'Yeah but, it's funny if she does it to him': comparing ratings of acceptability, humour, and perpetrator and victim blame in female-to-male versus male-to-female domestic violence scenarios

Background: Data suggests that an increasing number of women are being arrested for intimate partner assault (Martin, 1997). Research has also shown how male and female offenders may have different reasons for offending and may require different domestic violence programs to reduce repeat offending (Henning, Jones & Holdfold, 2005). However, relatively little is known about how male-to-female versus female-to-male domestic violence (DV) is judged by others. Methods: This study presented 20 male undergraduates and 20 female undergraduates with vignettes depicting a scenario of either male-to-female or female-to-male DV. Participants rated these scenarios on how acceptable and humorous the scenario was, as well as how much they attributed blame to the victim and perpetrator. Participants also completed a questionnaire assessing the relationship of power to sex (Chapleau & Oswald, 2010). Results: 2 (Gender) x 2 (Vignette Type) ANOVAs were computed for each scale. Results showed that whilst acceptability was low for both scenarios, participants found female-to-male DV more humorous. In addition, whilst across both scenarios participants placed high blame on the perpetrator, participants placed more blame on the victim in the female-to-male DV scenario. In addition, for all participants, ratings given to DV scenarios were positively correlated with how strongly they related power-to-sex. Conclusions: These results indicate that, even though it is viewed as equally unacceptable, both men and women view female-to-male DV as ‘funnier’, and also believe that the victim was more to blame in these scenarios – suggesting that overall DV towards men may be taken less seriously. This study demonstrates that, in addition to different DV treatment programmes for offender, attitudes towards male victims of DV also need to be targeted

Ophelia Lema and Family to James Meredith (3 October 1962)

Signed by Ophelia Lema and Familyhttps://egrove.olemiss.edu/mercorr_pro/1861/thumbnail.jp

They Need Labels : Contemporary Institutional and Popular Frameworks for Gender Variance

This study addresses the complex issues of etiology and conceptualization of gender variance in the modern West. By analyzing medical, psychological, and popular approaches to gender variance, I demonstrate the highly political nature of each of these paradigms and how gender variant individuals engage with these discourses in the elaboration of their own gender identities. I focus on the role of institutional authority in shaping popular ideas about gender variance and the relationship of gender variant individuals who seek medical intervention towards the systems that regulate their care. Also relevant are the tensions between those who view gender variance as an expression of an essential cross-sex gender (as in traditional transsexual narrative) and those who believe that gender is socially constructed and non-binary. I finally argue that the standards of treatment for gender variant individuals pertains more to the medical legitimization of their identities than with necessarily improving outcomes

Op weg naar regionale expansie: het ontstaan van een regionaal-economische politiek in België (ca. 1930-1959)

The Birth of Region-based Economic Politics in Belgium (ca. 1930-1959 With the 1980s' state reform, the Belgian regions received large powers to implement their own economic policy. Although the first clear questions in that respect were raised at policy level during the interwar period, there was no concrete policy as yet. Foreign countries had a general tendency to consider economic growth from a regional perspective, but in Belgium it was not until the 18 July 1959-expansion law that a full-fledged regional economics law proposal came to exist. This study intends to understand the reasons for the delay of this regional economic policy in Belgium. Belgian historiography has given little space to regional economic political processes. Restraining and stimulating factors overlapped, influencing the evolution towards a regional economic discourse. The issue of this study is why this complicated process was so much delayed before it became a concrete legislation as compared to other West European countries, and which factors and actors played herein a role. Thereby it also raises the question of the role played by the yet-to-be regional consultations

British business and the Euro. ACES Cases No. 2008.2

During the Maastricht Treaty negotiations, the United Kingdom obtained an opt-out option on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). When Tony Blair came to power, he promised there would be a referendum on the euro if the government decided it was in the national interest to join. Many believed Tony Blair intended to call and try to win a referendum on the euro. Therefore, in the late 1990s, the debate over the euro raged in Britain, filling the pages of the tabloids and the minds of many Britons. In this paper based on empirical research conducted in London in 2005-06, I investigate whether the business sector had a clear preference on the issue of British membership in the EMU and tried to influence the government‟s decision. I use Jeffry Frieden's model of interest group preferences regarding exchange-rate policies to develop hypotheses regarding the position of the business sector on the euro. Research findings reveal that the business sector was divided on the issue of euro membership exactly as Frieden's model predicts. However, the intensity of business preferences decreased overtime. By the end of Tony Blair's second term, the business sector had become neutral on the issue of the euro