Cross-posted at FemmePolitical.

As many as 4 million people — most of them women and children — are sold into slavery globally each year, according to the United Nations, and 70 percent of those women are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation [PDF]. An estimated 200,000 American children are at risk for sex trafficking each year, and the International Human Rights Law Institute estimates that 30,000 sexual slaves die annually from abuse, torture, neglect and disease.

So why is Disneyland still asking us to laugh at an overt depiction of sexual slavery in its popular Pirates of the Caribbean ride?

Many of us have floated past the scene of a pirate captain selling captured women as “brides,” with the banner “Auction: Take a Wench as a Bride.” Viewer focus is drawn to a rotund woman on the auction block, an object of open derision due to her weight, as well as to a red-haired woman with her breasts on display, an object of hoots and hollers from surrounding drunken pirates.

These two women are linked to four other women-for-sale by ropes cinched around their waists. One of the captives–a teenager–cries profusely into a handkerchief while an older woman tries to comfort her. This disturbing scene of women being sold into sexual slavery is supposed to be amusing.

What makes this all the more alarming is that the Disney folks altered the ride to be less sexist during a major renovation in 2007. It originally included a scene with male pirates chasing unwilling (but giggling) townswomen and another in which an overweight male pirate, exhausted from his pursuit of a teenage girl, holds a piece of her dress and says, “It’s sore I be to hoist me colors upon the likes of that shy little wench” and, “Keep a weather eye open, Mateys. I be willing to share, I be” (an implied gang-rape invitation?).

The pirates-ravaging-wenches aspect of the Pirates attraction was planned from its inception in the late 1960s. Several sketches from illustrator Marc Davis conveyed the rapacious spirit of the scenes:

And they included the notion that women might even enjoy being sold into sexual slavery:

So why didn’t Disney get rid of the sexual slave auction when it had the chance? What arguments were put forth by corporate executives to justify showing these images to as many as 40,000 visitors a day, many of them children, with jovial music playing in the background? (Note: Pirates was the last exhibit Walt Disney oversaw before his death. The auction scene is the only one he saw fully animated, and the only scene that has never been altered.)

Disney has unparalleled power to shape young hearts and minds. If the Pirates of the Caribbean ride normalizes sexual slavery with humor, it can desensitize viewers to this heinous and very real gendered crime.

When will Disney learn that sexual slavery is no laughing matter? Contact the company to let them know what you think.

Special thanks to C. Martin Croker for his insightful research on the ride and to Theme Park Adventure magazine for images and history on the ride.

Yesterday, while recovering from the flu, I was glancing through Jon Stewart’s new book Earth: The Book. In the chapter on commerce they included a vintage Scot Tissue ad that I initially thought was a joke. Turns out it was real, first appearing in the 1930s and urging employers to stock bathrooms with Scot Tissue products to prevent turning their employees into radical communists:

(Image via.)

Text:

Employees lose respect for a company that fails to provide decent facilities for their comfort.

Try wiping your hands six days a week on harsh, cheap paper towels or awkward, unsanitary roller towels — and maybe you, too, would grumble. Towel service is just one of those small, but important courtesies — such as proper air and lighting — that help build up the goodwill of your employees. That’s why you’ll find clothlike Scot-Tissue Towels in the washrooms of large, well-run organizations such as R.C.A. Victor Co., Inc., National Lead Co. and Campbell Soup Co. ScotTissue Towels are made of “thirsty fiber”…an amazing cellulose product that drinks up moisture 12 times as fast as ordinary paper towels. They feel soft and pliant as a linen towel. Yet they’re so strong and tough in texture they won’t crumble or go to pieces…even when they’re wet. And they cost less, too — because one is enough to dry the hands — instead of three or four. Write for free trial carton. Scott Paper Company, Chester, Pennsylvania.

What I find fascinating is the idea that even minor discomforts might lead workers to become radicalized, and that one company would market to others based on the idea that they should respect their employees and keep them happy (at least in the way that serves Scot Tissue’s interests). Preventing the spread of communism isn’t, then, just about rooting out ideologues and rabble-rousers. The message is that becoming a Bolshevik may be a response to poor working conditions or treatment by management, and thus employers have a role to play in discouraging it by actually paying attention to potential causes of dissatisfaction and addressing them (in the bathroom, anyway), rather than simply a moral failing or outcome of ideological brain-washing.

