Rape and respectability: ideas about sexual violence and social class

Women on low incomes are disproportionately represented among sexual violence survivors, yet feminist research on this topic has paid very little attention to social class. This article blends recent research on class, gender and sexuality with what we know about sexual violence. It is argued that there is a need to engage with classed distinctions between women in terms of contexts for and experiences of sexual violence, and to look at interactions between pejorative constructions of working-class sexualities and how complainants and defendants are perceived and treated. The classed division between the sexual and the feminine, drawn via the notion of respectability, is applied to these issues. This piece is intended to catalyse further research and debate, and raises a number of questions for future work on sexual violence and social class

Classification of temporomandibular joint sounds based upon their reduced interference distribution

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) sounds were recorded in 98 orthodontic retention patients, mean age 19 ± 8–6 (s.d.) years, by interview, auscultation and electronic recording. Sounds were found by auscultation in 41% and by interview in 32% of the subjects, more often in females than in males (P ≤ 0.05). A new method for time-frequency analysis, the reduced interference distribution (RID), was used to classify the electronic sound recordings into five subclasses, RID types 1–5, based upon location and number of their energy peaks. RID types 1–3 had a few energy peaks close in time. RID types 4–5, typical of subjects with crepitation, had multiple energy peaks occurring close in time for a period of 20–300 ms. RID type 1, found in 45% of the subjects, typical of patients with clicking, had its dominant energy peak located in a frequency range ≤600 Hz and was significantly more common in the female than in the male subjects (P≤ 0.01). RID type 2, found in 68% of the subjects, with the dominant peak in the range 600–1200 Hz, and RID type 3, found in 38% of the subjects, with the peak in the frequency range >1200 Hz, were found to have a similar gender distribution. RID type 4, found in 49% of the subjects, had the energy peaks distributed in the frequency range ≤600 Hz. RID type 5, found in 43% of the subjects, more often in females than in males (P≤ 0.05), had the peaks distributed over the whole frequency range from about 30 Hz up to about 3000 Hz. In conclusion, a more detailed classification could be made of the TMJ sounds by displaying the RIDs than by auscultation. This suggests that RID classification methods may provide a means for differentiating sounds indicating different types of pathology.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74694/1/j.1365-2842.1996.tb00809.x.pd

Do Femtonewton Forces Affect Genetic Function? A Review

Protein-Mediated DNA looping is intricately related to gene expression. Therefore any mechanical constraint that disrupts loop formation can play a significant role in gene regulation. Polymer physics models predict that less than a piconewton of force may be sufficient to prevent the formation of DNA loops. Thus, it appears that tension can act as a molecular switch that controls the much larger forces associated with the processive motion of RNA polymerase. Since RNAP can exert forces over 20 pN before it stalls, a ‘substrate tension switch’ could offer a force advantage of two orders of magnitude. Evidence for such a mechanism is seen in recent in vitro micromanipulation experiments. In this article we provide new perspective on existing theory and experimental data on DNA looping in vitro and in vivo . We elaborate on the connection between tension and a variety of other intracellular mechanical constraints including sequence specific curvature and supercoiling. In the process, we emphasize that the richness and versatility of DNA mechanics opens up a whole new paradigm of gene regulation to explore.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41816/1/10867_2005_Article_9002.pd