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This thesis examines the everyday experiences of young adult nonbinary athletes who participate in a competitive team sport in the Netherlands. Sport has always been of exclusionary nature and dominated by men. There does not seem to be a place for nonbinary athletes in binary gender segregated sport competition. However, little research has been done on the topic of nonbinary people in sport. The central question of this thesis, therefore is: “How do nonbinary young adult athletes navigate their gender identity while playing competitive team sports in the Netherlands?” The research was conducted through two rounds of interviews. The first interviews were exploratory and unstructured, while the second round of interviews were semi-structured through the use of an interview guide. My analysis showed that the queer inclusive climate participants experienced while playing sport, the experiences of gender euphoria, and being seen as part of the team were experienced as positives. Gender dysphoria and little visibility of nonbinary athletes were seen as challenges by the participants. I concluded that while theory makes us think that the Netherlands is an inclusive and considerate policy, the practice shows that this is not always the case. Regulations on fair play and trans* athletes are not clear. Furthermore, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach or solution for nonbinary athletes. It is person dependent what nonbinary athletes face and need. What was important for all participants, however, is that they are given space to come out and that they are seen as part of the team.

The figure of the witch has been interpreted in various ways through centuries in Western culture, from a symbol of darkness and femininity to a declaration of independence and feminist empowerment. In this thesis, the researcher explores the discourse about witches on the online platform Reddit, known for its diverse and unconventional communities. I examine how language and visual representations are used to shape, challenge, endorse, or reflect ambiguity in the portrayal of witches on Reddit. The research also delves into how Reddit users negotiate the ambiguity of the witch archetype in their discussions and representations of witches, and to what extent these discussions reflect or challenge broader cultural understandings of witches as an ambiguous archetype. The methodology involves analysing two Reddit communities as case studies: 'r/HillaryForPrison,' a hate page about Hillary Clinton that represents the witch as a malevolent figure, and 'r/WitchesVsPatriarchy,' a subreddit that embraces and challenges the mystical aspects of femininity, representing the witch as a benevolent figure. Through a comprehensive review of literature and analysis of posts from these subreddits, I aim to shed light on the multifaceted nature of the witch as an archetype and its implications for gender and power dynamics in contemporary online discourse.

Departing from the resonances between “finding a unicorn in the woods” and my politics and daily practices of living and working inside the university, this piece engages with issues of speed, competition, and individualism in the neoliberal university. More importantly, it looks at the possibilities for resistance in and around contemporary academia, through the lens of slow scholarship and slowness, as a mode of feminist activism and of activating feminist care.

This volume focusses on the role of art, culture and politics in transitions and the struggle for social justice. Sometimes these transitions are traumatic and violent processes as in the case of post-apartheid South Africa. In other cases, as in Europe, they involve long-standing histories that are multi-directionally linked to colonialism, holocaust and totalitarianism. The authors explore intersectional issues of transition and social change in conjunction with broader debates on the role of democracy, citizenship and human rights. In doing so, they engage with the work of feminist scholar Rosemarie Buikema.

The figure of the witch has been interpreted in various ways through centuries in Western culture, from a symbol of darkness and femininity to a declaration of independence and feminist empowerment. In this thesis, the researcher explores the discourse about witches on the online platform Reddit, known for its diverse and unconventional communities. I examine how language and visual representations are used to shape, challenge, endorse, or reflect ambiguity in the portrayal of witches on Reddit. The research also delves into how Reddit users negotiate the ambiguity of the witch archetype in their discussions and representations of witches, and to what extent these discussions reflect or challenge broader cultural understandings of witches as an ambiguous archetype. The methodology involves analysing two Reddit communities as case studies: 'r/HillaryForPrison,' a hate page about Hillary Clinton that represents the witch as a malevolent figure, and 'r/WitchesVsPatriarchy,' a subreddit that embraces and challenges the mystical aspects of femininity, representing the witch as a benevolent figure. Through a comprehensive review of literature and analysis of posts from these subreddits, I aim to shed light on the multifaceted nature of the witch as an archetype and its implications for gender and power dynamics in contemporary online discourse.

