Artículos de revistas sobre el tema "Neutralité masculine"

Résumé Une étude détaillée de l'art du dialogue chez Guèvremont et Roy révèle d'importantes différences dans la facture des dialogues, leur fréquence, leurs fonctions et leur insertion dans le tissu romanesque. On constate chez Roy la présence quasi constante de non-dits et de troubles de la communication, tandis que chez Guèvremont, les échanges linguistiques procurent le plus souvent du plaisir et un sentiment d'appartenance. Par ailleurs, les deux romancières analysent, entre autres au moyen des dialogues, l'inégale répartition du pouvoir entre les sexes. L'apparente neutralité de la forme réaliste, et plus particulièrement du dialogue romanesque, permet aux romancières de constater la domaination masculine des échanges linguistiques tout en la critiquant subtilement et en laissant surgir, par divers moyens textuels, une parole et un regard féminins autres.

Le modèle du « bon père de famille », ou de la personne raisonnable, utilisé dans l'évaluation de la faute extracontractuelle est loin d'être un modèle neutre et objectif. Il s'agit plutôt d'une norme essentiellement masculine et inéquitable pour les femmes. Pour démontrer son hypothèse, l'auteure trace un parallèle entre ce modèle d'évaluation et celui qui est employé dans les affaires de harcèlement sexuel du type « environnement de travail hostile ». Dans ces deux domaines, peu importe le modèle auquel ont recours les tribunaux, ils tombent dans le piège de la neutralité: le modèle neutre n'existe pas et l'évaluation du caractère raisonnable passe par la lorgnette du juge. Pour rendre des décisions qui tiennent compte des réalités des femmes, les juges doivent se débarrasser des modèles d'évaluation prétendument neutres, qui ne font que masquer la réalité, et prendre en considération l'opinion des victimes.

Cet article s’intéresse à l’emploi des genres grammaticaux pour les noms référant à des humains dans un oral non planifié. Notre analyse repose sur l’observation de sept heures de parole à partir du Corpus de français parlé parisien (CFPP2000, Branca et al. , 2012) et du Corpus de français parlé à Bruxelles (CFPB, Dister et Labeau, 2017), soit 1616 noms. Sur la base de 5 catégories que nous avons distinguées, nous montrons la répartition des emplois au masculin et au féminin, et l’importance des catégories renvoyant potentiellement autant à un homme qu’à une femme : épicènes (n=353), collectifs renvoyant à des groupes mixtes (n=506), noms à genre fixe comme personne , mais qui peuvent renvoyer indifféremment à un homme ou à une femme (n=51). Nous examinons ensuite le fonctionnement du masculin, en distinguant les emplois spécifiques et les emplois neutralisants, pour les noms à alternance du morphème flexionnel (n=300), et pour les noms épicènes masculins (n=82). Pour ces catégories, au pluriel, les emplois neutralisés représentent les trois quarts des usages. La catégorie sexuée est donc fréquemment neutralisée, en particulier grâce aux épicènes et à l’emploi du masculin pluriel. L’observation qualitative des corpus montre cependant que les informations sur le sexe des référents peuvent être réintroduites au fil du discours, quand le besoin s’en fait sentir. Les locuteurs peuvent sans « trouble » passer d’un épicène masculin, conçu comme englobant les deux sexes, à un féminin pour évoquer une personne spécifique.

O presente estudo objetiva abranger a intersecção dos conceitos de sexualidade, envelhecimento e masculinidade para a compreensão das representações do corpo envelhecido para os homens idosos, tal como a sexualidade e os desafios da manutenção da masculinidade na contemporaneidade. Os aspectos metodológicos empregados para este fim incidem em um relato de experiência de oficinas temáticas desenvolvidas com idosos, tais homens são frequentadores de um equipamento social e participantes de grupos de convivência. Os dados registrados em diários de campo foram submetidos à análise de conteúdo de Bardin. Com isso, obtêm-se, enquanto resultados, os diversos fatores que contribuem para a construção da subjetividade do idoso a respeito do corpo masculino em torno da sexualidade, entre eles os valores e a manutenção das normas em detrimento dos encontros contemporâneos na mídia e na sociedade. Entende-se, portanto, que o envelhecer na atualidade é um desafio que vai além de carregar os estigmas sociais, e insere-se em uma dimensão cultural que padroniza os corpos, as relações sexuais e a masculinidade numa esfera que neutraliza o sujeito e o enquadra na jovialidade.

Alors que l’autrice et l’auteur se trouvaient dans un séminaire doctoral et que les deux expliquaient avoir choisi de féminiser leur mémoire de maitrise, un seul des deux reçut des félicitations pour sa prise de position. Cette situation ouvrit la porte à une discussion sur l’importance de s’émanciper du recours au masculin générique et sur le rôle des personnes alliées dans cet effort. Une discussion qui paraissait trop riche pour s’éteindre dans l’enceinte d’une plateforme numérique. Dans le présent article, nous proposons de revenir sur l’origine du recours au générique masculin dans la langue française afin de démythifier la prétention du masculin à la neutralité. Il s’agira ensuite de s’intéresser aux implications du recours au masculin générique dans le cas particulier du droit privé québécois et des inégalités et iniquités qui en découlent. Finalement, nous présenterons un dialogue sur nos motivations et expériences respectives en matière de rédaction inclusive, révélant un parcours qui s’arpente rarement sans embûches.

This paper seeks to expose feminist existence in the tradition of Bugis Makassar marriage by revisiting the position of Siri 'culture as the emancipation of human values, especially with regard to feminist and masculine essence in marriage. The marriage system shows the unclear direction or unrelatedness between the Siri 'values tradition and the concrete reality of feminist existence. The marriage system of Bugis Makassar is characterized by a shift in tradition which then raises the value of materialism into Siri 'culture. The problem becomes more complicated when faced with “uang panaik” tradition that so neutralize myths as a measure of establishment and masculine responsibility, so that the masculine reaction to the tradition of marriage Bugis Makassar feels necessary. Because this is what will create the feminist dilemma in the tradition of marriage.

This paper seeks to expose feminist existence in the tradition of Bugis Makassar marriage by revisiting the position of Siri 'culture as the emancipation of human values, especially with regard to feminist and masculine essence in marriage. The marriage system shows the unclear direction or unrelatedness between the Siri 'values tradition and the concrete reality of feminist existence. The marriage system of Bugis Makassar is characterized by a shift in tradition which then raises the value of materialism into Siri 'culture. The problem becomes more complicated when faced with “uang panaik” tradition that so neutralize myths as a measure of establishment and masculine responsibility, so that the masculine reaction to the tradition of marriage Bugis Makassar feels necessary. Because this is what will create the feminist dilemma in the tradition of marriage.

AbstractMaterials experience in design involves the meanings that materials convey to users through its expressive characteristics. Such meaning evoking patterns are influenced by parameters such as context, product (e.g.shape) and user. Consequently, there is a need to standardise experiential material characterisation and large-scale data collection, by means of a meaning-less or ‘neutral’ demonstrator to objectively compare materials.This paper explores the conception of this neutrality and proposes two opposing strategies: neutrality through complexity or through simplicity. In a pre-study with 20 designers, six associative pairs are selected as neutrality criteria, and shaped in 240 forms by 20 (non) designers in a main workshop. Following the simplicity strategy, these forms are averaged out in three steps by a team of five designers, based on a consensus on of delicate-rugged, aggressive-calm, futuristic-calm, masculine-feminine, traditional-modern, and toylike-professional, resulting in a selection of four averaged neutral forms.Finally, future research will focus on complexity to increase interactivity, so that consumers might be triggered in extensive material exploration.

Health care professionals’ (HCPs) notions about gender may influence the provision and quality of care. If care-seeking men are met by HCPs holding idealized and stereotypical notions of masculinity, this could reinforce barriers to adequate care. This study explored notions about men and masculinities among HCPs working with men’s sexual health in Sweden. Focus group interviews with 35 HCPs from primary health and sexual health clinics were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The analysis resulted in three descriptive themes: (a) Contradictory masculinity—elusive but clear. Notions of masculinity as a phenomenon or concept were elusive, but masculine and un-masculine traits, behaviors, and qualities were clear. (b) Sexual health care is a social place where men and masculinities can be challenging. Male patients were associated with unwanted sexual tensions. Masculinity could challenge professionality. Seeking sexual health care was perceived as doing un-masculinity. (c) Regarding masculinity as irrelevant—a difficult ambition to achieve. Participants strived for gender-neutrality by regarding patients as humans, individuals, or patients rather than as men and masculine. The analysis also identified a theme of meaning: Notions of masculinity are situated relationally. HCPs situate masculinity in real and hypothetical relationships. Romantic and sexual preferences were used to define preferred masculinity. This study identified themes that showed how HCPs balanced professional and private notions of men and masculinity in their patient encounters. Increased gender awareness and training are needed to professionalize the management of gendered notions in encounters with men who seek care for sexual health problems.

“Zhongxing,” meaning “gender neutrality” in Mandarin Chinese, is the term typically used to describe young women who adopt masculine gender expressions affected by popular Japanese and Korean beautiful-boy styles and who assume a collective and prevalent presence in public space and popular culture in contemporary Taiwan. I examine how this cultural phenomenon evinces multilayered transnational convergence of globalizing western feminist and queer politics, commodified regional flow of Korean beautiful-boy image, and local Taiwanese T-Po lesbian subcultures in the process of Taiwan’s modern and international nation building. I also indicate the gender-specific consequences of cultural transnationalization on queer sexuality formation by elucidating how the rise of the zhongxing phenomenon mainstreams the unique form of female masculinity as a chic, politically progressive, and semi-normative gender performance for young women and represents lesbian visibility as a practice of insinuated signification rather than straightforward confession. Finally, I demonstrate how Taiwanese lesbians take advantage of the zhongxing discourse to conceive of a masculine inclination congruent with their female body and identification and to satisfy conflicting desires for queer visibility and social integration, revealing the subtle relations between normative constraints and the exercise of queer agency in a transnational cultural context.

In this article, we take up feminist new materialist thought in relation to our music research-creation practice to problematize the white, en/abled, cis-masculine, and Euro-Western methodological orientation often inherited with sound methods. We think with our music research-creation practice to activate a feminist new materialist politics of approach, unsettling sound studies’ inheritances that seek to separate, essentialize, naturalize/neutralize, capture, decontextualize, and re-present. We unsettle these inheritances with six propositions: imbricate, stratify, provoke, inject, contextualize, and more-than-represent. These propositions, and this article’s uptake of research-creation, hold implications for scholars interested in critically enacting sound studies research as well as qualitative and post qualitative research in general.

This article is devoted to the problem of feminization of masculine nouns in French and Russian, which is important for achieving gender neutrality, i.e. equality of masculine and feminine words. The relevance of this problem lies in the fact that ambiguous ideas are quite often put into practice through words that are not familiar to our ears. Some examples in Russian are such words as «блогерка» (a female blogger), «авторка» (a female author), «профессорка» (a female professor), and others. And in French, la préfète, la magistrate, la députée and others. The authors of the article touch upon the issue of linguistic political correctness in relation to discriminated communities, or those considered discriminated: women, people of non-traditional sexual orientation, national, racial and religious minorities. There is also much discussion nowadays about people with disabilities The best example of how to erase the boundaries between the sexes in the Russian language is the word comrade. The work draws attention to the fact that the feminist community is not unanimous, since not everyone is in favor of feminitives. On the one hand, there is a group of radical feminists, and on the other, their opponents, who are definitely against innovations. In addition, we should not forget the majority of native speakers who speak at their convenience. The results of the study lead to the conclusion that if feminitives are regularly used, especially in the media and social networks, the society can get used to them very quickly. In other words, feminitives can penetrate the language if our life changes.

The article is devoted to the analysis of cases of neutralization of gender attribution of phraseological units in their live use in modern media speech. Russian Russian phraseology The aim of the work is to study the dynamics of ideas about the masculine and feminine gender in Russian phraseology based on the identification of forms of neutralization of gender attribution, their classification and analysis of the noted transformations when using stable combinations in newspaper texts of the National Corpus of the Russian language. The following research methods are used in the work: continuous sampling method, observation of language material, lexicographic, lexico-semantic and contextual analysis, classification, analysis, generalization. Three ways of neutralization of gender attribution of phraseological units are considered: neutralization of gender at the level of dictionary definitions (indication of kinship with a person as a whole, without gender differentiation: Ivan, who does not remember kinship), neutralization at the grammatical level (compatibility with the object of the opposite grammatical gender: sleeping beauty), the use of phraseological turnover in relation to the person of the opposite pola (free Cossack). It is shown that, despite the strength of gender stereotypes in the linguistic consciousness, they are not frozen: gender representations change in the process of social development, which is expressed in the transformation of semantics and the compatibility of gender-marked phraseological units, rethinking their one-line connection with masculinity / femininity.The identification of ways to neutralize the gender attribution of phraseological units contributes to the study of gender manifestations in phraseology. The description of modern phraseological usage is important from the point of view of ascertaining the constancy in the linguistic consciousness of established gender stereotypes and shifts in their perception, as well as the accumulation of data on the mechanisms of functioning of idiomatics and the development of phraseological meaning.

To create the trend of today’s sonic degenderization is ‘gender neutralism.’ This perspective refers to one that aims not to lean on either masculinity or feminity. It is shown in an interesting way in the scene of ‘female-participatory rock’ in the area of popular music that forms part of the sonic world of young people in their twenties. That music has refuted a long-standing gender stereotype that ‘rock is a male genre.’ This movement is subtly sensed in the voice of female rockers. A typical example is offered by Hwang So-yoon, a vocalist and guitarist of the Korean indie rock band Se So Neon(New Boys), Against this background, this paper aims to look at how gender neutralism is displayed through voice, looking at a case study of Hwang. To this end, this study intends to employ an ‘semiotic-vocal approach.’ This is a methodology to examine how a gender-related view of vocalization is shown semiotically and vocally. With this approach, this research finds three things. First, from a ‘vocalism’ seeking degenderization, Hwang forms a ‘sonic semanticity’ of lyrics in a complex way. Second, she produces a ‘convergent and divergent’ voice using a mix of masculine, true voice and feminine falsetto. Third, through those practices, Hwang constructs the self or the other as an ‘existence’ that goes beyond masculinity and feminity. Those practices imply an extension of a boundary area of a rock society pursing degenderization.

