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Browsing by Author "Pope, Annaliese"

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    “Being without restriction”: contemporary sociological theory and the gender anti-binary
    (2023) Richards, Ezra; Pope, Annaliese
    Canada and the US have seen recent increases in transphobic attitudes and policies, under the guise of “parental rights” or adherence to tradition. Trans people are often painted as predators attempting to indoctrinate children into “gender ideology,” and any deviance from the cisgender, male-female binary are seen as inherently dangerous or inappropriate, misconstruing and preventing trans liberation. Using sociological theories from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the Frankfurt School, and Judith Butler, I propose a path beyond this transphobic discourse: redefine gender devoid of any and all labels and categories. This anti-binary attitude puts the emphasis on embodied experience, such that gender is centred around personal joy and self-awareness rather than external, societal criteria. With this anti-binary in place, gender liberation will extend not only to trans individuals, but to all individuals facing pressure from the gender culture industry.
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    “Being without restriction”: contemporary sociological theory and the gender anti-binary
    (2024) Richards, Ezra; Pope, Annaliese
    Canada and the US have seen recent increases in transphobic attitudes and policies, under the guise of “parental rights” or adherence to tradition. Trans people are often painted as predators attempting to indoctrinate children into “gender ideology,” and any deviance from the cisgender, male-female binary are seen as inherently dangerous or inappropriate, misconstruing and preventing trans liberation. Using sociological theories from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the Frankfurt School, and Judith Butler, I propose a path beyond this transphobic discourse: redefine gender devoid of any and all labels and categories. This anti-binary attitude puts the emphasis on embodied experience, such that gender is centred around personal joy and self-awareness rather than external, societal criteria. With this anti-binary in place, gender liberation will extend not only to trans individuals, but to all individuals facing pressure from the gender culture industry.
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    High speed society and the otherization of non-human animals
    (2025) Pope, Annaliese; Rode-Breymann, Susanne; Ullrich, Martin; Martin Ullrich
    Within high-speed society individuals are confronted with an increasing amount of technologically mediated information, and sonic push notifications have reformulated our perception to be more attuned to our devices than to our non-technological surroundings (Berardi, 2009). Post-Fordist data mining has reshaped our perception so that, rather than empathically engage with non-human animal others, we continue to codify them as commodities due to our panicked overstimulation. By invoking Georg Simmel’s (1971a) blasé attitude, and the drive to highlight dissimilarities rather than that which is common, and Berardi’s (2015) shift to connective concatenations, I demonstrate that whereas the sounds of non-human animals may suggest a sameness with human animals, our shared phenomenological ‘fleshiness’ and, ideally, empathy, within a dystopic high speed society, such possibilities may be foreclosed through the codification of the (in)audible and a frenzied panic for survival (Abram, 2010).