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Since the late eighteenth century, American men have supported women's equality. (see Kimmel and Mosmiller, 1992). Even before the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York heralded the birth of the organized women's movement in 1848, American men had begun to argue in favor of women's rights. That celebrated radical, Thomas Paine, for example, mused in 1775 that any formal declaration of independence from England should include women, since women have, as he put it, “an equal right to virtue.”(Paine, [1775] 1992, 63–66). Other reformers, like Benjamin Rush and John Neal articulated claims for women's entry into schools and public life. Charles Brockden Brown, America's first professional novelist, penned a passionate plea for women's equality in Alcuin(1798).

The CW’s long-running horror-drama series Supernatural (2005–) has been accused of undoing progressive advances for women made by Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996–2003). While it’s hard to deny the truth in that claim, Supernatural also problematizes conventional gender roles from a very different approach, one that plays with perceptions of masculinity and social class.

Buffy Summers may initially seem to have more in common with Supernatural’s Sam Winchester, a chosen one with special powers who wants a normal life away from the supernatural. However, Buffy shares more in common with Dean Winchester. Embodying popular gendered stereotypes in their introductions, it’s gradually revealed that there is more complexity to each. Both form alliances with Others; both recognize elements of the Other in themselves. Both transgress conventional gender boundaries, complicating the notion of a binary gender system. Both series introduce the seemingly familiar only to alter it into the uncanny. See the little cute blonde virginal cheerleader? She can kick your ass. See the stupid cocky womanizing jock? All he wants is family and a home. This chapter explores the increasingly gender-blended, social-class-crossing behaviours of Supernatural’s Dean Winchester as an heir to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

This autoethnography takes up the matter of toxic masculinity in university settings. We introduce the term “status silencing” as a way to make visible the normalization of toxic masculinity in everyday talk and interaction in university settings among and around colleagues. Status silencing is the process in which the status of a dominant individual becomes a context which renders the story of an individual with a subordinated status untellable or untold. Using strange accounting, we explore active and passive types of status silencing to show how talk and interactions involving toxic masculinity are both internalized and externalized expressions of power and dominance. We argue that while most scholars view toxic masculinity as blatant acts of violence (mass shootings, rape and sexual assault, etc.), it is also a normalized occurrence for feminized others and that toxic masculinity in academic settings is part of an ongoing institutional norm of silence.

Purpose – This research is an analysis of expressions of masculinity among members of two social movements. The focus of the study is how racialized constructions of masculinity shape similar discourses of victimization in the mythopoetic men's movement and the Militia of Montana.

Method – Content analysis of the movement members’ written work available to the general public is analyzed. A theoretical overview of masculinity and victimization is also utilized to illustrate essentialist narratives in masculinity.

Findings – This research raises questions about the lived experience of the racialization of masculinity in movements, the complexity of identity formation of movement members, and challenges assumptions about the limitations of essentialism in these types of social movements. Both movements employ language that explicitly and implicitly illustrate a perception of white male victimization. Attention to essentialism in each movement shows the contradictions of each movement, with attention to how movement members choose to construct their own identities.

Research limitations – This research is limited to the written words of some movement members from material generated by each movement, and therefore, this research does not contain interview narratives of the movement members.

Originality/value of chapter – Previous research has faulted each movement for essentialist notions of self and group. This work argues that group cohesion and success of these types of movements depends on the ability of members to create essentialist categories of masculinity to support their claims and interests.

Employee involvement (EI) is a major part of high-performance work systems (HPWS) that have successfully transformed a large number of organizations and have become standard practice in many new organizations. Despite the proven benefits of EI, however, it is still not as widely utilized as it could be even when accounting for industry and organization differences in its applicability. We suggest that EI implementation is limited in part by the change management challenges it presents. We review the recent research on EI and HPWS, and suggest ways in which change research and theory can inform our understanding of why EI practices have fallen short of their potential and how they can be effectively implemented.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in‐depth understanding of the lived experience of sex discrimination from the perspective of women in the Wal‐Mart case and unravels the daily mechanisms through which sex discrimination takes place.

One hundred and ten in‐depth statements from women who are current and former employees of Wal‐Mart, describing in detail their work experience, were employed as the main source of data. We have carried out a detailed content analysis of these in‐depth interviews identifying the mechanisms of sex discrimination.

Findings identify the specific mechanisms through which sex discrimination takes place. In the context of the current sex discrimination case, the paper provides a rich body of evidence in unraveling the everyday mechanisms of sex discrimination. It observes that instead of individual events, at important thresholds, sex discrimination is a result of small, everyday acts and gendered assumptions, which often appear supportive and harmless.

The richness of the data provides the unique, empirical opportunity to observe the process in detail, but this paper focuses exclusively on the process, and the end‐results remain outside the scope of the paper.

The paper provides a very useful source of information and practical advice for women in the labor force in identifying the supportive, nice and harmless mechanisms and everyday experience of sex discrimination.

This paper exclusively focuses on the process and identifies the mechanisms of sex discrimination using a rich source of qualitative data. It offers empirical evidence in identifying the daily assumptions and everyday mechanisms of sex discrimination. Sex discrimination in the everyday lives are carried out in disguise of harmless, nice and often supportive behavior; therefore this paper offers explanations as to why many women stay in these exploitative jobs as long as they do.

Purpose – This chapter analyzes the ways that gender expectations shape the process of ethnic Jewish identity construction.

Methodology – I spent approximately 18 months conducting participant-observation with Shalom, an independent social group comprised of young adult (primarily secular) Jews, whose mission was to facilitate a “cohesive Jewish community.” I then conducted 25 in-depth interviews with group members.

Findings – My data suggest that Shalom's negotiation of Jewish identity was actually a negotiation of Jewish male identity and Jewish female identity, with the assumption of heterosexuality in both constructs. Often using language reflecting gender-coded anti-Semitic stereotypes, members of Shalom constructed Jewish identity in ways intimately intertwined with their perceptions of “typical” Jewish men and “typical” Jewish women.

Research limitations/implications – Further empirical studies of the gendered construction of ethnic identity in the United States (particularly among more recent “white” immigrant groups like Greeks, Eastern Europeans, and Middle Easterners) could help illuminate the ways gender concerns influence efforts to move to the cultural center by those situated at the cultural margins.

Originality/value of chapter – Published accounts of the intersectionality of identities have been either largely theoretical in nature or comprised of personal identity narratives. However, there has been little systematic, empirical study of the interactional processes that shape the identities produced through the simultaneous doing of both gender and race/ethnicity.

The focus of this article is a comparative analysis of the values inherent in multicultural feminism, and their consistency with the field of sociology of sexualities using Laud Humphreys’ Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places as an reflection of that growing body of work. The following six feminist values, as discussed in Cammaert and Larsen (1988), will be discussed through the filter of the Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places: (1) the personal is political; (2) acknowledging that oppression often results in limited life choices for the “out” group; (3) equalization of the power dynamics between the “in” and “out” groups so they can begin to share power with each other; (4) androgyny and masculinity; (5) social action/empowerment; and (6) expanding the existing knowledge base of data associated with the sociology of sexualities.