We examine how two sociological traditions account for the role of femininities in social domination. The masculinities tradition theorizes gender as an independent structure of domination; consequently, femininities that complement hegemonic masculinities are treated as passively compliant in the reproduction of gender. In contrast, Patricia Hill Collins views cultural ideals of hegemonic femininity as simultaneously raced, classed, and gendered. This intersectional perspective allows us to recognize women striving to approximate hegemonic cultural ideals of femininity as actively complicit in reproducing a matrix of domination. We argue that hegemonic femininities reference a powerful location in the matrix from which some women draw considerable individual benefits (i.e., a femininity premium) while shoring up collective benefits along other dimensions of advantage. In the process, they engage in intersectional domination of other women and even some men. Our analysis re-enforces the utility of analyzing femininities and masculinities from within an intersectional feminist framework.

Women’s participation in slut shaming is often viewed as internalized oppression: they apply disadvantageous sexual double standards established by men. This perspective grants women little agency and neglects their simultaneous location in other social structures. In this article we synthesize insights from social psychology, gender, and culture to argue that undergraduate women use slut stigma to draw boundaries around status groups linked to social class—while also regulating sexual behavior and gender performance. High-status women employ slut discourse to assert class advantage, defining themselves as classy rather than trashy, while low-status women express class resentment—deriding rich, bitchy sluts for their exclusivity. Slut discourse enables, rather than constrains, sexual experimentation for the high-status women whose definitions prevail in the dominant social scene. This is a form of sexual privilege. In contrast, low-status women risk public shaming when they attempt to enter dominant social worlds.

Research on men tokens (or numerical minorities) at work has focused on the processes by which men try to claim hegemonic masculine identities for themselves and how workplace interactants support or reject these attempts. In contrast to masculinity studies, token theory has paid less attention to non‐hegemonic masculinities. Using interviews with men administrative assistants, I develop a more comprehensive understanding of men tokens' gender performances and their significance for gender inequality. I present a four‐part typology: hegemonic masculinity, alternative masculinity, critical masculinity and male femininity. The categories are differentiated along two axes: support for hegemonic masculinity and support for hierarchical, binary gender.

Returning the helper to studies of help‐seeking highlights how organizational status is interactionally (re)produced. Using interview and ethnographic data of IT support workers in a medical school, I illuminate how organizational status hierarchies develop independently of organizational rank or authority. Status both structures and is (re)produced through requestors' enactment of deference and/or face‐threatening acts; backstage interpretive processes among helpers naturalize and legitimate status‐based interaction styles. High‐status requestors' failure to protect helpers' face does not flow naturally from organizational status but is the result of active meaning‐making processes with meso‐level implications.

This paper explores the overlaps and divergences between network sociologist Harrison White's second edition of Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge (2008) and poststructuralist theories from the past three decades. Although poststructuralist thought is barely discussed in White's work, comparing the approaches reveals significant convergence. I detail two major overlaps: White's ideas of control compared to Foucault's concept of discipline, and White's conception of identity compared to that of feminist poststructuralists. Differences are apparent also, especially as regards treatment of categorical identities such as gender and race. Then, I turn to two ways poststructuralism and White can be put into productive conversation: how focusing on gender as discursive rather than attributional can help network analysts develop theories that better explain the gendered dimensions of social life, and how using blockmodeling methods can aid feminist poststructuralism in understanding what gender looks like without men's and women's bodies present.

Research on women who divorce their abusive husbands typically draws on the experiences of those who have had contact with formal intimate partner violence (IPV) support services. The experiences of women who have not sought such support remain poorly understood. Drawing upon a series of longitudinal, in-depth interviews with 12 women who did not seek formal IPV services, this work illuminates women’s “strategically stealthy” agency, as they navigate spousal violence, seek human connection and formal support, and eventually file for divorce. This article proposes a revision of the transtheoretical model’s (TTM) preparation stage from 30 days to a flexible time frame of months and even years, which allows a more complex, agentic understanding of IPV survivors’ actions, behaviors, and help-seeking efforts deployed in planning for divorce. By expanding the time frame of TTM’s preparation stage, this work has broad implications for social work practice.

Drawing on 200 hours of observation at The Help Desk, an IT Support (ITS) unit at a medical school, and interviews with 30 ITS workers from across the university, this article shows how organizational-level IT rationalization was affected at the microlevel through ITS workers’ extensive emotional labor and involvement in meaning-making projects. Successful implementation required ITS workers to function as shock troops, introducing and enforcing new policies, and shock absorbers, encouraging compliance and insulating administrators from discontent about those changes. This article contributes to inhabited institutions theories of organizational change by demonstrating the importance of service workers’ interactive and emotional labor to the coupling of institutional myth, organizational policy, and the interactions and practices of constituent members.

Research on queuing and waiting has demonstrated how these practices exemplify tacit norms of social organization and how the dynamics of deference embedded in waiting (re)produce the status of the waiting individual and/or the power of individuals in charge of queues. Less attention has been given to the broader effects of the agentic efforts of individuals to decrease their wait times and increase their priority in their original queue, what I term the active management of waiting. Using ethnographic and interview data on IT support workers at a large university, I document how high-status individuals engage in three active management of waiting strategies: trumping the queue, circumventing the queue, and refusing to queue. As I show, these strategies are patterned by organizational status and thus not only (re)produce the status of the waiting individual but also exert a disciplinary effect on servers and help (re)produce organizational status structures as a whole.