What’s the big deal about uptalk? In The College of William & Mary’s Tom Linneman took a look at how women and men both use uptalk in his new study, “Gender in Jeopardy! Intonation Variation on a Television Game Show” in Gender & Society. The punchline? Women use uptalk more frequently, but men use it as well. For men, however, uptalk signals something completely different.

What is uptalk? “Uptalk is the use of a rising, questioning intonation when making a statement, which has become quite prevalent in contemporary American speech,” explains Linneman. Uptalk in the U.S. is reported to have emerged in the 1980s among adolescent women in California, aka “Valley Girls,” and it has become more widely used by men and women since then. Uptalk has been associated with a way of talking that makes women sound less confident Or is it makes people sound more like a girl?

Jeopardy! was Linneman’s clever setting for observing how women and men use the speech pattern. The associate professor of sociology analyzed the use of uptalk by carefully coding 5,500 responses from 300 contestants in 100 episodes of the popular game show. He looked at what happened to speech patterns when contestants – from a variety of backgrounds – gave their answers to host Alex Trebek.  Although the contestants were asked to phrase their response in the form of a question, they used uptalk just over a third of the time.

How do men use uptalk? Linneman found that men use uptalk as a way to signal uncertainty.   Linneman explained, “On average, women used uptalk nearly twice as often as men. However, if men responded incorrectly, their intonation betrayed their uncertainty: Their use of uptalk shot up dramatically.”  On average, men who answered correctly used uptalk only 27 percent of the time. Among incorrect responses, men used uptalk 57 percent of the time.  In contrast, a woman who answered correctly used uptalk 48 percent of the time, nearly as often as an incorrect man.

Men’s uptalk increased when they were less confident, and also when they were correcting women—but not men. When a man corrected another man—that is, following a man’s incorrect answer with a correct one—he used uptalk 22 percent of the time. When a man corrected another woman, though, he used uptalk 53 percent of the time. Linneman speculates that men are engaging in a kind of chivalry: men can be blunt with another man in public, but feel obliged to use a softer edge with a woman.

How do women use uptalk? As Linneman explains, “One of the most interesting findings coming out of the project is that success has an opposite effect on men and women on the show.”  Linneman measured success in two ways: He compared challengers to returning champions, and he tracked how far ahead or behind contestants were when they responded.  Linneman found that, “The more successful a man is on the show, the less he uses uptalk. The opposite is true for women…the more successful a woman is on the show, the more she uses uptalk.” Linneman suspects that this is “because women continue to feel they must apologize for their success.”

-Virginia Rutter

Can we end rape?

It seems impossible, and yet many activists are urging us to imagine a world without rape and sexualized violence. Now. Today. 2013.

February 14 marks One Billion Rising, the fifteenth anniversary of V-Day, which urges “ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence.” In a similar vein, Women Under Siege director Lauren Wolfe issued a call to action in a recent OpEd: “Let’s declare 2013 The Year to End Rape.” Women Under Siege is having its own anniversary: February 8 marks the first year of this project, which was launched by the Women’s Media Center and has been documenting rape and sexualized violence in conflicts around the world. For example, Women Under Siege is using crowd sourcing to document and map the violence in Syria. One year ago, Wolfe and Steinem explained the goals of this project as follows:

Naming sexualized violence as a weapon of war makes it visible—and once visible, prosecutable. What happened to men in the past was political, but what happened to women was cultural. The political was public and could be changed; the other was private—even sacred—and could not or even should not be changed.

Making clear that sexualized violence is political and public breaks down that wall. It acknowledges that sexualized violence does not need to happen. When masculinity is no longer defined by the possession and domination of women, when femininity is no longer about the absence of sexual experience or being owned, then we will have begun.

Women Under Siege strives to name and analyze sexualized violence in several conflicts, including those in Burma, Mexico, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Wolfe and Steinem argue, “we must understand how sexualized violence is being used. We must understand in order to stop it.” Their analysis not only spans the globe but also looks back at history to include the Holocaust, based on research from the 2010 book Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, edited by Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel.

