Search results for hook up

Katrin sent in a link to a series of ads created by an organization called Stepping Stone Nova Scotia. Their mission is to advocate on behalf of, and offer resources and services to, prostitutes in the Maritime Provinces of Canada.

The ads, as you can see, depict quotes by friends or family members of prostitutes (“I’m proud of my tramp, raising two kids on her own”) which are intended to humanize sex workers; the bottom of each ad reads “Sex workers are brothers/daughters/mothers too.” They’re also intended to shock the reader into really thinking about prostitutes. The juxtaposition of words like “tramp” and “hooker” with the white middle-class faces of the speakers makes the viewer question our culture’s ease with using those terms, and forces us to see the person behind the prostitute.

Stepping Stone’s executive director, Rene Ross, points out that every time a prostitute is killed—sex workers have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the Canadian national average—media accounts emphasize that the victim was a prostitute, but not that she (or he) was also a mother, daughter, friend or, for example, animal lover. By thinking of sex workers only in terms of their stigmatized occupation, we don’t have to care about them as people.

In New Mexico, where I live, the remains of eleven women (and the unborn fetus of one) were found buried on a mesa outside of Albuquerque in 2009. The women had disappeared between 2003 and 2005, and most, according to police, were involved with drugs and/or prostitution. Why did it take the police so long to find the bodies of these women, and why do their murders still remain unsolved? Some observers have suggested that because the women were—or were alleged to be—prostitutes, there was less pressure to find them after they went missing, or to solve their murders once their bodies were found. As long as the victims were sex workers, then the non-sex worker public can feel safe in the knowledge that they are not at risk. We know that prostitution is dangerous, so it’s expected that some of them will die grisly deaths, and be buried like trash on a mesa outside of town.

I love the motivation behind the ads, and they do make me smile. I hope they have the effect that Stepping Stone intends—making people think of prostitutes as people, not trash. But they’re also funny, and I wonder if they won’t also have an unintended effect, of making prostitutes seem like a joke.

This week I watched the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen. During the roast, most of the jokes dealt with his well-known history with drug use and prostitution, and “prostitute,” “hooker” and “whore” were used as punch lines in the majority of the jokes, and each “whore” reference incited additional laughter. Sure, many of the women that Sheen paid to have sex were doubtless “high class” call girls, paid well, and not living on the street. But we also know that at least some of these women, as well as the non-prostitute females in his life, were subject to violence and threats of violence. He is alleged to have beaten, shot, shoved, and thrown to the floor a number of women over the years, but because many of these women were sex workers (or porn stars, which is the next best thing), the women were “asking for it.”

Let’s hope that Stepping Stone’s campaign does some good, making us think about sex workers as people, rather than punch lines and faceless victims.

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Margo DeMello has a PhD in cultural anthropology and teaches anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology at Central New Mexico Community College. Her research areas include body modification and adornment and human-animal studies.

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

Cross-posted at Sociology in Focus.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, died this week. I didn’t know him and yet his death moved me deeply. It shook me awake. When I woke up sad the next morning I did the only thing I know how to do, I thought about Steve Jobs and his passing sociologically.

Of all the things you could say about Steve Jobs, without a doubt, one of them was that he was a great charismatic leader. During his presentations his words, energy, and style could create a “reality distortion field” that would make mundane aspects of his products sound revolutionary. His spirit worked almost like a Jedi mind trick telling reporters what they were to write in their reviews. His charisma seemed superhuman.

(source)

A charismatic authority figure is one of three styles of authority that Max Weber talked about. Authority can be thought of as the use of power that is perceived as legitimate. Some statuses have power simply because of tradition (e.g. parents have power over children). Other statuses have power because they have been “routinized” or built in the structure of social institutions. Weber calls this type of authority rational-legal authority and the president of the United States is a good example of this type.

Charismatic authority can be thought of as the the use of power that is legitimized by the exemplary characteristics of a person or by their accomplishments that inspire others to follow or be loyal to them. Steve Jobs accomplishments have gained him a rabid fan base; to the point that Apple fans are oft referred to as members of the “Cult of Mac”. It was because of who Jobs is (or at least how he was perceived) that many people admired, respected, and followed his work.

The problem for Apple is that any organization that gains its authority because they have a charismatic leader must eventually deal with the loss of that leader. How can you hold on to your authority and legitimacy with the charismatic figure gone? You have to build the revolutionary ideas and practices of the figure into the bureaucracy or formal structure of the organization. Weber called this process of transferring authority from a charismatic person to a bureaucratic organization the “Routinization of Charisma”. In the corporate world they call this process a “succession plan.”

When Jobs resigned on August 24th Tim Cook succeeded him and became the CEO. A few weeks later on October 4 Cook took the stage for the first time to lead Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 4S. The announcement was nearly identical in form to the announcements led by Jobs. During the announcement Cook said multiple times, “There is a lot of momentum here at Apple” which could be interpreted sociologically as, “nothing has changed; we still deserve the authority our previous leader gained through his charisma.” The entire announcement was almost identical to the announcements except many viewers noted that Tim Cook did not have the charisma of Steve Jobs.

Jobs was a master at getting the media to write the headlines he wanted, but after this weeks talk ABC’s headline read “Apple Unveils Anti-Climatic iPhone 4S.” Anti-climatic!?!  Comedians ripped Cook for his poor stage presence in a video. Traders showed their disapproval as Apple’s stock price dropped a half percent after the announcement. I’m not trying to pile on here, I’m just pointing out that transitioning from a charismatic authority figure to less charismatic figure is hard; or as Weber would say it, the “routinization of charisma” is difficult if not impossible.

Now that he is gone, I’m sad because I enjoyed so much listening to him speak about his work. He was an artist in so many ways and I’m sad I won’t get to see anymore of his work. Rest in peace Mr. Jobs.

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Nathan Palmer is a visiting lecturer at Georgia Southern University. He is a passionate educator, the founder of Sociology Source, and the editor of Sociology in Focus.

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Course Guide for
SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER
(last updated 09/2011)


Developed by Mary Nell Trautner, PhD
University at Buffalo, SUNY

 

Social Construction of Sex & Gender

Intersexuality

 

Patriarchy / Oppression

Patriarchy as Male Dominated

Patriarchy as Male Identified

Patriarchy as Male Centered

 

“Doing Gender,” Gender as Performance

 

Intersectionality

White privilege

 

Childhood Gender Socialization

 

Gender & Language

 

Gender & Mass Media

 

Gender & Work

The Wage Gap

 

Gender & Sports

 

Sexuality: Homophobia

 

Sexuality: Sexual Behavior

 

Gender & the Body

Physical appearance and beauty work

Obesity and overweight


Gender and Family

 

Hegemonic Masculinity

 

Intimate Partner Violence

 

Sexual Harassment

 

Forced Sex & Sexual Assault

Anti-Rape Campaigns

 

Visions for the Future

If you would like to write a Course Guide for Sociological Images, please email us at socimages@thesocietypages.org.

Back in February I went ahead and built myself a website highlighting, well, myself.  And I will admit to, on occasion, indulging my curiosity regarding how often it’s visited and what visitors are looking at.  So yesterday I was browsing the site stats and noticed that there was data on how often each clickable thing was clicked on, including images, tabs, links, and documents I’d uploaded; stuff like that.  I thought, huh, well I wonder?  Are people checking out my classes?  Downloading my journal articles? Are they interested in my public speaking!?  That’d be so cool!

Lo and behold.  The most clicked upon clickable thing on my website is the Sociological Images tab.  Yay!  The second most clicked upon thing?  My photograph.

This is kind of fascinating.  What drives people not just to look at my photograph, but to want to look at it up close?  What kind of information are they trying to glean, not from the articles I’ve written or material I teach, but from the gleam in my eye?  Is it “human nature” to want to see people you’re interacting with, even on the internet?  Is it the cultural imperative to have an opinion on what women look like?  Something else?

And if I’m going to speculate as to the motivations of visitors, I should ask myself the obvious questions.  Why did I upload photographs of myself at all?  Four of them!  Why do I think that it’s important to be embodied on, let’s face it, a website with a great deal of highly abstracted content?  Do I think it looks “professional”?  Do I think photographs make me more relate-able?  Am I bowing to the cultural imperative that women present their bodies for judgment?  I don’t know!

I didn’t think much of it at the time.

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.

Cross-posted from Family Inequality.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart case, Justice Scalia acknowledged that Wal-Mart’s many local managers had a lot of discretion in their personnel decisions, even though the company had a written policy against gender discrimination (who doesn’t?). But he gave the company credit for a vague policy and let it off the hook for a systematic pattern of disparity between men and women. So, when does a toothless, vague policy with wide discretion lead to a bad outcome, and is failing to prevent it the same as causing it?

A path-breaking sociological analysis of organizational affirmative action outcomes has shown that the companies that successfully diversify their management are most likely to have policies with teeth – where accountability is built into the diversity goal. In light of the Wal-Mart case, this led to a rollicking debate about how to think about “corporate culture” versus policies, and when to blame whom, legally or otherwise – which even divided sociologists.

Smoking in the movies

Here’s an interesting, at-least-vaguely related case. Positive depictions of smoking in the movies are widely understood to be harmful. Yet, smoking is also glamorous, artistic, and popular – representing both anti-adult rebellion and maturity. So, what to do? The Centers for Disease Control, in the always-riveting Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, has published a fascinating report on this topic. They report the number of tobacco incidents* in top-grossing, youth-rated (G, PG, PG-13) movies, and divide them between those that implemented an anti-tobacco policy and those that didn’t — helpfully cutting the movie industry roughly in half — and provide a simple before-and-after tabulation:

From 2005 to 2010, among the three major motion picture companies (half of the six members of the Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA]) with policies aimed at reducing tobacco use in their movies, the number of tobacco incidents per youth-rated movie decreased 95.8%, from an average of 23.1 incidents per movie to an average of 1.0 incident. For independent companies (which are not MPAA members) and the three MPAA members with no antitobacco policies, tobacco incidents decreased 41.7%, from an average of 17.9 incidents per youth-rated movie in 2005 to 10.4 in 2010, a 10-fold higher rate than the rate for the companies with policies. Among the three companies with antitobacco policies, 88.2% of their top-grossing movies had no tobacco incidents, compared with 57.4% of movies among companies without policies.

The difference is dramatic, as indicated by this image about the images. (Because I turned the columns into cigarettes, this is not just a graph, but an infographic):

 

The policies provide what may be an ideal mix of accountability and responsibility, short of a simplistic ban.

[The policies] provide for review of scripts, story boards, daily footage, rough cuts, and the final edited film by managers in each studio with the authority to implement the policies. However, although the three companies have eliminated depictions of tobacco use almost entirely from their G, PG, and PG-13 movies, as of June 2011 none of the three policies completely banned smoking or other tobacco imagery in the youth-rated films that they produced or distributed.

Maybe this formula is effective because there already has been a strong cultural shift against smoking — as strong, even, as the shift against excluding women from management positions?

Graphic addendum (disturbing image below)

Whether smoking in movies actually encourages young people to take up smoking is of course a not a settled issue — especially on websites sponsored by tobacco sellers, as seen in this ironic screen-shot from Smokers News:

 

One reason to have an explicit policy is that it’s easy to assume viewers will see through the glamour to the negative outcomes. “Surely no one will want to be like that character…” But people – maybe especially young people? – have an amazing capacity to celebrate selectively from the characters they see. I have learned from experience that, in children’s stories, even those who get their comeuppance in the end still manage to emerge as role models for their bad behavior. So maybe some people want to relive this from Pulp Fiction…

…and aren’t put off by this:

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* “A new incident occurred each time 1) a tobacco product went off screen and then back on screen, 2) a different actor was shown with a tobacco product, or 3) a scene changed, and the new scene contained the use or implied off-screen use of a tobacco product.”

Kelebek and Laurie L. both let us know about a recent example of the use of images of dead or brutalized women in fashion advertising. A recent catalog, titled “Deadly Deals,” from the Australian clothing chain Rivers, included this image (via The Age):

And way back in July of last year, Caroline submitted an article from Amazing Women Rock about an ad for Beymen Blender, an upscale clothing boutique in Istanbul. The ad shows a woman’s dismembered body hanging from meat hooks; it and the rest of the photos below may be triggering for those sensitive to images of violence toward people, so I’m putting it after the jump.

However, Dmitriy T.M., Melissa F., and Noelle S. found an example from the October 2010 issue of Interview magazine that inverts the usual gender pattern by showing a woman with brutalized men. The photo shoot was apparently supposed to evoke the types of torture and murder used by organized crime in Russia.

In this case, Naomi Campbell is shown in positions of dominance over an extremely pale-skinned, and clearly badly injured, man. So those images reverse not just the usual gender dynamic in images of violence and brutality in fashion photos, but also the frequent pattern of seeing naked or partially-naked Black bodies displayed as props around more fully-clothed White bodies (though Campbell is certainly scantily clad and sexualized). I suppose you could see this as undermining or commenting on the images we often see of violence toward women in fashion. Yet we could also argue that it does so by reinforcing the association of Blackness, in particular, with violence and aggression. And the photo shoot includes the same sexualization of violence seen so often in the fashion industry.

Thoughts?

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

The sexual assault of CBS reporter Lara Logan in Tahrir Square last week has resulted in two predictable, but utterly depressing types of commentary.

Muslims are backwards

On the one hand are the anti-Islam culture warriors, eager to find in this incident proof of how degenerate Muslims (and Arabs) are. This, despite the fact that there’s no proof the assailants were Muslims, nor that they had any connection to the overwhelmingly peaceful and harassment-free demonstrations. In fact, there’s reason to believe that Logan’s attackers may have been pro-Mubarak thugs or apolitical opportunists. The right wing response to this story was inevitable, but liberal response was also problematic. Film critic and outspoken liberal Roger Ebert tweeted this today:

“The attack on Lara Logan brings Middle East attitudes toward women into sad focus.”

Oy.

I’d like to call Roger Ebert’s attention to the case of Roman Polanski, who has enjoyed a long and celebrated movie career, in spite of his status as a fugitive child rapist. When Polanski was arrested in September of 2009, while attempting to accept an award at a film festival in Switzerland, supporters circulated a petition on his behalf. Over a hundred people in the film industry signed that petition which gratuitously called Polanski’s crime “a case of morals.” Some weeks later, Gore Vidal went so far as to smear Polanski’s 13 year old victim as “a young hooker.”

Has Ebert ever decried the Polanski case for the way it “brings Hollywood’s attitudes towards women into sad focus?” Has he ever criticized Polanski, Vidal, David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai, Harvey Weinstein or any of the dozens of cinematic luminaries who signed off on this petition? Nope. On the contrary, he gave a big thumbs up to a documentary which argued Polanski should be given a pass for his crime.

I hardly expected Russ Meyers’ former writing pal to be an exemplar of feminist discourse, but his tweet yesterday was especially myopic. Does he really believe that the West is so much more enlightened about rape and sexual violence than those primitive, backwards Middle Easterners?

The opportunistic use of feminism is a common feature of the “liberal” discourse in the culture war against Islam. Just look at how Ayaan Hirsi Ali is trotted out by the media (especially Bill Maher and Steven Colbert) to justify imperialist wars and burqa bans, all in the name of protecting Arab and Muslim women from their own cultures. Meanwhile, many of these same commentators ignore the fact that rape and misogyny are also endemic to our own culture. (And that includes our movies, Roger.)

Rape is sexy

The other type of response to Logan’s assault was the usual victim blaming, made extra creepy by the focus on Logan’s good looks and alleged sexual history. The worst offender was LA Weekly blogger Simone Wilson, who, in an extraordinarily trashy piece of writing had this to say:

Logan was in Tahrir Square with her “60 Minutes” news team when Mubarak’s announcement broke. Then, in a rush of frenzied excitement, some Egyptian protesters apparently consummated their newfound independence by sexually assaulting the blonde reporter.

Wilson conflates the historic Egyptian revolution with gang rape. Classy stuff. But she’s not through. In addition to “blonde reporter” we’re also treated to these descriptors of Logan:

“it girl”
“firecracker”
“shocking good looks”
“Hollywood good looks”
“gutsy stunner”
“homewrecker”
(this courtesy of a NY Post article from 2008)

As has already been noted, focusing on a sexual assault victim’s good looks and allegedly dubious sexual character amounts to victim blaming. But it also does something even more insidious. It makes rape sexy.

This is par for the course at the LA Weekly, where almost anything can be sexed up. LA Weekly‘s cover art department in the last couple of years has managed to make nearly every topic sexy, from murder to toxic mold and overpopulation.

Murder is sexy:

Toxic mold is sexy:

Overpopulation is sexy:

Rarely do the sexy women adorning the covers of the LA Weekly figure as the subjects of these stories. They’re splayed on the cover to boost circulation, because sex sells and, after all, “what’s wrong with being sexy?” (This isn’t even to mention the content of the Weekly– its abundance of ads for plastic surgery, or its routine back page ads from American Apparel– subjects for a longer post.)

Given this particular aesthetic, it is not at all surprising that an LA Weekly blogger would choose to play up the sexy side of the Logan assault story, taking extra pains to emphasize her “Hollywood good looks.” Even an “alternative” newspaper upholds the local value system. Arab Muslim rapists are bad. Sexy women make great victims. And cinematic geniuses should get a pass.

UPDATE, after the jump:

more...

“What’s the deal with all those songs in Bollywood?”

I’ve found that the most consistently misunderstood aspect of Bollywood (and, indeed, all popular Indian cinema) is the way lip-synced songs are used within the narrative of the film. American viewers in particular tend to find this an almost insurmountable obstacle to appreciating Bollywood films on their own merits. Why might Bollywood be ignored by the Western film community even as mass entertainment from places like China (kung fuand wuxia films) and Japan (anime) have been embraced?

I think the problem may lie in an association of Bollywood with Broadway-style American musicals and their sugar happy appropriate-for-all-ages content (due to heavy censorship during the heyday of the American musical). Bollywood films are not appropriate-for-all-ages. While they do have to pass through a Censor Board and explicit references to things like sex are going to be snipped if a film is to have an all-ages certificate, films can and do discuss a wide variety of serious issues using lip-synced songs. For example, the film Roti Kapada aur Makaan (Food, Clothes, and Shelter, 1974) is, among other things, a tough look at how the drive to stay out of poverty can lead a person to an immoral life. It has songs in which the actors lip sync and it also has a really disturbing rape scene and a bittersweet ending. Dil Se (From the Heart, 2000) is an intense film about terrorism. It has songs where the actors lip sync; it also has explosions and tough social commentary.

This clip from Dil Se, for example, shows how Amar is romanticizing the war zone he has been sent to cover as a reporter. We see his inner thoughts expressed through song in a way that couldn’t be easily duplicated in a Hollywood film (please forgive the advertisement):

 

So, Bollywood films are not all cheerful or what we might consider ‘family-friendly’ and the endings to the films are sometimes really unpleasant. Still, I still hear Western film buffs argue that lip-synced songs somehow make a film unrealistic. Let’s get one thing straight — the use of music in Western films is no more realistic than in Bollywood films.

Bollywood songs usually function like a soliloquy out of a Shakespeare play. The songs are designed to express a character’s inner feelings in a metaphorical way. A couple, for example, might be shown singing a duet in a lush meadow in Europe. Indian audiences implicitly understand that the couple has not actually been teleported to Switzerland or The Netherlands. The fantasy location and the song are designed to show how that first blush of love feels to the people involved. In another examples of a fantasy teleport song, in Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham (2001) you clearly see Rahul in a shop in India and then suddenly he and Anjali are cavorting around the pyramids in Egypt:

 

This, however, is no less realistic than your classic Hollywood movie song montage that features a couple falling in love using a series of different scenes set to “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” Likewise, previously recorded songs used as part of a background score are an accepted convention in Western film. We don’t walk around hearing music matched to our mood in real life, but Westerners accept the fantasy in movies because it’s familiar.

Soundtracks and falling-in-love montages do not happen in real life but we have learned to ignore the artifice of the tools to appreciate the stories told. The only difference between those things and Bollywood songs is that is that Western viewers have no experience with the Bollywood song form.

 

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About 15 years ago, a friend gave Filmi Girl a cassette tape with the soundtrack from the 1980s hit Bollywood film Maine Pyaar Kiye and she was hooked. A few years later, she began watching the films the songs were centered around, and after realizing that her real life friends were uninterested in hearing her gush about Aamir, Preity and Rani, she started a blog.  The 31-year-old librarian now spends her limited free time reading about her latest interest and watching large amounts of deliciously, over-the-top Indian films. Read more Bollywood for Beginner posts at Filmi Girl.

 

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