Week 13

Question 1

Gavey/ The abstract

Answer 1

The concept of sexual empowerment is too flexible; its not helpful to focus on individual empowerment if / where this involves omitting the broader sociocultural conditions for the possibility of intimate justice for girls & women.
-Gavey wants us to see value in a reflexive, empathetic, & respectful feminist critique of the cultural conditions for such a thing as sexual empowerment

Question 2

Primary concern

Answer 2

-When empowerment is discussed as a property of individuals & not at all tethered to social reality of their lives, their bodies, their actions
-Feeling empowered is not really there same as being empowered
-Argues we should not focus on any one action or individual but rather on the cultural conditions of possibility for girls’ sexuality & empowerment

Question 3

Women and girls are caught in a bind

Answer 3

required to balance tight tensions between conformity to traditional/ acceptable feminine norms of sexuality & more liberated sexual norms of the modern emancipated

Question 4

The consequences for breaking the rules

Answer 4

is more punishing for women and girls who are not white, heterosexual, slim, conventionally attractive, and the right age.

Question 5

Empathetic Culture Critique

Answer 5

-Open up conversations that make space for us all together to understand the politics of our personal lives, & the constraints on choice- look at the possibilities open to each of us with an intersectional lens that takes difference into account.
-So we can create tools to understanding all of this, have our eyes mores wide open and empathetic.
-In the process, we acknowledge our complicities & constraints, stop- pretending like we are unaffected by the cultures we live in dynamic ways.