Gender inequality remains a concerning issue in accounting professions, primarily due to the prevalence of traditional masculine values. Additionally, religious perspectives often assign women the roles of mothers and wives within households. However, it is important to note that Allah views men and women as equals in this world, differentiating them only through faith and piety. Considering this standpoint, this study employs a religious approach to address and diminish the influence of masculinity values and promote gender equality within Islamic principles. To achieve this, the study identifies and examines the masculinity values that perpetuate gender inequality within the accounting profession, using documentary research methods. The investigation reveals several masculinity values that justify gender disparities in this field. To counteract these harmful values, the study draws a parallel between leadership and accounting and proposes relevant Islamic values that can challenge and neutralize the identified masculinity norms, thereby fostering gender equality. This research contributes to the refinement of the religious approach by acknowledging and addressing the influence of masculinity values that contribute to gender inequality and replacing them with Islamic values that promote fairness and equity.

With the increasing attempts to use gender-fair language, different studies have investigated this issue from different viewpoints. To find an epicene pronoun used as a third-person singular, some research has been conducted investigating them in various contexts, yet few studies have focused on cultural differences. Since how to use language differs among cultures, this study aims to investigate and compare the use of epicene pronouns (he, she, he/she, and singular they) among Iranian and Polish Non-Native Speakers (NNSs) of English with different cultures, social backgrounds, and L1s (in terms of gender markedness; Iran with a genderless-grammar language, and Poland with a grammatical-gender language). A survey containing sentences and questions was given to 64 university learners in 4 contexts (indefinite noun, feminine, masculine, and neutral connotations) to choose the most suitable pronouns while exploring the reasons for choices followed by the source of learning. The results revealed that singular they was the highest deployed pronoun in all four contexts, with no significant difference between Iranian and Polish learners. Furthermore, gender neutrality was mentioned most as the main reason for their selection of choices. Finally, roughly half the Polish students and about a third of Iranian participants had already heard about singular they, with private institutions and schools were respectively mentioned as their main sources of this knowledge.

When feminists interrogate the symbolic realm of religion, they often expose much of theological discourse as an idealized projection of a masculine subjectivity. In response to androcentric theological discourse, some feminists’ approaches have reframed religion in support of feminine subjectivity. For example, Luce Irigaray experienced an important, constructive turn to religion in her writings in the 1980s and 1990s following her early criticism of phallogocentric Western philosophy. She argued provocatively:Monotheistic religions speak to us of God the Father and God made man; nothing is said of a God the Mother or of God made Woman, or even of God as a couple or couples. Not all the transcendental fancies, or ecstasies of every type, not all the quibbling over maternity and the neutrality (neuterness) of God, can succeed in erasing this one reality that determines identities, rights, symbols, and discourse.Elsewhere, she contends: “as long as woman lacks a divine made in her image she cannot establish her subjectivity or achieve a goal of her own. She lacks an ideal that would be her goal or path in becoming.” For Irigaray, “to become divine” means to become a subject, as opposed to being a term that defines the other. Fertility, motherhood, and female genealogies are central to Irigaray's divine woman as a way to establish female subjectivity.

Abstract Today, word embeddings have become a standard method in natural language processing, largely due to the availability of large language corpora. The models effectively reflect the semantic relationships between words without any additional linguistic input. Recently, more emphasis has been placed on interpreting the seemingly discriminatory results of some queries, with the goal of de-biasing language models. However, if we consider the vector space to be a reasonably valid model of a linguistic semantic space, does not the asymmetry and subsequent discrimination in word embeddings reflect the (average) discriminatory tendencies inherent in the language? This article explores word embedding models for the Visegrád group languages and we apply basic vector arithmetic to demonstrate the basic language asymmetry present in the models. It is well known that in English models, vector transfers result in eerily accurate predictions when swapping genders (the famous king – man + woman = queen), but these transfers also result in rather uncomplimentary roles for certain occupations (doctor – man + woman = nurse, or computer programmer – man + woman = homemaker). The article explores similar transfers in models of V4 languages – Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian. With Hungarian gender neutrality, Polish strong generic masculine, and close parallels between Slovak and Czech, we hope to uncover interesting similarities and differences in gender asymmetry in these languages, based on real language data.

Hemophilia is a congenital bleeding disorder that mainly affects men. Men with severe hemophilia experience stigma because they are unable to live up to various ideals of masculinity. This study involves a qualitative analysis of how nine Danish men aged 40–54 years with severe hemophilia manage life as functionally impaired relative to their masculine identity. The analytical focus is on how the men manage on a daily basis, how they construct their identity as a result of the disorder, and the body’s importance in these identity negotiations. The source of their biggest defeat is that the disorder often prevents them from living up to social expectations about men as fathers. This results in a variety of management strategies that they apply to neutralize the stigma, allowing them to (a) distance themselves from the disorder in various practical and verbal ways and to (b) assume primary responsibility for managing the disorder, including internalizing being experts on the disorder. The results identify that men with severe hemophilia are frustrated by the lack of advice provided by the health sector. The article proposes initiatives that can be taken to address the lack of knowledge and to create a broader network of peers for men with hemophilia across varying age groups.

This study aimed at obtaining an in-depth understanding of masculinities which act as barriers to performing the direct observable therapy (DOT) on the expected sick role behaviours among men who were diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in Zambian compounds. The article identifies masculinities that act as gendered barriers to tuberculosis patients. It explores masculine gendered actions situated in an impoverished household. Of concern is considering both the situational aspects of gender and failure to honour the expected sick role behaviours. To do this the article used the Talcott Parson’s sick role theory whereby the behaviours, rights and responsibilities of a patient deviates from societal norms because of their disease or disorder” (DeLaune et al., 2019). Methodologically, a maximum variation sampling design was used to enlist 59 respondents. In-depth interviews were conducted with men anchored on Charmaz’s modified constructivist grounded theory informing the article. The argument in this article is that six categories of masculinities influenced deviant behaviour and accounted for reasons why and how men fail to fulfil the expected tuberculosis sick role behaviour. These categories found were: not being in control of the situation, hyper masculinity, resistance to recommended practices, masculinity stereotype threat, breadwinner and gender identities. A much closer look at the explored six categories of masculinities that effectuate deviant behaviour, the article asserts that gendered interventions are possible to neutralise sick-role behaviour among tuberculosis male patients.

The research provided a descriptive analysis of six articles published by Magdalene, an Indonesian publication that resonated with feminists, pluralists, and progressive voices, to identify the subtle tactics men used to silence women. The idea of neutrality in language endured a long-standing debate between scholars in the communication field. In the perspective of feminist thinkers, language served a function of sexual division, placing men in domination and women in oppression. Women were constrained by a social system governed and communicated through a language that did not represent their experience and perspective. Men’s language denied and negated women’s authenticity. Women were only authentic when their voice was narrated by the language unfamiliar to the scream of their anguish and struggles. The language was not only a medium of expression but also a method of silence. In order to resist oppression, one must be critical of the technique men use in silencing women. Using silence methods from Muted Group Theory provided by Cheris Kramare, the research finds that silence dominantly occurs in the form of violence. The overlap of silence methods is mostly followed by censorship towards women. In one case of sexual harassment towards a female university student, the educational institution is considered the embodiment of patriarchal social construction for coercing silence to victims and doubling its function as sources of knowledge and sexual harassment perpetrators. Lastly, another finding suggests that men who strongly associate with feminist traits and whose sexual identification is against the dominant masculine norm are also disempowered.

Resumo Neste artigo são analisados os spots eleitorais nas propagandas televisivas das campanhas presidenciais de Dilma Rousseff (Brasil), Michelle Bachelet (Chile) e Cristina Kirchner (Argentina) com o objetivo de verificar como as presidentes latino-americanas se posicionam enquanto gênero feminino em suas campanhas. A pergunta de pesquisa que orientou nossa análise foi: o posicionamento das candidatas neutraliza ou reforça estereótipos de gênero? Buscamos na literatura temática entender as questões implicadas nas leituras de gênero, em suas imbricações com as disputas eleitorais. Para a análise empírica, adotamos a análise de conteúdo para mensurar a presença do tema "mulher" nos spots, analisando, em seguida, o posicionamento adotado nos demais aspectos da campanha televisiva, a partir da presença de três códigos principais: icônico, linguístico e sonoro. Os resultados demonstraram que a agenda de temas relacionados à temática de gênero se concentrou em programas sobre maternidade e geração de emprego e que, para superar os estereótipos de gênero, as candidatas foram apresentadas com qualidades necessárias para a liderança política, enfatizando características tradicionalmente consideradas como masculinas, como determinação, seriedade, inteligência, competência, capacidade de liderança, entre outras. A análise dos spots demonstrou que, em alguns momentos, as próprias candidatas reproduziram estereótipos de gênero em suas campanhas.

The advent of the twentieth and the twenty first century has seen languages embrace gender neutrality consciously and these changes in languages have contributed to gender equality. In this regard, the power of languages cannot be ignored in shaping people’s social constructions and their roles in societies. Studies have indicated that languages have the power to create and enforce gender determinism and the marginalisation of the feminine gender. Currently, both English and French have embraced inclusivity, whereby there is a deliberate attempt to move away from the use of the masculine as the default form for nouns, to the use of gender-neutral words. This may not be the case for many other languages of the world. That is why this article investigated the use of prejudiced language in Ekegusii paying particular attention to proverbs or wise sayings. Specifically, the article investigated the gender inferences, the roles and the stereotypical constructions in the proverbs or the wise sayings. It also investigated the effect of these gender inferences on the users’ perceptions in constructing their identities as men or women. The Social Constructionism Theory guided the analysis while a descriptive field linguistic design was used. Judgemental sampling was then used to sample proverbs from the Ekegusii dictionary and thereafter analysed them to determine the gender inferences, the roles, and the perceived gender constructions. The findings revealed that the figurative language used in these proverbs had underlying gendered prejudiced language that perpetuates historical patriarchal hierarchy that denotes men as norm. Further, the gendered prejudiced language outlines roles that influence members of the society to conform to specific societal expectations in line with their gender therefore forming stereotypes. Proverbs or wise sayings mirror essentially, a culture of a given people. Their continued use indicates one’s prowess in a given language and it is deemed prestigious. Therefore, it is hoped that the findings herein will awaken the users on the gendered ideologies in some of the proverbs so that even as they use them, they may conform to the modern trends of gender-neutral language.

This paper presents empirical evidence to illustrate how one Australian university complies with the nation's federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) regulatory framework. The aim of this paper is to provide insight into the extent to which organizational practices deviate from articulated policy and how this gap impacts on the perceived career trajectories of female academics. While the disadvantaged status of female academics has been recognized worldwide, a deeper examination of how employees experience the policies and practices designed to support their advancement is required, especially in light of the increasing corporate-like activities of Australian universities which have deprioritized EEO. A case study of an Australian university is used to explore these phenomena. Documentary evidence of its EEO policies was compared with interviewee narratives of employees, including both female academics and members of general staff involved in policy development. This allowed female employees to be heard, in particular where they sensed contradictions between espoused company policy and their real experiences. Hearing what they have to say is an important contribution, given that Australia's EEO regulatory framework allows organizations to waive reporting on their gender equity “chievements.”This case study highlights employee concerns about the efficacy of the University's policies and practices designed to support women's career trajectories and demonstrates that, particularly in light of the increasing corporatization of the University, some women questioned whether drawing support from such policies would harm their careers. The most signifi cant concern focused on the criteria for promotion, which interviewees perceived to be based on a masculine model of merit, in contrast to the ostensible gender-neutrality of the promotions policies. A related concern was how carer responsibilities impacted on opportunities for advancement, particularly the ability to engage in research work that was prized more highly than teaching activities by promotions committees. These examples illustrate that, while the University may be upholding the law at face-value, the actual experiences of women in the organization suggest that EEO compliance is merely skin-deep.

Abstract: This study dealt with the "Sex" (i.e., masculinization and feminization) in the language, making the Arabic language the focus of study, compared to English and French, with pointing to the phenomenon of sex in other languages, aiming at the determination of the behavior of languages in this phenomenon, which connected to some social concepts that look at it as an image of the alleged conflict between men and women. The study followed the analytical descriptive methodology. The most important findings of the study: The logic of the language is different from the logic of the mind. In some languages we notice characteristics of the masculine with the signs of feminization and characteristics that describe feminine that are free of signs of feminization such as in Arabic, which led some scholars to say that the signs of feminization in Arabic are not frequent in Arabic if the subject is figuratively feminine. In Arabic in case of metaphorical subject, it is permissible to attach Taa Attaneeth as a sign of feminization to the verb, even if the Subject is directly followed the Verb, because feminization was not real. The issue of sex has preoccupied linguists very early on, especially with regard to metaphorical masculinization and feminization. Some languages used the signs of feminization to infer the feminine metaphor, from those languages: Arabic and French, and some other languages neglected it and made it a third section. The French used many suffixes and tools to distinguish sex, which led some to compare French to Arabic in this aspect. There is a similarity between Arabic and French in the feminization and masculinization of characteristics with what is described contrary to English. The identification of neutrality as male or female, in which peoples and nations differ according to their concepts and beliefs, which make this issue not referring to particular logic. The feminist philosophies in the modern era, extremely, have given gender a different social content than the content assigned to it by linguistics. This is because we find in the language characteristics describe the feminine devoid of signs of feminization and others that characterize the masculine by signs of feminization and characteristics that shared between them. الملخص: تناولت هذه الدراسة (مقولة الجنس)، جاعلة من العربية محوراً للدراسة، مقارنة بالإنجليزية والفرنسية، مع الإشارة إلى ظاهرة الجنس في لغات أخرى، رامية لمعرفة سلوك اللغات في هذه الظاهرة، التي ارتبط ببعض المفاهيم الاجتماعية التي تَرى فيها صورة من صور الصراع بين الرجال والنساء. متبعة المنهج الوصفي التحليلي. ومن نتائج هذه الدراسة: أن منطق اللغة يختلف عن منطق العقل. في العربية صفات للمذكر بها علامات تأنيث، وصفات للمؤنث خالية من علامات التأنيث، مما أدَّى للقول بعدم اطراد علامات التأنيث فيها. في العربية إذا كان (الفاعل) مؤنثاً مجازيّاّ؛ لا تلحق تاء التأنيث بالفعل أحياناً، لإنّ التأنيث لم يكن حقيقيّاً. شغلت قضية الجنس العلماء منذ وقت مبكر. بعض اللغات استخدمت علامات التأنيث للاستدلال بها على المؤنث المجازي، وأهملتها لغات أخرى وجعلته قسماً ثالثاً. استخدمت الفرنسية لواحق وأدوات كثيرة لتمييز الجنس، مما دفع بعضهم للمقارنة بينها والعربية. لوجود تشابه بين العربية والفرنسية في تأنيث الصفات وتذكيرها. تحديد كون المحايد مذكراً أم مؤنثاً تختلف فيه الشعوب؛ مما جعله لا يخضع لمنطق معين. قد أجحفت الفلسفات النسوية إذ تعطي النوع (الجندر) مضموناً اجتماعياً مختلفاً عن مضمون اللسانيات؛ وذلك لما نجده من صفات يوصف بها المؤنث تخلو من علامات التأنيث وأخرى يوصف بها المذكر بها علامات تأنيث، وصفات يشتركان فيها.

