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Siberian Khanty (Ostiak) menstrual taboos and related rituals of birth, naming, and marriage are analyzed, in order to explore cross‐cultural theories of menstrual restriction, gender stratification, and female conservatism. Emphasis is placed on Mary Douglas's idea that conflicting norms of male dominance and female independence can encourage pollution beliefs. The importance of ancestresses, female shamans, and postmenopausal women in Khanty ritual indicates that there is no male monopoly on concepts of culture, power, the sacred and the "public." Khanty ideas about women, changing with Russian influence, are discussed in terms of slowly shifting definitions of "self and ethnicity. Data result from 13 months in the Soviet Union, including a summer ethnographic expedition to the Northern Ob River. [symbolic anthropology, pollution beliefs, gender stratification, ethnicity, Siberian Khanty (Ostiak)]

Alternatives Within the Mainstream II follows from the first volume's dedication to a critical appreciation of and a tracing of trajectories of the theatres of our Others on the British stage. The first volume Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres traced a history of Black and Asian British plays, playwrights, theatre companies and theatre voices. The two volumes celebrate the plurality on the post-war British stage in terms of class, gender, race and sexualities. Alternatives Within the Mainstream II: Queer Theatres in Post-war Britain is an introduction to queer sexualities and their presence on the post-war British stage. From an introduction which addresses the possibilities of an undoing of repressiveness in desiring another, this volume charts a history of queer on the British stage, from a climate of sexual repressiveness and criminalisation, to a period of legal acceptance of homosexual desire. It covers gay, les, trans and queer British theatres, the influence of American queer theatre, AIDS consciousness, black queer theatre and television drama. Alternatives Within the Mainstream II: Queer Theatres in Post-war Britain is aimed as an introductory text which introduces the several plays, playwrights, theatre companies and queer theorists to students and scholars of contemporary queer British theatres. This book is dedicated to Anthony Blair and the Labour government for bringing in the Civil Partnerships Act.

Sally Haslanger offers the following concept of "woman": If one is perceived as being biologically female and, in that context, one is subordinated owing to the background ideology, then one "functions" as a woman (2012b, 235). An implication of this account is that if someone is not regarded by others as their self-identified gender, they do not function as that gender socially. Therefore, one objection to this ascriptive account of gender is that it wrongly undermines the gender identities of some trans people. In this paper, I will argue that Haslanger's definition can be defended against this objection and that her account inevitably aids in liberatory efforts not only for cisgender women, but for all sexual and gender minorities. While Katharine Jenkins's dual account of gender aims to rectify this objection (2016, 407), I will point out two important problems with her argument: "the inclusion dilemma" and "the abolition problem." Finally, I will argue that Haslanger's account of gender is preferable to Jenkins's because it outlines the reality of gender as an oppressive, hierarchical system whose categories ought to be dismantled.

AbstractThis article argues that African American hair is a political matter by examining the little-known role of state occupational licensing of African American hair care. By focusing on recent legal challenges and legislative battles over state regulation of hair-care provision for African Americans, the article traces state authorities' responses to struggles over market share between licensed, and often native-born, African American beauticians, and typically unlicensed, and often recent African immigrant, hair braiders. Hair braiders challenged state regulatory oversight by invoking racial deference claims, in which they argued that braiding was a "cultural practice" that should be exempt from state regulation. A statistical analysis of state regulatory decision making revealed that states varied widely in addressing the issue of African American hair care. While racial deference claims, in the form of legal cases, put pressure on states to exempt hair braiders from regulatory oversight, by and large, most states did not choose this path. For states that did choose to address the demands for market protection or market relief, the choices were mostly in the direction of enacting new regulations or actively incorporating hair braiders under existing regulations. Despite the invocation of racial deference claims, African American hair care was not freed from state oversight—state regulators became more flexible in their oversight of Black hair care rooted in their concerns over public safety as well as the demands from a variety of interest groups. The analysis reveals that when race/gender and state regulation intersect, traditional economic theories of occupational licensing are not sufficient; an intersectional approach can better explain policy outcomes.

This article seeks to reclaim Trans Studies as a space for political-theoretical practice committed to radical social transformation from its current state of superficiality and frustration. In a first step, the article proposes a critique of the 'gender identity' paradigm as a unique and fundamental contribution by Trans Studies scholarship, which exposes how the framework of 'gender identity' reproduces forms of othering, reductionism and coloniality. Building on this critique, the centrality of 'gender identity' as an analytical category in current Trans Studies writing becomes problematic and in need of explanation. In a second step, the article critically interrogates the impact of a liberal transgender rights project and its strategic notion of 'gender identity' on Trans Studies scholarship. It argues for the necessity to open up the political-theoretical imaginary of Trans Studies, explicitly including Marxist-feminist currents. The article finally proposes three political-theoretical commitments for Trans Studies.

The two factors of 'gender-identity' (whether the speaker is male or female) and 'gender-congruence' (whether or not the gender of speaker and listener is the same) can be assumed to act differently in determining levels of politeness. To investigate this assumption, the present study was designed to analyze university student politeness levels in Japan and South Korea when they (i.e., speakers) asked various people (i.e., listeners) to purchase a concert ticket. A decision tree analysis revealed hierarchies of factors predictive of politeness levels specific to young Japanese and Koreans. Among Japanese, distance (i.e., extent to which speaker and listener are acquainted) was the strongest followed by power (i.e., extent of disparity in social status) and gender-identity/gender-congruence. Among Koreans, however, power appeared to override distance, resulting in the descending order of power and gender-identity/gender-congruence. Regarding gender-related factors, the results of these parallel studies in Japan and South Korea generally suggested a distinctive influence of gender-identity on politeness levels when listeners held equal or lesser power than speakers, while gender-congruence was implicated when listeners held greater power.