I spent a good portion of the ‘70’s curled up around my parents’ record player, listening to Jim Croce croon about the Roller Derby Queen he’d fallen in love with – a woman whose fans called her Tuffy and friends called her Spike. Tuffy/Spike raised eyebrows, she was a woman loved for her strength, one “built like a ‘fridgerator” who “knew how to scuffle and fight.” As a girl I never wanted to be a princess. But this roller derby queen thing? This was the sort of royalty I wanted to become one day.

Because roller derby was an option only in my dreams, I tried other outlets that might fulfill my penchant for pushing myself, for raising eyebrows, and for playing to a crowd. My career as a ballerina was cut short after my mother heard one too many complaints about my itchy tutu. My dreams of becoming the next Ian Anderson were dashed when my flute teacher told me I’d have to give up having friends or a life if I really wanted to be a professional musician. In college I tried my hand at broomball and rugby but I hadn’t yet developed the courage needed to leave it all on the rink or field. And though I ran a few marathons in my 30s, I’m skeptical of anyone who claims to really enjoy distance running. I mean, come on. Runner’s trots and bloody nipples? How are these things fun?

Roller derby re-entered my life just as I was wrapping up my 39^th year and staring down the barrel of the big 4-0. As much as it pains me to fess up to something so trite, I suppose I was facing the proverbial midlife crisis. I’d gained weight. New gray hairs had sprouted. I worried that I’d given too much to my job and not enough to the people I loved or to myself.

I’d received tenure a few years before and was feeling restless, not sure what to do now that the chase of the thing I’d been chasing since what felt like forever had come to an end. Sure, there was the next promotion but I longed for something other than work to fill my time and to occupy my mind.

Yet I had no real passions. No hobbies. Other people I knew loved reading voraciously, building furniture, knitting sweaters, climbing rock walls, running marathons (or so they said). I wanted to have something I loved, something that was mine but that wasn’t the next paper or presentation or promotion. Something that harkened back to my life-long desire to raise eyebrows and to try scary, challenging things.

An invitation from a former student who had become part of a growing movement of women looking to bring flat track roller derby to my area led me to find myself covered in protective gear and hugging the wall at my local roller rink. I had laced up a pair of skates and was going to give it my best shot. As luck would have it, I fell. Hard. I got back up. I fell. Again.

For the next few years, I continued to fall and continued to get back up. More than 30 years since Jim Croce first sang to me about the adventures of his Roller Derby Queen in my parents’ basement, I’ve taken a great many spins round and around the track myself. I became my own version of Croce’s “meanest hunk of woman” I’d ever seen. And, just as Croce described, I learned how to scuffle. I reveled in the realization that being “built like a ‘fridgerator” was a good thing, a royal thing even.

To become this sort of royalty requires determination, a willingness to scuffle, and grander-than-princess aspirations. It requires an interest in what, in my humble opinion, is one of the coolest darn things some of the coolest darn women in the world give their heart and their soul to in order to be a part of something bigger than themselves, something that challenges them to be their best selves.

Popularized in the 1960’s, the derby of 50 years ago was typically run by male business owners for a largely male spectator audience. Today, roller derby is run by and for women. As a feminist sociologist of gender, I love the diversity of gender expressions that are allowed and encouraged in derby. I love how derby simultaneously embraces and challenges normative expressions of gender. I love the contrariness of it all, the eyebrow raising-ness of it all.

Most of the sociological research on roller derby comes from fellow gender scholars who are interested in how roller derby challenges what we think about gender, how we think about gender, and how we “do” gender. As sociologist Jennifer Carlson put it in her 2010 article in the Sociology of Sport Journal, “Roller derby provides an aggressive, high-contact environment in which to interrogate femininity.”

Carlson, like other sociologists who study derby, is especially interested in the balance that derby members strike between their athleticism and the sport’s theatrical edge. It is perhaps because of the theatrical liberties allowed by the sport that derby players are so successful at both calling our attention to our cultural biases when it comes to representations of gender and forcing us to question those biases.

Travis Beaver, who wrote about derby in the Journal of Sport & Social Issues, argues that the “do-it-yourself” philosophy of today’s roller derby is a crucial value of derby’s revival. Doing it themselves ensures that the skaters – the women athletes – retain control over their training, their organizations, and the future of the sport.

While derby players may have grander-than-princess aspirations in common, one clear finding to emerge from the sociological research on derby is that players are by no means a homogenous group. Kylie Parrotta, a sociologist at Delaware State University, wrote her dissertation on tensions between sub-groups of derby participants based on differential investments in the identities “rollergirl” versus “athlete.” She also explores how skaters balance work and family obligations with their commitments to the sport – not an easy task! Parrotta says that skaters’ athletic careers may be shaped by other aspects of their identities that are linked to gender, such as motherhood.

While the sociological research raises questions about the extent to which roller derby is or can be transformative in terms of gender, I think sociologist Adele Pavlidis put it best when she wrote, “Roller derby smashes through dichotomous thinking that ranks and privileges men over women, but only if we let it. Right now there is an opportunity not to be missed, an opportunity for women to be watched and admired … on their own terms and with their own rules.”

On an individual level, roller derby has without a doubt been transformative for me. It has challenged my own too-often dichotomous thinking. It has pushed me to figure out my own terms and my own rules – and to live by them. It was my passion at a time when I very much needed one and it is an experience for which I will be eternally grateful.

