Tags: gender, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, everyday sexism, street harassment, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2014 Length: 3:56 Access: YouTube Summary: Leah Green turns the tables on men by playing an in-your-face sexual harasser on the streets of London in this video featured in a recent article in The Guardian. In doing so, she is trying to sensitize men to how it feels to be the object of sexism by simply relating to men in the same ways many men interact with women in public space. Quoting Green in her article: "As is usual when men make inappropriate sexual remarks to me, I felt embarrassed. This time, at least, there was a slight silver lining, as it was a perfect scenario to recreate for my film, in which I tested out real sexist situations on men. I took tweets from @EverdaySexism, where women (and men) recount sexist incidents and, using hidden cameras, acted these out on unsuspecting members of the public. Since launching the film on the Guardian website on Friday it has garnered more than a million hits and nearly three thousand comments. Responses have been varied. Women have said that the film, which uses comedy to make a serious point, highlights perfectly the kind of harassment they receive on a daily basis. Many men have said that the words coming from the mouth of a woman made them realise their weight and impact. However, others felt the film was cruel, and that subjecting innocent men to sexually aggressive comments made me no better than the men who do that, thus completely undermining the feminist message. Those are the criticisms I would like to answer." (Note: This post originally appeared on SoUnequal.) Submitted By: Michael Miller
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Tags: children/youth, crime/law/deviance, discourse/language, gender, immigration/citizenship, inequality, intersectionality, media, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, stereotypes, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2008 Length: 8:50 Access: YouTube Summary: Star Jones briefly hosted a live talk show from August 2007 until February 2008, and in one of the show's segments she covered the story of Kelsey Peterson, a 25-year-old teacher who sexually assaulted her 13-year-old student, who happened to be an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. The above video features a telephone interview, where Jones asks Peterson's attorney, James Martin Davis, whether he believes it is possible for a 13-year-old child to give consent. Martin responds, "I resent the word 'child.' You're baby-fying this kid. This kid is a Latino machismo teenager...Is there anyone in the world who has a higher sex drive than a teenage boy." Jones admonishes Martin for his casual racism and ends the interview. In a follow-up segment, she invites the attorney for the victim, Amy Peck, and scholar Marc Lamont Hill to discuss the racist exchange, as well as the impact of racial thinking on the case. Although Star Jones and her guests largely frame the interview in terms of race, this video offers a nice foray into a larger discussion about how multiple dimensions of inequality intersect to shape the way people experience the criminal justice system and whether victims of crime become the recipients of public sympathy. Jones suggests a useful thought experiment by asking people to imagine that the race and gender of the participants are reversed. The question can be usefully posed: How would the story be discussed and reported by the media and interested parties if the victim was a young white girl and the perpetrator an older Latino man? Also, what difference does it make that the teenager was an undocumented Mexican immigrant, and how might the current discourse surrounding Mexican immigrants shape sympathy for the victim? Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: gender, health/medicine, inequality, violence, domestic violence, gender violence, masculinity, partner abuse, power relations, sexualizing violence, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 3:53 Access: YouTube Summary: What do you think of when you hear "gender-based violence"? While the term gender-based violence is primarily associated with men inflicting violence towards women and girls, it is important to analyze why the reversed scenario—women inflicting violence towards men—is often disregarded. Pink's video "Please Don't Leave Me" is a stark example of the way that gender-based violence towards men is perceived as somehow less serious than men inflicting violence towards women. This video is centered around Pink's various (violent) attempts to prevent her partner from leaving. She keeps her partner as a prisoner in her house and relentlessly begs him to stay. It is important to note that gender-based violence disproportionately affects women because of unequal power relations between men and women. For instance, women account for 85% of domestic violence victims in the United States. Questions to consider alongside the video include: Why is it that we do not see a problem (or see less of a problem) when a woman physically and/or emotionally abuses a man? Why do some people perceive gender-based violence against men as humorous? Might this affect the number of men who report gender-based violence? What are some examples of violent actions and/or language in this video? (e.g., "I can cut you into pieces," "You're my perfect little punching bag.") Does Pink try to make violence sexy? Is