_Tags: bodies, crime/law/deviance, gender, sex/sexuality, violence, rape, sexual violence, violence against women, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2011 Length: 2:04 Access: wusa9.com news Summary: This local DC newscast notes that a government study just found that sexual violence is more pervasive than previously thought: 1 in 5 women experience rape or attempted rape at some point in the lives; 1 in 4 women are beaten by their partners. The newscasters critically respond by asking how seriously does society respond to that? They note that a fraternity at the University of Vermont recently circulated a questionnaire that asked respondents "who would you like to rape?" It briefly gives the perspective of a recovering rape victim who was sexually molested by her step-father since she was 3 years old. A local community activist describes how the experience of sexual violence is very traumatic, and how it affects how they experience daily life and relationships. This raises the question of how we, as a society, respond to sexual violence and crime? Is rape somehow glorified by certain groups, and if so, why and how? This video is a good complement to another video on Rape and Blaming the Victim, and reflection on our rape culture, which is articulated well in the book Transforming a Rape Culture. See also this video about how sexual violence against women is perpetuated through popular culture, specifically music video. On a more uplifting note, see activist Tony Porter's efforts (as depicted in this video) to end violence against women. Submitted By: Paul Dean
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_Tags: bodies, gender, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, identity, lesbian, masculinity, transgender, 11 to 20 mins, 61+ mins Year: 2005 Length: 13:58 (entire documentary is 75:00) Access: YouTube Summary: The Aggressives is a documentary "look at the lesbian women who prefer to dress and act as men and who participate in NYC's predominantly African-American lesbian drag balls." Viewers may explore issues of identity, gender, and sexuality with this group of lesbians that identify as butch/stud "aggressives," and adopt a very masculine gender. Part of this excerpt shows the daily practices to portray a masculine physique, including constantly working out to build muscle tone, grinding their teeth in order to have a strong masculine jaw line, taking hormone pills to grow facial hair and other mail traits to reduce feminine features and using duct tape, ace bandage and girdles to tape/hold down their breasts so they are less visible. As the respondents discuss their identity, this excerpt also explores what it means to be a man or woman, illustrating West and Zimmerman's concept of "doing gender." The women in the documentary are constantly fighting against societal constraints of a gendered female norm. This highly provocative excerpt can be a great discussion starter on issues of gender and sexuality, but the film more generally also examines issues of race. Submitted By: Jasmine Jowers and Rachele Macarthy _Tags: bodies, disability, health/medicine, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, stereotypes, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2007 Length: 10:47 Access: YouTube (part 1; part 2) Summary: What if ablebodied people were a minority? What would navigating that world be like? This film put out by the Disability Rights Commission (UK) turns the tables on a world that favors the ablebodied, and invites viewers to imagine what it would feel like if they found themselves subjected to the difficulties, discomforts, humiliations, and discrimination that disabled people face on a regular basis. This is a useful way to open a class discussion of the production of disability as a social category—how do we organize society in a way that privileges certain kinds of bodies and marginalizes others? How do we frame the people who are marginalized? How do we understand our own relationship to them when we come into contact with them? How do we understand institutional and cultural efforts to mitigate that process of marginalization—and how successful are we, really? Submitted By: Sarah Wanenchak Tags: bodies, children/youth, consumption/consumerism, discourse/language, gender, inequality, marketing/brands, media, political economy, sex/sexuality, social construction, violence, feminism, media literacy, representation, self-objectification, sexism, sexual objectification, stereotypes, symbolic annihilation, 06 to 10 mins, 61+ mins Year: 2011 Length: 90:00, 8:52 Access: no online access, Vimeo preview Summary: Jennifer Siebel Newsom directs this documentary, and following in the steps of the Killing Us Softly films, it draws attention to the very problematic ways women and girls are represented in contemporary media. To tell the story, Newsom weaves together a number of interviews from an array of experts and activists, including Erika Falk, Jennifer Pozner, Jean Kilbourne, Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Cory Booker, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem. The dominant themes of Miss Representation can be described as the consequences of living in a world where one is virtually swimming in representations which consistently emphasize an unattainable beauty standard for women, and in a separate vein, encourage