Search

(1) Background: This paper presents an analysis of the associations between minority stressors and activism in the population of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals in Poland. (2) Methods: The cross-sectional online-based research was conducted among 192 lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people in two groups: activists (n = 51) and people not engaged in activism (n = 141). Four scales of the Sexual Minority Stress Scale were used: Internalized Homophobia, Expectation of Rejection, Concealment, and Sexual Minority Negative Events Scale. Activism was measured using the Activism Scale and a single item asking about belonging to an activist group. (3) Results: Activists, lesbians, and gays scored significantly higher in the Sexual Minority Negative Events than people not involved in activism and bisexual individuals. Attitude toward LGBT+ activism correlated weakly and positively with Sexual Minority Negative Events and Expectation of Rejection while negatively with Internalized Homophobia. The Network Analysis showed that positive attitudes toward LGBT+ activism, the expectation of rejection, and negative events in minority stress are the most influential variables in the network model, playing a crucial role in the interaction between particular dimensions of minority stress. (4) Conclusions: Prevention and intervention programs should focus on reducing minority stress, especially negative events and rejection, especially among lesbians, gays, and people engaged in LGBT+ activism. The cooperation of politicians, lawyers, social workers, and psychologists is required to decrease homophobia and the stigmatization of people representing sexual and gender minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing rightist movement studies into the Iranian context, this study advances a generalizable understanding of the ideological, moral, and cultural activism of Islamist movements and their rightist counterparts. While numerous studies have discussed the economic explanation of rightist movements, I integrate Islamist movements in the Muslim world and rightist movements in the West to develop a generalizable cultural and moral explanation of rightist movements. Value and ideological conflicts, as well as moral outrage, drive this integrated understanding of rightist movements. The rise of innovative and contentious forms of millennialism in Iran—especially the increasing salience of the Jamkaran mosque, the rise of new media outlets and millennial discourses, and pertinent policies—provide evidence for proposing this generalizable understanding. I argue that the rise of performative contentions surrounding millennialism, known as Mahdaviat, within the pro-regime revolutionary rightist movement in Iran was Islamists' ideological response to liberal threat perceptions. These threat perceptions were activated before the liberal Reform era (1997–2005). After the ascent of Ahmadinejad to power in 2005, ideological millennialism became the dominant discursive field in Iran's state politics. Drawing on narratives of prominent Islamist figures and media personalities in Iran and events surrounding Mahdaviat, this paper advances a generalizable argument of the moral and cultural explanation of rightist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores archetypes of femininity associated with Fāṭimah al-Zahrāʾ in Twelver Shi'i hagiography through consideration of a broad range of archetypes found in the study of narrative and mythology. Many archetypes associated with goddesses of antiquity recur in portrayals of Fāṭimah al-Zahrāʾ, suggesting either cultural influence or universal archetypes. For instance, Fāṭimah embodies a youthful, innocent, virginal goddess; Jung's light and dark mother figure; and the lamenting goddess. Similar archetypes are projected onto other sacred women in Shi'ism, such as Zaynab bint ʿAlī and Fāṭimah al-Maʿṣūmah. However, other feminine archetypes are absent, some are sublimated onto male figures, and some are banalized through translating the esoteric into the exoteric. This leaves gaps in the narrative models available to faithful women. Furthermore, embodying archetypes like lamenting and suffering may be undesirable. While reformist portrayals of Fāṭimah have attempted to present her as a model for female activism, historical and hagiographical archetypes of Fāṭimah inherently clash and are difficult to disentangle. Nonetheless, considering how hagiography differs from history can help understand how the mythic does not always translate well to the mundane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Black and Latina adolescent girls experience race and gender discrimination, they may turn to their families to explore their beliefs about and responses to systemic injustice and oppression. Familial racial socialization is a likely entry point for critical action (like community activism), linking ethnic–racial identity and critical consciousness in youth development. We used hierarchical linear regression to investigate whether familial racial socialization moderated the relationship between experiences of gendered racism and community activism. We analyzed survey data for 315 Black (n = 158) and Latina/Afro-Latina (n = 157) girls (n = 282) and gender-expansive youth (age 13–17) from the southern United States. We found that girls who received more familial socialization and were more frequently stereotyped as being angry participated in more low-risk and formal political activism. Also, Black and Latina girls who were more frequently stereotyped as angry and received more messages about racism from their families engaged in more high-risk activism, while girls who were more frequently perceived as angry and received less racial socialization engaged in less high-risk activism. We discuss the implications of our results for families, educators, and scholars who support Black and Latina girls' sociopolitical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasingly diverse societal landscape in Greece for more than three decades within a context of migration, understandings of its fragile histories are still limited in shaping a sense of belonging that is open to 'otherness'. While Greek communities have utilised history as a pathway to maintain identity, other parallel histories and understandings do not resonate with 'Greekness' for most, such as the case of Greek Jewry. Critical historical perspectives can benefit from tracing 're-membering' as a feminist practice in the reassessment of societal values of inclusivity. Histories of violence and injustice can also include elements of 'difficult histories' and must be embraced to seek acknowledgement of these in promoting social change and cultural analysis for public humanities informing curation and curricula. Between eduscapes, art heritage spaces, an entry into contested and conflictual histories can expand a sense of belonging and the way we imagine our own connected histories with communities, place and nation. Greek Jews do not constitute a strong part of historical memory for Greeks in their past and present; in contrast to what is perceived as 'official' history, theirs is quite marginal. As a result, contemporary Greeks, from everyday life to academia, do not have a holistic understanding in relation to the identities of Jews in Greece, their culture or the Holocaust. Given the emergence of a new wave of artistic