered critiques by feminist philosophers such as Irigaray, who maintains that “Levinas considers sexual difference as secondary to ethics, [establishing] paternity as the paradigm of self-transcendence” (Vasseleu 110). Thus, the seemingly “universal” state of Levinas’ ethics highlights an important overgeneralization: submission is more readily described as feminine because it disproportionately applies to women’s experiences compared with men. Under these sexual assumptions, I wish to defend the notion that Levinas’ philosophical framework unknowingly functions on the “effacement of the feminine” before the establishment of social and ethical relations (Vasseleu 111). Accordingly, this essay argues that ‘Levinasian’ responsibility is not an entirely universal human condition but rather a distinctly feminine way of being. To demonstrate this, I examine Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight, where the female protagonists are so deeply constrained to ‘passive’ responsibility that they come to see themselves as sexual and social objects. This self-objectification then mutates in various ways—through imagined futures, ‘dark’ female counterparts, and a painfully embedded subordination, they become reduced to spectators of their own lived experiences. Reframing Levinasian responsibility as extreme feminine passivity, I contend that these women are burdened with the role of observer in order to live ‘meaningfully’. Consequently, the ‘feminine’ drive toward death in these texts is not simply suicidal, but a rejection of the masculine demands that dictate a woman’s world.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jack Lyall https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Lost Paradise: The Role of the Witness in Shaping the Historiography of Jerusalem
Jerusalem is not merely occupied; it is actively rewritten. This piece examines how Palestinian witness testimony defies the gradual violence of erasure, transforming the city from a site of dispossession into an assertion of historical continuity. Drawing from decolonial theory, phenomenology, and political philosophy, I argue that testimony is not merely an act of remembrance but an epistemic and ontological intervention that challenges both material oppression and the state’s monopolization of historical truth. I interrogate the material conditions of occupation, positioning them within a broader philosophy of spatial domination: the destruction of Palestinian homes, the calculated deprivation of infrastructure, and the juridical apparatus that renders Palestinian existence precarious. Drawing on Nur-eldeen Masalha’s concept of memoricide, I examine how settler-colonial power operates not just through territorial expansion but through the systematic erasure and reconstruction of historical narratives, turning Jerusalem into a battleground of meaning as much as land. Testimony emerges here not as passive recollection but as an act of existential resistance. The act of witnessing asserts both the primacy of lived experience and the refusal of epistemic erasure, positioning Palestinian memory as a challenge to the structures that seek to render it illegible. Judith Butler’s work on ‘grievability’ is mobilized to interrogate how international frameworks of recognition operate to exclude Palestinian suffering from the category of the politically visible. Further on, I situates testimony within digital landscapes, analyzing the El-Kurd family’s plight in Sheikh Jarrah as an extension of what James C. Scott terms ‘hidden transcripts,’ a counter-history that bypasses the gatekeepers of official discourse. ‘Digital sumud’ is introduced as a contemporary iteration of Palestinian endurance, where social media functions not just as documentation but as a subversion of hegemonic narratives. Ultimately, this essay argues that Palestinian testimony does more than document loss. It disrupts, resists, and reclaims. The struggle over Jerusalem is not just territorial; it is a war over meaning itself, and through the voices of those who refuse to be erased, the city remains a living archive of defiance.
Copyright (c) 2025 A Hijazi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Resisting Surveillance: Can Abolitionist Self-Care Truly Provide Liberation from the Male Gaze Within Oppressive Structures?
