Journal articles on the topic 'Sexual concerns (SexCon)'

<p>O presente artigo tem como objeto de análise o fenômeno da categorização sexual, à luz da teoria do filósofo Michel Foucault, principalmente a partir de sua obra <em>História da Sexualidade: a vontade de saber,</em> visando-se averiguar em que medida o citado fenômeno, a categorização sexual, representa um instrumento do poder e da verdade incidentes sobre o sexo, um instrumento de padronização de formas de vida. Para tanto, optou-se, inicialmente, por uma reflexão acerca de leis, decretos e programas pátrios baseados em identidades sexuais, em categorias sexuais, apresentando-se, por sua vez, o sentido que o termo <em>categoria sexual</em> assume no presente ensaio; sustentando-se a sexualidade como uma construção, em forma de um dispositivo, responsável pela criação da ideia de sexo biológico, assim como pela produção das sexualidades desviantes, que precisaram ser nomeadas e catalogadas, para fins de controle. Seguidamente, fez-se, de forma breve, uma análise histórica, reconstrução histórica, no sentido foucaultiano, de desnaturalização do evidente; da sexualidade, averiguando-se o poder e a verdade incidentes sobre o sexo, tratando-se do chamado <em>dispositivo de sexualidade</em>. Em um terceiro momento, estudou-se a inversão teórica realizada por Michel Foucault, no que concerne a ideia de criação do sexo pelo citado dispositivo, dispositivo de sexualidade. Por fim, refletiu-se sobre a verdade e o poder incidentes sobre o sexo e o fenômeno da categorização sexual, identificação sexual, analisando-se a sua instrumentalização por aqueles, se as categorias sexuais cumprem um papel específico atribuído por aqueles.</p>

A transexualidade trata da mudança dos indivíduos de seu sexo masculino ou feminino identificado no nascimento para viver em sociedade sob sua alternativa de identidade de gênero. Visando essa adequação são realizados procedimentos transexualizadores, no entanto, pouco se conhece sobre a função sexual e urinária após esses processos. Neste sentido, este estudo propôs avaliar as funções sexuais e miccionais de homens transexuais submetidos à terapia hormonal. Participaram do estudo 13 homens transexuais e foram utilizados os questionários: Escala de Desconforto Sexual Feminino (FSDS-R), Índice de função sexual feminina (FSFI), Teste de Três Perguntas sobre Incontinência (3IQ), Protection, Amount, Frequency, Adjustment, Bodyimage (PRAFAB). Foi utilizado o software Excel para entrada dos dados, confecção das tabelas e análise estatística descritiva. No FSDS-R, 10 (76,92%) dos homens trans apresentam-se desconfortáveis sexualmente. A pontuação média da FSFI foi de 14,8 pontos, sugerindo disfunção sexual. No teste de 3IQ, 25% relataram perder urinária, destes, 75% apresentam urgência miccional e 25% apresentam Incontinência Urinária (IU) por esforço. No score total do PRAFAB, 50% apresentaram IU leve e 50% obtiveram IU moderada. Portanto, a avaliação foi positiva para tendência a disfunções sexuais nesta população. No que concerne a função miccional, a minoria dos homens trans manifestaram alterações.

AbstractPart of the ethical debate about sex with robots concerns whether sex with a robot is rape of that robot. It therefore makes sense for us to debate what should be the boundaries of consent, decades from now, i.e. consent given by humans to robots. How will the sexbot landscape look in situations when it is the human who is consenting, or not, to a sexual invitation or advance by the robot? The sexbot will have responsibilities towards its human partner, and there will be moral and legal consequences if it fails to deliver on those responsibilities. An unresolved ethical argument employed by many of those who deplore the coming advent of sex robots is that robots are unable to proffer a meaningful indication of sexual consent, and therefore a human deciding to have sex with a robot is committing rape of the robot. A parallel question, as yet to be addressed, is under what circumstances should a robot be considered to be acting in a sexually inappropriate or illegal manner towards a human? And this question embraces some others, including: “How can a robot determine, with any degree of certainty, whether or not a proximate human wants or at least consents to sex?”; “What behaviours by a robot are permissible within the #MeToo context when the robot is exploring a proximate human’s current level of sexual interest in the robot?”; and “If a robot oversteps the accepted bounds of sexual behaviour with a human, who is responsible and what should be the legal consequences?” We discuss these issues and speculate on how the sex robots of the future will be able to conform to the ethics of consent.

Resumo O uso de drogas injetáveis refere-se, principalmente, ao uso de cocaína, e seus usuários caracterizam-se por alta frequência de injeção, elevado número de parceiros sexuais, comportamentos sexuais de risco e a troca de sexo por drogas. Há um contingente significativo de mulheres que usam drogas injetáveis, demandando contínua investigação no que concerne às relações de gênero que permeiam essa prática e os comportamentos de risco associados, bem como a suas demandas específicas. Buscou-se elucidar a vulnerabilidade dessas mulheres às doenças sexualmente transmissíveis (DST), ao uso de drogas pela parceria com usuários e ao sexo desprotegido em decorrência da dependência química. Tratou-se de estudo qualitativo, em que foram utilizadas a observação participante e o grupo focal como estratégias para conhecimento da população. Os dados coletados foram divididos nos seguintes núcleos temáticos: consumo de drogas, relações afetivas, violência, situação legal, comportamento sexual e acesso à informação e às medidas de saúde. Investimentos e incorporação do conceito de iniquidades nas relações de gênero devem ser preconizados em medidas de saúde, de forma a esclarecer e fortalecer o grupo de mulheres nas tomadas de decisões em suas práticas sexuais e consumo de drogas que as imputam maior vulnerabilidade.

En las últimas décadas se han llevado a cabo varios estudios que evidencian la relevancia de la actividad sexual para la salud, el bienestar y la calidad de vida de las personas mayores. En este contexto se ubica esta investigación, que tiene por objeto conocer los factores que potencialmente pueden explicar la inactividad sexual en las poblaciones mayores. Además de los factores sociodemográficos, que tradicionalmente se han asociado a la actividad sexual, exploramos el potencial explicativo y la sensibilidad en la estimación de la inactividad sexual en el último año de las percepciones de salud y las actitudes hacia la sexualidad en una muestra de 200 sujetos de entre 62 y 91 años (M=71.30; SD=5.48). Los resultados obtenidos sugieren importantes porcentajes de varianza explica de la inactivad sexual por el modelo de regresión donde se incorporan variables sociodemográficas (R2 = .295). Nuestros resultados apuntan también, a que tanto la percepción y preocupación por la salud sexual como las consideraciones en torno a las relaciones sexuales antes del matrimonio o al sexo sin amor, explicarían la inactividad sexual de las personas mayores. Estos resultados permiten sugerir el potencial de la intervención centrada en los estereotipos y actitudes hacia la sexualidad. Extensive studies carried out in recent decades have noted the relevance of sexual activity to the health, well-being and quality of life of older people. In this context, we propose this research work that aims to know the factors that can potentially explain sexual inactivity in older populations. In addition to the sociodemographic factors that have traditionally been associated with sexual activity, we explored the explanatory potential and the sensitivity in the estimation of sexual inactivity in the last year of health perceptions and attitudes towards sexuality in a sample of 200 subjects between 62 and 91 years old (M = 71.30, SD = 5.48). The results obtained suggest important percentages of variance explained by the regression model where variables such as the existence of a partner, age and place of origin are incorporated (R2 = .295). Our results also point to the fact that, both the perception and concern for sexual health and the considerations regarding sexual relations before marriage or sex without love, would explain the sexual inactivity of the elderly. These results allow us to suggest the potential of the intervention centered on stereotypes and attitudes towards sexuality.

Resumen: Este artículo versa sobre el actual estado de la teorización, de la terminología y del conocimien- to empírico relativo a la producción social y ejercicio del trabajo sexual, con atención especial a las teorías y conceptos que estructuran el tema de la participación diferenciada de las mujeres en general, y de las muje- res con características étnicas/raciales subalternizadas en particular, en el mercado del sexo. Se delinea una postura alternativa a los planteamientos convenciona- les higienistas, criminalistas o victimistas desde donde tradicionalmente se ha analizado la cuestión. Adicio- nalmente, se reflexiona sobre el crecimiento, expansión y modernización de la industria del sexo, en la que algu- nos países post-industrializados asumen la condición de demandantes y los países en vía de desarrollo, la de ofer- tantes de mano de obra para el consumo de experiencias sexuales de diferente índole. De igual modo, se delibera sobre la importancia que tiene la comercialización del sexo, para el desarrollo económico de algunos países y el trabajo sexual como estrategia de “rebusque” frente a los embates de la vida cotidiana. Asimismo, describimos las formas de explotación y de ejercicio del oficio de tra- bajadoras del sexo.Palabras claves: Mercado global del sexo, construcción de la ocupación, interseccionalidad, trabajo sexual, mu- jeres afrocolombianas, sexualidades disidentesFrom the Hygienist Paradigm to Intersectionality. The Social Construction of Sexual WorkAbstract: The present article deals with the current state of the theorizing, the terminology and the empirical knowledge about the social production and exercise of sex work, with special attention to theories and concepts that structure the subject of the different participation in the sex trade of women in general, and of women with subalternized ethnic/racial features in particular. It de- lineates an alternative view to conventional hygienist approaches, or criminal or victimization approaches, traditionally used to analyze the issue. In addition, this paper reflects on the growth, expansion and moderniza- tion of the sex industry, in which some post-industrialized countries provide the demand and developing countries provide the supply of labor for the consumption of sexual experiences. Similarly, it discusses the importance of the commercialization of sex for the economic development of some countries and of sex work as a strategy of look- ing for informal work while coping with the ravages of everyday life. It also describes the forms of exploitation of sex workers in the exercise of their profession. Key words: global sex market, occupation, intersection- ality, sex work, Afro-Colombian women, dissident sexu- alities

ABSTRACT Objective: to know the way through which the concepts of sexuality embodied by the adolescents interfere in their preventive actions, searching for the factors that compromise their sexual and reproductive health. Methodology: this is a study with a qualitative design, carried out with the approval by the Ethics Committe of Funorte, under the Protocol 0129/8. The data were obtained through the focal group technique on October 2008. The study’s subjects were six adolescent girls whose ages ranged from 13 to 17 years, all of them users of the Health Center of the Maracana neighborhood, in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Results: the results showed that the adolescence experience favors the construction of ideas on sexuality; that parents aren't prepared to guide their children on the theme; that gender issues influence the sexuality in adolescence; and that both the health services and the school do not clarify issues related to sexuality, leading friends to be the major sources of information. Conclusion: the understanding on the several concepts of sexuality and the factors influencing on the construction of their values from the adolescent's reality will be useful to guide the doing of nursing, as well as that of other professional categories in the integral care provided to this public. Descriptors: adolescent; sexuality; sexual and reproductive health. RESUMO Objetivo: conhecer a maneira pela qual os conceitos de sexualidade que os adolescentes absorvem interferem em suas ações preventivas, buscando-se os fatores que comprometem sua saúde sexual e reprodutiva. Metodologia: trata-se de um estudo de natureza qualitativa, desempenhado com aprovação do Comitê de Ética da Funorte, sob o Protocolo n. 0129/08. Os dados foram obtidos através de técnica do grupo focal em outubro de 2008. Os sujeitos do estudo foram seis adolescentes do sexo feminino com idades entre 13 e 17 anos, todas usuárias do Centro de Saúde do bairro Maracanã, em Montes Claros, Minas Gerais. Resultados: os resultados mostraram que a vivência da adolescência beneficia a construção de ideias sobre sexualidade; que os pais não estão preparados para orientar seus filhos sobre o tema; que as questões de gênero influenciam a sexualidade na adolescência; e que tanto os serviços de saúde como a escola não elucidam questões pertinentes à sexualidade, tornando os amigos as principais fontes de informação. Conclusão: o entendimento dos diversos conceitos de sexualidade e dos fatores que influenciam a construção de seus valores a partir da realidade do adolescente servirá para direcionar o fazer da enfermagem, assim como o de outras categorias profissionais na atenção integral a esse público. Descritores: adolescente; sexualidade; saúde sexual e reprodutiva. RESUMEN Objetivo: conocer la manera por la cual los conceptos de sexualidad que los adolescentes absorben interfieren en sus acciones preventivas, buscándose los factores que comprometen su salud sexual y reproductiva. Metodología: esto es un estudio de naturaleza cualitativa, desempeñado con aprobación del Comité de Ética de la Funorte, bajo el Protocolo 0129/08. Los datos fueron obtenidos a través de la técnica del grupo focal en octubre de 2008. Los sujetos del estudio fueron seis adolescentes del sexo femenino con edades entre 13 y 17 años, todas usuarias del Centro de Salud del barrio Maracanã, en Montes Claros, Minas Gerais, Brasil. Resultados: los resultados mostraron que la vivencia de la adolescencia beneficia a la construcción de ideas acerca de la sexualidad; que los padres no están preparados para orientar a sus hijos sobre el tema; que las cuestiones de género influyen en la sexualidad en la adolescencia; y que tanto los servicios de salud como la escuela no elucidan cuestiones pertinentes a la sexualidad, tornando los amigos las principales fuentes de información. Conclusión: la comprensión de los diversos conceptos de sexualidad y de los factores que influyen en la construcción de sus valores a partir de la realidad del adolescente servirá para direccionar el hacer de la enfermería, así como lo de otras categorías profesionales en la atención integral a ese público. Descriptores: adolescente; sexualidad; salud sexual y reproductiva.