Este trabalho de pesquisa ocupa-se das percepções de acadêmicos dos cursos presenciais de Administração e Ciências Contábeis de uma instituição de ensino superior do meio-oeste catarinense sobre os componentes curriculares desenvolvidos na modalidade a distância. A pesquisa é de natureza quali-quantitativa, do tipo descritiva a partir de levantamento com aplicação de questionário e entrevista semiestruturada. Os resultados apontam que a organização da Educação a Distância é constituída de forma organizada e coerente, apresentando avanços ao longo de sua existência na instituição em estudo. Dos 122 estudantes que participaram, 80 são do curso de Administração e 42 de Ciências Contábeis entre a 2ª e a 8ª fase, com idade entre 17 e 25 anos (81,9%), do gênero feminino (56,6%); masculino (42,6%) e 0,8% preferiram não se identificar. Esses estudantes têm avaliação positiva da organização do setor de EaD (76,45%), e avaliam bem (72,10%), também, os materiais base de seus estudos, assim como as avaliações (64,8%) e a atuação dos professores é avaliada como satisfatória por 65,87% dos estudantes. Os percentuais de avaliação positiva se reduzem quando os mesmos estudantes avaliam sua postura, resultando em percepção positiva de 54,35%. As percepções são predominantemente positivas, mas a neutralidade chama a atenção para a necessidade de ações pontuais, como pesquisas a cada final de componente curricular para verificar o desempenho do professor, a qualidade do material, entre outras variáveis importantes para o processo de ensino e aprendizagem. Palavras-chave: Educação a Distância – EaD. Pesquisa de satisfação. Graduação. Administração. Ciências Contábeis ABSTRACT This research study focuses on the perceptions of students from face-to-face Administration and Accounting courses at a higher education institution in the Midwest of Santa Catarina, Brazil, regarding distance learning curricular components. The research is of a qualitative-quantitative nature, descriptive in type, based on a survey using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that the organization of Distance Learning is systematically and coherently developed, showing advancements throughout its existence in the institution under study. Out of the 122 participating students, 80 are enrolled in the Administration course, and 42 in Accounting, between the 2nd and the 8th semester, aged between 17 and 25 years old (81.9%), 56.6% females; 42.6% males and 0.8% preferred not to identify themselves. These students have a positive assessment of the organization of the Distance Learning sector (76.45%) and evaluate well (72.10%) also the study material, as well as the tests (64.8%), and the performance of teachers is rated as satisfactory by 65.87% of students. Positive evaluation percentages decrease when the same students assess their own performance, resulting in a positive perception of 54.35%. Perceptions are predominantly positive, but neutrality draws attention to the need for specific actions, such as conducting surveys at the end of each curricular component to assess teacher's performance, material quality, and other variables important for the teaching and learning process. Keywords: Distance Learning – DL. Satisfaction survey. Graduation. Administration. Accounting Sciences.

Before essential feminist contributions to legal drafting were made, legislative drafters adopted the use of the masculine rule, which established that all genders were implicitly included in the usage of the pseudo-generic third person masculine singulars such as ‘he’ and ‘him.’ In the 1960s, feminism acted as a nucleus for an approach to legal drafting that was inclusive of and thus avoided the erasure of women in constitutional and legislative language. Historically, the concept of gender neutrality has been approached from binary cisgendered and heteronormative perspectives. Legal drafters now have to take cognisance of this evolving reality as there is a growing need for legislation that is gender diverse and non-heteronormative. The Recognition of Customary Marriages Act 120 of 1998 has been subject to criticism for its use of gendered language that excludes queer couples. This article places the development of an understanding of inclusive legal drafting in South Africa within Afro-feminist theory. These theories present a more useful framework for thinking beyond a binary view of language in legal drafting. They also present an opportunity of placing inclusive legal drafting as African, in the face of continued marginalisation and subjugation of gender and sexual minorities on the continent. Using theories such as the coloniality of gender, the coloniality of being and the coloniality of knowledge for deconstructing Western and consequently binary notions of gender neutrality, I suggest an Afro-feminist understanding of drafting that will consequently be gender-neutral in a way that is inclusive of queer people.

On the 8th of August 1993, JAS 39 Gripen, the pride of the Swedish air force, crashed during an air show in downtown Stockholm. The pilot miraculously survived this accident, witnessed by half a million specta- tors, and no serious injuries were reported among the audience. This article draws on feminist theory in studies of international relations and a discourse analytical framework to reveal how gendered representations of emotions and bodies featured in, and contributed to, making meaning about collective identity and possible futures in the aftermath of the event. The empirical focus lies on the four major Swedish newspapers during the early 1990s, Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet. The analysis shows that the crash triggered intense criticism of JAS, a costly state-industrial military project at the core of the Swedish welfare state project, and the historical policy of armed neutrality which relied on notions of defensive masculine protection. By doing so, the crash contributed to destabilize notions of defensive masculinist protection practiced through the armed neutrality policy during the Cold War period. These findings are not only relevant for our understanding of the past. By shedding light on how logics related to masculinist protection were de-stabilized in a period when Sweden’s first steps towards increased military cooperation with NATO were taken, the findings also provide important clues to our understanding of contemporary security developments.

Are There Any Female Astronauts? On Gender-Inclusive Translation of Non-Fiction Books for Children This article deals with gender-inclusive translation of information books for children. Translation solutions drawn from three non-fiction books translated from French to Swedish by different translators are discussed in terms of gender neutrality and inclusion. Analysis reveals that, although the Swedish translations are comparatively free in relation to the original texts, the translators differ in their tendency to make use of gender-inclusive translation strategies, such as employing gender-neutral occupational terms, avoiding masculine generic forms, reformulating gender-biased passages, representing parenthood as more equal and making women visible in the translation by the explicit mention of female experiences and characters. While emphasizing the importance of being attentive to gender issues in information books for young children, it is argued that gender-neutralising interventions can be made in translations of this text type without putting the overall purpose of the book at risk.

Resumen: En la sociedad actual la mujer sigue soportando la infravaloración y el abuso por parte del colectivo masculino, quien, a través de técnicas de dominación y creación de estereotipos arbitrarios y artificiales, insiste en que esta situación de asimetría es connatural al ser humano. Consideramos que este desequilibrio se neutraliza con una educación para nuestros jóvenes basada en la igualdad y el respeto. En este trabajo analizamos los segmentos que vehiculan micromachismos y estereotipos en la novela Des poupées et des anges (2004) de Nora Hamdi, siguiendo las técnicas de dominación de Berit Ås (2004) y los parámetros de medición de estereotipos de Colás y Villaciervos (2009). La traducción al español de los ejemplos permite a nuestro alumnado universitario reflexionar sobre las agresiones que sufre la mujer, y cómo el lenguaje participa de actitudes excluyentes y de control individual y social.

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é oferecer uma chave interpretativa ainda pouco utilizada para o entendimento do conservadorismo que circula entre mulheres evangélicas. Parte-se da observação e da análise de cultos e congressos organizados pela pastora Ana Paula Valadão, entre 2011 e 2016, e que tratavam sobretudo de corpo, sexualidade e família. Os eventos estimulavam as mulheres a um constante automonitoramento, a um “sacrifício de si”, e fortaleciam a figura masculina tradicional. Embora a relação entre religião evangélica e gênero seja escrutinada pela literatura socioantropológica ao menos desde o final da década de 1990, propõe-se que um diálogo com a teoria de Angela McRobbie possa avançar a compreensão da reprodução e da exacerbação do “dispositivo da perfeição”, que, no caso das religiosas, neutraliza, naturaliza e reveste de justificativa espiritual as desigualdades sexuais e de gênero.

Background: The presence of African women in mathematics has been nearly invisible. The underrepresentation of African women in this field is a result of their historical socio-political marginalisation. The mathematics discipline is politicised, racialised, and gendered to systematically oppress African women. The mathematics fields continue to be a masculine and white male dominated field, which reinforces and preserves masculine culture which is hostile and unwelcoming to women. African women mathematicians are further oppressed because of their racial and gendered identities in fields that are ideologically founded on proving the racial, gendered, social, cultural, and intellectual inferiority of Africans.Aim: The article aims to exemplify the lived experiences of African women doctoral students in the mathematics disciplines in South African universities. The article critically interrogates the factors that influence the participation, progression, and retention of African female doctoral students in the mathematics disciplines.Setting: The article comes from a larger study which investigated the reasons why African doctorate students do not become academics after they receive their doctorates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines in South African universities. This paper focuses on the experiences of 10 African female doctoral students at five universities in South Africa. The universities were selected because they ranked in the top five in South Africa. Two of the institutions are historically Black universities and the rest are historically white institutions, with one historically Afrikaner-speaking university—between 2019–2021.Methods: This article employed a qualitative research methodology, where semi-structures interviews were conducted with 10 African female doctoral participants in mathematics disciplines in five South African universities and is underpinned by the theory of intersectionality.Results: The findings reveal how interlocking systems of oppression continue to influence the recruitment, retention, and progression of women in the mathematics discipline, thereby providing insight into the mechanisms that need to be altered and/or put in place to actively recruit African female doctoral students and retain them in academic positions.Conclusion: The article concludes that despite the mathematics field proclaiming neutrality and objectivity nevertheless, African women still experience racism, sexism, and classism. The experiences of African women in mathematics are vital to understanding the reasons why there is a high attrition rate of African women in the mathematics discipline in academia and why they do not become academics when they could transform this discipline.

The use of social media, particularly among youngsters, is characterized by simple and fast image exploration, mostly of people, particularly faces. The study presented here was conducted in order to investigate stereotypical judgments about men and women concerning past events of aggression—perpetrated or suffered—expressed on the basis of their faces, and gender-related differences in the judgments. To this aim, 185 participants answered a structured questionnaire online. The questionnaire contained 30 photos of young people’s faces, 15 men and 15 women (Ma et al., 2015), selected on the basis of the neutrality of their expression, and participants were asked to rate each face with respect to masculinity/femininity, strength/weakness, and having a past of aggression, as a victim or as a perpetrator. Information about the empathic abilities and personality traits of participants were also collected. The results indicate that the stereotypes—both of gender and those of victims and perpetrators—emerge as a consequence of the visual exploration of faces that present no facial emotion. Some characteristics of the personality of the observers, such as neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and affective empathy, have a role in facilitating or hindering stereotype processing, in different ways for male and female faces by male and female observers. In particular, both genders attribute their positive stereotypical attributes to same-gender faces: men see male faces as stronger, masculine, and more aggressive than women do, and women see female faces as more feminine, less weak, and less as victims than men do. Intensive use of social media emerges as a factor that could facilitate the expression of some stereotypes of violent experiences and considering female subjects as more aggressive. Findings in this study can contribute to research on aggressive behavior on the Internet and improve our understanding of the multiple factors involved in the elaboration of gender stereotypes relative to violent or victim behavior.