This paper explores the pervasive nature of the male gaze within patriarchal structures, claiming that women and other marginalised groups are subject to constant surveillance. This leads to the internalisation of the male gaze, which effectively creates women to become their own witnesses in response to societal expectations. By building on Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, the paper applies this theory to social dynamics beyond the original cinematic context. It applies theories of alienation to argue that the male gaze functions as a form of estrangement for those living within systematised oppression. The paper examines how different intersectional identities-such as women of colour and queer individuals- experience its effects in distinct ways. These experiences diverge significantly from those of cisgender, heterosexual women, highlighting the complex intersections of identity within patriarchal systems. The paper makes a clear point that defiance does not erase the gaze but affirms its power as something that must be resisted. Once you become aware of its presence, it cannot simply be forgotten. The author concludes the paper in an optimistic tone, suggesting that abolitionist self-care practices can provide individuals with radical tools to dismantle oppressive structures. Abolitionist self care in isolation finds it difficult to challenge the male gaze, however, activist spaces offers a beacon of hope as means for women to resist the male gaze through mutual recognition and meaningful, interpersonal relationships.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mia Taylor https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Girlcore: the Right Way to be Female? Examining the Effect of Choice Feminism on What it Means to be a 'Woman' through the Language and Trends of Tiktok
Since the beginning of the 2010s and the advent of what many call the fourth wave of feminism, “choice feminism” has accounted for an increasingly large segment of people who call themselves “feminists”. This movement can widely be observed through commentary on femininity on social media such as TikTok and women choose to use the platform. Since the rise of TikTok in 2020 many different trends and debates have appeared in relation to what it means to be a “girl” or “woman”, and these instances can be observed and analysed to ask a larger question of what being female and identifying as such means in the modern era and years to come. In a world more and more defined by our online presence and the use of social media, there is a landscape in which there is increasing desire to market oneself. In using micro-labels, micro-labels here referring to the hyper-specific aesthetic or identity related categories that have risen in popularity over the last couple years on social media (Sojit Pejcha, 2023), we transform ourselves from human beings to concepts. This process seems to be specifically taken up by women who exercise their “choice” to objectify themselves in a radical new way; something that I argue is much more comfortable than having to deal with the true acceptance of the human experience and what it means to be a woman.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ruby Scott https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Myth of the 'muse': a History of the Gender Roles Conceptualised in Art
The muse has been historically defined as a source of divine inspiration to the artist, a passive and voiceless object art is made in reflection to but not about. The dynamic is almost always gendered with the female counterpart of the muse being frequently left silent. She takes on a sexualised role, posing nude, as often the relationship between muse and artist extends to romantic one. An erotised and romanticised version of womanhood litters nude paintings of the past, highlighting how the role frequently stripped women of their identity as they were portrayed through the eyes of the male artist. However, there are artists who have challenged these assumptions. Tracing the life of artist Lee Miller and the work of Shigeyuki Kihara reveals how the binaries between the roles of artist and muse are not as rigid as previously thought but are influenced by societal constructs limiting how we perceive and use the role of the muse.
Copyright (c) 2024 Martha Gane https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Considerations of Intersectionality in Psychological research
At the forefront of the increasingly popular intersectionality agenda in psychology is the wellbeing of individuals. The British Psychological Society states that a key principle of psychological research is to “consider societal benefits” and “contribute to the common good” (BPS, 2021). There is an abundance of evidence on the harmful outcomes of negative intergroup relations and systemic oppression on marginalised individuals. For example, marginalised groups often experience educational and economic disadvantages (Porter, 2011) alongside both physical and mental health disparities (English et al., 2022; Mitchell et al., 2021; Stevens-Watkins et al., 2014). Consequently, psychology as a discipline should prioritise advocating for a more equitable society.
Copyright (c) 2024 Abigail Nicoll https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Legislating Virginity: The Law and Ethics of Hymenoplasty and Virginity Testing
According to Merriam Webster, the definition of a ‘virgin’ is someone who has never participated in sexual intercourse. This definition revolves around heterosexual relationships and the assumption that the intercourse will involve a person with a penis and another with a vagina. However, what one considers sexual intercourse can vary from person to person (for example, whether oral sex is included) and the definition incurs greater difficulty when linked to anatomy, specifically the hymen. The hymen is a thin membrane of skin near the opening of the vagina, which consists of leftover fragments of tissue formed during foetal development, found only in female mammals. The presence of the hymen still holds significant importance in most religions as it is believed to determine a woman’s ‘purity’ and ability to marry, an essential factor for their position within their community, due to the commodification of female virginity. Consequently, women often face violence when they are accused of not being a virgin, or are found to have a hymen which is not intact. Due to the gender binary being imposed by the concept of virginity, this essay assumes that most people with hymens identify as women, whilst still acknowledging that trans*, non-binary and intersex people can also share this anatomical feature. This essay will discuss the cultural practices that encourage virginity testing and hymenoplasty, followed by an analysis of potential harm-reduction solutions with reference to the historical and religious background which places virginity as a gendered concept. Whether the measures put in place by the Health and Care Act 2022 are sufficient in preventing the violence against women which stems from practices surrounding virginity will be discussed in the context of the practical realities of virginity testing. This idea will be explored within the framework of the UK’s legal system with reference to other European jurisdictions for context.