The essays in Hedgepeth and Saidel’s book reframe the Holocaust to include a range of violent acts perpetrated against Jewish women. I haven’t read their book, but I have read At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, Danielle McGuire’s remarkable account that places sexual violence towards black women—and their resistance—at its center. McGuire’s focus on sexual violence in the Jim Crow South requires us to shift how we understand the entire civil rights movement. By the end, we’re left with a very different story.

The groundbreaking research undertaken by McGuire, Hedgepeth and Saidel, and Women Under Siege allow us to ask some powerful questions. Did sexual violence in the Jim Crow South manifest similar or different patterns than those in conflicts in Libya, Sierra Leone, or Bangladesh? What might we learn from a comparative analysis of different kinds of conflict situations and the sexualized violence that accompanies them? How might we then use this information to prevent more human beings from being raped and killed?

What’s inspiring about Women Under Siege is that they’re asking us not just to look at awful things that are happening, but to understand precisely what’s going on in different contexts—and to refuse to accept any of it as natural or inevitable.

If we refuse to accept the violence, then maybe 2013 can become the year when we end rape.

By Dairanys Grullon-Virgil*

While reading Paulo Coelho’s novel Aleph over the semester break, a passage jumped out to me.  Coelho, the main character, sees Hilda, his love interest, naked and notices her shaved genitals: “When I met her in her past life, when I first saw her naked she had pubic hair. Today the woman in front of me has shaved all of it, something that I think is abominable, like if all man are looking for a infant to have sex with. I ask her to never do that again.”

What? He is actually fine with her having pubic hair and begging her not to shave it all ever again?! That is certainly not the message I’ve gotten as a young woman. Then thinking about it he makes a very important point. Pubic hair on a woman or a man is the symbol of becoming, growing, age. However, thanks to the media and social norms, we often feel repulsed or embarrassed by having pubic hair. Especially for women, we are constantly targeted with messages on how our vagina should look when we wearing a bikini or before having sex. I am not saying that all women feel this way, but many of us have felt that that way including myself. more...

President Obama’s inaugural address captured in one ringing phrase–‘Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall’–the progress this nation has made toward an America where equality and justice for all are realities, not simply pretty words.  This year and the next few will all mark milestone anniversaries of events, laws and court decisions that have moved us along a path toward greater individual freedom and equality. It is a legacy most can rejoice in.  It is also a legacy that is challenged at every turn, as it always has been.

Those who fear change, seeing it as a threat to the status quo with which they are comfortable, continue to fight against greater acceptance of differences. For this group, the equation is too often one of absolutes, of winners and losers, of either/or opposites that leave no room for win/win outcomes.   Speaking forcefully of rights they ignore responsibilities—unless it is to accuse others of ‘lacking initiative and responsibility’. On issues ranging from women’s health to gun control, the rhetoric of individual rights is twisted to deny rights to vast numbers of citizens. Many of these arguments are irrational or without factual evidence; but they reflect a reality within which too many seem to operate.

As someone who has worked for greater opportunities for women and girls for more than four decades, I am both encouraged by our clear, undeniable progress and concerned about the dangers ahead. Change is not a one way street. We have moved backwards or stalled on a variety of rights once thought fully secured.  Voting rights, access to  safe and legal abortion, sane, sensible responses to rape are all examples of this.  In Mississippi, anti choice advocates may soon succeed in drastically limiting access to abortion by closing the last Mississippi clinic providing safe abortions. Women who can afford to travel out of state may have options, low income women will not.  The latest and most absurd example of anti choice thinking is a bill introduced in New Mexico. It would  charge any rape victim who ends a resulting pregnancy with a third degree felony for ‘tampering with evidence’. The bill is unlikely to pass; but even its introduction boggles the mind.

President Obama spoke eloquently on the work still to ahead to fulfill the vision of the pioneers of Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall. His address was moving, inspiring and invigorating.  But neither an election won, nor the President’s unequivocal  support for human rights equals a guarantee of progress. The guarantee resides in each  of us as we support national efforts and work in our individual communities, families and workplaces.

Sometimes the hardest work is the work with those closest to us. Clarifying half truths, dispelling disinformation and entering into civilized discussions of issues with those  who hold different views is difficult in today’s highly partisan environment. Too often the tone turns ugly before any thoughtful conversation can take place. Differing with the perspectives of family, friends, and colleagues is dangerous to our own status quo, our own comfort. There are times when I find it almost impossible to do. Nevertheless, we must all learn to do it and to do it effectively.  If we don’t, if we ‘let it go’ too often, or give up when it gets ‘too hard’ we become, in the old fashioned words of the 1960’s, a part of the problem, rather than a piece of the solution.