The advertisement depicted here comes out of a Lands’ End catalog I received in the mail last week. The text reads: “New blue collar shirts white collar guys will love.” It’s a subtle message and surely, some will think I am making too much of it. But, it is one small piece of a larger cultural process taking place–in this case, how class inequality gets commodified and sold back to young, straight, white men as evidence of their masculine credibility and cosmopolitan taste in gender performance and display. This is one configuration of hybrid masculinity in practice. It allows for a form of what I call “practiced indifference” whereby young, straight, white men are able to appear relaxed, content, and at ease with an increasingly varied range of gender performances.

What we think of as “masculine” is something that shifts over time and from place to place. Historical and cross-cultural research shows that just about anything you might think of as essentially “masculine” has been—at one time or another, in one place or another—thought of as anything but. This is part of what makes studying masculinity so exciting to me: it’s an unstable object of inquiry and there are lots of moving parts. Michael Kimmel sums up a really important finding from his historical research on masculinity with a simple statement: “[D]efinitions of masculinity are historically reactive to changing definitions of femininity” (here: 123). We don’t often think of those in power as capable of being “pushed around.” But the historical relationship between masculinity and femininity suggests precisely this pattern.

My own research suggests that one way gender inequality is perpetuated is by being flexible, capable of adapting to new circumstances, challenges, and contingencies. And one of the ways masculinities exhibit these qualities is through practices of appropriation—what C.J. Pascoe and I refer to as “strategic borrowing” in our theorization of hybrid masculinities. At historical moments when gender inequality is publicly challenged and threatened, configurations of masculinity shift—and they do so in pattered directions. When gender inequality is publicly threatened, a range of strategies emerge.  We may collectively exalt configurations of masculinity that exaggerate gender difference and implicitly promote the continued necessity of gender segregation.  But the discourse of what Michael Messner referred to as the “new man” can emerge as well, involving the “softening” of some features of masculinity.  And one way this happens is through a process by which (some) men strategically borrow configurations of gendered practice and presentation from various groups of Others.  This whole process has the effect of obscuring relations of power and inequality between men and women and among men as well.

As I argued earlier in my post on hipster masculinity and my post with D’Lane Compton on the rise of the “lumbersexual,” men who occupy positions of incredible privilege (young, middle- and upper-class, able-bodied, heterosexual) are increasingly borrowing elements of masculinities that do not “belong” to them. Cultural aesthetics associated with marginalized and subordinated groups (though often this relies on stereotypes and, occasionally, myths) are commodified, consumed, and work to situate certain privileged groups as more cosmopolitan as a result. These processes sometimes appear to situate young, straight, white guys as increasingly interested in equality and as more “multicultural” than Other men (who get cast as the “real problem” in this discourse). A consequence of this process is that it works to obscure some men’s positions within contemporary relations of power and inequality.

Inequalities are much easier to accept when we believe them to be just. This cosmopolitan taste in gender increasingly displayed by groups of young, straight, white men makes it appear that masculinities are opening up, becoming less dictatorial, and more democratic. Yet, the new forms that this omnivorousness in gender performance and politics is taking also works to reproduce privilege in historically novel ways. While young, straight, white men may not be the only ones flirting with these new styles of gender performance and display, they may be receiving a qualitatively different set of benefits from their engagement.

Indeed, research suggests that while it might look different today, this is a historical process. Young, middle and upper class, straight, white men became interested in exercise and building muscles around the time that this muscle was no longer necessary to earn a living (for these men). The Boy Scouts of America emerged at the turn of the century to ensure boys learned survival skills no longer required for the lives these boys would lead or the work they would eventually pursue. Young groups got interested in Black musicians and jazz at a point in our history when privilege started to feel “dull” when compared with the seemingly more “authentic” identities of Others—identities formed, in part, by the very same systems of inequality that these practices of appropriation protect. Matthew Hughey has addressed similar practices of racialized appropriation by whites and Shamus Khan finds a parallel mode of classed and racialized cultural appropriation among elites. But, it’s not just classed and racialized. Hybrid masculinities demonstrate that this is a gendered and sexualized practice as well.

Through “strategically borrowing” elements from marginalized and subordinated groups, hybrid masculinities “discursively distance” the men who mobilize these configurations of gender from masculinities that have been successfully challenged by feminist activism and reform. Yet, this discursive distance is more symbolic than “real” in the sense that it does not actually challenge the systems of power and inequality that are largely still in place—rather, it obscures them, fortifying the same inequalities in new ways.

_______________________

*This is a small piece of the argument I’m pursuing in a book prospectus and manuscript I’m currently working on that traces transformations in gender politics and performances among three separate groups of men.  I didn’t use any of my data here as I’m saving that for the book.  But I’m loving the finding some of my ideas apparent in advertisements too.

Spoil alert! White men are going to take home a lot of Oscars this year. America and the world will once again honor the cult of male genius, and the great men of history.

Steven Hawking, Alan Turing, Martin Luther King Jr. – these are some of the great men of this year’s Oscar line-up. Their accomplishments are significant. And kudos to the filmmakers, who, in a few of these cases, complicated the “lone genius” idea by telling a story that reveals the power of mentors, colleagues, and friends. But the genius or the hero is always male, isn’t he?

