White Femininity

Race, Gender & Power

Katerina Deliovsky

This book contributes to the emerging field of white studies — an examination of the notion that whiteness is not an invisible category, but is itself a category of race. Looking at hegemonic white femininity in particular, the author examines the ways in which white women are coerced and compelled to demonstrate an allegiance to whiteness through their choice of intimate partners,sexual orientation, participation in racial inequality and complicity with white feminine beauty standards. This qualitative and theoretical research points to the fundamental role that white femininity plays in securing and reproducing whiteness as a location of white power and privilege.

Contents

Acknowledgements • Elsewhere from Here: Remapping the Territories of White Femininity • Behind the White Curtain • Compulsory ‘White’ Heterosexuality: The Politics of Racial and Sexual Loyalty • Reinscribing Whiteness: Rituals of Unity and Exclusion • Normative ‘White’ Femininity: Race, Gender and the Politics of Beauty • Surveying the Road Less Travelled: Reconfiguring White Femininity • References • Index

About the Author

Katerina Deliovsky teaches at Brock University in the areas of racism and anti-racism, sociology of gender, race and ethnicity and introductory sociology. Her intellectual and research interests lie in the examination of gendered processes of racialization, the sociology of interracial relationships, anti-racist feminism and social justice. She also informally counsels women who encounter challenges and obstacles to their interracial relationships.

Excerpt

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