AbstractThis article offers a novel reading of the criticisms of sex robots put forward by the Campaign Against Sex Robots (CASR). Focusing on the implication of a loss of empathy, it structures CASR’s worries as an argument from moral degradation centered around the potential effects on sexbot users’ sexual and moral subjectivity. This argument is subsequently explored through the combined lenses of postphenomenology and the ethical phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas. In so doing, it describes the type of human-technology relations that sexbots invite, identifying alterity as a central feature. It also highlights how alterity, responsibility, and subjectivity are intimately connected. However, that connection is distinctly different in sexual circumstances, making current versions of Levinasian roboethics largely inapplicable for the ethics of sexbots. To overcome this, the article delves into Levinas’ phenomenology of Eros and identifies voluptuousness as a type of enjoyment of the Other that is different from the enjoyment invited by current sexbots and is compatible with responsibility. Based on this, the article provides examples of how this phenomenology of Eros can inspire the design of future sexbots in ways that alleviate some of CASR’s concerns.

ABSTRACTObjective: to describe adolescents’ opinions about the social norms that influence sexual initiation and behavior according to the sex. Method: this is about a cross-sectional quantitative study conducted with 335 male and female adolescents between 15 to 19 years old. They were selected from a systematic sample of those enrolled in a Family Health Unit located in São Paulo city west zone, Brazil. Data were obtained with the application of a structured questionnaire filled up by the adolescents within their homes in September 2007. Qui-square and Mann-Whitney tests were used in the analysis. Results: the adolescents’ average age was 16.8 years, and 63.7% had already initiated sexual life (average age at 14.8). Male and female adolescents showed similar opinion concerning the social norms of sexual behavior such as the perception of peer pressures on sexual onset, high valorization of female virginity and different relationship between parents and adolescents according to their sex. Conclusion: in the sexuality field, distinct social sex profiles were attributed to the adolescents. They seemed to be sure that those profiles are submitted to different expectations and evaluations according to their sex because of gender relations. Descriptors: adolescent health; sexual and reproductive health; gender and health.RESUMO Objetivo: descrever as opiniões de adolescentes sobre as normas sociais que influenciam a iniciação e o comportamento sexual na adolescência segundo o sexo. Método: estudo transversal quantitativo conduzido com 335 adolescentes de 15-19 anos de idade, selecionados por amostra sistemática a partir de uma lista dos adolescentes cadastrados em uma Unidade de Saúde da Família da zona oeste da cidade de São Paulo. Os dados, obtidos a partir de questionário estruturado autoaplicado em setembro de 2007, foram analisados por meio dos testes Qui-quadrado e Mann-Whitney. Resultados: os adolescentes tinham idade média de 16,8 anos e 63,7% já tinham iniciado atividade sexual, em média aos 14,8 anos. Homens e mulheres adolescentes mostraram que têm opiniões semelhantes no que concerne às normas sociais de comportamento sexual, como a percepção de pressão dos amigos para o início da atividade sexual, valorização da virgindade feminina e tratamento diferenciado que pais e mães destinam aos filhos/filhas. Conclusão: no campo da sexualidade, foram reafirmados papeis sociais distintos aos adolescentes do sexo masculino e feminino. Os adolescentes possuem convicções de que tais papeis estão sujeitos a avaliações e expectativas diferenciadas, que emergem de acordo com as relações de gênero perpetuadas na sociedade na qual estão inseridos. Descritores: saúde do adolescente; saúde sexual e reprodutiva; gênero e saúde.RESUMENObjetivo: describir las opiniones de los adolescentes sobre las normas sociales que influyen en su iniciación y comportamiento sexual, de acuerdo con el sexo. Método: estudio transversal y cuantitativo con una muestra de 335 adolescentes de 15-19 años de edad. Es una muestra sistemática de los adolescentes inscritos en una Unidad de Salud de la Familia, parte oeste de la ciudad de Sao Paulo, Brasil. Los datos fueran obtenidos de un cuestionario estructurado lleno por los propios adolescentes en septiembre de 2007. Resultados: los adolescentes tenían una edad media de 16,8 años y 63,7% había iniciado su actividad sexual a 14,8 años de edad. Los adolescentes tenían opiniones similares sobre las normas sociales de comportamiento sexual, como la percepción de la presión del grupo de pares para la actividad sexual temprana, el reconocimiento de la virginidad femenina y el tratamiento diferenciado de los padres y madres destinadas a los hijos/hijas. Conclusión: en el campo de la sexualidad, los roles sociales se reafirmaron diferentes para los adolescentes varones y mujeres. Los adolescentes tienen convicciones que eses papeles sociales están sujetos a las distintas expectativas y evaluaciones que surgen de acuerdo con las relaciones de género, perpetuadas en la sociedad a que pertenecen. Descriptores: salud del adolescente; salud sexual y reproductiva; género y salud.

Abstrak: Anak autis usia pubertas perlu memiliki pemahaman tentang konsep bagian tubuh pribadi agar dirinya terhindar dari tindakan pelecehan seksual. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui efektivitas penggunaan media pembelajaran berupa SEXO App terhadap pemahaman konsep bagian tubuh pribadi pada siswa autis. Jenis penelitian ini menggunakan Single Subject Research (SSR) atau penelitian dengan subjek tunggal. Desain yang digunakan adalah A-B-A’. Subjek penelitian ini adalah anak autis kelas V SD yang berusia 12 tahun di Sekolah Khusus Autis Bina Anggita. Data penelitian dikumpulkan menggunakan tes tertulis. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan yaitu analisis dalam kondisi dan analisis antar kondisi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa media SEXO App efektif terhadap pemahaman konsep bagian tubuh pribadi yang dibuktikan dengan naiknya perolehan skor tes pemahaman konsep bagian tubuh pribadi dari tahap ke tahap. Hal tersebut terjadi karena media SEXO App merupakan aplikasi pembelajaran visual yang disesuaikan dengan karakteristik pembelajaran anak autis sebagai visual learner.Kata Kunci: aplikasi pembelajaran, bagian tubuh pribadi, siswa autisAbstract: Autistic children of puberty age must have sexual education in order to avoid sexual harassment.This study aims to determine the use of learning media in the form of Application SEXO towards understanding the concept of automatic users in students. This type of research uses Single Subject Research (SSR) or research with a single subject. The design is A-B-A '. The subjects of this research are children with autism grade V SD which is 12 years in Special School Autism Bina Anggita. Methods of research data using written tests. Data analysis techniques are also called in conditions and analysis between conditions. The results showed that the SEXO media Application effective against the understanding of existing concepts is reversed with the increase of performance Scores of some parts. This is done because the media SEXO App is a visual learning application tailored to the type of autism learning as a visual learner.Keywords: learning application, body part concept, autistic student.

O artigo reflete a impossibilidade de um estudo comparado entre a Literatura Brasileira e a Literatura Cubana no que concerne às pessoas transgêneras; e às demais pessoas gênero-divergentes. Trabalha a partir da análise do grau de erudição que o texto “Máscaras”, do escritor Cubano Leonardo Padura. Apresenta o repertório do autor em torno do termo das pessoas transe aponta que na Literatura Brasileira algo similar não exista. Para não nos furtarmos do estudo comparado far-se-á análise do caso de Verônica Bolina. Para compor a análise do caso busca-se o entendimento judicial proferido às pessoas transgêneras nos seguintes casos: RE 670.422/RS, RE 845.779/SC e a ADPF 527 que suscitam a discussão, pari passu, ao texto literário, qual seja; distinção do que seja sexo, gênero, orientação sexual e identidade de gênero.

This essay discusses Keats's affinity with Pyrrhonian scepticism as recorded by Sextus Empiricus in Outlines of Scepticism in the following aspects: the investigative, non-dogmatic attitude towards the truth, the ability to set out oppositions and to realise the equipollence in opposed accounts of the truth, suspension of judgement, and the goal of tranquility. It also speculates on the implication of the common medical background Sextus and Keats shared by linking the ethical values of ancient scepticism to the humanitarian concerns of medicine that might have shaped Keats's scepticism. Although the connection between Keats, Sextus, and medicine is speculative, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy – carefully studied by Keats – mentions Sextus, from which we can assume Keats's exposure to Sextan scepticism. The Renaissance revival of Pyrrhonian scepticism provides us with stronger evidence about its indirect influence on Keats through Montaigne and Shakespeare as its important inheritors.

El recorrido seguido a partir de las transformaciones del currículum y los cambios legislativos sucedidos en el contexto español no parecen haber dado respuesta a las demandas que organizaciones clave como la OMS o la UNESCO han pronunciado en torno al concepto de educación sexual. Este artículo busca adentrarse en la realidad pasada y presente del tratamiento de aspectos como el cuerpo, las emociones, las relaciones interpersonales y las cuestiones ligadas a la igualdad entre sexos y al género en educación obligatoria de nuestro país. Para ello se lleva a cabo un procedimiento de revisión de la legislación educativa que parte de la LGE de 1970 y llega hasta la actual LOMCE y en el que se desgranan las aportaciones y evidencias detectadas en torno a este tema. Así mismo, el artículo pretende dibujar el recorrido del marco académico de la sexología y la educación sexual como ámbitos del conocimiento, resaltando las tendencias más significativas. Finalmente, las conclusiones pretenden dibujar la situación actual de la educación sexual como cuerpo teórico en la etapa secundaria y señalar claves necesarias para que tales contenidos sean incorporados en el currículo educativo y en la formación continua e inicial de profesionales de la educación. The curricular transformations and the legislative changes occurred in the Spanish context do not seem to have addressed the demands that key organizations such as OMS or UNESCO have made about sex education. In the specific context of Spanish Secondary Compulsory Education, the present article taps into the past and present of concepts such as the body, emotions, interpersonal relationships and issues linked to equality and gender. To this end, we conducted a review of the educational legislation from the LGE of 1970 to the current LOMCE with a view to tapping into the most important implications of these legislative frameworks. This article also aims to picture the reality of the academic framework of sexology and sex education looked at as areas of knowledge, highlighting the most significant trends. Finally, we map out the current situation of sexual education as a theoretical body in secondary education. We also highlight the keys which might encourage the incorporation of sex education in the educational curriculum and in the initial and continuous training programs for education professionals.

Resumo: O consumo excessivo de álcool em estudantes universitários tem sido focode grandes preocupações, não só devido aos seus efeitos negativos na saúde, mastambém porque habitualmente leva a comportamentos de risco, como a condução sobo efeito de álcool, ou relações sexuais sem proteção. Outro aspeto muitoverificado entre os estudantes universitários, e que parece ser um dos motivos queleva ao consumo de álcool são os níveis de stress. Neste estudo, realizado a760 estudantes da Universidade de Aveiro, verificámos que os participantes apresentamelevados consumos de álcool, sobretudo em festas académicas. Os comportamentosde risco associados não se mostram significativos. Verificámos igualmente que omaior consumo de álcool está associado ao sexo masculino. Também se constatou queos estudantes universitários que saem de casa dos pais/da sua residência apresentammaiores consumos de álcool. Relativamente à perceção de stress, verificámos queos estudantes universitários de Aveiro apresentam níveis moderados de stress eque estes se encontram negativamente correlacionados com os consumos de álcool.Os nossos resultados são discutidos à luz das teorias existentes sobre ospadrões de consumo de álcool em estudantes universitários.Palavras-chave: estudantes universitários, consumo de álcool,comportamentos de risco, stress Abstract: The alcohol consumption in college students had beena point of enormous concerns, not only because the alcohol has negative effectsfor the health, but also because frequently it has risk behaviours associated,for instance driving sob alcohol effect or sexual relations sob alcohol effect.Other aspect that we can view in college students is stress that probably it’sa motive for the alcohol consumption. In this study, that it was realized with 760students at University of Aveiro, we found that students consume alcohol a lot,particularly in academics celebrations. However, the risk behaviours aren’tsignificants in our sample. We also found that higher consumption of alcohol isassociated with masculine students and with students that are dislocated of thefamilies’ house. Our sample has a medium level of stress. The stress’ studentsis negatively correlated with the alcohol consumption. Our results arediscussed in light of existing theories about the alcohol consumption incollege students. Keywords: college students, alcohol consumption, riskbehaviours, stress

OBJETIVO: Estudar questões relativas à sexualidade e à saúde reprodutiva de mulheres HIV-positivas, seu acesso às práticas de prevenção, sua aderência a tratamentos e a possibilidade de fazerem opções conscientes quanto à gravidez. MÉTODOS: Estudo exploratório realizado, em 1997, em um ambulatório de um centro de referência na área de doenças sexualmente transmissíveis e Aids localizado na cidade de São Paulo, Brasil. Foi estudada uma amostra consecutiva, não-probabilística, constituída de 148 mulheres HIV-positivas. Foram excluídas as menores de 18 anos e as fisicamente debilitadas. Os dados foram colhidos por meio de entrevistas estruturadas. Foram aplicados os testes de chi² e t-Student. RESULTADOS: A média de idade das mulheres pesquisadas foi de 32 anos, sendo que 92 (62,2%) tinham até o primeiro grau de escolaridade, e 12,2% chegaram a cursar uma faculdade. A mediana do número de parceiros na vida foi quatro, e metade das entrevistadas manteve vida sexual ativa após infecção pelo HIV. Do total das mulheres, 76% tinham filhos, e 21% ainda pensavam em tê-los. Um maior número de filhos, maior número de filhos vivos e de filhos que moravam com as mães foram os fatores mais indicados como interferência negativa na intenção de ter filhos. Não foi encontrada associação entre pensar em ter filhos com as variáveis como percepção de risco, situação sorológica do parceiro, uso de contraceptivos e outras. Os métodos contraceptivos mudaram, sensivelmente, na vigência da infecção pelo HIV. CONCLUSÕES: A intenção de ter filhos não se alterou substancialmente nas mulheres em conseqüência da infecção pelo HIV. Mulheres HIV-positivas precisam ter seus direitos reprodutivos e sexuais discutidos e respeitados em todos os serviços de atenção à saúde. A adesão ao medicamento e ao sexo seguro são importantes, mas difíceis, requerendo aconselhamento e apoio. São necessários serviços que promovam ambiente de apoio para essas mulheres e seus parceiros, propiciando às pessoas com HIV/Aids condições de conhecer, discutir e realizar opções conscientes no que concerne às decisões reprodutivas e sua sexualidade.

