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This essay aims to amplify feminist theory by articulating and fostering feminist disability theory. It names feminist disability studies as an academic field of inquiry, describes work that is already underway, calls for needed study and sets an agenda for future work in feminist disability studies. Feminist disability theory augments the terms and confronts the limits of the ways we understand human diversity, the materiality of the body, multiculturalism, and the social formations that interpret bodily differences. The essay asserts that integrating disability as a category of analysis and a system of representation deepens, expands, and challenges feminist theory. To elaborate on these premises, the essay discusses four fundamental and interpenetrating domains of feminist theory: representation, the body, identity, and activism, suggesting some critical inquiries that considering disability can generate within these theoretical arenas.

Focusing on the street AIDS activist movement ACT UP, this article explores the question of social movement sustainability. Emotions figure centrally in two ways. First, I argue that the emotion work of movements, largely ignored by scholars, is vital to their ability to develop and thrive over time. I investigate the ways AIDS activists nourished and extended an “emotional common sense” that was amenable to their brand of street activism, exploring, for example, the ways in which ACT UP marshaled grief and tethered it to anger; reoriented the object of gay pride away from community stoicism and toward gay sexual difference and militant activism; transformed the subject and object of shame from gay shame about homosexuality to government shame about its negligent response to AIDS; and gave birth to a new “queer” identity that joined the new emotional common sense, militant politics, and sexradicalism into a compelling package that helped to sustain the movement. Second, I investigate the emotions generated in the heat of the action that also helped the street AIDS activist movement flourish into the early 1990s.

My essay theorizes femme/butch family romances against the grain of dominant feminist and lesbian thought that desexualizes the space of mother/daughter desire. I do so through a reading/recoding of the infringing incestuous mommie-boy desires that surface in an archetypal lesbian novel, Jane Rule's Desert of the Heart.

Cette publication de 2002 aborde les enjeux des femmes et des sexualité(s) *** FéminÉtudes est une revue étudiante, féministe et multidisciplinaire. La revue est née en 1995 de l’initiative d’étudiantes féministes dans l’intérêt de partager leurs recherches et de créer un groupe affinitaire. La revue est dirigée par des collectifs de rédaction bénévoles et autogérés, et soutenue par l’Institut de Recherches en Études Féministes (IREF) de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Au fil des ans, FéminÉtudes a réussi à se bâtir une réputation et une légitimité dans le champ de la recherche en études féministes, tout en offrant une tribune au travaux et aux réflexions de dizaines d’étudiant.e.s. Au-delà de la recherche, c’est également pour l’avancement des luttes féministes que FéminÉtudes souhaite continuer à grandir.

Lorsqu'on se penche sur les politiques publiques concernant les violences en France, on relève une division des compétences entre les politiques dites « de sécurité » et les politiques « contre les violences faites aux femmes ». On constate que les politiques de sécurité, en se basant sur les statistiques de criminalité et de victimation, portent essentiellement sur l'espace public et marginalisent les violences faites aux femmes dans l'espace privé. Pour autant, elles ne prennent pas non plus en considération les violences perpétrées à leur encontre dans l'espace public. Or, divers exemples venant de pays étrangers esquissent des réponses faites par les pouvoirs publics à ces violences

Divided between essentialism and constructivism, the mobilization of united-statesian homosexuals becomes a real social movement when it goes beyond the opposition between integrationism and differentialism. Thanks to a complex identity forged by ACT-UP, it has been able in this way to resist AIDS. A comparison between San Francisco and New York shows that the initiative comes from the bottom up. Collective action is most effective as it takes account of differences (such as ethnicity) between homosexuals. This requirement has been dictated by the evolution of AIDS since the 1990s. It is, therefore, in stressing the subjectivity of the actors that the gay and lesbian movement can continue and contribute to social change in the United States.

Social capital has entered development policy thinking and practice in Latin America where it converges with the premises of a new development agenda that emerged in the 1990s. Women are often central to the forms of social capital that development agencies are keen to mobilize in poverty relief programmes, but the terms of women’s insertion into these programmes is rarely problematized. This article critically examines the gendered assumptions that govern efforts to build social capital, and explores some of the tensions that have arisen in post-transition Latin America between women’s rights and social capital agendas.

This paper explores the interrelationship of gender equity and socioeconomic inequality and how they affect women's health at the macro- (country) and micro- (household and individual) levels. An integrated framework draws theoretical perspectives from both approaches and from public health. Determinants of women's health in the geopolitical environment include country-specific history and geography, policies and services, legal rights, organizations and institutions, and structures that shape gender and economic inequality. Culture, norms and sanctions at the country and community level, and sociodemographic characteristics at the individual level, influence women's productive and reproductive roles in the household and workplace. Social capital, roles, psychosocial stresses and resources, health services, and behaviors mediate social, economic and cultural effects on health outcomes. Inequality between and within households contributes to the patterning of women's health. Within the framework, relationships may vary depending upon women's lifestage and cohort experience. Examples of other relevant theoretical frameworks are discussed. The conclusion suggests strategies to improve data, influence policy, and extend research to better understand the effect of gender and socioeconomic inequality on women's health.

