This study utilizes reflexive thematic analysis and feminist communication frameworks to examine how men's mental health podcasting serves as a "feminist counter-space" for the renegotiation of contested masculinities. By analyzing episodes from a UK-based charity podcast, the research identifies three themes: encouraging a culture of inclusivity, positive masculinity and discursive accountability, and grappling with masculinity and the gender binary. The findings reveal that the podcast's aural intimacy and "emotional role modeling" allow participants to subvert the patriarchal bargain by promoting individual accountability and vulnerability, thereby reducing the "emotional outsourcing" historically imposed upon women. Proceeding from the premise that scholarship involving men must actively interrogate patriarchy to foster gender justice and equality, the research argues that long-form podcasting offers a vital site for feminist praxis, providing a discursive blueprint for an "emotionally self-sustaining" masculinity that effectively dismantles patriarchal communicative norms. While these digital spaces offer significant potential, the study cautions that inclusive masculine projects require continued intersectional vigilance and a commitment to radical transparency to remain effective within contemporary society.
This autoethnography examines the intersectional harm experienced by one Black American woman professor at a faith-based institution, whose feminist and critical pedagogy in communication became the target of conservative media in the United States. Written in second person to protect the professor's identity and all involved, the piece demonstrates how epistemic surveillance and misrepresentation delegitimize Black women's intellectual labor in white academic spaces. Through critical engagement with feminist and womanist thought, a central tension emerges between the public response the professor wishes to give, and the strategic silence required for survival and to minimize future targeting. The piece theorizes silence as calculated nonverbal resistance, revealing how Black women academics must navigate the impossible choice between speaking truth and protecting their precarious positions. This autoethnography illuminates the challenges women of Color face today when doing culturally responsive work in communication studies, centering the costs of such labor at the intersections of race, gender, and religion.
This article offers a comparative analysis of The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) and its Hindi adaptation, Mrs. (2024), two films that examine the emotional and physical toll of domestic labor and patriarchal control within Indian households. Through an exploration of everyday spaces, the kitchen, the dining table, and the bedroom, the article traces how both protagonists navigate marital expectations, silent surveillance, and cultural rituals that normalize female subordination. By situating these films within both Global North and South feminist discourses, this study highlights how cinematic storytelling critiques and also reproduces cultural norms, revealing the shifting politics of gendered labor across regional and national contexts. Thus, the article examines how feminist resistance can be portrayed through different cinematic vocabularies, offering new ways to think about gender, labor, and autonomy in contemporary Indian cinema.
