(GAS1a) Open Session on Gender I: Critical Perspectives

This is an open session on gender. It invited papers that make theoretical and/or empirical contributions to the sociological study of gender Tags: Gender

Organizers: Chris Tatham, University of Guelph, Toby Anne Finlay, York University; Chairs: Chris Tatham, University of Guelph, Toby Anne Finlay, York University

Presentations

Danielle Bird, University of Saskatchewan

Settler Colonialism and Carceral Gendered Violence

Academic research. government reports, and commissions of inquiry reveal that Indigenous people are incarcerated at higher rates than their non-Indigenous counterparts (Office of the Correctional Investigator 2023) and underscore that Indigenous Peoples are more likely to be victims of violent crime and are subjected to increasing levels of interpersonal violence (Rizkalla et al., 2021; MMIWG-FFADA 2019). The ongoing recognition of Indigenous peoples’ incarceration has resulted in a cannon of literature that provides a diverse range of perspectives that link Canada’s racist practices and policies, including the effects of residential schools, to individual pathologies (e.g. intergenerational and/or historical trauma) which are considered conducive to criminalization (RCAP 1996; TRC 2015; MMIWG-FFADA 2019). These types of explanations for Indigenous incarceration are not surprising given how the “neoliberal punitive doxa” has infiltrated every aspect of settler colonial states, resulting in the wide-spread criminalization of the poor (Wacquant 2009). However, such explanations have yet to unsettle inherently flawed foundation from which the criminal justice system in Canada continues to operate (Cunneen and Tauri 2019) and fails to interrogate the role that settler colonialism plays in Indigenous peoples socio-economic marginalization in the state building projects that require securing access to Indigenous lands (Nichols 2014; Stark 2016; Blagg and Anthony 2019). This paper draws up critical Indigenous feminisms (Nickel and Snyder 2019) which acknowledge that race, class, gender, and heteronormative patriarchy within the context of settler colonialism, informs the criminological discourses and the ongoing hyper-incarceration of Indigenous women in settler colonial Canada (McGuire and Murdoch 2021). However, this paper extends this analyses and argues that colonial gendered violence is also imperative in providing nuanced understandings of the continuity of Indigenous men’s victimization, criminalization, and hyper-incarceration in settler colonial Canada. I suggest that the discipline of criminology must reckon with issues of gender, sexuality, and white heteronormative patriarchy as they relate to Indigenous men’s criminalization. I also acknowledge the internal polemics within Indigenous feminist scholarship and suggest that Indigenous feminisms must also strive to consider the ongoing “un-gendering” of Indigenous men and critically engage with the idea that colonial gendered violence is an often overlooked aspect in the hyper-incarceration of Indigenous men. This paper aligns with the conference theme “Challenging Hate: Sustaining shared futures” and asks the social collective to consider the what our communities can look like when we reprioritize relationships in a way that does not overlook the real work that must take place to attain anti-colonial Indigenous futurisms.

Connor MacMillan, York University

Masculinity turned inwards: The adoption of a victimized label

Father’s rights groups (FRGs) serve as a men’s centric support group for men/fathers that have gone through, or are currently going through, family law processes related to custody/guardianship. While FRGs poise themselves as support and advocacy groups, scholars have demonstrated how these groups have the capability to engage in socialization, and potentially radicalization, of their members. Many FRGs are centred on perceptions of men’s loss of social and familial power and/or degradation of their previously unquestioned dominance and authority, which has the potential to facilitate an adoption of and/or further enmeshment with gender inequitable beliefs and ideologies. For example, the rhetoric of FRGs tells a story of men’s oppression and victimization resulting from feminism and the empowerment of women. Through this social frame, these groups can create and perpetuate a narrative of women as malicious agents in men’s oppression through, for instance, manipulative tactics and false allegations of abuse in family court proceedings. However, the discursive mechanism of oppression that is harmfully co-opted by FRGs is not a novel concept and, instead, reflects the collective action of historical and contemporary emancipatory and rights-based movements. Yet, within the rhetoric and activism of FRGs, this narrative has the ability to reframe men and their harmful actions, such as domestic violence and acts of patriarchal control, and situate men/fathers as victims of social and legal processes they allege are biased in favour of women/mothers. Through interviews with men/fathers who are part of FRGs within Canada, and the use of thematic analysis and a grounded theory approach, this research examines: 1) the social implications of FRGs adopting and proclaiming a narrative of men’s victimization; 2) how men in FRGs reconcile a label of victim with a traditional/patriarchal masculine identity; and 3) how a victim label intersect with ongoing patriarchal practices of dominance and control.

Taisto Witt, McGill University

The Creation of the Monstrous Feminist in Men's Rights Discourses as an Ideological Defense Mechanism

A primary way in which the masculinities and ideologies of the men’s rights movement (MRM) are conceptualized by its’ members is through a strong reliance on biological essentialism as a mechanism for explaining and justifying gendered behaviour, hierarchies, and patriarchal privilege and domination. As a result, the core logics underpinning key arguments, positions, and ideologies of the MRM are both fundamentally flawed, and highly vulnerable to evidence-based critique. This vulnerability is compounded by the assertions of logic as essentially masculine by the MRM movement, which would suggest that the many extant evidence-based counterarguments would/should be readily considered by the MRM, even if they were to challenge or undermine the dominany beliefs and ideologies of the group. Furthermore, this represents an greater ideological weakness within MRM ideological logics, the foundational system of belief for the community, and MRM understandings of gender, masculinity and identity; if such expressions, traits, and social systems are ‘natural’ and ‘essential’, then how can the existence of the ‘feminist’, who can be interpreted as running counter to such forces, be explained or justified? Drawing from observations of the r/mensrights subreddit, currently the largest online community for the MRM, and the affective work of scholars such as Sara Ahmed and Zizi Papacharissi, this presentation explores the ways in which the ideological systems and narratives of the men’s rights movement discursively construct the oppositional ‘other’ (in this case the feminist woman) into an instrumental and highly affective semiotic object that can be utilized by the MRM as a method of ideological defense and securement. In particular, the ongoing construction of the feminist woman as ugly, unnatural, and irrational can be observed within ongoing community discourses. This discursive construction allows for the the dismissal of the personhood, positions, and logics of the ‘feminist woman’ and her allies/collaborators prior to any earnest or direct engagement with the thoughts, arguments, and existence of ‘real-life feminists’, which run counter to MRM narratives and beliefs. In this way, the utilization of highly essentialist logics is used to create embedded, highly affective ideological defense mechanisms that allow for the maintenance of deeply flawed belief systems within the MRM.

Chris Tatham, University of Guelph

Gender, Health and Stigma: Living With HIV under Criminalization in Canada

This paper examines how the impacts of HIV criminalization in Canada (the criminalization of non-disclosure of HIV) upon people living with HIV varies along of gender. The key themes that emerge from the accounts of the 75 people living with HIV in the study include how the law facilitates their potential for social exploitation (in terms of increased risk of violence after disclosure, and decreased control over condom use), the impact of the law upon sexual and romantic relationships (changing both the form of their relationships, and the gendered power dynamics within them), as well as their treatment by the criminal justice system itself (through the linking of HIV status with presumed guilt). A notable key finding is that women in the study experience criminalization through the lens of motherhood – regardless of whether they have children. Overall, this paper posits that the non-disclosure law, which was heralded as being designed to ‘protect women’ (Krusi 2018), does indeed do the opposite.