Intersectional analysis of women human rights defenders' lived experiences under COVID-19 lockdowns in Zimbabwe

This paper focuses on providing a nuanced understanding of how COVID-19 lockdowns in Zimbabwe exacerbated the vulnerability of women human rights defenders (WHRDs). It utilises a desk research approach to narrate the lived experiences of WHRDs in a context where historically they have faced abuse, exclusion, and social and political stigma. COVID-19 evolved from a public health crisis to a sociopolitical and economic crisis that affected multiple groups. Government responses to COVID-19 exacerbated the ‘hostile environment' specifically for WHRDs in different social and virtual spaces, and they had to grapple with the multi-dimensional crises of livelihoods, health, state repression, and everyday survival. Civil and political liberties came under severe attack in Zimbabwe after March 2020. The most apparent were the violations of the right to freedom of movement and the right to freedom of association (including the right to religion) through curtailment of population mobility as well as postponement of political and elections-related activities on 25 March 2020. In all these spaces WHRDs were targeted by government and their activities curtailed by the curfews imposed within communities. The soaring economic crisis and the effects of COVID-19 are intertwined with police brutality, abduction of political and media personalities including WHRDs, and harassment of press and silencing of WHRD voices. State-sponsored attacks against women have come in the form of beatings by the police and army, and arrests under the guise of enforcing COVID-19 restrictions. This paper also highlights the agency of WHRDs to continuously create spaces and ways to keep fighting for improved service delivery in the face of increased state repression, by confronting institutionalised impunity, risking jail to protect and promote civic and political rights, and challenging oppressive traditional practices. © 2023 Oxfam KEDV.

Narratives of Success and Failure in Ressentiment: Assuming Victimhood and Transmuting Frustration among Young Korean Men

In this article, we examine toxic masculinity, anti-feminist, anti-globalisation, and anti-military conscription positions in the narratives of what constitutes success and failure among young South Korean men during the COVID-19 pandemic. Misogynistic accounts attributed to the globalised effects of neoliberalism and its evolution through South Korean meritocratic competition, compounded by the social isolation of the pandemic, remain a puzzle psychologically, despite their toxic emotionality. We use the analytical framework of ressentiment to consolidate references to moral victimhood, indignation, a sense of destiny, powerlessness, and transvaluation, as components of a single emotional mechanism responsible for misogynistic accounts. In an empirical plausibility probe, we analyse qualitative surveys with young South Korean men and examine the content of the far-right social sharing site Ilbe (일베) which hosts conversations of young men about success and self-improvement. Our findings show envy, shame, and inefficacious anger transvaluated into to moral victimhood, misogynistic hatred, vindictiveness against women and feminists, and anti-globalisation stances. We discuss how the content of these narratives of success and failure in ressentiment relates to the electoral win of the right-wing People Power party in March 2022 which capitalised on anti-feminist grievances. We also consider the socio-political consequences of ressentiment narratives in the highly gendered and polarised South Korean society and expand the study of ressentiment outside the context of Western democracies where it has been most extensively elaborated. © 2023 by the authors.

Steps in Incremental Activism

In "The Promise of the Green New Deal: A 21st-Century Federal Theatre Project," I argued that a reimagined Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was a necessary response to the multiple crises faced by the field: 1) ongoing lack of equity in funding across race, gender, and geography;2) racism, misogyny, ableism, transphobia, and other forms of bias that cause ongoing harm;3) abusive and exploitative labor practices;and, of course, 4) COVID-19's widespread devastation of the theatre. [...]it would serve as a communications resource center for professional, community, and academic theatre, thus enabling us to share information and resources with other theatres and community, religious, and civic organizations. [...]I map a preliminary plan for a structure of communications and support that demonstrates the potential of a shift from crisis rhetoric to incremental activism. Minimum operating expenses of $50,000 in most recently completed fiscal year Professional paid leadership, including at least one full-time paid professional director or manager (filled either by one individual or shared) Evidence of rigorous pursuit of theatrical form, as shown by artists' payroll activity of at least 15 weeks per year or by a minimum of 50 performances per year A commitment to the rehearsal process which is demonstrated by at least 30 hours of rehearsal time for primary production activities Minimum of one year's prior existence as a professional producing organization with continuity of operation Community vitality, as evidenced by local, state or national funding sources, local media coverage and/or community awards or other recognition of the value of the theatre's work Diversification of funding sources