Since climate change is unfolding and women and girls experience the greatest impacts, I will in this thesis use film as a tool to draw attention on the bounded exploitation of nature and women. With the use of the method ‘practice as research’, I create a film plan for a short, fictional ecocritical film called Nature Calling, to answer the following question: How can Nature Calling visualize the bounded exploitation of nature and women in the Anthropocene according to post humanist, decolonial and ecofeminist theory, enabling spectators to empathize with the non-human? I use feminist film theory to understand how film has the capacity to change structures of cultural norms and values and analyze how film can affect spectators through phenomenology. The theoretical framework which consists of post humanist, decolonial and ecofeminist theory, informs the decisions made in the ‘practice’ part, in which the film plan is described. Finally, Nature Calling confronts the spectator with the human/non-human binary to eventually illustrate that this binary is a human creation and can therefore be made undone.

This article consists of a conversation between dr. Domitilla (domi) Olivieri, scholar and activist, and Trinh T. Minh-ha, renowned film-maker, writer, theorist, and professor. Through questions and answers, the piece starts with Trinh’s take on the notion of the intellectual; the dialogue then continues by traversing some of the themes and issues that characterise Trinh’s work as a filmmaker and a scholar: films as forms of political and intellectual intervention; the matter of (diasporic) communities, subjectivities, and locations; how the issue of labels and genres plays out in the film industry; the question of audiences; the film as encounter; politics of knowl-edge productions; matters of time and temporalities. Sustaining the conversation is also an understanding that Trinh’s films do not only address issues of (trans)national movements, encounters, technol-ogies, poetry, and rhythms of lives, but they also enact and perform those very movements. Finally, the article discusses Trinh’s legacies as feminist and postcolonial practices, and the role of criticism and (non)knowing in her work across genres and registers of filmmaking that are complex and poetic, as well as strongly political.

In this thesis, I explore the ways that diabetes type 1 has been included and excluded from disability scholarship and discourses. This research project takes up Alison Kafer’s remark in Feminist. Queer. Crip. (2013) that the largest group of people with disabilities, such as those with diabetes, do not consider themselves disabled or crip. I investigate the question “why diabetes can(not) be considered a dis/ability” through a mixed method approach of autoethnography, semistructured qualitative interviews, and textual and cultural analysis. Why is diabetes generally not seen as a disability from the perspective of the disability community and from those who are diabetic? What does that reveal about how diabetes and disability are viewed in scholarship and in society? And what does say about the values attached to normative (dis)abled embodiments? In four chapters that weave together theory and lived experience, I investigate disability discourse, disability/diabetes identity, neoliberal agentic subjectivity in diabetes care, and alternative, queer, and affective modes of kinship and care. Following Robert McRuer and Lisa Johnson (2014), I aim to create a “cripistemelogy” (or a crip epistemology) of diabetes type 1. Using queer, feminist, and disability scholarship, I contend that diabetes type 1 is scripted as a medical disease that is embedded in ‘compulsory able-bodiedness’ (McRuer [2006] 2017) which consequently leaves the lived, cultural experiences undertheorised. The hypothesis of the thesis is that personal narratives that highlight the (un)stable aspects of diabetes can offer an entry into destabilising, questioning, and queering categories of (dis)abled embodiment. Indeed, I offer ways of imagining (un)stable diabetic embodiment as a site of resistance that open up new potentialities for radical inclusivity (Keating 2013). Through a cripistemological queering of diabetes, I offer an approach of dis/ability, which is an internal critique towards neoliberal

In recent years, academic literature has indicated an expansion of understandings of masculinity and fathering in contemporary Western society, shifting from hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1980s) towards ‘caring masculinity’ (inspired by the concept of universal caregiver, Fraser, 1977; developed by Elliott, 2016, amongst others). Despite the enthusiasm surrounding the latter’s emergence, critics have both challenged the temptation to overly simplify these ideas into a ‘new’ vs ‘traditional’ father (Dermott); and questioned whether ‘involved fathering’ (key characteristic of caring masculinity) is more cultural ideal than material reality, with such fathering potentially representing re-creations of patriarchal dominance in new guises (Hearn, Gatrell, Ranson amongst others). This research seeks to introduce the study of memory to this intersection between fatherhood and masculinity studies, in order to test the academic hypothesis of a shift in fatherhood model by investigating the prevalence of fatherhood norms within the Netherlands - specifically the influence of childhood memory in their intergenerational transmission. In other words, researching how an individual’s memory of the experience of being fathered shapes the parameters of their own engagement with, and/or adoption of, fatherhood norms, and how this ties in with their understanding, performance, and valuation of masculinity. This research adopts an hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology, and a mixed-methods research design incorporating a survey (in Dutch) followed by semi-structured interviews (in English) to contextualise survey findings through personal stories, focusing more explicitly on childhood memories. The goal of this research is to understand how fatherhood norms are remembered and to what extent these are transferred, in order to break negative fathering cycles in the advance towards gender equality.

