Gender Studies

ABSTRACT The Gender Lab (TGL) has learnt that young facilitators of gender norms change programs for adolescent boys experience transformations of their own. Having centred lived experiences of gender and masculinities in interventions towards norms change to redefine masculinities since 2017, this practice note holds TGL's enquiries of these transformations in the lives of young cisgender heterosexual male facilitators of The Gender Lab Boys Program. The note captures facilitators' stories of employing vulnerability, humour and local slang to connect with adolescent boys through a program to redefine masculinities, and the reflections on their own masculinities that these efforts evoked. The note attempts to sift evidence of ongoing relational re-constructions of masculinity between the young men and the boys from these stories, revealing shifts in facilitators' own performances, expressions, and exercises of gender and masculinities alongside their negotiations with the pressure of masculine norms across contexts. This work hence suggests that working with boys as role models could be an intervention for young men towards discovering a changed narrative of masculinity in their lives. The tensions shared by the facilitators, including living intervention values across spheres of life and facing isolation as men in feminist masculinities work, lead the note to call for compassionate spaces to hold the experiences of facilitators of norms change work on gender and masculinities.

This is a transcribed interview with professors K.J. Rawson and Libby Adler, with questions from board chair Carla Kaplan, discussing the initial actions by the second Trump administration to set back transgender progress and erase all federal government recognition of trans existence. Much of the discussion focuses on Donald Trump’s executive orders from his first week in office, purporting to govern everything from military participation to passports to athletics. Professors Rawson and Adler address the concrete effects of the orders on trans people in the United States as well as the legal and political context in which the orders can be situated.

ObjectiveThis study aims to estimate the prevalence of sexual violence among university students (identification of sexual violence behaviors, self-recognition as victims and perpetrators) and its relationship with alcohol consumption and other associated factors.MethodsDescriptive cross-sectional multicenter study of students from six public universities in Catalonia, north-eastern Spain. Sexual violence has been categorized into three levels of severity, ranging from least to most severe.Results2,803 students participated (72.5% women). Regarding sexual violence victimization, 79% of respondents had experienced level 1, 59.8% level 2, and 7.5% level 3. Concerning perpetration, 15.6% had perpetrated level 1, 2.5% level 2 and 0.3% level 3. Sexual violence identification was high, with females identifying more situations than males (p < 0.001). 39.6% of students had felt pressured to drink alcohol and 65% had experienced alcohol-related blackouts in the previous year. Men consumed more alcohol than women (p < 0.001). Sexual violence perpetration was associated with males, students in 4th to 6th grade, pressure to consume alcohol, alcohol-related blackouts and alcohol consumption. Sexual violence victimization was associated with females, pressure to consume alcohol, alcohol-related blackouts and alcohol consumption.ConclusionThis study identifies a high prevalence of sexual violence among university students, consistent with international findings and signaling a concerning trend. The results also show a strong link between sexual violence and alcohol consumption in university leisure contexts. Existing evidence indicates that alcohol facilitates rather than causes sexual violence, creating circumstances in which sexual victimization becomes more likely. The study highlights the need for prevention strategies and educational programs addressing sexual violence and reducing its associated risk factors among university students.

Abstract Classifying information, or concealing reasons for government decisions, can weaken state legitimacy in a democratic order where citizen insight and participation are imperative. Despite these democratic drawbacks, state secrecy can appear to be necessary and even to consolidate the state. Recognizing that secrecy may both weaken and strengthen state legitimacy, this article argues that feminist perspectives on security and protection deepen the understanding of the relationship between secrecy and legitimacy in democratic states. Through an analysis of contemporary Cold War military heritagization in Sweden, we demonstrate how secrecy's Janus-faced relation to the state is fundamentally gendered. This intervention contributes to critical security literature on secrecy by engaging specifically with the feminist theorizing on the logic of masculinist protection. The way in which state secrecy actualizes gendered protection can shape secrecy practices into both a resource for and a threat against state legitimacy. We argue that while state legitimacy depends on the connections among masculinist protection and the making and keeping of secrets, those very same connections also mean that the leakage of state secrets suggests a feminized vulnerability and an inability to protect citizens. Such feminization may delegitimize the state.

Due to its very subject matter, research on transnational migration inevitably involves multiple languages. As a result, such research cannot be reduced to research where the researcher’s first language is English, but the interviewees’ first language is not; it needs to be expanded to interviews where the researcher and the interviewee speak the same language. Even then, however, their (class, race, gender) background may become an obstacle to understanding each other. In my research project on family life worlds under Jordanian citizenship law, I conducted semi‐structured interviews in Arabic without an interpreter. Arabic was the first language of my interviewees, but my third foreign language, which I speak and understand well, but not perfectly. This special interview situation seemed challenging and was initially due to a lack of financial resources for interpreters, which is often recommended (van Nes et al., 2010). In the course of my research, conducting interviews without an interpreter proved to be a helpful approach in order to take into account the co‐constitutive process of reality generation in qualitative research (Finlay, 2002). Grounded in feminist and intersectional methodologies, I developed a reflexive approach on how to deal with languages, (a lack of) understanding, and the corresponding power hierarchies in research processes. I argue that the balance of power between researchers and interviewees is changed by the fact that the interviewee is in a linguistically more capable position and thus may develop a different perception of his or her own agency. I propose epistemologically that an interview outside the interviewer’s first language can be a constant reminder of gaps in understanding and the different realities of the interviewer and the interviewee in the subsequent transcription, translation, and analysis steps (Larkin et al., 2007).