I remember walking to class one morning as a 10-year-old boy, and for no particular reason, my gaze drifted to my right, just in time to catch a classmate exiting the girls restroom. It was a split second glance into the forbidden zone, and I was suddenly guilty. Did anyone see me? The girls restroom didn't look anything like the boys restroom, I thought. More pointedly, what was the nature and purpose of that large white box bolted to the side of the bathroom wall?
Whatever goodies that glorious white box dispensed, I decided that the facilities, and indeed the experience of using the girls restroom were irrefutably better than could be had in the boys. Some time later, I pieced together enough information to conclude that the box held a supply of tampons or menstrual pads, which had something to do with women and their periods. As to how often girls used these soft cotton marvels of technological innovation was a complete mystery, and I knew even less about how they used them. That fleeting glance of the white box that day stirred my curiosity, but somehow I intuitively understood that to broach the topic of women’s menstruation was to risk embarrassment, so I never brought it up. I eventually learned the basic mechanics of an average menstrual cycle, but it wasn’t until after high school that I developed some very close relationships with women, and through our conversations, I was finally able to name this bizarre mystique surrounding the topic of menstruation. I’ve always been a curious guy, so it’s fitting that I became a sociologist. I’ve been thinking about just how pervasive this fear of menstruation is in American society, and I’m wondering why it exists at all. One could look at Hollywood movies as a rough gauge of the ubiquity of the fear. The kinds of stories we transform into blockbuster movies, and even the jokes we tell in those movies, say a lot about our society. Take, for instance, the popular 2007 film, Superbad, starring Jonah Hill as Seth. In one memorable scene, Seth finds himself dancing close to a woman at a party and accidentally winds up with her menstrual blood on his pant leg. A group of boys at the party spot the blood, deduce the source, and one by one, they buckle in laughter. Seth is humiliated by what is supposed to be an awkward adolescent moment, but he’s also gagging uncontrollably from his own disgust.
Menstrual blood, in its capacity to stir discomfort and uneasiness, is used as a vehicle for comedy in Superbad, but in the Stephen King film, it serves a different purpose. In Carrie, King's depiction of Carrie's first period is used to layer in tension, and it is not until the concluding scene, when a spiteful classmate pours a brimming bucket of pseudo-menstrual blood over Carrie's head in front of the entire student body, that Carrie finally resolves the tension by using her telekinetic powers to bar all exits and set her tormenters ablaze.
These two films are from entirely different genres and are separated by over 30 years; yet they rely on the same cultural taboos and anxieties surrounding menstruation (as do many, many other films I haven't mentioned). Both films have been commercially successful, suggesting they contain themes and characters that resonate with a broad swath of the American public. The menstrual scenes from Carrie are as unsettling as the scene from Superbad is hilarious because both films successfully capitalized on the collective sense of shame surrounding menstruation.
Long before me, feminists have noted that the all-too-common fear of menstrual contamination and the shame of failing to manage the menstrual flow are deeply held ideas rooted in patriarchy. That some men involuntarily gag at the mere thought of menstrual blood is evidence that the natural human experience of menstruation has been successfully re-imagined in American society as a kind of pathology. But I think it is important to remember, that women bear the brunt of this ideology. After all, women’s bodies are pathologized, not men’s.
It’s also important not to lose sight of the fact that this pervasive fear of menstruation also fuels a multi-billion dollar industry, which produces and markets hundreds of products designed to manage and even suppress menstruation (e.g., Lybrel and Seasonique), and it is this relationship between menstrual shame and corporate profit that needs to be exposed and disentangled. In an interview about her recent book, New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation, sociologist Chris Bobel nicely articulates the connection between menstrual anxiety and corporate profit: The prohibition against talking about menstruation—shh…that’s dirty; that’s gross; pretend it’s not going on; just clean it up—breeds a climate where corporations, like femcare companies and pharmaceutical companies, like the makers of Lybrel and Seasonique, can develop and market products of questionable safety. They can conveniently exploit women’s body shame and self-hatred. And we see this, by the way, when it comes to birthing, breastfeeding, birth control and health care in general. The medical industrial complex depends on our ignorance and discomfort with our bodies. Bobel’s analysis helps make sense of why I felt so certain at the ripe old age of 10 that I couldn’t ask anyone about the tampon dispenser on the wall. By then, I had already internalized the patriarchal notion that women’s menstruation is a potential source of shame, or at least that my interest in it would be shameful. Nearly three decades later, when discussing the topic with my students in the introduction to sociology class I teach, I invariably get asked why—given all we know about the natural, reproductive purpose of the menstrual cycle—do we persist in attaching shame and embarrassment to this experience? In order to understand why, I think we need to critically examine the way patriarchy is entangled with capitalism. As Bobel also notes, it is profitable to peddle the patriarchal idea that women’s bodies are potentially dangerous well springs of shame. Femcare companies and the advertising firms they hire devote enormous resources toward replenishing this well of menstrual anxiety, thereby ensuring women continue to purchase a host of products all designed with the intent of managing their menstrual flow or even stopping it all together. Unfortunately, quelling the persistence of these very problematic ideas about women and menstruation is a tall order. If my argument is that it is untenable for advertisers to effectively tell women they must use femcare products to avoid shame, then it is equally untenable for me—especially as a man—to tell women to do something else. Instead, I'll conclude with what feels to be an embarrassing compromise with a system I'd rather just discard. My hope is that both women and men can become critically-minded consumers of media and the representations it deploys about women and their bodies. The American public, and many other publics, currently confront a number of anxiety-inducing challenges, menstruation isn't one of them. Lester Andrist
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It seems a week rarely passes without a story or a video like this one circulating through the news cycle. As someone who has spent the better part of the last decade studying teenage boys, I have seen much of this bullying behavior first hand. This video, while dramatic, is not so different that the sorts of interactions I saw as I “hung out” with young men and talked to them about their definitions of masculinity. Our children are bullying and being bullied. Thirty-two percent of young people from fifth to twelfth grade report having been bullied at least once in the past month.1 Nowhere perhaps has the discussion of bullying been more pronounced than in recent reports of the bullying of LGBTQ young people. GLSEN’s 2009 School Climate Survey indicates that eight in ten LGBTQ students (age 13-21) have been verbally harassed at school and four in ten had been physically harassed. Given these numbers, this attention is welcomed and needed. However, the current popular discourse on bullying, with its focus on individual bullies, rather than a social order that gives rise to aggressive behaviors in groups of people, misses some key components of bullying. This general discussion (not to mention much of the academic research) about bullying often ignores an important component, specifically the role of masculinity. That is, much of the bullying behavior, especially homophobic bullying, between boys, functions to enforce contemporary definitions of masculinity as dominant, heterosexual, competent, and powerful. By ignoring the role masculinity plays in these aggressive, often homophobic, interactions, much of the discussion about bullying makes it seem as if a particular type of person bullies and a particular type of person is victim to it. While this is certainly an important approach when it comes to making life better for our youth, it is also true that this type of aggressive behavior is found in relationships between many boys, even in seemingly friendly interactions. To address all forms of bullying these popular discussions need to look seriously at the role of gender in these interactions and not assume that there is only a certain type of (pathological) person that bullies and a certain type of person who is bullied. The reality of our kids’ lives is much more complex.
