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This article explores the intersectional perspectives of parents of transgender children in Aotearoa (New Zealand). The substantial body of research on parent experiences in this area has largely focused on parents who are white North American middle-class cisgender women. We seek to extend this research by taking an intersectional approach and examining the perspectives of a group of participants of different genders, sexual orientations, and cultural backgrounds. We asked 20 participants in Aotearoa who self-identified as gender-affirming parents to draw their experience of parenting a transgender child and discuss this with us in interview. The research resulted in rich visual and verbal depictions of gender-affirming parenting, drawing from the intersectional perspectives of Māori, Pākehā, Pacific, Asian, queer, straight, female, male and non-binary parents. Using visual and verbal discourse analysis, we explore how the participants constructed their experience from their uniquely situated perspectives, both specific and multilayered. We argue that the parents' perspectives reveal both challenges and strengths, reflecting the burdens of intersectional oppression, while also fostering the parents' capacity for engaging in discursive resistance to advance their children's interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of support worker responses to intellectually disabled women's sex and reproductive health. Drawing on reproductive justice theory, interviews with seven support workers from various disability service providers in New Zealand were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings point to the persistence of a sexual risk discourse, which undermines progressive perspectives, including the rights-based approach that is usually advocated for in sexual and reproductive health, and ultimately constrains intellectually disabled women's sexual agency. The value of a reproductive justice framework for countering risk-oriented framings in favor of a social justice perspective that expands the notions of individual rights is discussed. The findings support a growing global evidence base and have implications for national and international policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affirmative sexual subjectivity and agency are fostered by positive understandings of sexual desire and pleasure. Yet, research shows that print media circulate problematic discourses, including constructing women's desire as passive, linked to objectification, or as a form of (postfeminist) empowerment enacted through pleasing men. Developing this work with a specific focus on digital media and the subject positions offered there, a Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis was performed on 75 online articles, identified through a systematic search intending to replicate the information young women are exposed to during everyday internet use. The analysis produced three subject positions: the "Made through the male gaze" woman whose experience of sexual desire was contingent on men's desire; the "Working on it woman" who employed self-help methods to improve her libido and match a socially acceptable male standard; and the "Sexual connoisseur," a postfeminist subject position who is sexually knowledgeable and confident yet still prioritises men's pleasure. The analysis demonstrates a hetero-gendered discursive framework operating within mainstream media accounts, wherein men's sexual agency and desire are prioritised over women's even in apparently sex-positive and feminist-oriented articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Death by assisted dying has long received media attention and remains a current socio-political health topic today. For many, understanding assisted dying is derived from media representations that position health, illness and dying in particular ways. These various stories shift and shape how we understand ourselves. With a Foucauldian lens, we explore what the media made possible for people to think, feel and do in relation to this phenomenon. From media articles collated in early 2018 we identify representations of a particularly individualised "autonomy' which intersects with assisted dying as a 'right' and necessary 'choice' to control when, where and how to die. Those with mental illness were excluded from this discourse for lacking a 'rational' sensibility. From the autonomous right to choose discourse, two subject positions arose; my choice and mine alone and the defender of rights. A counter-discourse positioning assisted dying as perilous for society and the subject position of concerned protector emerged in resistance to the autonomous right to choose. A particularly Western and privileged subject was representative of those in favour of legitimating the practice. Non-Western understandings were absent, religious and spiritual considerations marginalised, the disabled body let die, and the older adult voice silent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on a small evaluation research project, conducted in one early childhood education (ECE) centre in Auckland, New Zealand, with the aim of supporting its capacity for self-review. The centre management and governance team was motivated to seek out the support of research as part of their response to two recent Education Review Office (ERO) reports that had cast doubt over the value of their transition-to-school programme, and the pedagogy used at the centre. This article draws on this evaluation research to discuss knowledge debates that featured in the discourses of the centre and its community: dispute about the value of the transition programme; the paradox of mandatory self-review; and the difficult work of changing practice, in responding to ERO advice to move away from teacher-directed pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a decade and a half since Nigel Edley and Margaret Wetherell's (2001) “Jekyll and Hyde: Men's constructions of feminism and feminists” called scholarly attention to men's discursive splitting of feminism and feminists into good and monstrous variants. In this article, we ask whether this double vision persists and how it operates in a cultural moment when feminism and feminist issues are (re)entering the mainstream. We draw from data collected in the course of a New Zealand study exploring how young people were making sense of sexism, feminism and gender (in)equality. Our analysis of participants' accounts suggests a binary discursive formulation of feminism is alive and well: “unreasonable feminism” damns and dismisses feminism, while “fair feminism” affirms it, aligning it with equality. Where previous research has shown how such pejorative and affirming accounts are worked together in ways that dilute or depoliticise feminism, we explore how teenagers who explicitly adopted a feminist identity drew on these discourses to justify a more politicised feminist position. Many participants adopted a practice of “reasonable feminism”, embodying and evidencing feminist reasonableness through their rhetorical and performative devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In crisis situations, the authority of the nurse is legitimised by legal powers and professional knowledge. Crisis stakeholders include those who directly use services and their families, and a wide range of health, social service and justice agencies. Alternative strategies such as therapeutic risk taking from the perspective of socially inclusive recovery policy coexist in a sometimes uneasy relationship with mental health legislation. A critical discourse analysis was undertaken to examine mental health policies and guidelines, and we interviewed service users, families, nurses and the police about experiences of accessing services. For those who attempt to access services early in crisis, as is suggested to lead to a better outcome, provision of services and rights appear to be reversed by an attempt to exclude them through practices that screen them out, rather than prioritising a choice in access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of global debates about safety and ethics of supporting women to give birth at home, it is important to analyse documents governing midwifery and obstetric practice and influence decision‐making around place of birth. In Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, relatively small numbers of women choose to give birth at home despite their midwifery colleges' support. In the United States and Australia, the obstetric colleges do not support homebirth and these countries have lower numbers of women who birth at home, compared with the United Kingdom. There are numerous regulatory and industry challenges for midwives attending homebirths. This paper reports on a Foucauldian analysis of Australian obstetric and midwifery colleges' position statements about homebirth, who have conflicting views, with the view to understanding their arguments and underlying assumptions. The documents highlighted tensions between competing discourses of risk and autonomy and differences in academic argument. Opportunities for strengthening their statements are highlighted. The methodology is applicable for future analysis of similar documents governing practice in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fathers’ rights movement is a worldwide phenomenon that takes a particular form in our geopolitical region. Responding initially to an apparent judicial preference for mothers to have custody of children, the movement grew alongside, and in resistance to, the women’s movement. In this paper, we analyse how texts of fathers’ rights discourse strategically appropriate egalitarianism in the context of gendered struggles over rights within the nuclear family. Texts from four fathers’ rights websites are engaged to locate, construct and critique the discursive power of the movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We discuss examples of strategies that appropriate egalitarianism, engage quantifying logic, and demonise women and argue how the fathers’ rights sites exemplify resistance to the impact of the women’s movement on Family Court and criminal justice interventions into violence against women at home. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]