Nicola Gavey

Feminist Poststructuralism and Discourse Analysis: Contributions to Feminist Psychology.

In this article I suggest that feminist poststructuralism (Weedon, 1987) is of great potential value to feminist psychologists seeking more satisfactory ways of theorizing gender and subjectivity. Some key elements of this theoretical perspective are discussed, including an understanding of knowledge as socially produced and inherently unstable, an emphasis on the importance of language and discourse, and a decentering of the subject. Discourse analysis is discussed as one way of working that is consistent with feminist poststructuralist theory. To illustrate this approach, an example is presented from my work on the sexual coercion of women within heterosexual relationships.

Subject to Romance: Heterosexual Passivity as an Obstacle to Women Initiating Condom Use

Safer sex campaigns directed at heterosexuals have increasingly targeted women to encourage them to take responsibility for condom use. It appears, however, that many women are unable or unwilling to accept this role. In this article we report on one particular kind of obstacle that some women face in initiating condom use. We draw on data from interviews with 14 women, aged 22 to 43 years, about their experiences with, and views of, condoms. There was considerable variability, as well as commonalities, among the women interviewed in the way they regarded condoms. Using a feminist poststructuralist form of discourse analysis, we explored two womens accounts of being unable to initiate condom use despite their stated intentions not to have intercourse without a condom and having condoms in their possession. We suggest that this particular dynamic results from the passivity women can experience through being positioned in a discourse of heterosexual feminine sexuality in general and a discourse of heterosexual romance in particular. We discuss how this passivity can be experienced by women who are

Dominance and Entitlement: The Rhetoric Men Use to Discuss their Violence towards Women

Academic interest in applications of rhetoric to social issues is undergoing a revival. This paper develops a rhetorical analysis of discourse generated by men who have been recently violent towards women. The texts have been drawn from transcribed interviews with 14 men who had recently begun or were about to attend stopping violence programmes. Each 90-minute interview prompted the men on their views towards women, violence and relationships. A range of rhetorical devices within the texts were identified and their effect was analysed. This paper focuses on five devices: reference ambiguity, axiom markers, metaphor, synecdoche and metonymy. The strategic effects of each device are discussed with close reference to sample passages from the transcripts. The paper explores how these rhetorical devices resource discourses of male dominance and entitlement to power, and how these in turn resource men in their violence towards women. Increased sensitivity to the nuanced effects of the rhetoric is seen to improve understanding of how men justify, camouflage and maintain positions of dominance within relationships with women.

‘Healthy Weight’ at What Cost? ‘Bulimia’ and a Discourse of Weight Control

Public health messages emphasizing ‘healthy weight’ link good health to a narrow range of body weights and stress energy regulation to achieve this. We examined whether women who practise bulimia deploy notions of ‘healthy weight’ in their talk about body management activities. Analysis is based on interviews with 15 women who practise bulimia and on material collected from cultural locations containing ‘health promotion’ advice. Poststructuralist discourse analysis revealed that slenderness was constituted as healthy in both sites and that the careful regulation of energy intake and output was similarly reified as a healthy practice. We conclude that a discourse of ‘healthy weight’ cannot be unhinged from a cultural imperative of slenderness for women, and that paradoxically ‘health’ practices provide a rationality that supports the practices of binge eating and compensating.

“IF IT'S NOT ON, IT'S NOT ON”—OR IS IT? Discursive Constraints on Women's Condom Use

Safer sex campaigns for heterosexuals have sometimes targeted women in particular to take responsibility for condom use. In this article, the authors question some of the assumptions underlying this strategy, for instance, the assumptions of womens relatively unproblematic relationship with condoms and womens control over condom use. The authors interviewed 14 women about their experiences and views of condoms and of heterosexual relationships more broadly. Using a feminist poststructuralist form of discourse analysis, they examine their accounts in relation to gendered discourses of desire and a coital imperative. They argue that an appreciation of these kinds of discursive influences is important for understanding the complex ways in which women are constrained and enabled to employ condoms for safer heterosex.