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Are LGBTQ kids bullied? Absolutely. GLSEN, the GSA network and the Human Rights Campaign (among others) have documented this extensively. But here is the problem. In framing so much of this bullying discourse about sexual identity, the fact that much of this bullying is directed at straight identified boys (from other straight identified boys) disappears. The Safe Schools Coalition documents that 80% of the recipients of homophobic harassment identify as straight. It is unlikely that the targets of the song in the above video identify as gay, and if they do, it is doubtful their tormentors are aware of this fact. So, what is this about? Masculinity. This sort of bullying when coming from and directed at (mostly straight)boys, has as much to do with shoring up definitions of masculinity as they do with understandings of sexuality (though of course the two are deeply related). When I talked to teenage boys about these types of homophobic taunts, they often tell me such epithets are simultaneously the most serious of insults and have little to do with sexuality. As one boy told me, “To call someone gay or fag is like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that’s like saying that you’re nothing.” Another claimed “Fag, seriously it has nothing to do with sexual preference at all. You could just be calling somebody an idiot, you know?” Another made it perfectly clear when he told me, “Being gay is just a lifestyle. It’s someone you choose to sleep with. You can still throw around a football and be gay.” In other words, a guy could be gay so long as he acts sufficiently masculine. According to the analysis set forth by many of the young men I talked to about homophobic epithets, the boys in the video are not being harassed because they are gay, but because the fans are trying to emasculate them (apparently because they support the wrong baseball team). Boys tell me that even the most minor of infractions can trigger this type of homophobia. One boy told me that you could suffer this kind of harassment for doing “Anything…literally, anything. Like you were trying to turn a wrench the wrong way, ‘Dude, you’re such a fag.’ Even if a piece of meat drops out of your sandwich, ‘You fag!’” Boys are continually vulnerable to this sort of harassment should they reveal in any way a lack of competence, femininity, weakness, inappropriate emotions or, yes, same sex desire. It seems that boys are frequently trying to avoid these epithets by acting sufficiently masculine, part of which entails lobbing these epithets at other boys when their performance of masculinity lapses, even mildly and or for a moment. While these videos show aggressive, indeed scary, forms of bullying, these messages about masculinity frequently also appear in more friendly interactions among boys and young men. Take this famous, and problematically funny, scene from the film 40 Year Old Virgin (and another version of it from Knocked Up), for example:
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In it two friends tease each other by answering the question “know how I know you’re gay?” Clearly, neither thinks the other is actually gay. What they are doing here is reminding each other about what it means to be a man. A real man does not sew, cook, wear clean clothes, like certain types of music and certainly doesn’t sleep with other men. Much of the homophobic bullying that goes on among young men (and in this instance, adulthood!) happens between friends, in a seemingly joking way. Joking, however, does not make the messages about masculinity any less serious. Just like the baseball fans, these men are sending each other messages about appropriate masculinity through aggressive joking. This type of joking, where the goal is to humiliate or embarrass another, contains important messages about masculinity and because of the humor involved we don’t often recognize it as a possible form of bullying. When we begin to think about bullying as something that goes on in boys’ friendships, not just between enemies, it calls into question the dominant framing of bullying as something that happens when one individual targets another individual. If we start to think about bullying as one of the ways boys assert masculinity and remind others to be appropriately masculine, than it is less an issue about one boy targeting another boy, than it is about the “friendly” bullying that happens between boys as they joke. Looking at bullying in this way suggests that it is not necessarily about some individual pathology (though of course it certainly can be), but also be about shoring up definitions of masculinity.
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Given this reframing of bullying, we may want to rethink the way we use the word bully for a few reasons. When we call these interactions between boys bullying and ignore the messages about masculinity embedded in their serious and joking relationships, we might risk divorcing what they are doing from larger issues of inequality and sexualized power. In doing so, we run the risk of sending the message that this sort of behavior is the domain of youth, certainly not something in which adults engage. It allows adults to project blame for this sort of aggressive behavior on to kids, rather than acknowledging that their behavior reflects (and reinforces) society-wide problems of gendered and sexualized inequality. It allows us to tell them “it gets better,” as if the adult world is so rife with sexual and gender equality. It allows us to evade the blame for perpetuating problematic definitions of masculinity that these kids are merely acting out.
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C.J. Pascoe Originally posted on Human Goods Last week, anti-trafficking crusader Ashton Kutcher bungled an opportunity to show America how everyday sexual attitudes toward women encourage exploitation. It’s time for good men to buck up and speak out about what respect really means. On August 24, actor Ashton Kutcher went on The Late Show with David Letterman to promote his new role in the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men. For those of us dedicated to the anti-human trafficking movement, this in itself was an interesting career choice for Kutcher. He’s replacing Charlie Sheen, who played the role of a hapless womanizer who often frequented strip clubs and paid women for sex. As in real life, on Two and a Half Men, Charlie Sheen was a John. Over the past few years, Kutcher has explicitly pronounced himself a “real man," which he publicly defines as someone who does not pay for commercial sex because prostituted girls are victims of human trafficking. He doesn’t believe that girls should be bought and sold for male gratification. In his interview with Letterman, however, Kutcher admitted to enjoying “the live thing” when asked whether he preferred “strippers or porn stars.” It is not controversial to state that strip clubs and pornography commodify the female body; in fact that is their commercial purpose. However, Kutcher’s professed preference for “the live thing” should raise some eyebrows. Kutcher is a co-founder of the DNA Foundation, whose mission is “to raise awareness about child sex slavery, change the cultural stereotypes that facilitate this horrific problem, and rehabilitate innocent victims.” For the past few years, Kutcher and his wife and co-founder of the foundation, actress Demi Moore, have been raising funds and awareness about human trafficking. Together they have made numerous appearances on TV and at forums, particularly denouncing child sex slavery—and men’s demand for it—as part of their stated efforts to “change the cultural stereotypes that facilitate this horrific problem.” Kutcher often tweets about the issue to his million plus followers and was a driving force behind the foundation’s “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” PSA campaign, an effort to discourage men from buying sex. “The ‘Real Men Don’t Buy Girls Campaign’,” the Huffington Post noted, “contains a message he [Kutcher] hopes people are willing to pass around; one that specifically addresses the male psyche, while also being entertaining and informative. ‘Once someone goes on record saying they are or aren’t going to do something, they tend to be a bit more accountable,’ says Kutcher. ‘We wanted to make something akin to a pledge: ‘real men don’t buy girls, and I am a real man.'’’ Although opinions about the efficacy of this campaign vary, Kutcher’s involvement in anti-trafficking efforts has been welcome, celebrated, and seemingly authentic. Before embarking on his advocacy, Kutcher took the time to learn: He read the research, talked to women and girls who had been trafficked, and consulted with NGO and government experts. He has spoken eloquently and knowledgeably about the issue in most of his public appearances. In short, Kutcher used his fame and charm to educate and model positive male behavior that redefines masculinity as respecting women—not commodifying them. He has positioned himself as the anti-Charlie Sheen. On his show, David Letterman predictably asked Kutcher a “gotcha question”: “Do you prefer strippers or porn stars?” After a pause and a chuckle, Kutcher responded, “I have a foundation that fights human trafficking, and neither of those qualify as human trafficking. You know the live thing is nice, there’s nothing wrong with a live show.” Not all prostitution or other commercial sexual services like stripping, aka “the live thing,” are connected to sex trafficking. However, Kutcher’s foundation recognizes a link in stating, “Men, women and children are enslaved for many purposes including sex, pornography, forced labor and indentured servitude.” The DNA Foundation’s website links to various studies and research reports that document significant connections between human trafficking and “the live thing.” Law enforcement officials throughout the country are increasingly recognizing this connection as they listen to survivors who tell us that, yes—they were indeed trafficked against their will to gratify men in strip clubs, massage parlors, and escort agencies. As a result of this evidence, state governments are clamoring to create public policies that ensure potential victims, wherever they are exploited, have a real opportunity to identify themselves as such. I am not a famous person. The paparazzi do not follow me. I have never been in a situation where millions watch me as I respond to a “gotcha” question. However, as a longtime advocate for exploited women and girls, I have spoken to many survivors who were trafficked through strip clubs and used in pornography, and I frequently speak about their exploitation at public events. I have often had to defend my own definition of masculinity, one that is not predicated upon the Hobson’s choice of “strippers or porn stars.” We tolerate, in public discourse, a willful ignorance of the role that men who pay for sexual experiences play in fueling the human trafficking industry. We fear that any condemnation will be labeled anti-sex. It’s difficult to go against this grain and take a principled but unpopular stance—one that contradicts an accepted norm that purposefully makes invisible the real harm done to real people for profit. But difficulty is not an excuse. I don’t have the public pressures that Kutcher’s fame stimulates and I also don’t have the same opportunities. Kutcher has taken this fame and molded it for the positive, and I respect him for that. He carved out a well-informed role for himself in a movement dedicated to ending slavery. Although there are many who may not agree with his tactics, most appreciate him as someone who has tried to inform—and inspire—men who are unaware of the venues through which women get trafficked. Kutcher went beyond just talking about the how and the where, but challenged conventional definitions of masculinity itself. That is the tremendous value Kutcher brings to this movement. And that is why I really wish that when the momentous opportunity presented itself, Kutcher would have stood up as the “real man” he professes to be. I wish that he would have challenged David Letterman for asking a question that trivializes the experiences of many trafficking survivors, whose stories have moved Kutcher to action. I wish he would have explained to Letterman that patronizing strip clubs supports an industry that perpetuates the consumption of women’s bodies and regularly profits from the trafficking of young girls—which goes against his definition of what a “real man” is. Strip clubs monetize engrained male attitudes toward women by offering men access to them for a fee. Kutcher could have implicated these attitudes, instead of supporting them, by explaining the close connection between men’s desire for (and language about) paid access to viewing and touching women’s bodies, and the millions of women and girls for sale worldwide. However, Kutcher’s response to Letterman’s impossible question betrayed a troubling ignorance that is not founded in a man who actually has taken the time to listen and learn. No one expects him to have it all figured out, but it’s not unreasonable to expect a modicum of courage to express a higher sense of awareness and sensibility, or at least an honest admission of confusion. Sexuality is complex and confusing. We are all attracted to and stimulated by other physical bodies for various and often inexplicable reasons. Those of us who profess to be defenders of human rights, and gain considerable attention and favor for it, have to hold ourselves to a high standard of introspection and public accountability. Kutcher didn’t just lower that bar for himself. He broke it. Along with it, I suspect that he also broke the trust and admiration of many in the anti-trafficking movement. Sexual attraction may be challenging and situational. Respect for women should not be. Samir Goswami Samir Goswami is a DC-based writer from India and wrote this article for Human Goods. Samir spent the last fifteen years working towards policy reform for the issues of homelessness and housing, workforce development, human rights, violence against women and sex trafficking, specifically working with survivors to have a direct say in their governance. His work has been recognized by Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, the Chicago Community Trust, and the Chicago Foundation for Women, which honored him with the 2010 Impact Award. He is currently on a quest for authentic advocacy. Originally posted on The Grand Narrative Opening my “Gender Advertisements in the Korean Context” lecture these days by talking about erections, I’m loath to end it on something as deflating as domestic savings rates. But then so often am I asked questions afterwards like… Why are there such sharp distinctions in the ways men and women are presented in ads? Why are women portrayed passively, weakly, dependent, childishly, and in awkward, unnatural poses to a much greater extent than men? Why, despite being written about North American advertisements in the 1970s, does Gender Advertisements have such resonance in Korean advertisements today? …that in my latest version for the 4th Korea-America Student Conference at Pukyeong National University (a highly-recommended 4-week exchange program by the way!), I decided to address the last by providing the data to backup my argument that it was largely because of a shared experience of housewifization. In the actual event though, the students wisely decided that they’d much rather get lunch than ask any more questions, so let me give a brief overview of that argument here instead: In short, housewifization is the process of creating a labor division between male workers and female housewives that every advanced capitalist economy has experienced as it developed, essential and fundamental to which is the creation of a female underclass that acquiesces in this state of affairs, finding self-identity and empowerment in its consumer choices rather than in employment. Lest that sound like a gross and – for the purposes of my lecture – rather convenient generalization however, then let me refer you to someone who puts it much better than I could. From page 60-61 of this 2001 edition of The Feminine Mystique (my emphases): “ The suburban housewife – she was the dream image of the young American woman and the envy, it was said, of all woman all over the world. The American housewife – freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of. In the fifteen years after World War 2, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary culture. ” And then this from page 197 of the 1963 edition: “ Why is it never said that the really crucial function…that women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house… somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured out that women will buy more things if they are kept in the underused, nameless-yearning, energy-to-get-rid-of state of being housewives…it would take a pretty clever economist to figure out what would keep our affluent economy going if the housewife market began to fall off. ” Ironically, by 2009 more women would actually be working in the U.S. than men. But rather than the result of enlightened attitudes, this was primarily because layoffs were concentrated in largely male industries like construction, and I am unconvinced that the above dynamic no longer applies in the U.S. In Korea however, the exact opposite happened. Moreover, while by no means are modern Korean notions of appropriate gender roles a carbon-copy of those in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, even if Korean women themselves are saying that the parallels between Mad Men and Korean workplaces are uncanny(!), the fact remains that in a society where consumerism was once explicitly equated with national-security, there also happens to be the highest number of non-working women in the OECD. It would be strange if the gender ideologies that underscore this decades-old combination were not heavily reflected in – nay, propagated by – advertising. This is a simplification of course, one caveat amongst many being that the Korean advertising industry is actually heavily influenced by the Westernized global advertising industry (see this post on the impact of foreign women’s magazines in Korea for a good practical example of that). But, also raising the sociological issues of Convergence vs. Divergence, and the role of Base and Superstructure, the main