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Hiking and Hegemony: Destabilizing the nature/culture and gender binaries through outdoor recreation
Our second framework, titled The Pleasurable Potential of Outdoor Recreation, cites second-wave feminism as a catalyst for women’s participation in wilderness exploration and outdoor recreation. The work of radical feminists and the women’s liberation movement in 1960s and 1970s empowered women at home, in the workplace, and eventually, in the outdoors; women reclaimed their wilderness, yet they continued to employ Framework One’s feminization of nature. Ecofeminsim brought together nature and women, seeking to bring justice to two groups wronged by the same entity: masculinity. In this context, outdoor recreation is empowering for women.
Despite the potential of Framework Two to reinscribe and better the experiences of women in outdoor recreation, we argue that both Frameworks One and Two perpetuate the gender binary and the nature/culture binary, because they are based upon the notion that women are in fact fundamentally different and separate from men, the notion that nature is an entity separate from culture, or human society, as well as the notion that nature is in fact a feminine entity.
Our third framework, Deer Pay No Mind to Your Genitals, engages poststructuralism, asserting that outdoor recreation and activities that occur in nature can serve to destabilize and deconstruct notions of the gender binary. However, we argue that care must be exercised during this process as not to perpetuate the problematic nature/culture binary, a phenomenon that is unproductive in terms of both sustainability and gender liberation. Outdoor recreation has been used by many as a tool to deconstruct numerous societal constraints, including the gender binary; this, however, continues to attribute escapist and isolationist qualities toward nature, and therefore perpetuating the nature/culture divide. Ultimately, we argue outdoor recreation can and should be used as a tool deconstruct the gender binary, however needs to account for the fact that if nature is helping to construct elements of culture, then the two cannot be separate.
The Gender Quota of Costa Rica: An impactful method to address women’s issues through representation
With a prison population that has grown to 1.4 million, an imprisonment rate of 419 per 100,000 U.S. residents, and a recidivism rate of 52.2% for males and 36.4% for females, the United States is facing a crisis. Currently, no sufficient measures have been taken by the United States to reduce recidivism. Attempts have been made, but they ultimately failed. Recently, however, there has been an increase in experimentation with the concept of teaching inmates basic computer skills to reduce recidivism. As labor becomes increasingly digitized, it becomes more difficult for inmates who spent a certain period away from technology to adapt and find employment. At the bare minimum, anybody entering the workforce must know how to use a computer and other technological appliances, even in the lowest-paid positions. By incorporating basic computer skills and coding educational programs within prisons, this issue can be addressed, since inmates would be better equipped to take on a more technologically advanced labor market.<br/>Additionally, thoroughly preparing inmates for employment is a necessity because it has been proven to reduce recidivism. Prisons typically have some work programs; however, these programs are typically outdated and prepare inmates for fields that may represent a difficult employment market moving forward. On the other hand, preparing inmates for tech-related fields of work is proving to be successful in the early stages of experimentation. A reason for this success is the growing demand. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in computer and information technology occupations is projected to grow 11 percent between 2019 and 2029. This is noteworthy considering the national average for growth of all other jobs is only 4 percent. It also warrants the exploration of educating coders because software developers, in particular, have an expected growth rate of 22 percent between 2019 and 2029. <br/>Despite the security risks of giving inmates access to computers, the implementation of basic computer skills and coding in prisons should be explored further. Programs that give inmates access to a computing education already exist. The only issue with these programs is their scarcity. However, this is to no fault of their own, considering the complex nature and costs of running such a program. Accordingly, this leaves the opportunity for public universities to get involved. Public universities serve as perfect hosts because they are fully capable of leveraging the resources already available to them. Arizona State University, in particular, is a more than ideal candidate to spearhead such a program and serve as a model for other public universities to follow. Arizona State University (ASU) is already educating inmates in local Arizona prisons on subjects such as math and English through their PEP (Prison Education Programming) program.<br/>This thesis will focus on Arizona specifically and why this would benefit the state. It will also explain why Arizona State University is the perfect candidate to spearhead this kind of program. Additionally, it will also discuss why recidivism is detrimental and the reasons why formerly incarcerated individuals re-offend. Furthermore, it will also explore the current measures being taken in Arizona and their limitations. Finally, it will provide evidence for why programs like these tend to succeed and serve as a proposal to Arizona State University to create its own program using the provided framework in this thesis.
Video games are packed full of endless potential. They are the telling of impossible narratives with something for every type of person. So then why has the industry historically been one of the worst for representations of race and gender? In this thesis, I define "good" media representation and engage in the analysis of both Overwatch (2016) and Detroit Become Human (2018) to observe the ways these two video games, which so outwardly market their diversity, have failed marginalized groups. Accompanying the research paper is a video game poster representing a woman of color designed by the author which is meant to learn from the mistakes of its predecessors.
The cyborgs in these films, however, refuse to let categorizations like female, or even their status as human, alive, or real, restrict them so easily. As human-robot hybrids, cyborgs bridge identities that are assumed to be separate and often oppositional or mutually exclusive. Cyborgs reveal the structures and expectations reified in gender to suggest that something constructed can as easily be deconstructed. In doing so, they create loose ends that leave space for new understandings of both gender and technology. By viewing these films alongside critical theory, we can understand their cyborgs as subversive, hybrid characters. Accordingly, the cyborg as a figure subverts and fragments the coherency of narratives that present gender, technology, and identity in monolithic terms, not only helping us envision new possibilities but giving us the faculties to imagine them at all.