This article features several women who are part of the present-day Bulgarian lesbian scene and discusses the significance of butch/femme identities in the absence of a tradition of lesbian community life.

Comme caractéristique du développement capitaliste, la migration économique a toujours entraîné le travail sexuel. À l’heure de la mondialisation, cela signifie pour beaucoup de femmes, qui émigrent du village à la grande ville dans leur propre pays ou du pays natal à l’étranger, un choix imposé par les circonstances. Cet article examine surtout la décision d’émigrer, les moyens empruntés et la situation à l’étranger de celles - la grande majorité, d’ailleurs -- qui n’ont pas été victimes d’un trafic, mais qui ont exercé ce choix imposé. Le rôle dans l’émigration des travailleuses sexuelles et des clients « émigrés » en tant que touristes sexuels fait partie de la discussion, ainsi que d’autres caractéristiques économiques et culturelles.Summary As a feature of capitalist development, economic migration has historically entailed sex work as one of its components. In the age of globalization, this means a forced choice for many women, as they move from the village to the city in their own countries and across international borders. The present article focuses on the decision making process, the means of migration, and the experience in the urban site, national or international, of those -- the vast majority -- who have not been "trafficked", but have made this forced choice their life strategy. The impact on sex worker migration of customer "migration" in the form of sex tourism is discussed, along with the other economic and cultural factors.

Il arrive fréquemment que les débats sur l’action positive aux États-Unis traitent séparément les questions relatives à l’égalité et à la différence, aux droits individuels et aux identités de groupe. Pourtant, ce sont là des couples de concepts interdépendants, chacun étant lié à l’autre dans une tension nécessaire. Les tensions se manifestent de façon spécifique selon la période historique et doivent être analysées en fonction du contexte politique qui les porte et non comme des choix moraux ou éthiques a-historiques. Cet essai explore trois paradoxes — qui sont des tensions insolubles — propres aux débats sur l’action positive : 1) l’égalité est un principe absolu et une pratique historique contingente ; 2) les identités de groupe définissent des individus et leur refusent la pleine expression ou réalisation de leur individualité ; 3) les revendications de l’égalité impliquent l’acceptation et le rejet de l’identité de groupe produit par la discrimination. Autrement dit, les termes de l’exclusion, qui fondent la discrimination, sont à la fois refusés et reproduits dans la demande d’inclusion.

Personal advertisements placed by lesbians were examined to determine how often butch/femme descriptors were used: (a) as a form of self-identification or (b) to indicate the type of partner being sought. The 388 personal advertisements were drawn from 16 alternative newspapers around the U.S., as well as from one Internet site (Qworld) that contained personal ads by lesbians. Each advertisement was coded for the presence or absence of butch/femme descriptors. The majority of advertisers did not mention butch or femme labels either in terms of self-identity or type of partner sought. Among the minority of advertisers who self-identified as butch or femme, more described themselves as femme than butch. Among advertisers seeking butch or femme partners, femme partners were sought most often. Explanations for the preference for femme lesbians were explored

The aim of the article is to further assess and develop feminist standpoint theory by introducing the notion of the ‘situated imagination’ as constituting an important part of this theory as well as that of ‘situated knowledge’. The article argues that the faculty of the imagination constructs as well as transforms, challenges and supersedes both existing knowledge and social reality. However, like knowledge, it is crucial to theorize the imagination as situated, that is, as shaped and conditioned (although not determined) by social positioning.

This memoir of a 65-year-old “butch” lesbian describes her growing-up days in the South and her subsequent professional identity as a university professor and psychologist. The article includes feelings about being raised as a girl while feeling male. Personal reactions to family pressures to conform to a rigid sex role are noted and some attention is given to the effects of living an adult life in the closet.

Can one explain both the resilience of the status quo and the possibility for resistance from a subordinate position? This paper aims to resolve these seemingly incompatible perspectives. By extending Randall Collins’s interaction ritual theory, and synthesizing it with Norbert Wiley’s model of the self, this paper suggests how the emotional dynam- ics between people and within the self can explain social inertia as well as the possibility for resistance and change. Diverging from literature on the sociology of emotions that has been concerned with individual emotional processes, this paper considers the collective level in order to explore how movement action is motivated. The emotional dynamics of subordinate positioning that limit women’s options in face-to-face inter- actions are examined, as are the social processes of developing feminist consciousness and a willingness to participate in resistance work. Pointing toward empirical appli- cations, I conclude by suggesting conditions where resistance is likely.