purpose of my finishing my lecture with that explanation is to leave audiences with encouraging them to think for themselves, by giving them just a tantalizing hint of how deep the sociological rabbit hole goes. Yes: it’s a cliche, but Gender Advertisements is very much a red pill. In particular, consider what greeted me at work just two days after giving the lecture: I don’t know their names sorry (anyone?), but I was struck by the different impressions left by the man and the woman’s poses. Whereas he seems to be engaging the viewer’s gaze, the finger on his chin implying that he is actively thinking about him or her, in contrast the woman’s ”bashful knee bend” and “head cant” make her appear to be merely the passive object of that gaze instead. For more about those advertising poses, see here and here, especially on how they arguably make the person performing them subordinate in many senses, and – regardless of those arguments – the empirical evidence that women do them in advertisements much more than men. Indeed, while that advertisement was perfectly benign in itself of course, and you possibly nonplussed at my even mentioning it, just a little later that week I saw this similar image with Han Ye-seul (한예슬) and Song Seung-heon (송승헌) in a Caffe Bene advertisement, outside a branch opening close to my apartment: Granted, the head cant helps frame the couple, and the ensuing contrast between the two models makes for a more interesting picture. But neither explains why it’s more often found on women than on men. Moreover, primed to look for more examples from then on, for the rest of July I saw plenty of advertisements featuring women by themselves doing a head-cant, and a few with men by themselves doing one. But when a man and woman were together? Call it confirmation bias, but it became a slightly surreal experience constantly only ever seeing the woman doing it (it’s one thing to know about something like that in an abstract sense from academic papers, quite another to experience it for yourself). Here’s an example from a recent trip to Seoul: Another with Lee Min-jeong (이민정) and Gong-yoo (공유) in Seomyeon subway in Busan: One more with Wang Ji-won (왕지원) and Won-bin (원빈), commercials of which are playing on Korean TV screens at the moment: Finally, with Jeong Woo-seong (정우성) and Kim Tae-hee (김태희): Only after 4 weeks(!) of looking, did I finally find a possible example of the opposite in Gwanganli Beach last Saturday (with Song Seung-heon {송승헌} and “Special-K girl” Lee Soo-kyeong {이수경}): Having told you about the difficulty I had in finding such an ad though, then Murphy’s law dictates that you’ll probably see one yourself very soon; if so, please take a picture send it on, and I’ll buy you a beer next time we’re both in the same city. But it wouldn’t surprise me if I don’t actually hear from anyone until September! Update 1: Literally just as I typed that last, the headline that “Women still stereotyped in TV ads” appeared in my Google Reader. I should feel vindicated, but I actually find the study described quite superficial, the conclusions meaningless without reference to that fact that roughly 75% of Korean advertisements feature celebrities. Still, I’ll give the National Human Rights Commission the benefit of the doubt until I see Korean language sources. Update 2: The Korea Herald also has an article, but it’s virtually identical. James Turnbull Gender equality has come a long way in recent decades. Yet, as we sociologists know, so much of our binary system of gender--and its many inequalities--remain. But is it that obvious to our students? Usually not! When teaching gender inequality in my Social Problems class this semester, I was struck by how many students could watch a video about gender in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, or even more recently, and say "but luckily things have changed so much, its not like that any more." While much has changed, so much remains the same. To document some of the continuities and changes of our gendered system, let's take a 15-minute video tour of gender representations using clips on this site. First, consider a retrospective look at the 1950s. In this clip from the 2003 film, Mona Lisa Smile, Katherine Ann Watson (played by Julia Roberts) is a socially progressive art history instructor. In the film, the tensions between the traditional ideology of a woman’s role in society as a domestic homemaker and the new idea of an educated, autonomous woman are constantly present in Watson’s classroom. Watson strongly encourages her students to be independent women, seeing their potential to be more than subservient accessories to a man’s household. Her advocacy for an uncompromising lifestyle is met with criticism and resentment from conservative students, who argue that it challenges "the roles you were born to fill." This tension reflects the common misconception of gender as a biological, rather than social, construct, and prompts Watson to use a powerful and emotionally-charged slide show critiquing depictions of women in a variety of 1950s advertisements (read more here). Second, let's take a look at a 1963 Disney film that shows that being a socially successful woman is simply a matter of walking, talking and smiling in a feminine way, as well as dressing in equally feminine clothes (read our analysis here). This is where some viewers may say "at least its not like that any more!" So is that true? What is old and new about the way women are depicted in the media today? For example, consider how commercials often depict women in traditional gender roles (read our analysis here; see other traditional gender roles depicted in commercials here and here). How about TV shows focusing on seemingly liberated women (read our analysis here)? What is new here? Finally, consider contemporary music videos and how they portray men and women, in relation to desire, sex, and power (read our analysis here): Like videos from the 1950s and 1960s, contemporary media place men and women into clearly defined gender categories. In the words of Dr. Watson's student in her fictional 1950s class, these media messages encourage women and men to conform to "the roles you were born to fill." But, of course, we are not born that way. Both women and men (see Jackson Katz's video on masculinity) are socialized--through many sources including media--to perform these roles. By watching this group of clips together, students can be encouraged to think about how much has changed? How much remains the same? Where did the changes come from? Why haven't gender representations changed more, and what is the role of power in reproducing gender? Paul Dean With the 83rd Academy Awards looming, the celebratory cries of Americans who love their cinema have reached a virtual fever pitch. As a site that celebrates movies, we thought it only appropriate to join in the revelry, albeit in an unconventional way. Rather than endless commentary about who is wearing who, and which star is most deserving of an Oscar, we at The Sociological Cinema would like to offer up a note about the kinds of stories Americans most often celebrate and value. We want to draw attention to the overwhelmingly male-centered narratives and representations emanating from the Hollywood film industry. Lucky for us, feminist cultural critic, Anita Sarkeesian, offers a very succinct analysis on the topic in a five-minute clip. In it, she demonstrates that our most celebrated films in the United States tend to be stories about men. As she explains, one of the consequences of living in a patriarchal society is that stories about men and masculine representations--their trials and transformations, courage and heroism--tend to be valued more than stories about women and feminine representations. Drawing from Sarkeesian's analysis, one can think about the following questions as they pertain to the films being celebrated as cinematic triumphs on Sunday: 1. Who has the most screen time? 2. Whose perspective do we see the story from? 3. Whose story arc does the plot revolve around? 