Jose at Thick Culture sent us this design for the Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Youth Commission logo in 1973 (via The Daily Dish). 

The logo nicely shows how images are polysemic.  That is, the same image can be read very differently by different people or, as this image illustrates, at different times.   Because of the shift in the social construction of the Catholic priesthood–from benevolent child chaperones to evil child molesters–the logo, though likely lovely then, would be very ill-advised today.

Two more good examples of polysemy here and here.

Something I read in another blog sent me digging into the statistics on homicide between husbands and wives or other “intimates.” I remembered from my days in the crim biz that the US was unique in that wives here killed their husbands almost as frequently as husbands killed wives. This statistic, the “spousal rate of killing” (SROK), was introduced in a now-classic 1992 article by Margo Wilson and Martin Daly. In most countries, that rate is 25-30%. In the US, Wilson and Daly pointed out, it was about 75%.

But something has happened, over the last thirty years or so (data here). And as far as I can tell from a quick search on the Internet, nobody seems to have noticed.

(Click on the graph for a larger view.)

Between 1976 and 2005, the number of women killed by their male partners decreased by about 25%, less than the decrease in all homicides nationwide. But the number of men killed by women dropped dramatically, from 1300 to 330, a 75% decrease (since the population increased in those three decades, the change in rates is probably even greater. The SROK fell from 82% to 28%.

My Internet search for explanations was cursory at best, but it turned up nothing. I have only two ideas:

1. Men Behaving Better. Men have stopped doing those things that made women want to kill them.

I offered this explanation to two women in the Justice Studies department here. They rejected it out of hand and without comment. (Maybe they didn’t like the blaming-the-victim assumption: if women kill men, it’s because of what men do. Or maybe they were using a convenience sample of anecdotal data on men’s behavior.). One of these women, Lisa Anne Zilney, offered a counter-explanation . . .

2. Women Having Options. Women’s shelters and other facilities have given women an alternative. Without these, the only way to escape an intolerable situation at home was to get rid of the cause. Providing abused and desperate women a safe place to go saves lives – and apparently not just the lives of women.

I’m not wild about either of these explanations for the steep decline in the SROK (and as I recall, Wilson and Daly weren’t wild about any of their explanations of why it was so high).

Any ideas?

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Thanks Jay!  Read his other guest post: When grown men loved teddy bears.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

We have posted previously about how ethnic difference is made available for consumption through products (see here, here, and here).  This product, Nestea’s red tea, suggests that you can consume other people, not just their culture.

Text:

Tasty and foreign, like we bottled an exchange student. Liquid awesomeness.

Via Shakesville.

When Rihanna was beaten by Chris Brown, many people blamed Rihanna for enraging him.   Laura McDe sent in another example of victim-blaming in a case of domestic violence.  This time a man killed his five children, and then himself, after discovering that his wife had left him for another man.  Many headlines placed the blame on his wife (via Shakesville):

The Seattle Times:

Yahoo News:

Kansas City.com:

Google News:

Instead of focusing on the husband’s abusive and frightening behavior, his mental instability, and his horrific decision to kill five children, the headlines focus on his wife’s behavior and how it “ignited” his own.  To complete the metaphor, if you are flammable, when you burst into flame, it is the match striker’s fault.

NEW! Shakesville highlighted another example of the excusing men’s violence against women:

That’s right.  Poisoning your wife is an act of love.  You see, they were estranged and he wanted to make her ill so that he could nurse her back to health and have-her-no-she-can’t-get-away-I’ll-make-sure-of-it.  Story here.

Also in blaming the victim: mothers are responsible for their children’s addiction, renters are responsible for lead poisonous apartments, girls are responsible for internet predators, and women are responsible for preventing sexual harassment.

genderkid sent in a link to a story in the Chicago Tribune about a karaoke bar in Peoria, Illinois, called Elbo Room whose felt the need to post the following sign:

Apparently the location used to be a gay bar, and the karaoke bar doesn’t want to be mistaken for it.

This led to protests by members of the gay community and others opposed to homophobia:

The group held three protests last weekend, one of which drew the attention of paintballers, who fired on the crowd. Police had no suspects in that attack.

