Key Concepts in Gender, Race, and Colonial Critique for Social Justice

Misogynarchies

A: Bacchetta

D: Misogyny + patriarchy = large colonial feminist and queer rubric to categorize and analyze a wide spectrum of sexist, lesphobic, queerphobic, and tranphobic political, economic, cultural, social, psychic, dimensions, etc.

- Misogynarchies draws on a "foucaldian notion of power

- framework is designed to account for how gender, sexuality, and other "inseparable relations of power (colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, racism, class, caste, etc.) are distinctly organized

- Unlike "patriarchy," which primarily focuses on women and men, "misogynarchies" can "specifically render visible subjects of subalternized genders and sexualities such as lesbians, queers, nonbinary gendered subjects, transgender peoples, and subjects who as yet have no name or who in their contexts simply do not need to be named

Heteronormativity

A: Cohen

D: A binary disciplinary system that keeps sexual inequalities in place by forging and reinforcing economic and racialized formations

- Cohen reminds us that some of the technologies of that system are the production of institutions that center and normalize heterosexual relationships.

Neoliberalism

D: economic and political theory that prioritizes free-market capitalism, minimal government intervention, and individual liberty. Originating in the mid-20th century, it became a dominant force in global policy during the late 20th century under leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

Capitalism

D: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit

Orientalism

A: Said

D: describe the way Westerners misunderstood and described colonial subjects and cultures. Belief that eastern cultures are inferior to western cultures

- Defined orientalism as a projection of what called orient is - orient in relation to what

Biopolitical

A: Foucault

D: Politics are politics of a broader quantity - ex state getting involved in matters of abortion, forcing women to have pregnancies. ex. Biopolitical Control = describe the occupation as producing a "severely restrained economy of corporeality," where Palestinian bodies are subjected to intense control through checkpoints, walls, and military surveillance.

Episteme

A: Foucault

D: defined by its components that its comprised of assumptions, categories, logics, and conclusions and it is a way of making meaning and its a way of intelligibility or making things legible - differs from one context to another

Ex. british focused on infantilizing the colonized (indian society), so when they saw this leaders sash/cultural clothing, they belittled their outfit to men wearing diapers

Looking at the same image of mohad mogandi, but two epistemes looking a this image in a different way

Ex. racial categories = never neutral -> different categorizations historically and today in south africa under apartheid, theres categories like black, colored, asian / in the US, colored and black are one / in mexico theres 151 racial categorizations

Epistemic Violence

A: Santa Cruz (???)

D: The imposition of dominant colonial worldviews and binary gender systems, which erases or devalues Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing and being.

ex. The enforcement of Western binary gender constructs, leading to the erasure of non-binary, fluid, and third-gender roles historically present in many Indigenous and non-Western societies. This distorts self-perception for those whose identities do not conform.

Identity Politics

A: Barbara Smith (CRC)

D: Invented by people who don like what they're doing - shorthand for dismissing whats being done, not friendly to queer movements - also called ideology

Can be neoliberal can be right wing

Cambahee river collective first used it as them stating they ave the right to hav their own opinion

Two-Spirit

A: Indigenous folk

D: Umbrella term that bridges native and western understandings of gender and sexuality  

• Introduced by native people with the goal of finding common ground and helping educate about traditional teachings in a contemporary context

• “Two Spirit refers to another gender role believed to be common among most if not all first people of Turtle Island, one that had a proper and accepted place within native societies. This acceptance was rooted in the spiritual teachings that say all life is sacred”

Controlling Images

A: PH Collins

D: From book "black feminist thought"

- Term stereotype is not liked too much - controlling image is a way to think of those negative representations and how they have an effect

- These are images that aren't innocent, they affect how people think and what they do

- A controlling image is a different way of thinking about a stereotype - same imagine as a stereotype - controlling imagine has the word control - stresses behavior that stereotype induces in the person watching this stereotype

Premature Death

A: Gilmore

D: the conditions in which certain parts of the population live which lead to premature death which other parts of the population will not have those kinds of premature deaths

- Ex. HIV crisis = Underlying cause is queerphobia

- A part of it is looking at parts of who's in areas of toxification

- Flint michigan thing of them toxifying the water of underserved communities instead of the bourgeois-esque neighborhoods

Navigational Exhaustion

D: The relentless psychological and emotionalv fatigue that results from the constant effort to move between, adapt to, and justify one's identity in different cultural contexts, especially those dominated by colonial norms.

- The strenuous mental labor of constantly confronting and correcting ingrained misconceptions and biases about gender in both institutional and interpersonal settings.

Straight Mind

A: Monique

D: a thought system that develops a "totalizing interpretation of history, social reality, culture, language, and all the subjective phenomena

- Tendency to Universalize: primary characteristic is the immediate universalization of its concepts into general laws purported to be true for all societies and all epochs. Ex: The exchange of women

The difference between the sexes

The symbolic order

The Unconscious

Desire

- Inability to Conceive Alternatives: The straight mind cannot conceive of a culture or society where heterosexuality is not the organizing principle. To reject the institutions of heterosexuality is framed as a rejection of meaning and social coherence itself.

