Disrupting patriarchal norms and languages: Narrative and rhetorical analyses of bi and pansexual feminist blogs.

Abstract

This dissertation asserts that existing definitions of gender and understandings of sexuality need to be reworked in order to compose more holistic senses of both identifications. To accomplish this, this research highlights how some feminists are using Internet communications (specifically blogging) to revamp contemporary understandings about gender. Additionally, it explores how some feminists are more purposefully incorporating bi and pansexual feminist perspectives into feminist conversations which, in turn, can potentially mitigate harmful monosexual and patriarchal dialectics that constrain personhood. There is continued need for careful scrutiny and analysis of hegemonic forces working against females and, more specifically, those who identify within marginalized sexualities. This project delegitimizes suppressions of gendered and/or sexed constructions of self by deconstructing the languages and norms working against females and femaleness (whether these come from outside of or from within the feminist community itself). This dissertation examines how ideas about identity construction (specific to the idea of "female") within bi and pansexual-feminist blog writing can remedy, add to, and widen existing feminist political and ethical theories.

First Advisor

Madeleine Esch

Date of Award

1-1-2011

Document Type

Dissertation

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