FINAL TAKE HOME EXAM GESO 1001 COURSEHERO

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1 Definitions/Significance 1. Heteronormative Gender Binary The heteronormative gender binary is a rigid social norm in which people are placed into one of two categories: male or female. That is a cisgender male or a cisgender male. This binary does not take into account the existence of transgender, gender non-conforming and gender-expansive people, and therefore is not representative of a large fraction of society. It also does not include queer people. The heteronormative gender binary has long since been acknowledged as not only an inaccurate to how we function as a society – as many, if not all, do not fit into such structured boxes – but also extremely non-inclusive. As Alok Vaid- Menon (2015) states in Alok Vaid-Menon Exists Outside of your Heteronormative Gender Binary, we have created norms in society for every little thing, expecting all of us to correctly fit in and follow them, instead of acknowledging the reality that none of us can fit into them. Gender cannot be divided into two distinct categories by certain behaviours, clothing, colours, etc. everyone behaviours in their own way and expresses themselves in their own ways. it is neither indicative of sexuality nor gender. 2. Killjoy A killjoy, in the general sense, is someone who disrupts the current environment, either through their need to point out something or simply just to ruin the mood. A killjoy, discussed in feminist studies, is someone who disrupts the harmonic flow of society by bringing to attention the dynamics of sexism, heterosexism and racism. In Brazilian Migrant Women as Killjoys: Disclosing Racism in “Friendly” Portugal (Franca & Oliveira, 2021), Sarah Ahmed’s definition of a killjoy is discussed. Because they are intent on exposing the oppressive barriers within society, they are seen as killjoys as they are then disrupting the carefully curated illusion of happiness within the community that comes at the expense of

2 those that have been continually silenced. Ahmed describes categories of the killjoy: the feminist killjoy, the angry black woman, the unhappy queer, and the melancholic migrant. Franca and Oliveira focus on the former and the latter. Feminist killjoys are those who refuse to take part in the heteronormative gendered society, instead choosing to bring attention to the sexist and the power imbalance within gender, and are therefore seen as frequent troublemakers. To expose these discriminatory dynamics is to bring about bad feelings to the surface, which in turn “kills” the community’s happiness. Similarly, the melancholic migrant is one who “disrupts” their host country’s happiness by bringing attention to the ongoing racism and other discriminatory policies within the nation, they are seen as disruptions, as they oppose to widespread western understanding that migrants should be grateful for their host countries as it helped them “escape” their home countries. 3. Structural Violence Structural violence, as defined in Responding to the Structural Violence of Migrant Domestic Work: Insights from Participatory Action Research with Migrant Caregivers in Canada (Bhuyan et al., 2018) refers to institutions and practices, such as immigration policies, that prevent people from meeting their basic needs. They are a form of gender-based violence, as they ensure male domination within these structures, norms, social institutions, and practices to maintain systems of inequality throughout history intersecting with racism, sexism, classism, and ableism along with the production of several discriminatory immigration policies. Structural violence is not often covert they are often hidden behind many policies as the goal here is to make it harder for the less advantaged, be it racially, through class or ability (to name a few), to meet their basic needs. They are systems of oppression that are integrated into the legal system to maintain that oppression and prevent people, often migrants, from bettering their lives. It is a cruel, invisible practice that hurts many people and benefits even less in the bigger picture.