While the postpartum time and its associated complications are well researched from a medical and psychological standpoint, there are few philosophical or feminist theories that take the postpartum as a point of study. In this thesis, I posit the postpartum as an entrance point, a portal, to lean into the inherent transformational and vulnerable characteristics of humanity that are so often denied, especially to women and mothers, in Western philosophy. This study is based in posthumanist theory (Braidotti, 2013) in which the Western idea of the individual and the contained subject is problematized to imagine an alternative relational and situated subjectivity. I use arts-based methods, working with the medium of linocut printing to allow participants to explore conceptions of the postpartum in focus groups. I discuss how the medium of linocut printing provides a unique way for the participants to process their ideas and reflection and argue for this medium to be incorporated into arts-based research. Throughout this study, I argue that experiences and perceptions of the postpartum period by women/birthing people located within Europe can challenge Western conceptions of the human by reclaiming the abject liquids associated with this time, advocating for increased vulnerability and care, rethinking static conceptions of the body that are contained by the skin, and troubling the self/other binary. The troubling of the self/other binary in the postpartum is explored both through the relationships between birth giver, child, and community and through cultural food-based rituals, which showed how food in the postpartum moved between the self and the other as a connecting force, creating alternative meanings in Western and non-Western traditions (food as regulation and control vs. care). I discuss the philosophy behind “bounce back culture”- in which women in the West are expected to bounce back to their pre-pregnant state after birth, and analyze the negative affects th

Cancelling has become an increasingly resonant word in the past years, and it has adopted particular modes in the field of pop culture and media. This research aims to explore the ways in which cancel culture relates to and with contemporary Western works of visual fiction, by analyzing the cases of the independent feature film Adam (2018), by Rhys Ernst, and the third season of mainstream comedy series Master of None, titled Moments in Love (2021). Firstly, by the means of a genealogy, I situate cancel culture in a trajectory of kin practices of accountability and punishment. Accompanied by abolitionist thinkers, queer and feminist theory and criminology, I analyze which notions of accountability and justice are encompassed in these cancellation efforts, and how they are related with punitivism, activism and social justice movements. Guided by these main questions, I also inquire around further interrogations that preeminently emerge from this subject matter, such as where does cancel culture happen, who are the agents of cancellation, why do we regard it as a form of culture, what does it mean to cancel work of fictions, and how could we come to regard this phenomenon otherwise. Through a diffractive approach (Barad, 2007) that refuses oppositional readings and argumentations and seeks to staying with the problem/atic, I examine how cancel culture influences practices of queer storytelling as worlding, understood by Donna Haraway (2016) as a form of world-making with. Through this engagement, I argue that, as a punitive oppositional practice, cancel culture seeks to separate itself from conflict, accountability and relational world-making by trying to make the problem/atic disappear.

Feminist research has revealed a significant relationship between militarization and patriarchy. This thesis takes that research forward through a gender analysis of the bodily impact of militarization on Syrian women activists. The thesis identifies and interrogates the gendered underpinnings of militarism. In doing so, it examines the contributions of Syrian women activists to our understanding of militarism and gender through a standpoint methodology. This thesis examines the manifestations of militarization at the ideological and material level in peace and war time, uncovers the assumptions about gender (and ethnicity) that shape dominant perceptions of war and militarism. Finally, the thesis illustrates how militarization affects women’s body and emotions, gender identity and psychosocial issues.

This study explores how visual and textual art can be analysed for highlighting conditions of vulnerability and practices of resistance in Filipino migrant workers’ groups in the UK and the Netherlands. It tackles vulnerability and resistance as they are compounded by broad structures of globalized, gendered labour with a focus on the position of the Philippines as a post-colonial nation that produces cheapened labour to the Global North. Under these conditions, art is a potent resource for protest and solidarity-building; even more so in the context of escalating attacks on human rights defenders and activists under the Duterte administration that has coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic. The art pieces were collected from the social media pages of Migrante Utrecht and Gabriela London, focusing on those produced in 2020, and I argue that art is not a mere representation of experience but is capable of mediating and mobilizing people toward a better reality. I discuss vulnerability in relation to other concepts employed to describe life under neo-liberal structures: debility (Shildrick, 2015), disability (Puar, 2009), and precarity (Butler, 2004). I then use feminist critical discourse analysis (Lazar, 2005) to show how the pieces’ elements reinterpret flows of power that render workers vulnerable and re-signify their relation to activism, following Butler’s (2016) analysis of the radical potential of vulnerability. Social media is a productive space wherein these flows occur, and the study discusses how virtual reality translates and disseminates portrayals of vulnerability. Lastly, drawing on affect theory (Ahmed, 2014; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010) and its weaving together of political depression, anger, friendship, and solidarity, the paper traces connections among the art pieces and how vulnerability ultimately informs migrant women’s strategies of care and resistance.