The construction, visualization, and stabilization of public problems require the mobilization of civil society groups concerned about these issues to actively engage in the demand for actions and policies. This paper explores the institutional campaigns against human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Spain between 2008 and 2017 and their role in helping to shape this issue as a matter of public concern. Our aim is to identify the ideological basis of these campaigns through their representations of predominant actors, which have been systematized to identify possible mistakes and to help determine more effective actions with a greater capacity for mobilization. We applied a mixed content analysis combined with a semiotic model to evaluate the presence or absence of the different actors and their relevance in each case. Several lines of discourse have been reiterated across the 50 campaigns analysed: Curbing the demand for prostitution as a priority objective; the centrality of victims in the representations; the role of the consumer of paid sex as an accomplice to the crime; and the correlation between prostitution and human trafficking. We will also examine how these issues relate to the broader dispute on the status of prostitution in Spain. This will require a conceptual shift away from educational and social-oriented communication towards the structural causes, collective responsibility and transformative justice frameworks. La construcción, visibilización y estabilización de un problema público requiere de la movilización de colectivos ciudadanos interesados en el asunto, que actúen como un ente activo en la reclamación de acciones y políticas. Este artículo analiza las campañas contra la trata de personas con fines de explotación sexual en España (2008-2017) desde su contribución a la conformación de esta cuestión como un problema de carácter público. El objetivo es identificar los ejes ideológicos desde los que han operado estas campañas, a través de las representaciones que se han sistematizado de sus protagonistas para identificar posibles errores y orientar acciones de mayor eficiencia y capacidad movilizadora. Se ha aplicado un análisis de contenido mixto complementado con un análisis semiótico, considerando la presencia o ausencia de los distintos actores y su mayor o menor protagonismo en cada caso. En las cincuenta campañas analizadas se constata la reiteración de varias líneas discursivas: la prioridad en desincentivar la demanda de prostitución, la centralidad de las víctimas en la representación, la figura del demandante de sexo de pago como cómplice del delito y la equiparación de prostitución y trata. Son discursos que intervienen en una controversia más amplia sobre el estatuto de la prostitución en el país y que necesitan reorientarse, desde la educomunicación y la comunicación con fines sociales, hacia las causas estructurales, la responsabilidad colectiva y la denuncia transformadoras.

Abstract:GENDER ROLES AND AGGRESSIVENESS IN ADOLESCENCEAdolescent and Young violence remains a concern which damages their biopsychosocial development and involves several factors. The binomial sex-gender has revealed considerable influence on aggressive behavior among adolescents. In order to study in depth our knowledge about these variables, this study analyzes the relation between gender category (masculinity, feminity, adrogyny or undifferentiated) and sex (men or women) to adolescent aggressiveness. For this purpose, by the Spanish adaptation of Sexual Role Inventory by Bem (García-Mina Freire, 2004) and the Cuestionario de Información, Actitudes y Comportamientos relacionados con la Salud (Ballester y Gil, 1999), we analyze the existence of violent behaviors of 270 adolescents from Comunidad Valenciana, ranging from 13 and 17 years old, as well as their self-identification in gender. In general, the results support the relation between masculine traits and higher probability to develop aggressive behaviors. This result is also obtained by the majority of participants self identified as “undifferentiated gender”. However, participants who have more feminine traits are usually more worried about other people. In addition, these traits have shown more influence on aggressive behaviors, preventing their beginning. Therefore, our findings support the gender inequality about aggressive behavior, associated with masculine and undifferentiated universe, and suggest a broad range of actions for preventive interventions.Keywords: violence, gender, sex, adolescentsResumen:La violencia entre adolescentes y jóvenes es un problema que repercute en su desarrollo biopsicosocial y viene determinado por diversos factores. El binomio sexo-género, ha mostrado una influencia considerable en las conductas agresivas adolescentes. Con el interés de profundizar nuestro conocimiento sobre estas variables, el presente estudio analiza la relación que las categorías de género (masculino, femenino, andrógino o indiferenciado) y sexo (hombre o mujer) tienen sobre la agresividad adolescente. Por este motivo, mediante la adaptación española de Inventario de Rol Sexual de Bem (García-Mina Freire, 2004) y el Cuestionario de Información, Actitudes y Comportamientos relacionados con la Salud (Ballester y Gil, 1999), se analiza la presencia de conductas violentas realizadas por 270 adolescentes de la Comunidad Valenciana, entre 13 y 17 años, así como su auto-identificación con el género. En general, los resultados ratifican la relación entre los rasgos masculinos y una mayor probabilidad de ejercer conductas agresivas. Este resultado, también se obtiene en la mayoría de personas identificadas con el “género indiferenciado”. Por el contrario, se reafirma la mayor preocupación por otras personas, de los y las adolescentes con más rasgos femeninos. Además, estos rasgos femeninos son los que muestran tener una mayor influencia en la realización de conductas agresivas, previniendo su aparición. Así pues, los hallazgos confirman la desigualdad de género en el comportamiento agresivo, asociado al universo masculino e indiferenciado, y proponen un amplio campo de acción para las intervenciones preventivas.Palabras clave: violencia, género, sexo, adolescentes.

RESUMOEstudo exploratório descritivo, de abordagem qualitativa, realizado em um Hospital Escola Público Federal de Recife, com o objetivo principal de analisar idéias, crenças e valores que as gestantes têm sobre a sua sexualidade. A população constituiu-se de gestantes atendidas no Pré-Natal da referida instituição e três gestantes que espontaneamente verbalizaram seus sentimentos relacionados com a sexualidade constituíram a amostra. Este estudo teve a aprovação pelo Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa do Centro de Ciências da Saúde da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco. As informações foram coletadas por meio de discussão em grupo, utilizando-se um formulário semi-estruturado onde foi utilizada a entrevista não estruturada e a observação participativa após elaborar as seguintes questões norteadoras: Como eu penso a questão do sexo? Que sentimento vem quando estou junto ao meu companheiro? Como eu gestante sinto prazer? Como é a sensação do prazer no meu corpo?. Para a análise das informações foi realizada a transcrição das fitas gravadas, com identificação das participantes pela letra inicial de seus nomes, mantendo sigilo de suas identidades. Foi realizada leitura minuciosa de cada transcrição e identificada as temáticas sexualidade na gestação e sexualidade no puerpério. Ao proceder com a discussão pôde-se observar que os sentimentos das gestantes relacionados com sua sexualidade foram divergentes no que dizem respeito à freqüência das relações sexuais, satisfação pessoal, experiência em gestação anterior, invasão de limites do companheiro, sensações uterinas durante e após coito, sentir parceiro e bebê durante o ato sexual, dentre outros; e semelhantes quando se refere ao medo de machucar o bebê, preocupação com a dor, recusa do homem que leva a insegurança feminina. Esses aspectos podem ser trabalhados pela equipe de saúde em uma consulta pré-natal proporcionando-lhes maior conhecimento tornando possível que a sexualidade no período gestacional e, também puerperal sejam mais saudáveis.Descritores: Sentimentos; Gestantes; Sexualidade. ABSTRACTExploratory and descriptive study, from qualitative boarding, carried through in a Federal Public Hospital School of Recife, with the main objective to analyze ideas, beliefs and values that the pregnants have about their sexuality. The population consisted of pregnants taken care of in the Prenatal of the related institution and three pregnants that spontaneously talking about feelings related with the sexuality had constituted the sample. This study has been approval for the Ethics Committee in Research of the Health Sciences Center of the Federal University of Pernambuco. The information had been collected by means of talking in group, using a half-structuralized form where the interview not structuralized was used and the participative comment, after to elaborate the following questions: How I think the question of the sex? That feeling comes when I am next to my partner? How I pregnant feel pleasure? How is the sensation of the pleasure in my body? For the analysis the recorded transcription was carried through, with participants identification for the initial letter of its names, keeping secrecy of its identities. It was carried through after that, reading minute of each transcription that revealed the thematic: sexuality in the gestation and sexuality in the postpartum. When proceeding with the discussion it has been observed that the pregnants feelings related to its sexuality had been divergent in what they say respect to the frequency of the sexual relations, personal satisfaction, experience in previous gestation, partner’s invasion of limits, uterine sensations during and after coitus, to feel partner and baby during the sexual act, amongst others; and similar when it has been mentioned the fear to hurt the baby, concern with pain, man’s refuses that takes the feminine unreliability. These aspects can be worked by the health team in a prenatal consultation providing bigger knowledge to them becoming possible that the sexuality in pregnancy and also puerperal period is more healthful.Descriptors: Feelings; Pregnant; Sexuality.RESUMENEstudio exploratorio descriptivo, cualitativo, realizado en una Hospital Escuela Público Federal de Recife, con el objetivo principal de analizar ideas, creencias y valores que las embarazadas tienen sobre su sexualidad. La población estuvo representada por las embarazadas atendidas en el prenatal en esta institución, la muestra estuvo constituida por tres gestantes que espontáneamente verbalizaron sus sentimientos en relación con la sexualidad. Este estudio ha sido aprobado en el Comité de Ética en Investigación del Centro de Ciencias de la Salud de la Universidad Federal de Pernambuco, bajo nº del protocolo 004/2001-CEP/CCS. La información había sido recogida por medio de discusión en grupo, usando un cuestionario semi-estructurado, aplicado en entrevista no estructurada y observación participante, después de elaborar las siguientes preguntas: ¿Cómo pienso la cuestión del sexo? ¿Qué sensación viene cuando estoy al lado de mi compañero? ¿Cómo embarazada siento placer? Cómo es la sensación del placer en mi cuerpo?. Para el análisis de la información fue realizada la transcripción de las entrevistas grabadas, con la identificación de los participantes con la letra inicial de sus nombres, guardando el secreto de sus identidades. Luego fue leída cada transcripción con detenimiento, las temáticas identificadas fueron: sexualidad en la gestación y sexualidad en el puerperio. En la discusión se pudo observar que los sentimientos de las embarazadas relacionados con su sexualidad fueron divergentes en lo que dicen respecto a la frecuencia de las relaciones sexuales, satisfacción personal, experiencia en gestación anterior, invasión de límites del compañero, sensaciones uterinas durante y después del coito, sentir al compañero y al bebé durante el acto sexual, entre otros; y similar cuando se refiere al miedo de golpear al bebé, preocupación con el dolor, rechazo del hombre que lleva a la inseguridad femenina. Esos aspectos pueden ser trabajados por el equipo de salud en una consulta prenatal proporcionándole mayor conocimiento, haciendo posible que la sexualidad en embarazo y también en el puerperal sea más saludable. Descriptores: Sensaciones; Gestantes; Sexualidad.

doi: 10.5216/ree.v12i4.6492 O advento da AIDS há mais de 25 anos no cenário epidemiológico mundial, traz consigo a discussão acerca de comportamentos sexuais, crenças e valores. Dentre os modelos e teorias, que auxiliam na compreensão da exposição ao risco para o HIV, destaca-se o Modelo de Crenças em Saúde. O modelo enfatiza que o comportamento em relação a uma ameaça à sua saúde, é dependente de quatro variáveis: percepção de susceptibilidade; de severidade; benefícios e barreiras percebidas. Objetivou-se identificar a percepção de vulnerabilidade de adolescentes do sexo masculino, acerca das DST/HIV. Estudo qualitativo teve como cenário uma escola pública em Fortaleza-CE. Os informantes foram 16 adolescentes com idade entre 14 e 18 anos. A coleta de informações ocorreu em maio e junho de 2008, através de entrevista semi-estruturada, baseada nas variáveis propostas no modelo. Os adolescentes identificam mais benefícios do que barreiras no que concerne à prevenção das DST. Em relação aos benefícios percebidos, são associados ao uso de preservativo e ainda a melhorias no diálogo entre parceiros sexuais. É mister que o Enfermeiro fomente medidas preventivas e de Educação em Saúde junto aos adolescentes, que favoreçam a reflexão acerca da vulnerabilidade às DST/HIV e seu impacto na qualidade de vida. Descritores: Adolescente; Vulnerabilidade em Saúde; Doenças Sexualmente Transmissíveis; Enfermagem.

