Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

The present study performed a critical feminist discourse analysis (CFDA) on narrative-style YouTube videos created by Black women while on their Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) surgery journeys. Specifically, this study aimed to answer the main research question: What are Black women’s motivations for undergoing surgery? Additionally, it takes interest in examining the ways undergoing BBL surgery has impacted individual Black women’s mental health and wellness. Upon coding for the discursive objects “motivations” and “mental health impacts”, the following discourses and counter discourses emerged and were subsequently analyzed using a critical Black feminist theoretical framework: “doing it for me” empowerment discourse versus self-preservation counterdiscourse, postop satisfaction discourse versus postop regret discourse, mental obstacle discourse versus psychological resilience counterdiscourse and support system discourse. Conclusively, this study suggests that Black women’s decision-making and motivations for choosing BBL surgery is a topic of complexity and intricacies which suggest a need for further academic research and analysis.

This thesis explores the link between New Age ideology, Evangelical Christianity, Qanon and the weaponization of women's body autonomy. It delves into how these factors have brought women into the Qanon conspiracy, leading them to engage in COVID denial, anti-vax movements, spreading medical misinformation, Qanon propaganda, and right-wing beliefs. Employing qualitative data analysis, cyberethnography, and feminist analysis, the research identifies online behavior, shared values, and beliefs in wellness, spiritual, and alt-right spaces through specific hashtags. This thesis focuses on a small set of social media hashtags on Facebook and Instagram between 2016 to 2020, revealing connections and shared agendas between New Age and Conservative religious communities. Remarkably, it uncovers a partnership between the male-dominated alt-right and the female-led New Age community, united by a specific feminized metaphysical language. By highlighting this connection, the research exposes the white supremacist origins of Qanon, discouraging well-intentioned women from joining the movement.

Can women's liberation organizations draw inspiration from Black female rappers as contemporary feminist role models and embodiments of anti-misogynoir? Black female rap music asserts that women and femme-identifying individuals can counter harmful and oppressive portrayals by rapping life into alternative realities. Artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, and City Girls actively resist patriarchal and heteronormative norms through their assertive and explicit lyrics, distinctive wardrobes, and performances. This paper utilizes intertextuality to delve into the themes and patterns across Black female rap music to illustrate how these artists use their craft to subvert violence, racism, and sexism, thereby reshaping the prevailing images of Black womanhood. The intertextual analysis presented in this paper aims to describe and justify a curriculum designed to enrich identity exploration among young people and to be instrumental for feminist organizations. Through a critical examination of the lyrical content of Black female rap music, this study aims to uncover how these artists transcend traditional stereotypes of Black womanhood and sexual objectification, providing a survival guide for subverting patriarchal dominance for us all.

In asexuality studies, I have found a tendency to place radical critiques of compulsory sexuality before the identities of asexual people. Although largely unintentional, these scholars reduce asexuality down to a logical kernel of itself that is then used to posit these criticisms. Therefore, the identities that asexual people can embody become removed from the critiques put forth. To combat this tendency, I argue not for the disavowal of radical critique, but rather I advocate for a postcritical approach to critical argumentation surrounding asexuality so that identity is a part of the conversation. My aim is to expand the methods of evaluation without abandoning asexual identity. Ultimately, I suggest that one can still use radical critique so long as these identities are honored. Lastly, I contend the only way to accomplish this goal is to supplement radical critique with other forms of argumentation (e.g., arguments based on negotiation, not exposure).

Often, academic knowledge and activist knowledge clash, one being dismissed as unscholarly and the other as impractical. As theory becomes further removed from its application in academic and activist spaces, how can scholars and activists work to produce revolutionary knowledge to transform our thinking and engage with social justice movements? This feminist action research project combines traditional and non-traditional methods of relaying feminist theoretical implications in the reproductive justice movement by pairing academic written text with a collection of “zines” to produce new and legitimate ways of transforming feminist scholarship and praxis. Because academia needs the “real world” experiences of activists and activists need the political and theoretical analyses that shape social justice movements, this project should compel other feminist scholar-activists to explore the use of multiple formats to increase the visibility and legitimacy of contemporary feminist thought.

Research presented in this project examines how the social construction of sexuality affects cisgender (cis) men's attraction to transgender women. While mainstream discourse roots gender normative males' attraction to transgender women in heterosexuality, this project demonstrates how cis-trans pairings emerged from homosexuality in the twentieth century. This project traces the way sexologists' elaboration of the differences between sex, gender, and sexuality helped to distinguish transfeminine people from trans-attracted gender normative males using Foucauldian genealogy. Further, this project examines how researchers have adapted nineteenth-century frameworks of same-sex desires as sexual fetishes to construct gender-conforming “healthy” desires aimed at transsexual women by using the elaboration of these categories in the science of transsexualism. By doing so, this project illustrates how researchers deemphasized the body of trans people and elevated their gender to ensure a white middle-class cis-normative society.