This thesis examines how students in a Dutch vocational secondary educational institute experience (un)safety, and how this relates to the (conscious or unconscious) act of showing and/or hiding (non)normative aspects of their identities (i.e., identity negotiation). In order to understand the results of this study, (theories on) the dense and relative concepts of safety, safe spaces and identity are unpacked in the context of educational institutes. With the aim to answer the main research question and sub-questions, qualitative research was conducted at STC Group. STC Group is an educational company within the logistics, technology and maritime sectors offering programmes on a wide range of educational ‘levels’. Ethnographic research was conducted amongst various types of employees of the organisation, in-class discussions were held with seven classes, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 vocational students at STC. During the research, it became apparent that an image of the ideal STC student is implicitly and explicitly expressed by (people within) the school. The ideal student would, according to this polished image, be male, cisgender, white, able-bodied and heterosexual. This mirrors the normative western patriarchal idea of an ideal student, which is highly criticized from a feminist perspective, since the (institutional) norms lead to injustice for those who cannot meet the standards. In analysing the 12 interviews with students, it furthermore became apparent that the students in this Dutch professional secondary educational institute tend to state they feel (physically) safe, while their other remarks suggest that parts of their educational environments contribute to (perhaps subtle) feelings of (social-emotional) unsafety. This implies that the unsafety, discrimination and expectations regarding ‘normative’ behaviour are internalized to the extent that students seem to accept and adopt discriminatory behaviour and beliefs. As a result, - especi

This thesis explore how the Dutch dairy discourse informs (lived) social realities within contemporary Dutch society. I explore this from my position as an ecofeminist, anthropological and vegan (activist) researcher by linking the production and the consumption of animal products (dairy in particular) to the perpetuation of patriarchy. I examine how the Dutch dairy industry mediates dairy production and consumption by looking at audio-visual commercials they produce. I am also interested in how people perceive these commercials and, on the other hand, respond to audio-visual material (such as a documentary) that reveals another reality of dairy production and consumption. The research question that guides this thesis is: How does the Dutch dairy discourse determine ways of being in Dutch society? Using the methodology of feminist critical discourse analysis enables me to analyse the Dutch dairy industry as a discourse. I use this method to examine the case studies of two Dutch dairy commercials and use a focus group as a method to uncover the lived social realities that are constructed by the Dutch dairy discourse. This exploration results in the conclusion that the social reality created by the Dutch dairy discourse is one in which the consumption of dairy makes your body strong, healthy, Dutch and ‘normal’. This discourse, in which the production of dairy is disembodied from consumption and consumption is embodied by the ‘disciplined body’, constructs and reinforces ways of being that oppress non-human animals and human animals alike, which is in line with the patriarchy.

After the national controversy regarding gender inclusivity in the Netherlands in 2017, there seem to have emerged a whole new group of individuals that actively reject the gender binary, opting instead for other modes of gender identification. This is in no way a new phenomenon since there have been individuals claiming to stand in between or outside of the binary and actively seeking medical treatment since the beginnings of gender transitions in the 1960s. There has, however, been a shift in discourse apparent in Dutch media inspired by the LGBT movement. This shift has changed trans*ness to a diagnosis to an active mode of self-identification, allowing trans* individuals the complete control over their own gender identity. This thesis will utilise the concepts of traps , doors and trapdoors (Gossett et al. xiii) as a framework for the analysis that will aim to trace the shift from a medical discourse of trans*ness to a one that deems being trans* a social identity. The starting points are two media texts; namely, Mounir Samuel's coming out interview on Jinek in 2015 and the documentary Genderbende , which follows five individuals that all challenge the Western gender binary. The two media texts additionally prove the way certain media genres and conventions shape a narrative, allowing a certain narrative to thrive over others. Another focus is the way in which inhabiting labels, in this case, gender identities, can be restrictive, negotiated but also possibly liberating, if we let go of clear cut definition and instead focus on a sense of community through a common struggle. Inhabiting new, broad and freeing labels such as Halberstam's trans* help to imagine new possibilities of a trans* future that does not focus on dividing people into ever smaller growing niche identities, but instead on uniting them. In current times, we cannot allow ourselves to fall into utopian yet unproductive modes of nihilism.