ABSTRACT Objectives: to reflect on sexuality in a cultural perspective. In a group reflexive exercise, the concepts of this theme have been discussed in groups of undergraduate students of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria in the years 2003 and 2004. Methodology: this is a research with a qualitative approach whose data collection was based on presuppositions of the focus group. Population included 80 nursing undergraduate students of a university in south Brazil, at ages between 18 and 25 years old, male and female, at the third year. A theme analysis of the data was applied. The study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the Health Sciences Center of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (113/03). Results: the meanings revealed expressed varied senses about sexuality which was highlighted as an element of mediation for the interpersonal relationships and as a human expression of a sexed body. Conclusion: The study enabled the inborn human visibility, universal and singular, however rarely discussed in the formation of nurses. It was possible to visualize sexuality in the perspective of cultural, social, and historic construction; sensitizing participants for the singularities that this topic approaches to each person. Descriptors: sexuality; culture; nursing; teaching; students; social sciences; interpersonal relations.RESUMOObjetivo: refletir acerca da sexualidade numa perspectiva cultural. Em um exercício reflexivo grupal discutiu-se as concepções desta temática junto a grupos de alunos do Curso de Enfermagem da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, nos anos de 2003 e 2004. Metodologia: pesquisa com abordagem qualitativa cuja coleta de dados baseou-se em pressupostos do grupo focal. A população compreendeu 80 acadêmicos do curso de Enfermagem de uma universidade da região sul do Brasil, com idade entre 18 e 25 anos, de ambos os sexos e que cursavam o sexto semestre. Aplicou-se a análise temática para analisar os dados. Este estudo foi aprovado pelo Comitê de Ética do Centro de Ciências da Saúde, da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (número de protocolo 113/03). Resultados: os significados revelados expressaram sentidos variados acerca da sexualidade e a destacaram como um elemento de mediação para os relacionamentos interpessoais e como expressão humana de um corpo sexuado. Conclusão: o estudo permitiu a visibilidade de uma dimensão humana inata, universal e singular, porém raramente discutida na formação de enfermeiros; oportunizou ver a sexualidade na perspectiva de construção cultural, social e histórica, e sensibilizou os participantes para a singularidade que esse tema circunscreve a cada pessoa. Descritores: sexualidade; cultura; enfermagem; ensino; estudantes; ciências sociais; relações interpessoais.RESUMEN Objetivo: reflexionar sobre la sexualidad en una perspectiva cultural. En un ejercicio reflexivo grupal se discutieron las concepciones de esta temática junto a los grupos de alumnos del Curso de Enfermería de la Universidad Federal de Santa María, en los años de 2003 y 2004. Metodologia: es una investigación con abordaje cualitativo. La recolección de datos se basó en presupuestos del grupo focal. La población comprendió 80 académicos del curso de Enfermería de una universidad de la región sur de Brasil, con edad entre 18 y 25 años, de ambos sexos y que cursaban el sexto semestre, aplicado al análisis temático para analizar los datos. El estudio fue aprobado por el Comité de Ética del Centro de Ciencias de la Salud, de la Universidad Federal de Santa María (numero de registro 113/03). Resultados: los significados revelados expresaron sentidos variados acerca de la sexualidad y la señalaron como un elemento de mediación para los relacionamientos interpersonales y como expresión humana de un cuerpo sexuado. Conclusión: el estudio permitió la visibilidad de una dimensión humana innata, universal y singular, pero raramente discutida en la formación de enfermeros; ha dado la oportunidad de ver la sexualidad en la perspectiva de construcción cultural, social e histórica, y ha sensibilizado a los participantes para la singularidad que este tema representa para cada persona. Descriptores: sexualidad; cultura; enfermería; enseñanza; estudiantes; ciencias sociales; relaciones interpersonales.

En este ensayo se explica en qué consisten los conceptos género, adolescencia y violencia y cómo se vinculan entre sí. Resulta complejo estudiar la violencia de género durante el noviazgo y específicamente en esta etapa de la vida, motivo por el cual explicaré el enfoque de género y su finalidad, entendiendo esta categoría en su relación con el noviazgo entre los adolescentes, quienes evidencian las prácticas aprendidas, que “deben” llevar a cabo: como dejar de tener amigos del sexo opuesto porque la pareja se puede molestar, lo cual nos lleva a la violencia en el noviazgo, esto es, de acuerdo con Pereira (2012, pp. 55-56), cualquier acción o conducta basada en el género que cause muerte, daño o sufrimiento físico, sexual o psicológico a la mujer o el hombre a través de mecanismos de violencia, físicos y/o psicológicos.Palabras clave: Género, Noviazgo, Adolescencia, Violencia Adolescence, dating and gender violence: looks from the school space in Teocelo, VeracruzSummaryThis essay explains what the concepts of gender, adolescence and violence consist of and how they are linked together. It is complex to study gender violence during dating and specifically at this stage of life, which is why I will explain the gender approach and its purpose, understanding this category in its relationship with dating between adolescents, who evidence the practices learned, which they "must" carry out like stopping meeting friends of the opposite sex because the couple can get annoyed, which leads to violence in dating, that is, according to Pereira (2012, pp. 55-56 ), any gender-based action or conduct that causes death, harm or physical, sexual or psychological suffering to women or men through mechanisms of violence, physical and / or psychological.Keywords: Gender, Dating, Adolescence, Violence Adolescence, relation amoureuse et violence de genre : regards à partir l’espace scolaire à Teocelo, VeracruzRésuméDans cet essai on explique en quoi consistent les concepts genre, adolescence et violence et comment ils se lient parmi eux. Il résulte complexe d’étudier la violence de genre au cours de la relation amoureuse et spécifiquement dans cette étape de la vie, motif pour lequel j’expliquerai l’approche de genre et sa finalité en comprenant cette catégorie dans sa relation avec la relation amoureuse parmi les adolescents, qui mettent en évidence les pratiques apprises qui « doivent » mener à bien : ne plus avoir des amis du sexe opposé à cause de l’embarras du partenaire, ce qui nous mène à la violence dans la relation amoureuse, en d’autres mots, selon Pereira (2012, pp. 55-56), n’importe quelle action ou conduite basée dans le genre qui provoque mort, dégât ou souffrance physique, sexuelle ou psychologique envers la femme ou l’homme à travers des mécanismes de violence, physiques et/ou psychologiques.Mots clés: Genre, Relation amoureuse, Adolescence, Violence

Devido à alta incidência e às sérias consequências para vítima, sua família e à sociedade, a violência sexual contra crianças e adolescentes na contemporaneidade é considerado um grave problema de saúde pública, fato apontado também pela Organização Mundial de Saúde, o que suscita a necessidade de medidas preventivas e protetivas ao abuso sexual (HABIGZANG et al., 2005; OMS, 2002).A definição de violência sexual em suma é apresentada como “qualquer ato sexual, tentativa de obter um ato sexual, comentário ou investidas sexuais indesejadas, ou atos direcionados ao tráfico sexual ou de alguma forma voltados contra a sexualidade” (OMS, 2002, p. 147). No que concerne ao abuso sexual, ocorre entre “uma criança ou adolescente e alguém em estágio psicossexual mais avançado do desenvolvimento, no qual a criança ou adolescente estiver sendo usado para estimulação sexual do perpetrador” (HABIGZANG et al., 2005, p. 341). O abuso sexual pode ser empreendido: com contato através de “interação sexual, pode incluir toques, carícias, sexo oral ou relações com penetração (digital, genital ou anal)”; e sem contato como no voyerismo, assédio e exibicionismo (HABIGZANG et al., 2005, p. 341). Os contextos de ocorrência do abuso sexual são classificados em extrafamiliar e intrafamiliar (COSTA, 2013). O abuso sexual intrafamiliar é “considerada como incestuoso, ocorre no espaço social interno da família, seja ela biológica ou adotiva.” (SANTOS, 2011, p. 65; COSTA, 2013). O abuso sexual extrafamiliar pode ser definido como o ato no qual uma pessoas conhecidas ou desconhecidas estabelecem atividade sexual com criança(s) ou adolescente(s) e sua ocorrência pode ser nos espaços de socialização da vítima ou ambientes desconhecidos (NEVES et al., 2010; SANTOS, 2011).A Organização Mundial de Saúde indica a necessidade da realização de pesquisas nos países para que o fenômeno da violência sexual e consequentemente o abuso sexual, seja conhecido a partir da realidade de cada nacionalidade (OMS, 2002). Em consonância, a pesquisa apresenta relevância científica e social, na medida em que: se apresenta como um estudo específico, que investiga os aspectos relativos ao perfil das crianças e adolescentes vítimas de violência sexual e as característica do abuso, a nível municipal; e possibilita na identificação de como a violência sexual tem atingido população infanto-juvenil em Feira de Santana. Nesse sentido, a presente pesquisa teve por objetivo geral descrever e analisar o perfil das vítimas de violência sexual perpetrada contra crianças e adolescentes e as características da violência em Feira de Santana, Bahia.

Resumo O artigo é um extrato de duas leituras críticas realizadas sobre o filme What Happened, Miss Simone? de Liz Garbus, documentário produzido nos EUA em 2015, que explora a trajetória biográfica, a atuação e a sensibilidade artística, profissional, política, amorosa da cantora, pianista, ativista e compositora Nina Simone (EUA, 2015). Duas abordagens permitem acompanhar a construção de perspectivas analíticas do pesquisador e da pesquisadora que priorizam, por um viés, a conjuntura político-social, e por outro, a materialidade histórico-discursiva, buscando recompor um outro conjunto de elementos constitutivos do documentário. A reflexão histórica/historiográfica resulta no exercício de recepção da obra em algumas de suas possibilidades interpretativas. As comunicações foram objeto de debate realizado na mesa-redonda do Projeto Educação e Cinema, promovida pelo PPGE/FACED, na Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, em 16 de junho de 2016. Palavras-chave: Nina Simone. Arte. Corpo. Política. Raça. Sexo-Gênero. EUA. TRIBUTE TO NINA SIMONE: art, politics, the body and the racial / sexual issue in the United States of America in two actsAbstract This article is an extract of two critical reviews on the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? (EUA, 2015), by Liz Garbus. Life, art, profession, love, a biography of Nina Simone was builded with video and film fragments, interviews, speeches, concerts, materials by and about that woman, activist, and the fabulous composer, piano player and singer. Different views elaborated by two historians exhibit approaches to that source: in one hand, a historical-political analysis, in the other hand, a discourse analysis based on gender studies and the body theory. Both historical and historiographical approaches together seek to enlarge possibilities for the work of thought, interpretation and reception. The papers were extracts of a debate within Education and Movie Project, promoted by PPGE/FACED, at Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, in June 16, 2016. Keywords: Nina Simone. Art. Body. Politics. Race. Sex-Gender. USA.Â

Este artigo, baseado em pesquisa sobre o imaginário da aids entre jovens, busca compreender a noção de risco como uma categoria sociocultural, cujos significados se acumulam nos conceitos de várias áreas do conhecimento e nos usos de senso comum. O perigo, o mal e o infortúnio sempre foram moralizados e politizados nas diversas culturas humanas e a história da aids não poderia ser diferente. Os simbolismos culturais sobre contágio, doenças transmitidas pelo sexo e pelo sangue e os valores atuais da sexualidade, incluindo as relações de gênero, estão presentes na forma como os jovens representam o risco do HIV. Além disso, não se pode desconsiderar a ambivalência que os riscos assumem atualmente para os jovens: alguns negados e afastados, outros aceitos e valorizados. No caso da aids, a busca pela vertigem e pelo êxtase, componentes do sexo e das drogas, distancia o discurso dos jovens sobre risco do discurso preventivo, baseado na racionalidade do comportamento individual, assumindo valores distintos ligados a experiências cotidianas. Youngsters and the imagery of AIDS: notes for the social construction of risk This article, based on research about the imagery of AIDS among youth, aims to understand the notion of risk as a social-cultural category, whose meanings are piled upon concepts of several areas of both knowledge and common sense usages. Danger, evil and misfortune have always been moralized and politicized in the different human cultures and it could not be different in the history of aids. Cultural symbolism about infection, sexually and blood transmitted diseases, as well as sexuality’s current values, including here gender relations, are present in the way the youth represents HIV´s risks. Besides, the ambivalence these risks assume for the youth nowadays cannot be disregarded: some are denied and put aside, others are accepted and valorized. In the case of AIDS, the search for vertigo and ecstasy, components of sex and drugs, distances the youth’s discourse about risk from the preventive discourse, based on the rationality of individual behavior, assuming distinct values linked to everyday experiences.