- Interpretation of Homosexuality: When viewed through the lens of the straight mind, "homosexuality is nothing but heterosexuality."

Pinkwashing

D: where Israel co-opts LGBTQ+ rights to obscure human rights violations. In response, organizations like alQaws assert that there can be "no queer co-resistance with colonizers.

- Utilized in averting audiences from acknowledging the violence caused toward Palestinians.

- Propaganda tool utilized in efforts to improve its international image

- The term "pinkwashing" gained significant traction in 2020 when anti-occupation groups began using it to describe how the Israeli government's attitude toward LGBTQ+ Palestinians was being used for political purposes

Genealogies of the Present

A: Foucault

D: Whats a genealogy: way of looking at the past from how it is now and preceded that rather than starting in the past and seeing to what it led to

Genealogies are a kind of reading backwards in a 'what led to this' way - looking at main factors as opposed to histories that list everything in a 'this happened in the past' way

Something taken u pin quer theory to think about we have a situation thing today that is quite plural - we have an extreme right wing fascist in power but we also have a lot of resistance, the government is transphobic in writing, yet we have lots of activist groups, what led to this and now we have al these organizations fighting this

Multiple genealogies of the present recognizes that he present did not dro pout of the sky, it has a present that led to it

Homonationalism

A: Puar

D: the phenomenon where some nations or groups selectively use LGBTQ+ rights and discourses of sexual progressiveness to promote nationalistic, xenophobic, and imperialist ideologies

- Practice of framing primarily western countries of being freed of transphobia/homophobia to seem more progressive / western centric way of viewing lgbtq+ rights

- Women used as a thermometer to see how progressive they are by seeing how women are treated

- Really about representation and subjects - US was able to frame as certain countries as more homophobic that actually colonialism did a lot of damage to queer people

Stonewall

June 28th, 1969

D: A series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the LGBTQ+ community against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in NYC on June 28th, 1969

Settler colonialism

A: Oropeza

D: settlers have expelled indigenous groups in order ot establish their own ethnic and religious national communities in their place

Protest vs. Parade

D: Reference to pride becoming corporatized despite originating as a protest

Institutions

D: Complex social organizations such as governments, economies, and education systems

Gender Binary

D: the idea that there are only two types of people - male-bodied people who are masculine and female-bodied people who are feminine

Ballroom (drag gatherings)

D: a subculture with its own events and "houses" where LGBTQ+ people, particularly those of color, compete in various categories like voguing, modeling, and fashion. It's a form of artistic expression and community, often with a strong emphasis on creative looks and performance, where the term "drag" can encompass a wide range of identities

Reformist reform

D: Like a social movement into some reforms but they're for a small sector of the community

- reforms within of themselves - don't have a long term goal in mind such as gay marriage

liberation oriented

D: Fighting on more than one front but not exigent

- fighting on more than one front - ex. Universal basic wages - has so many ripples besides, detoxifying earth - its intersectional such as who's living in the places that are most toxic? Native and black folk

freedom exigent

D: We are not putting up with anyone's oppression

- very much aligned with revolution - is whatever action we partake in that will mess up things so much that will make immense change to reorganize society - we have a total fascist reorganization right now. Relations of power

intersectionality

A: Crenshaw

D: How different kinds of oppressions are actually fused or overlapping

- the concept that various aspects of a person's social and political identity, such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation, can combine to create unique and overlapping systems of discrimination or disadvantage

- ex. a queer Black woman facing discrimination based on her race, gender, and sexuality simultaneously, and a disabled person of color experiencing added barriers like racism and ableism on top of those related to their disability

queer

strange; eccentric; deviating from the normal

linguistic terrorism

A: Anzaldua

D: Attack on a persons culture, so like someone verbally attacking another person solely for the type of culture/language

- Imposition of the colonizing language and its political structure, culture, literature, and sometimes the complete erasure of indigenous language which is also linguistic terrorism

scale (human, geographical and political entity)

D: Small scale, medium scale, large scale = its always relative, a size!

Ex. this classroom is a small scale in relation to the planet and university, but in relation to a person, it's very big!

Political scale: political structure, the city gov vs state gov for example.

binary-sex

D: a traditional and outdated view of sex, limiting possibilities to "female" or "male"

- actual research on biological sex is that fluidity is a big thing in it

Its a system of dividing society into two categories that are homogeneous

- Direct war on trans folk - trump spent $215M on anti-trans ads

- Whats going on now is the idea that one bad apple ruins the whole batch

colonialism

D: A structure, not an event

- hetero patriarchy reinforcement

- EX: Rejection of recognizing certain countries = palestine, Cultural gaps for communities that were wiped out by colonialism, Mission trips, esp mormon religion which also ties to feminist religion trips

Decolonizing

A: Bacchetta

D: Decolonization requires "fostering the continuity of Indigenous, Native, Afro-diasporic, and anticolonial ways of knowing, being, and doing," and "repairing and recovering nondominant and noncapitalist arrangements, both precolonial and postcolonial."