4. Who is depicted as making consequential decisions in the story? and 5. Who do we most identify with? More often than not, the award is given to a movie about a man, told from his perspective. In fact, As Sarkeesian shows, a sweeping majority of the last 50 films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture were films about men and masculinity. For those fans of American film who have no patience for Sarkeesian's sound reasoning and...umm...systematic use of data, we submit a second short clip for your consideration. This clip comes from The Girls on Film (TGOF), who describe their film blog as "a commentary with the objective of stimulating thought around the art of storytelling through film." The creators of the blog seek to challenge the audience through their "exploration of archetypal energies that are typically portrayed by men." To this end, the blog features scenes from mainstream blockbuster films that were originally performed by men but recreates them with women actors. In my favorite clip of theirs, Ashleigh Harrington and Katerina Taxia (directed by Jeff Hammond) reenact the recruiting scene from J.J. Abrams' Star Trek (2009). While Harrington and Taxia do a superb acting job, I think many people are dumbstruck when they first encounter the recreated scene. The masculine repartee between these two women and Harrington's bloody nose challenge the idea that masculinity can only be enacted by men. Performances of female masculinity tend to be rare in Hollywood films and are therefore surprising, but more germane to Sarkeesian's point above, The Girls on Film scene might also be surprising because it uses a woman to play the kind of role we have come to expect a man to play. We have been primed to see such important and consequential dialogue between men, so when women do it, it feels somehow disorienting. Hollywood didn't invent patriarchy, but that doesn't preclude it from being implicated in reproducing it. The cultural critic, Stuart Hall, once observed that the people who work in creating media stand in a different relationship to ideology than the rest of us. That is to say, those who produce, direct, and act in films have at their disposal a powerful tool, which can be used to transform how people come to understand the world in which they live. Movies--especially the ones the Academy deems worthy of its coveted Oscar--pose answers to questions many people never asked, such as, "whose story is likely to matter most?" or just, "who matters?" As evidenced from the list of nominated films this year, those who were hoping for a revolution in the kinds of stories Hollywood tells may be disappointed. For now, a critical awareness of the men and masculinity America is (also) celebrating on Sunday may have to suffice. Lester Andrist The Super Bowl is around the corner and millions of spectators across the country will be congregating in living rooms, dens and bars to watch one of the biggest events in American sports. However, this sporting spectacle is famous not only for televising the battle for the much-coveted Lombardi Trophy, but also for its commercials. Airing a thirty second spot during a Super Bowl XLV time slot will cost about three million dollars this year. Given the highly gendered nature of sports, and American football in particular, as well as the high stakes and costs of Super Bowl commercials, the event this Sunday is a unique and significant cultural site to explore representations of gender, and specifically, those pertaining to masculinity. Not surprisingly, we are not the first sociologists to recognize the value of exploring gender representations in popular media, and others have fruitfully examined masculinity in mega sports media events like the Super Bowl in the past (Messner and Montez de Oca 2005). Still we were struck by the commercials that aired during last year’s Super Bowl, perhaps because they seemed unusually brazen in exploring representations of men, namely themes of emasculation via relationships with women and calls for men to overcome this emasculation and reclaim their rightful positions of authority. Seen from a slightly different vantage point, many of these ads seemed almost tongue-in-cheek, as though poking fun at the kind of masculinity that was celebrated without qualification not so long ago. When the commercials first aired we were both teaching classes on the Sociology of Gender, and soon thereafter found ourselves agreeing that the masculinities explored in these commercials were far more complex than they first appeared. And so, we set about trying to decipher the broader social and historical trends that might have led to these particular representations of masculinity. Namely, we have tried to make sense of a new crop of ads, which seem to promote an atavistic, hypermasculinity, while at the same time suggesting that such a masculinity is absurd and even laughable. Many of these commercials feature unmistakably alpha males, but the masculinity is overplayed almost as satire. While these ads first grabbed our attention last year, this new trope of masculinity predates the 2010 Super Bowl (consider, for example, the Dos Equis ads) and continues to flourish. If what we lose in reality (social structure), we recreate in fantasy (culture), then as Michael Kimmel suggests, advertising can be seen as a rear-guard action, which aims to recapture what has already been lost. In this light, the exaggerated masculinity of the 1980s—the decade which celebrated action heroes like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Norris—can be understood as a rear-guard action or a backlash against the urgings of Second Wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s (Jackson Katz makes a similar point in his documentary on masculinity). At the same time, the masculinity of the 1980s can be seen as a backlash against larger structural economic changes, which cannot be exhaustively explained as the result of the feminist agenda. A generation of boys aspired to be men in the face of an economy that was surrendering blue-collar jobs to cheaper labor elsewhere in the world. Thus the characteristically tough, unionized, and well-compensated blue-collar work became increasingly scarce, while at the same time pink-collar jobs of the service industry became ever more abundant. Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone, and numerous depictions of blue-collar workers were a fantasy that could recapture a traditional image of manhood, which was very much a fixture of the popular imagination but was becoming increasingly difficult to uphold in the material world. At the start of the new millennium an emergent strain of masculinity appeared, which seemed to cross itself by celebrating “mediocre men.” Michael Messner and Jeffrey Montez de Oca (2005) found that by 2002, the advertisements of mega media sports events began to construct “a white male ‘loser’…who hangs out with his male buddies, is self-mocking and ironic about his loser status” (1882). This shift was less about a newfound humility than the concerted efforts of marketers to encourage a rearticulation of the white male subject as vulnerable to humiliation, lest he enthusiastically consumes alcoholic beverages with his male buddies. We argue that the resonance of this emergent form was also built on the shortcomings of the masculine projects of the 1980s. While the appeal of characters like John Rambo stemmed from a fantasy to realize an unadulterated masculine prowess, the downside of this fantasy was that it was largely unattainable. It was, then, the inability to identify with the hypermasculine media representations of 1980s that paved the way for the popularity of more attainable and mediocre representations of men in the early 2000s. We still see the mediocre man trope identified by Messner and Montez de Oca in the ads of mega sports media events such as the Super Bowl. For instance, one of a handful of highly discussed ads from Super Bowl XLIV featured a series of young, seemingly emasculated “average” men staring blankly into a camera, narrating a list of humiliations they endure for their wives and girlfriends. In exchange for tolerating such defeats, they conclude: “I will carry your lip balm, and because I do this, I will drive the car I want to drive.” While the mediocre man is alive and well, we highlight a new development in American masculinity evident in recent commercials. A new character has burst onto the scene and his presence confounds previous analyses that point to the ubiquity of mediocre men in contemporary advertising. There is nothing mediocre about this latest iteration. He represents a return to the hypermasculinity of the 1980s, but not perfectly. There is a twist, for this new iteration is intended to be humorous. For the most part, the men of this new trope come with chiseled bodies, baritone voices, and full beards; they are understood to be the objects of women’s fantasies. Unlike the beer and liquor ads analyzed by Messner and Montez de Oca (2005), this new masculinity features men who are islands unto themselves. They don’t seek refuge among male buddies, as it might somehow dilute their potent manhood. Yet this performance of masculine idealism is done tongue-in-cheek. By 2005, the undaunted heroism and uncommon strength of the Chuck Norris persona no longer resonated as it once did. What was cool was not Chuck’s masculine prowess, but being aware of why such exaggerations of manhood were ridiculous. So-called “facts” about Chuck Norris—such as “Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits”—became an Internet sensation, and in 2007 a book was even published on the topic. Old Spice appeared to tap into this more ironic take on contemporary masculinity when they hired Isaiah Mustafa to step from a bathrobe to a horse in the span of thirty seconds. How do we make sense of this? We argue that despite appearances, the self-mocking irony of the mediocre man is still relevant; however, rather than encouraging the viewer to identify with the excessively mediocre characters on screen, these new tongue-in-cheek ads work from the premise that the viewer is the mediocre man. Like the Old Spice guy’s pitch about how to smell and what women desire, “the most interesting man in the world” from the Dos Equis commercials does not address or humiliate average men. Instead, he talks directly to us, providing counsel to mediocre men from an idealized masculine perspective about topics