Economics of Cute There are many ways to study cute: for example, neuro-biology (cute as adaptation); anthropology (cute in culture); political economy (cute industries, how cute exploits consumers); cultural studies (social construction of cute); media theory and politics (representation and identity of cute), and so on. What about economics? At first sight, this might point to a money-capitalism nexus (“the cute economy”), but I want to argue here that the economics of cute actually works through choice interacting with fixed costs and what economists call ”the substitution effect”. Cute, in conjunction with the Internet, affects the trade-offs involved in choices people make. Let me put that more starkly: cute shapes the economy. This can be illustrated with internet animals, which at the time of writing means Grumpy Cat. I want to explain how that mechanism works – but to do so I will need some abstraction. This is not difficult – a simple application of a well-known economics model, namely the Allen-Alchian theorem, or the “third law of demand”. But I am going to take some liberties in order to represent that model clearly in this short paper. Specifically, I will model just two extremes of quality (“opera” and “cat videos”) to represent end-points of a spectrum. I will also assume that the entire effect of the internet is to lower the cost of cat videos. Now obviously these are just simplifying assumptions “for the purpose of the model”. And the purpose of the model is to illuminate a further aspect of how we might understand cute, by using an economic model of choice and its consequences. This is a standard technique in economics, but not so in cultural studies, so I will endeavour to explain these moments as we go, so as to avoid any confusion about analytic intent. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a way that a simple economic model might be applied to augment the cultural study of cute by seeking to unpack its economic aspect. This can be elucidated by considering the rise of internet animals as a media-cultural force, as epitomized by “cat videos”. We can explain this through an application of price theory and the theory of demand that was first proposed by Armen Alchian and William Allen. They showed how an equal fixed cost that was imposed to both high-quality and low-quality goods alike caused a shift in consumption toward the higher-quality good, because it is now relatively cheaper. Alchian and Allen had in mind something like transport costs on agricultural goods (such as apples). But it is also true that the same effect works in reverse (Cowen), and the purpose of this paper is to develop that logic to contribute to explaining how certain structural shifts in production and consumption in digital media, particularly the rise of blog formats such as Tumblr, a primary supplier of kittens on the Internet, can be in part understood as a consequence of this economic mechanism. There are three key assumptions to build this argument. The first is that the cost of the internet is independent of what it carries. This is certainly true at the level of machine code, and largely true at higher levels. What might be judged aesthetically high quality or low quality content – say of a Bach cantata or a funny cat video – are treated the same way if they both have the same file size. This is a physical and computational aspect of net-neutrality. The internet – or digitization – functions as a fixed cost imposed regardless of what cultural quality is moving across it. Second, while there are costs to using the internet (for example, in hardware or concerning digital literacy) these costs are lower than previous analog forms of information and cultural production and dissemination. This is not an empirical claim, but a logical one (revealed preference): if it were not so, people would not have chosen it. The first two points – net neutrality and lowered cost – I want to take as working assumptions, although they can obviously be debated. But that is not the purpose of the paper, which is instead the third point – the “Alchian-Allen theorem”, or the third fundamental law of demand. The Alchian-Allen Theorem The Alchian-Allen theorem is an extension of the law of demand (Razzolini et al) to consider how the distribution of high quality and low quality substitutes of the same good (such as apples) is affected by the imposition of a fixed cost (such as transportation). It is also known as the “shipping the good apples out” theorem, after Borcherding and Silberberg explained why places that produce a lot of apples – such as Seattle in the US – often also have low supplies of high quality apples compared to places that do not produce apples, such as New York. The puzzle of “why can’t you get good apples in Seattle?” is a simple but clever application of price theory. When a place produces high quality and low quality items, it will be rational for those in faraway places to consume the high quality items, and it will be rational for the producers to ship them, leaving only the low quality items locally.Why? Assume preferences and incomes are the same everywhere and that transport cost is the same regardless of whether the item shipped is high or low quality. Both high quality and low quality apples are more expensive in New York compared to Seattle, but because the fixed transport cost applies to both the high quality apples are relatively less expensive. Rational consumers in New York will consume more high quality apples. This makes fewer available in Seattle.Figure 1: Change in consumption ratio after the imposition of a fixed cost to all apples Another example: Australians drink higher quality Californian wine than Californians, and vice versa, because it is only worth shipping the high quality wine out. A counter-argument is that learning effects dominate: with high quality local product, local consumers learn to appreciate quality, and have different preferences (Cowen and Tabarrok).The Alchian-Allen theorem applies to any fixed cost that applies generally. For example, consider illegal drugs (such as alcohol during the US prohibition, or marijuana or cocaine presently) and the implication of a fixed penalty – such as a fine, or prison sentence, which is like a cost – applied to trafficking or consumption. Alchian-Allen predicts a shift toward higher quality (or stronger) drugs, because with a fixed penalty and probability of getting caught, the relatively stronger substance is now relatively cheaper. Empirical work finds that this effect did occur during alcohol prohibition, and is currently occurring in narcotics (Thornton Economics of Prohibition, "Potency of illegal drugs").Another application proposed by Steven Cuellar uses Alchian-Allen to explain a well-known statistical phenomenon why women taking the contraceptive pill on average prefer “more masculine” men. This is once again a shift toward quality predicted on falling relative price based on a common ‘fixed price’ (taking the pill) of sexual activity. Jean Eid et al show that the result also applies to racehorses (the good horses get shipped out), and Staten and Umbeck show it applies to students – the good students go to faraway universities, and the good student in those places do the same. So that’s apples, drugs, sex and racehorses. What about the Internet and kittens?Allen-Alchian Explains Why the Internet Is Made of CatsIn analog days, before digitization and Internet, the transactions costs involved with various consumption items, whether commodities or media, meant that the Alchian-Allen effect pushed in the direction of higher quality, bundled product. Any additional fixed costs, such as higher transport costs, or taxes or duties, or transactions costs associated with search and coordination and payment, i.e. costs that affected all substitutes in the same way, would tend to make the higher quality item relatively less expensive, increasing its consumption.But digitisation and the Internet reverse the direction of these transactions costs. Rather than adding a fixed cost, such as transport costs, the various aspects of the digital revolution are equivalent to a fall in fixed costs, particularly access.These factors are not just one thing, but a suite of changes that add up to lowered transaction costs in the production, distribution and consumption of media, culture and games. These include: The internet and world-wide-web, and its unencumbered operation The growth and increasing efficacy of search technology Growth of universal broadband for fast, wide band-width access Growth of mobile access (through smartphones and other appliances) Growth of social media networks (Facebook, Twitter; Metcalfe’s law) Growth of developer and distribution platforms (iPhone, android, iTunes) Globally falling hardware and network access costs (Moore’s law) Growth of e-commerce (Ebay, Amazon, Etsy) and e-payments (paypal, bitcoin) Expansions of digital literacy and competence Creative commons These effects do not simply shift us down a demand curve for each given consumption item. This effect alone simply predicts that we consume more. But the Alchian-Allen effect makes a different prediction, namely that we consume not just more, but also different.These effects function to reduce the overall fixed costs or transactions costs associated with any consumption, sharing, or production of media, culture or games over the internet (or in digital form). With this overall fixed cost component now reduced, it represents a relatively larger decline in cost at the lower-quality, more bite-sized or unbundled end of the media goods spectrum. As such, this predicts a change in the composition of the overall consumption basket to reflect the changed relative prices that these above effects give rise to. See Figure 2 below (based on a blog post by James Oswald). The key to the economics of cute, in consequence of digitisation, is to follow through the qualitative change that, because of the Alchian-Allen effect, moves away from the high-quality, highly-bundled, high-value end of the media goods spectrum. The “pattern prediction” here is toward more, different, and lower quality: toward five minutes of “Internet animals”, rather than a full day at the zoo. Figure 2: Reducing transaction costs lowers the relative price of cat videos Consider five dimensions in which this more and different tendency plays out. Consumption These effects make digital and Internet-based consumption cheaper, shifting us down a demand curve, so we consume more. That’s the first law of demand in action: i.e. demand curves slope downwards. But a further effect – brilliantly set out in Cowen – is that we also consume lower-quality media. This is not a value judgment. These lower-quality media may well have much higher aesthetic value. They may be funnier, or more tragic and sublime; or faster, or not. This is not about absolute value; only about relative value. Digitization operating through Allen-Alchian skews consumption toward the lower quality ends in some dimensions: whether this is time, as in shorter – or cost, as in cheaper – or size, as in smaller – or transmission quality, as in gifs. This can also be seen as a form of unbundling, of dropping of dimensions that are not valued to create a simplified product.So we consume different, with higher variance. We sample more than we used to. This means that we explore a larger information world. Consumption is bite-sized and assorted. This tendency is evident in the rise of apps and in the proliferation of media forms and devices and the value of interoperability.ProductionAs consumption shifts (lower quality, greater variety), so must production. The production process has two phases: (1) figuring out what to do, or development; and (2) doing it, or making. The world of trade and globalization describes the latter part: namely efficient production. The main challenge is the world of innovation: the entrepreneurial and experimental world of figuring out what to do, and how. It is this second world that is radically transformed by implications of lowered transaction costs.One implication is growth of user-communities based around collaborative media projects (such as open source software) and community-based platforms or common pool resources for sharing knowledge, such as the “Maker movement” (Anderson 2012). This phenomenon of user-co-creation, or produsers, has been widely recognized as an important new phenomenon in the innovation and production process, particularly those processes associated with new digital technologies. There are numerous explanations for this, particularly around preferences for cooperation, community-building, social learning and reputational capital, and entrepreneurial expectations (Quiggin and Potts, Banks and Potts). Business Models The Alchian-Allen effect on consumption and production follows through to business models. A business model is a way of extracting value that represents some strategic equilibrium between market forms, organizational structures, technological possibilities and institutional framework and environmental conditions that manifests in entrepreneurial patterns of business strategy and particular patterns of investment and organization. The discovery of effective business models is a key process of market capitalist development and competition. The Alchian-Allen effect impacts on the space of effective viable business models. Business models that used to work will work less well, or not at all. And new business models will be required. It is a significant challenge to develop these “economic technologies”. Perhaps no less so than development of the physical technologies, new business models are produced through experimental trial and error. They cannot be known in advance or planned. But business models will change, which will affect not only the constellation of existing companies and the value propositions that underlie them, but also the broader specializations based on these in terms of skill sets held and developed by people, locations of businesses and people, and so on. New business models will emerge from a process of Schumpeterian creative destruction as it unfolds (Beinhocker). The large production, high development cost, proprietary intellectual property and systems based business model is not likely to survive, other than as niche areas. More experimental, discovery-focused, fast-development-then-scale-up based business models are more likely to fit the new ecology. Social Network Markets & Novelty Bundling MarketsThe growth of variety and diversity of choice that comes with this change in the way media is consumed to reflect a reallocation of consumption toward smaller more bite-sized, lower valued chunks (the Alchian-Allen effect) presents consumers with a problem, namely that they have to make more choices over novelty. Choice over novelty is difficult for consumers because it is experimental and potentially costly due to risk of mistakes (Earl), but it also presents entrepreneurs with an opportunity to seek to help solve that problem. The problem is a simple consequence of bounded rationality and time scarcity. It is equivalent to saying that the cost of choice rises monotonically with the number of choices, and that because there is no way to make a complete rational choice, agents will use decision or choice heuristics. These heuristics can be developed independently by the agents themselves through experience, or they can be copied or adopted from others (Earl and Potts). What Potts et al call “social network markets” and what Potts calls “novelty bundling markets” are both instances of the latter process of copying and adoption of decision rules. Social network markets occur when agents use a “copy the most common” or “copy the highest rank” meta-level decision rule (Bentley et al) to deal with uncertainty. Social network markets can be efficient aggregators of distributed information, but they can also be path-dependent, and usually lead to winner-take all situations and dynamics. These can result in huge pay-offs differentials between first and second or fifth place, even when the initial quality differentials are slight or random. Diversity, rapid experimentation, and “fast-failure” are likely to be effective strategies. It also points to the role of trust and reputation in using adopted decision rules and the information economics that underlies that: namely that specialization and trade applies to the production and consumption of information as well as commodities. Novelty bundling markets are an entrepreneurial response to this problem, and observable in a range of new media and creative industries contexts. These include arts, music or food festivals or fairs where entertainment and sociality is combined with low opportunity cost situations in which to try bundles of novelty and connect with experts. These are by agents who developed expert preferences through investment and experience in consumption of the particular segment or domain. They are expert consumers and are selling their “decision rules” and not just the product. The more production and consumption of media and digital information goods and services experiences the Alchian-Allen effect, the greater the importance of novelty bundling markets. Intellectual Property & Regulation A further implication is that rent-seeking solutions may also emerge. This can be seen in two dimensions; pursuit of intellectual property (Boldrin and Levine); and demand for regulations (Stigler). The Alchian-Allen induced shift will affect markets and business models (and firms), and because this will induce strategic defensive and aggressive responses from different organizations. Some organizations will seek to fight and adapt to this new world through innovative competition. Other firms will fight through political connections. Most incumbent firms will have substantial investments in IP or in the business model it supports. Yet the intellectual property model is optimized for high-quality large volume centralized production and global sales of undifferentiated product. Much industrial and labour regulation is built on that model. How governments support such industries is predicated on the stability of this model. The Alchian-Allen effect threatens to upset that model. Political pushback will invariably take the form of opposing most new business models and the new entrants they carry. Conclusion I have presented here a lesser-known but important theorem in applied microeconomics – the Alchian-Allen effect – and explain why its inverse is central to understanding the evolution of new media industries, and also why cute animals proliferate on the Internet. The theorem states that when a fixed cost is added to substitute goods, consumers will shift to the higher quality item (now relatively less expensive). The theorem also holds in reverse, when a fixed cost is removed from substitute items we expect a shift to lower quality consumption. The Internet has dramatically lowered fixed costs of access to media consumption, and various development platforms have similarly lowered the costs of production. Alchian-Allen predicts a shift to lower-quality, ”bittier” cuter consumption (Cowen). References Alchian, Arman, and William Allen. Exchange and Production. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1967. Anderson, Chris. Makers. New York: Crown Business, 2012. Banks, John, and Jason Potts. "Consumer Co-Creation in Online Games." New Media and Society 12.2 (2010): 253-70. Beinhocker, Eric. Origin of Wealth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Bentley, R., et al. "Regular Rates of Popular Culture Change Reflect Random Copying." Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (2007): 151-158. Borcherding, Thomas, and Eugene Silberberg. "Shipping the Good Apples Out: The Alchian and Allen Theorem Reconsidered." Journal of Political Economy 86.1 (1978): 131-6. Cowen, Tyler. Create Your Own Economy. New York: Dutton, 2009. (Also published as The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy. Penguin, 2010.) Cowen, Tyler, and Alexander Tabarrok. "Good Grapes and Bad Lobsters: The Alchian and Allen Theorem Revisited." Journal of Economic Inquiry 33.2 (1995): 253-6. Cuellar, Steven. "Sex, Drugs and the Alchian-Allen Theorem." Unpublished paper, 2005. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.sonoma.edu/users/c/cuellar/research/Sex-Drugs.pdf›.Earl, Peter. The Economic Imagination. Cheltenham: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986. Earl, Peter, and Jason Potts. "The Market for Preferences." Cambridge Journal of Economics 28 (2004): 619–33. Eid, Jean, Travis Ng, and Terence Tai-Leung Chong. "Shipping the Good Horses Out." Wworking paper, 2012. http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ngkaho/Research/shippinghorses.pdf Potts, Jason, et al. "Social Network Markets: A New Definition of Creative Industries." Journal of Cultural Economics 32.3 (2008): 166-185. Quiggin, John, and Jason Potts. "Economics of Non-Market Innovation & Digital Literacy." Media International Australia 128 (2008): 144-50. Razzolini, Laura, William Shughart, and Robert Tollison. "On the Third Law of Demand." Economic Inquiry 41.2 (2003): 292–298. Staten, Michael, and John Umbeck. “Shipping the Good Students Out: The Effect of a Fixed Charge on Student Enrollments.” Journal of Economic Education 20.2 (1989): 165-171. Stigler, George. "The Theory of Economic Regulation." Bell Journal of Economics 2.1 (1971): 3-22. Thornton, Mark. The Economics of Prohibition. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991.Thornton, Mark. "The Potency of Illegal Drugs." Journal of Drug Issues 28.3 (1998): 525-40.