This thesis is a critical analysis on the Dutch feminist movement while productively contributing to the question how it can sustain to be a movement for change. Feminism as a brand has become a widespread phenomenon, while on the other hand, questions about who is and who is not allowed to identify as feminist is common practice. These discourses are both build upon the idea of ‘inclusive feminism’, and focused on individual realities and experiences. What are the implications of this for the Dutch feminist movement and what are the opportunities for the future?

In this thesis, I am adding a feminist, humanities-based voice to the sociological discourse surrounding voluntary childlessness. I am mapping voluntary childless women’s experiences with the societal expectation that all women are, or want to be, mothers. Through a literature study, I show that voluntary childless women are not generally thought of in a very positive way and I highlight a scientific gap which this thesis aims to fill. Voluntary childless women have never before been asked about their experiences of being voluntary childless in a world that places motherhood at the centre of its understanding of womanhood. In my theoretical framework, I show how motherhood is central to people’s ideas of what a good woman should be, and I argue that voluntary childless women are therefore being punished by society. Moreover, I argue, through the use of qualitative research by form of feminist interviewing*, that voluntary childless women are starting to reconstruct what it means to be a woman. Through my analysis of the interview data, and linking back to my theoretical framework, I am answering my research question, and four sub questions in the concluding remarks. *Please note: complete transcripts of interviews are not included here for privacy reasons.

Institutional readings of classical myths have been essential to the repetition of the gender binary within the heteronormative frame. Moving from my ‘local knowledge’, I reflect on critical and engaged education and the importance of non-normative methodologies – derived from the agenda of both feminist and queer pedagogy – to prompt a socio-political change. Accordingly, my research aims at creating a feministqueer reading method, so as to raise awareness of the multiple possibilities of self-identification beyond (gender) binary constrictions. As a consequence, it intends to develop emancipating and transgressing knowledge. Basing my theorization on standpoint epistemology and the concept of diffractive reading, I outline the feministqueer method of reading classical myths as a ‘praxis’ that undoes gender restrictions, by producing narratives which attest to difference, discriminations, identitarian multiplicities and fluid identifications. More precisely, this alternative method is a subversive practice that intends to fracture the ‘normalcy’ implicit in patriarchal and normative readings, through a series of resisting steps. In the feministqueer reading process I suggest, the reader’s recognition of their resistances to patterns of (gender) normalcy and the practice of undoing such resistances come together to produce a feministqueer meaning beyond the gender binary. In order to give an example of this feministqueer reading method, I put it into practice by engaging with Anne Carson’s Antigonick. Thus, in opposition to the sexual difference-inspired analysis, I develop a provocative reading, following Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Throughout this feministqueer close reading, I drag Antigone and unravel the heroine’s wavering identity, which is somewhat ‘in the making’ and whose status undoes the fixity of gender borders and destabilizes both the immutability of gendered roles and the necessity of heteronormative relationships. My project ther

Building new active citizenship policy on the heritage of supportive practices amongst Afro- Caribbean women in Amsterdam Southeast.

Critical media literacy engages with critical thinking and critically asserting the media around us. In this thesis the focus has been especially on critically asserting the gendered and raced bodies in media. This critical education is important in secondary school to teach students how to properly engage with media and how to be less susceptible for its influential messages. Critical media literacy is already somewhat incorporated in 'maatschappijwetenschappen'-class, or 'societal sciences'-class. This curriculum will be renewed starting in 2016 however, and in this thesis, suggestions for this change are given. In this research a Dutch havo 5 class 'maatschappijwetenschappen' (secondary education) is given a workshop with tools to look at media critically, and in this case: a case study of documentary posters. The pupils' ability to form a critical opinion about the media images and messages is tested before and after they received these tools.

This research is located at a crossroad of media studies, gender studies and food studies and is set up to explore a supposedly ‘natural’ relation between gender and food. Through a media content analysis of Reader's Digest advertising (1950s-2000s), normative imagery of this relation and its evolution is analyzed. It also includes an exploration of strategies of change, resistance and agency towards this 'natural relation'. This research aims to contribute to media literacy by deconstructing the representation of the relation between gender and food, specifically between women and food preparation, to question a naturalization of gender roles and explore strategies of change. (Note: This file contains blank pages due to a booklet format)