ranging from “manscaping” to “rollerblading.” These new ads make fun of that unattainable hegemonic masculinity of decades past, but does this mean these ads are genuinely subversive? In short, we don’t think the new, self-mocking masculinity in these commercials and popular culture is all that subversive. First, in laughing at these characters, white men are able to telegraph to the world the rather privileged assertion that they do not take themselves all that seriously. It follows then that when feminists offer critical insights about the embedded assumptions of heteronormativity in these commercials, or when they ask whether part of the joke is also the assumption that all women are seduced by diamonds, they are admonished as failing to have a sense of humor. As in the mega sports media ads analyzed by Messner and Montez de Oca (2005), the irony can and does work effectively as a means of deflecting charges of sexism away from white males. Second, this emergent masculinity is further problematic in that while it is self-mocking, it is not self-ridiculing. The representations of these men cause us to smirk because they are improbable, in part due to the social and cultural changes men perceive to be threatening their survival. However, while this masculinity may be deemed improbable, it is not undesirable. In this way the propagation of this new masculinity is not ultimately subversive because it does not fundamentally offer or even necessarily encourage a critique of hegemonic masculinity. It is as though the culture has found a way to reignite the hypermasculine fantasies of the 1980s. Furthermore, the fact that this trope of masculinity is recognized as fantasy does not undermine the ideal of masculinity (Connell 2005). As such, the ideal still serves to organize patterns, performances, and policing of everyday masculinities. We see this in the current Miller Lite commercials that command mediocre men to “man up” and, ostensibly, do a better job living up to the hegemonic ideal. Third, laughable representations of the hegemonic ideal do little to challenge characterizations of women, who continue to be depicted as reliably heterosexual and predictably susceptible to these hegemonic seductions. That is, even while we shake our heads about the implausibility of men in these ads, characterizations of women are largely taken at face value. Women want their men to give them diamonds and build them a dream kitchen. Such messages continue to organize interactive patterns between men and women, and as is evident from the retorts of our Sociology of Gender students, the messages about women remain effective. Students often make the strongest arguments in favor of a hegemonic masculinity when they attempt to refute it: “But that’s what girls naturally want! They’re looking for strong, hot, rich guys.” The millions of fans watching the Super Bowl and its commercials on Sunday will undoubtedly be treated to a virtual deluge of messages about masculinity. If previous years are any indication, a good number of the commercials will promote images of hypermasculine men proudly proving to be irresistible to women and capable of herculean feats of strength. Steelers and Packers fans alike will watch these clever commercials and revel in their self-awareness of the absurdity of it all. But although they will smirk and wink to their couch-mates, they would do well to wonder whether a hegemonic masculinity is being reinforced and promoted even as they mock it. We will be watching the game on Sunday to see what else becomes of the mediocre man. ***Join the conversation! If you have analysis to provide on Super Bowl commercials from this Sunday’s game, please consider submitting a video and your accompanying thoughts to The Sociological Cinema. We seek video submissions that instructors of sociology can use in the classroom. Lester Andrist and Valerie Chepp Originally posted on Skepchick Like many another crime fiction junkie, I’m mildly obsessed with Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. I pounced on the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, when it first appeared in the States, and was rather thrilled to discover a good crime story with a startling unique and complex female character at its heart – an unfortunately rare occurrence. All too often, especially historically, women only occupy the backdrops of noir genre tales. But beyond the story itself, the (anti-)heroine Lisbeth Salander has also seemed to find herself in the middle of a popular criticism debate about women, violence and the representation of both in art. The graphic depiction of both the violence – extremely sexual in nature – she is subject to and the violence she delivers in return has been the justification for critics to discuss whether or not her story deserves to be taken seriously or if it’s nothing but salacious drama only befitting the pulp from which tradition it springs. There are spoilers galore in this, so if you’re worried about that sort of thing, you might want to flee now. Let’s say this immediately and clearly – misogynist imagery does not equal a misogynist work of art. That’s a lazy correlation too many readers, watchers and reviewers currently make about books, films and the like, and it’s simplistic and shallow. Rape scenes do not automatically mean sexual content is being using gratuitously. Descriptions of women being victimized do not immediately point to exploitation. The impulse to label it as such is of course well-intended, and sometimes well-suited. It’s a sign of progress and, in general, a step in the right direction. But it’s not truly progress if it’s only an impulsive leap to the opposite end of the spectrum instead of a carefully considered conclusion about a terribly complicated and nuanced topic. Let’s also be clear about this – it’s entirely possible for a book to be feminist without featuring a single feminist in it. Lisbeth Salander, for example, is not a feminist. She’s an extremely emotionally damaged individual focused on survival, although she seems to be at least on the path to improvement by the close of the trilogy. She’s a victim of systematic abuse and torture, and she’s committed to self-preservation and revenge by any means possible. She’s not a necessarily noble figure. She doesn’t have to be to prove Larsson’s point. The fact that she isn’t proves it even more successfully. The same thing that many dislike (and understandably so) about the Millennium trilogy – its terse, journalist style, or, as some would have it, lack thereof – is what lends it its relevancy. The situations in this book are fictional, yes. But the entire tapestry is woven from Larsson’s journalistic observations and research of Swedish society, which, in many ways, does not differ much from other Western modern societies. There’s a reason each part in the book begins with statistics on violence against women in Sweden. It’s the same reason the Swedish title of the published book has nothing to do with dragon tattoos, but is simply, “Men Who Hate Women.” The book supports this thesis in numerous way, both obvious and so subtle that people seem to miss them completely. In the first book, the killer Martin Vanger quite evidently hates women, and deliberately picks as his victims prostitutes, because he doesn’t even see them as people and believes no one cares about their safety. The truly horrifying part about this is that he’s right. Not just in the book’s world, but our own. As the plot thickens to include Zalenchenko, we learn Salander’s father not only regularly beat her mother to the point where the elder woman sustained permanent brain damage and had to move to a nursing home to live, he is a sex trafficker who sells women like cattle. But the most subtle condemnation of the way some men treat women is Blomvikst himself, who, while ostensibly the hero and clearly a good man, nonetheless is freewheeling and often careless with the women he creates relationships with. His marriage deteriorated because he continued his open affair with Erika Berger – the same affair that makes Lisbeth realize he’s not worth pursuing romantically. Blomvikst’s own sister, a domestic violence lawyer who represents Salander in the latter’s trial, states this matter-of-factly at the end of the third book, as a way of warning to Lisbeth. But Lisbeth, of course, already knew. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a fictionalized journalistic expose of a modern, industrialized, progressive society’s complicity in systematic abusive treatment of women. From an epidemic of sex trafficking to rape used as a tool of control to the media panic over Salander’s bisexuality to random, sexually charged attacks on the street to Salander’s own insecurity about her body which leads her to breast implants. These books paint a portrait of every subtle and overt challenge women in civilized societies still have to face down. We praise violent and gory war movies that celebrate male sacrifice, pain and torture. Those are considered profound, and the willingness to graphically depict violence is lauded as bold and courageous. Rough and tumble gangsters and cowboys are treasured antiheroes. But when we see a book and/or movie that does the same for women, then it seems to become gratuitous. Men caught in a violent battle against larger forces are heroes. Are women in less-defined but no less violent battles simply victims? After all, the third book of the Millennium trilogy begins each chapter with a historical anecdote about the role of women in wars. All three books are about a female warrior in an urban battleground where women are physical and emotional casualties of men’s business and desires, and just because the war she fights is ambiguous, it’s no less real. Paradoxically, it seems those express concern about how women are being depicted are the ones drawing these unfortunate lines and missing the point entirely. Essentially, I think much of the criticism leveled against Dragon Tattoo based on misogynist grounds is even more misogynist itself. Dismissing graphic depiction of this sort of violence once again marginalizes the importance of highlighting and talking about it, and covers this marginalization in a nice sheen of concern for the poor women. Which means they also don’t get the first thing about why a character such as Lisbeth Salander is at the center of this tale. She doesn’t want your fucking concern. When it comes to my reading or viewing preferences, neither do I. I appreciate the fact there are so many people worried about these implications. But they don’t have the right to dismiss those, and further, implications because it’s distasteful to them, or deny the positive implications of talking about how women have to deal with them. What I think people aren’t getting about the evolving depictions about women in popular literature and on screen is that the goal is not to have nothing but perfect women in perfect situations. What I want to see is complex and complicated women in complex and complicated lives. It’s not always going to be pretty. It shouldn’t be, if it has any truth in it, and the more important the truth, the messier it’s probably going to be. The whole idea is learning to see it all in a new perspective. A perspective in which women, including their challenges, failings and endurance, are taken seriously, both inside and outside the story. When it comes to the Millennium trilogy, there is something here, and whatever crime story wrappings it comes in is not justification for denying it. Maybe, instead of looking away, it’s time to look even closer. Jen Myers Originally published by RH Reality Check. I saw this video Tuesday evening when a friend posted it on her tumblr page. There was a trigger warning regarding suicide, violence, and bullying. I wanted to share this video because I did not know what to expect while watching and when the video was over I was stunned. Not just with the messaging and representations, but in the possibilities of using this video in a classroom or youth group. Please watch the video below. I’ve posted a few ideas I have on how to use this video, please share some ideas and suggestions you may have! There are so many ways to use this video with youth. I wanted to share and hope others want to add how they may use this video as well or what discussions you may envision having. I’d first start by introducing the video. This may require some background of the artist Marsha Ambrosius, who is the other half of the R&B duo Floetry. They reached a height in mainstream popularity in 2002-2003. This is important to keep in mind, as some youth may not know who the artist is because of this time period. Discussions of Bullying I’m not sure if the concept of “bullying” would connect clearly with some viewers. It may be that some youth and other folks may view the experiences presented as intra-racial violence and not only bullying. There may also be a connection between bullying and age. Some may view the men in the video as adult males who may be too old to experience bullying in the ways we’ve heard about it in the past several months. This may lead to some interesting dialogue about how bullying can be considered an age-specific experience. Conversations about masculinity and how it is connected to gender, race, ethnicity, age, geographic location, and ability (to name a few) will also be important. How are racially Black men living in the US expected to present themselves? How was Black masculinity represented in this video (make a list of all the forms of masculinity and Blackness seen, for example clothing, forms of affection, solidarity, etc.). Were there attempts at defending masculinity? How is intra-racial violence affecting our community? (this may be a good opportunity to have information about intra-racial violence as connected to various forms of violence from rape to murder). What could some community responses to violence look like in this situation/scenario? Discussions on Men of Color & Same Gender Relationships I’d make it clear that this is NOT a “down low” relationship. Both men have publicly been together and showing affection for and with one another. Living in NYC where the anti-homophobia campaign “I Love My Boo” began in October 2010, representations of men of Color in same gender relationships remain limited (see some of the images here). I have not seen in mainstream popular culture such images since Noah’s Arc (which I’m still recovering from it’s absence in my life) and the film that was released in select theaters in 2008, Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom. The phrase “alternative Lifestyles” is the one thing I have an issue with in this video. My opinion is that this term assumes there is a choice in how people are living and I believe that we do not choose our sexual orientation. I came to this space while working as an intern at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) over a decade ago. GLAAD has a great Media Reference Guide that has a section on offensive and problematic phrases/words to avoid and “lifestyle” is included with this discussion: “ Offensive: "gay lifestyle" or "homosexual lifestyle" Preferred: "gay lives," "gay and lesbian lives" There is no single lesbian, gay or bisexual lifestyle. Lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are diverse in the ways they lead their lives. The phrase "gay lifestyle" is used to denigrate lesbians and gay men, suggesting that their orientation is a choice and therefore can and should be "cured" ” Heterosexual Privilege In the beginning of the video the viewer may assume that there is a heterosexual relationship until there is affection in a specific way shown among two men of Color. This would be a useful time to discuss how we assume heterosexuality often, how heterosexuality is seen as a “norm” in our society, and what that does to all of us, not just people who do not identify as heterosexual. Here is a good article about heterosexual privilege and a checklist that may be useful for this conversation. These are a few things that immediately come to mind and I’m hoping that others will share some of their own. I know over the next several days as I think about this video I’ll come up with more ideas and possibilities. Thanks in advance for all of you who share! Bianca I. Laureano About 60 students typically registered for my class on the sociology of gender. They would arrive, some of them with their jitters quite visible and others with what appeared to be a cultivated indifference. Hand over hand, my syllabus would skate through the rows, and I would watch as they eagerly thumbed through the pages—even the indifferent ones. I imagined many of them were contemplating whether to drop my class and take their chances on the waiting list of another section, so I encouraged them to take their time. At about five minutes past the official start time, I introduced myself, took a deep breath, and at last began the difficult work of teaching a topic about which students already believed themselves to be experts—their gender. "Teaching sociology is akin to playing Morpheus to a group of students who haven't yet seen how deep the rabbit hole goes, but I think teaching the sociology of gender is particularly challenging." Teaching sociology is akin to playing Morpheus to a group of students who haven't yet seen how deep the rabbit hole goes, but I think teaching the sociology of gender is particularly challenging. I approach the topic most identifiably from a culturalist perspective and draw most notably from material many would identify as falling within the jurisdiction of the sociology of knowledge. Time and again, I return with my class to the social and historical processes behind the construction of values, beliefs, and other intellectual structures. How are they built, sustained, recreated, and manipulated? I set as my first task excavating a level of deep culture by asking students to consider how gender is socially constructed. Students are of course more than capable of parroting such constructivist sentiments as Simone de Beauvoir's remark that “One is not born but rather becomes, a woman.” What is needed to transform students’ thinking is to dislodge their foundational assumptions—the premises upon which they begin to think. It is necessary, then, to begin by cultivating uncertainty, or by forcing them to interrogate and articulate their own common sense understandings of the world. One particular discussion from the class stands as a good example. In