Jay Smooth over at Ill Doctrine interviewed Elizabeth Mendez Berry (who wrote an article in Vibe several years ago about domestic violence in the hip-hop community) about the issue, which has received renewed attention in the wake of the Chris Brown/Rihanna incident:

It brings up some interesting issues–the pressure on women to not ruin the reputation of men by “airing dirty laundry” and the still-common assumption that women who are abused might have deserved it, higher rates of domestic abuse experienced by African American and Latina women than White women, etc. You might also use it to talk about the fact that both men and women hit their partners, and what that dynamic means. Overall, women in the U.S. hit more often in terms of total incidents (this includes things like the stereotypical slap across the face, not just punches), but are much less likely than men to inflict significant physical harm. Though the rates of harm caused by female aggression toward males is surely underestimated, there is little doubt that women simply do not inflict the levels of physical injury on men that men do on women each year in this country, particularly harm that requires a hospital stay or that ends in death. But I often encounter the sort of equivalency argument Jay Smooth mentions in the video–if women hit, they should be expect to be hit back, etc. It’s always a really interesting discussion, and Berry’s response might be useful for sparking some thoughts about domestic violence, personal responsibility, appropriate reactions (is hitting someone who has hit you first really the most appropriate response?), and so on.

Lauredhel of Hoyden about Town sent in this ad for Brighton Grammar School, an Anglican boys’ school in Australia:

Text:

BGS boys have mates…and dates. Some people think that our boys won’t know how to interact with girls. That’s not true. Our learning programs are carefully desgined to build each boys self confidence, especially through the awkward teenage years, allowing them to relate to each other, their teachers, and, on regular occasions…with girls.

Huh. I like how they’re using the promise of access to girls to market the school. And indeed, it appears that they do teach boys things, including to expect cute girls to gaze at them adoringly.

I don’t know much about the assumptions surrounding all-boys or all-girls schools. Is there a belief that kids who go to them won’t be able to interact with the other sex? Or is this about fears parents have about homosexuality at all-boys schools? Is the school letting them know they don’t have to worry because their sons will have tons of opportunities to hang out with pretty girls?

Elizabeth N. Sent us a post from InGameNow, a networking/chat site for sports fans. The post shows women posed in “meat bikinis”–that is, with raw meat covering women’s nipples and genitals. The images don’t show totally nude women–the are, after all, dressed in raw meat–but they’re probably not safe for work.

Elizabeth says,

It depicts traditionally attractive women being covered with different types of meat, including bacon and sushi, and being used as human platters.  So we’ve got sexism, objectification, commodification, heavy male gaze, and of course the association between red meat and masculinity.

Yep. The trifecta: sports, meat, and naked women. And also the possibility of hot girl-on-girl action!

Seriously, the idea of being naked and then partially covered in bacon is absolutely disgusting.

Kimi W. sent me the documentary “Married to the Eiffel Tower” (originally found at Mental Floss) which documents objectum-sexuals, or people who have relationships with inanimate objects.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/19783541[/vimeo]

I find this just fascinating, particularly the way most of the individuals describe the inanimate objects in insistently gendered language–they may be taking part in an unusual type of sexuality, but it is generally a specifically heterosexual one. (A couple of commenters pointed out that the Eiffel Tower was referred to as she, but most of the objects are described as he.)

I don’t quite know what to make of the fact that these are women who express some discomfort or dissatisfaction with men and/or sex. Given the small number of people interviewed, that may just be a fluke rather than a tendency among objectum-sexuals (I have no idea what proportion are male and female, have or haven’t had sex with humans at some point, etc.). I suspect most people will watch the video and just conclude that they are crazy women with emotional issues who pick often phallic-shaped objects to create elaborate sexual fantasies around. I mean, I teach all about sexualities and social constructions of “normal” and “abnormal” and all, and my first reaction was still “Uh, WTF???” Among other things, in several sections of the documentary the women just seem really sad and lost, particularly when the one talks about childhood sexual abuse, family dysfunction, and so on.