I still haven’t seen a movie about a woman genius, and I’m wondering if I will in my lifetime. Afterall, our social construction of “genius” is a math-equation-solving white male nerd who is usually associated with an elite institution. We have SO many movies about that guy. Are women ever part of the equation? Isn’t the equation itself reductionist and unfair? Taking this even further, do all geniuses have to use chalkboards, or can we find great thinkers and problem-solvers outside of classrooms?

The genius stereotype isn’t something we let go of when we leave the theater. Fiction shapes real life. Sarah-Jane Leslie is a philosopher at Princeton University who writes in the journal Science that the male genius stereotype is holding women back.  And therein lies the challenge – the vicious cycle of fiction shaping reality and vice versa. How can women be called to math, physics, and philosophy, for example, when all we hear about are the great men of these fields?

This genius question undergirds Walter Isaacson’s great new book about the forgotten female programmers who created modern technology. Will anyone invest in making this story into a movie, or does it not fit our narrow idea of genius?

It isn’t clear if Oscar-nominated The Theory of Everything pushes the genius trope to the next level. The film doesn’t put a woman in the equation, exactly, but she is nearby. While the film sets us up to follow Steven Hawking’s career and contributions, there next to him in almost every scene is his girlfriend and then wife Jane, who saves him from his depression upon being diagnosed with ALS, and then nurses him and cares for him for not two years (the period of time his doctors give him to live), but decades upon decades, while raising a family and pursuing a PhD. Just as important, she is an educated peer who pushes his thinking. She’s a superwoman! And she speaks to us. What woman doesn’t feel a pang of familiarity watching her balance work and family, thought and emotion? That said, Jane’s load is huge and lonely, especially without her husband’s consent for additional assistance.

In The Theory of Everything, Jane is a type of hero in a film about defying all odds. Still, the film left me feeling like she didn’t get her due. Given her heroism as a caretaker, perhaps Jane should be the one, at the end of the film, who takes the stage and tells us how she did it. Afterall, she appears to be a problem-solving genius. How in the world did she study Spanish literature, raise three kids, care for a severely physically disabled husband, and get food on the table every night?

The Theory of Everything enables us to see the great woman behind the great man. But we still have a ways to go before the great women are the stars of the show, and the Oscar recipients.

For a great infographic, see Women’s Media Center on the gendering of this year’s Oscar nominations.

We need to keep critiquing the genius effect. Just for fun, I’m going to start using the word a whole lot more, to describe the women in my life. There are a lot of amazing problem-solvers out there.

A new study published in the British Medical Journal titled “The Darwin Awards: Sex differences in idiotic behaviour” found marked sex differences in Darwin Award winners. Men were more likely than women to receive the award for “eliminat[ing] themselves from the gene pool in such an idiotic manner that their action ensures one less idiot will survive.”

In other words, a person who shoots himself in the head to show that a gun is loaded and dies, or a terrorist who sends a letter bomb with insufficient postage and then, upon its return, unthinkingly opens the letter and it explodes causing his death, might be eligible for the award.

The researchers reviewed data on the Darwin Award winners over a 20-year period (1995 to 2014) from the website DarwinAwards.Com.

The Darwin Awards are about idiotic risks.

Different from risks associated with adventurism or contact sports, idiotic risks involve “senseless risks where the apparent payoff is negligible or non-existent, and the outcome is often extremely negative and often final.” Thus, the nominations for the Darwin Awards go through a rigorous evaluation in terms of five criteria:

1. Death – the candidate must be eliminated from the gene pool;
2. Style – the candidate must show an astounding misapplication of common sense;
3. Veracity – the event must be verified;
4. Capability – the candidate must be capable of sound judgment;
5. Self Selection – the candidate must be the cause of his or her own demise.

The researchers analyzed all verified nominations (n=332). They excluded nominations that were unverified or urban legends, as well as the ‘honorable mentions’ that were worthy in their own right but failed to eliminate the person from the gene pool. They also excluded the 14 awards given to “overly adventurous couples in compromising positions.” This left 318 valid cases for analysis.

Of the 318 Darwin Awards nominations in the analysis, an overwhelming majority (282) involved men, and only 36 involved women. The researchers concluded that the finding is consistent with male idiot theory, supporting their hypothesis that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things.

The authors note limitations of the study such as possible selection bias (women more likely to nominate men for the award), reporting bias (male idiocy getting more media attention), or gender differences in alcohol use (with high alcohol use known to influence risky behavior). Yet the findings suggest too that “idiotic behaviour confers some, as yet unidentified, selective advantage on those who do not become its casualties.”

Could it be that bragging rights from idiotic behavior confer social status to some forms of normative masculinity? If so, male idiot theory certainly deserves further investigation.

A complete description of the research and its data can be found here.

Part 5 in a Series

The systematic oppression of black people has been thrust into national consciousness because of the visibility of recent police brutality against black men.

Black Lives Matter (BLM), the emerging social movement challenging this violence and the institutionalized inequalities that underlie and uphold it, started as a hashtag by three black queer women activists. Now it has become a national call to action that has brought thousands of people of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds into the streets to demand immediate changes in police policies and practices.

Pacific Standard, Dec. 19, 2014

On December 18th (2014), Associate professor Adia Harvey Wingfield of Georgia State University wrote an analysis of the gendering of BLM for the Pacific Standard (PS). We wrote an article the next day, also in PS, on how social scientists can do more to end racial subjugation. Together, these articles offer both a feminist perspective on the movement and a concrete set of ways social scientists can take action.