Decolonial feminists and transfeminists "organize against all forms of violence specifically directed toward BIPOC women, nonbinary, trans, and nonwomen populations," challenging "myriad technologies of depersonification while affirming novel ontologies and epistemologies of embodied dissent, reciprocity, restorative justice, mutual care, and communal wellbeing.

Coloniality of Gender

A: Di Pietro

D: a framework "theorized by María Lugones (2007, 2010, 2020)," offering "a paradigmatic shift in the ways that populations of color make sense of the cognitive, political, and experiential needs of capitalism through coalitional and feminist labor.

- stems from the convergence of "contributions by women of color, third-world feminist perspectives, Native and Indigenous feminist theorizing, critical race theory (CRT), and the sociology and anthropology of nonWestern societies.

Colonial Dysphoria

A: Santa Cruz

D: term developed to articulate the profound psychological, emotional, and physical distress experienced by transgender individuals of color due to the lasting impacts of colonial legacies. It challenges traditional philosophical views on self and existence by demonstrating how deeply colonialism influences individual consciousness, self-knowledge, and existential realities.

- EX: Loss of traditional roles: led to the suppression and disappearance of previously accepted roles, such as those for Two-Spirit people in Indigenous North America or the mudoko dako in Uganda, Cultural disorientation, internalized colonialism.

Social reproduction

A: Yousfi

D: identified as having three essential components:

1. Biological Reproduction: The physical act of procreation.

2. Workforce Renewal: The labor involved in nurturing, raising, and educating children to become future workers, as well as the activities that mitigate the physical and mental toll of capitalist exploitation on the current workforce.

3. Care for Non-Workers: The provision of care for individuals deemed outside the formal labor force, whom capital may categorize as "useless bodies.

- EX: performed by women in the family but also by people hired to do that - responsible for the nuclear heteronormative family

Is it still social reproductive labor if there's no children?

Yes. because the wife is still "responsible" for all the cooking, cleaning, and unpaid labor, and even if its shared sometimes it's still social reproduction

Includes caring for those outside he labor force such as older folk

racial capitalism

A: R Kelley & Cedric Robinson

D: Description of a specific system to generally understand the world of modern capitalism

- Robinson's objective was to not understand the historical capitalism framework rather to understand how european racism preceded capitalism

- The tendency of european civilization through capitalism was thus not to homogenize but to differentiate — to exaggerate regional, subcultural, and dialectical differences into "racial" ones" - Robinson

- Not a type of capitalism, there's no such thing as a non-racial capitalism, simply signals capitalism operates within a racist system/regime, racism is necessary for maintaining capitalism

- Capital begins with seizing control of natural resources and creating cheap labor to turn these resources into commodities

Ungendering

A: Spillers

D: - a person is turned into property

Ungendering of african bodies and making them into property which doesn't have a gender

Hypergendering:

- exaggerated form of gender - gender ideal in an oppressive/sexist system

Theory in the flesh

A: Cherrie/Anzaldua

D: Flesh is the "dehumanized occupant of space in the hold of a slave ship." It is a quantity occupying a space "saturated by capital that must be optimized to yield a profit.

- Function: flesh has been theorized as a fungible resource that signifies both abjection and the potential for radical possibility.

- EX. (A) On the Slave Ship: The initial ungendering occurs during the Middle Passage, where the captive is reduced to cargo.

(2) On the Plantation: The process is repeated and extended through the instrumentalization of enslaved females for forced reproductive labor, or the "breeding" of new chattel. The enslaved reproducer is treated as a "breeding machine," a source for producing new commodities and accumulating profit.

homonormative

A: Duggan

D: Extending things from straight people to queer people

- ex. Ex. gay marriage -based en hetero marriage

- used to describe sexual minorities who try to be as "normal" as possible

Heteropatriarchy

A: Hooks

D: the dominance associated with a gender binary system that presumes heterosexuality as a social norm. Doesn't refer to patriarchy refers to heterosexist patriarchy - puts into relief the sexism of it (Heteropatriarchy means a system where heterosexual men hold power and it shows how this benefits men while being unfair to others, especially women.)

Histories of the Present

D: Almost a way to say genealogies of the present

Only real difference is the word history which haas different implications - not directly connected/ties to the present like genealogies is

Reform

D: Taking a system that exists and changing it to be better - keep structure but mess with whats in the structure

How does it mappen? Through law, changing consciousness, organizations efforts, revolutionary organizations, ex. Black panther party

Vanguard

D: formed in 1965 in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, the city's primary gay and trans neighborhood. Its membership consisted of gay male and transgender female youth, the majority of whom were street-based sex workers. The organization's genesis was a unique convergence of religious outreach, federal anti-poverty initiatives, and the city's burgeoning homophile movement.

Decolonizing Sexualities

D: unlearning colonial oppression in the form of resistance, not romanticizing the idea of a conflict free past