This article explores how fat women protesting challenges norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces. We use the term fat as a political reclamation; Fat Studies scholars and fat activists prefer the term fat, over the normative term “overweight” and the pathologising term “obese/obesity” (Lee and Pausé para 3). Who is and who isn’t fat, we suggest, is best left to self-determination, although it is generally accepted by fat activists that the term is most appropriately adopted by individuals who are unable to buy clothes in any store they choose. Using a tweet from conservative commentator Ann Coulter as a leaping-off point, we examine the narratives around women in the public sphere and explore how fat bodies might transgress further the norms set by society. The public representations of women in politics and protest are then are set in the context of ‘activist wisdom’ (Maddison and Scalmer) from two sides of the globe. Activist wisdom gives preference to the lived knowledge and experience of activists as tools to understand social movements. It seeks to draw theoretical implications from the practical actions of those on the ground. In centring the experiences of ourselves and other activists, we hope to expand existing understandings of body politics, gender, and political power in this piece. It is important in researching social movements to look both at the representations of protest and protestors in all forms of media as this is the ‘public face’ of movements, but also to examine the reflections of the individuals who collectively put their weight behind bringing social change.A few days after the 45th President of the United States was elected, people around the world spilled into the streets and participated in protests; precursors to the Women’s March which would take place the following January. Pictures of such marches were shared via social media, demonstrating the worldwide protest against the racism, misogyny, and overall oppressiveness, of the newly elected leader. Not everyone was supportive of these protests though; one such conservative commentator, Ann Coulter, shared this tweet: Image1: A tweet from Ann Coulter; the tweet contains a picture of a group of protestors, holding signs protesting Trump, white supremacy, and for the rights of immigrants. In front of the group, holding a megaphone is a woman. Below the picture, the text reads, “Without fat girls, there would be no protests”.Coulter continued on with two more tweets, sharing pictures of other girls protesting and suggesting that the protestors needed a diet programme. Kivan Bay (“Without Fat Girls”) suggested that perhaps Coulter was implying that skinny girls do not have time to protest because they are too busy doing skinny girl things, like buying jackets or trying on sweaters. Or perhaps Coulter was arguing that fat girls are too visible, too loud, and too big, to be taken seriously in their protests. These tweets provide a point of illustration for how fat women protesting challenge norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces While Coulter’s tweet was most likely intended as a hostile personal attack on political grounds, we find it useful in its foregrounding of gender, bodies and protest which we consider in this article, beginning with a review of fat girls’ role in social justice movements.Across the world, we can point to fat women who engage in activism related to body politics and more. Australian fat filmmaker and activist Kelli Jean Drinkwater makes documentaries, such as Aquaporko! and Nothing to Lose, that queer fat embodiment and confronts body norms. Newly elected Ontario MPP Jill Andrew has been fighting for equal rights for queer people and fat people in Canada for decades. Nigerian Latasha Ngwube founded About That Curvy Life, Africa’s leading body positive and empowerment site, and has organised plus-size fashion show events at Heineken Lagos Fashion and Design Week in Nigeria in 2016 and the Glitz Africa Fashion Week in Ghana in 2017. Fat women have been putting their bodies on the line for the rights of others to live, work, and love. American Heather Heyer was protesting the hate that white nationalists represent and the danger they posed to her friends, family, and neighbours when she died at a rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina in late 2017 (Caron). When Heyer was killed by one of those white nationalists, they declared that she was fat, and therefore her body size was lauded loudly as justification for her death (Bay, “How Nazis Use”; Spangler).Fat women protesting is not new. For example, the Fat Underground was a group of “radical fat feminist women”, who split off from the more conservative NAAFA (National Association to Aid Fat Americans) in the 1970s (Simic 18). The group educated the public about weight science, harassed weight-loss companies, and disrupted academic seminars on obesity. The Fat Underground made their first public appearance at a Women’s Equality Day in Los Angeles, taking over the stage at the public event to accuse the medical profession of murdering Cass Elliot, the lead singer of the folk music group, The Mamas and the Papas (Dean and Buss). In 1973, the Fat Underground produced the Fat Liberation Manifesto. This Manifesto began by declaring that they believed “that fat people are full entitled to human respect and recognition” (Freespirit and Aldebaran 341).Women have long been disavowed, or discouraged, from participating in the public sphere (Ginzberg; van Acker) or seen as “intruders or outsiders to the tough world of politics” (van Acker 118). The feminist slogan the personal is political was intended to shed light on the role that women needed to play in the public spheres of education, employment, and government (Caha 22). Across the world, the acceptance of women within the public sphere has been varied due to cultural, political, and religious, preferences and restrictions (Agenda Feminist Media Collective). Limited acceptance of women in the public sphere has historically been granted by those ‘anointed’ by a male family member or patron (Fountaine 47).Anti-feminists are quick to disavow women being in public spaces, preferring to assign them the role as helpmeet to male political elite. As Schlafly (in Rowland 30) notes: “A Positive Woman cannot defeat a man in a wrestling or boxing match, but she can motivate him, inspire him, encourage him, teach him, restrain him, reward him, and have power over him that he can never achieve over her with all his muscle.” This idea of women working behind the scenes has been very strong in New Zealand where the ‘sternly worded’ letter is favoured over street protest. An acceptable route for women’s activism was working within existing political institutions (Grey), with activity being ‘hidden’ inside government offices such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (Schuster, 23). But women’s movement organisations that engage in even the mildest form of disruptive protest are decried (Grey; van Acker).One way women have been accepted into public space is as the moral guardians or change agents of the entire political realm (Bliss; Ginzberg; van Acker; Ledwith). From the early suffrage movements both political actors and media representations highlighted women were more principled and conciliatory than men, and in many cases had a moral compass based on restraint. Cartoons showed women in the suffrage movement ‘sweeping up’ and ‘cleaning house’ (Sheppard 123). Groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were celebrated for protesting against the demon drink and anti-pornography campaigners like Patricia Bartlett were seen as acceptable voices of moral reason (Moynihan). And as Cunnison and Stageman (in Ledwith 193) note, women bring a “culture of femininity to trade unions … an alternative culture, derived from the particularity of their lives as women and experiences of caring and subordination”. This role of moral guardian often derived from women as ‘mothers’, responsible for the physical and moral well-being of the nation.The body itself has been a sight of protest for women including fights for bodily autonomy in their medical decisions, reproductive justice, and to live lives free from physical and sexual abuse, have long been met with criticisms of being unladylike or inappropriate. Early examples decried in NZ include the women’s clothing movement which formed part of the suffrage movement. In the second half of the 20th century it was the freedom trash can protests that started the myth of ‘women burning their bras’ which defied acceptable feminine norms (Sawer and Grey). Recent examples of women protesting for body rights include #MeToo and Time’s Up. Both movements protest the lack of bodily autonomy women can assert when men believe they are entitled to women’s bodies for their entertainment, enjoyment, and pleasure. And both movements have received considerable backlash by those who suggest it is a witch hunt that might ensnare otherwise innocent men, or those who are worried that the real victims are white men who are being left behind (see Garber; Haussegger). Women who advocate for bodily autonomy, including access to contraception and abortion, are often held up as morally irresponsible. As Archdeacon Bullock (cited in Smyth 55) asserted, “A woman should pay for her fun.”Many individuals believe that the stigma and discrimination fat people face are the consequences they sow from their own behaviours (Crandall 892); that fat people are fat because they have made poor decisions, being too indulgent with food and too lazy to exercise (Crandall 883). Therefore, fat people, like women, should have to pay for their fun. Fat women find themselves at this intersection, and are often judged more harshly for their weight than fat men (Tiggemann and Rothblum). Examining Coulter’s tweet with this perspective in mind, it can easily be read as an attempt to put fat girl protestors back into their place. It can also be read as a warning. Don’t go making too much noise or you may be labelled as fat. Presenting troublesome women as fat has a long history within political art and depictions. Marianne (the symbol of the French Republic) was depicted as fat and ugly; she also reinforced an anti-suffragist position (Chenut 441). These images are effective because of our societal views on fatness (Kyrölä). Fatness is undesirable, unworthy of love and attention, and a representation of poor character, lack of willpower, and an absence of discipline (Murray 14; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 1).Fat women who protest transgress rules around body size, gender norms, and the appropriate place for women in society. Take as an example the experiences of one of the authors of this piece, Sandra Grey, who was thrust in to political limelight nationally with the Campaign for MMP (Grey and Fitzsimmons) and when elected as the President of the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union in 2011. Sandra is a trade union activist who breaches too many norms set for the “good woman protestor,” as well as the norms for being a “good fat woman”. She looms large on a stage – literally – and holds enough power in public protest to make a crowd of 7,000 people “jump to left”, chant, sing, and march. In response, some perceive Sandra less as a tactical and strategic leader of the union movement, and more as the “jolly fat woman” who entertains, MCs, and leads public events. Though even in this role, she has been criticised for being too loud, too much, too big.These criticisms are loudest when Sandra is alongside other fat female bodies. When posting on social media photos with fellow trade union members the comments often note the need of the group to “go on a diet”. The collective fatness also brings comments about “not wanting to fuck any of that group of fat cows”. There is something politically and socially dangerous about fat women en masse. This was behind the responses to Sandra’s first public appearance as the President of TEU when one of the male union members remarked “Clearly you have to be a fat dyke to run this union.” The four top elected and appointed positions in the TEU have been women for eight years now and both their fatness and perceived sexuality present as a threat in a once male-dominated space. Even when not numerically dominant, unions are public spaces dominated by a “masculine culture … underpinned by the undervaluation of ‘women’s worth’ and notions of womanhood ‘defined in domesticity’” (Cockburn in Kirton 273-4). Sandra’s experiences in public space show that the derision and methods of putting fat girls back in their place varies dependent on whether the challenge to power is posed by a single fat body with positional power and a group of fat bodies with collective power.Fat Girls Are the FutureOn the other side of the world, Tara Vilhjálmsdóttir is protesting to change the law in Iceland. Tara believes that fat people should be protected against discrimination in public and private settings. Using social media such as Facebook and Instagram, Tara takes her message, and her activism, to her thousands of followers (Keller, 434; Pausé, “Rebel Heart”). And through mainstream media, she pushes back on fatphobia rhetoric and applies pressure on the government to classify weight as a protected status under the law.After a lifetime of living “under the oppression of diet culture,” Tara began her activism in 2010 (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She had suffered real harm from diet culture, developing an eating disorder as a teen and being told through her treatment for it that her fears as a fat woman – that she had no future, that fat people experienced discrimination and stigma – were unfounded. But Tara’s lived experiences demonstrated fat stigma and discrimination were real.In 2012, she co-founded the Icelandic Association for Body Respect, which promotes body positivity and fights weight stigma in Iceland. The group uses a mixture of real life and online tools; organising petitions, running campaigns against the Icelandic version of The Biggest Loser, and campaigning for weight to be a protected class in the Icelandic constitution. The Association has increased the visibility of the dangers of diet culture and the harm of fat stigma. They laid the groundwork that led to changing the human rights policy for the city of Reykjavík; fat people cannot be discriminated against in employment settings within government jobs. As the city is one of the largest employers in the country, this was a large step forward for fat rights.Tara does receive her fair share of hate messages; she’s shared that she’s amazed at the lengths people will go to misunderstand what she is saying (Vilhjálmsdóttir). “This isn’t about hurt feelings; I’m not insulted [by fat stigma]. It’s about [fat stigma] affecting the livelihood of fat people and the structural discrimination they face” (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She collects the hateful comments she receives online through screenshots and shares them in an album on her page. She believes it is important to keep a repository to demonstrate to others that the hatred towards fat people is real. But the hate she receives only fuels her work more. As does the encouragement she receives from people, both in Iceland and abroad. And she is not alone; fat activists across the world are using Web 2.0 tools to change the conversation around fatness and demand civil rights for fat people (Pausé, “Rebel Heart”; Pausé, “Live to Tell").Using Web 2.0 tools as a way to protest and engage in activism is an example of oppositional technologics; a “political praxis of resistance being woven into low-tech, amateur, hybrid, alternative subcultural feminist networks” (Garrison 151). Fat activists use social media to engage in anti-assimilationist activism and build communities of practice online in ways that would not be possible in real life (Pausé, “Express Yourself” 1). This is especially useful for those whose protests sit at the intersections of oppressions (Keller 435; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 19). Online protests have the ability to travel the globe quickly, providing opportunities for connections between protests and spreading protests across the globe, such as SlutWalks in 2011-2012 (Schuster 19). And online spaces open up unlimited venues for women to participate more freely in protest than other forms (Harris 479; Schuster 16; Garrison 162).Whether online or offline, women are represented as dangerous in the political sphere when they act without male champions breaching norms of femininity, when their involvement challenges the role of woman as moral guardians, and when they make the body the site of protest. Women must ‘do politics’ politely, with utmost control, and of course caringly; that is they must play their ‘designated roles’. Whether or not you fit the gendered norms of political life affects how your protest is perceived through the media (van Acker). Coulter’s tweet loudly proclaimed that the fat ‘girls’ protesting the election of the 45th President of the United States were unworthy, out of control, and not worthy of attention (ironic, then, as her tweet caused considerable conversation about protest, fatness, and the reasons not to like the President-Elect). What the Coulter tweet demonstrates is that fat women are perceived as doubly-problematic in public space, both as fat and as women. They do not do politics in a way that is befitting womanhood – they are too visible and loud; they are not moral guardians of conservative values; and, their bodies challenge masculine power.ReferencesAgenda Feminist Media Collective. “Women in Society: Public Debate.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 10 (1991): 31-44.Bay, Kivan. “How Nazis Use Fat to Excuse Violence.” Medium, 7 Feb. 2018. 1 May 2018 <https://medium.com/@kivabay/how-nazis-use-fat-to-excuse-violence-b7da7d18fea8>.———. “Without Fat Girls, There Would Be No Protests.” Bullshit.ist, 13 Nov. 2016. 16 May 2018 <https://bullshit.ist/without-fat-girls-there-would-be-no-protests-e66690de539a>.Bliss, Katherine Elaine. Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City. Penn State Press, 2010.Caha, Omer. Women and Civil Society in Turkey: Women’s Movements in a Muslim Society. London: Ashgate, 2013.Caron, Christina. “Heather Heyer, Charlottesville Victim, Is Recalled as ‘a Strong Woman’.” New York Times, 13 Aug. 2017. 1 May 2018 <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/heather-heyer-charlottesville-victim.html>.Chenut, Helen. “Anti-Feminist Caricature in France: Politics, Satire and Public Opinion, 1890-1914.” Modern & Contemporary France 20.4 (2012): 437-452.Crandall, Christian S. "Prejudice against Fat People: Ideology and Self-Interest." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66.5 (1994): 882-894.Damousi, Joy. “Representations of the Body and Sexuality in Communist Iconography, 1920-1955.” Australian Feminist Studies 12.25 (1997): 59-75.Dean, Marge, and Shirl Buss. “Fat Underground.” YouTube, 11 Aug. 2016 [1975]. 1 May 2018 <https://youtu.be/UPYRZCXjoRo>.Fountaine, Susan. “Women, Politics and the Media: The 1999 New Zealand General Election.” PhD thesis. Palmerston North, NZ: Massey University, 2002.Freespirit, Judy, and Aldebaran. “Fat Liberation Manifesto November 1973.” The Fat Studies Reader. Eds. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay. New York: NYU P, 2009. 341-342.Garber, Megan. “The Selective Empathy of #MeToo Backlash.” The Atlantic, 11 Feb 2018. 5 Apr. 2018 <https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/02/the-selective-empathy-of-metoo-backlash/553022/>.Garrison, Edith. “US Feminism – Grrrl Style! Youth (Sub)Cultures and the Technologics of the Third Wave.” Feminist Studies 26.1 (2000): 141-170.Garvey, Nicola. “Violence against Women: Beyond Gender Neutrality.” Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Janus Women’s Convention 2005. Ed. Dale Spender. Masterton: Janus Trust, 2005. 114-120.Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States. Yale UP, 1992.Grey, Sandra. “Women, Politics, and Protest: Rethinking Women's Liberation Activism in New Zealand.” Rethinking Women and Politics: New Zealand and Comparative Perspectives. Eds. John Leslie, Elizabeth McLeay, and Kate McMillan. Victoria UP, 2009. 34-61.———, and Matthew Fitzsimons. “Defending Democracy: ‘Keep MMP’ and the 2011 Electoral Referendum.” Kicking the Tyres: The New Zealand General Election and Electoral Referendum of 2011. Eds. Jon Johansson and Stephen Levine. Victoria UP, 2012. 285-304.———, and Marian Sawer, eds. Women’s Movements: Flourishing or in Abeyance? London: Routledge, 2008.Harris, Anita. “Mind the Gap: Attitudes and Emergent Feminist Politics since the Third Wave.” Australian Feminist Studies 25.66 (2010): 475-484.Haussegger, Virginia. “#MeToo: Beware the Brewing Whiff of Backlash.” Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Mar. 2018. 1 Apr. 2018 <https://www.smh.com.au/national/metoo-beware-the-brewing-whiff-of-backlash-20180306-p4z33s.html>.Keller, Jessalynn. “Virtual Feminisms.” Information, Communication and Society 15.3(2011): 429-447.Kirston, Gill. “From ‘a Woman’s Place Is in Her Union’ to ‘Strong Unions Need Women’: Changing Gender Discourses, Policies and Realities in the Union Movement.” Labour & Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work 27.4 (2017): 270-283.Kyrölä, Katariina. The Weight of Images. London: Routledge, 2014.Ledwith, Sue. “Gender Politics in Trade Unions: The Representation of Women between Exclusion and Inclusion.” European Review of Labour and Research 18.2 (2012): 185-199.Lyndsey, Susan. Women, Politics, and the Media: The 1999 New Zealand General Election. Dissertation. Massey University, 2002.Maddison, Sarah, and Sean Scalmer. Activist Wisdom: Practical Knowledge and Creative Tension in Social Movements. Sydney: UNSW P, 2006. Moynihan, Carolyn. A Stand for Decency: Patricia Bartlett & the Society for Promotion of Community Standards, 1970-1995. Wellington: The Society, 1995.Murray, Samantha. "Pathologizing 'Fatness': Medical Authority and Popular Culture." Sociology of Sport Journal 25.1 (2008): 7-21.Pausé, Cat. “Live to Tell: Coming Out as Fat.” Somatechnics 21 (2012): 42-56.———. “Express Yourself: Fat Activism in the Web 2.0 Age.” The Politics of Size: Perspectives from the Fat-Acceptance Movement. Ed. Ragen Chastain. Praeger, 2015. 1-8.———. “Rebel Heart: Performing Fatness Wrong Online.” M/C Journal 18.3 (2015).Rowland, Robyn, ed. Women Who Do and Women Who Don’t Join the Women’s Movement. London: Routledge, 1984.Schuster, Julia. “Invisible Feminists? Social Media and Young Women’s Political Participation.” Political Science 65.1 (2013): 8-24.Sheppard, Alice. "Suffrage Art and Feminism." Hypatia 5.2 (1990): 122-136.Simic, Zora. “Fat as a Feminist Issue: A History.” Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism. Eds. Helen Hester and Caroline Walters. London: Ashgate, 2015. 15-36.Spangler, Todd. “White-Supremacist Site Daily Stormer Booted by Hosting Provider.” Variety, 13 Aug. 2017. 1 May 2018 <https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/daily-stormer-heather-heyer-white-supremacist-neo-nazi-hosting-provider-1202526544/>.Smyth, Helen. Rocking the Cradle: Contraception, Sex, and Politics in New Zealand. Steele Roberts, 2000.Tiggemann, Marika, and Esther D. Rothblum. "Gender Differences in Social Consequences of Perceived Overweight in the United States and Australia." Sex Roles 18.1-2 (1988): 75-86.Van Acker, Elizabeth. “Media Representations of Women Politicians in Australia and New Zealand: High Expectations, Hostility or Stardom.” Policy and Society 22.1 (2003): 116-136.Vilhjálmsdóttir, Tara. Personal interview. 1 June 2018.

