So it (finally) happened. On June, 23rd, Polish Father’s Day, President Andrzej Duda signed the bill prohibiting the sale of ellaOne (the “morning after pill”) without a doctor’s prescription. By doing so, he added another brick to the current government’s mission aimed at limiting the sexual and reproductive rights of Polish women. According to European Commission recommendations, ellaOne has been available without prescription since 2015 and it will now remain so for less than one month. Access to ellaOne under new legislation will present multiple obstacles such as difficulties in finding nearby gynecologists (particularly those willing to give a prescription), short visiting hours (Nappi et al., 2013) and money issues (short-notice visits to gynecologists in Poland usually cost extra). In other words, many women, especially those who are young, from rural areas and not wealthy, will suffer under the new law tremendously.
men in Poland
On reactionary social movements, political opportunities and the antifeminist state
In May 2014 I had the pleasure of taking part in a workshop organised at the University of British Columbia by Professor Susan B. Boyd entitled “Men’s Groups: Challenging Feminism”. The main aim of the workshop was to gather international scholars working on issues such as antifeminism, men’s social movements, mothers’ and fathers’ rights in child custody, domestic violence etcetera. During this two-day event, academics from Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, the United Kingdom, Poland, Sweden, and Taiwan analysed contemporary activism and debates and discourses on the resistance to feminism and discussed how to support the advancement of feminist theories and strategies with regard to preventing the development of antifeminist practices, discourses and legislation all around the world.
New Special Issue on the dimensions of (Polish) masculinities
And yet another Special Issue on broadly defined men and masculinities research has been published. This time, together with Urszula Kluczyńska, we concentrated mostly on the intersections among (critical) men and masculinities and queer and sexuality studies and therefore, we had searched for papers where these particular perspectives are represented. Our efforts resulted in the collection of articles touching upon issues such as male friendships in the contemporary society, medicalization of male sexuality, transsexuality and drag-king’s activism as well as men’s politics in the Polish LGBTQ movement.
Special issue on men and masculinities in the European dimension
Some days
ago in Studia Humanistyczne AGH several papers on the on the variety of issues regarding men and masculinities have been published. The papers have been collected for the purpose of special issue edited by me and Urszula Kluczynska and deal with men and masculinities issues in a European, Polish, Norwegian, Swedish and Czech context, with authors residing in Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Spain, Germany, Austria, Norway and Slovenia. It is worth to mention that our collection is the very first special issue on critical research on men and masculinities published in Polish peer-reviewed journal and can be seen as one of the milestones in terms of establishing Polish (and Eastern European) critical studies on men and masculinities. All papers are highly interesting and definitely worth to take a look!
New article on the role of emotions in social movements
My latest paper (in Polish) on the role of emotions in social movements (the case of Polish fathers’ rights movement and breast cancer survivors) has been recently published in Studia Socjologiczne 4/2014 (215) and will is available here Full text The article results from research on the role of emotions in the constitution, character and dynamic of contemporary social movements. The paper is based on the cases of the fathers’ rights movement and the breast cancer survivors movement in Poland and is to a large extent the result of qualitative sociological research conducted with activists from the above mentioned movements between 2009 and 2012. Moreover, the analysis of the gathered material is preceded by an outline of the status of emotions in (Polish) sociology and the state of affairs in Polish research on the presented social movements. If You are interested in our findings and cannot read in Polish do not hesitate to contact me.
New article on men’s movements in Poland
My latest paper on men’s social movements in Poland has been recently published in Folia Sociologica (47/2013) and is available (in Polish) here Full text
Dr. K & THE men 