Professor Wingfield’s analysis demonstrates how the BLM protests are important not only because they draw attention to ongoing acts of racial persecution, but because they reveal how gender shapes police violence and those who are victimized by it.

• It’s safe to say that the most well-known victims of police (and self-appointed vigilante) violence are black males….
• Black men have historically been and continue to be cast as dangerous, threatening, and inclined to violent behavior. This stereotype has its roots in the post-slavery era when such “violence” was used as a justification for lynching black men.
• The stereotype of black male criminality may have the unintended consequence of making criminal activity more difficult to curtail.

Black women are an untold side of this story.

• The act of protesting itself is a gendered activity, also involving covert forms of protest.
• If police violence is seen as a black men’s issue, then black female victims are easily overlooked and the problem persists.
• Depictions of black men as the primary victims of police violence may make black women reluctant to involve law enforcement.

Read the full article: “Gendering #BlackLivesMatter: A Feminist Perspective” by Adia Harvey Wingfield, Pacific Standard, Dec. 18, 2014.

On December 19th (2014) we argued, too, that using our knowledge of social systems, all social scientists—black or white, race scholar or not—have an opportunity to challenge white privilege. As social scientists, our job is to understand the social structures within society that reproduce inequities. We can, in tangible ways, bring our sociological imaginations to bear on the eradication of racial repression.

We can:

1. Listen and follow the lead of this black-led movement to confront racial injustice.
2. Assess the critical role of law enforcement.
3. Create space in our classrooms for dialogue about white privilege and anti-black racism.
4. Support social action among our students.
5. Incorporate a race lens into our research and writing, and include research on race in our syllabi.
6. Share our findings with other colleagues, activists, and our broader communities.
7. Open our eyes, look around, and “interrupt oppression” when we see it.
8. Talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and engage in critical dialogue to transform our institutions.
9. Mobilize anti-racist white people.
10. Help to change the system.

Racial justice requires fundamental changes to a system with deep historical roots, one that structurally disadvantages black people as a group. At this critical time, we all have an opportunity to examine ourselves and to support those seeking transparency, accountability, and safety in their communities.

Read the full article: “Social Scientists Can Do More to Eradicate Racial Oppression” by Gayle Sulik and Mindy Fried, Pacific Standard, Dec. 19, 2014.

Read the entire Black Lives Matter Series on Feminist Reflections

• Part 1: Don’t Black Lives Matter? by Gayle Sulik
• Part 2: How Sociologists Can Support Black Lives Matter by Mindy Fried
• Part 3: An Open Letter to Student Activists by Meika Loe
• Part 4: Racism is not Dead: Language And Everyday Interactions by Trina Smith

Part 4 in a Series

I know racism exists everywhere in the U.S., but as a newer person to the South, I have observed that segregation and racism are more visible and verbal here.

Prior to moving here, I lived in the inner-city of a metro area in the Upper Midwest where I observed racism in more covert ways:  minority youth afraid of police, wedges between different racial/ethnic groups in the community, and  strategies to work on these issues from “Facing Race” trainings and community-police relationship building, to the police force trying to hire more minorities. From a vantage point of moving from the Upper Midwest to the Deep rural South, racism can be seen differently.

“Standpoint” is not a new concept to sociologists, nor to people of color who have lived in both regions. And certainly all ways that racism is expressed and experienced is unacceptable. However, some folks I have talked to who moved to the North from the South have said that when racism is more overt, it is sometimes easier to deal with because you know what people think. Whatever the form, racism is something we shouldn’t have to fight. But as I share my observations to talk about why black lives matter, I see clearly that racism is not dead.

In this post, I am going to take a different stance from my co-bloggers on Feminist Reflections to share stories that demonstrate racism in everyday interactions, rather than the local or national protests currently underway. Organized protests are the manifestations of years and year of oppression; a build-up of blatant racist acts experienced by people of color. With permission, I share the following stories from one of my students. My student “Bob” (not his real name) is currently finishing his internship under my supervision. It is my ethical decision to write more generically about my student and some events to protect identities of persons and organizations.

Pickin’ Cotton: My Student’s Story

Bob is a large black man. Bob knows he is large. Bob also knows how people may perceive him, given the stereotypes about back men. Indeed, he’s told me about numerous times in his life of being pulled over by the police and the interactions that have happened. But the reason I want to talk about Bob is to point to issues about language and micro-aggressions as a form of racism occurring in everyday lives. Everyday interactions, including our language, whether people “intend” to be racist or not, are embedded in structural racism.

In a meeting discussing his internship, Bob told me about something that happened with a man who answered the phones at his internship site. While waiting to meet with another person at the organization, they engaged in small talk. After a rant about how people claim their race and ethnicity, the man told Bob that he could not call himself African American, charging that Bob could not trace his ancestry back to slavery or to Africa. Bob was shocked that this man had the audacity to make such a ridiculous claim. In trying to keep his cool while also advocating for himself, Bob gave the man “a short history lesson.” But while doing so, Bob had to maintain professionalism as an intern, despite what he had just heard, which of course upset him.

There were other stories Bob shared. Since we live in the rural South, we are surrounded  by many cotton fields. When Bob was talking to another person at the organization, the guy told Bob “to go pick cotton.” A cotton field was, literally, behind them. Joking or not, why would he say that? Did he fail to realize that the remark harkens back to slavery? Why did the receptionist at Bob’s internship think he could tell Bob what racial or ethnic term he can or cannot claim or use?

