“Tindersluts" and “Tinderellas”: Negotiating Young Women's Sexuality Within a Digital Hookup Culture

This study explores how the dating/hookup app Tinder shapes the sexual scripts of young women. Preliminary findings from 24 in-depth interviews reveal the emergence of what I call a hybrid hookup script. This digitally mediated hookup script reintegrates traditional dating practices, which are absent in on-campus hookup culture, while maintaining the presumption of non-relational sex. Women do not find the hybrid hookup script to be unproblematic. According to participants, the sexual expectation to engage in hookups is at odds with their desire to establish romantic relationships through Tinder. By situating these findings within a broader nexus of scholarship on contemporary gender theory and digital sociology, I address how the integration of technology reinforces gendered sexual expectations and power relations. 

Objectives

1. To analyze the impact of mobile dating apps on young adult sexuality from a feminist perspective.
2. To demonstrate how Tinder operates as an extension of the on-campus hook-up culture. 3. To analyze the transformation of modern sexual scripts.4. To examine how modern technological advancements rearticulate existing gendered power dynamics. 

Using Your Social Positioning as Scholars to Promote Social Justice Through Public Scholarship

Scholars are uniquely equipped to advocate for disenfranchised populations. Relevate, a project created by interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners, calls for scholars to utilize their social positions to be change agents by decreasing inequalities in public access to knowledge. Capitalizing on increased access to the internet and technology across demographic groups, scholars can use Relevate as a platform for increasing the diversity of relationship information available in order to be relevant to diverse experiences. Using community engaged, intersectional, and social responsibility perspectives, we will discuss the institutional and social barriers to and benefits of engaging in public scholarship.

Objectives

1) To discuss the variety of ways scholars can systemically impact families, communities and the relationships between them through public scholarship2) To discuss resources for overcoming institutional barriers to public scholarship such as Relevate3) To discuss the ways intersectional identities of scholars can help or hinder community engagement depending on scholars’ awareness of their unique social positioning

Pairing Feminist Pedagogy With Performance

In this symposium, foregrounding feminist thought and using performance as an anchoring device, we will draw on several innovative pedagogical practices within and outside the academy and offer perspectives from an undergraduate student, instructors, and scholars. The purpose of this symposium is inspire family scholars to engage in new pedagogical possibilities. In so doing, we share how five feminist family scholars have experimented with performance in their learning and teaching.

Objectives

To encourage thoughtful integration of HDFS, feminism, and the artsTo provide specific examples of how to employ the arts within feminist research and teaching spacesTo offer practical recommendations and theoretical framings for feminist pedagogical practices  

Academic Mothers and Work-Family Balance

Since women’s biological and tenure clocks run simultaneously, they often feel like they have to choose between their career and motherhood. Women who do climb the academic ladder often remain childless or produce fewer children than they wish. Women who choose to combine a full-time academic career with motherhood experience high levels of stress and work-family conflict. This presentation will summarize the literature on academic mothers and their work-life balance. This will help generate implications for policy and practice to help support academic mothers and foster their professional growth.

Objectives

To identify factors that contribute to the ability of women to balance academic and parental roles.To summarize literature on the lived experience of academic mothers.To discuss implications for policy and practice to help support academic mothers and foster their professional growth.

Being Brown in America Today: An Interactive Feminist Workshop

This interactive and educational workshop will review a brief history of American feminism (including intersectional feminism) and the ABC-X Models of coping (Hill, 1949; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983). These concepts will then be applied to working with families of African American and Latino descent, and specific stressors faced by brown families, in the current social climate in America. An emphasis will be placed on experiences of mothers and children in these families and stressors professionals should be aware of. The importance of responsibility and multicultural competence, on the part of the professional, will be accentuated, with various tools and activities for professionals to educate themselves on multicultural issues, as well as applying these concepts to professional lives.

Objectives

To gain an understanding of both (intersectional) feminism and the ABC-X Models of stress, coping, and resilience. To gain an understanding of how being brown in America is a stressor for many families, and what strategies may be effective working with these families. To practice strategies to be more effective in working with people of color in identifying stressors and resources that may be effective when working with these families.

Engaging Men as Advocates: Creating Greater Gender Equity in Higher Education

This feminist informed qualitative study evaluated the impact of an Advocate Program that is specifically designed to engage men faculty in individual and institutional change efforts intended to facilitate greater gender equity. The data was gathered through interviews with fifteen men faculty who participated in an Advocate Program as well as two focus groups each with seven women faculty. This study provides important insights into the structure, development, and potential impacts of an Advocate Program. Findings highlight the unique role that men can play in furthering the efforts to create more equitable climates that have historically been led by women.

Objectives

To evaluate the effectiveness of an Advocate and Ally program.
To analyze the necessary components for creating an effective Advocate and Ally program and utilize those components to design a campus specific program.
To analyze the barriers to establishing an effective Advocate and Ally program.

Creating Supportive Living Environments for LGBTQ Elders

Funded by the BGSU Optimal Aging Institute, the authors created an on-site training for staff of senior living facilities. The face-to-face LGBTQ diversity training focuses on increasing the understanding of issues and concerns, awareness of aging LGBTQ population needs, comfort in working with and addressing LGBTQ concerns, and preparedness to serve and support the optimal aging for older LGBTQ populations among senior living facility staff. The presentation will implement the training pedagogy and discuss evaluation of workshop effectiveness. Workshop topics include: terminology and language; historical events and changes; minority-related stressors; and supportive practices.

Objectives

1. To demonstrate best practices in creating supportive living environments for LGBTQ elders2. To evaluate the effectiveness of LGBTQ diversity training for senior living facilities3. To describe the need for additional LGBTQ diversity trainings focusing on the aging process for this population