Brave Sperm and Demure Eggs: Fallopian Gender Politics on YouTube

A narrative analysis of videos of human conception from medical and nonmedical sources aired in the democratic space of YouTube finds that stereotypical gender roles are consistently assigned to cellular behavior. Sperm are represented as little men and embodiments of hegemonic masculinity, with heroic sperm winning the egg prize after a competitive athletic contest fraught with peril. Eggs are represented as featureless planets floating in a murky void and are without agency or action. Almost every video is about the “journey” or “adventure” of the sperm; the egg has no adventure. These videos represent a view of a persistent gendered narrative of human fertilization that does not coalesce with emerging scientific narratives that appear to attempt to be more gender-neutral in accounts of conception. The imposition of gendered social scripts onto biology—even pop-culture biology—may work to obscure common understanding of the nature of gender and of humanity, as well as reveal vivid and enduring stereotypes

Domestic Violence in Men\u27s and Women\u27s Magazines: Women Are Guilty of Choosing the Wrong Men, Men Are Not Guilty of Hitting Women

Men\u27s and women\u27s magazine discourse on domestic violence characterizes women as guilty of choosing the wrong men but does not hold men responsible for hitting women. Using qualitative narrative analysis on 10 leading titles over 10 years, I find an ongoing tolerance for and celebration of domestic violence in men\u27s magazines and an enduring expectation in women\u27s that women bear responsibility for both genders. No magazines discuss patriarchal cultural structures that enable violence against women

Shaping the future for primary care education & training project. Education and training needs analysis (ETNA) toolkit: a resource kit and users’ guide

The Education and Training Needs Analysis (ETNA) Toolkit that has been developed as part of an inter university collaboration in the North West of England entitled the ‘Shaping the Future for Primary Care Education and Training’ project. The tool has been developed by the University of Bolton and Lancaster University in collaboration with key stakeholders including representatives from Primary Care Trusts and Social Services across the North Wes

No Girls Allowed: Television Boys’ Clubs as Resistance to Feminism

This article analyzes the male-only spaces present in four television series, FX’s The Shield, Nip/Tuck , Rescue Me, and ABC’s Boston Legal, which each include a gendered territory as a recurring feature. I argue that these homosocially segregated environments enforce boundaries against women and shelter intense bromance relationships that foreclose romantic relationships of any kind, acting as physical incarnations of troubling retrograde sexual politics and ideologies. I also assert that the “boys’ clubs” in which these narratives take place, enabled and empowered by the aesthetic dimensions of architecture and design, help establish workplace patriarchy as commonplace, reasonable, and benign. This article reveals that in these television boys’ clubs, problematic gender ideologies are protected and celebrated, misogyny is naturalized, and patriarchal beliefs and behaviors legitimized