Gender studies

This study examines the formal, informal, and non-formal learning experiences offeminist-identified counsellors and psychotherapists working within the Violence Against Women (VAW) and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) sector of community- based social services in Ontario, Canada. Using critical, feminist polyethnography and intersectional and feminist theories, this study discusses the participants' and researcher's experiences in the field. The participants' narratives contribute to the understanding of intersectional feminist pedagogies in counselling and psychotherapy practices and spaces. Additionally, the study offers recommendations for post- secondary programs, wise practice approaches to intersectional clinical supervision, and a framework for community of practice models of peer supervision.

Author Keywords: adult learning, feminism, feminist theory, intersectional theory, psychotherapy, social work

This dissertation, titled "Echoes of Injustice: Regulating Indigenous Masculinity through Canadian Legal and Colonial Systems, "examines how the Canadian criminal justice system—through its denial of colonial violence and its regulation of Indigenous masculinity—has contributed to the ongoing criminalization and marginalization of Indigenous men. By critically engaging with both historical and contemporary legal frameworks, including the Indian Act, restorative justice practices, and landmark cases such as R. v. Gladue and Blackwater v. Plint, this research traces how colonial narratives remain embedded in Canadian jurisprudence. These narratives often portray Indigenous men as inherently violent, deviant, and in need of regulation. The central research question guiding this work is: How has the Canadian criminal justice system, through its denial of colonial violence and its regulation of Indigenous masculinity, contributed to the continued criminalization and marginalization of Indigenous men? Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of Frantz Fanon and Michel Foucault, this dissertation argues that the legal system not only fails to address the structural impacts of settler colonialism but also actively reproduces colonial violence by projecting it back onto Indigenous male bodies. In doing so, it reinforces pathologizing narratives and obstructs opportunities for meaningful healing and justice. Each chapter applies this theoretical lens to specific legal cases and state policies, demonstrating how Indigenous men are constructed as threats to colonial order and denied recognition as victims of systemic trauma. Using a counter-narrative methodology, this dissertation challenges dominant legal and academic discourses, revealing how they obscure the lived realities of Indigenous men and sustain one-dimensional portrayals that rationalize state control. The counter-narrative approach is not merely a tool for alternative interpretation; it is a necessary act of decolonial resistance—one that disrupts colonial knowledge production and reclaims interpretive authority. By centring Indigenous voices and rejecting pathologizing settler narratives, this methodology contributes to the broader project of Indigenous resurgence: the revitalization of Indigenous masculinities, sovereignties, and justice systems on Indigenous terms. Ultimately, this work calls for a fundamental reimagining of justice—one that dismantles colonial legal foundations and embraces decolonial frameworks rooted in healing, accountability, and the resurgence of Indigenous masculinities.

Author Keywords: Colonial Violence, Colonialism Criminalization, Gladue Principles, Indian Act, Indigenous Masculinity, Restorative Justice

SOGIE refugee scholarship examines intersecting power relations, including race, ethnicity, gender, class, citizenship, and geopolitical location. A key intersection is how SOGIE claimants navigate the homonationalist apparatus of the Canadian refugee system, which constructs the identity category of an "authentic" SOGIE refugee as characterized by pure victimhood and passivity, based on a Western-exceptionalist notion of sexuality. Through a comprehensive literature review and Thematic Analysis of 30 publicly available SOGIE refugee decisions in Canada, this study identifies three primary assumptions about the "authentic" SOGIE refugee claimant: the Public/Private Discourse of LGBT Rights, the Linear, Progressive Narrative of SOGIE, and the Homocolonial Inclusion of LGBT Rights. Recognizing the limitations of "adaptive agency," this analysis centers the transformative potential of SOGIE refugee claimants' narratives in interrogating these assumptions through their "discursive agency," transcending the limitations of liberal notions of agency that operate within a dichotomy of resistance and compliance.

This thesis examines Beyoncé's art within the context of Black feminist thought, specifically focusing on how her work reflects and contributes to the themes of sisterhood, female empowerment, and intersectionality. A comprehensive analysis of her songs and performances will demonstrate how Beyoncé's art advocates for unity, female empowerment, particularly for Black women, and encourages sisterhood and support. The results reveal that Beyoncé's art serves as a powerful tool to challenge societal norms, address racial and gender inequalities, and advocate for justice, especially in the lives of Black women. Through her music and performances, Beyoncé has become a powerful example of using popular music as a medium for social change and cultural empowerment. This research highlights the significance of her contributions to the ongoing conversations surrounding race, gender, and socioeconomic factors, underlining the powerful influence of her art in encouraging a more inclusive society.

Author Keywords: Beyoncé, Black Feminist Thought, Female Empowerment, Gender inequalities, Intersectionality, Sisterhood

Games immerse players. Through immersion, players can see themselves embodied in their avatars. There is space for meaningful experimentation of gender through these avatars as embodied players can blur the lines between their real-life and virtual selves. The player's avatar becomes that person — in terms of personality, feelings, and gender identity/expression. In virtual reality, the player becomes a virtual actor in the world of the game, allowing the player to explore their avatar directly. Through various games, books, and anime, I demonstrate how players can find embodiment and how games can achieve a rigid sense of embodiment. Using an intersectional lens of cultural and gender studies, this paper aims to provide a framework for embodied gender exploration that future games can build upon. This framework is enacted through a look at embodiment and how the player is able to find an authentic self in the virtual world.