Bridging ideas presented in contemporary media analysis and feminist theory, the research presented herein investigates the representations of pregnancy within Angel in order to draw conclusions about the lasting impacts of these story arcs for both the women who fall victim to these violent possessions and pregnancies and the male characters who bear witness as well. Extending this analysis outside of the interpersonal conflicts that emerge between these fictional characters, this thesis argues that these pregnancy storylines serve as a “shibboleth of death” that extends past the minutiae of these characters’ lives and deaths to influence their legacies, or lack thereof. This usage of “shibboleth” highlights the mere mention of pregnancy as an automatic signifier of death for the women of Angel; both on screen and beyond, women are held captive by their reproductive capabilities and exploited for the gains of their male counterparts even after their deaths.

Often without question, we are tasked with understanding gender as inherently predicated on the assumption of whiteness and understanding that Black trans women and other transfeminine people belong at the bottom of a silent “hierarchy” of sorts. How then do Southern Black transfeminine people form their genders under such tightly coiled restraints? To elucidate these questions’ answers, I interviewed 5 Southern Black trans women and/or Southern Black transfeminine people to discuss the issues facing those that find themselves often spoken about but rarely spoken to. After these interviews, I utilized both my own understanding of Southern Black gender theory as well as the works of Black gender and Africana studies theorists to parse out how hegemonies within Southern trans communities are leading to Black trans women’s alienation and brutalization through narrative analysis. I aim to let these interviewees’ stories act as a catalyzing force for further Black transgender theorization.

Assata Shakur and Marielle Franco were activists fighting for racial and gender equality in the United States and Brazil. This work aims to observe their life stories and legacies, analyzing the documentary Marielle: The Crime That Shook Brazil and Assata Shakur’s memoir Assata: An Autobiography. This study will focus on the differences and similarities in their countries’ justice systems and how Franco and Shakur built strategies of resistance to navigate their homeland's necropolitics and also focus on the process of recognizing the self, using the concept of escrevivências. Therefore, observing how their political views and positions directly cause their exile and death. Two methodologies, narrative analysis and analysis of the discourse will uncover the similarities between the discourses presented in the documentary and the autobiography. Pointing out how political consciousness is a significant factor in the life of Black women both in Brazil and the United States.

Public debates on youth sexuality, sex education, and reproductive rights are forever changing. Social media outlets are important knowledge spaces for teens to learn, share, and seek information regarding these topics. Using feminist content analysis, I explore how eight issues of Seventeen magazine construct and uphold conservative fears of teen sexuality. With the application of Michelle Fine’s four discourses of female sexuality, found in public-school sex education, (sexuality as individual morality, sexuality as victimization, sexuality as violence, and the missing discourse of desire) I seek to address how Seventeen constructs its target audience as a cis-gendered, heterosexual, teen girl who lives without sexual desire or the need for medically accurate sex education or reproductive health services. With the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade, this study seeks to acknowledge how public discourses of sex, sexuality, and reproductive health directly impact how youth view their individual bodily autonomy or lack thereof.

This thesis explores the various discursive strategies that black women employ when they encounter street harassment from men. To investigate the ways in which these women choose to respond to men’s attention during social interactions, I examine their perception of social situations to understand how they view urban spaces and strangers within these spaces. Drawing on qualitative interviews that I conducted with 10 black women, I focus on how the unique convergence of this group’s racial and gender identities can expose them to sexist and racist street harassment. Thus, I argue that black women face street harassment as a result of gendered and racialized power asymmetries. I found that black women rely on a variety of discursive strategies, including speech and silence, to neutralize and negotiate these power asymmetries. They actively resist reproducing racialized and gendered sexual stereotypes of black women by refusing to talk back to men who harass. Understanding silence as indicative of black women’s agency, not oppression, remains a key finding in this research.

This research aims to deconstruct mainstream Egyptian TV talk show representations of Arab LGBQ people through identifying and dissecting the strategies they deploy to manufacture anti-queer representations. The representation strategies I study are: the construction of the ideal viewer, advancing an “us” vs. “them” paradigm, reproducing queer people as the “Other,” fetishization, and the mobilization of false impartiality. The second aspect I explore is how power relations limit moments of resistance within the defined space of the interviews I analyze. Lastly, I interrogate how the growing social struggle in discourse has affected more recent mainstream representations, particularly in the years of 2017 and 2018. In my analysis, I refer to Norman Fairclough’s analysis of the use of language as inseparable from social structures, Teun van Dijk’s research concerning the common discursive means that media utilizes, and Stuart Hall’s investigation of the work of representation and the process of producing meaning.

“Stories of Exile: The Construction of Trans Athletes as a Political Category,” asks: What is the relationship between gendered sports policy since 1936 and anti-trans sports laws in 2021? Utilizing a transfeminist sports studies’ methodology, I explore three significant points in Olympic sports where the discourse of the gender binary shifts: the introduction of sex verification in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the 1972 passage of Title IX, which shaped the classification of “female athletes,” and the 2021 Tokyo Olympics which featured the first out transgender and non-binary athletes. Aiming to bring attention to the connection between sports and the construction and continued (de)stabilization of the hierarchical gender binary, this project looks for explicit attempts to regulate gender non-normativity in sports in order to identify specific characteristics about how trans athletes are discussed to formulate a historically grounded conception of today’s attacks on trans athletes.

