Feminism & Psychology

An understanding of children's interpretation of refusal statements is an important element in understanding the way girls are encouraged to cooperate with their own oppression. Refusing is a particularly important survival skill for girls growing up in a patriarchal society where boys are trained to be active but girls are trained to be compliant. In each of three samples (N = 27; N = 36; N = 20), girls differed from boys in their identification of a simple `No' as the refusal most likely to annoy an adult. Three possible explanations were explored: compared with boys, girls are less defiant; girls are more advanced; and that their perceptions are accurate. Support was found for the third explanation only. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for reassessing the role of refusals to resolve some of the contradictions around expectations of obedience and assertiveness, while recognizing the interests which benefit from keeping girls and women obedient.

Many lesbian feminist philosophers and social theorists have deployed a `false self account' of identity in their work. In this article the implications of this account of the self are identified and critiqued. An alternative relational psychoanalytic account of the self, drawn from the work of D. W. Winnicott, is suggested as useful for the development of lesbian feminist theory.

This study has two main aims: (a) to explore young men's and women's representations of `unfaithful' heterosexual relationships; and (b) in so doing to explore the theoretical and methodological implications of story completion as a research tool. One hundred and sixteen student subjects (seventy-two females and forty-four males) were given a story completion exercise, featuring a presumably unfaithful heterosexual partner-approximately half with a same-sex and half with an other-sex protagonist. Content analysis indicated that male subjects tended to sexualize and female subjects to romanticize the cue relationship. Males described the relationship as casual and sexually-focused, and minimized the emotional impact of infidelity, especially on the same-sex protagonist, who was most often described as reacting with indifference. Female subjects described the cue relationship as mutually loving and trusting and emphasized the emotionally devastating impact of infidelity for both same- and other-sex protagonists. Physically violent actions were more common in stories written by men. The findings are discussed in relation to feminist research on sex differences and sexuality and the implications of using story completion within essentialist and social constructionist perspectives are explored.