Introduction “Patterns are everywhere”, design researcher Anuradha Reddy told her virtual audience at the 2023 speaker series hosted by Brilliant Labs, a Canadian non-profit focussed on experiential digital learning and coding (Brilliant Labs / Labos Créatifs). Like other technology fora, this public-facing series offered designers an opportunity to highlight the accessibility of code. But unlike many such fora, Reddy’s code was worn on the body. Sitting at the now-standard webinar lectern, Reddy shared a flurry of images and contexts as she introduced a garment she called b00b, a bra that she created in 2021 to probe the encoding of more than aesthetic possibility. Her presentation included knotted motifs of Andean Quipus; symbolic arcs of Chinese Pan Chang knots; geometric transformations of African American cornrow hairstyles (Eglash and Bennett, Brilliant Labs / Labos Créatifs). She followed the patterned imagery with questions of uncertainty that are often central for design researchers like her. Facing what might be a possible swipe, tap, or otherwise engagement, a technologist cannot fully determine what a user does. But they can “nudge”, a term popularised by behavioral economists Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein in 2008 and later propagated within technoscientific discourses on risk (see Duffy and Thorson; Rossi et al.; Thaler and Sunstein). Adjacent bodies of scholarship frame the related concept of trust as a form of compliance (Adam et al.; Gass and Seiter). The more trustworthy an interface, the more likely a user is to comply. Rooted in social-psychological precepts, this line of scholarship frames trust less as a condition than a perception. When a user trusts an indicator light, for example, an app is more likely to see increased acceptance and engagement. Reddy approaches trust from and with b00b, an emphatically intimate (soft, pliable, textile) artifact. “How do we use these … perspectives to deal with uncertainty and things we do not know yet in the future?”, Reddy asks her Brilliant Labs audience (Brilliant Labs / Labos Créatifs). To make this argument, I examine Reddy’s b00b in conversation with a legacy feminist textile performance that brings questions of embodiment (and embodied trust) to an ostensibly disembodied technocratic scene. b00b is a decorative bra that emulates two-factor authentication, or what Reddy calls “b00b factor authentication.” The bra uses its two cups to verify a user’s access to a Website describing the project. With this interaction, the bra is self-referential—asking users to unlock a link that brings them back to someone’s chest. In practice, b00b asks users to scan a bra cup that relies on scanning the companion bra cup for a second passcode. Rather than messaging users, an initial passcode that triggers a second passcode sent by text message, the engagement requires bodily proximity. The bra cups take the place of electronic media (such as the text message) so that a close encounter with the bra enlivens digital trust. Under these circumstances, a trusted user becomes a risk-taker—gaining access while transgressing personal boundaries. In the sections that follow, I thread conversations on digital and algorithmic trustworthiness with critiques of trust and compliance that pervade Reddy’s 2021 handmade experiment. To date, technology analysts tend to treat trust as a perception: feelings of confidence in a person or thing (Gilkson and Woolley). As Natasha Schüll notes, a user might trust a slot machine but might miss its implications for further (and potentially excessive) gambling. Additionally, media scholars such as Evgeny Morozov have since mapped this addiction principle within social media development, pointing to a familiar science of incentive structures, gamification dashboards, and behaviour-change techniques, each designed to raise user engagement and keep people in apps longer. Thinking with Reddy’s work, I argue that trust can reveal an embodied desire, something momentarily felt and differentially shared (see also Gregg; Sharma; Irani). Reddy frames the weft of woven material as code, the purl and knit stitches of knitting as binary, and the knots of rope as algorithms. She urges her audience to see fabric as a means of challenging common assumptions about technology. With needles and thread, she proffers algorithmic trust as a relational ethics. In Technology We Trust From a design perspective, trust grows from the strategic balancing of risk and uncertainty (Cheshire). Users who find a digital feature reliable or trustworthy are more likely to grow their engagement and convince others to join in (Hancock et al.). In a recent analysis of the overlapping dynamics of algorithmic trust and bias, communication and information scholars Jeff Hancock, Mor Namaan, and Karen Levy (95) argue that machine learning tools such as the Chrome extension Just Not Sorry often replicate bias within training data. The extension disproportionately alerts femme users when they use qualifying words like “sorry”, and “I think”. In ​​other contexts, Hancock and colleagues suggest, an AI-aided tool may help mitigate interpersonal biases since if it “imparts signals of trustworthiness between peer-based social exchange partners, these countervailing cues may neutralise stereotypes that would otherwise impede the transaction” (ibid). Here, the signal of trustworthiness holds the promise of accountability. But because the signals focus on cognition (manipulating an individual’s perceptions), what they refer to and how they may alleviate harms caused by entrenched cultural bias remains less clear. Grounded in social-psychological tenets, technology analysts codify trust as the relationship between two primary concepts: risk and uncertainty. As information scholar Coye Chesire (50) explains, “trust is not simply the absence of risk and uncertainty. More accurately, trust is a complex human response to situations that are rife with risk and uncertainty”. Through a range of controlled methods including observations, self-reports, survey questions, and the experimental conditions of a lab study, researchers measure the trustworthiness of user interface features as assessments of risk and uncertainty that explain differing motivations for use and disengagement. For example, design researcher Nick Merrill’s and Cheshire’s study of heart rate monitors finds that listening to an acquaintance's normal heart rate can lead to negative trust-related assessments in challenging contexts such as waiting to meet the acquaintance about a legal dispute. Parallel work by Hancock and colleagues uses self-reports and large-scale experiments on platforms like Facebook to map the significance of AI-enabled curation features like news feeds (Hancock et al.). As a psychological state, trustworthiness tends to indicate a behavioral metric that can be numerically encoded and individually addressed. By measuring trust-infused dimensions of user activity, analysts seek to systematically identify new ways of scaffolding trust-building behaviour by manipulating perception (Hancock, Namaan, and Levy), ultimately convincing a user to comply. A core goal is to maximise participation. The US government applied these principles to mass data collection and dissemination efforts during national census such as the COVID response (Halpern). But a secondary effect grows from the political-economic dimensions of user experience. Through compliance, users become easier to place, measure, count, and amend—a process Michelle Murphy names the economisation of life. When people’s certainty in interpersonal relationships grows, “the source of uncertainty then shifts to the assurance system, thereby making trustworthiness and reliability of the institution or organisation the salient relationship” (Cheshire 54). For instance, we may trust people in our text messages because we meet them face to face and put their numbers in our phones. But once we trust them, this assurance moves to our social media service or cellular phone provider. The service that manages our contacts also preserves the integrity of our contacts, such as when a messaging platform like WhatsApp automatically updates a cell phone number without our knowledge or explicit consent. Conversely, feelings of assurance in a digital interface feature may dwindle with decreased feelings of assurance by a platform. Until November 2022, users may have trusted someone with a blue checkmark on Twitter more than someone without one, even if they did not trust them at an interpersonal level. But with a chaotic acquisition that, according to a Washington Post report (Weatherbed), led to shifting check mark meanings and colours, this assurance grew more complicated. Murphy (24) might call these quantitative practices enriched with affect the “phantasmagrams” of rationalised assurance. Like a check mark that may or may not index a particular measure of confidence, excitement or worry, these shifting dynamics reveal the “trust and belief that animates numbers” (52). A less considered outcome of this framing is how individuated expressions of distrust (situations that foster psychological and physiological concern, skepticism, or fear for a single person) overshadow its complement: non-unconditional expressions of care. How might a user interface foster networks of connection for self and community? As Anna Lauren Hoffmann suggests, efforts to thwart algorithmic discrimination undergird this conundrum—“mirroring some of antidiscrimination discourse’s most problematic tendencies” (901). The particular value placed on trust often proceeds quick-fix techniques such as multi-factor authentication and cryptography that reduce trust to a neutral transaction (see Ashoori, et al.). In this discussion, design researchers have only begun to conceive trust (and distrust) as a deeply embodied process. Looks, Cuts, and Scans Reddy’s b00b invites audiences to explore embodied positioning. Sitting on a static mannequin, the garment invites audience members to engage the handiwork laid atop its breasts. In video documentation (Reddy), Reddy holds up a phone to a mannequin wearing the bra. She touches the phone to the mannequin’s right nipple, and the phone screen opens a Web browser with a password-protected field. As Reddy moves the phone to the mannequin’s left nipple, the phone shares the password ‘banjara,’ a reference to the community from which the embroidery techniques derive. The password opens a Website full of descriptive text and imagery detailing this material reference. In this interaction, b00b joins a movement of artistic work that uses textile artifacts to frame boundaries of self and other as porous and shifting. Consider Nam June Paik’s 1969 TV Bra for Living Sculpture. Across the 1970s, Charlotte Moorman performed the work by playing cello while wearing a transparent brassiere with two miniature television screens mounted on her chest (Paik; Rothfuss). As Moorman played her cello, wires connecting the cello to the two television sets sent sonic signals to the video that manipulate its imagery. Moorman’s instrumentation controlled the visuals displayed on the screens, inviting audience members to come closer to the electronic garment and her body—or, as Joan Rothfuss explains, “never mind that the bra actually encouraged prurience by compelling spectators to stare at [Moorman’s] breasts” (243). TV Bra invited its audience to breach conventional limits of closeness and contact much like users of b00b. Yoko Ono’s celebrated Cut Piece has sparked a similar prurience. During the work Ono dressed in some of her finest clothes and invites audience members to walk on stage and shear away pieces of fabric. Notably documented in the Albert and David Maysles film of Ono’s 1965 Carnegie Hall performance, the audience leaves Ono’s body nearly fully exposed at the performance’s end, save for her arms holding remaining pieces of fabric. With scissors in hand, the performance threatens imminent danger—inspiring snickers, pause, and discomforting ease among audience members eager to participate. Cut Piece encourages the audience to disregard consent and expose a certain breach of trust, practice mirrored with b00b. In this process of cutting cloth, often on the bias (or on a slanted angle; see Benabdallah, et al.; Rosner), feminist performance works have long prompted audiences to trouble the intimate relationship between themselves and the performer. As Vivian Huang has deftly argued, Ono’s shredded fabrics are more than neutral inconveniences; they also hint at whatever racialised and gendered feelings of trust might or might not exist between Ono and her audience. “If Orientalist conflations of the East with femininity have in turn sexualized Asian women as simultaneously hypersexual and submissive”, Haung contends, “then how can we as viewers and readers performatively read Asian femininity in a different, and not anti-relational, orientation to hospitality?” (187). b00b asks a similar question with systems of verification. Examining this possibility, Peggy Kyoungwon Lee recently puts Cut Piece in conversation with the contemporary media art of Lisa Park, and notes that “Ono’s signature composure both enacts and challenges archetypes of the feminized