Why did these people express these particular words and types of sentiments to Bob?

Rest assured, Bob handled the situations with professionalism and dignity. He brought the issues to the person in charge of the organization, who was concerned and took action.

However, as Bob and I talked about his experiences and I thought about them for days, the question about who tells a black person to go pick cotton kept coming to back to my mind. Language matters. Symbolism matters. If someone doesn’t understand why telling a black person to go pick cotton is not okay, that person may want to re-visit history.

The issues were taken care of internally before I had to get involved as a faculty internship adviser. But hearing about these daily micro-aggressions Bob was experiencing made me angry. If I had to get involved, what would have I said? I would have to use the language of treating my student with respect, in which racism will not be tolerated. But “who tells a black person to go pick cotton?” This is the question to ask in these kinds of circumstances.

My student may be “privileged” in that he is attending college, but this does not erase his race, the discrimination he may face because of it, nor his feelings when racial aggressions occur. He knows that in a professional setting in which many things are at stake including the security of his internship, which may be a stepping stone to a job and/or letters of recommendation for his future, he must tread lightly. As sociologists have shown, if a black person gets angry it is often viewed stereotypically as typical behavior, helping to reproduce the cycle of racism. Bob advocated for himself, but realized that he had to do so within the constraints of his professional setting.

While this interaction is not at the same level as the Ferguson or related cases, it shows how micro level interaction racism exists in overt ways. A black person carries the burden of experiencing racism in everyday life.

Moving Forward

Beyond advocacy and social action through protests, rallies, and so forth, we must also listen and acknowledge the experiences of  students and people of color that happen in everyday interactions. It is through some of these everyday experiences where we can see the ways in which racism is experienced on a daily basis by people of color.

These stories show the power of language, part of our (racist) culture. Micro-aggressions, including language and symbols, are symptoms of structural racism and perpetuate racism, intentionally or not. Intent is not the same thing as impact. And Bob is one of many students who have told me about these kinds of everyday racist interactions. Language matters. Unfortunately, language is often ignored.

I have encouraged my students to write about their experiences. My students have told me that they want to make a difference in the world and work for social justice in their careers and volunteer activities. Many of them in fact work or volunteer with student organizations, multicultural centers, and/or do internships at organizations that work with diverse and oppressed clientele. By documenting and reflecting on their experiences (sadly including the “isms” they experience or see others experience), using their sociological training, and reflecting on current ways of addressing inequality they witness, I hope we can find effective ways to work together to advocate for social justice. While I firmly believe that the oppressed should not have to teach their oppressors, I do think it is important for us as allies to listen and learn from the perspectives of people of color.

Often in our quest for public and feminist sociology, we do not hear from students or from those who experience everyday racism. I have invited my students to write their stories and reflect on how they conceive of advocacy and social change. We’ll share some of these on Feminist Reflections in the future to highlight student voices that exemplify feminist sociological principles. Activism through rallies, protests, and other forms of collective organizing are incredibly important, and so is listening and being there for our students.

In conclusion, please remember:

    We cannot forget to be allies by LISTENING, leaning from, and supporting our own students whose lives have been affected by structural racism and experience micro-aggressions and every day, often overt, racism.

Related:

When Will the North Face Its Racism? by Isabel Wilkerson, The New York Times, Jan. 10, 2015

Read the entire Black Lives Matter Series on Feminist Reflections

• Part 1: Don’t Black Lives Matter? by Gayle Sulik
• Part 2: How Sociologists Can Support Black Lives Matter by Mindy Fried
• Part 3: An Open Letter to Student Activists by Meika Loe
• Part 4: Racism is not Dead: Language And Everyday Interactions by Trina Smith

It’s that time of year. Babies in top hats don sashes and people everywhere resolve to begin anew, to start fresh, to do things differently or more wisely or somehow better.

I rang in the New Year in much the same way many do – a little too much drinking, some singing, and of course the obligatory New Year’s kiss. But I’ve always been averse to New Year’s resolutions. Why wait til the New Year to do something you should be doing now?

I’ve got a resolution this year, though. This year I resolve to walk the childfree, feminist talk I’ve been peddling for the last couple of years. You see, my partner Lance and I launched our blog about the childfree choice, we’re {not} having a baby!, in early 2013.

Our goals were simple: to celebrate our choice, celebrate that we live in a time and a place where we have a choice, and challenge the many unfounded myths of those of us who choose not to have kids.

These goals are reflected in our w{n}hab! manifesto.

You can see from our conclusion that celebrating is indeed a top priority.

Beyond celebrating, we wanted to challenge myths. And while I think we’ve done that through a variety of posts including some on challenging the idea that we’ll change our minds and others on the mistaken belief that we must hate kids, I’m not sure that I’ve challenged myths in my day-to-day life to the extent that I’d like.

So, this year I resolve to:

1. Apologize less

I admit that I do what I have criticized others for doing: I sometimes apologize for my choice not to have kids. Not directly but implicitly. No more. I made the choice that’s right for me. I don’t need to apologize for that choice.