With this coming Tuesday marking the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I’m inspired to post this month’s column early.

I encourage readers to check out the work of ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health), a UCSF research program “dedicated to ensuring that reproductive health care and policy are grounded in evidence.” So, rather than cover the breadth of political and social dynamics related to abortion policies, I’m focusing on one specific new study which has important implications for protecting women’s health:

A newly published landmark study by ANSIRH demonstrates that trained nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physician assistants match physicians in the safety of aspiration abortions they provide. We hope that these results will give policymakers the evidence they need to move beyond physician-only restrictions in order to enable more women to have their reproductive health care needs met in their local communities by health care providers they know and trust.

The results of this study are significant because PAs, NPs and CNMs have been shown to be important and accessible health care providers for rural and low-income women. ANSIRH’s new findings support policies which would reduce health care disparities and increase continuity of care because a larger group of health care providers would be able to offer early abortion care. For more on this topic, read the latest post by Tracy Weitz, Director of ANSIRH.  This research should inform health policy across the U.S.

For more on the realities of abortion in the U.S., watch Abortion in the United States, a short video from the Guttmacher Institute.

The National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW)’s new study, “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973– 2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health” appears today in the peer-reviewed Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. I’m sharing some highlights from their press statement, but check out the entire piece, including their discussion of political actions.

Here are some of the cases NAPW summarizes:

• A woman in Utah gave birth to twins. When one was stillborn, she was arrested and charged with criminal homicide based on the claim that her decision to delay cesarean surgery was the cause of the stillbirth.
• After a hearing that lasted less than a day, a court issued an order requiring a critically ill pregnant woman in Washington, DC, to undergo cesarean surgery over her objections.  Neither she nor her baby survived.
• A judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion.
• A woman in Oregon who did not comply with a doctor’s recommendation to have additional testing for gestational diabetes was subjected to involuntary civil commitment.  During her detention, the additional testing was never performed.
• A Louisiana woman was charged with murder and spent approximately a year in jail before her counsel was able to show that what was deemed a murder of a fetus or newborn was actually a miscarriage that resulted from medication given to her by a health care provider.
• In Texas a pregnant woman who sometimes smoked marijuana to ease nausea and boost her appetite gave birth to healthy twins.  She was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.
• A doctor in Wisconsin had concerns about a woman’s plans to have her birth attended by a midwife. As a result, a civil court order of protective custody for the woman’s fetus was obtained. The order authorized the sheriff’s department to take the woman into custody, transport her to a hospital, and subject her to involuntary testing and medical treatment.

In all, the researchers identified 413 criminal and civil cases involving the arrests, detentions and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women’s physical liberty that occurred between 1973 and 2005. These 413 cases in 44 states, the District of Columbia and federal jurisdictions are likely a substantial undercount and does not include more than 250 known cases that have occurred since 2005. You can read here about a decision last week in Alabama that will intensify the state’s ability to police pregnant women.

In the cases reviewed for  this paper, pregnant women were subject to arrests; incarceration; increases in prison or jail sentences; detentions in hospitals, mental institutions and drug treatment programs; and forced medical interventions, including surgery. The researchers wanted to know, what was the basis of these arrests and forced interventions?

“Our analysis of the legal claims used to justify these arrests found that they relied on post-Roe measures such as feticide laws and the same arguments made in support of so-called ‘personhood’ measures – namely that state actors should be empowered to treat fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as completely legally separate from the pregnant woman,” said Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) and lead author of the study.

Jeanne Flavin, PhD, Fordham University professor of sociology, president of NAPW’s board of directors, and the study’s co-author, said “The public debate about personhood and other anti-abortion measures tends to focus narrowly on abortion.  Our study makes clear that all pregnant women are threatened by such measures.  These measures not only undermine maternal, fetal, and child health, they deny women’s status as full constitutional persons, as human beings.” Flavin is author of Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America.