Since sexual orientation is a characteristic protected by state law, the bar owner was notified the sign is illegal, since it implies that gays and lesbians are unwelcome in the establishment.

We’ve offered many examples of companies co-opting feminism in order to sell products.  In the video below, we see that the co-optation of feminism is nothing new:

(At Vintage Videosift.)

Actually, I shouldn’t be so flippant.  Inventions like the washing machine did, indeed, save women a great deal of time and effort.  From what I understand, however, as women’s cleaning became more efficient, standards of cleanliness rose.  So even as time-saving devices were introduced, the time women spent cleaning did not substantially change.  I’d love to hear more from scholars who have a better handle on this history.

Here’s another step in the trajectory, this one from 1971, also about cleaning appliances (found here):

Text:

The American Appliance Industry has always championed women’s liberation.

There was a time when women washed clothes by hand in water carried from a well…

…shapped every day because there was no way to refigerate food…

..tried to keep house with just a broom…

…made clothes without a sewing machine!

It’s obvious.  America’s appliances have freed women from the oppression of endlessly dull, backbreaking work.  They’ve helped liberate the American woman to enjoy a more stimulating, more interesting life…

In or out of the home.

Women who seek successful careers in the arts, sciences, business, industry, education, or the professions are finding themselves.

It’s all part of America’s new freedom of preference.  And Republican Steel Corporation, a leading supplier of steels to the appliance industry, is proud to be a part of it.

Visit your nearest appliance dealer and you’ll see hundreds of our modern steels — intricately shaped and beautifully finished in the world’s finest consumer appliances.

Like to help liberate the women in your life from some hard work and drudgery?

Buy her one of the new convenience appliances this weekend.

Or maybe a whole houseful.

Notice that women’s liberation DOES NOT involve men sharing housework responsibilities, but men replacing women’s labor with tools he purchases for her.  Ultimately, even if she has a “successful career” in “the professions,” it is her responsibility to make sure that the housework is completed (and apparently still wouldn’t be able to buy herself one of these machines).

For contemporary examples, see these posts on make up (here and here), botox, cigarettes (here and here), right-hand diamond rings, cooking and cleaning products, fashion, and other miscellaneous products (here, here, and here).

Cross-posted at PolicyMic.

I recently came across two really fascinating figures.  The United States has a system of “progressive taxation.”  This means that the richer you are, the more you pay in taxes.  This first figure, found at The American Prospect, shows the percentage of total income earned by Americans (split up into quintiles) and the tax rates for each group.   The poorest quintile, then, pays 4.3 percent of their income to the government, but only makes 3.9 percent of all income dollars each year.  In contrast, the richest quintile brings home 55.7 percent of all income dollars each year, and pays 25.9 percent of that in taxes.

Ezra Klein writes:

When you look at percentage of total tax liabilities, the rich do in fact bear a heavier burden. But it’s because they have so much more money. They are not bearing a heavier burden as a percentage of their incomes. They’re bearing it in relation to everyone else’s incomes… People hear that the top 20 percent pay almost 70 percent of the country’s income taxes and nod their head. That’s unfair! But it mainly seems unfair because people don’t know the top 20 percent accounts for almost 60 percent of the national income.

This second figure (from Matthew Yglesias via Thick Culture) illustrates increasing income inequality.  It compares the average after-tax income for each  quintile, and then the top 1 percent, in 1979 and 2006.  During that time, the poorest fifth saw their incomes increase 11 percent, the middle fifth saw their income increase by 21 percent, and the richest fifth saw their income increase by 87 percent.  Check out the percent increase for the top one percent!

(For more great illustrations of income inequality in the U.S., see here, here, and here; for a comparison of income inequality in the U.S. and elsewhere, see here.)

What does fair look like?

Is this kind of income inequality fair?  Is it fair to take a higher proportion of taxes from richer people?  Should we be taking even more from the rich?  Should we be taking less from any group?

Does it matter where the money is going?  I have to admit, I was feeling a little crappy about taxes when we were spending billions of dollars on war, but now that we need to kick start the economy and deal with our debt, I feel fine about them.