UPDATE: Reader Ben has some interesting comments:

I’ve always wondered if it was meant to be serious. I understand that we live in an ironic age, but it’s not like ironic, self-mocking and humorous ads didn’t exist before the 1990s. As time passes and inside jokes lose their meaning, it gets harder and harder to correctly interpret texts with their original meaning and context intact.

Thoughts?

On the heels of our recent post about non-corresponding English- and Spanish-language advisories, Sara P. sent in a photograph and an interesting question. The photo is of stacked billboards for CitiBank.  The top one reads “You’re never too young to learn how important money is.”  The bottom one, in Spanish, says the opposite.  Sara translates it as “Don’t wait until you have a lot of money before you realize that it isn’t what is most important” (my emphasis).

Sara asks:

It makes me wonder what the strategy is behind this kind of marketing. 75% of the population will only understand the first billboard, which by itself has an entirely different meaning than when it is paired with the second.

I have no good answer for her.  You?

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 midterm election last week Republicans took the House and won eight seats in the Senate. Their win, however, as Matthew Yglesias puts it, doesn’t simply reflect the “national mood.”  Instead, it was partly a reflection of a shift in the demographics of the voters who turned out. Young voted still lean Democratic, and many more of them stayed home last Tuesday than two years ago.

See also our post on historic trends in voter turnout.

Via Jose Marichal at Thick Culture.

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.

Gizmodo posted an image created by Kamel Makhloufi based on the most recent data on the war in Iraq posted at WikiLeaks. The image divides deaths into categories illustrated by colors. Blue = U.S./Coalition forces, light green = “host” deaths (that is, members of the Iraqi government), gold = civilians, and gray = insurgents. On the left they’re arranged by totals; on the right, as the deaths have been distributed over time:

Of course, as the Gizmodo post points out, this doesn’t tell us who did the killing, so we don’t know what % of the civilians were killed by Coalition forces vs. insurgents. But it is a stark reminder of how much of the burden of war generally falls on non-combatant civilians.

Thanks to Jeff H. for the link!

Hegemony is a word used by sociologists use to describe how the status quo can be preserved through consent as well as coercion.  One way to gain consent for the status quo, even if it is unjust, is to make the social arrangements that are in the best interests of the dominant group appear to be in everyone’s best interests.  When hegemony works, we see social cooperation where there would be conflict

Capitalism is a great example of a hegemonic ideology.  Nearly all Americans will argue that capitalism is a fair and effective economic system, even though it, by design, benefits some more than others.  Instead of banding together and saying “this may be working for you, but this isn’t working for us,” however, even the poorest of Americans will typically defend capitalism as the best and most just option for the U.S.

Capitalism, though, is not hegemonic everywhere.  F. T. Garcia sent us a link to a photograph snapped by a student of Economics Professor Greg Mankiw and posted on his blog.  The photo is of a price sign at Mercado Bicentenario in Caracas, Venezuela.  The student translated it as follows:

Description of the product: Diana Oil.

Fair Price: 4,73 Bfs.

Capitalist Price: 7 Bfs.

% of savings: 32%.

In this little narrative, capitalism is an unfair economic system that overcharges consumers.  It is by definition not a fair price.  A very different narrative about capitalism than we typically hear in the U.S.

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.

Named after the classic New Orleans cocktail, the Sazerac bar excluded women until 1949 when the hotel’s owner, Seymour Weiss, moved it to the Roosevelt New Orleans Hotel and opened its doors to women.    Long thirsty for the best Sazerac in town, women crammed into the bar on September 26th.  The moment was captured in this fabulous photo:

Last month the Roosevelt had an event commemorating 60 years since the “stormin’ of the Sazerac.”  My friend and photographer Brian Huff captured the re-creation:

If anyone knows the photographer who took the 1949 photo, please let me know so that I can credit him.

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.

We’ve documented dozens of instances in which products are coded with gender (e.g., with colors and patterns) but sometimes, as in the example of a toy cop car, it is specified that items are for girls or for boys.  More than simply following gendered themes and allowing us to infer their meaning, these items offer a gendered prescription for use.

Kelly, for example, sent in a JC Penney page for a Hello Kitty sewing machine that specifies that it is for girls (it was also specified as for girls at Target):

Likewise, Coley L. bought a shorts-and-shirt swimsuit for a daughter.  The green swimsuit, however, was labeled explicitly for boys:

And MP sent in a link to a downloadable foldable gift card holder that specified whether it was for him or her in the url:

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.