Author Keywords: Avatars, Embodiment, Embodiment studies, Gender euphoria, Video games, Virtual Reality

This dissertation sought to examine how reactionary influencers on YouTube are able to create 'gateways' towards audience tolerance and even desire to enact violence against marginalized groups, particularly those groups relating to gender performance. for the purposes of YouTube moderation. This dissertation uses the perspectives of affect theorists Ahmed, Berlant, and Tomkins, and the gender theories of Connell and Butler to divide the examined influencers into two categories, gurus and prophets. Prophets, such as Tucker Carlson or the Prager U platform, presented already existing hegemonic narratives about gender norms as ontological truths that were key to the coherence of both society and individual identity. Meanwhile, gurus like Andrew Tate presented themselves as teachers whose ability to embody hegemonic masculine norms gave them both the wisdom and authority to convert loyal viewers into successful men like them. Both categories of reactionary influencer were examined with a focus on both rhetoric and modelling of masculinity and the performance thereof. While both categories worked to align viewers with fascist ideology through emphasizing hatred, fear, and anger towards real-world events while connecting feelings of hope, joy, and desire to quasi-gnostic mythic perspectives around masculine sovereignty, they presented significant differences in method and target audience. This has significant implications for attempts at deradicalization and resistance to the increasing tide of fascism in mainstream society. Another significant finding was that affective connections to reactionary beliefs were almost all found to originate with mainstream narratives around gender norms, particularly with regards to masculine success and authority under capitalism. Overall, this dissertation's findings strongly counter mainstream assumptions that extremist reactionary ideology comes from a discrete fringe source rather than as a direct result of existence within a vicious capitalist social system that prioritizes White male comfort over the ability of ethnic and gender minorities to express any shred of agency.

Author Keywords: Affect, Extremism, Fascism, Internet, Masculinity, Performativity

This thesis creates an adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest that reshapes the play through a focus on queer identities. Specifically, through setting the play at a Drag club and changing the characters accordingly a nuanced view of how gender roles shape the interactions we have with ourselves, our society, and our environment. The chapters that proceed the adaptation provide evidence and supporting clarification for the ideas brought up in the adaptation.

Author Keywords: Adaptation, Drag, Gender, Queer, Shakespeare

An interesting question arises upon viewing the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz (MGM). The main character Dorothy Gale faces a long arduous journey on foot. Why did she not have a car? Women had formed strong associations with the automobile in its early years, yet they appeared to have weaker associations with the automobile a few decades later. A look back to three other "Dorothies" from the World War I era demonstrates the evolution of women's associations with the early automobile, and how war impacted them. In the pre-World War I years, women drivers appeared in film, while Dorothy Levitt wrote columns for other women on how to drive and repair a car and many other women invented safety technologies for automobiles. During World War I, the pinnacle of recognition for women's driving emerged with the woman ambulance drivers on the front lines. Dorothie Feilding was one of the first women to arrive in Belgium to drive ambulances, often while under fire. Feilding and many women like her were given war medals for their service, and their bravery was touted in newspapers. However, once the war ended, their accomplishments would be erased and ignored. In the post-World War I years, Dorothée Pullinger's experience as CEO of the Galloway factory illustrate how ideas of masculinity and femininity. promoted by governments after the war, impacted women. The Galloway factory in Tongland Scotland, was staffed by women engineers and workers. After World War I ended, these women were pushed out of their jobs. War-induced disability and its economic costs to governments were at the heart of gender inequities and served to displace women from automobile technology. Policies such as Britain's "Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act" set the stage for a script that constructed women's jobs as expendable and marketed ideas of the disabled soldier needing to "re-gain his manliness" by re-entering the labour force at women's expense. As a result, the state imbued a new relational, gendered analytic onto automobile use and production that remains with western society today. Keywords: woman's labour, woman driver, automobile, factory labour, gendered technology, World War I, ambulance, silent film, Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, Galloway, Tongland, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, Munro Flying Ambulance Corps, Dorothy Levitt, Dorothie Feiling, Dorothée Pullinger.

Author Keywords: ambulance, automobile, Galloway, gendering, women, world war I

This dissertation traces the emergence of the "transgender predator" discourse on social media. Taking its cue from the 2019 British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal case Yaniv v. Various Waxing Salons, in which a white Canadian trans woman named Jessica Yaniv unsuccessfully filed a series of complaints against a number of racialized cisgender aestheticians claiming that they denied her body and Brazilian waxing services, I examine Canadian socio-legal discussions regarding trans women's access to spaces and services designed for cisgender women. Second, I focus on the realm of YouTube in which Yaniv v. Various Waxing Salons was marketed as the case of a transgender predator by another trans female YouTuber named Blaire White. I locate Yaniv-related content within a larger genre of "predator-hunting" in which self-proclaimed vigilantes lure and "hunt" putative child predators through sting operations and publish their expeditions as online shaming content on YouTube. By analyzing the visual and verbal discursive elements of the genre of predator catching/exposé, I suggest that "transgender predator" functions within the axis of surveillance regimes and monetized humiliation-entertainment, rather than merely being motivated by the goal of protecting cisgender women and children. Lastly, I turn my attention from "transgender predator" to another type of pejorative construction about trans people represented in the stand-up comedy of Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. I argue that, as opposed to comedy's previous engagement with trans subjectivity in which the comedic element was revealed through the tropes of deception and bodily incongruity, in the works of Chappelle and Gervais, transgender subjectivity is used to make social commentary about the supposed decline of, what are deemed to be, Western values of reason, rationality, and freedom of speech.

Author Keywords: predator, stand-up comedy, surveillance, transgender, vigilantism, YouTube