Has the economic crisis affected your opinions on (progressive) taxation?  How?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In the spirit of “Obese blamed for world’s ills” comes this little ad video that shows what happens if you fail to shave your legs to absolute smoothness every single day: utter chaos. Not only will dudes be grossed out, but they could DIE!

Look, ladies, here’s how it is: even if you’re white and thin and traditionally feminine, and you wore your sandals and your cute sundress with the cleavage and you have no problem with your boyfriend groping you on public transit, if you forgot or, heaven forfend, chose not to shave the invisible stubble from your legs, YOU HAVE DOOMED ALL AROUND YOU TO MISERY. A woman may be pinned on her back under a stranger (god, it’s almost like you WANT her to be assaulted), and a perfectly innocent man who just wants to enjoy his perfectly healthy apple despite the fact that you’re not really supposed to eat on the bus will choke almost to death AND THEN EVERYONE WILL GLARE AT YOU AND YOU WILL GET A TEXT MESSAGE FROM YOUR FUTURE SELF OR SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW.

Here’s the thing: this ad would be kinda cute, in its Rube Goldberg-esque way, if it didn’t start from the premise that all women should be available to groping by men at all times. No matter how much you doll yourself up, if there is any part of you that is not sufficiently hairless and smooth, you are persona non grata in terms of beauty. Stubble turns you from a hot chick into a chick so disgusting that men actually leap away from you. You’ve ruined everything by failing to meet the endlessly exacting standards of beauty, which you can only hope to meet by buying our extra-fancy new razor or beauty creme or undergarment.

And remember, even if you look hairless, since your body is available to be groped at any time, your True Hairlessness is subject to scrutiny. If you are cursed with thick body hair, or dark hair against pale skin, you should probably just carry your fancy-ass razor along with you at all times, since your stubble might be noticeable under fluorescent light or when caressed by a (male) baby.

Because I am, as you know, a humorless feminist and a noted misanthropist, I am about to do something that is so dangerous to the fate of dudes everywhere, it will probably cause the dystopian women-only future that right-wingers have nightmares about. I live in Chicago, where it fucking snowed this morning, which should give you a sense of how many months it’s been since I showed my bare legs in public. Also, I am a very pale white woman with dark, thick hair. By now, you’ve sensed what’s coming: tell the menfolk to hide in the storm cellar lest they catch a glimpse of this, my real leg:

Behold: My hairy damn leg

I have not shaved in WEEKS. Sometime I go the whole winter without shaving at all, and then I have what I think of as a Deforestation Session in March or April. It’s odd; I’ve lived with a man for six years, but he’s never mentioned the horrible chains of events that must happen to him every day because of my hirsute natural state. He must be suffering in silence, the poor thing.

This is what the beauty ideal is designed to erase: the reality of our bodies. This is what is so scary to proponents of fancy razors, diet pills, fake tans, and all that bullshit: the fact that women have hair on their bodies, just like they’re people or something. Some women are fat and some are thin. Some women have straight swingy hair and some have kinky hair and some have frizzy hair and some just stick what they’ve got in a damn ponytail. Some women have big pillowy lips and some don’t. Some women have curves and some have rolls and some have both and some have neither. Women, just like men, live in human bodies, and human bodies are incredibly diverse. We all know that, even the most brainwashed of us: but we also know we’re not supposed to know it. If we all just said that women are real people — if we said that out loud — what on earth might happen?

Chaos would ensue. Dudes might be harmed.

(Via Feministing.)

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Sweet Machine is a twentysomething queer grad student in Chicagoland, where she studies too much and fails to dress appropriately for the weather.  She has been a fat kid, a thin teen, a chubby teen, a fat adult, a thin adult, and an in-between adult. She is particularly interested in the grad school-y aspects of fat, such as its intersections with gender and disability.”

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

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For more body hair confessions from Shapely Prose, visit their posts on women having hair where they “shouldn’t” and not having hair where they “should.”

And for more from Sociological Images on the hairlessness norm for women, visit our posts on shaving the hair down there (here, here, here, and especially here) and our post on early marketing of armpit shaving.