sexualizing violence problematic? Would people be more critical of this video if the characters' genders were reversed? It may be helpful to clearly define gender-based violence so that students can critically analyze the video according to accepted definitions of what qualifies as gender-based violence. Gender-based violence of any kind is unacceptable and should not be used as a form of entertainment. As a society, we should actively speak out against images that work to normalize violent behavior. To learn more about gender-based violence check out the European Institute of Gender's website. Submitted By: Patricia Louie Tags: gender, inequality, marketing/brands, organizations/occupations/work, commercial, double-standard, gender bias, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 1:02 Access: YouTube Summary: As the creators of this ad note, "Does gender bias still exist? If the answer is no, then why is it that women who take charge tend to be called bossy, whereas men who do the same are just doing their jobs as bosses? Or why is it that when mothers are passionate about their career, they tend to be seen as selfish, while working dads are dedicated? It is also quite startling that a recent study said 70% of men feel that women need to downplay their personality in order to be accepted." With a focus on the workplace, this video critiques the double-standard between men and women. It juxtaposes labels applied differently to men and women, noting that men are considered "persuasive" while women are "pushy"; men are "dedicated" while women are "selfish." The ad was created by Pantene, and ends with this message: "Don't let labels hold you back" and "be strong and shine." Like this Dove ad that critiques media's depiction of feminine beauty, the message promotes awareness of gender issues and develops positive images of women. At the same time, viewers should be critical of other advertising by both Pantene and Dove, which reinforces stereotypical imagery of women and ideal beauty. Thank you to Michael Miller for suggesting this clip. Submitted By: Paul Dean Tags: discourse/language, gender, knowledge, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, gender ambiguity, gender neutral pronouns, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1991 Length: 5:55 Access: Yahoo Screen Summary: What is it, exactly, about gender ambiguity that is presumed to be so funny? Referencing the now classic Saturday Night Live sketch comedy "It's Pat," I pose this question to students when teaching about the deeply embedded ways that gender structures our society. Not to be conflated with genital ambiguity (which focuses on sex characteristics), gender ambiguity refers to a type of gender presentation in which a person's gender (e.g., man or woman) is unclear. In this clip (season 17, episode 3), coworkers throw the androgynous fictional character Pat O'Neil Riley (played by Julia Sweeney) a surprise birthday party. As with all segments in the series, people's interactions with Pat center around trying to decipher Pat's gender; overwhelmingly, Pat's indeterminate gender is framed to be a source of deep confusion for others, to the point where the social interaction is compromised, thus resulting in a presumably comedic scenario. Throughout the skit, co-workers search for clues that might give insight into Pat's gender, as they are unsure how to behave around Pat without this knowledge. For example, a male co-worker doesn't know whether putting his arm around Pat's shoulders is an appropriate form of consoling. Similarly, in this clip (as well as others in the series), Pat's acquaintances ask questions that might reveal the gender of Pat's romantic affection, assuming that the romantic partner would be of the "opposite" gender (this assumption illustrates the concept of heteronormativity). The fact that something so simple as not knowing one's gender can compromise entire social interactions, and that we have culturally defined this as "funny," illustrates how profoundly this social construction organizes society. Specifically, viewers can see the demand that language imposes on knowing one's gender, as co-workers don't know whether to use terms like mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, or fellow, and they struggle to substitute gender neutral terms like child, sibling, and person. While the skit's theme song aims to "humorously" represent the limitations of language, it resorts to the offensive notion that individuals with an ambiguous gender are an "it" or a "that." In addition to illustrating the limits of language, this clip is useful for introducing students to the utility and importance of gender neutral pronouns in our lexicon, such as ze, hir, and xem. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp Tags: gender, inequality, media, double bind, feminism, rape culture, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 3:39 Access: YouTube Summary: This video from The Representation Project summarizes media images of women in 2013. The video begins by highlighting that "there was a lot to celebrate this year for women in the media," pointing to media images of women in political leadership roles (Malala Yousafzai), heroine leads (Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games), scientists (Sandra Bullock in Gravity), female-centric casts (Orange Is The New Black), and ESPN's coverage of women's sports. The video then recognizes that media images "aren’t changing fast enough," spotlighting much more problematic and sexist portrayals of women, including: women who were hypersexualized in advertisements, music, television, and film; women criticizing other women’s appearances; sole attention on women’s physical appearances as opposed to intelligence; and stereotypes of women being hysterical and overly-emotional. This video can be shown when teaching about gender oppression, and it can specifically help students grasp teachings on: (1) rape culture and how the media normalizes and desensitizes audiences to rape through, for example, comedic discussions and scenes of such violence toward women; and (2) feminism’s double bind, as the clip captures media scenes where women are told, for example, that it is nearly impossible for them to be both attractive and intelligent, or successful at home and work. Instructors can ask students: (1) Based on the video, what can we celebrate about gender equity in media representation? Can you think of other examples not mentioned in the video? (2) What media images of women can we critique? (3) Using an intersectional analysis, are women of color portrayed differently than white women in these examples? If so, how? The video would pair well with Ariel Levy’s (2005) Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, which also addresses changing representations of women in the media, including how women internalize misogyny by, for example, objectifying each other and themselves. Submitted By: Maegan Zielinksi and Beverly M. Pratt Tags: emotion/desire, gender, emotion management, masculinity, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2000 Length: 5:53 Access: YouTube Summary: We often think of emotions as psychological or biological, or as seemingly natural and innate responses to stimuli that makes us happy, sad, afraid, angry, etc. Yet, sociologists know most of our emotions are managed, or that we tend to ensure our feelings are felt (or at the very least expressed) in socially acceptable ways or in socially appropriate contexts. The management of emotions is especially apparent with gender as men and women are socialized to adhere to different, almost completely oppositional sets of feeling rules. Men are conditioned, and socially expected to suppress emotion (with the exception of anger); less rigid norms for females means women are freer to express relatively more, and more intense emotions than men. Usually, this gendered emotion work is so embedded in the social fabric we seldom notice how effective these rules are in dictating what we feel, how we feel it, how long we feel it, etc. However, in this short clip from the movie Bedazzled, a character played by Brendan Fraser makes a deal with the devil to become the world’s most emotionally sensitive man—and in doing so ends up being unable to manage his emotions effectively, thus revealing just how important emotional management and feeling rules are in our daily lives. Submitted By: Jason T. Eastman Tags: biology, bodies, class, crime/law/deviance, demography/population, disability, discourse/language, gender, health/medicine, immigration/citizenship, intersectionality, lgbtq, nationalism, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, science/technology, sex/sexuality, institutionalized discrimination, eugenics, subtitles/CC, 11 to 20 mins, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2012; 2013 Length: 15:05; 17:25 Access: YouTube (clip 1; clip 2) Summary: The eugenics movement has a long history in the United States. A popular misconception is that eugenic thinking and the associated practices were uniformly abandoned after the Third Reich's genocidal intentions were laid bare at the end of the Second World War. In point of fact, eugenic ideologies and practices have been recalcitrant features of American social institutions right up until the present day. In her book American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism, Nancy Ordover remarks on the resiliency of the ideology, "Eugenics..is a scavenger ideology, exploiting and reinforcing anxieties over race, gender, sexuality, and class and bringing them into the service of nationalism, white supremacy, and heterosexism." In earlier decades eugenicists could openly discuss stemming the "overflow" of immigration, as an effort to "dry up...the streams that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm." The language of eugenics would eventually change, but the core ideas have remained; socially deviant groups and socially undesirable conditions are seen by eugenicists as biologically determined. The above clips are news stories, which draw attention to two recent manifestations of eugenics policy. The first clip chronicles the experience of an African American woman who was legally sterilized in the late 1960s in North Carolina after giving birth to her first son. The clip reports that between 1929 and 1974 approximately 7,600 North Carolinians were sterilized for a host of dubious reasons, from "feeble-mindedness" to "promiscuity." But while North Carolina's victims included men, women, and children, Ordover's research points out that the victims were overwhelmingly women and African American (by 1964 African Americans composed 65% of all women sterilized in the state). The first clip, then, is an example of how eugenics became institutionalized with the force of law, but the second news clip examines a case of institutionalized eugenics in California, which existed without the explicit consent of law. In 1909 California became the third state to pass a compulsory sterilization law, allowing prisons and other institutions to sterilize "moral degenerates" and "sexual perverts showing hereditary degeneracy." By 1979, when the law was finally repealed, the state had already sterilized as many as 20,000 people, or about one-third of the total number of such victims throughout the United States. One learns from the news clip that between 2006 and 2010, 148 women were sterilized by doctors who continued to be guided by the precepts of their eugenic ideology. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: bodies, emotion/desire, gender, marketing/brands, media, beauty standards, representation, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2013 Length: 3:01; 6:36 Access: YouTube (clip 1; clip 2) Summary: For some time now, advertisers have employed a powerful strategy to peddle their wares. They sell men and women on the idea that a woman's value and worth is bound up with her beauty, then, with the aid of lighting, cosmetics, and digital technology, the advertisers construct an ideal beauty standard that is forever out of reach. The media landscape is populated with images of women with flawless skin, perfect postures, and perky busts—a mirage that perpetually lies on the horizon. Dove's "real beauty" campaign claims to address the harm of encouraging women to base their self worth on something which is unattainable by design; yet a critical analysis of the campaign reveals that it is reinforcing the very issue it claims to critique. In one of the campaign's latest videos (there is a short version and a long version), an FBI trained forensic artist sketches a number of women based on their own descriptions of themselves, then the artist sketches the same women based on how others describe them. The finished sketches are hung side by side, and the women subjects examine the difference. Each is shocked to discover that others apparently describe them as more beautiful than they describe themselves. Laura Stampler's article for Business Insider provides a nice summary of all that is wrong with the ad, but it is worth mentioning two of the more common critiques here. First, the video focuses on a small group of women, who are mostly thin, mostly young (the oldest woman is 40), and mostly white (In the six minute clip, people of color are onscreen for less than 10 seconds). Any campaign that seeks to lift the veil on the harm of unrealistic beauty standards would do well to stop perpetuating the practice of excluding fat women, old women, and women of color. Second, while the video is wrapped in a heartwarming message that women are more beautiful than they realize, the deeper message is still that physical beauty can be the basis for true happiness and satisfaction. At about the 5:10 mark, the sketch artist asks one woman, "Do you think you're more beautiful than you say?" She replies, "Yeah," How different the message of the video would be if instead she flipped the script and asked the artist, "Why should my sense of being whole and satisfied hinge so much on my physical appearance in the first place?" Submitted By: Jeehye Kang Tags: children/youth, gender, marketing/brands, organizations/occupations/work, science/technology, occupational sex segregation, socialization, stem fields, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 2:06 Access: Slate; YouTube Summary: This new commercial from the GoldieBlox toy company has been enthusiastically shared among feminists and those who are generally frustrated by the dearth of creative toys for girls. The ad features three bored little girls watching a generic television ad of other girls dressed in princess costumes. The three girls throw on a record of a reworked Beastie Boys tune, they grab their tools, and in the next shot, we see that they have constructed an elaborate Rube Goldberg apparatus. Swinging levers beget cascading dominoes and rolling bowling balls, until at last a makeshift hammer swings toward the television and appears to change the channel. The ad is in keeping with GoldieBlox's overall mission, which is to "show the world that girls deserve more choices than dolls and princesses [and that] femininity is strong and girls will build the future." The company's concern is well placed too. In the United States, between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of women in the field of engineering has been in decline, and currently, only about 18% of all engineering degree holders are women (According to GoldieBlox, only 11% of total engineers worldwide are women). Obviously the commercial seeks to sell toys, but it might work well as a means to draw attention to this gendered imbalance in the field of engineering (i.e., occupational sex segregation), and how this imbalance is connected to the different ways boys and girls are socialized. But one can take the analysis even further. Notice that even in this fairly progressive ad, gender proves itself as a resilient basis upon which to socialize boys and girls differently. For all GoldieBlox's talk on their website about "disrupting the pink aisle," it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the company's marketing approach actually reinforces the gender binary just as well as any other company's. GoldieBlox might be disrupting pink as an innately feminine color, but it leaves unscathed the core idea that girls and women are somehow fundamentally different than boys and men. Submitted By: Lester Andrist |
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