activism in recent years in response to the ever-increasing dominance of authoritarian neoliberalism, along with activist practices in the art field as undercurrents of resistance, in this intervention I bring together bodies of works to create a dialogic reflection with historical, artistic and feminist sources. In turn, the discussion then explores the spatiotemporal contestations of the historical geographies of Holocaust monuments in Greece. While interrogating historical amnesia, I endeavour to provide a space to engage with 'difficult histories' in their aesthetic context as a heritage of healing and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflective essay describes a research course which provided undergraduate students with an opportunity to conduct archival research on six decades of queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (QTBIPOC) activism and care that have challenged heteronormativity, cis-normativity, and racism in Canada. While there are many ways to share the findings of archival research, we chose to teach our students how to create dramatic verbatim monologues as the arts-based research method of verbatim theatre required students to use the words of activists themselves to explain why a particular moment of activism and care was needed. Students attended three different workshops during the full-year course from September 2022 to March 2023: a workshop in conducting archival research, a workshop about centring themselves and their communities in their research, and a workshop in verbatim monologue writing. Here, we reflect upon what these workshops taught us about archival research, working with Indigenous archival material, and rupturing systems of oppression in our own bodies. At the end of the course, students reported their take-aways from the course. This included a new understanding that it was possible to conduct research on topics they felt passionate about and that theatre-based research provided them with a way to express the findings of their research in forms other than writing essays. This new-found freedom was life-changing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2022, Greece became the fifth country in the world to legally ban Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM). The bill was prepared by the Ministry of Health and the intersex-led organisation "Intersex Greece". Even though the organisation was only established in 2021, it was actively engaged in the whole law-making process, which resulted in a legal text that became a best practice worldwide. This article tracks the history of the intersex movement in Greece and shows that the movement emerged around 2009. Then, based on online interviews, blogs, videos and articles, all strategies and alliances used by the movement over the years to advocate for intersex rights are explored, especially in the year 2017 when the law on Legal Gender Recognition (LGR) was passed and in 2022 when IGM was banned. Furthermore, online public documents from the Greek Parliament are consulted to provide a comprehensive analysis of how the social, cultural, economic, and political environment in the country affected these legal developments. Based on the above evidence, this article shows that the law-making process on IGM in Greece started 13 years before the law and was the outcome of a long process of multiple and unique intersecting factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how and under what conditions Italy's civil society organizations (CSOs) have resorted to transnational activism and to what extent these efforts translate into impactful political advocacy. The analysis focuses on the action strategies of these civil society actors that have come under considerable pressure through the resurgence of populist–nationalist actors in the domestic arena. Developing an actor-centred perspective from below, this article draws on a series of 27 interviews conducted with these organizations' representatives working primarily on issues related to migration and refugees in Italy. The empirical study examines some key initiatives that see domestic CSOs as protagonists in the transnational realm and explicates their motivations, approaches, and experiences. Conceptually, the article distinguishes between the vertical and horizontal Europeanization of CSOs. While there are notable opportunities for CSOs to engage in Brussels-centred governance and policy making, the effectiveness of horizontal Europeanization in the form of cross-border networking is—at first sight paradoxically—limited by the EU's system of multi-level governance. The central argument about Europeanizing civil society activism is that these processes are primarily driven by a pragmatic pursuit of solutions to concrete political challenges that could not be properly addressed in an increasingly hostile domestic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, the field of forensic anthropology has become more diverse, bringing unique perspectives to a previously homogeneous field. This diversification has been accompanied by recognizing the need for advocacy and activism in an effort to support the communities we serve: marginalized communities that are often overrepresented in the forensic population. As such, forensic anthropologists see the downstream effects of colonialism, white supremacy, inequitable policies, racism, poverty, homophobia, transphobia, gun violence, and misogyny. Some argue that advocacy and activism have no place in forensic anthropological praxis. The counterarguments for engaging in advocacy and activism uphold white, heterosexual, cisgender, and ableist privilege by arguing that perceived objectivity and unbiased perspectives are more important than personally biasing experiences and positionality that supposedly jeopardize the science and expert testimony. Advocacy and activism, however, are not new to the practice of anthropology. Whether through sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, or other areas of biological anthropology, activism and advocacy play an important role, using both the scientific method and community engagement. Using a North American approach, we detail the scope of the issues, address how advocacy and activism are perceived in the wider discipline of anthropology, and define ways in which advocacy and activism can be utilized more broadly in the areas of casework, research, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent onslaught of educational censorship measures is the latest and most extreme manifestation of the perennial struggle over curriculum and politics in schools. Lessons from past and present teacher resistance, solidarity, and activism can inspire and galvanize teachers in this moment within the long struggle for educational justice. This article describes three orientations that may help teachers avoid self-censorship and take action: teachers as classroom-level judges, teachers as part of a collective, and teachers as historical actors. We also present reflective questions that can help teachers identify supports available to them and actions they can take in light of their particular contexts. Our hope is that these tools for thinking about the role of the teacher and taking action will offer both teachers and teacher educators critical hope in our collective struggle for the common good and a more democratic future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]