One of the greatest joys in watching Foxtel is to see all the crazy people who run talk shows. Judgement, ridicule and generalisations slip from their tongues like overcooked lamb off a bone. From Oprah to Rikki, from Jerry to Mother Love, the posterior of pop culture claims a world-wide audience. Recently, a new talk diva was added to the pay television stable. Dr Laura Schlessinger, the Mother of Morals, prowls the soundstage. attacking 'selfish acts' such as divorce, de facto relationships and voting Democrat. On April 11, 2001, a show aired in Australia that added a new demon to the decadence of the age. Dr Laura had been told that a disgusting video clip, called 'Rock DJ', had been televised at 2:30pm on MTV. Children could have been watching. The footage that so troubled our doyenne of daytime featured the British performer Robbie Williams not only stripping in front of disinterested women, but then removing skin, muscle and tissue in a desperate attempt to claim their gaze. This was too much for Dr Laura. She was horrified: her strident tone became piercing. She screeched, "this is si-ee-ck." . My paper is drawn to this sick masculinity, not to judge - but to laugh and theorise. Robbie Williams, the deity of levity, holds a pivotal role in theorising the contemporary 'crisis' of manhood. To paraphrase Austin Powers, Williams returned the ger to singer. But Williams also triumphed in a captivatingly original way. He is one of the few members of a boy band who created a successful solo career without regurgitating the middle of the road mantras of boys, girls, love, loss and whining about it. Williams' journey through post-war popular music, encompassing influences from both Sinatra and Sonique, forms a functional collage, rather than patchwork, of masculinity. He has been prepared to not only age in public, but to discuss the crevices and cracks in the facade. He strips, smokes, plays football, wears interesting underwear and drinks too much. My short paper trails behind this combustible masculinity, focussing on his sorties with both masculine modalities and the rock discourse. My words attack the gap between text and readership, beat and ear, music and men. The aim is to reveal how this 'sick masculinity' problematises the conservative rendering of men's crisis. Come follow me I'm an honorary Sean Connery, born '74 There's only one of me … Press be asking do I care for sodomy I don't know, yeah, probably I've been looking for serial monogamy Not some bird that looks like Billy Connolly But for now I'm down for ornithology Grab your binoculars, come follow me. 'Kids,' Robbie Williams Robbie Williams is a man for our age. Between dating supermodels and Geri 'Lost Spice' Halliwell [1], he has time to "love … his mum and a pint," (Ansen 85) but also subvert the Oasis cock(rock)tail by frocking up for a television appearance. Williams is important to theories of masculine representation. As a masculinity to think with, he creates popular culture with a history. In an era where Madonna practices yoga and wears cowboy boots, it is no surprise that by June 2000, Robbie Williams was voted the world's sexist man [2]. A few months later, in the October edition of Vogue, he posed in a British flag bikini. It is reassuring in an era where a 12 year old boy states that "You aren't a man until you shoot at something," (Issac in Mendel 19) that positive male role models exist who are prepared to both wear a frock and strip on national television. Reading Robbie Williams is like dipping into the most convincing but draining of intellectual texts. He is masculinity in motion, conveying foreignness, transgression and corruption, bartering in the polymorphous economies of sex, colonialism, race, gender and nation. His career has spanned the boy bands, try-hard rock, video star and hybrid pop performer. There are obvious resonances between the changes to Williams and alterations in masculinity. In 1988, Suzanne Moore described (the artist still known as) Prince as "the pimp of postmodernism." (165-166) Over a decade later, the simulacra has a new tour guide. Williams revels in the potency of representation. He rarely sings about love or romance, as was his sonic fodder in Take That. Instead, his performance is fixated on becoming a better man, glancing an analytical eye over other modes of masculinity. Notions of masculine crisis and sickness have punctuated this era. Men's studies is a boom area of cultural studies, dislodging the assumed structures of popular culture [3]. William Pollack's Real Boys has created a culture of changing expectations for men. The greater question arising from his concerns is why these problems, traumas and difficulties are emerging in our present. Pollack's argument is that boys and young men invest energy and time "disguising their deepest and most vulnerable feelings." (15) This masking is difficult to discern within dance and popular music. Through lyrics and dancing, videos and choreography, masculinity is revealed as convoluted, complex and fragmented. While rock music is legitimised by dominant ideologies, marginalised groups frequently use disempowered genres - like country, dance and rap genres - to present oppositional messages. These competing representations expose seamless interpretations of competent masculinity. Particular skills are necessary to rip the metaphoric pacifier out of the masculine mouth of popular culture. Patriarchal pop revels in the paradoxes of everyday life. Frequently these are nostalgic visions, which Kimmel described as a "retreat to a bygone era." (87) It is the recognition of a shared, simpler past that provides reinforcement to heteronormativity. Williams, as a gaffer tape masculinity, pulls apart the gaps and crevices in representation. Theorists must open the interpretative space encircling popular culture, disrupting normalising criteria. Multiple nodes of assessment allow a ranking of competent masculinity. From sport to business, drinking to sex, masculinity is transformed into a wired site of ranking, judgement and determination. Popular music swims in the spectacle of maleness. From David Lee Roth's skied splits to Eminem's beanie, young men are interpellated as subjects in patriarchy. Robbie Williams is a history lesson in post war masculinity. This nostalgia is conservative in nature. The ironic pastiche within his music videos features motor racing, heavy metal and Bond films. 'Rock DJ', the 'sick text' that vexed Doctor Laura, is Williams' most elaborate video. Set in a rollerdrome with female skaters encircling a central podium, the object of fascination and fetish is a male stripper. This strip is different though, as it disrupts the power held by men in phallocentralism. After being confronted by Williams' naked body, the observing women are both bored and disappointed at the lack-lustre deployment of masculine genitalia. After this display, Williams appears embarrassed, confused and humiliated. As Buchbinder realised, "No actual penis could every really measure up to the imagined sexual potency and social or magical power of the phallus." (49) To render this banal experience of male nudity ridiculous, Williams then proceeds to remove skin and muscle. He finally becomes an object of attraction for the female DJ only in skeletal form. By 'going all the way,' the strip confirms the predictability of masculinity and the ordinariness of the male body. For literate listeners though, a higher level of connotation is revealed. The song itself is based on Barry White's melody for 'It's ecstasy (when you lay down next to me).' Such intertextuality accesses the meta-racist excesses of a licentious black male sexuality. A white boy dancer must deliver an impotent, but ironic, rendering of White's (love unlimited) orchestration of potent sexuality. Williams' iconography and soundtrack is refreshing, emerging from an era of "men who cling … tightly to their illusions." (Faludi 14) When the ideological drapery is cut away, the male body is a major disappointment. Masculinity is an anxious performance. Fascinatingly, this deconstructive video has been demeaned through its labelling as pornography [4]. Oddly, a man who is prepared to - literally - shave the skin of masculinity is rendered offensive. Men's studies, like feminism, has been defrocking masculinity for some time. Robinson for example, expressed little sympathy for "whiny men jumping on the victimisation bandwagon or playing cowboys and Indians at warrior weekends and beating drums in sweat lodges." (6) By grating men's identity back to the body, the link between surface and depth - or identity and self - is forged. 'Rock DJ' attacks the new subjectivities of the male body by not only generating self-surveillance, but humour through the removal of clothes, skin and muscle. He continues this play with the symbols of masculine performance throughout the album Sing when you're winning. Featuring soccer photographs of players, coaches and fans, closer inspection of the images reveal that Robbie Williams is actually every character, in every role. His live show also enfolds diverse performances. Singing a version of 'My Way,' with cigarette in tow, he remixes Frank Sinatra into a replaying and recutting of masculine fabric. He follows one dominating masculinity with another: the Bond-inspired 'Millennium.' Some say that we are players Some say that we are pawns But we've been making money Since the day we were born Robbie Williams is comfortably located in a long history of post-Sinatra popular music. He mocks the rock ethos by combining guitars and drums with a gleaming brass section, hailing the lounge act of Dean Martin, while also using rap and dance samples. Although carrying fifty year's of crooner baggage, the spicy scent of homosexuality has also danced around Robbie Williams' career. Much of this ideology can be traced back to the Take That years. As Gary Barlow and Jason Orange commented at the time, Jason: So the rumour is we're all gay now are we? Gary: Am I gay? I am? Why? Oh good. Just as long as we know. Howard: Does anyone think I'm gay? Jason: No, you're the only one people think is straight. Howard: Why aren't I gay? What's wrong with me? Jason: It's because you're such a fine figure of macho manhood.(Kadis 17) For those not literate in the Take That discourse, it should come as no surprise that Howard was the TT equivalent of The Beatle's Ringo Starr or Duran Duran's Andy Taylor. Every boy band requires the ugly, shy member to make the others appear taller and more attractive. The inference of this dialogue is that the other members of the group are simply too handsome to be heterosexual. This ambiguous sexuality has followed Williams into his solo career, becoming fodder for those lads too unappealing to be homosexual: Oasis. Born to be mild I seem to spend my life Just waiting for the chorus 'Cause the verse is never nearly Good enough Robbie Williams "Singing for the lonely." Robbie Williams accesses a bigger, brighter and bolder future than Britpop. While the Gallagher brothers emulate and worship the icons of 1960s British music - from the Beatles' haircuts to the Stones' psychedelia - Williams' songs, videos and persona are chattering in a broader cultural field. From Noel Cowardesque allusions to the ordinariness of pub culture, Williams is much more than a pretty-boy singer. He has become an icon of English masculinity, enclosing all the complexity that these two terms convey. Williams' solo success from 1999-2001 occurred at the time of much parochial concern that British acts were not performing well in the American charts. It is bemusing to read Billboard over this period. The obvious quality of Britney Spears is seen to dwarf the mediocrity of British performers. The calibre of Fatboy Slim, carrying a smiley backpack stuffed with reflexive dance culture, is neither admitted nor discussed. It is becoming increasing strange to monitor the excessive fame of Williams in Britain, Europe, Asia and the Pacific when compared to his patchy career in the United States. Even some American magazines are trying to grasp the disparity. The swaggering king of Britpop sold a relatively measly 600,000 copies of his U.S. debut album, The ego has landed … Maybe Americans didn't appreciate his songs about being famous. (Ask Dr. Hip 72) In the first few years of the 2000s, it has been difficult to discuss a unified Anglo-American musical formation. Divergent discursive frameworks have emerged through this British evasion. There is no longer an agreed centre to the musical model. Throughout 1990s Britain, blackness jutted out of dance floor mixes, from reggae to dub, jazz and jungle. Plied with the coldness of techno was an almost too hot hip hop. Yet both were alternate trajectories to Cool Britannia. London once more became swinging, or as Vanity Fair declared, "the nerve centre of pop's most cohesive scene since the Pacific Northwest grunge explosion of 1991." (Kamp 102) Through Britpop, the clock turned back to