Copyright (c) 2024 Eve Coffey https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Gendering Empire: A Historiographical Exploration
In her landmark work in feminist theory The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argues how gender is a totalising, transformative social experience. In this essay, I will argue that this total construction of power and identity finds resonance the colonial project. As alluded to in Franz Fanon’s vision of decolonisation, colonialism wholly moulds and creates individuals. The link is established in using gender as a category of historical analysis for empires, where the principal analytical prism is a Foucauldian dispersion of power, in which power emanates through knowledge-fields, discourse and social relations rather than through simple, unmasked, top-down imposition. Two strands emerge: the genealogy of power and the reproduction of power. The former traces how gender has contributed to moulding, naturalising and essentialising colonial hierarchies, while the latter addresses how historical writing itself illuminates or occludes narratives, agencies and subjectivities, in turn creating new meanings. However, gender as a category of historical analysis is useful for historians of empire, contingent upon the adoption of an intersectional approach that does not posit gender as primary to other axes of oppression. Furthermore, the consciousness of its inessentiality – particularly that of the binary – is necessary to avoid perpetuating Eurocentrism and its specific demarcation of the concepts of gender and race.
Copyright (c) 2024 Adeline Cheung https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Ellen Churchill Semple: Navigating a Patriarchal Discipline
Ellen Churchill Semple is a notorious figure in the geographical realm whose complicated legacy renders her place within a historiography of geography uncertain. While Semple is hailed as the first female geographer, it is also widely acknowledged that her work is tainted with racism. Contemporary scholars wish to erase her contributions, declaring that they would “prefer to forget” her infamous text Influences of Geographic Environment in which she claimed that physical geography determined human behaviour. Mona Domosh complicates this desire to erase Semple from memory by advocating for a feminist historiography of geography. Through foregrounding the contributions that women have made to the development of geographic knowledge, Domosh challenges the exclusion of women from accounts of the discipline’s past. This paper therefore addresses the question: Should Semple be included in a feminist historiography of geography? Furthermore, was Semple a feminist? To interrogate this, I reimagine Pearson’s take on violent women. Just as Atwood describes a woman’s disbelief at her ability to cause harm in the opening quote, Pearson centres the misperception that women are simply compassionate caregivers and victims of their circumstances – the ‘myth of female innocence’. This is useful for exploring Semple’s role in epistemological violence where her data interpretations brought negative consequences for certain groups. An intersectional lens is crucial for examining the connections between race, class, and gender which shaped the experiences of Semple and those she deemed ‘inferior’. The structure-agency debate emerges, asking whether individuals are entirely socialised by structures or can act autonomously. I take a relational approach to acknowledge the interrelatedness of social processes and argue that Semple both actively challenged and perpetuated patriarchy. Firstly, this paper outlines Semple’s theoretical contributions and other key insights provided by contemporary female geographers which are useful for assessing Semple’s impact today. Secondly, Semple’s infiltration of male-dominated space is examined to demonstrate her resistance to traditional gender expectations. Thirdly, her imperial entanglements are traced to illustrate her perpetuation of the patriarchal state. Finally, a contemporary manifestation of the Semple dilemma is considered. I conclude that by today’s standards of intersectional feminism Semple is not a feminist role model, however she can be considered an early feminist for her active reconfiguration of an all-male discipline. Ultimately, I advocate for the critical inclusion of Semple’s work in a feminist historiography of geography. This project of decoding knowledge to understand the influence of cultural forces offers a step towards decolonising the academy.