No Place for Hate California: A Model for Community-Centered Policymaking

These are just three of more than 11,000 reports of hate against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) shared with the Stop AAPI Hate coalition during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many more acts continue to go unreported, making the actual number much higher-potentially in the millions. Reports of anti-AAPI hate come from all fifty states and the District of Columbia, with nearly 40 percent from California. In response to the rise in hate against AAPI communities, Stop AAPI Hate introduced No Place for Hate California, a package of first-in-the-nation, state-level policy proposals. Together, these proposals take a gender-based, public health, and civil rights approach to addressing the racialized and sexualized verbal harassment experienced by AAPIs (especially AAPI women) in public, which comprise a majority of the reports submitted to Stop AAPI Hate. Stop AAPI Hate partnered with state legislators and mobilized a coalition of over fifty community-based organizations.

"Watch me pretend to punch my girlfriend”: exploring youth responses to viral dating violence

Dating violence among adolescents is a severe public health issue that has escalated rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article explores young people's responses to social media trends normalizing dating violence. Through analysis of the "pretend to punch your girlfriend” trend on the social media platform TikTok, this study asks: how do youth make sense of dating violence on social media? And what do their emotional responses reveal about emerging attitudes towards dating violence and relationship equity? This study explores the "feeling rules” constructed by youth in response to dating violence online through a mixed-method analysis of user comments. This article concludes with platform design solutions to regulate the rise of dating violence on social networks. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Editorial Introduction

What is there to say during these tumultuous times? Over the last year, in each introduction I've written for an issue of Feminist Formations, it seems there are new crises and violences to contend with. Living through a deadly global pandemic, we have sustained so many losses. At the time of this writing, COVID cases in India have overwhelmed the healthcare system, particularly in rural areas. There is a desperate shortage of hospital beds, antiviral drugs, vaccines, and even oxygen to treat the rising number of patients. In the US, anti-Asian violence has increased exponentially, evidenced by the recent shootings of six Asian American women in Atlanta. In many parts of the country, violence against Asians has specifically targeted Asian elders and women. Police violence against Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities continues, and while many felt relief over the recent guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd, we also must contend with the fact that fewer than 5 percent of police who commit acts of violence against BIPOC communities are ever held responsible. And in Gaza, Palestinian people continue to experience state and settler-colonial violence from the Israeli government, with more than 145 Palestinians—including forty-one children—killed by Israeli bombing raids this month, and nearly a thousand Palestinians wounded. We are reminded that what is happening in Palestine is a feminist issue.

Screening Anti-Asian Racism Gendered and Racialized Discourses in Film and Television

The global pan demic of COVID-19 has exac er bated anti-Asian rac ism???the demon iza tion of the Asian Amer i can and Pacific Islander com mu ni ties as viral ori gins???in the United States. Offering strat e gies for inclu sion and for iden ti fy ing tacit forms of misog y nis tic rac ism, this arti cle ana lyzes the man i fes ta tion of the ideas of yel low peril and yel low fever in recent films and tele vi sion series. The spec ta tor ial aspect of rac ism has both fetishized Asian bod ies and erased Asianness from con tent cre a tors??? visual land scapes. These case stud ies reveal that racialized think ing is insti tu tion al ized as power rela tions in the cul tural and polit i cal life, take the form of polit i cal mar gin al i za tion of minor ity groups, and cause emo tional dis tress and phys i cal harm within and beyond the fic tional uni verse.