2. Balance more

Over the last few months I’ve put in an average of about 75 hours of work/week. That’s nearly double what I’d like to be putting in but when push comes to shove and someone has to do it, I tend to fall on my sword and pick up slack that I might not if I had kids waiting for me at home. But I have a life and a partner at home, both of whom I adore, so I resolve to stop putting work before life. I resolve to take the advice I give to others and just say no when work creeps into the life side of the work/life equation. I didn’t choose a childfree life so that I could work more. I chose a childfree life because I value solitude, quiet, my partnership, and a zillion activities that I’ve given up in favor of work. No more.

This year, more than ever before, I will celebrate my choice. I will celebrate by actually living my life, the life I chose and the life I want to live. I will continue to advocate for work/life balance for all – parents and the childfree alike. And I will celebrate that I have a choice. I will celebrate that I have a choice by not apologizing for my choice. And I will do what I can to support efforts that ensure that all people have a choice. Now that will be walking my childfree, feminist talk!

I’ll drink to that!

Another version of this post was published at we’re {not} having a baby!.

“Lumbersexual” recently entered our cultural lexicon. What it means exactly is still being negotiated. At a basic level, it’s an identity category that relies on a set of stereotypes about regionally specific and classed masculinities. Lumbersexuals are probably best recognized by a set of hirsute bodies and grooming habits. Their attire, bodies, and comportment are presumed to cite stereotypes of lumberjacks in the cultural imaginary. However, combined with the overall cultural portrayal of the lumbersexual, this stereotype set fundamentally creates an aesthetic with a particular subset of men that idealizes a cold weather, rugged, large, hard-bodied, bewhiskered configuration of masculinity.

Similar to hipster masculinity, “lumbersexual” is a classification largely reserved for young, straight, white, and arguably class-privileged men. While some position lumbersexuals as the antithesis of the metrosexual, others understand lumbersexuals as within a spectrum of identity options made available by metrosexuality. Urbandicionary.com defines the lumbersexual as “a sexy man who dresses in denim, leather, and flannel, and has a ruggedly sensual beard.”

One of the key signifiers of the “lumbersexual,” however, is that he is not, in fact, a lumberjack. Like the hipster, the lumbersexual is less of an identity men claim and more of one used to describe them (perhaps, against their wishes). It’s used to mock young, straight, white men for participating in a kind of identity work. Gearjunkie.com describes the identity this way:

Whether the roots of the lumbersexual are a cultural shift toward environmentalism, rebellion against the grind of 9-5 office jobs, or simply recognition that outdoor gear is just more comfortable, functional and durable, the lumbersexual is on the rise (here).

Many aspects of masculinity are “comfortable.” And, men don’t need outdoor gear and lumberjack attire to be comfortable. Lumbersexual has less to do with comfort and more to do with masculinity. It is a practice of masculinization. It’s part of a collection of practices associated with “hybrid masculinities”—categories and identity work practices made available to young, white, heterosexual men that allow them to collect masculine status they might otherwise see themselves (or be seen by others) as lacking. Hybridization offers young, straight, class-privileged white men an avenue to negotiate, compensate, and attempt to control meanings attached to their identities as men. Hybrid configurations of masculinity, like the lumbersexual, accomplish two things at once. They enable young, straight, class-privileged, white men to discursively distance themselves from what they might perceive as something akin to the stigma of privilege. They simultaneously offer a way out of the “emptiness” a great deal of scholarship has discussed as associated with racially, sexually, class-privileged identities (see here, here, and here).

The lumbersexual highlights a series of rival binaries associated with masculinities: rural vs. urban, rugged vs. refined, tidy vs. unkempt. But the lumbersexual is so compelling precisely because, rather than “choosing sides,” this identity attempts to delicately walk the line between these binaries. It’s “delicate” precisely because this is a heteromasculine configuration—falling too far toward one side or the other could call him into question. But, a lumbersexual isn’t a lumberjack just like a metrosexual isn’t gay. Their identity work attempts to establish a connection with identities to which they have no authentic claim by flirting with stereotypes surrounding sets of interests and aesthetics associated with various marginalized and subordinated groups of men. Yet, these collections are largely mythologies. The bristly woodsmen they are ostensibly parroting were, in fact, created for precisely this purpose. As Willa Brown writes,

The archetypal lumberjack—the Paul Bunyanesque hipster naturalist—was an invention of urban journalists and advertisers. He was created not as a portrait of real working-class life, but as a model for middle-class urban men to aspire to, a cure for chronic neurasthenics. He came to life not in the forests of Minnesota, but in the pages of magazines (here).

Perhaps less obviously, however, the lumbersexual is also coopting elements of sexual minority subcultures. If we look through queer lenses we might suggest that lumbersexuals are more similar to metrosexuals than they may acknowledge as many elements of “lumberjack” identities are already connected with configurations of lesbian and gay identities. For instance, lumbersexuals share a lot of common ground with “bear masculinity” (a subculture of gay men defined by larger bodies with lots of hair) and some rural configurations of lesbian identity. Arguably, whether someone is a “bear” or a “lumbersexual” may solely be a question of sexual identity. After all, bear culture emerged to celebrate a queer masculinity, creating symbolic distance from stereotypes of gay masculinities as feminine or effeminate. Lumbersexuals could be read as a similar move in response to metrosexuality.

Lumbersexual masculinity is certainly an illustration that certain groups of young, straight, class-privileged, white men are playing with gender. In the process, however, systems of power and inequality are probably better understood as obscured than challenged. Like the phrase “no homo,” hybrid configurations of masculinity afford young straight men new kinds of flexibility in identities and practice, but don’t challenge relations of power and inequality in any meaningful way.

