Tags: children/youth, gender, inequality, sex/sexuality, dating, hook-up, intimacy, intimate relationships, romance, youth culture, 21 to 60 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 30:00
Access: no online access (YouTube preview)

Summary: In this lecture, Dr. Paula England explores the hookup culture in college campuses and describes gendered differences in this "new social form of relationship". As the Media Education Foundation notes, "England mobilizes a wealth of data to begin to chart whether the hookup phenomenon represents some kind of fundamental change, or whether we’re simply seeing age-old gender patterns dressed up in new social forms." Drawing upon qualitative research with heterosexual Stanford undergraduate students and online surveys study with 18 private and public universities, her findings show that hooking up is a new social form where sexual activity precedes – rather than follows – dates or other expressions of relational intent. She also documents gender differences and inequalities in traditional dating and courtship practices. For example, women who initiate and have frequent hook-ups are perceived as "sluts"; pleasure is organized around men in that women are expected to give oral sex to their hookup partners, and report lower levels of orgasm. When used in class, students may be given pre-film questions and after viewing the lecture, use post-viewing questions provided by the study guide from the Media Education Foundation. Viewers may consider whether dating is replaced by hooking-up in contemporary youth culture and if women can be empowered by this new social form of relationship.

Submitted By: Nihal Celik

Tags: bodies, consumption/consumerism, gender, marketing/brands, media, sex/sexuality, representation, sexual
objectification, 00 to 05 mins
Year:
2011
Length: 0:59
Access: YouTube 

Summary: In this television advertisement for the Fiat 500 Abarth, a man has a passionate encounter with a seductive Italian woman, who  turns out to be a car. Literally. I use this clip to teach the concept of  sexual objectification. First, I have my students read Caroline  Heldman's essay on how to identify sexual objectification in media images. In this essay, Heldman defines the term as follows: "If objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like an object, then sexual objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like a sex object, one that serves another’s sexual pleasure." I then screen this Fiat commercial in class and have students construct it, using Heldman's 7-item Sex Object Test (SOT) as a resource to guide our analysis. This approach gives us a lot to talk about, including the way the woman in the advertisement stands in for an object, the interchangeability of sex objects (she only speaks Italian and appears to be incomprehensible to the fantasizer), the way in which her body is literally branded with the Abarth logo, and the ejaculatory imagery. Instructors can go on to discuss the harm associated with sexual objectification, which Heldman addresses in Part 2 of her series on sexual objectification, and which is also discussed in the films Killing Us Softly and Miss Representation.

Submitted  By: Michelle Sandhoff

Tags: gender, sex/sexuality, violence, gender binary, Native American culture, third gender, two-spirit people, 61+ mins
Year: 2009
Length: 65:00
Access: PBS (includes Trailer; Clip 1; Clip 2; Clip 3)

Summary: This documentary from PBS's Independent Lens series centers on the story of Fred Martinez, "a boy who was also a girl" who was murdered as a teenager, making him "one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history." The film explores non-binary gender traditions or "two-spirit people" in the indigenous cultures of North America. As explained here, "Most tribes were aware of the existence of two-spirit people, and many still have a name in their traditional language for them. For example, The Din éh (Navaho) refer to them as nàdleehé or one who is 'transformed', the Lakota (Sioux) as winkte, the Mohave as alyha, the Zuni as lhamana, the Omaha as mexoga, the Aleut and Kodiak as achnucek, the Zapotec as ira' muxe, the Cheyenne as he man eh, etc. (Roscoe, 1988). Some tribes had different names for two-spirited men and women." Several short clips from the film are available from PBS. I use Clip 1 (2:24) to help students think beyond the gender binary of contemporary American society. PBS's website for the film offers some educational resources, including a map of gender-diverse cultures across the globe. For additional information about the film and how to purchase it, click here.

Submitted By: Michelle Sandhoff

Tags: art/music, bodies, gender, sex/sexuality, social construction, dance, masculinity, performance, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2009
Length: 9:11
Access: YouTube 

Summary: This video features a dance piece entitled "The One & The Other," and is part of the graduate thesis of choreographer Juan Carlos Claudio (performing here with Graham Brown). In the piece, Claudio explores issues of masculinity and male-male friendships. He writes in his thesis: "The One & The Other came from a desire to portray the process of developing a healthy male relationship in which traits of masculinity and femininity are fully realized and expressed without fear or judgment. In presenting an example of this relationship I hoped to: 1) Challenge the old-fashioned rules of masculinity and the assumptions of male superiority, so that men could live happier and more fulfilled lives; 2) Expand men’s personal and emotional selves by helping them expose and realize their fears of close affection toward other men; and 3) Understand how men can create more genuine friendships by overcoming competitiveness, inexpressiveness, and other aspects of traditional masculine roles." This piece is not set to music. If you turn the volume up high you can hear the sounds of breathing and bodies in motion. After showing this performance in class, I ask students to discuss their emotional or visceral responses; they often say that it made them feel uncomfortable. This sets up a discussion of our social expectations of performances of masculinity, and can segue into a discussion of how we connect gender performance to ideas about sexuality. I ask the students to honestly assess whether they made assumptions about the sexuality of the performers based on their movements and interactions, and what led them to these assumptions. The video can also be used as an introduction to why bodies matter—I often ask students if they would feel more comfortable if it were two women dancers, or a male-female couple, and how their interpretations of certain movement sequences might be altered.

