Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork, this article examines mothers raising kids with invisible, social/emotional/behavioral disabilities to refine feminist theories of mother-blame. The mother-valor/mother-blame binary holds mothers responsible for families and future citizens, maintaining this “natural” care at the center of normative femininity. The author explores how mothers raising such burdensome children understand their experiences and makes three arguments: Fewer mothers are blamed for causing their child's troubles in an era of “brain-blame,” but more are blamed as proximate causes if (...) they do not make unrelenting efforts, paralleling “concerted cultivation,” to resolve them; such mothers often exceed concerted cultivation, as they seize authority, as vigilantes, within educational and medical systems in the midst of turf wars, cost containment, and a resulting proliferation of medication treatments; and this maternal speedup holds mothers accountable for feminizing ties to sons, for policing gender boundaries while policing their own feminine care. In sum, mothers raising invisibly disabled kids may represent the model of maternal valor for an era of public stinginess and extensive medicalization. (shrink)

In both social science and medicine, research on reproduction generally focuses on women. In this article, we examine how men’s reproductive contributions are understood. We develop an analytic framework that brings together Cynthia Daniels’ conceptualization of reproductive masculinity with a staged view of reproduction, where the stages include the period before conception, conception, gestation, and birth. Drawing on data from two medical sites that are oriented to the period before pregnancy, we examine how gendered knowledge about reproduction produces different reproductive (...) equations in different stages of the reproductive process. We conclude with a new research agenda that emerges from rethinking the role of men and masculinity in reproduction. (shrink)

This article examines the way in which selfhood is constructed in direct-to-consumer advertisements for antidepressant medications. The sample consists of advertisements that appeared in nine popular magazines between 1997 and 2005, television commercials that ran between 2003 and 2005, and online promotional Web sites. The analysis is divided into three sections. First, it is argued that the ads rely on metaphors of communication, information exchange, and plenitude to construct a relationship between biology and selfhood. Second, in offering the choice for (...) antidepressant treatment, the ads grant individuals a new capacity for the exercise of personal agency. Third, the author describes antidepressants as pills that perform a narrative “magic.” In contrast to religious and psychoanalytic narratives that required individuals to incorporate disavowed elements of their selves into an ongoing life narrative, antidepressants are medications that allow individuals to put aside, or jump over, inexplicable and painful moments in their life. (shrink)

Abstract Under the realm of neurocultures the concept of the cerebral subject emerges as the central category to define the self, socio-cultural interaction and behaviour. The brain is the reference for explaining cognitive processes and behaviour but at the same time the plastic brain is situated in current paradigms of (self)optimization on the market of meritocracy by means of neurotechnologies. This paper explores whether neurotechnological apparatuses may—due to their hybridity and malleability—bear potentials for a change in gender based attributions that (...) have been historically legitimized by apparently natural differences between women and men. Or, in contrast, which gendered ascriptions are (again) produced in theories and applications according to the normative demands for the bio-techno-social cerebral subject situated in neoliberal power relations. An exploration of three main fields of current developments, the neurotechnological apparatus of brain-computer-interfaces, the technologies for brain tuning and the discourses in neuroeconomics, reveals first insights on these gender aspects in reliance with the ethical/political debate. Moreover, this paper concretizes questions for further research on gender and ethical aspects in the field of neurotechnologies. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s12152-011-9129-1 Authors Sigrid Schmitz, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, Alserstraße 23/22, 1080 Vienna, Austria Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490. (shrink)

Within barely a year, two school shootings shook Finland. The school shootings shocked Finnish society, forcing media, academics and experts, police and politicians alike to search for reasons behind the violent incidents. Focusing their analysis on the two main Finnish newspapers, Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet, authoritative sources of information for Finland’s two language communities, the authors maintain that the Finnish case contributes to research on school shootings by evidencing the intimate linkages between the state, gender and violence. The authors argue (...) that violence is to be understood through different discourses about the Finnish state. In particular, they discern three discourses about the state that produce gendered discourses of violence: the welfare state, the realist state and the neoliberal state. The authors conclude that these discourses produce different notions of rational and irrational violence thereby providing different legitimizations for male-embodied/masculine violence. (shrink)

This article focuses on transition to first-time motherhood and explores the experiences of a group of women as they anticipate, give birth, and engage in early mothering. It illuminates how these women draw on, weave together, and challenge dominant strands of discourse that circumscribe their journeys into motherhood. Using qualitative longitudinal data, prenatal and postnatal episodes of transition are explored. The analysis and juxtaposing of these data reveal the different ways women anticipate and gradually make sense of becoming mothers. While (...) there is a disjuncture between expectations and experiences for these new mothers, this article draws attention to the different ways women discursively position themselves through transition. It reveals how birth experiences can act as a discursive turning point and underscores the obduracy of some strands of dominant discourse. These findings contribute to a subtler and more nuanced understanding of the dynamic interplay between personal experience and gendered discourses. (shrink)

This article discusses the new reproductive technology of egg freezing in the context of existing literature on gender, medicalization, and infertility. What is unique about this technology is its use by women who are not currently infertile but who may anticipate a future diagnosis. This circumstance gives rise to a new ontological category of “anticipated infertility.” The author draws on participant observation and a qualitative analysis of scientific, mainstream, and marketing literature to identify and compare the representation of two different (...) candidates for egg freezing: women with cancer and healthy young women. Although both populations experience anticipated infertility, their dichotomous portrayals as appropriate candidates are demonstrative of gender norms linking women to motherhood. Egg freezing is a concise illustration of how the medicalization of women’s bodies and bodily processes masks a host of cultural anxieties about aging, illness, reproduction, and risk. (shrink)

Cluster headache is a notoriously painful and dramatic disorder. Unlike other pain disorders, which tend to affect women, cluster headache is thought to predominantly affect men. Drawing on ethnography, interviews with headache researchers, and an analysis of the medical literature, this article describes how this epidemiological “fact”—which recent research suggests may be overstated—has become the central clue used by researchers who study cluster headache, fundamentally shaping how they identify and talk about the disorder. Cluster headache presents an extreme case of (...) medicalized masculinity, magnifying the processes of gendering and bringing into relief features of the world whose routine operation we might otherwise overlook. (shrink)