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*We would like to thank the Orange Couch of NOLA, Urban Outfitters, the rural (&) queer community, and Andrea Herrera for suggesting we tackle this piece. Additional thanks to C.J. Pascoe and Lisa Wade for advanced reading and comments.

Part 3 in a series

At a recent speak-out, I shared how Rodney King’s treatment by police 20 years ago helped me to find my voice as a social justice activist. And yet, despite our national attempts to stop traffic and speak back to injustice, I am horrified by how little progress we have made since then. Yet another generation is forced to confront these structural problems.

Following on Gayle Sulik’s recent post, Don’t Black Lives Matter?, many of us are involved in protests on our own campuses. This is the letter our feminist faculty at Colgate posted in solidarity with students on our campus. Now I want to share it widely with student activists across the nation. Students, we are here with you. We feel broken too. Let’s move forward together.
-Meika

Dearest Students:

We write this letter in the spirit of solidarity and love. And we begin this letter with one word, one potentially problematic idea: “to be broken.” And then to ask, “what does it mean to break, to be broken?” Certainly, the events of this last week, this last month, this last semester have left many of us with broken hearts and a more general sense of brokenness: a broken justice system that facilitates impunity and the abuse of power, a broken society where the humanity of the racialized and the poor is subject to daily assaults and being disappeared, a broken world all together where the cracks reveal far too many injustices. There is much that is broken. And we recognize that in this vulnerable moment things and persons nearest and dearest to us feel all the more fragile, easily broken, as we pause to also reflect on the histories and structures that render some lives, some bodies, more fragile, more easily broken, than others. It’s possible that many of you, as you read these (broken) words, are likely feeling that brokenness in your hearts. And that some of you are likely feeling that brokenness in your bodies and in your very spirits, the week’s/semester’s/year’s events leaving you feeling weary, broken-down, on the side of a shadowed road with your spirits deflated, while “hope,” that elusive winged-thing, speeds by, sees you for a moment, but can’t be bothered to stop to help with the repairs. Many of you know this brokenness far too well, so well in fact that it’s beginning to feel like a broken-in shoe. And you are tired.

As faculty, we write this letter to say that we know this brokenness too, and that we are living with that brokenness, albeit in ways both similar and different, alongside you. We write this letter in an effort to recognize and name that brokenness and to note that we are here, standing beside you amidst the fissures and the cracks that have been revealed. Without undermining or glossing over the very real pain that has resulted from so much breakage, we write this letter from a space of hope for what these heart-breaking moments of rupture might reveal and what lessons they might teach us about how we want to be and belong as a community here and beyond. Breaking offers opportunity for building anew. After all, “[a] writer’s heart, a poet’s heart, an artist’s heart, a musician’s heart is always breaking,” says Alice Walker. “[I]t is through that broken window that we see the world.” As we look, cautiously perhaps, through these broken windows in our midst, what can we now see? What connections and opportunities for new relationships and alliance-building does such breaking reveal?

The events of this last week (and prior) have served to illuminate the inherent brokenness of a system—a broken system that facilitates students feeling uncared for, unseen, unsafe. We write this letter to let you all know that we recognize this brokenness and that we take serious our responsibility to make sure those gaps in the system are addressed so as to trace the threats to their source(s). With all of that said, we thus hope that this letter will signal a different kind of break—the fracturing of a narrative that tells you are in this alone. You are not alone. This letter gestures towards the possibility inherent in what we recognize is a heart-breaking moment, but one that has also broke open the opportunity for us to share our stories of breaking and being-broken—stories that might bring us closer to recognizing the deeper bonds and commitments we need to have to one another during these heart-soul-body breaking times. We are here, with you.

In solidarity,

Your feminist faculty

Read the entire Black Lives Matter Series on Feminist Reflections

• Part 1: Don’t Black Lives Matter? by Gayle Sulik
• Part 2: How Sociologists Can Support Black Lives Matter by Mindy Fried
• Part 3: An Open Letter to Student Activists by Meika Loe
• Part 4: Racism is not Dead: Language And Everyday Interactions by Trina Smith

Part 2 in a series

Last Thursday night, I sat in Boston’s Hope Church with over 300 white people, not for a concert or for a sermon. But to respond to a call from local and national Black leadership asking white people to come together to talk about our role in the movement for racial justice. Like so many people, I had been seething about the targeting of young Black men by police, and the increasing militarization of the police in responding to legal protests in Ferguson and elsewhere.

I had joined two of the rallies in Boston the week before, the first, following the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, who had killed Michael Brown, in which thousands of people took over the streets, chanting “No justice, no peace, no racist police.” We paused in front of the South Bay House of Correction, where inmates stood at the windows with their arms held up to communicate “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

Ultimately, many of the marchers shut down a ramp leading to the interstate. In contrast to the media framing of this demonstration, a number of people I know personally were punched in the head or ribs, or trampled on by police. The other rally followed the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who killed Eric Garner, marching up to the city’s Christmas tree lighting and celebration. The message was that we cannot go on with business as usual, while Black people are being victimized.

In both of these rallies, I was struck by the power of Black women leadership, and discovered the organizers of these events were from a group called Black Lives Matter (BLM) Boston, affiliated with the national BLM.