Women and fairness: Navigating an unfair world

According to the John Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Centre (https://coronavirus.ihu.edu/map.html). by April 2022, more than six million people had lost their lives due to the virus, with millions more having lost their jobs. The hegemonic heteropatriarchal gender order of many communities, therefore, requires a rethinking in this day and age when life systems are drastically changing and the gender divide in skills and careers has been reduced. [...]the onus is on those who can, to take up arms and remind the world of their daily struggles in overcoming the barriers to full recognition as human beings. The collection of chapters in this book highlights the unfairness of such oppression and hindrances placed in women's career and livelihood paths and societal participation. [...]it is hoped that those who read this book will gain a revitalised sense of urgency to revisit the unique barriers placed before women as they manoeuvre their paths in life. The author discusses the strengthening of female citizenship in these states as an issue of public concern in need of the state's involvement in protecting women through new social welfare schemes, female police officers, and the first-time entry of female prosecutors in courts after 2014.

EDITORIAL

[...]to the ferocity expressed in Hyland's production, Adriann Smith interprets the dissonance and distance inherent in key definitions of dramatic irony through an analysis of the works of three New Zealand artists: the songs of Andrew London, the play Home Land (Gary Henderson, 2005) and the opera Bitter Calm (Stuart Hoar, 1993). While acknowledging that these projects were, in part, a pragmatic response to diminishing on-campus resources, they present a compelling argument for the capacity of site-specific and site-responsive performance to embed student experience in their local communities. Demonstrating similar concerns with both the participation and representation of community in a regional Australian context, Vahri McKenzie offers a critical appraisal of the development of a process from which emerged a production of Euripides' The Bacchae (here renamed Bakkhai), in collaboration with an ensemble of professional and emerging artists and community members in Bunbury, Western Australia.

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

JFSR [Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion] and CoLaboratory will begin curating related information from the organization's history, including retrospective contributions such as roundtables, lists of editors and board members from the very beginning, etc." Peter Sabo and Rhiannon Graybill's article, "The Bible and Margaret Atwood's The Testaments," continues the twin themes of misogyny and reimaginings in examining how Atwood's novel subversively draws upon the Bible to suggest the liberatory power of infinite interpretations in rewriting stories replete with "misogynist representations of gender, violence, and patriarchy," and whether such an approach is successful (132). Haruka Umetsu Cho takes us to Japan in her analysis of writings from the 1970s by female Japanese Christians, who simultaneously relocate-an interpretive act-"the oppression of women in the church within the larger issues of Japanese colonial legacy" (185) and are blinded by reflection on race, bringing us full circle to the deep connections between colonization and racism also drawn in several of the reflections in the roundtable.

Feminist Loneliness Studies: an introduction

Writing about loneliness has been a struggle in the midst of the pandemic. Characterized by loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and fear, the COVID-19 pandemic is an exceptionally challenging time. At various points while navigating this loneliness project amid a particularly lonely time, we lamented the seeming futility of it all. A main goal of developing a Feminist Loneliness Studies in this introduction is to understand the ways that systems of oppression – white supremacy, settler colonialism, anti-queer bias, misogyny, neoliberal capitalism, and so on – create our lonely world. To date, there remains no comprehensive feminist analysis of the structural conditions that both produce and intensify experiences of loneliness. We aim to remedy this gap. That is, we seek to address what a Feminist Loneliness Studies can contribute to understanding the complexities of this complicated emotion. For example, what is the unique loneliness of the feminist killjoy who calls out, or calls in, existing forms of queerphobia, racism, and sexism? What does it mean to be a politicized person and how does that result in both alienation and isolation? What might the relationship be between white supremacy and loneliness? How is loneliness both individual and systemic, and what is the relationship between the two? What distinctive forms of loneliness are created by ableism, sanism, neoliberalism, capitalism, globalization, and the gig economy? Ought loneliness be avoided at all costs? What are the ethics of loneliness? In our introduction to this special issue, we unpack and theorize the potential perils and generative possibilities offered up by this profound emotion. Establishing a Feminist Loneliness Studies provides us with the space we need to begin addressing and comprehending loneliness.