M. Candace Christensen

Technology Access and Use, and Their Associations With Social Engagement Among Older Adults: Do Women and Men Differ?

Objectives To examine how information and communication technology (ICT) access and use are conceptually incorporated in the Successful Aging 2.0 framework. Method Using data from the 2011 National Health and Aging Trends Study (N = 6,476), we examined how ICT access and use for different purposes are associated with social engagement (i.e., informal and formal social participation) by gender. Weighted logistic regression analyses were performed. Results Findings revealed that men were more likely to access and use ICT than women. ICT access was positively associated with all types of womens social engagement, but only with mens informal social participation. Information technology (IT) use for health matters was positively associated with formal social participation for women and with informal social participation for men. IT use for personal tasks was negatively associated with formal social participation for older adults. Communication technology use was positively associated with formal and informal social participation for women and men. Discussion This study supports the expansion of the successful aging model by incorporating ICT access and use. Further, it assists in the identification of specific technologies that promote active engagement in later life for women and men.

The Ray Rice Domestic Violence Case Constructing Black Masculinity Through Newspaper Reports

This case study used concepts associated with Black masculinity to critically analyze newspaper depictions of the Ray Rice Domestic Violence Case (RRDVC). The pattern matching and content analysis revealed the following themes: colorblindness, binary depictions, and commodification. This article used the RRDVC to establish a persistent pattern of public discourse that situates Black male athletes accused of committing crimes within a series of controlling images depicted by the media that serve to maintain White supremacist patriarchal understandings of Black masculinity. The results of the analysis reveal how hegemonic depictions of Ray Rice serve the White supremacist patriarchy in maintaining the containment and commodification of Black men and perpetuate the acceptability of violence against Black women.

“I didn’t raise a d#@k!” how parents perceive and address gendered bullying with children

ABSTRACT This is an exploratory study that uses a critical feminist approach to examine how parents perceive and respond to gendered bullying with children. Past research conceptualizes bullying from a feminist perspective and previous studies examine how parents perceive bullying. This study moves beyond earlier investigations by integrating these sites of inquiry. The author engages five fathers and eight mothers to participate in this study (n = 13). Data collection includes semi-structured individual interviews and the data analysis is based on a critical feminist approach to phenomenological inquiry. The data analysis shows how the majority of parents, in this study, do perceive and address bullying from a critical feminist perspective, in particular, according to three categories: (a) challenging binary thinking b) understanding identities/positionalities and c) perceiving/addressing gendered power relations. The results lay the foundation for practice and policy implications aimed at bullying prevention and future research to further examine social phenomenon related to gendered bullying.

Social Work Practice and Sexuality: Applying a Positive Sexuality Model to Enhance Diversity and Resolve Problems

In recent years, there has been considerable attention within the social work profession surrounding diverse personal, family, and community issues pertaining to sexuality, yet social workers typically receive very little training on sexuality. This article discusses several such issues before introducing a recently proposed positive sexuality framework, which was designed to help facilitate sexual diversity and resolve a wide range of sociosexual problems. The positive sexuality framework is comprised of eight interrelated dimensions and, while designed to address sexual issues specifically, overlaps with and complements social work generalist practice. Thus, social workers and helping professionals may find increased success in better understanding and addressing a wide variety of sociosexual problems and issues by utilizing a positive sexuality framework in conjunction with generalist practice.

Activating College Men to Prevent Sexual Violence: A Qualitative Investigation.

This study explores the experiences of male college students who participated in a theatre-based, peer-education, sexual assault prevention presentation. The program was established through the use of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Theatre of the Oppressed, as well as multicultural feminist theory and approaches. These models emphasize subverting social norms that perpetuate sexual violence. Data were collected via field notes and focus group interviews. Implications for how higher education administrators can develop programs to prevent sexual violence against college women are discussed, as well as future research opportunities.

Navigating the Concepts of Gender and Violence With Young Children

The aims of this research were to investigate how parents explore gender and violence with children and develop a conceptual groundwork for understanding the relationship between parental attitudes and behaviors and gender-based violence. Few social work scholars have investigated how parents process gender and violence with their children. This study design was grounded in a phenomenological approach. For data collection, the authors conducted semistructured individual interviews with a sample of five fathers, eight mothers, with at least one child between age 3 and 11 years. The data analysis consisted of In-Vivo and Value coding, from which the researchers developed themes to illustrate the findings. The overarching category that emerged from the data analysis was witnessing and themes included beholding, being present, and perceiving. These themes appeared to be in alignment with mindfulness attitudes and practices and illustrated the way these parents processed gender and violence with their children. The authors developed practice, policy, and research implications from this research.

VIII. New tools: Young feminism in the rural west

I am the product of a second-wave feminist. Towards the late 1970s my mother left the Latter Day Saint Church (the Mormons), divorced my father, and became a feminist. I remember my mother picking me up after school one day and wearing a button on her tweed jacket, ‘‘ERA, Yes!’’ I asked my mother ‘‘What is ERA?’’ And she responded, ‘‘Equal Rights Amendment, honey, Equal Rights; that is what we are asking for.’’ She emphasized the ‘‘we’’ meaning ‘‘you and me, daughter.’’ With much support and guidance from my family (mother in particular), I obtained my first academic position in a small town in the rural, western United States. Traditional gender norms are enforced in that region by an overt system of surveillance, geographic isolation, and fear of cultural change (Little & Panelli, 2003). There is also a strong tradition and history of violence and hyper-masculinity in the area (Aho, 1995; Campbell, Bell, & Finney, 2006; Kimmel & Ferber, 2000). It was both exhilarating and frightening to identify and behave as a multicultural feminist violence prevention scholar and activist in that space. Like many young feminists I started writing a blog to counter that culture (Madden & Zickuhr, 2011). Writing the blog gave me a venue for analyzing, critiquing, and wrestling with my challenges of working in a traditional, conservative community. Madden and Zickuhr (2011) recently published a report documenting women’s social networking site use. The researchers found that women ages 18–29 are the ‘‘power users of social networking’’ and there are no significant demographic differences among those users (p. 3). The Internet has become a site for feminist activism that is accessible to women despite our intersectional differences. Regardless of race, class, sexual identity, ability, and geographic location young