BLM is a national organization with an action agenda. It started as a hashtag, created by three Black queer women organizers with a deep understanding of “intersectionality” (or, ways in which different oppressions – including gender, race, and sexual preference – intersect and co-produce one another). Queer is an umbrella term to refer to all LGBTIQ – lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, intersexual and questioning people – that reveals the fluidity of social categories such as sex and gender. As Black feminist and social activist, bell hooks, writes: “Every day of my life that I walk out of my house, I am a combination of race, gender, class, sexual preference and religion or what have you.”

To be in a huge throng of people demanding an end to racism, to chant Black Lives Matter, was nothing short of inspiring. Here is a short clip of activist Ife Franklin, who spontaneously led us in singing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”

Video from Ferguson Rally (11.25.14)

But while marching, there were moments I felt confused. Should I, as a white woman, be chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot?” or “We can’t breathe?” Do whites as a group face systematic victimization by the police? No. Can I breathe when I see a police officer when I walk down the street? Hell, yeah! They might even help me, if I’m in need, without presuming that I am guilty of some infraction. As a collectivity, white people are not incarcerated or murdered because of the color of our skin. It seemed wrong to use the language of people who are.

I wondered, more broadly: What is my role in this struggle for racial justice, as a white person?

When I read about the local meeting to help white people figure out their role in the context of this organizing effort, I was compelled to go. Sitting in the pews of Hope Church, I listened to three young white organizers deftly walk us through a set of guidelines to frame how we can be allies – or “accomplices” – to this Black led movement “without replicating racist dynamics.” To set the stage, the trainers began by presenting findings from a study (conducted by scholars from Harvard and Rutgers for the ACLU) that confirmed the existence of racial discrimination within the Boston police force. The study concluded that Boston police officers disproportionately interrogated, observed, or searched Black residents during the period between 2007 and 2010.

And despite these Boston “police-street encounters,” there was little evidence of probable cause. Researchers reported that the “hit” rate was incredibly low, with no documented seizure and no documented arrest in 97.5 percent of the cases. Black people were 8.8 percent more likely than whites to be stopped repeatedly by police, and 12 percent more likely than whites to be frisked or searched during a stop.

In defining our role as white people in supporting Black Lives Matter, the trainers acknowledged that we in the audience might be leaders in our own worlds and in many of our endeavors, but now we have an opportunity to “follow the leadership of this Black-led, women-led, and queer-led movement.” They challenged us to keep “Black lives at the center,” meaning that it is Black people who suffer the consequences of anti-Black racism, and they must be in charge of the movement to eradicate it.

White people need to critically assess what it means to be white in a society that systematically privileges whiteness. Peggy McIntosh, who writes extensively on white privilege, says,

“I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious…White privilege is like an invisible weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.” [She cites many examples of white privilege.]

“Whether (I use) checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, poverty, or the illiteracy of my race…I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race…I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of race…I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.”

White people have a critical role to play, not only in supporting the efforts of Black people, but also in educating ourselves and other white people about the nature of structural economic and racial oppression.

How can white sociologists contribute to a Black-led movement for racial justice? What role can we play in combating racism?

We may say, “I am not a race scholar,” so what can I do? But sociologists specializing in any field are still human beings living in a racist society. We understand the social structures within society that reproduce inequities of all kinds. How can we bring this sociological eye to our work to address and help to eradicate racial oppression? I can think about a number of ways, and maybe you can think of others.

We can assess the critical role of law enforcement as the tool of a white dominant culture. We can question how police brutality against “racialized others” has historically been considered acceptable in our society. We can change our curriculum and incorporate other people’s experiences and narratives. We can include authors on our syllabi who tell stories about racial injustice, providing students with a better understanding of the systemic ways that discrimination is reproduced. We can create space in the classroom for dialogue about these issues. And for those of us who teach social movements, we can include this growing social movement as part of our curriculum, how small acts of coordinated resistance are important for engendering large-scale struggle. We can also incorporate a race lens into our research and writing. We can support social action among our students on campus.

The trainers emphasized that Black Lives Matter is not a pep rally or protest; It is an uprising, and the meeting at Hope Church was held in the hopes that white people in the room would join that resistance. The three energetic trainers asked us white people to understand the structural nature of racism and to find a way to talk – as white people – about the Black Lives Matter movement. They asked us to commit to the practice of talking with other white people about white supremacy, just as we were doing at this meeting. And they asked us to become activists, to mobilize anti-racist white people when we were called upon.

As white people, we have an opportunity to make a difference, just as hundreds and thousands of white people who have joined the struggle for racial justice over the decades. As social scientists, we have tools to support this movement – our teaching and research and our access to spaces to foster a new, constructive dialogue – where we can frame the conversation for our students, our colleagues, and our communities.

To paraphrase an oft-used phrase: If not us, who? If not now, when?

Lyrics, Redemption Song by Bob Marley

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind.
Wo! Have no fear for atomic energy,
‘Cause none of them-a can-a stop-a the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Yes, some say it’s just a part of it:
We’ve got to fulfill the book.
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom? –
‘Cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs –
All I ever had:
Redemption songs:
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom.

Read the entire Black Lives Matter Series on Feminist Reflections

• Part 1: Don’t Black Lives Matter? by Gayle Sulik
• Part 2: How Sociologists Can Support Black Lives Matter by Mindy Fried
• Part 3: An Open Letter to Student Activists by Meika Loe
• Part 4: Racism is not Dead: Language And Everyday Interactions by Trina Smith