Asian body: cognitive efficiency, durability, calculative emotionality, docility, passivity” (54). For Lee, Cut Piece continues to open pathways for interpretation by diverting audience members from the compliance arguments above. Where algorithmic trust further complicates the making of trust with an added layer of uncertainty (is this made by an algorithm or is this not?), Cut Piece and TV Bra see in and through uncertainty to recentre a relational ethics. This concern for the relationality endures in Reddy’s b00b. To fashion the near-field communication (NFC) cards, Reddy draws from Banjara embroidery, a heritage craft technique featured in her home city of Hyderbad (Telangana). Like Banjara, b00b incorporates varied accessories (mirrors, tassels, shells) with colourful pattern. She embellishes the bra with lively zig-zagging embroidery, fashioning each nipple with a mirror that expertly doubles as an NFT tag hidden behind the embroidery. Garments like Ono’s, Paik and Moorman’s, and now Reddy’s, share an understanding that technology can and should reflect a certain felt complexity. At the Brilliant Labs event, Reddy presents b00b to conference-goers invested in shared hardware design specification standards. Across the 48-minute presentation, b00b interrupts the audience's presumed intentions. As Elizabeth Goodman has argued, hackers and tech enthusiasts interested in schematics, wireframes, and other digital drawings often prioritise formats that anyone can examine, adapt, use, and circulate by overlooking their situated social and political stakes. In the theatrical setting of a tech forum, b00b’s fabric draws attention to the body—manoeuvring the (often white Western) gaze around femme Asian subjectivities and questioning proximities between one body and another. Through its embodied relationality, real or imagined, b00b shares a concern for reimagining trust within mechanisms of control. b00b is Reddy’s attempt at generative justice, a concept of inclusive making she calls part of “bringing the Open Hardware community closer to heritage craft communities” (Reddy). In documentation, she discusses the geopolitical conditions of NFC-based authentication that relies on intimate connection as a means of state-led coercion and control. Situating her work in contemporary trust politics, she describes the Aadhar biometric identification system designed to compel Indian residents to record biometric data through iris scans, fingerprints, and photographs in exchange for a unique identity number (Dixon). She writes that systems like Aadhar “make minority communities more vulnerable to being identified, classified, and policed by powerful social actors” (Dixon). Wearing b00b challenges efforts to root NFC transactions in similar carceral and colonial logics. With an intimate scan, a user or audience makes room for counter-expressions of dis/trust. Sitting across from Reddy during a recent Zoom conference, I felt the tug of this work. With the piece modelled on a mannequin in the background, it reminded me of the homegrown techno-armour worn throughout Friedrichshain, a lively neighborhood in the former eastern part of Berlin. For the onlooker, the bra incites not only intrigue but also a careful engagement; or what Reddy names the “need to actively participate in conveying trust and intimacy with the bra’s wearer”. I couldn't help but wonder what an attendee at the Open Hardware Summit might make of the work. Would they bristle at the intimacy, or would they—like Ono’s audiences—cut in? On the surface, b00b presents a playful counterpoint to the dominant narrative of technology as slick, neutral, and disembodied. By foregrounding the tactile, handmade qualities of electronic media, Reddy’s work suggests we reconsider the boundaries between physical and digital worlds to complicate readings of computational risk. She is taking a highly technical process typically used for practical applications like finance, online identity, or other well-defined authentication problems, and enlivening it. The garment invites her audience to appreciate two-factor encryption as something intimate—both in an abstract sense and in a resolutely embodied sense. By defamiliarising digital trust, Reddy calls attention to its absurdity. How can a term like “trust” (associated with intimacy and mutual concern) also denote the extractive politics of algorithmic control (the verification of a user, the assessment of risk, the escalating manipulation of use)? Look closer at b00b, and the focus on authentication offers something specific for our ideas of algorithmic trust. Reddy turns a computational process into an extension of the body, registering a distinctly affective intrusion within the digital codification of assurance and accountability. Working with interaction design in the tradition of feminist performance, b00b directs our digital gaze back toward the embodied. Toward a Relational Ethics of Trust Fabric artifacts like b00b have long challenged digital scholars to consider questions of uncertainty and accountability. From what counts as computational, to whose labour gets recognised as innovative, woven material sparks a particular performance of risk. As Lisa Nakamura (933) shrewdly observes, gendered and racialised “traits” associated with textiles tend to fuel technological production, casting women of colour as the ideal digital workers. Looking to transnational flows connected with making, Silvia Lindnter argues that these stereotypes bring strategic meanings to feminised Asian bodies that naturalise their role within digital economies. Whose bodies get associated with fabric (through making, repair, consumption, aesthetics) reflects deep-seated stratifications within the masculine history of computing—with seemingly few possibilities for circumvention. If trust works as a felt condition, digital developments might more fully honour that condition. Bringing textile possibilities to NFTs suggests examining how authentication systems work on and through the body, even without touch. It is in this reciprocal encounter between content and user, audience and performer, textile and algorithm that something like a bra can hint at a profound ethics of connection. Reddy’s work reveals the consensual contact that can meaningfully shape who and how we digitally trust. While this essay has focussed on trust, I want to end with a brief consideration of the way a textile—in this case a conceptual and maybe even ontoepistemic (da Silva) artifact—brings the status of users closer to that of audience members. It begins to weave an analytic thread between the orientations, capacities, and desires of performance and design. Across this connection, b00b’s design works as minoritarian performance, as Jasmine Mahmoud (after José Esteban Muñoz) describes: a practice that “centers performance—as an object of study, a method, and theoretical container—as a means of centering minortized knowledge”. As minoritarian knowledge, the embroidered NFT expands Rozsika Parker’s profound insight into the subversive power of needlecraft. As Julia Bryan-Wilson (6) observes, “accounting for textiles—objects that are in close physical contact with us at virtually every minute of the day—demands alternative methodologies, ones that extend from shared bodily knowledge”. For digital scholars, b00b opens a similar possibility under racial technocapitalism. It asks us to notice how an indicator light on an AI-trained surveillance camera, for instance, does not map to an engaged or disaffected condition for an over-monitored user. It registers the need for probing relationships that underlie those tools—relationships between workers and employers, between non-users and corporate platforms, between differentially marked bodies. It challenges the reduction of trust dynamics into individualised or universalised motivations. To trust and be trusted with thread opens the possibility of algorithmic re-embodiment. Acknowledgements I’m grateful to insightful comments and suggestions from Anuradha Reddy, Amanda Doxtater, Scott Magelssen, Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud, Adair Rounthwaite, Anne Searcy, James Pierce, and the anonymous reviewers of the current M/C Journal issue. References Adam, Martin, Michael Wessel, and Alexander Benlian. "AI-Based Chatbots in Customer Service and Their Effects on User Compliance." Electronic Markets 31.2 (2021): 427-445. Ashoori, Maryam, and Justin D. Weisz. "In AI We Trust? Factors That Influence Trustworthiness of AI-Infused Decision-Making Processes." arXiv 1912.02675 (2019). Benabdallah, Gabrielle, et al. "Slanted Speculations: Material Encounters with Algorithmic Bias." Designing Interactive Systems Conference (2022): 85-99. Brilliant Labs / Labos Créatifs. “AlgoCraft: Remixing Craft, Culture, and Computation with Dr. Anuradha Reddy.” 2023. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UweYVhsPMjc>. Bryan-Wilson, Julia. Fray: Art and Textile Politics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2021. Cheshire, Coye. "Online Trust, Trustworthiness, or Assurance?" Daedalus 140.4 (2011): 49-58. Dixon, Pam. “A Failure to ‘Do No Harm’—India’s Aadhaar Biometric ID Program and Its Inability to Protect Privacy in Relation to Measures in Europe and the US.” Health and technology 7.4 (2017): 539-567. Duffy, Margaret, and Esther Thorson, eds. Persuasion Ethics Today. Routledge, 2015. Eglash, Ron, and Audrey Bennett. "Teaching with Hidden Capital: Agency in Children's Computational Explorations of Cornrow Hairstyles." Children Youth and Environments 19.1 (2009): 58-73. Ferreira da Silva, Denise. Unpayable Debt. Sternberg Press / The Antipolitical, 2022. Gass, Robert H., and John S. Seiter. Persuasion: Social Influence and Compliance Gaining. Routledge, 2022. Glikson, Ella, and Anita Williams Woolley. “Human Trust in Artificial Intelligence: Review of Empirical Research.” Academy of Management Annals 14.2 (2020): 627-660. Goodman, Elizabeth Sarah. Delivering Design: Performance and Materiality in Professional Interaction Design. Berkeley: U of California P, 2013. Gregg, Melissa. Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy. Durham: Duke UP, 2018. Halpern, Sue. “Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect Privacy at the Same Time?” New Yorker 27 Apr. 2020. <https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/can-we-track-covid-19-and-protect-privacy-at-the-same-time>. Hancock, Jeffrey T., Mor Naaman, and Karen Levy. "AI-Mediated Communication: Definition, Research Agenda, and Ethical Considerations." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 25.1 (2020): 89-100. Huang, Vivian L. "Inscrutably, Actually: Hospitality, Parasitism, and the Silent Work of Yoko Ono and Laurel Nakadate." Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 28.3 (2018): 187-203. Irani, Lilly. "‘Design Thinking’: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies." Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 4.1 (2018): 1-19. Lee, Peggy Kyoungwon. "The Alpha Orient: Lisa Park and Yoko Ono." TDR 66.2 (2022): 45-59. Mahmoud, Jasmine. “Minoritarian Performance.” Research Cluster, University of Washington, 2022. <https://simpsoncenter.org/projects/minoritarian-performance>. Merrill, Nick, and Coye Cheshire. "Habits of the Heart(rate): Social Interpretation of Biosignals in Two Interaction Contexts." Proceedings of the 19th international Conference on Supporting Group Work (2016): 31-38. Morozov, Evgeny. “The Mindfulness Racket.” New Republic 23 Feb. 2014. 1 Sep. 2016 <https://newrepublic.com/article/116618/technologys-mindfulness-racket>. Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia. Tenth anniversary ed. New York: New York UP, 2019. Murphy, Michelle. The Economization of Life. Duke UP, 2017. Nakamura, Lisa. "Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture." American Quarterly 66.4 (2014): 919-941. Oldenziel, Ruth. Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women and Modern Machines in America, 1870-1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 1999. Paik, Nam June, and S. Moorman. "TV Bra for Living Sculpture." 1969. 6 Mar. 2014 <http://www.eai.org/kinetic/ch1/creative/video/paik_tvbra.html>. Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984. Reddy, Anurandha. “b00b-Factor Authentication.” 2022. 7 Nov. 2023 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41kjOXtUrxw>. ———. “b00b-Factor Authentication in Banjara Embroidery.” 2023. 7 Nov. 2023 <https://anuradhareddy.com/B00B-Factor-Authentication-in-Banjara-Embroidery> (password: 'banjara'). Rossi, John, and Michael Yudell. "The Use of Persuasion in Public Health Communication: an Ethical Critique." Public Health Ethics 5.2 (2012): 192-205. Rothfuss, Joan. Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman. Cambridge: MIT P, 2014. Schüll, Natasha Dow. Addiction by Design. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012. Sharma, Sarah. In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke UP, 2014. Weatherbed, Jess. “Elon Musk Says Twitter Will Begin Manually Authenticating Blue, Grey, and Gold Accounts as Soon as Next Week.” The Verge 25 Nov. 2022. <https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/25/23477550/twitter-manual-verification-blue-checkmark-gold-grey>.