Submitted By: Michelle Sandhoff

Tags: gender, media, sex/sexuality, sports, athletes, male gaze, olympics, self-objectification, sexual objectification, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 2:18
Access: LiveLeak

Summary: Hockey blogger for Yahoo! Sports, Greg Wyshynski, offered a scathing critique of NBC's video ode to the women athletes of the 2012 London Games. He sees straight through the flimsy defense that the video montage was merely a celebration of the human form, and he exposes it for the vulgar artifact of sexual objectification it truly is. He writes: "The 2012 London Games have been labeled 'the women's Olympics' thanks to record-setting performances and watershed moments like the dawn of women's boxing as well as the participation of female athletes from Saudi Arabia. How did NBC decide to help celebrate this incredible time for women in sports? With meaningless objectification, of course! 'Bodies in Motion' was an online video produced by NBC in which women competing in various Olympic sports were featured in softcore, fetishist slow-motion highlights, while porn-tastic jazz music played on the soundtrack. It looked like something a horny teenager with a DVR would have spliced together for YouTube; instead, it was the official rights holder of the Olympics in the U.S. that produced it.” Wyshynski's admonishment is spot on, but he doesn't go far enough. The sexual objectification during the 2012 Olympics needs to be discussed, not because its execution is reminiscent of low budget porn, but because widespread sexual objectification is harmful to girls and women. As political scientist Caroline Heldman has argued, an environment of sexual objectification leads women to self-objectify, which is the "phenomenon of girls and women viewing themselves from an external vantage point, constantly monitoring their behaviors and bodies to maximize their appeal." The harm for girls and women is quite measurable. For instance, Heldman notes the psychological harm. Women who self-objectify are more prone to depression, have lower self-esteem, and lower personal efficacy. They are also more likely to feel body shame, including shame about their menstrual cycles, and they are more likely to exhibit symptoms of anorexia and bulimia. They have lower cognitive functioning on average as well, which is expressed by lower grade point averages. Finally, they are more likely to experience sexual dysfunction, and Heldman's own research links self objectification to lower political efficacy.

Image by Brian Snyder/Reuters

Submitted By: Anonymous

Tags: abortion/reproduction, demography/population, gender, marriage/family, violence, domestic violence, gendercide, india, infanticide, patriarchy, sex ratio, subtitles/CC, 61+ mins
Year: 2012
Length: 64:29
Access: YouTube

Summary: The cultural preference for sons in India and China is well known and widely discussed, and demographers observe that both countries have distorted sex ratios, due in part to a rise in sex selective abortions since the 1980s. According to estimates based on census and sample registration data, in mainland China the sex ratio stood at 120.6 boys per 100 girls in 2008, while it stood at 110.6 boys per 100 girls in India for 2006-2008. In some Chinese provinces and Indian states, the ratios are even higher than these national-level estimates. For instance, in Jiangxi, Anhui and Shaanxi provinces in China the sex ratios are 137.1, 132.2 and 132.1, respectively, and in India's northern states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, the sex ratios are 119.6, 118 and 114.9, respectively. This video is from the Indian television talk show Satyamev Jayate and takes on the issue of sex selective abortions in India. The video can be used to supplement discussions on distorted sex ratios. In particular, it can be used to highlight the domestic violence that often accompanies the preference for sons but tends to be neglected in the demographic literature, given its tendency to focus exclusively on numbers and trends. From about the 6:10 mark to about 19:30 minutes, the audience hears the testimony of two women who were coerced into having sex selective abortions and have faced considerable harassment from their husbands and in-laws for their failure to have sons. Instructors can further use the video to begin a discussion about how the problem of imbalanced sex ratios can be addressed. Since patriarchal notions that men are more valuable than women underlie the trend toward coerced sex selective abortion, a truly systemic approach will likely include an attempt to dismantle patriarchy itself.