While the study shows that low-income women and African American women are more likely to be deprived of their physical liberty, it also confirms that these state interventions are happening in every region of the country and affect women of all races. The researchers argue that as “personhood” measures continue to be promoted in state legislatures and in Congress, and as we observe the 40^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this study broadens the conversation from one just about abortion to one about health policy and the legal status of pregnant women.

Read the report.

–Virginia Rutter

This fall I had the great privilege of designing and teaching the first Sociology of Gender class to be offered at the City College of New York.  My goal of the class was for the students to leave able to apply a nuanced gender lens to whatever social problem tickled their fancy. One night reading their weekly reflexive journals, I witnessed that “click” moment when the students start to engage with the class material in very exciting ways.  More importantly, I realized I had stumbled upon the next generation of gender justice thinkers.  They were asking questions and making connections that I knew the movement needed to hear.  How could I NOT invite them to blog here at Girl w/ Pen, a space that has long supported the next generation of feminists?  So without further ado, here are some of my star students, chatting about a few of the key debates we had in class this semester. Enjoy!

Throughout the semester, we debated whether the goal of a movement for greater gender justice should be the expansion of gender or the explosion of gender.  In other words, is your utopian vision a world with a multiplicity of genders or a genderless world?  Where did you end up in this debate?

Alex Constantin: Although I understand some (utopian) reason behind the call for exploding gender to reach a genderless, liberated world, my personal sense of justice lends towards the expansion of gender. There are still far too many oppressive gender rules for me not advocate for expanding gender. We have an entire outdated archive on the male and female dichotomy that calls for an urgent expansion above and beyond the binary.

Gloria Robles: I personally believe that the goal of a movement for greater gender justice should be on the expansion of gender – not the explosion, or elimination. To draw a comparison of gender to race, it’s important to recognize that there are differences and to not promote “color-blindness.” We are all unique and have many nuances to who we are and that should not be disregarded but celebrated.

Sandra Prieto: I can’t really relate to a genderless world. A genderless world would only allow some other category to restructure how we relate to each other, like sports team affiliations or preferred ice cream flavor. Maybe I’ve read too many Orwell novels, but the only genderless world I can imagine is where we all have to mask our faces and bodies. Sure, it might create greater equal opportunities, but might it also strip away one way we express ourselves? That is why I find the expansion of gender more appealing. With the introduction of more genders, we would no longer be able to assign masculinity to just males and femininity to just females. Instead of expecting everyone to fit into one of two ideal categories, we would be creating more flexible gender norms.

Shari Mohammed: For me, this is a both/and question. To successfully move towards greater justice, we need to expand gender, which will eventually entail the explosion of gender. Not that this will result in a genderless world, just an exploded understanding of what is gender. We need to recreate how we think of, react to, and how we express gender. My utopian world would be everyone expressing their gender however they wish without fear of social sanctions.  The first step, in my opinion, is eradicating the sexism inherent in our current binary system and then working toward an expanded sense of acceptance.

Dairanys Grullon-Virgil: We need an explosion of gender. Today people more than ever are becoming more comfortable and proud of who they are. The problem is that we still judge individuals based on socially constructed ideologies of gender. I think that the conversation about having greater gender justice should revolve around acknowledging the multiplicity of gender identities, instead of imposing gender identities to individuals.

Erin Crowder: It is difficult for me to pick a side in this debate.  Expanding what is considered normal sounds utopian at first, but then I think about how much I despise the word “normal.”  It is quite clear that norms are always regulating and oppressive, so why simply create more?  On the other hand, however, I feel a genderless world is problematic too.  I believe there is an internal force creating gender that creates our identity.  Personally, my gender is central to my identity, although, I do not know if this is a good thing.  What I do know is that in a genderless world I would lose this part of my identity.  Lacking this identity could be detrimental, but it could also be a source of liberation.   I find myself somersaulting between the two sides in this debate.

Kenya Bushell: I feel that we should live in a genderless world. The world shouldn’t have expectations of anyone for any reason, especially regarding genetics. It shouldn’t matter that a person was born a male or a female. They had no control of this outcome and therefore should not be controlled by it. As we continue to conflate gender and sex, a genderless world is the only way I see out of this conundrum.

One of your first assignments was to go out in public and do your gender differently in a way that challenged current gender norms.  What gender norm did you choose to break and what was the experience like for you? more...