it, students took aim at unequal beauty standards and exaggerated swaggers as the constructed implements of a gender stratified society. Not surprisingly, most students were at ease with rejecting any natural affinity between women and domesticity; however, the timeless truth that homo sapiens are naturally divided into two distinct types—men and women—remained unscathed. Cultivating uncertainty, I pressed them, "So what do we make of the fact that some societies count three genders?" "There are always exceptions," came one response. "These societies are outliers then?” I asked. “How do you know your society isn’t the exception?” The student conceded that he believed his model was based on what was most clearly given by biology. Thus at last the premise underlying so much of his certainty was exposed. This student and many others in the class couldn’t disagree more with de Beauvoir’s constructivist assertion. For them, one is born a man or a woman and does not become one—not really. Having identified this premise, I marked it on a placard and propped it up on the table at the front of the classroom like a life-sized, pop-out book. Biology—if we're being honest—is not given as a clear binary but exists as a spectrum. Women and men cannot just be identified by disrobing and neither will a snapshot of a person’s chromosomes yield a definitive answer. As Cary Costello asserts in his comments regarding the spectacle surrounding athlete Caster Semenya in 2009, "Dyadic sex is a myth—sex is a spectrum. Hormones, chromosomes, genitals, gonads—they are all arranged in many complex ways, and imposing a binary onto them is arbitrary. It's as arbitrary as saying all fruit is either sweet or sour." "From here, class discussion desperately moved from the macro to the micro, from the genitals to the genome…they were wrestling with something very unsettling...dyadic sex is itself somewhat of a myth." From here, class discussion desperately moved from the macro to the micro, from the genitals to the genome; each student in turn attempting to retrace what they once believed was an impenetrable basis upon which they invested so much of their thinking. But they were on a threshold, for they were wrestling with something very unsettling: our dyadic gender construction claims to be based on biological sex, but in fact, dyadic sex is itself somewhat of a myth. This moment of dislodging a foundational premise is a difficult one, and may be the principal reason why the sociology of gender is such a challenging course to teach. Reexamining the gender binary, and the sex binary upon which it claims to be based, is disorienting. It’s not like waking up in an unfamiliar place, where the task is to take a moment to deduce your surroundings based on coordinates you already know to exist in the world. Instead, I think it is far more akin to being unable to determine whether you are now awake or still dreaming. Coaxing students into this uncertainty, this zone of indistinction, is the beginning of the teaching moment. However, collective uncertainty is no place to dwell for an entire semester. If my claim is that they can no longer uncritically draw upon their common sense to evaluate the world—if that way of knowing is to be cast in suspicion—then what am I proposing as a replacement? What will they use to evaluate their common sense? It is at this juncture that I become the pitchman who must finally demonstrate his product, lest the crowd disperse. I must demonstrate by example how gender is socially constructed. So there could be no question as to how current the information was, I drew upon a fairly recent advertisement for the new iPad from Steve Jobs and company (here). The ad pretends to be a casual chat with four of the creative tech geeks at Apple, who just love what they do and are gushing to talk about this cool thing they invented. Women are conspicuously missing from this eight-minute clip; yet I would argue that even among women the ad is largely successful for Apple. While questions have surfaced about how truly innovative the iPad is, fewer have questioned the natural affinity depicted in this commercial between male logic and technological innovation. Hearing the epithet "computer geek," we in the U.S. mostly think of men, and that is precisely who we want designing our high tech gadgets because we associate men with logical integrity. Perhaps Apple intuitively understands that if they featured an exuberant woman in the ad, it would suggest that the iPad’s programming is logically flawed. This analysis baits controversy among my students, and almost immediately hands are raised. A flurry of remarks ensue, each insisting on counterexamples which demonstrate that women are definitely also represented in our society as having technological prowess. Plenty of visual representations suggest that they too belong to the symbolic universe of high technology. “This is true,” I tell them, “but consider the technology women are typically paired with.” Women are consistently overrepresented in commercials pitching “domestic” technologies, or those that pertain to, say, cooking and other household chores. Men, on the other hand, are consistently overrepresented in commercials for non-domestic technologies, and as it happens, often those which pertain to paid labor outside the home (see Bartsch et al. 2000). This is demonstrated, for example, in two recent commercials from The Clorox company. In both clips laundry is demonstrated as women's work. In the first (here), the viewer watches the technologies associated with doing laundry advance through time, as though on fast forward. While women wash clothes in increasingly modern washing machines, a woman's voice offers narration, "although a lot has changed—the machines, the detergents, the clothes themselves—one thing has not...Clorox Bleach." In the second commercial (here) a group of women—presumably housewives—are ushered through the so-called Clorox 2 Stain Research Facility where they witness the true power of Clorox. As in the first commercial, Clorox is positing a natural affinity between women and the technologies of the domestic sphere. In this second clip, however, there is another, complimentary message about men and science. With the exception of a brief and fleeting appearance of a woman scientist at about 19 seconds, the serious and purposeful work of science is all performed by men. While it is hardly surprising that commercials advertising products of the domestic sphere, particularly those involved in cooking and cleaning, are gendered, what about those technologies, like the iPad, which are considered to be "cutting edge"? If we restrict the analysis to this domain, where do women fit? Do they exist at all? Here I turn to play a second short clip (here), this time taken from TED Talks, a non-profit which hosts presentations related to ideas of technology, entertainment, and design. Jane Chen, the CEO of a company called Embrace, recently gave a presentation for them which caught my attention. In it, she promotes a life-saving and inexpensive incubation technology for premature infants, which her company invented. While this spot is about a high technology, it is presented exclusively by a woman, and therefore begs a corrective to my earlier claim that cutting edge technology is the privileged domain of men. It's not that women have no place in high technology; they clearly do. Rather, this clip demonstrates that we want women involved with technologies related to nurturing and saving the lives of newborns. The take-away for my students is really twofold and recalls the idea that a lot of popular thinking about gender is informed by a common sense which continually attempts to link gender to biology. This affinity between woman and incubator works because it conforms to the pervasive assumption that nature produces two distinct types of people, and one is naturally more nurturing than the other. We are primed, in a sense, so that certain messages resonate with us, while others seem odd or inappropriate. By that same token, these clips and the institutions that built them are implicated in continuing to replicate distinct pairings of gender and technology. Notably, commercials which claim to be exclusively about technology make significant contributions to people's common sense about gender. I mentioned above that collective uncertainty is no place to dwell and that if teachers ask their students to be suspicious of their common sense, they are obliged to offer their students an alternative. The alternative is of course not a schema of three, four, or five genders. On its face, systematic exclusion and ranking is just as likely to stem from a five-gender schema as a two-gender schema. Instead I try to conclude my first week of class by encouraging students to discuss the way their assumptions about nature and biology have informed their own thinking. I encourage them to reflect on the way these regimes of representation have invaded their own evaluations of the people in their lives. Ideally, this particular teaching moment concludes with students comprehending the way their common sense is always a social and historical product worthy of scrutiny. Lester Andrist |
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