Coffee changes people. Moreover, it changes the way they interact with their friends, their fellow citizens and their community. (Ellis 24) On my daily walk around the streets of my neighbourhood, I pass the footpath cafés that have become synonymous with the area. On this particular day, I take a less familiar route and notice a new, small café wedged between a candle shop and an industrial building. At one of the two footpath tables sit a couple with their young child, conveniently (for them) asleep in a stroller. One is reading the Saturday paper, and the other has her nose in a book—coffee, muffins, and newspapers are strewn across the table. I am struck by this tableau of domestic ease and comfort, precisely because it is so domestic and yet the couple and child, with all the accoutrements of a relaxed Saturday morning, are situated outside the spaces of the home. It brings to mind an elegant phrase of Robert Hughes’ about the types of spaces that cities need, where “solitudes may lie together” (cited in Miller 79). I could, of course, also have drawn my attention to other vignettes at the café—for example, people involved in animated or easy conversation—and this would support Hughes’ other dictum, that cities need places where “people can gather and engage in energetic discourse” (79), which is of course another way in which people inhabit and utilise the café. The ascendancy of the café is synonymous with the contemporary city and, as semi-public space, it supports either solitude—through anonymity—or sociability. “Having a coffee” is central to the experience of everyday life in cities, yet it is also an expression of intent that suggests more than simply drinking a café latte or a cappuccino at our favourite neighbourhood café. While coffee aficionados will go the extra distance for a good brew, the coffee transaction is typically more to do with meeting friends, colleagues or connecting with people beyond our personal and professional networks. And under the umbrella of these types of encounters sit a variety of affective, social and civil transactions. In cities characterised by increasing density and cultural difference, and as mobile populations move back and forth across the planet, how we forge and maintain relationships with each other is important for the development of cosmopolitan cultures and social cohesion. It is the contemporary café and its coffee culture that provides the space to support sociability and the negotiation of civil encounters. Sociability, Coffee, and the Café Café culture is emblematic of social and urban change, of the rise of food culture and industries, and “aesthetic” cultures. The proliferation of hospitality and entertainment industries in the form of cafés, bars, restaurants, and other semi-public spaces—such as art galleries—are the consumer-based social spaces in which new forms of sociability and attachment are being nurtured and sustained. It is hardly surprising that people seek out places to meet others—given the transformation in social and kinship relations wrought by social change, globalization and mobile populations—to find their genesis in the city. Despite the decline of familial relations, new social formation produced by conditions such as workforce mobility, flexible work arrangements, the rise of the so-called “creative class” and single person households are flourishing. There are now more single person households in Australia than in any other period, with 1.9 million people living alone in 2006. This figure is predicted to increase to 30.36 per cent of the population by 2026 (ABS). The rapid take-up of apartment living in Australian cities suggests both a desire and necessity for urban living along with its associated amenities, and as a result, more people are living out their lives in the public and semi-public spaces of cities. Maffesoli refers to restructured and emerging social relations as “tribes” which are types of “emotional communities” (after Weber) based upon the affective, life-affirming impulse of “being togetherness” rather than an outmoded, rationalised social structure. For Maffesoli, tribes have strong powers of inclusion and integration and people are connected by shared affinities or lifestyles. Their stamping ground is the city where they gather in its public and semi-public spaces, such as the café, where sociability is expressed through “the exchange of feelings, conversation” (13). In this context, the café facilitates a mode of interaction that is both emotional and rational: while there might be a reason for meeting up, it is frequently driven by a desire for communication that is underpinned by the affective dimension. As a common ritualistic behaviour, “meeting for coffee” facilitates encounters not only with those known to us, but also among relationships that are provisional and contingent. It is among those less familiar that the café is useful as a space for engaging and practicing civil discourse (after Habermas) and where encounters with strangers might be comfortably negotiated. The café’s social codes facilitate the negotiation of less familiar relationships, promoting a sociability that is not as easy to navigate in other spaces of the city. The gesture of “having coffee” is hospitable, and the café’s neutrality as a meeting place is predicated on its function as transitional or liminal space; it is neither domestic, work, nor wholly public space. Its liminality removes inhabitants from the potentially anxious intimacy of the home and offers protection from the unknown of public space. Moreover, the café’s “safety” is further reinforced because it is regulated temporally by its central function as a place of food and beverage consumption: it provides a finite certitude to meetings, with the length of encounter largely being determined by the time it takes to consume a coffee or snack. In this way, the possible complexity or ambiguity associated with meetings with strangers in the more intimate spaces of the home is avoided, and meeting in a café may relieve the onus and anxiety that can be associated with entertaining. Café culture is not a new phenomenon, though its current manifestation differs from its antecedent, the sixteenth-century coffee house. Both the modern café and the coffee house are notable as places of intense sociability where people from all walks of life mingle (Ellis 2004). The diverse clientele of the coffee house is recorded extensively in the diaries of Samuel Pepys and unlike other social institutions of the time, was defined by its inclusivity of men from all walks of life (Ellis 59). Similarly, the espresso bars of the 1950s that appeared in Europe, North America and to a lesser extent Australia became known for their mix of customers from a range of classes, races and cultures, and for the inclusion of women as their patrons (Ellis 233). The wide assortment of people who patronised these espresso bars was noted in Architectural Digest magazine which claimed the new coffee bars as “the greatest social revolution since the launderette in 1954” (Ellis 234). Contemporary café culture continues this egalitarian tradition, with the café assuming importance as a place in which reconfigured social relationships are fostered and maintained. In Australia, the café has replaced the institution of the public house or hotel—the “pub” in Australia—as the traditional meeting place of cultural significance. Not everyone felt at home, or indeed was welcomed in the pub, despite its mythology as a place that was emblematic of “the Australian way of life”. Women, children and “others” who may have felt or may have been legally excluded from the pub are the new beneficiaries of the café’s inclusivity. The social organisation of the pub revolved around the interests of masculine relationships and culture (Fiske et al.) and until the late 1970s, women were excluded by legislation from its public bars. There are many other socio-cultural reasons why women were uncomfortable in the pub, even once legislation was removed. By comparison, the café, despite the bourgeois associations in some of its manifestations, is more democratic space than the pub and this rests to some extent on a greater emphasis placed on disciplined conduct of its patrons. The consumption of alcohol in hotels, combined with a cultural tolerance of excess and with alcohol’s effect of loosening inhibitions, also encourages the loosening of socially acceptable forms of conduct. A wider range of behaviour is tolerated and sanctioned which can present problems for women in particular. The negotiation of gendered relationships in the pub is, therefore, typically of more concern to women than men. In spite of its egalitarianism, and the diversity of patrons welcomed, the café, as a social space, is governed by a set of rules that communicate meaning about who belongs, who doesn’t and how people should behave. The social codes inscribed into café culture contribute to the production and reproduction of different social groups (Bourdieu and Lefebvre) and are reinforced by the café’s choice of aesthetics. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital accounts for the acquisition of cultural competencies and explains why some people feel comfortable in certain spaces while others feel excluded. Knowledge and skills required in social spaces express both subtle and sometimes not so subtle hierarchies of power and ownership, cutting across gender, ethnic and class divisions. Yet despite this, the relatively low cost of obtaining entry into the café—through the purchase of a drink—gives it greater accessibility than a pub, restaurant, or any other consumer site that is central to sociability and place attachment. In cities characterised by an intensity of change and movement, the café also enables a negotiation of place attachment. A sense of place connectedness, through habitual and regular usage, facilitates social meaning and belonging. People become “regulars” at cafés, patronising one over another, getting to know the staff and perhaps other patrons. The semiotics of the café, its ambience, decor, type of food and drink it sells, all contribute to the kind of fit that helps anchors it in a place. A proliferation of café styles offers scope for individual and collective affinities. While some adopt the latest trends in interior design, others appeal to a differentiated clientele through more varied approaches to design. Critiques of urban café culture, which see it as serving the interests of taste-based bourgeois patterns of consumption, often overlook the diversity of café styles that appeal to, and serve a wide range of, demographic groups. Café styles vary across a design continuum from fashionable minimalist décor, homey, grungy, sophisticated, traditional, corporate (McDonalds and Starbucks) or simply plain with little attention to current décor trends. The growth of café culture is a significant feature of gentrified inner city areas in cities across the world. In Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in Australia, an inner-city youth entertainment precinct, many cafés have adopted a downmarket or “grunge” aesthetic, appealing to the area’s youth clientele and other marginal groups. Here, décor can suggest a cavalier disregard for bourgeois taste: shabby décor with mismatching tables and chairs and posters and graffiti plastered over windows and walls. Ironically, the community service organisation Mission Australia saw the need to provide for its community in this area; the marginalised, disadvantaged, and disengaged original inhabitants of this gentrified area, and opened a no-frills Café One to cater for them. Civility, Coffee, and the Café One of the distinctive features of cities is that they are places where “we meet with the other” (Barthes 96), and this is in contrast to life in provincial towns and villages where people and families could be known for generations. For the last two decades or so, cities across the world have been undergoing a period of accelerated change, including the rise of Asian mega-cities—and now, for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population is urban based. Alongside this development is the movement of people across the world, for work, study, travel or fleeing from conflict and persecution. If Barthes’s statement was apt in the 1980s, it is ever more so now, nearly thirty years later. How strangers live together in cities of unprecedented scale and density raises important questions around social cohesion and the civil life of cities. As well as offering spaces that support a growth in urban sociability, the exponential rise of café culture can be seen as an important factor in the production of urban civilities. Reciprocity is central here, and it is the café’s function as a place of hospitality that adds another dimension to its role in the cultivation of civility and sociability. Café culture requires the acquisition of competencies associated with etiquette and manners that are based upon on notions of hospitality. The protocol required for ordering food and drink and for eating and drinking with others encourages certain types of behaviour such as courtesy, patience, restraint, and tolerance by all participants, including the café staff. The serving of food and drink in a semi-public space in exchange for money is more than a commercial transaction, it also demands the language and behaviour of civility. Conduct such as not talking too loudly, not eavesdropping on others’ conversations, knowing where to look and what to hear, are considered necessary competencies when thrust into close proximity with strangers. More intimately, the techniques of conversation—of listening, responding and sharing information—are practised in the café. It can be instructive to reprise Habermas’s concept of the public sphere (1962) in order to consider how semi-public places such as the café contribute to support the civil life of a city. Habermas’s analysis, grounded in the eighteenth-century city, charted how the coffee house or salon was instrumental to the development of a civilised discourse which contributed to the development of the public sphere across Europe. While a set of political and social structures operating at the time paved the way for the advent of democracy, critical discussion and rational argument was also vital. In other words, democratic values underpin civil discourse and the parallel here is that the space the café provides for civil interaction, particularly in cities marked by cultural and other difference, is unique among public amenities on offer in the city. The “bourgeois public sphere” for Habermas is based on the development of a social mode of interaction which became normative through socio-structural transformation during this period, and the coffee house or salon was a place that enabled a particular form of sociability and communication style. For Habermas, meeting places such as the urban-based coffee house were the heart of sociability, where conversational rules based on reasoned exchange were established; the cultivation of conversation was aimed at the dialogical egalitarian. Habermas’s bourgeois public sphere is essentially and potentially a political one, “conceived […] as the sphere of private people come together as a public” (Johnson 27). It refers to a realm of social life in which something approaching public opinion can be found. I am not claiming that the contemporary café might be the site of political dialogue and civic activism of the type that Habermas suggests. Rather, what is useful here is a recognition that the café facilitates a mode of interaction similar to the one proposed by Habermas—a mode of interaction which has the potential to be distinguished by its “open and inclusive character” (Johnson 22). The expectation of a “patient, willing comprehension of sympathetic fellows” (Johnson 23) refers to the cultivation of the art of conversation based on a reciprocity and is one that requires empathetic listening as well as dialogue. Because the café is a venue where people meet with less familiar others, the practice and techniques of conversation assumes particular significance, borne out in Habermas’s and Ellis’s historical research into café culture. Both scholars attribute the establishment of coffee houses in London to the development of social discourse and urban networking which helped set the ground for conversational rules and exchange and worked towards a democratic culture. In this context, values were challenged and differences revealed but the continued practice of conversation enabled the negotiation of such social diversity. Demonstrations of civility and generosity are straightforward in the café because of its established codes of conduct in an environment focussed upon hospitality. Paying for another’s drink, although not a great expense is a simple gesture of hospitality: “meeting for coffee” has become part of the lingua franca of workplace and business culture and relationships and is weighted with meaning. As cities grow in density, complexity and cultural diversity, citizens are adapting with new techniques of urban living. At a broad level, the café can be seen as supporting the growth in networks of sociability and facilitating the negotiation of civil discourse and behaviour. In the café, to act as a competent citizen, one must demonstrate the ability to be polite, restrained, considerate and civil—that is, to act in accordance with the social situation. This involves an element of self-control and discipline and requires social standards and expectations to become self-monitored and controlled. To be perceived as acting in accordance with the needs of certain social situations, participants bend, limit and regulate their behaviour and affects. In sum, the widespread take up of café culture, based on hospitality and reciprocity, encourages a mode of interaction that has implications for the development of a social and civic ethic. References Australian Bureau of Statistics. "1301.0–Year Book Australia." 2009. 31 Jan. 2012 ‹http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/0/916F96F929978825CA25773700169C65?opendocument› Barthes, Roland. Empire of Signs. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Ellis, Markum. The Coffee House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004. Fiske, J., B. Hodge, and G. Turner, eds. Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987. Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1962. -----. The Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Johnson, Pauline. Habermas: Rescuing the Public Sphere. London: Routledge, 2006. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Maffesoli, Michel. Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. Trans. D. Smith. London: Sage, 1996. Miller, George. “A City that Works.” Sydney Papers Spring (2001): 77–79.