{"id":2997,"date":"2016-06-27T10:31:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T14:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/?p=2997"},"modified":"2017-03-15T08:29:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T12:29:13","slug":"google-tell-me-is-my-son-gay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/2016\/06\/27\/google-tell-me-is-my-son-gay\/","title":{"rendered":"Google, Tell Me. Is My Son Gay?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>In 2014, a story in\u00a0The New York Times<\/em> by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz<\/a> went viral using Google Trend data to address gender bias in parental assessments of their children\u2014\u201cGoogle, Tell Me. Is My Son a Genius?<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 People ask Google whether sons are \u201cgifted\u201d at a rate 2.5x higher than they do for daughters.\u00a0 When asking about sons on Google, people are also more likely to inquire about genius, intelligence, stupidity, happiness, and leadership than they are about daughters.\u00a0 When asking about daughters on Google, people are much more likely to inquire about beauty, ugliness, body weight, and just marginally more likely to ask about depression.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pretty powerful way of showing that we judge girls based on appearance and boys based on abilities.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t mean that parents are necessarily consciously attempting to reproduce gender inequality.\u00a0 But it might mean that they are simply much more likely to take note of and celebrate different elements of who their children are depending on whether those children are girls or boys.<\/p>\n

To get the figures, Stephens-Davidowitz relied on data from Google Trends<\/a>. The tool does not give you a sense of the total number of searches utilizing specific search terms; it presents the relative popularity of search terms compared with one another on a scale from 0 to 100, and over time (since 2004).\u00a0 For instance, it allows people selling used car parts to see whether people searching for used car parts are more likely to search for \u201cused car parts,\u201d \u201cused auto parts,\u201d or something else entirely before they decide how to list their merchandise online.\u00a0 I recently looked over the data the author relied on for the piece.\u00a0 Stephens-Davidowitz charted searches for \u201cis my son gifted\u201d against searches for \u201cis my daughter gifted\u201d and then replaced that last word in the search with: smart, beautiful, overweight, etc.<\/p>\n

And while people are more likely to turn to Google to ask about their son\u2019s intelligence than whether or not their daughters are overweight, people are much more likely to ask Google about children\u2019s sexualities than any other quality mentioned in the article<\/strong>.\u00a0 And to be even more precise, parents on Google are primarily concerned with boys’<\/em> sexuality.\u00a0 Below, I\u2019ve charted the relative popularity of searches for \u201cis my son gay\u201d alongside searches for \u201cis my daughter gay,\u201d \u201cis my child gay,\u201d and \u201cis my son gifted.\u201d\u00a0 I included \u201cchild\u201d to illustrate that Google searches here are more commonly gender-specific.\u00a0 And I include \u201cgifted\u201d to illustrate how much more common searches for son\u2019s sexuality is compared with searches for son\u2019s giftedness (which was among the more common searches in Stephens-Davidowitz\u2019s article).<\/p>\n

\"Picture1\"<\/p>\n

The general trend of the graph is toward increasing popularity.\u00a0 People are more likely to ask Google about their children\u2019s sexuality since 2004 (and slightly less likely to ask Google about their children\u2019s \u201cgiftedness\u201d over that same time period).\u00a0 But they are much more likely to inquire about son\u2019s sexuality.\u00a0 At two points, the graph hits the ceiling.\u00a0 The first, in November of 2010, corresponds with the release of the movie \u201cOy Vey! My Son is Gay<\/a>\u201d about a Jewish family coming to terms with a son coming out as gay and dating a non-Jewish young man. \u00a0The second high point, in September of 2011, occurred during a great deal of press surrounding Apple\u2019s recently released \u201cIs my son gay?\u201d app<\/a>, which was later taken off the market after a great deal of protest.\u00a0 And certainly, some residual popularity in searches may be associated with increased relative search volume since.\u00a0 But, the increase in relative searches for \u201cis my son gay\u201d happens earlier than either of these events.<\/p>\n

\"RelativeIndeed, over the period of time illustrated here, people were 28x more likely to search for \u201cis my son gay\u201d than they were for \u201cis my son gifted.\u201d\u00a0 And searches for \u201cis my son gay\u201d were 4.7x more common than searches for \u201cis my daughter gay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reading Google Trends is a bit like reading tea leaves in that it\u2019s certainly open to interpretation.\u00a0 For instance, this could mean that parents are increasingly open to sexual diversity and are increasingly attempting to help their children navigate coming to terms with their sexual identities (whatever those identities happen to be).\u00a0 Though, were this the case, it\u2019s interesting that parents are apparently more interested in helping their sons navigate any presumed challenges than their daughters.\u00a0 It could mean that as performances of masculinity shift<\/a> and take on new forms<\/a>, sons are simply much more likely to engage with gender in ways that cause their parents to question their (hetero)sexuality than they used to.\u00a0 Or it could mean that parents are more scared that their sons might be gay.\u00a0 It is likely all of these things.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not necessarily sold on the idea that the trend can only be seen as a sign of the endurance of gender and sexual inequality.\u00a0 But one measure of that might be to check back in with Google Trends to see if people start asking Google whether their sons and daughters are straight.\u00a0 At present, both searches are uncommon enough that Google Trends won\u2019t even display their relative popularity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2014, a story in\u00a0The New York Times by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz went viral using Google Trend data to address gender bias in parental assessments of their children\u2014\u201cGoogle, Tell Me. Is My Son a Genius?\u201d\u00a0 People ask Google whether sons are \u201cgifted\u201d at a rate 2.5x higher than they do for daughters.\u00a0 When asking about sons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245,30335,55,35058,5007,26,175],"tags":[37997,37998],"class_list":["post-2997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-feminist-sociology","category-gender","category-in-the-news","category-pop-culture","category-public-sociology","category-sociology","tag-google-trends","tag-is-my-son-gay"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2997"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3255,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions\/3255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}