The videos might be useful for talking about the medicalization and regulation of sexuality–who gets to define what types of sexualities are “normal” or healthy? Do these women need mental health treatment? Are they hurting anyone? Is it the fact that they are turned on by physical objects or that they claim to love them in a deeply romantic way that is most disconcerting, and why? Are we partly uncomfortable that women are speaking so openly about sexual desire and having orgasms as a result of being around or thinking about objects? Are these women having “real sex” with the objects they love? By what definition?

Thanks, Kimi!

Margaret McE. sent in an image of Gro-Shu kids’ shoes (found at Hoyden About Town), which are sold at Payless Shoes in Australia. They’re a great example of the gendering of products: notice that the boys’ shoe is called Maths and the girls’ is Drama.

I mean, really?

Miriam B. sent in a link to a blog post about a (presumably–I may be totally wrong) homeless woman on public transportation. I didn’t immediately post it because I kept going back and forth about whether it was appropriate. For one thing, it’s a personal blog, not something put out by an artist, ad agency, political group, etc., and with a few exceptions we usually don’t repost things from personal blogs (unless they’re images of things in the public domain, such as a billboard). I was also trying to decide if I wanted to post images of a possibly mentally-ill woman when it might be opening her up for ridicule (which was the point of the original post), even though she’s not clearly visible in any of them. After talking to Lisa about it, I decided to go ahead, but I’m aware some of you may object.

All that said…the point of the original post is that the poster/photographer noticed that the woman has sectioned off a seat on the subway and put up signs, which she clearly spent a lot of time putting together, stating that she didn’t want people’s things:

As Miriam said,

What caused this woman to write such a strongly worded set of rules? What does it imply about how people have treated her in the past?  Homeless people have personal boundaries too.

What I found interesting was the tone of the original blog post and the comments to it: basically, a) I can assure that crazy lady, I had no intention of giving her anything in the first place! and b) what an uppity homeless person! What position is she in to say she doesn’t want stuff from strangers?

Of course, the woman might be mentally ill, and that explains her reaction. But it’s also possible that she just does not want people offering her handouts, for whatever reason–maybe sick of them, doesn’t think of herself as a beggar, sense of pride, isn’t homeless, whatever. Or some combination of all of the above. I can see an onlooker finding the vehemence of her statements amusing. But the reaction to her brings up a bigger issue, which seems to be a sense that her insistence that she doesn’t want donations is a sense of “entitlement,” as the original poster called it.

It brings up some interesting questions. Do homeless people lose the right to personal boundaries or to turn down handouts? I think many people will argue the point is the tone of her statements, but I wonder–if a fellow subway passenger offered her a dollar and she kindly said “no, thank you, I’m not a beggar,” would the reaction necessarily be much better? Is part of the problem that she is openly and unapologetically marking off some space on public transit as hers (though not much more space than a lot of people take up with their oversized purses, briefcases, etc.)? Is it that she’s ridiculing the idea of the rest of us as Good Samaritans when we give money or items to the poor?

I might be more sympathetic to her message than most because I’ve worked at a number of non-profits and see some of the weird issues that can arise around donations. People or businesses will sometimes show up with large quantities of products that, while we might be thrilled to have some of them, were difficult to deal with all at once, store, etc. If individuals called and offered things that we couldn’t use, no matter how how politely we explained that we didn’t need or could store the item, the reaction was generally a sense of moral outrage–we were a service agency being offered free stuff! How dare we not immediately say yes, offer to come get it ourselves, and express our gratitude? People seemed to take it very personally if we could not accept a particular donation.  [For the record: of course organizations want donations. But if it’s a large amount, oddly sized, etc., you might call ahead and make sure it’s something they have room for. And seriously, don’t use non-profits as an alternative to taking real, true junk to the dump or whatever–they can’t use your permanently-broken washing machine any more than you can.]

I don’t know. Thoughts?

(And yes, it did make me think of the “Seinfeld” episode where Elaine and Kramer are trying to get rid of all the muffin stumps and the woman at the shelter yells at them, saying just because people are homeless doesn’t mean they want their stumps.)