Copyright (c) 2024 Eliza Sinclair Kidd https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Against Chrononormativity: How May a Concept of Queer Time Challenge Traditional Ideas of Historical Progress?
If we, in modernity, define time as the standard by which we measure and organise the expected life course, as ‘linear, ordered, progressive, and teleological’ (Luciano, 2007:2), then queer discourse and experience can be seen to exist as oppositional to it. Historical progress is marked by heteronormative assumptions of the life course - regarding factors such as bodies, achievements, goals, and productivity - assumptions that queer communities may not always assimilate to. This essay aims to discuss how a concept of ‘queer time’, borne from this alienation and difference, can be seen to challenge traditional, heteronormative, and ‘western’ ideas of historical progress. To do so, it is important to consider further concepts, such as chrononormativity, grief, and activism, through contesting queer theories on futurity. Additionally, all arguments should contemplate intersectional applications, as what we define as ‘the queer experience’ continues to adapt and diversify.
Copyright (c) 2024 Izzie Atkinson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Who is to Blame for the Russia-Ukraine war? Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives on 'Real Politics'
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has widely been narrated as having epochal significance with far-reaching implications. For leading historians of Eastern Europe, such as Timothy Snyder (2022) and Serhii Plokhy (2015), what we are seeing is an existential threat to democratic norms. While discussing phenomena of the political world, drawing on a variety of lenses is advantageous; in the case of the Russian-Ukrainian war it is a necessity. This article engages with a combination of lenses provided by feminist and postcolonial theories to critically reflect on the logic, as articulated by Russia's political elites, behind the invasion of Ukraine. It focuses on the role of gender and racialisation in normalising one’s place in the social hierarchy and its ‘appropriate’ behaviour, excusing occupational, violent and genocidal policies under the abstract term of ‘real politics’. This article attempts to trace the way social structures empower gendered and racialised politics, allowing invasions to be justified. Russia-led wars in Ukraine will be discussed as an example of the consequences of such a structure and ideology. This article will firstly underline a feminist and postcolonial approach that addresses the necessity of social hierarchy analysis to reveal the causes of war. Further sections will focus on unpacking Russia’s claims of the legitimacy of its colonial/great-power state project to incorporate Ukraine. I will conclude with a reflection on how the notion of the nation-state, rooted in the ideologies of social hierarchy and colonial domination, can be seen as having fuelled the ongoing war.
Copyright (c) 2024 Liza Yeroshkina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Removing the Binary: An Exploration on the Impact Language has on Our Gender Perception
Language, as a reflection of societal values and beliefs, wields the power to shape perceptions of gender, often perpetuating a binary understanding through grammatical gender systems. The influence of the generic masculine and masculine norm within languages with dense grammatical gender reinforces this binary, marginalizing communities and centralizing power within the masculine form. Despite these challenges, endeavours towards gender neutrality within grammatical gender languages offer hope, particularly in their potential to benefit marginalized groups like the LGBTQ+ community. However, while recent advancements demonstrate potential for gender neutrality within language, the possibility of achieving a genuine ‘gender-free’ language remains a question, especially within grammatical gender languages and beyond. In order to begin answering this question, one needs to understand the concept of ‘gendered language’ and how it has impacted our perception of gender throughout history. It is also necessary to analyse how recent linguistic adjustments impact the LGBTQ+ community and the changes in attitudes towards non-binary spaces. By comparing attitudes towards gender in grammatical gender and genderless languages, we gain insight into the intricate relationship between language and societal norms. To do that one needs to look at the contemporary languages such as English, Spanish and Swedish, which are undergoing gender-neutral adaptations within the core lexicon and grammar. In addition to indigenous languages that have historically included a form of gender neutral language. In essence, this examination of language and gender dynamics offers the conclusion that it is possible to remove gender from language, yet cannot change the impact that gendered language has already had on society’s perception of gender.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ellie Robertson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Mana Wāhine: Decolonising Feminism and Patriarchy in Aotearoa
Aotearoa/New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the right to vote in 1893, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was widely celebrated for her response to Covid-19 (Roy, 2020), and the country, despite having experienced a swing towards the right in the 2023 general election (Corlett 2023), is generally seen as one of the most progressive (McDonald, 2020). But does the situation of Māori women paint a different picture? It is important to look at numerous additional difficulties Māori women face compared to Pākehā women. Statistics show that Māori women are significantly overrepresented in prisons (Adair, 2023) and are much more likely to be unemployed than all other demographics (Reilly, 2019). According to Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a leading Māori scholar on Mana Wāhine theory (1992), Māori women face a double jeopardy of oppression for being both a woman and Māori. To understand their situation, it is essential to examine what role colonialism plays in this oppression. In this essay, I explore how colonialism has shaped the struggles Māori women face, and how they respond to it through Māori feminisms, – more specifically, through the concept of Mana Wāhine . I start by describing how colonialism is a gendered process that brought patriarchy to Aotearoa, and how this colonial encounter shaped interactions between white and Māori feminists, an encounter that is marked by misconstructions of distinct realities that are assumed to be the same. I move on to Indigenous feminism in Aotearoa by categorising Mana Wāhine as a decolonising Māori form of feminist theory and tying it into transnational efforts before finishing with a conclusion. I find that the colonial encounter lastingly shaped the situation of Māori women in Aotearoa by introducing Western binaries, gender norms and patriarchy. Furthermore, the lens of colonisation distorted Māori culture to present it as sexist. The only way out of thisdouble bind for Māori women is therefore an approach that takes their oppression as both women and Māori into account.
Copyright (c) 2024 Lea Kern https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
'These Chicks are Damaged Goods': The Abject Female Body in Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Warner's The Sopranos
The female body as a disruptive force was a dominant topic in the popular culture and literature of the 1990s, as well as in debates of the postfeminist theorists of the decade. As culture began to constantly scrutinise women’s bodies and obsessively fixate on unhealthy thinness and perpetual youth, an idealistic model of the female body was conceptualised: self-contained, perfectly smooth, with no biological functions or needs (vide McRobbie 57-8). Due to the impossibility of meeting these voyeuristic standards, the uncomfortable biological reality of womanhood has been perceived as deserving of societal degradation and unyielding control. This essay will examine the nature of Kristevan's abjection of female bodies in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1997) and Alan Warner’s The Sopranos (1999). I shall follow the thesis of Margrit Shildrick and Janet Price, which delineates the relationship between the physicality of the female body and the negative perception of women, outlined as such: ‘the body has a propensity to leak, to overflow the proper distinctions between self and other, to contaminate and engulf. Thus, women themselves are, in the conventional masculinist imagination, not simply inferior beings whose civil and social subordination is both inevitable and justified, but objects of fear and repulsion’ (3). I will argue that the female protagonists of these novels are unwilling to reject their corporeality despite its negative connotations; however, due to the all-encompassing nature of their patriarchal environments, they are unable to liberate themselves from the oppressive demarcations of female abjection.
Copyright (c) 2024 Julia Owczarek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Challenging Patriarchal Representations: Women's Metafictional Writing
In line with Friedman and Fuchs’s understanding of women’s experimental writing, I argue that through the means of metafiction, which subverts the established notions of realism and stresses the constructedness of reality, authors like Acker and Sapphire create room and possibility for women’s radical opposition against established norms of literary patriarchal structures as well as voice a call for their liberation. These works are rooted in the ideas of agency; through the experimental and metafictional form, they assert the writer’s freedom and thus give power to the marginalised feminine.
Copyright (c) 2024 Julia Guzikowska https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Resistance against oppression can be diversely defined. Johansson and Vinthagen (2019) have posited that it is composed of the acts of subordinated people that might undermine power. Henry (2019) describes these acts as contra the forces that homogenise and confine people, aiming at liberation. These definitions broadly describe the amorphous concept of resistance as ‘acts against’. However, what are these acts? Can something as little (or as big) as speaking out be a resistant act? I argue that anti-oppressive speech can enact resistance in accordance with J.L. Austin’s theory of speech acts. While J.L. Austin’s titular task is identifying ‘How to Do Things with Words’, I will describe how to resist with words.