This thesis focuses on Iranian women’s memoirs to analyze the use of transnational women’s autobiographies in the feminist classroom. It will explore the uses of memoir and autobiography to teach women’s experiences outside of the United States in the feminist classroom, why these narratives are so attractive and how they can also slip into ideologies that perpetuate Eastern/Western dichotomies and hierarchies. It will use a transnational feminist lens to analyze popular Iranian memoirs Persepolis and Reading Lolita in Tehran to evaluate how and why these texts are used in feminist academic spaces to teach American students about Iranian women. Additionally, this thesis will use Iran as a case study to interrogate and question how feminist academia can perpetuate ideologies of Western exceptionalism.

This thesis posits a primary role for the body in the deconstruction of ideological and cultural meaning such as religious and nationalist doctrines. Through the analysis of the work of vocal artists and performers I examine the ways in which contexts of meaning are altered. By centering their sound practices, as well as my own, I articulate possibilities for what I call “un-meaning” that nonetheless preserve cultural ties and practices of belonging that create “broken continuities.”

This thesis identifies a political tactic I call “personalizing the political.” Personalizing the political inverts the responsibility of social ills from social institutions, the economy, and governance into personal problems created by individuals. Personalizing the political inverts the Marxist feminist understanding of “the personal is political.” Ultimately, neoliberal feminism has prompted personalizing the political and weakening feminist praxis. I identify personalizing the political in the response to the “incel killer,” Elliot Rodger, who committed a spree-killing in Isla Vista, California in 2014, which frames him as a “lone-wolf terrorist,” or mentally ill, rather than a fascist political actor. I take on analytic philosopher Kate Manne’s response to Rodger, who also finds him a political actor. However, Manne too personalizes the political through her lack of feminist praxis. I argue for a robust socialist feminist praxis in the face of 21^st century fascism.

This research explores the invisibility and marginalization of Queer Black women and girls in films and television and how these inaccurate depictions and stereotypes in media contribute to the real-world disenfranchisement and abuse of Queer Black women and girls in the United States. I highlight movies and tv episodes with Queer Black female characters and analyze how their character arcs and how their character is utilized to aid the plot within the film or series. I cite literature that examines homophobia, racism, and sexism, socially and institutionally in the US and highlight the research represented within these selected studies and concluded with my own screenplay. My argument is that having more Queer Black women in leadership roles behind the scenes of these productions will aid in more nuanced and equitable representation of Queer Black women on-screen and potentially humanize the way Queer Black girls and women are treated in society.

This thesis focuses on emotions to analyze personal narratives of queer disabled sex to understand how queer disabled people talk about sex with the goal of identifying their constructions of their sexualities and sexual practices. By analyzing how the role of discourses on disability affect how these narrators and their partners feel about disabled sex, this thesis explores how sex can be used to combat negative emotions fueled by dominant ableist discourses that cause shame and self-disgust. This thesis explores how some of these narrators employ what I call a cross-crip praxis of lust, where they describe experiencing a radical liberation from shame about their disabled bodies and increased sexual pleasure as they create alternative sexual cultures. These narrators offer insights into how the possibilities for sex and pleasure can be expanded for us all through their stories of a DIY sexuality, where creativity and agency constitute fulfilling sexual experiences.

This study aims to bring attention to the ways in which Black womanhood is curated in the digital landscape by both Black women and non-Black women. Representations of Black women, often coded as negative, circulate mainstream media today, but when the same representations are taken up by non-Black woman bodies, they are regarded differently as unique, profitable, and desirable. In this context, Black womanhood is described as a specific performance assembled through cultural references popularized by Black women. To explore this topic, I analyze two Instagram accounts through visual analysis. The results show how my own curation of my image on Instagram account as a Black woman and Emma Hallberg’s, a white Swedish woman accused of “Blackfishing,” curation of her Instagram account are shaped by the performance of Black womanhood in digital space.

In the last five years Venezuela registered its first massive migration due to economic and sociopolitical circumstances. In this context, I explore visual discourses in which diasporic subjects imagine a modern nation through circulations of emotions and memories on Instagram. The Chromatic Environment, a piece by Carlos Cruz-Díez located at the Simón Bolívar International Airport, along with natural landscapes and circulations of commodities, become the evocative referents for Venezuelan diasporic subjects to claim their sense of belonging. A visual analysis of images reveals how Venezuelan migrants circulate their longing for recuperating and restoring icons, symbols, and consumption practices as they connect with their personal experiences and craft an ideal past and future. Emotions concerning time and space play a significant role in how diasporic subjects represent their relations to the nation at the moment of departure and when they settle in a new country.