the 1960s, a simpler time before race became 'a problem' for the nation. An affiliation was made between a New Labour, formed by the 1997 British election, and the rebirth of a Swinging London [5]. This style-driven empire supposedly - again - made London the centre of the world. Britpop was itself a misnaming. It was a strong sense of Englishness that permeated the lyrics, iconography and accent. Englishness requires a Britishness to invoke a sense of bigness and greatness. The contradictions and excesses of Blur, Oasis and Pulp resonate in the gap between centre and periphery, imperial core and colonised other. Slicing through the arrogance and anger of the Gallaghers is a yearning for colonial simplicity, when the pink portions of the map were the stable subjects of geography lessons, rather than the volatile embodiment of postcolonial theory. Simon Gikandi argues that "the central moments of English cultural identity were driven by doubts and disputes about the perimeters of the values that defined Englishness." (x) The reason that Britpop could not 'make it big' in the United States is because it was recycling an exhausted colonial dreaming. Two old Englands were duelling for ascendancy: the Oasis-inflected Manchester working class fought Blur-inspired London art school chic. This insular understanding of difference had serious social and cultural consequences. The only possible representation of white, British youth was a tabloidisation of Oasis's behaviour through swearing, drug excess and violence. Simon Reynolds realised that by returning to the three minute pop tune that the milkman can whistle, reinvoking parochial England with no black people, Britpop has turned its back defiantly on the future. (members.aol.com/blissout/Britpop.html) Fortunately, another future had already happened. The beats per minute were pulsating with an urgent affirmation of change, hybridity and difference. Hip hop and techno mapped a careful cartography of race. While rock was colonialisation by other means, hip hop enacted a decolonial imperative. Electronic dance music provided a unique rendering of identity throughout the 1990s. It was a mode of musical communication that moved across national and linguistic boundaries, far beyond Britpop or Stateside rock music. While the Anglo American military alliance was matched and shadowed by postwar popular culture, Brit-pop signalled the end of this hegemonic formation. From this point, English pop and American rock would not sail as smoothly over the Atlantic. While 1995 was the year of Wonderwall, by 1996 the Britpop bubble corroded the faces of the Gallagher brothers. Oasis was unable to complete the American tour. Yet other cultural forces were already active. 1996 was also the year of Trainspotting, with "Born Slippy" being the soundtrack for a blissful journey under the radar. This was a cultural force that no longer required America as a reference point [6]. Robbie Williams was able to integrate the histories of Britpop and dance culture, instigating a complex dialogue between the two. Still, concern peppered music and entertainment journals that British performers were not accessing 'America.' As Sharon Swart stated Britpop acts, on the other hand, are finding it less easy to crack the U.S. market. The Spice Girls may have made some early headway, but fellow purveyors of pop, such as Robbie Williams, can't seem to get satisfaction from American fans. (35 British performers had numerous cultural forces working against them. Flat global sales, the strength of the sterling and the slow response to the new technological opportunities of DVD, all caused problems. While Britpop "cleaned house," (Boehm 89) it was uncertain which cultural formation would replace this colonising force. Because of the complex dialogues between the rock discourse and dance culture, time and space were unable to align into a unified market. American critics simply could not grasp Robbie Williams' history, motives or iconography. It's Robbie's world, we just buy tickets for it. Unless, of course you're American and you don't know jack about soccer. That's the first mistake Williams makes - if indeed one of his goals is to break big in the U.S. (and I can't believe someone so ambitious would settle for less.) … Americans, it seems, are most fascinated by British pop when it presents a mirror image of American pop. (Woods 98 There is little sense that an entirely different musical economy now circulates, where making it big in the United States is not the singular marker of credibility. Williams' demonstrates commitment to the international market, focussing on MTV Asia, MTV online, New Zealand and Australian audiences [7]. The Gallagher brothers spent much of the 1990s trying to be John Lennon. While Noel, at times, knocked at the door of rock legends through "Wonderwall," he snubbed Williams' penchant for pop glory, describing him as a "fat dancer." (Gallagher in Orecklin 101) Dancing should not be decried so summarily. It conveys subtle nodes of bodily knowledge about men, women, sex and desire. While men are validated for bodily movement through sport, women's dancing remains a performance of voyeuristic attention. Such a divide is highly repressive of men who dance, with gayness infiltrating the metaphoric masculine dancefloor [8]. Too often the binary of male and female is enmeshed into the divide of rock and dance. Actually, these categories slide elegantly over each other. The male pop singers are located in a significant semiotic space. Robbie Williams carries these contradictions and controversy. NO! Robbie didn't go on NME's cover in a 'desperate' attempt to seduce nine-year old knickerwetters … YES! He used to be teenybopper fodder. SO WHAT?! So did the Beatles the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, etc blah blah pseudohistoricalrockbollocks. NO! Making music that gurlz like is NOT a crime! (Wells 62) There remains an uncertainty in his performance of masculinity and at times, a deliberate ambivalence. He grafts subversiveness into a specific lineage of English pop music. The aim for critics of popular music is to find a way to create a rhythm of resistance, rather than melody of credible meanings. In summoning an archaeology of the archive, we begin to write a popular music history. Suzanne Moore asked why men should "be interested in a sexual politics based on the frightfully old-fashioned ideas of truth, identity and history?" (175) The reason is now obvious. Femininity is no longer alone on the simulacra. It is impossible to separate real men from the representations of masculinity that dress the corporeal form. Popular music is pivotal, not for collapsing the representation into the real, but for making the space between these states livable, and pleasurable. Like all semiotic sicknesses, the damaged, beaten and bandaged masculinity of contemporary music swaddles a healing pedagogic formation. Robbie Williams enables the writing of a critical history of post Anglo-American music [9]. Popular music captures such stories of place and identity. Significantly though, it also opens out spaces of knowing. There is an investment in rhythm that transgresses national histories of music. While Williams has produced albums, singles, video and endless newspaper copy, his most important revelations are volatile and ephemeral in their impact. He increases the popular cultural vocabulary of masculinity. [1] The fame of both Williams and Halliwell was at such a level that it was reported in the generally conservative, pages of Marketing. The piece was titled "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing, August 2000: 17. [2] For poll results, please refer to "Winners and Losers," Time International, Vol. 155, Issue 23, June 12, 2000, 9 [3] For a discussion of this growth in academic discourse on masculinity, please refer to Paul Smith's "Introduction," in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. [4] Steve Futterman described Rock DJ as the "least alluring porn video on MTV," in "The best and worst: honour roll," Entertainment Weekly 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. [5] Michael Bracewell stated that "pop provides an unofficial cartography of its host culture, charting the national mood, marking the crossroads between the major social trends and the tunnels of the zeitgeist," in "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman .(February 21 1997): 36. [6] It is important to make my point clear. The 'America' that I am summoning here is a popular cultural formation, which possesses little connection with the territory, institution or defence initiatives of the United States. Simon Frith made this distinction clear, when he stated that "the question becomes whether 'America' can continue to be the mythical locale of popular culture as it has been through most of this century. As I've suggested, there are reasons now to suppose that 'America' itself, as a pop cultural myth, no longer bears much resemblance to the USA as a real place even in the myth." This statement was made in "Anglo-America and its discontents," Cultural Studies 5 1991: 268. [7] To observe the scale of attention paid to the Asian and Pacific markets, please refer to http://robbiewilliams.com/july13scroll.html, http://robbiewilliams.com/july19scroll.html and http://robbiewilliams.com/july24scroll.html, accessed on March 3, 2001 [8] At its most naïve, J. Michael Bailey and Michael Oberschneider asked, "Why are gay men so motivated to dance? One hypothesis is that gay men dance in order to be feminine. In other words, gay men dance because women do. An alternative hypothesis is that gay men and women share a common factor in their emotional make-up that makes dancing especially enjoyable," from "Sexual orientation in professional dance," Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997). Such an interpretation is particularly ludicrous when considering the pre-rock and roll masculine dancing rituals in the jive, Charleston and jitterbug. Once more, the history of rock music is obscuring the history of dance both before the mid 1950s and after acid house. [9] Women, gay men and black communities through much of the twentieth century have used these popular spaces. For example, Lynne Segal, in Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990, stated that "through dancing, athletic and erotic performance, but most powerfully through music, Black men could express something about the body and its physicality, about emotions and their cosmic reach, rarely found in white culture - least of all in white male culture,": 191 References Ansen, D., Giles, J., Kroll, J., Gates, D. and Schoemer, K. "What's a handsome lad to do?" Newsweek 133.19 (May 10, 1999): 85. "Ask Dr. Hip." U.S. News and World Report 129.16 (October 23, 2000): 72. Bailey, J. Michael., and Oberschneider, Michael. "Sexual orientation in professional dance." Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997):expanded academic database [fulltext]. Boehm, E. "Pop will beat itself up." Variety 373.5 (December 14, 1998): 89. Bracewell, Michael. "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman.(February 21 1997): 36. Buchbinder, David. Performance Anxieties .Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998. Faludi, Susan. Stiffed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1999. Frith, Simon. "Anglo-America and its discontents." Cultural Studies. 5 1991. Futterman, Steve. "The best and worst: honour roll." Entertainment Weekly, 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. Gikandi, Simon. Maps of Englishness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Kadis, Alex. Take That: In private. London: Virgin Books, 1994. Kamp, D. "London Swings! Again!" Vanity Fair ( March 1997): 102. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Mendell, Adrienne. How men think. New York: Fawcett, 1996. Moore, Susan. "Getting a bit of the other - the pimps of postmodernism." In Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (ed.) Male Order .London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988. 165-175. Orecklin, Michele. "People." Time. 155.10 (March 13, 2000): 101. Pollack, William. Real boys. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 1999. Reynolds, Simon. members.aol.com/blissout/britpop.html. Accessed on April 15, 2001. Robinson, David. No less a man. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University, 1994. Segal, Lynne. Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990. Smith, Paul. "Introduction" in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. Swart, S. "U.K. Showbiz" Variety.(December 11-17, 2000): 35. Sexton, Paul and Masson, Gordon. "Tips for Brits who want U.S. success" Billboard .(September 9 2000): 1. Wells, Steven. "Angst." NME.(November 21 1998): 62. "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing.(August 2000): 17. Woods, S. "Robbie Williams Sing when you're winning" The Village Voice. 45.52. (January 2, 2001): 98.