In case you missed it, a few years back there was a major brouhaha (limited mostly to the U.S.) because some astronomers began to argue that Pluto should be reclassified as a dwarf planet, part of the Kuiper belt. This started when, in 2001, the American Museum of Natural History (in New York) created a display about the solar system that did not include Pluto. At first the museum received letters (often from children) pointed out that Pluto was missing, such as this one (from an NPR story on the subject):

But then word got out that the museum left Pluto out of the display on purpose, and that the director of the museum argued that Pluto is not a planet. Then a real letter-writing campaign began, from both kids and adults (found here):

Text [some errors corrected for ease of reading]:

Dear Scientist,

What do you call Pluto if it’s not a planet anymore? If you make it a planet again all the science books will be right. Do people live on Pluto? If there are people who live there they won’t exist. Why can’t Pluto be a planet? If it’s small doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have to be a planet anymore. Some people like Pluto. If it doesn’t exist then they don’t have a favorite planet. Please write back, but not in cursive because I can’t read in cursive.

A Save Pluto movement had begun, including pro-Pluto websites, t-shirts, bumperstickers, and so on (at CafePress):

Some of these were clearly meant in a joking manner, but many of the letters sent to the museum or published in newspapers expressed realy anger over the change. Headlines announced that Pluto was being “demoted” from planet status. Amid lots of angry debate even among themselves, astronomers eventually voted to recategorized Pluto as a dwarf planet.

You might use these to talk about public controversies about scientific research. This is a particularly odd example because the public concern didn’t spring from arguments that the research was immoral or dangerous (claims used to oppose, say, embryonic stem cell research or cloning). The outrage about Pluto’s change in status mostly occurred in the U.S. and was based on the fact that people just seem to really like Pluto and consider it their “favorite” planet. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, director of the museum, suggests that this might be because of Disney’s cartoon dog Pluto. Regardless, a significant number of people wrote angry and even threatening letters to various outlets about a scientific reclassification that didn’t affect them in any real way; they just didn’t like it.

It’s also interested that Pluto’s reclassification was interpreted as a “demotion,” as though being a dwarf planet is clearly inferior to being a “real” planet, as though the objects in the solar system are arranged in a hierarchy based on size, and being anything other than a planet is a sad, sad fate. DeGrasse Tyson stresses that to astronomers, a dwarf planet isn’t “inferior to” a “regular” one–it’s just another category of things that exist in the galaxy. It’s an interesting example of how scientists’ perceptions of what their research means and the public’s interpretations may differ wildly.

NOTE: Mordecai comments,

First I want to say: All scientific classification is arbitrary.  There is no such thing as a planet, or a mammal.  These are terms humans put on them to try to make sense of the universe, not some built in truth.

Absolutely. I didn’t mean to imply the scientists were applying some ultimate truth about the universe when they re-classified Pluto. What I find interesting is what the controversy was based on: not “we think the data is wrong,” or “this is immoral or harmful,” but “Leave Pluto alone! It’s our favorite!” And the fact that it was really only a scandal in the U.S. is striking as well–whether it’s the character of Pluto or not, for some reason Americans are pretty much uniquely concerned about Pluto’s status.

I just discovered that PBS provides the entire documentary “A Class Divided” online. The video discusses the experiment a teacher conducted in her classroom, in which she divided her 3rd-grade class into groups with blue eyes and brown eyes and told them the blue-eyed groups were “the better people in this room,” later changing the rules and saying that brown-eyed kids are better (she started this experiment the day after Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot). It’s an interesting look at stereotyping and social psychology, particularly how quickly groups will change their behavior if they are told they have a superior or inferior characteristic.

The website also has clips from a class reunion 14 years later where the people who took part in the experiment talk about it, as well as when the teacher was hired to conduct the experiment on Corrections Department employees to teach them about discrimination and stereotyping.

You might also discuss this experiment when you’re looking at ethics of research–would we allow something like this now? How would parents likely react today if they found out their child was told they were in an “inferior” group? My guess is a teacher would face a lot of opposition trying to do this now.