3 4. Queer Fatalism Queer fatalism is the notion that queerness, or to be queer, is just another path to unhappiness and misery. It is the belief that just because someone is not cisgender and heterosexual, they are “doomed” to lead a life of sadness and pain. As Sarah Ahmed (2017) says, oftentimes, queer fatalism is used as a crutch to explain away queer deaths – that is, the death of the queer person is likely because of their queerness. The issue here is that happiness has so often been defined alongside the heteronormative standards, so to be anything outside automatically means you are bound to lead a less happy life. But happiness is not just found in heteronormativity. Queer happiness is real, but it keeps getting side-lined by homophobia, transphobia and other acts of violence against queer people. Queer violence is nothing new, and it is often seen as an inevitability for a queer person – hence the tragic end to a tragic life. But it is not queer people enforcing this violence. Homophobic and transphobic attacks are a result of people viewing gender roles as a structure within society and so those who do not fit within these structures are othered and targeted. The idea of queer fatalism can be extinguished as soon as homophobia and the heteronormative gender binary are. 5. Carceral Feminism Carcerality is the practice of punishing through criminal, legal, and policing systems, which then leads to incarceration, surveillance, and control. This has the most impact on the lives of marginalized people. Within Canadian prisons, for instance, Indigenous women are vastly overrepresented. Carceral feminism, as noted in The Complainer as Carceral Feminist (Ahmed, 2022), is a term that has been greatly misappropriated. It has been used by white feminism to separate themselves from feminists of colour. According to them, carceral feminism is to complain. Therefore, issues that black feminists and feminists of colour find important are in a way negated by white feminists who choose to

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4 simply chalk it down to “complaining,” invalidating their issues. This then causes racial ripples as feminists of colour so often have to present a more placating image to avoid harassment, so to be called carceral feminists puts the spotlight on them as aggressive or unreasonable. We can also consider gender roles here as the concept of carceral feminism is brought about simply because feminists of colour raise valid issues. This is further propagating the stereotype of women and female feminists complaining, falling into a negative gender stereotype that has been placed upon them. Short Answer Questions 1. How do migrant Brazilian women in Portugal and migrant domestic workers in Canada experience and also resist marginalization and racialization? Use specific examples from course materials to compare and contrast. Brazilian Migrant Women as Killjoys: Disclosing Racism in “Friendly” Portugal (Franca & Oliveira, 2021), discusses how migrant Brazilian women in Portugal have been subject to extreme prejudice and racism, both blatant and subtle, but equally harmful nonetheless. Franca and Oliveira provide several examples in their paper. A Brazilian woman in a position of higher authority over a Portuguese woman – a demonstration of inverse power relations – results in verbal aggression being provoked by the Portuguese woman, as she believes herself to be superior to the Brazilian woman and fights to “reclaim ” her superiority. She further goes on to allege that the only reason she would move to Portugal is to find herself a Portuguese husband, ridding her of her agency and feeding into the colonial view of Brazilian women being naturally seductive and sensual, holding power over Portuguese men. This accusation is consistent with comments and attacks that Brazilian women have to face. Even though women under the colonial regime often had to face sexual exploitation, the image of depravity, immorality and perverse behaviour was often placed upon them, the victims.

5 Brazilian women, more often than not, are subjected to derogatory and sexual comments by women and men alike, portraying them as objects for the pleasure of men as opposed to being people with their agency. Responding to the Structural Violence of Migrant Domestic Work: Insights from Participatory Action Research with Migrant Caregivers in Canada (Bhuyan et al., 2018) similarly talks about marginalisation and racialisation more specifically faced by immigrant caregivers in Canada. They commonly have to live with precarious working conditions and, as a result, are forcibly subjugated to financial and psychological abuse from their employers. Financial abuse includes unpaid overtime, being threatened with debt, and having to pay processing fees that are supposed to be paid by the employer, among others. Psychological abuse takes place in a variety of ways. a common theme here is caregivers employed by a relative were more vulnerable to exploitation under the guise of “indebtedness” – one woman left her job in the Philippines to work for her cousin in Canada, resulting in minimum “allowance” and a spiral into depression before she was able to move away. Many women faced sexual harassment from their employers or patients in elderly homes, from being groped or non-consensual kisses. These types of mental abuse led to many feeling isolated and trapped. 2. In their article, Edmiston et al. (2022) include an excerpt by Alexis Chavez, who suggests we should be asking, “in what meaningful ways can we improve the lives of trans people?” rather than “are trans people different?” What are the ways in which trans lives are made difficult, and how can we begin to improve the lives of trans people? Use specific examples from course materials (hint: think about multileveled approaches).

6 Historically, transgender people have gone through a significantly larger amount of trauma in their lives simply because of how they are perceived in society. Sex and Gender Development (Edmiston et al. 2022) highlights several ways in which trans lives have been made more difficult along with ways we can help in making them easier. They include an excerpt from Alexis Chavez, who discusses ways research into trans lives can be used to make trans lives easier instead of looking at them in the medical sense to affirm them to the cisnormative standard. Transgender people have a higher chance of experiencing unemployment, homelessness, and poverty. Almost directly linked to these are high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. As a result of societal discrimination against trans people. It is also found that the act of supporting people in their gender identity causes these high rates to plummet. Trans youth have also faced difficulties when it comes to hormone prescription, as doctors may not feel certain about prescribing such medicine to young people, making it difficult for trans teens to access their needs at such a crucial time in their lives. To fix this, there was the first study into trans youth funded by the National Institute of Health in 2015, to help trans youth all across the United States. This type of research assists in affirming the benefits and risks of hormone-related drugs, and educating health professionals and the common person alike. Furthermore, conversion therapy has been a massive hindrance within the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, for gay and trans people alike, albeit in different ways. It has proved to have lasting, damaging effects on the people forced to endure it, often young people. To combat this, research to gather evidence against these unethical practices will help in protecting young people from going through this, along with causing notable and professional organizations to take a stand against it, doing what they can do to discredit such a harmful practice.

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7 3. How do Johnk and Khan (2019) understand the Medical Industrial Complex in relation to interlocking systems of oppression, such as ableism, capitalism, hetero/cisnormativity, colonialism, and white supremacy? Use specific examples from course materials. Johnk and Khan (2019) define the Medical Industrial Complex as medicine under capitalism, a system that is linked with ableism and sanism. This, in turn, is an oppressive system that targets disability, Madness, and neurodivergence, purporting the ideal body-mind of the settler colonial image. The ideal body-mind is pictured to be rational, logical, capable, articulate, healthy, competent, well-adjusted, productive and normal – a coded way to define the white, thin, male, young, Christian, and heterosexual. The Medical Industrial Complex is rooted deeply in colonization, capitalism, eugenics, slavery, immigration, war, prisons, and reproductive oppression. It, therefore, is not a system that can be “reformed” as it functions as it was intended to – by maintaining settler colonialism through “state killings.” One way settler colonialism produces eugenic practices that “cure,” or kill, nonnormative body-minds are through pathologization. Pathologization constructs and polices body-minds, intersecting race, sexuality, gender, class, nationality, language, disability, madness, and neurodivergence. It justifies the process of rehabilitation, and confinement, among other forms of violence that enforce compulsory able-bodymindedness. Through this systemic process, nonnormative body-minds are put through carceral systems and also used to fund the Medical Industrial Complex and the Prison Industrial Complex. More than cisgender heterosexual white people, queer and trans people of colour have a higher rate of experiencing the effects of policing doctors and pathologizing cops. Neurodivergent and disabled folk too. Pathologization was used as a tool of settler colonialism in clearing stolen lands of Indigenous people. For instance, the Hiawatha Asylum, in South Dakota, was used to take possession of native people’s lands and body-

8 minds. Josephine Rider was one unfortunate victim of this. She, a Cherokee woman, was declared insane by claims made by her son-in-law, who was white, and law enforcement. She was then committed to the asylum, allowing her son-in-law to claim her land. This is one example of many, in which this practice of genocide was weaponizing ableism against Indigenous people. Black people who were seen as resistant to slavery were pathologized and treated as mentally ill due to a diagnosis that was invented to prevent black people from attempting to seek freedom. Black women especially were forced to be subject to scientific inquiry. Gynaecology was invented due to a slave owner experimenting on black women without any form of anaesthetic. 4. Hunt (2015) positions law as violence. How can we understand this in terms of the criminalization of sex work? When Hunt (2015) positions the law as violent, she is placing a specific lens on how the law is violent towards Indigenous women and girls. She is not arguing that people, on an interpersonal level, do not experience violence, exploitation and abuse or that it does not happen in the sex trade even though these do not necessarily entail violence. She is arguing, moreover, that the experiences of people with exploitation, violence and abuse are being defined by particular political and ideological responses which conveniently displaces the many ways in which colonialism was a major factor in why Indigenous women and children had gone missing or were murdered. Relabelling the range of injustices these women and girls have gone through as a particular form of violence – labelled “trafficking” – is an example of the many ways in which the legal system works to recategorize the violence against them as legal responses, in the context of ongoing colonial legal violence. Sex work and sexual exploitation and not the same thing. Sexual exploitation is a form of trafficking labour while sex work is a form of employment. Therefore, the criminalization of sex work is not only unjustified, but it is also highly dangerous for those involved. It is not a path forward

9 to creating a safer community for Indigenous women and children, it just creates more problems. Moving the focus to sex work as a criminal act of exploitation instead of paying attention to actual victims of sexual exploitation shows us the priorities of the government and how dangerous it is. Violence against Indigenous women has been enacted in several different ways, including the over-incarceration of Indigenous women in which they end up in prisons overflowing with violence, and the inadequacy in which they address this violence, therefore, allowing the violence to continue. The government also continue to not express enough enthusiasm about cases of missing people and continues to take the violence against Indigenous women and children seriously. 5. Thinking about a gender-based social service you engaged with as a service user, volunteer, staff member, or just one you have learned about in other contexts (e.g., through the internet, the media, conversations with others, this course, other courses, etc.), what are the ways the organization could function outside of a “non- profit structure”? What would be the benefits and/or challenges of doing that? A gender-based social service I have engaged with is the Trevor Project, a non-profit organization focused on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and potentially questioning youth. I encountered advertisements of them throughout all my social media and first dived when I began questioning my sexuality when I was around fifteen or sixteen. They exist primarily as a support system for queer youth which is never a bad thing, but we could always strive to do more, and be more hands-on when it comes to progressing society. They could strive to work directly with the legal system and even with local representatives in order to work towards direct change to make lives easier for young people.

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10 References Ahmed, S. (2017, January 13). Queer Fatalism. feministkilljoys. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://feministkilljoys.com/2017/01/13/queer-fatalism/ Ahmed, S. (2022, June 8). The Complainer as Carceral feminist. feministkilljoys. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://feministkilljoys.com/2022/06/08/the-complainer-as- carceral-feminist/ Bhuyan, R., Valmadrid, L., Panlaqui, E. L., Pendon, N. L., & Juan, P. (2018). Responding to the Structural Violence of Migrant Domestic Work: Insights from Participatory Action Research with Migrant Caregivers in Canada. Journal of Family Violence, 33 , 613-627. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-018-9988-x Edmiston, E. K., Gilbert, M. A., Smith, T. E., & Tomson, A. (2022). Sex and Gender Development. Erickson-Schroth, L (Ed.), Trans bodies, trans selves : A resource by and for transgender communities (pp. 128-155). Oxford University Press, Incorporated. Franca, T., & De Oliveira, S. T. (2021). Brazilian Migrant Women as Killjoys: Disclosing Racism in “Friendly” Portugal. Cadernos Pagu, 63, 1-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/18094449202100630001 Hunt, S. (2016). Representing Colonial Violence: Trafficking, Sex Work, and the Violence of Law. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Anti-Trafficking Discourse and Policy and Canadian Women Challenge the Constitution, 37, 2. 25-39. Johnk, L., & Khan, S. A. (2019) “Cripping the Fuck Out:” A Queer Crip Mad Manifesta Against the Medical Industrial Complex. State Killing: Queer and Women of Color Manifestas Against U.S. Violence and Oppression . 26-38

11 Menon, A. V. (2015), Alok Vaid-Menon Exists Outside Of Your Heteronormative Gender Binary . YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Gh2n9kPuA&t=400s

FINAL TAKE HOME EXAM GESO 1001 COURSEHERO

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