Gender and its Discontents Blog
Gender and its Discontents is the blog of the GSSI. Here, we feature selections of the exciting research completed by students in our graduate core course “Gender and its Discontents”, faculty and students opinion pieces, and material on past and forthcoming events.
Denied Femininity
Why aren’t Black women allowed to be housewives?
By Jordana Douglas
A critical perspective on “incel logic”
By Elia Goffi
Coming Out of the Holler
The Inherent Queerness of Appalachia
By Paige Griffith
Blessed Be the Algorithm
By Rebekah Nathan
The Implications and Psychological Dynamics of Anti-Birth Control
Rhetoric on TikTok
Feminisms as the Desire to Change Everything and the Ultra-Right Backlash
An interview with Verónica Gago by Chiara Bottici CB: Let’s start with a basic question: do you consider yourself a feminist? When and how did you become a feminist? VG: […]
Cisnormativity and the Trans Visibility Paradox
By Rose PelhamA while ago, I found myself in a bizarre conversation with a cisgender man who insisted he had a grand theory derived from the supposed exceptionality of trans experience. No […]
The Borderlands of Ukraine: A Preliminary Approach
By Mariah GuevinAs war between Ukraine and their oppressive, autocratic, neighbor to the north escalates, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has declared that all male citizens 18-60 years of age are forbidden from […]
On “Good Life”
By McKenzie WarkYou all know this, but I’ll say it anyway: house music is Black music; techno is Black music. I’m just a guest in these sonic spaces. That’s complicated, as I’m […]
How to Radically Transform Society, with bell hooks
By Fania Noël and Nathalie Batraville“Love is an action, never simply a feeling” [bell hooks] On December 15, 2021, bell hooks passed away at the age of 69. A university professor, intellectual, feminist, poetess, and […]
Guilty Mind, Guilty Body, Guilty Soul: (Im)Purity Culture in the American Catholic Church
By Emma CieslikAt the age of 10, Jane peered down at a pristine white flower. “Look at the flower in your hand, Jane. Notice how perfect it is,” Alba said, “How pure. […]
For an Anticapitalist Sexual Politics
By Maíra Marcondes MoreiraThere’s something the discussions around identities, whether they are driven by a critique of identitarianism or a defense of identity as a political category, reveal: the divisions within capitalism aren’t […]
Girlhood: An Apocalypse
By Zoey GreenwaldI haven’t had my period in three months. It’s okay. This story doesn’t end with me pregnant. I’m not pregnant anywhere in it. I’m just thinking. Thinking heavy like always, […]
A Plea for Good Manners: A Rapbuttal
By The Lady, Reverend Corporal Austin D. Burke (aka Lil Tit)This week, the post “A Plea for Good Manners” by Robert Mass (possibly seen here) was brought to my attention. Its contents took me quite by surprise – and so, […]
100 Reasons to Prosecute the Dictator
By Elif GencFeminicide is defined as the massacre of women and the killing of women with direct state responsibility. This responsibility of the state includes, delayed legal punishment and impunity. Feminicide refers […]
Unrelenting: Haitian Feminism on the Front Lines
By Fania Noel“Olmene listened to her attentively while trying to reconcile the mother with the market vendor, with the woman she was discovering. Ermancia realized this and, just before she closed her […]
Essential Strike Manifesto for the 8th of March
By E.A.S.T. (Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational)We are the women who are essential for the healing of the entire world from the pandemic. We are doing essential work and yet we find ourselves in miserable conditions: […]
Haunting and Hosting
By Romy OppermanMy original intentions for this post were complicated by three visitations.[1]In addition to the focus on Alexander, my plan was to engage with other Black and decolonial feminist thinkers that […]
Interview: Lydia Caldana, GSSI Student/GSSI Website Developer
By Aaron Neber (Interviewer)Hi Lydia. To get started, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself.I’m Lydia Caldana. I am from Brazil and left for Italy in 2009 when I was 17 […]
Liberation For Everybody: A Call For Abolitionist Feminism
By Cailin PotamiDUN-DUN. The theme music starts. Within the next hour, Benson will serve justice to some monster (after Stabler gets a few hits in). The criminal will leave the courtroom in […]
Sexistential Crisis // I. Camus. The Myth of Sissyphus; or, L’Être Étrange
By Rev. Cpl. Austin D. BurkeThis post marks the beginning of a series on Sexistential Crisis – taking as ‘focal exemplars’ sequentially: Camus, Fanon, de Beauvoir and Sartre, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Hegel. These are not […]
Intellectual Foremothers
By Ellen Freeberg, Gina Walker, Lara-Zuzan GolesorkhiReflections from The New School From 2015 through 2017 we traced the intellectual journey of Frieda Wunderlich, the only female professor to join a cohort of European scholars rescued from […]
Dream of A Keen
By Lana LinBefore I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I dreamed that I had gained a new internal organ. It was called a “keen,” which afterward I thought might be a hybrid of my kidney and spleen.
Living In The Uncanny
By Lana LinSometimes it snows in April, as Prince sings, but you know it’s uncanny when it hails in May, like it did a few days ago. I live in the epicenter […]
No Longer in Exile: The Legacy and Future of Gender Studies at the New School
No Longer in Exile’ was a two-day conference held in March 26-27, 2010 in celebration of the re- establishment of a gender studies program at The New School university.
Anarchafeminism in Times of COVID with Chiara Bottici
By Chiara BotticiIn this talk, I argue that anarchafeminism is a particularly timely form of feminism, because it is able to articulate a feminist position without turning the latter into yet another […]
Pride Wore White
By McKenzie WarkWhite Black trans women step out of the queer chorus The Brooklyn Museum has a sunken forecourt that makes it something of an amphitheater. I’d arrived there on this bright […]
The Dyer’s Hand
By Ann SnitowAnn Snitow’s retirement from The New School — Ann Snitow gave the following talk on the occasion of her retirement from The New School on April 9, 2019. In their […]
The Privilege & The Imaginal Possibilities of Sexual Fluidity
By Sanjana PeguHeterosexuality has been under siege since second-wave feminism. And yet it continues to hold sway, not only among self-identified heterosexuals but also those who disavow and critique it. Like capitalism […]
Anarchafeminist Manifesto 1.0
By The Ongoing Collective[Translations: Hungarian – Turkish] We live under a global menocracy. Women are oppressed all over the world and all over themselves. In a time when the world has become a […]
The New York State Fertility Mandate and Compulsory Heterosexuality
By Ellen YomBut a law expanding the right to reproductive choice is far from universal On January 1, 2020, New York became the tenth state to increase access to fertility treatments by […]
Void Bitches
By McKenzie WarkTo be trans is to be already left out of the design of the world. If trans writers have an affinity for the disaster of the world, maybe it’s because […]
Gender Reveal Party Fail
By Emily BreitkopfOn Cisnormativity and its disruptions In late 2016, a YouTube video entitled “Gender Reveal Party Fail” went viral. The video shows a couple named Joe and Leela Krummel standing over […]
The Politics of Female Sexuality in ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’
By Shiv D. SharmaWhat a recent Bollywood film can tell us about risk, pleasure, desire and feminism. In an advisory issued by the Information and Broadcasting ministry in December 2017, the Indian government banned […]
The Weinstein Trial and the #MeToo Movement
By Britta Reuther and Chiara BotticiThis is the text of an interview with Chiara Bottici, conducted by Britta Reuther, for the German TV and radio channel ARD. The Interview which took place on 6 January […]