Copyright (c) 2024 Elizabeth Hamilton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Can the Story of Eve (Genesis 2-3) be Interpreted as Feminist
This essay will argue that Eve in Genesis 2-3 cannot be interpreted as feminist as her story, tied to Adam, is inherently patriarchal. I will argue against three points that form the basis of a feminist re-interpretation of Genesis 2-3: that Adam is ungendered, that Eve is made from Adam’s side rather than his rib, and, that Eve is Adam’s suitable helper rather than his subordinate. I argue that feminist and traditional interpretations of Eve define her existence in relation to Adam’s prior existence. In this way, Eve consistently represents the Other, as she is defined only in reference to the Subject Adam, a man (De Beauvoir, 1949, 26). Eve is incidental while Adam is essential, and for a representation to be truly feminist it must show the woman as the Subject.
Copyright (c) 2024 Lily Roberts https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Can Religious Modest Dress be Included in the Feminist Project
In 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, claimed that the burqa was not a symbol of faith but rather a sign of enslavement, and was therefore unwelcome in French society (La Fornara, 2018). Feminism aims to free women from any such ‘enslavement’ that would act as a barrier to gender equality. Nevertheless, the intersectional injustices that impact religious women make this debate more complicated than what Sarkozy suggested. This essay will therefore explore the ethical significance of religious modest dress, and advocate for its compatibility with the feminist project. This will be achieved through focusing on Jewish and Muslim women, living as minoritised groups in Western countries. While religious patriarchal structures seem to contradict the strive for gender equality through dictating how women present themselves, this should not permit the Western world to act as ‘saviours’ and reduce these women to victims. Instead, they should be included in the feminist cause and an effort should be made to truly understand their perspectives in order to strive for a modern world that treats men and women from all backgrounds more equally than it does currently.
Copyright (c) 2024 Lucy Barry https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Hegemonic Masculinity, Health Administration, and Male Human Trafficking Victims inthe United States: A Public Health and Economic Analysis
Human trafficking remains a significant public health crisis in the United States, disproportionately affecting marginalized groups. Despite ongoing efforts, systemic shortcomings in U.S. anti-trafficking frameworks perpetuate the invisibility of male survivors, who constitute 25% of trafficking victims. This analysis investigates the role of hegemonic masculinity in shaping public health policies, revealing entrenched biases that hinder the identification and support of male victims. Cultural constructs of masculinity portray men as invulnerable, contributing to inequitable funding allocation, inadequate service provision, and the neglect of trauma-specific interventions. The analysis highlights how these oversights exacerbate health disparities, deepen homelessness, and impose substantial economic burdens on society. By addressing these systemic failures, the research advocates for transformative solutions—including equitable resource redistribution, targeted educational reforms, innovative policies, and comprehensive data collection. The study underscores the ethical imperative of dismantling gender biases to ensure inclusive anti-trafficking strategies that enhance resilience, promote health equity, and uphold human rights.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sommer Lugert https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Women as witness to desire: Power lines and structures in Lanval by Marie de France.
This article interrogates the role of women in Marie de France’s Lanval by examining how female figures function as symbolic witnesses and repositories of desire within the feudal court. Drawing on theoretical frameworks advanced by Julia Kristeva, the study argues that medieval literature constructs women as the Other, whose absence of personhood provides a space for the projection of male desire, lending itself to the pursuit of honour and spiritual ascendance. Through a detailed analysis of the dual portrayals of the fairy queen and the feudal queen, the article demonstrates how these figures, though superficially subversive, ultimately reinforce the gendered hierarchies of courtly love. The narrative techniques employed in Lanval—from lexical choices and character juxtapositions to the symbolic settings of the forest and court—reveal a deep reliance on the female form to validate the male quest for refinement and societal worth. By contrasting the two characters, the article underscores how women are reduced to ‘objects of exchange’, serving primarily to witness and substantiate male progress (Kristeva, 1981, p. 50). In doing so, it highlights the inherent tension between the subversive potential of Lanval and its structural adherence to patriarchal values, offering insight into the complex interplay of desire, power, and gender in medieval narratives.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rose Devine https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0