Contemporary definitions of resilience stress adaptability to changing ecological and economic conditions (Berkes, Colding and Folke; Castleden, McKee, Murray and Leonard 369). But this approach to resilience is a measure of individual ‘fitness’ to an adaptive whole (Hughes 165; McMahon et al.; Walker and Cooper). Not only is this incongruous with the experience of reproductive loss and infertility, it also works to sideline alternative forms or sources of resilience (Cox). In this paper, we share our efforts to build on previous theories of resilience by engaging in intimate dialogues and written reflections about our personal experiences with reproductive loss. Throughout the paper our reflections are interspersed with our ‘findings’ about the relationship between reproduction and resilience. For us, an active process of dialogically grounded reflection opened up the possibility of a different type of theoretical engagement, one that ultimately produced different enactments, and offered unexpected redirections, both of our experience with reproductive resilience, and in the resilience literature at large. This deeply personal, dialogical frame allowed us to move beyond the anecdotal and confessional to encompass a praxis that engaged the acutely affective reality of reproductive resiliency. Katherine: Three years ago, in the wake of the global financial crisis, I became interested in growing references to resilience in the media. I decided to start a graduate reading group on this theme. This was 'serious academic work.' We looked at questions like: Why has the UNDP rebranded itself 'Empowered Lives, Resilient Nations'? But my thinking about resilience was interrupted by a personal crisis. In January 2011, I was surprised and delighted to discover I was pregnant after years of clinically diagnosed 'unexplained infertility.' So my husband and I were devastated when, in May, a medical crisis (for me, not the baby) forced us to abort the pregnancy in its fifth month. Two years of exhausting medical interventions later, I learned that I am unable to bear children of my own—unable to reproduce—a fact which I am still actively struggling to reconcile. Ayumi: Strange the surprising state of affairs that would shift an employer and research lead into an acquaintance, confidante and friend. I initially learned of her challenges to carry a child to full term through proximity. As her teaching assistant I felt obliged to inform her that I had recently experienced an early miscarriage, and that it could possibly disrupt my work in her course. She was visibly pregnant at the time. Soon after, when I was participating in the resilience reading group, she miscarried as well. Reproductive Resilience A year or more passed before we spoke to each other about our losses, but when we did, we realised that we had both been influenced by dominant discourses around reproduction. Identifying the source of these pressures was an important topic of reflection for us. We found that dominant conceptions of reproductive resilience are overshadowed by a biological imperative to reproduce. When a woman is unable to conceive, or experiences a reproductive loss, she is told to ‘try again.’ There can be solace in trying, and in the ‘successful’ cases, a ‘happy resolution’ is achieved in subsequent pregnancies. But in other cases, the woman's body must produce several reproductive losses before medical professionals can understand the causes of her inability to reproduce (McMahon et al. 2007; Sexton, Byrd, and von Kluge 236). A series of increasingly invasive medical interventions can then be employed to increase the likelihood of reproduction. As a biological imperative, this type of reproductive resilience demands “progressive adaptation to a continually reinvented norm” (Walker and Cooper 156) of what it means to be fertile. But this is more than just a medical norm. Increasingly, reproduction also implies “adaptability to extremes of [ecological and economic] turbulence” (ibid.) that establish the conditions in which fertility is both experienced and understood, something that Katherine in particular had faced: Katherine: Why is it that we both ended up in this situation? Why is it that we are far from being alone in being 40 and childless? I am partly a product of the 1980s teen pregnancy hysteria in North America which made it an anathema for young women to ‘jeopardise’ their earning potential by having children. This makes me particularly bitter because I now understand that, at that moment in history, my society decided to prioritise my productive contributions to capital over socialised financing of the conditions that would allow me to produce a family. What I am suggesting is that the discourses which produce the preconceived notions that we attempt to ‘live up to’ are also discourses that we must, in many ways, ‘live with,’ because like it or not, they contributed to producing the situation which is now prompting us to write this paper! In this sense, reproductive resilience also becomes a measure of normalcy, where normalcy includes the adaptability of human bodies and biological process to the demands of a socio-economic system. Reproductive loss or infertility then becomes a source of personal weakness or abnormality that must be overcome, and a cause of personal degradation, which is often kept silent. In our experience, although individual responses differed greatly, either way the failure to reproduce demanded a response: Katherine: After my loss, I became determined to be pregnant again. For me IVF treatments were not so much about wanting to know with certainty my bodily ability to bring a child into the world. I was working under the perhaps rather desperate assumption that they would. I think of my IVF year more as desperation to achieve an end, a fear of failure, a crisis of sustainability, and a disbelief or disassociation from my own physical reality—the fact of my advancing age. The idea of ‘self-enclosed bodily anxiety’ captures this wonderfully for me. Ayumi: I did nothing, not a single consultation with a fertility expert, no visits to herbal medicine specialists, at most, a half-hearted internet search on adoption agencies. My path insisted upon embracing uncertainty over entrusting others with telling me the limits of my bodily integrity. When we began to share our stories with each other, we noticed that, despite having been surrounded by loving families and supportive colleagues at our times of crisis, both of us felt a tremendous sense of isolation as we tried to make sense of and respond to our losses. So a second area of reflection concerned the source of these emotions—both the sense of isolation, and the way in which it reinforced the normalisation of dominant discourses of reproductive resilience. We found that the reproductive industry’s medical interventions and specialised language community codify and reinforce measures of normalcy and sustain a coerced and often isolating process of adaptation to ever-more medicalised norms of fertility (Bonanno 753). This isolation is particularly apparent for women who choose to pursue fertility treatments. The language of medical intelligence is overwhelming and difficult to learn, creating a barrier between insiders and outsiders to fertility interventions (see for example: Kagan et al., S151). Fertility treatments are not only highly technical, but also a very introspective process, making it difficult for fertility partners, let alone friends and family, to fully comprehend what is going on, or to be involved. Meanwhile, support is difficult to find in a fertility clinic’s waiting room at 7am where groups of women silently await blood work to monitor hormone levels, avoiding eye contact by scanning their phones or reading a magazine. Many women turn instead to online forums, such as www.ivf.ca, where there is mutual comprehension wrapped in the security of anonymity. Rather than explain themselves each time they post to a forum, participants take up the language of reproductive medicine to detail their reproductive interventions in codified signature files (see Figure 1 below). Here, lengthy fertility campaigns become a merit badge of adaptability and perseverance. In their messages, participants share jingoistic mantras like ‘It only takes one!’, one harvested egg to have a child, as they cheer each other on in the search for a baby (Figure 2 below). These types of forums can empower insofar as they educate and encourage. However, they can also enclose and isolate as they cut patients off from family and friends, while creating external pressure to achieve a biological imperative suspended in changing parameters for what it means to be fertile. Figure 1: Example of a Signature File from an IVF Discussion Forum Figure 2: “It only takes one!” This kind of isolated adaptation to medicalised norms of fertility can come at a very high cost. For example, one friend was so traumatised by the multiple fertility interventions and failures it took for her to bear a child that she was ultimately unable to connect with the baby that she bore. The forward march of fertility treatments under the mounting pressure of advancing age required her to defer mourning for the multiple losses that she was experiencing: the loss of a child, the loss of normalcy, the loss of voice. She alone sustained the physical and psychological weight of reproductive resilience, and the pressures of achieving a ‘good outcome’ within the biological limits of her fertility window. When her daughter was born, she was engulfed by an avalanche of backlogged emotions—years of accumulated grief and stress. She was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and has struggled to develop a meaningful relationship with her child. But we also found that one need not pursue fertility treatments to experience the isolating and normalising effects of dominant conceptions of fertility. Some experienced infertility without feeling the need to consult medical professionals, or discover through initial consultations that a commercial and medicalised system was not the means through which they wanted to create a future for themselves. Others could find it difficult to contemplate the ‘reproduction’ of a ‘family’ when past experiences with family had been difficult. Yet, despite these decisions, changing norms of fertility continued to reinforce the biological imperative of reproduction in ways that become interwoven with tacitly heteronormative conceptualisations of the nature of family and community (Peters, Jackson, & Rudge 132-134). Katherine: Just the other day at the community garden, one of the gardeners, whom I had just met, wanted to know whether I had any children. When I said no, he bluntly asked me, ‘Why not?’ Just like that: ‘Why not?’ How can I even begin to answer this question? I’ve started to look people squarely in the eye and say, ‘I guess I must not be blessed.’ It’s not because I think I’m not blessed—my life is incredibly rewarding. It’s because it’s the best way I can think of to point out how inappropriate that line of questioning is. But I guess it’s also a defence… Ayumi: I do find that there is something deeply gendered and heterosexist about that line of questioning. As if there is some type of biological expectation for women to reproduce as a means to complete the family. And in absentia, in not raising the biological imperative with same-sex couples—in particular men, a whole host of assumptions are built into forming a good family. It’s like a double disrespect. In the first instance, the biological imperative falls on women, and in the second instance, the lack of expectation leaves many others out of the conversation. In total, we found that resilience always came with a modifier; otherwise we were left asking ‘resilience of what?’ ‘Resilience for what?’ Economic resilience, for example implied the adaptability of the capitalist system. Similarly, rather than expanding choices for and beyond women, the reproductive industry reinforced the normalcy of a gendered biological imperative that ultimately rested on the shoulders of an isolated individual. “The criteria of selection may well have shifted. Yet in the last instance, and for all its flexibility, the resilience perspective is no less rigorous in its selective function than Darwinian evolution” (Walker and Cooper 156). Dialogue Ayumi: To my surprise, she wanted to talk about it one day when we went for lunch, as though words would form the reality of her unexpected shift from pregnant to not-pregnant. The psychological experience of my own miscarriage had been devastating, so invisible, unannounced. Only those who needed to know were privy to the situation. Perhaps I quietly believed that if I spoke very little of it, it could almost have been mistaken for nothing other than conjecture or wishful thinking. Our conversation reproduced the reality of my failure to carry my child into childbirth. Her request for an empathetic listener would mean that a solitary introspection to resignify respect for my own body would give way to responding with due respect for her becoming no longer pregnant. Dialogue did more than just allow us to make sense of what we were experiencing. In conversation, reproductive resilience became something other than what we experienced in isolation. As experiences transformed into words, one perspective intermingled with and shaped the other, revealing imaginings that undid the closures and conclusions reached in our own minds, and offered an opportunity to reconsider the expectations of dominant narratives. Other possibilities surrounded, awaited contemplation, discursive engagement, solicitude in the shadows of experiences that coincided and diverged, resting assured that points of disagreement could be articulated as conjecture, wordless acknowledgement or future interactions. Our very different experiences and choices formed a context for conversation. We asked of one another: Why did this happen? How do you relate to your body? What do you feel is expected of you? What do you plan to do now? Upon dialogical reflection, it became clear that bodies, rather than being intentional enactments of adaptation, were more often than not products and reproductions of experiences and discourses: Ayumi: What kinds of biological, familial, technological, and economic imperatives are pressed upon our bodies? I wonder too about the ways in which consumerisation of reproduction plays upon our imagination of what it would be like to be a parent, creating a market and psychological demand for this life-changing acquisition of a human life. Perhaps these imperatives are operationalised as different mediations on the body, which is seen as a passive recipient of these directives. The externalisation and internalisation of our thoughts allowed us to see how our knowledge was suspended between our relationship with our body and the, often unexpressed, expectations of others which were based on their unexamined assumptions of what it meant to be a woman, a sexual being, a member of a family, a contributor to the community. Thinking about the body as something performed allowed us to use words to make real, reflect on, reproduce or recast our experiences: Katherine: I’m so independent, even in my relationship with my husband that I was a bit shocked at how my miscarriage rippled through my networks of friends, colleagues and family. People I hardly knew told me that they cried when they heard! I forget sometimes that my husband also suffered a huge loss, a blow to his identity and confidence, and a challenge to his sense of place. It is not just me who needs to engage with questions of resilience, but so does he, and we also need to do that together, and these processes will ripple through our networks of friends, family and co-workers in ways that affect the overall resiliency of a community of people. Ayumi: I talked to my partner about how deep down sometimes I feel that I've already done my work as a caregiver. I did a lot of volunteer and paid work with children when I was younger. I’ve taken care of so many children who ranged dramatically in age, mental and physical health and mobility, children who were dying and then died, and this took up so much of my teens, twenties and early thirties. I told him that while I've had that experience, he hasn't spent so much time with kids so that I wished for him to think about if this was something he wanted to explore (taking on a care giving / parental role), considering the options that are available to us through adoption or fostering. In dialogue, we figured out how to talk to one another, to locate a sense of fun within urgency, to reach toward mutual understanding, to test borders and to reshape them. Putting experiences and expectations into words allowed us to uncover expansive possibilities—options not considered, courses not taken. Ultimately, we began to think of reproductive resilience not as the means to achieve a biological imperative, but rather as a relational space of production. As we exchanged ideas, we came to question the assumption that reproductive resilience could be channeled through an individual body, and consequently we began to push back on definitions of fertility which served as measures of ‘fitness’ to a mythical adaptive whole. Through dialogue we resignified our individualised and isolated experiences with reproduction, turning what we experienced as vulnerability into a starting point for the reconceptualisation of resilience. This process—we call it ‘resiliency’ to distinguish it from adaptation—became an act of occupying our own reality in and through the relationships that surround us. Whereas resilience was about individual adaptations to shifting but still dominant norms of fertility, resiliency was about negotiating and constituting a fertile world through dialogues: Ayumi: I found our discussion of care a vitalising part of our conversations. Somehow, through forging different relations, the body propels resilience toward resisting external reinforcements to individualise reproduction and calls forth a collective response. Katherine: Today we discussed reproduction as a process of constructing a caring condition. Caring both in the sense of nurturing, but also in the sense of consideration. This was the most personally enriching part of our discussion – I felt empowered to make decisions about how I wanted to engage in caring and nurturing. This opened my mind to the possibility of adoption, but also to the fact that I express myself as a caring being in many other ways. Resiliency suggests actively engaging people and forces in ways that do not impose a certain order or state of affairs. But we struggled to think about how this new vision of reproductive resiliency would articulate with resistance. What does it mean to resist when biological failure renders acceptance of reproductive decline the only possible way forward? Though we can resist the conditions that created our current situations, we cannot resist our own pasts or our own biological reality. Should our inability to reproduce be seen as a victory in the fight against material myths of parental bliss? Or does our inability to reproduce make us the martyrs of the post-modern and neoliberal era? We want reproductive resiliency to offer a different experience of fertility. But we also want it to be a foundation to resist the normalisation of biological adaptation to the demands of a turbulent socio-economic system. We can do this by making a distinction between the biological act of reproduction (producing a baby), and the social reproducibility of care (nurturing, engaging, resisting, being, sharing, performing, etc.). Reproductive resiliency is concerned with nurturing the fertile enactments of human caring. It is on the basis of human caring that we can resist a system that creates the need for fertility adaptations, and it is also on this basis that we can open up room for thinking about reproductive resiliency in a respectful and socially engaged way. References Berkes, Fikret, Johan Colding and Carl Folke. “Introduction.” Navigating Social-Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change. Ed. F. Berkes, J. Colding and C. Folke. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Bonanno, George A. “Uses and Abuses of Resilience Construct: Loss, Trauma, and Health-Related Adversities. Social Science & Medicine 74.5 (2012): 753-756. Castleden, Matthew, Martin McGee, Virginia Murray & Giovanni Leonard. “Resilience Thinking in Health Protection. Journal of Public Health 33.3 (2011): 369-377. Cox, Pamela. “Marginalized Mothers, Reproductive Autonomy, and Repeat Losses to Care.” Journal of Law and Society 39.4 (2012): 541—561. Herrman, Helen, et al. “What Is Resilience?” Canadian J. of Psychiatry 56.5 (2011): 258-265. Hughes, Virginia. “The Roots of Resilience.” Nature 490 (2012): 165-167. Kagan, et al. “Improving Resilience among Infertile Women: A Pilot Study.” Fertility & Sterility 96.3 (2011): S151. McMahon, Catherine A., Frances L. Gibson, Jennifer L. Allen and Douglas Saunders. “Psychosocial Adjustment during Pregnancy for Older Couples Conceiving through Assisted Reproductive Technology.” Human Reproduction 22.4 (2007): 1168-1174. Peters, Kathleen, Debra Jackson, and Trudy Rudge. “Surviving the Adversity of Childlessness: Fostering Resilience in Couples.” Contemporary Nurse 40.1 (2011): 130-140. Sexton, Minden B., Michelle R. Byrd, and Silvia von Kluge. “Measuring Resilience in Women Experiencing Infertility Using the CD: RISC: Examining Infertility-Related Stress, General Stress, and Coping Styles.” Journal of Psychiatric Research 44.4 (2010): 236-241. Walker, Jeremy, and Melinda Cooper. “Genealogies of Resilience: From Systems Ecology to the Political Economy of Crisis Adaptation.” Security Dialogue 14.2 (2011): 143-160.

