Need some inspiration for my thesis on sex and gender

[fullmooncrazy]

Hello all,

Long, long, long time lurker here, and my first time posting. Firstly, thanks for all the knowledge and stories and enlightening threads and posts over the years. You are all amazing and have shaped so much of my thinking on feminism!

So now I need to write an MA thesis and after much pleading, I've managed to persuade my supervisor that something around media, sex and gender - and the failure of media to take women's concerns seriously - be an interesting topic, (and not one that would render me unemployable, forever).

But I need some support with a title - I know I want to investigate the failure of UK liberal media to a) report on controversies around the clash between women's rights and trans rights (prisons) and b) report it correctly (Wii spa), but I'm not sure of the main question and how I would go about researching this (textual analysis, survey of readers, both?). I know one of my subquestions that I want to prove is that this failure of reporting by the liberal media has led to increased polarisation, but I'm struggling to think of a great main question.

Any ideas? And any academic literature that springs to mind that people could share, as my uni doesn't give me access to any journals ...

Thanks so much for all your help and support!

‘Why is the liberal media so misogynistic?’ Would do it for me 😂

Something about the impact of the capture of IPSO upon women’s rights?

An analysis of UK media's reporting of womens and trans rights issues, and its effect on public debate.

Y

Thumbs!

You can't start from an assumption of media failure - you'll come across as biased. You'd presumably want to take the same story, and analyse coverage from several different sources?

I'm not an academic though so feel free to ignore me!

How about framing it as media’s sexist attitudes leading to major misinterpretations of gender critical opinions?

Or you could seek to critically analyse why media chooses to uncritically push (ideological) gender identity narratives that disadvantage women.

There’s always the chance to analyse why groups like Press For Change were able to make lobbying headway with IPSO and media generally and GC groups like Sex Matters, Fair Play for Women and FWS haven’t been able to make much progress until very recently.

Best of luck with your MA OP 👍

And any academic literature that springs to mind that people could share, as my uni doesn't give me access to any journals ...

Are you saying that the university doesn't subscribe to any journals or that you have been denied access to them for some reason? I don't see how they can expect you to complete an MA without access to the relevant literature.

What's your MA subject area? You'll need to refer to journals in that area, and of course your university must be giving you access to relevant journals. I mean if you're doing a French MA then you might not have access to media studies or gender studies or sociology journals, but then your topic wouldn't be suitable for your MA either.

You should look through journals in your area to see how they frame research questions, and what theories and methods they use; and frame your quesiton in a similar way. And if "has the failure of reporting [of stories which challenge the genderist point of view] by the liberal media led to increased polarisation?" is only a subquestion then maybe your overall question is too big! That seems like a big enough question for an MA thesis.

? What kind of university doesn’t give you access to journals?
Every uni I’ve come across has excellent online access to their library, and by extension to a huge range of publications….Which uni are you at?
of course you could always use Google Scholar

As part of your fees you will surely have university access to lots of journals online?

You seem to be starting with a research question (which is fine and usual for qualitative research methods), but then using the word 'prove' which is okay to use with a hypothesis, but not a research question.
Perhaps read 'Doing your research project' by Judith Bell beforehand!

You're asking quite big questions in terms of developing a research project. These really are the sort of things that should be covered on your research methods module and in collaboration with your supervisor.

Not having access to research journals is a massive concern at masters level and seems quite unusual.

Hmmmm yes it is a bit odd isn't it. Maybe OP is at the University of Life 🤷‍♀️

Any ideas? And any academic literature that springs to mind that people could share, as my uni doesn't give me access to any journals ...

You should be able to request them from your library, that's what happened for us, in 1995-99. We got 50 per year, without charge and two minibus trips (if we were interested!) to the Boston Spa (?) library, for unlimited copies - 5p a sheet.

It's all moved on a bit now!

I remember using microfiche for newspapers for my undergrad 😬

For a masters dissertation OP will need to be using up to date research which is all available online. Her library can definitely help access stuff, but it's fairly straightforward to find stuff through Google scholar, a lot is open access and there are ways to get past pay walls when your uni doesn't subscribe...

I'm a current undergrad student in 2nd year, so just starting to think ahead to my dissertation next year. There is no way I could write any of my essays without reference to a vast amount of recent journal articles that I access through my university library. It seems really odd that a Masters student would not have this access.

Also in the social sciences coming to research with the approach that you're looking to 'prove' a hypothesis is a little bit of a postivist position. Just my two cents...

I think it's wrong to set out to prove yourself right, but instead you could use this as a chance to investigate an area in more depth.

I'd use a qualitative approach to see how the gendered language changes are interpreted by those who have English as a second language, or a poor grasp of English - using the census as a basis for this needing done.

Possibly quite niche, but I'd like someone to look at the impact on journalism / the media of lack of clarity about the rules of English in relation to the sex / gender debate- specifically whether journalists use sex-based third person pronouns (common usage) or gender-based (upending all established rules of grammar). Common usage is that third person pronouns are sex class based and determined by the speaker /writer not the subject of discussion. If gender based pronouns are used these are individual, like names, not sex-class based and determined by the person being spoken about. Using both in the same article about different people is incredibly confusing and misleading.

Many articles use both sex based and gender based in the same article with no clear indication of when they're switching, and they use common usage i.e. sex based for most people without asking their gender identity first, which is inconsistent with then using gender-based pronouns (without a clear flag that they have changed the whole basis of pronoun usage) for a specific person. Because of this confusion and lack of clarity of when they're using sex- or gender-based third person pronouns, this leads to misinformation and inaccurate, untrustworthy reporting.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who questions now whether someone is actually male or female when reading an article about a criminal, for example.

It does depend on what faculty / MA title etc you're going for but I would tend to agree that you want to keep things as unbiased and clear as you possibly can for academic writing

presenting focus groups with passages reporting on a incident in one style and then asking them what they thought had happened, and then presenting with an account written about the same incident in a different style.

you can present this as a search for a reporting style which can inform readers without misleading them or telling them how they should think or feel whilst bearing in mind the sensitivities of trans readers.

You'll be able to find plenty of crappy journalism on both sides and therefore look much more fair and balanced.

@dimorphism x-post but yes I agree

I think a lot of people are very confused even now and probably a pretty large % or the population are still somewhat confused as to whether a transwoman is a woman who is trans and therefore identifies as a man, or a man who is trans and therefore identifies as a woman. I think even the same person could give different answers (guesses) on different days and after different news stories.