routine violence against women. In this environment, women increasingly self-objectify, they suffer from increased levels of anxiety and depression, a lack of political efficacy, and men increasingly perpetrate violence against women. Despite similarities, Newsom takes her film further than Jean Kilbourne's documentary, Killing Us Softly 4, by exploring more of the political economy behind these harmful representations. Specifically, she explores the large scale entrance of American women into the paid labor force during World War II as a watershed event (see also The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter). In Newsom's retelling of this story, once men returned to from fighting abroad, the media played a central role in encouraging women to surrender their high-paying jobs back to men in order to become domestic consumers in the brave new post-war economy. Today the marketing of corporations are regulated even less by Congress, and their ads continue to target women; they objectify them as part of a strategy aimed at creating ever more insatiable consumers. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: bodies, commodification, consumption/consumerism, gender, health/medicine, marketing/brands, human diversity, medical sociology, medicalization, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 1:02 Access: YouTube Summary: This commercial featuring actress/model Brooke Shields is for Latisse, a prescription drug approved by the FDA for “inadequate or not enough lashes.” The ad claims that Latisse can be used to treat symptoms of hypotrichosis, a condition characterized by a "less than normal" amount of hair; advertisements for Latisse have appeared in beauty magazines such as Allure. This clip is excellent for teaching students the concept of medicalization, the process by which normal life conditions (such as menopause, childbirth, aging, or death) or issues not traditionally seen as medical come to be framed as medical problems (e.g. alcoholism, eating disorders, compulsive gambling) (Conrad 1992). The Latisse commercial is particularly powerful when shown alongside a typical mascara commercial (e.g., here); while the latter claims to be a cosmetic product and the former claims to treat a “medical problem,” both are clearly targeted toward women and share many similarities -- e.g., promises of “better” (i.e., longer, darker, and/or fuller) lashes, before/after shots, celebrity actress/model spokeswomen, and scenes of attractive women having "fun," suggesting that longer, darker, and fuller lashes can result in happier social lives for women. Moreover, both commercials imply that women, and not men, should be concerned about their eyelashes, even though men can also have sparse, short, and/or light-colored lashes. While the producers of the commercial never say Latisse is developed for use by people with hypotrichosis (this message is only written in a caption at the bottom of the screen), a classroom discussion can underscore the blurring of the medical and the cosmetic in this advertisement. Instructors can point out that the active ingredient in Latisse is used to treat glaucoma. When some glaucoma patients began to notice more prominent eyelashes, they perceived this as a desirable side effect of their glaucoma medication since longer, thicker, and darker eyelashes on women are symbolic of beauty in our culture (Law 2010). Class discussion can then lead to a conversation about human diversity, in which the diversity of eye color and eye shape, as well as the length and thickness of eyelashes, among the world’s population can be examined. The Latisse commercial can prompt students to question whether eyelash hypotrichosis and other medical problems (e.g., andropause, erectile dysfunction, short stature, ADHD) (Conrad 2007) are medical problems or natural human conditions and/or characteristics that create human diversity. Advertisements such as this point to the commodification of such naturally occurring human conditions. Submitted By: Amy Irby Tags: art/music, bodies, discourse/language, gender, sex/sexuality, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2011 Length: 2:25 Access: YouTube Summary: In a recent post entitled, "The Clitoris: Most. Awkward. Discussion. Ever!" Sociologist Sarah Nell Rusche draws attention to the way culture and power act as a guiding force, "not only for what gets constructed as acceptable sexuality, but also comfortable conversation topics." Rusche begins by recounting her rather awkward experience of saying the word "clitoris" to a classroom full of snickering undergraduates. The above clip might be a way to move past the anxieties students typically have about discussing sex and sexuality. In only 2 minutes and 25 seconds, the clip (created by loveyourvagina.com) compiles a massive list of possible nicknames for vaginas into a song. More than an ice-breaker, the clip could also be used to introduce, trigger, or promote a rich discussion related to the representations and language associated with sex in American culture. It could also be a way of drawing attention to the meaning and purpose behind the countless euphemisms used to describe the penis, the clitoris and the downtown dining and entertainment district. Submitted By: Jessica Leveto Tags: bodies, gender, health/medicine, political economy, sex/sexuality, social