Feminist Poststructuralism and Discourse Analysis Revisited

Trying to piece together the context in which I wrote ‘‘Feminist Poststructuralism and Discourse Analysis’’ (Gavey, 1989) has taken me back (almost) to childhood! Why did I go into psychology in the first place? And why was I then such a reluctant psychologist? The article grew out of my attempts to find a different way of doing psychology, after 8 or 9 years of studying and wrestling with the discipline. It is partly a personal story, but also a story about significant shifts in the production of knowledge that were taking place at the time.

The Discursive Condition of Viagra

This research investigates the socio-cultural implications of Viagra as a biomedical solution to a medically defined problem. This New Zealand-based research involved interviews with 33 men, to examine how they discursively constituted meanings around masculinity, erections, and the role of Viagra. It is argued that the relationship between discourses of mechanistic functionality of erections, the primacy of the male as performer, and the partners pleasure as measure of success, create the conditions of possibility for a pharmaceutical solution directed at the male. The problem is configured as the uncertainty accompanying the instability evident in the relationship between these discourses. The mens discourse on the solution, Viagra, confirms this analysis.

“Trauma of Rape” Discourse: A Double-Edged Template for Everyday Understandings of the Impact of Rape?

We map a discourse of the trauma of rape that was widely drawn upon by 29 “lay” New Zealand women and men in focus group discussions about the impact of rape. Using a discursiv e approach, we identify the key interlocking elements of this discourse. It centers on the contention that rape is traumatic, and depicts this trauma as unique, sev ere, long lasting, and in need of healing. We discuss the ways in which this ostensibly more enlightened and sensitiv e framework of meaning brings forth its own ways of potentially othering, stigmatizing, v iolating, and obstructing av enues of support and understanding for women who hav e experienced rape.

Sexual Coercion Among Gay and Bisexual Men in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Until recently, sexual coercion among gay men has been regarded as virtually oxymoronic. Discourses of male sexuality as ever-present and driven, and discourses of masculinity that portray men as in control and invulnerable, converge to almost disavow the possibilities that sex could be unwanted by men, or that men could be vulnerable to being pressured into sex against their will. This article reports on interviews with 19 gay and bisexual men about their experiences of forced, coerced, or unwanted sex. We identified four general patterns in these accounts: (1) incidents involving physical force; (2) experiences in which a mans ability to refuse sex was compromised by intoxication; (3) dynamics where young and inexperienced men were coerced or pressured into unwanted sex; and (4) situations in which men felt obligated to engage in unwanted sex. Specific issues included barriers to reporting sexual assault, power dynamics in intergenerational sex, and the difficulty of refusing unwanted sex. Importantly, many of the factors identified as driving sexual coercion relate not to gay sexuality per se, but rather to masculine sexuality. Conversely, some of the factors relating to mens vulnerability to coercion were exacerbated by some features of gay sexual culture; in particular those aspects associated with existing in a marginalized territory within a wider heteronormative context.

“Bad girls” And “Good girls”? sexuality and cervical cancer

Abstract The relationship between sex and cervical cancer has sometimes been used to position women who develop cervical cancer as promiscuous and, therefore, sexually bad. This article explores sexual discourses informing cervical cancer prevention policy. We contend that a good girl/bad girl discourse influenced the particular direction of policy development. This historically pervasive discourse positions women who have sex outside certain ‘acceptable’ heterosexual relationships as, at best, promiscuous, and, at worst, as ‘whores’. When this discourse is prominent, publicising the association between sexuality and cervical cancer may deter women from being screened. New Zealand’s cervical cancer prevention policy has therefore downplayed the relationship between sexual behaviour and cervical cancer. We question whether or not it is in women’s best interests for policy to submit to, rather than directly challenge, such sexist discourses. Unarticulated norms around heterosexual intercourse and heterosexuality were also found to inform cervical cancer prevention policy.