What creative techniques of resistance are available to a female filmmaker when she is the victim of a violent event and filmed at her most vulnerable? This article uses an autoethnographic lens to discuss my experience of a serious car crash my family and I were inadvertently involved in due to police negligence and a criminal act. Employing Creative Analytical Practice (CAP) ethnography, a reflexive form of research which recognises that the creative process, producer and product are “deeply intertwined” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 930), I investigate how the crash’s violent affects crippled my agency, manifested in my creative praxis and catalysed my identification of latent forms of institutionalised violence in film culture, its discourse and pedagogy that also contributed to my inertia. The article maps my process of writing a feature length screenplay during the aftermath of the crash as I set out to articulate my story of survival and resistance. Using this narrative inquiry, in which we can “investigate how we construct the world, ourselves, and others, and how standard objectifying practices...unnecessarily limit us” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 924), I outline how I attempted to disrupt the entrenched power structures that exist in dominant narratives of violence in film and challenge my subjugated positioning as a woman within this canon. I describe my engagement with the deconstructionist practices of writing the body and militant feminist cinema, which suggest subversive opportunities for women’s self-determination by encouraging us to embrace our exiled positioning in dominant discourse through creative experimentation, and identify some of the possibilities and limitations of this for female agency. Drawing on CAP ethnography, existentialism, film feminism, and narrative reframing, I assert that these reconstructive practices are more effective for the creative enfranchisement of women by not relegating us to the periphery of social systems and cultural forms. Instead, they enable us to speak back to violent structures in a language that has greater social access, context and impact.My strong desire to tell screen stories lies in my belief that storytelling is a crucial evolutionary mechanism of resilience. Narratives do not simply represent the social world but also have the ability to change it by enabling us to “try to figure out how to live our lives meaningfully” (Ellis 760). This conviction has been directly influenced by my personal story of trauma and survival when myself, my siblings, and our respective life partners became involved in a major car crash. Two police officers attending to a drunken brawl in an inner city park had, in their haste, left the keys in the ignition of their vehicle. We were travelling across a major intersection when the police car, which had subsequently been stolen by a man involved in the brawl – a man who was wanted on parole, had a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit, and was driving at speeds exceeding 110kms per hour - ran a red light and crossed our path, causing us to crash into his vehicle. From the impact, the small four-wheel drive we were travelling in was catapulted metres into the air, rolling numerous times before smashing head on into oncoming traffic. My heavily pregnant sister was driving our vehicle.The incident attracted national media attention and our story became a sensationalist spectacle. Each news station reported erroneous and conflicting information, one stating that my sister had lost her unborn daughter, another even going so far as to claim my sister had died in the crash. This tabloidised, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’, culture of journalism, along with new digital technologies, encourages and facilitates the normalisation of violent acts, often inflicted on women. Moreover, in their pursuit of high-rating stories, news bodies motivate dehumanising acts of citizen journalism that see witnesses often inspired to film, rather than assist, victims involved in a violent event. Through a connection with someone working for a major news station, we discovered that leading news broadcasters had bought a tape shot by a group of men who call themselves the ‘Paparazzi of Perth’. These men were some of the first on the scene and began filming us from only a few metres away while we were still trapped upside down and unconscious in our vehicle. In the recording, the men are heard laughing and celebrating our tragedy as they realise the lucrative possibilities of the shocking imagery they are capturing as witnesses pull us out of the back of the car, and my pregnant sister incredibly frees herself from the wreckage by kicking out the window.As a female filmmaker, I saw the bitter irony of this event as the camera was now turned on me and my loved ones at our most vulnerable. In her discussion of the male gaze, a culturally sanctioned form of narrational violence against women that is ubiquitous in most mainstream media, Mulvey proposes that women are generally the passive image, trapped by the physical limits of the frame in a permanent state of powerlessness as our identity is reduced to her “to-be-looked-at-ness” (40). For a long period of time, the experience of performing the role of this commodified woman of a weaponised male gaze, along with the threat of annihilation associated with our near-death experience, immobilised my spirit. I felt I belonged “more to the dead than to the living” (Herman 34). When I eventually returned to my creative praxis, I decided to use scriptwriting as both my “mode of reasoning and a mode of representation” (Richardson, Writing Strategies 21), test whether I could work through my feelings of alienation and violation and reclaim my agency. This was a complex and harrowing task because my memories “lack[ed] verbal narrative and context” (Herman 38) and were deeply rooted in my body. Cixous confirms that for women, “writing and voice...are woven together” and “spring from the deepest layers of her psyche” (Moi 112). For many months, I struggled to write. I attempted to block out this violent ordeal and censor my self. I soon learnt, however, that my body could not be silenced and was slow to forget. As I tried to write around this experience, the trauma worked itself deeper inside of me, and my physical symptoms worsened, as did the quality of my writing.In the early version of the screenplay I found myself writing a female-centred film about violence, identity and death, using the fictional narrative to express the numbness I experienced. I wrote the female protagonist with detachment as though she were an object devoid of agency. Sartre claims that we make objects of others and of ourselves in an attempt to control the uncertainty of life and the ever-changing nature of humanity (242). Making something into an object is to deprive it of life (and death); it is our attempt to keep ourselves ‘safe’. While I recognise that the car crash’s reminder of my mortality was no doubt part of the reason why I rendered myself, and the script’s female protagonist, lifeless as agentic beings, I sensed that there were subtler operations of power and control behind my self-objectification and self-censorship, which deeply concerned me. What had influenced this dea(r)th of female agency in my creative imaginings? Why did I write my female character with such a red pen? Why did I seem so compelled to ‘kill’ her? I wanted to investigate my gender construction, the complex relationship between my scriptwriting praxis, and the context within which it is produced to discover whether I could write a different future for myself, and my female characters. Kiesinger supports “contextualizing our stories within the framework of a larger picture” (108), so as to remain open to the possibility that there might not be anything ‘wrong’ with us, per se, “but rather something very wrong with the dynamics that dominate the communicative system” (109) within which we operate: in the case of my creative praxis, the oppressive structures present in the culture of film and its pedagogy.Pulling FocusWomen are supposed to be the view and when the view talks back, it is uncomfortable.— Jane Campion (Filming Desire)It is a terrible thing to see that no one has ever taught us how to develop our vision as women neither in the history of arts nor in film schools.— Marie Mandy (Filming Desire)The democratisation of today’s media landscape through new technologies, the recent rise in female-run production companies (Zemler) in Hollywood, along with the ground-breaking #MeToo and Time’s Up movements has elevated the global consciousness of gender-based violence, and has seen the screen industry seek to redress its history of gender imbalance. While it is too early to assess the impact these developments may have on women’s standing in film, today the ‘celluloid ceiling’ still operates on multiple levels of indoctrination and control through a systemic pattern of exclusion for women that upholds the “nearly seamless dialogue among men in cinema” (Lauzen, Thumbs Down 2). Female filmmakers occupy a tenuous position of influence in the mainstream industry and things are not any better on the other side of the camera (Lauzen, The Celluloid Ceiling). For the most part, Hollywood’s male gaze and penchant for sexualising and (physically or figuratively) killing female characters, which normalises violence against women and is “almost inversely proportional to the liberation of women in society” (Mandy), continues to limit women to performing as the image rather than the agent on screen.Film funding bodies and censorship boards, mostly comprised of men, remain exceptionally averse to independent female filmmakers who go against the odds to tell their stories, which often violate taboos about femininity and radically redefine female agency through the construction of the female gaze: a narrational technique of resistance that enables reel woman to govern the point of view, imagery and action of the film (Smelik 51-52). This generally sees their films unjustly ghettoised through incongruent classification or censorship, and forced into independent or underground distribution (Sexton-Finck 165-182). Not only does censorship propose the idea that female agency is abject and dangerous and needs to be restrained, it prevents access to this important cinema by women that aims to counter the male gaze and “shield us from this type of violence” (Gillain 210). This form of ideological and institutional gatekeeping is not only enforced in the film industry, it is also insidiously (re)constituted in the epistemological construction of film discourse and pedagogy, which in their design, are still largely intrinsically gendered institutions, encoded with phallocentric signification that rejects a woman’s specificity and approach to knowledge. Drawing on my mutually informative roles as a former film student and experienced screen educator, I assert that most screen curricula in Australia still uphold entrenched androcentric norms that assume the male gaze and advocate popular cinema’s didactic three-act structure, which conditions our value systems to favour masculinity and men’s worldview. This restorative storytelling approach is argued to be fatally limiting to reel women (Smith 136; Dancyger and Rush 25) as it propagates the Enlightenment notion of a universal subjectivity, based on free will and reason, which neutralises the power structures of society (and film) and repudiates the influence of social positioning on our opportunity for agency. Moreover, through its omniscient consciousness, which seeks to efface the presence of a specific narrator, the three-act method disavows this policing of female agency and absolves any specific individual of responsibility for its structural violence (Dyer 98).By pulling focus on some of these problematic mechanisms in the hostile climate of the film industry and its spaces of learning for women, I became acutely aware of the more latent forms of violence that had conditioned my scriptwriting praxis, the ambivalence I felt towards my female identity, and my consequent gagging of the female character in the screenplay.Changing Lenses How do the specific circumstances in which we write affect what we write? How does what we write affect who we become?— Laurel Richardson (Fields of Play 1)In the beginning, there is an end. Don’t be afraid: it’s your death that is dying. Then: all the beginnings.— Helene Cixous (Cixous and Jensen 41)The discoveries I made during my process of CAP ethnography saw a strong feeling of dissidence arrive inside me. I vehemently wanted to write my way out of my subjugated state and release some of the anguish that my traumatised body was carrying around. I was drawn to militant feminist cinema and the French poststructuralist approach of ‘writing the body’ (l’ecriture feminine) given these deconstructive practices “create images and ideas that have the power to inspire to revolt against oppression and exploitation” (Moi 120). Feminist cinema’s visual treatise of writing the body through its departure from androcentric codes - its unformulaic approach to structure, plot, character and narration (De Lauretis 106) - revealed to me ways in which I could use the scriptwriting process to validate my debilitating experience of physical and psychic violence, decensor my self and move towards rejoining the living. Cixous affirms that, “by writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into…the ailing or dead figure” (Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa 880). It became clear to me that the persistent themes of death that manifested in the first draft of the script were not, as I first suspected, me ‘rehearsing to die’, or wanting to kill off the woman inside me. I was in fact “not driven towards death but by death” (Homer 89), the close proximity to my mortality, acting as a limit, was calling for a strengthening of my life force, a rebirth of my agency (Bettelheim 36). Mansfield acknowledges that death “offers us a freedom outside of the repression and logic that dominate our daily practices of keeping ourselves in order, within the lines” (87).I challenged myself to write the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the unexplored and to allow myself to go to places in me that I had never before let speak by investigating my agency from a much more layered and critical perspective. This was both incredibly terrifying and liberating and enabled me to discard the agentic ‘corset’ I had previously worn in my creative praxis. Dancyger and Rush confirm that “one of the things that happens when we break out of the restorative three-act form is that the effaced narrator becomes increasingly visible and overt” (38). I experienced an invigorating feeling of empowerment through my appropriation of the female gaze in the screenplay which initially appeased some of the post-crash turmoil and general sense of injustice I was experiencing. However, I soon, found something toxic rising inside of me. Like the acrimonious feminist cinema I was immersed in – Raw (Ducournau), A Girl Walks Home at Night (Amirpour), Romance (Breillat), Trouble Every Day (Denis), Baise-Moi (Despentes and Thi), In My Skin (Van), Anatomy of Hell (Breillat) – the screenplay I had produced involved a female character turning the tables on men and using acts of revenge to satisfy her needs. Not only was I creating a highly dystopian world filled with explicit themes of suffering in the screenplay, I too existed in a displaced state of rage and ‘psychic nausea’ in my daily life (Baldick and Sartre). I became haunted by vivid flashbacks of the car crash as abject images, sounds and sensations played over and over in my mind and body like a horror movie on loop. I struggled to find the necessary clarity and counterbalance of stability required to successfully handle this type of experimentation.I do not wish to undermine the creative potential of deconstructive practices, such as writing the body and militant cinema, for female filmmakers. However, I believe my post-trauma sensitivity to visceral entrapment and spiritual violence magnifies some of the psychological and physiological risks involved. Deconstructive experimentation “happens much more easily in the realm of “texts” than in the world of human interaction” (hooks 22) and presents agentic limitations for women since it offers a “utopian vision of female creativity” (Moi 119) that is “devoid of reality...except in a poetic sense” (Moi 122). In jettisoning the restorative qualities of narrative film, new boundaries for women are inadvertently created through restricting us to “intellectual pleasure but rarely emotional pleasure” (Citron 51). Moreover, by reducing women’s agency to retaliation we are denied the opportunity for catharsis and transformation; something I desperately longed to experience in my injured state. Kaplan acknowledges this problem, arguing that female filmmakers need to move theoretically beyond deconstruction to reconstruction, “to manipulate the recognized, dominating discourses so as to begin to free ourselves through rather than beyond them (for what is there ‘beyond’?)” (Women and Film 141).A potent desire to regain a sense of connectedness and control pushed itself out from deep inside me. I yearned for a tonic to move myself and my female character to an active position, rather than a reactive one that merely repeats the victimising dynamic of mainstream film by appropriating a reversed (female) gaze and now makes women the violent victors (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 130). We have arrived at a point where we must destabilise the dominance-submission structure and “think about ways of transcending a polarity that has only brought us all pain” (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 135). I became determined to write a screen narrative that, while dealing with some of the harsh realities of humanity I had become exposed to, involved an existentialist movement towards catharsis and activity.ReframingWhen our stories break down or no longer serve us well, it is imperative that we examine the quality of the stories we are telling and actively reinvent our accounts in ways that permit us to live more fulfilling lives.— Christine Kiesinger (107)I’m frightened by life’s randomness, so I want to deal with it, make some sense of it by telling a film story. But it’s not without hope. I don’t believe in telling stories without some hope.— Susanne Bier (Thomas)Narrative reframing is underlined by the existentialist belief that our spiritual freedom is an artistic process of self-creation, dependent on our free will to organise the elements of our lives, many determined out of our control, into the subjective frame that is to be our experience of our selves and the world around us (107). As a filmmaker, I recognise the power of selective editing and composition. Narrative reframing’s demand for a rational assessment of “the degree to which we live our stories versus the degree to which our stories live us” (Kiesinger 109), helped me to understand how I could use these filmmaking skills to take a step back from my trauma so as to look at it objectively “as a text for study” (Ellis 108) and to exercise power over the creative-destructive forces it, and the deconstructive writing methods I had employed, produced. Richardson confirms the benefits of this practice, since narrative “is the universal way in which humans accommodate to finitude” (Writing Strategies 65).In the script’s development, I found my resilience lay in my capacity to imagine more positive alternatives for female agency. I focussed on writing a narrative that did not avoid life’s hardships and injustices, or require them to be “attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted, and falsified” (Nietzsche and Hollingdale 68), yet still involved a life-affirming sentiment. With this in mind, I reintroduced the three-act structure in the revised script as its affectivity and therapeutic denouement enabled me to experience a sense of agentic catharsis that turned “nauseous thoughts into imaginations with which it is possible to live” (Nietzsche 52). Nevertheless, I remained vigilant not to lapse into didacticism; to allow my female character to be free to transgress social conventions surrounding women’s agency. Indebted to Kaplan’s writing on the cinematic gaze, I chose to take up what she identifies as a ‘mutual gaze’; an ethical framework that enabled me to privilege the female character’s perspective and autonomy with a neutral subject-subject gaze rather than the “subject-object kind that reduces one of the parties to the place of submission” (Feminism and Film 135). I incorporated the filmic technique of the point of view (POV) shot for key narrative moments as it allows an audience to literally view the world through a character’s eyes, as well as direct address, which involves the character looking back down the lens at the viewer (us); establishing the highest level of identification between the spectator and the subject on screen.The most pertinent illustration of these significant scriptwriting changes through my engagement with narrative reframing and feminist film theory, is in the reworking of my family’s car crash which became a pivotal turning point in the final draft. In the scene, I use POV and direct address to turn the weaponised gaze back around onto the ‘paparazzi’ who are filming the spectacle. When the central (pregnant) character frees herself from the wreckage, she notices these men filming her and we see the moment from her point of view as she looks at these men laughing and revelling in the commercial potential of their mediatised act. Switching between POV and direct address, the men soon notice they have been exposed as the woman looks back down the lens at them (us) with disbelief, reproaching them (us) for daring to film her in this traumatic moment. She holds her determined gaze while they glance awkwardly back at her, until their laughter dissipates, they stop recording and appear to recognise the culpability of their actions. With these techniques of mutual gazing, I set out to humanise and empower the female victim and neutralise the power dynamic: the woman is now also a viewing agent, and the men equally perform the role of the viewed. In this creative reframing, I hope to provide an antidote to filmic violence against and/or by women as this female character reclaims her (my) experience of survival without adhering to the culture of female passivity or ressentiment.This article has examined how a serious car crash, being filmed against my will in its aftermath and the attendant damages that prevailed from this experience, catalysed a critical change of direction in my scriptwriting. The victimising event helped me recognise the manifest and latent forms of violence against women that are normalised through everyday ideological and institutional systems in film and prevent us from performing as active agents in our creative praxis. There is a critical need for more inclusive modes of practice – across the film industry, discourse and pedagogy – that are cognisant and respectful of women’s specificity and our difference to the androcentric landscape of mainstream film. We need to continue to exert pressure on changing violent mechanisms that marginalise us and ghettoise our stories. As this article has demonstrated, working outside dominant forms can enable important emancipatory opportunities for women, however, this type or deconstruction also presents risks that generally leave us powerless in everyday spaces. While I advocate that female filmmakers should look to techniques of feminist cinema for an alternative lens, we must also work within popular film to critique and subvert it, and not deny women the pleasures and political advantages of its restorative structure. By enabling female filmmakers to (re)humanise woman though encouraging empathy and compassion, this affective storytelling form has the potential to counter violence against women and mobilise female agency. Equally, CAP ethnography and narrative reframing are critical discourses for the retrieval and actualisation of female filmmakers’ agency as they allow us to contextualise our stories of resistance and survival within the framework of a larger picture of violence to gain perspective on our subjective experiences and render them as significant, informative and useful to the lives of others. This enables us to move from the isolated margins of subcultural film and discourse to reclaim our stories at the centre.ReferencesA Girl Walks Home at Night. Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour. Say Ahh Productions, 2014.Anatomy of Hell. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Tartan Films, 2004. Baise-Moi. Dirs. Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. FilmFixx, 2000.Baldick, Robert, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea. 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