construction, medicalization, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 5:06 Access: YouTube Summary: In her article, "In Pursuit of the Perfect Penis," Leonore Tiefer endeavors to "show how the persistence and increased use of the stigmatizing and stress-inducing label of impotence reflects a significant moment in the social construction of male sexuality." Liz Canner seems to be attempting something similar in her documentary, Orgasm Inc (watch the trailer here), which tracks not only the development of a drug that promises sexual satisfaction for women but also the social construction of a new illness called female sexual dysfunction. In this clip Canner recounts what she learned while making the documentary, including the role Pfizer and other drug companies played in funding conferences where a small group of hand-picked doctors met and formally described the symptoms of female sexual dysfunction. Their work in defining the disease, Canner argues, was largely driven by the ambitions of drug companies to create a demand for a new drug. I find this clip works nicely in class discussions wrestling with the social construction of illness and the concept of medicalization, which can be defined as a process where phenomena related to the human body come to be defined as medical conditions. As such they fall under the responsibility and authority of medical doctors and other health professionals to study, diagnose, prevent, and treat. Thanks to Sociological Images for suggesting Leonore Tiefer's article. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: bodies, gender, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, sex/sexuality, street harassment; violence against women (VAW), 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 4:01 Access: YouTube Summary: As stated by the producers of this video (Third World Newsreel), "this is an experimental piece about women ritually facing street harassment as they walk home. Shot in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, it mixes 16mm film, video, poetry and music in an effort to honor and reclaim our voice, name and humanity in the public sphere. This is for the walkers, talkers and those who say nothing." Through the poetry and narrative, several women discuss the experience of street harassment and being objectified, and the frequent insults that women face when not responding to men's sexual comments in public spaces, but also acknowledges and honors the victims of this harassment for reclaiming their voice. This powerful depiction of women experiencing street harassment can be an excellent way to discuss issues of gender and sexuality, and gender inequality in everyday life. Students can be encouraged to reflect upon the range of possible emotions the narrator goes through and how repeated experiences like this can shape everyday behavior. How often do students experience this on college campuses or elsewhere? Could we imagine a situation where the roles are reversed, and what does this tell us about gender relations in society? What is the meaning behind street harassment? Is it really about sex or perhaps about power and control? Submitted By: Anonymous Murderball Tags: bodies, disability, intersectionality, sports, masculinity, master status, stereotypes, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins, 61+ mins Year: 2005 Length: 85:00 (or first 10 min) Access: no online access (trailer here) Summary: This documentary explores the world of quad rugby (i.e., murderball), which is a full-contact sport for quadriplegics, who compete with wheelchair specially designed to take the hard knocks of the sport. The film follows the U.S. quad rugby team through their competition in the 2002 World Championships and the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. Recently, I have used the first 10 minutes of the film in a class period on disability, where we are introduced to the people on the team, and also to the sport. Watching these men physically compete in a competitive sport (and manage the activities of their daily lives) is great for breaking stereotypes about people in wheelchairs. It would also be a good way to explore master statuses (like being in a wheelchair); this film is a nice starting point to discuss both masculinity and how people maintain complex and multi-faceted identities despite disability. Submitted By: Molly Dingel Tags: bodies, gender, inequality, violence, gender socialization, masculinity, rape, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2010 Length: 11:14 Access: TED Talks Summary: In this video from TED Talks, Tony Porter makes a call to men everywhere: Don't "act like a man" (Tony Porter is an educator and activist who is internationally recognized for his effort to end violence against women). Porter tells powerful stories from his own life, including a story of rape, showing how a "mentality, drummed into so many men and boys, can lead men to disrespect, mistreat and abuse women and each other." He notes men are part of the solution and problem, promoting a specific solution to men: break free of the "man box." Porter describes the “man-box” in similar ways as Jackson Katz’s discussion of how masculinity’s “tough guise” boxes men in. I would like to thank Lisa Wade at Sociological Images for suggesting this video. Submitted By: Paul Dean |
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