Submitted By: Manjistha Banerji

Tags: art/music, children/youth, discourse/language, emotion/desire, gender, media, sex/sexuality, feminist criticism, hip hop, male gaze, madonna-whore complex, misogyny, rap, rhetoric, sexism, slut shaming, socialization,
06 to 10 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 5:35
Access: YouTube

Summary: In this music video, rap artist Lupe Fiasco addresses the issue of images in the media and how they are absorbed by children and incorporated into their lives as adults. He appears to be critical of the hip hop music industry for sending confusing messages when it broadcasts words like "bitch," sometimes as a deprecation, and other times as a compliment (e.g., Kanye West calls Kim Kardashian a "perfect bitch" in a recent song he wrote). Before Fiasco, cultural scholars already contemplated the use of the word "bitch" in hip hop. For instance, in her book Prophets of the Hood, Imani Perry discusses the way women artists deploy the term, and how some have even succeeded in subverting its negative connotations in an effort to create new space for women. It is clear, however, Fiasco is plotting a different course with his criticism. He raps: "You see the fruit of the confusion / He caught in a reality / She caught in an illusion." While it should be said that neither character can see things more realistically than the other, the line suggests that Fiasco is really interested in the term's inherent dualism, and in this way, his criticism maps onto a broader feminist theory that attempts to expose the modern workings of what Freud originally coined as the Madonna-whore complex. This complex refers to a dualism in Western patriarchal discourse, which seeks to circumscribe the behavior of women and the desires of men. On the one hand, women are rewarded for being the sexual play objects of men (i.e., whores), and on the other hand, women are given clear messages that true grace only derives from marital chastity (i.e., Madonna). The video might be useful for triggering a discussion about how this game is clearly rigged for women, but it can also be used to begin a discussion about how the discourse negatively affects men.

Submitted By: Kim Ward

Tags: children/youth, emotion/desire, gender, violence, femininity, masculinity, socialization, subtitles/CC, 21 to 60 mins
Year: 1998
Length: 23:24
Access: Films On Demand

Summary: In this archived episode of ABC News 20/20, John Stossel investigates why girls and boys express their feelings differently. Drawing from an interview with Dr. William Pollack of the Harvard Medical School and author of Real Boys, and researchers from Emory University and the University of Connecticut, Stossel encounters what was still a fairly radical idea in 1998: parents, peers, and "society" encourage girls to express their feelings but stigmatize boys for doing the same. As Pollack explains, the consequence of this is that girls tend to feel more comfortable with their emotions and are able relieve their stress and sadness by talking about their emotions. Boys, in contrast, are unable to express their feelings and often act out with violence against others. Despite the expert testimony and research on the subject, Stossel and his colleagues seem reluctant to give up the idea that boys are biologically determined to hide emotion, and in the clip's conclusion, he expresses the evolutionary fantasy that men are biologically predisposed to hide emotions because they had to "stand in the woods with a spear [and] be quiet." The clip works well as a means of discussing the powerful influence of socialization to a topic rife with biological determinism. Before I show the clip in my class I have students write down the number of times they have cried in the last 6 months, and I ask them to make a note of how many times they cried in front of others. Then, once the clip is finished, I ask them to compare their answers to the ones given by the children in the clip and to reflect on their own socialization.

Submitted By: Nihal Celik

Tags: abortion/reproduction, aging/life course, biology, bodies, gender, health/medicine, lgbtq, marriage/family, science/technology, sex/sexuality, social construction, fatherhood, motherhood, parenting, pregnancy, stigma, transgender, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 10:33
Access: Vimeo

Summary: This video portrays the experiences and voices of various transgender parents and their families, which includes their decisions to become parents, reflections on what it means to be a parent, experiences of being a child of a transgender parent, the social stigma attached to being a transgender parent (and transgenderism in general), and experiences with various reproductive technology options. The video is excellent for illustrating the diversity of family structures and alternative gender arrangements, and would be useful in a class on sociology of the family, reproduction, gender, or sex and sexuality. People in the video highlight the hyper-gendered experience of pregnancy and parenting, thereby illustrating the social construction of these core features of the life course; this social constructivist perspective stands in contrast to common biological understandings of pregnancy and parenting. This video would pair well with Laura Mamo's Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience, as well as with GLAD's recently released book, Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy, which can offer a nice framework for discussing some of the legal issues and advocacy strategies that transgender people encounter in a family law context. The video is also available with Spanish subtitles.

Submitted By: Valerie Chepp

Image by Kristian Dowling/Getty Images for Beatie

Tags: children/youth, gender, marketing/brands, organizations/occupations/work, science/technology, adulthood socialization, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 0:52
Access: YouTube

Summary: This video was published by the European Commission for a campaign designed to attract more women to a career in science. The commission said that the video had to "speak their language to get their attention" and that it was intended to be "fun, catchy" and strike a chord with young people. The original video was taken down after it received so many negative comments. This tactic, however, of flashing a few pink gimmicks in an effort to get girls interested in (or purchase products related to) traditionally masculine activities is nothing new; instructors can point to numerous examples including the marketing of video games and computer technology (both the hardware and software). This clip would be useful for illustrating to students the ways in which gender socialization, often discussed in the classroom in the context of pink and blue toys for children, carries into adulthood in very obvious ways (e.g., Dell's short-lived Della computers). However, instructors might ask students to name some less obvious ways that gender socialization in adulthood takes place. Further, instructors might take a counterposition in an effort to spark classroom discussion, for example, posing the question: What's the harm of using a little pink and slick sexuality to get women involved in science? If successful, wouldn't this be a feminist victory in that more women would move into an occupational field currently dominated by men? 

Submitted By: Anonymous