Political donations are by law public. With this information, someone has put up a website which shows, on google maps, which households (in the Bay Area, Salt Lake City, and Orange and L.A. Counties) donated money to Proposition 8 (California’s successful proposition to prohibit gay marriage). When you click on the arrow, it also tells you the name of the person in the household, that persons occupation and employer, and how much money they donated. Take a look.

Over at The Daily Dish, one person is quoted saying:

What could possibly be the use of this kind of information, presented in this way? It’s intended to intimidate people into not participating in politics by donating money. Do that, and you’ll end up on some activist group’s map, with hotheads being able to find your street address on their iPhones.

Andrew Sullivan weighs in:

I don’t get the fear. If Prop 8 supporters truly feel that barring equality for gay couples is vital for saving civilization, shouldn’t they be proud of their financial support? Why don’t they actually have posters advertizing their support for discriminating against gay people – as a matter of pride?

Elsewhere on the same website, a reader writes in:

I zoomed in on the cities and neighborhoods where my relatives live.  What do I find but that one of my own aunts, in San Diego, contributed $200 to the Prop 8 cause last summer.  This same aunt, a good person I honestly believe, has even invited me and my partner to stay with in her family’s home. Call me naive, but I’m kind of having trouble wrapping my brain around this seeming contradiction.

This back and forth raises some interesting questions:

Is the map violating some sort of privacy? If not technical, legal privacy, then some sort of cultural agreement about how far is “too far”?

Is the first commenter correct that this is essentially a nefarious act? Should political donations be public in this brave new world of google maps and internet access? Has “public” taken on a whole new meaning here?

Then again, the right to free speech protects a lot more aggressive and heinous things than this google map. Is the first commenter overreacting?

And what of Andrew Sullivan’s comment? Are those who donated proud to see themselves on the map? Or are they ashamed?  When political action is unpopular (not that I’m sure this one is), does that change the nature of participation? Should holders of unpopular political beliefs be protected, perhaps by allowing them to donate anonymously?  Or is shaming part of how cultural change happens and, thus, a perfectly legitimate strategy on behalf of gay rights?

Further, maybe people like the last commenter deserve to know if their friends or relatives are donating to political causes that discriminate against them?  Then again, does the Aunt have any right to be able to donate to the cause without disrupting her relationships with her family?

Thoughts?  Other questions you think this brings up?

Francisco sent in the Jan. 7th cover of The Statement, the magazine of the Daily Michigan (found here).  It features three apples: one carries male markers (giant mustache), one female markers (eyelashes, make-up, and big red lips), and the third, labeled with a question mark, carries markers for both sexes, sort of askew, and is partially missing.

Cayden writes:

[Apparently p]eople who don’t conform to the gender binary (and quite rigidly too — note the “man” apple’s huge stache and the “woman” apple’s pouty red lips) are incomplete people: monsterous and frightening.

Below is a video, found via The Daily Dish, of a girl, maybe four or five, mimicking the dancing in a music video featuring Beyonce.  She’s amazing!  Watch her go:

Wow!

Okay… now for sociological comments… these are all Gwen’s ideas, by the way, even though I’m posting it:

We often think of childhood socialization as a top-down process.  That is, we imagine that children are empty vessels and adults, mostly parents maybe, fill them up with whatever they please.  It may be true that the parents of this little girl actively, even aggressively, encouraged her to learn this dance.  But it’s also possible that this is driven by that little girl.  In which case, it may illustrate how kids can take an active part in their own socialization.  Clearly these parents don’t mind that their daughter is watching Beyonce, but she may be taking the initiative to emulate a public figure she’s seeing in the media (which surely includes messages about how to look, dress, etc.).  Even if these parents don’t like everything about that message (or other models she might follow), they can’t actually protect her from the ever-present messages about femininity that are all around her, which are going to affect how she thinks about herself, what she should be, etc.

Now and again, I hear that college graduates entering the workforce today, both male and female, offer a new set of challenges to employers.  Notably, a sense of entitlement to high pay and excellent benefits and a poor work ethic. I have no idea if this is true. However, over at MultiCultClassics, Highjive posted an ad for a seminar that purports to teach employers to handle “Millennials”.  It’s similar to a post that Gwen put up about advice to employers for working with women when they initially entered the paid workforce in large numbers. 

Text:

There’s a new professional entering the workforce today—one who is different in attitude, behavior, and approach to both work and career.  Discover where they are coming from through this two-day seminar at Loyola, which helps bridge the gap between Baby Boomer managers and their younger cohorts, the Millennials.

Lorë P. sent in examples of two stamp sets. She writes:

They are clear plastic you peel and put on blocks in order to stamp images… They are both made by a company called Sassafras Lass and are being sold at Joann Fabrics. One of the stamp sets is called “Girl Talk” and the other is “Boy Talk.”

“Girl Talk”

“Boy Talk”

Lorë did such a wonderful job describing these, I will leave it to her:

One of the first things that struck me was that both of these is that they have stamps that mention dad — “daddy’s girl” and “like father like son” but only the female one mentions mom (I guess it would be considered too emasculating to have “mommy’s boy?”)

Another interesting part of these stamps is that the “Girl talk” emphasizes the sweetness of girls – their giggles, their silliness, their angelic qualities (not to mention princess..). On the other hand, the male version has more objects – trucks, rockets, robots and “strong” traits – being brave and embracing adventure (and what does “all boy” mean anyway?).

The one overlap that I can see is the word “Laughter” – which on the girls segment is in very frilly cursive handwriting and on the male version written in an old cowboy font. This also points to the difference in fonts, where the male versions are more square and has no cursive. The girl version is almost all cursive, except for some very curly printing.

While I am not particularly shocked at finding this kind of stamps available to scrapbookers and cardmakers – I always wonder why we have to make the lines of difference so distinct… Of course these stamps are probably not being used by children, but by adults making things about or for children… of course, these stamps are couched in (from my experience) a predominately female dominated (although pretty conservative) hobby.

Thanks Lorë!

See also this post on gendered Disneyland T-shirts.

Via.

In this series I have offered five explanations of why people of color are included in advertising. Start with the first in the series and follow the links to the remaining four here.

I am now discussing how they are included. Already I have shown that people of color are often whitewashed, that they tend to be chaperoned by white people, and that they are often subordinated through placement and action. 

In this ninth installment, I illustrate how, while interracial friendships are frequently pictured, interracial relationships are very rarely pictured.  Look closely, who is (hooking up) with who?

Also in this series:
(1) Including people of color so as to associate the product with the racial stereotype.
(2) Including people of color to invoke (literally) the idea of “color” or “flavor.”
(3) To suggest ideas like “hipness,” “modernity,” and “progress.”
(4) To trigger the idea of human diversity.
(5) To suggest that the company cares about diversity.

How are they included?
(6) They are “white-washed.”
(7) They are “chaperoned.”
(8) They are subordinated through placement or action.

Social psychologists have devised a genuis way to measure our implicit biases; that is, they have found a way to tap into those biases that we hold unconsciously and/or know better than to reveal in mixed company.  You can learn all about it and take all kinds of tests to reveal your own biases here.

One thing these investigations have revealed is that many of us internalize biases against the groups we belong to.  So, women can be sexist and people of color can be racist.  Even if people consciously reject these biases, they often sink in anyway and lead to a kind of self-dislike.

Someone sent in a postcard to PostSecret this week that illustrates just this phenomenon: