(view the slideshow)

Back in the spring, Lisa gave a talk at Franklin and Marshall College about data about the newness, prevalence, and content of “hook ups” on American campuses. Surprise, today’s college students didn’t invent casual sex and there’s no need for their parents to worry about a “bacchanalian orgy” in one dorm after another.  Concluding that the problem isn’t “too much” sex, she argues that the problem is too much bad sex.

In her own research, Lisa has found that students want sex to be pleasurable, empowering, or meaningful.  But, alas, they seem to have difficulty achieving any one of those things in great measure.  The culprit, she concludes, isn’t hooking up, it’s hook up culture.  When a hook up culture dominates, all other ways of being sexual are repressed, and that leaves many students involuntarily celibate or having sex they don’t really want. The solution: an opening up of sexual options that allow students to truly, genuinely explore their own sexualities safely.

Franklin and Marshall College arranged to have the lecture filmed, but Lisa was too shy to post it on Soc Images. But she sent me the link to the talk, and I have no such misgivings. Unfortunately, the camera was set up at an angle where you can’t see the PowerPoint presentation that went along with the lecture, so you’ll have to look through it separately if you’re interested (slideshow and transcript if you’d rather read).  Lisa’s got other talks too, if you’re interested, and I know she loves giving them.

Common Hour: The Promise and Perils of Hook-Up Culture from Franklin & Marshall College on Vimeo.

Common Hour: The Promise and Perils of Hook-Up Culture from Franklin & Marshall College on Vimeo.

I am always suspicious of invocations of the phrase “human nature.”  It is not necessarily because I think there is no such thing, it’s simply that it is typically invoked with little consideration of the vastly diverse physical, cultural, and physical-cultural contexts in which human beings find themselves, and have found themselves.  This 3 1/2 minute introduction to a BBC special, Human Planet, sent in by (my mom) Kay West, illustrates some of this diversity.  While I’m a little anxious about the exotification that the clip might include (especially of “the primitive”), I still think it does a wonderful job of hinting at the wildly different contexts in which humans live:

Also, this (Gwen, do not watch!):

Found at Blame it on the Voices.

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 have posted in the past about pre-World War II uses of the swastika as a symbol of good luck, a meaning that the Nazis’ appropriation of the swastika makes nearly inconceivable today. Matthieu S., who teaches anthropology at Vanier College in Montreal, sent in another example, a scan of a postcard he owns that was printed in the 1920s. The postcard, meant for a dad’s birthday, also includes pink-tinted flowers — evidence of a time when pink was considered a perfectly appropriate color for men and boys:

World War II and the atrocities of the Nazi party obviously significantly changed interpretations of both the formerly-benign swastika and the color pink. Pink wasn’t abandoned altogether, as the swastika was, but the Nazi’s use of pink to label gay and lesbian prisoners led pink to be stigmatized as effeminate and, thus, an inappropriate color for men…and over time it instead became the epitome of symbols of femininity.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court has announced that the female employees of  Walmart will not be allowed to bring a class action lawsuit against the company, arguing that it has not been shown that they are a class.  It would have been the largest employment discrimination suit in history.

It seems timely, then, to re-post our summary of some of the evidence against Walmart.  Women are, on average, paid less, are less likely to be salaried, and hold lower-ranked positions than men.  This is true even though there is less turnover among women, meaning that the average female employee has been working at Walmart significantly longer than the average male employee.

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The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart suit. Wal-Mart is accused of egregious and systematic discrimination against the 1.5 million women who have worked there since 1998.  The case isn’t based on anecdotal accounts; instead, it’s backed up by reams of data.  Here is some of it.

Women in hourly and especially salaried jobs make less money than men:

Women are disproportionately in hourly jobs (instead of salaried jobs) in every district examined:

Women make less than men in every district examined:

Women dominate the lowest paying, lowest ranked jobs at Walmart, and are a smaller and smaller percentages of the workforce as you go up the pay/rank hierarchy (from right to left):

And this is true despite the fact that women have lower turnover and have, on average, been working at Walmart significantly longer:

Walmart isn’t fighting the data. They’re not claiming non-discrimination. Instead, they’re arguing that compensation should be restricted to the women directly named in the suit instead of the 1.5 million women who’ve worked there. In other words, they’re hoping that the judge will not grant “class action” status to the case. If he does, it will be the largest class action lawsuit in history.

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.

Google often creatively alters its logo to honor important days on the calendar.  Today the logo references Father’s Day by turning the “l” in Google into a tie.  John McMahon did a fine job of discussing how Father’s Day cards tap into stereotypes about masculinity, but I thought this was interesting in its reference of a particular kind of work.  The tie isn’t a generic masculine symbol, but a class-specific one.

More, it ties fatherhood into the idea of being a breadwinner.  What is significant about a Dad?  The fact that he works so hard for the family.  Can you imagine a Mother’s Day symbol emphasizing her workplace instead of her time at home?

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.

It’s almost Father’s Day, which means it is time for the greeting card business to make tons of money. It also means it’s time for us to visually see the standard narrative about gender, masculinity, and fatherhood. Looking at mass commercial products like greeting cards is an especially useful venue: the greeting card companies, wanting to make money like good capitalists, will sell products that have the greatest widespread appeal. Thus, they will sell the most popular representations of gender, masculinity, and fatherhood.

From a brief perusal of a NYC chain store greeting card aisle, I found plenty of cards that shed light on these representations. I want to focus, though, on two: middle-aged masculinity and the different representations of daughters and sons.

There were plenty of cards like this one, that capture many of the stereotypical narratives about fatherhood, and middle-aged masculinity more broadly:

(Apologies for the poor picture quality, a nearby employee didn’t seem thrilled with my picture-taking).

Here, we see man/father as: head of the household (twice, and once as dictator – king): cooks, but only on the grill; lawn mowing expert; controller of the remote/TV watcher; and “big guy.” What’s not on there? Anything about love for children, caring, affection, equitable distribution of household duties (if part of a couple), etc.

Almost all of the love and affection, though, was saved for cards specifically marketed as ‘Dad from daughter.” Most of the cards in this picture were love-centric and labeled as such:

There were a few rare cards simply marked as ‘Dad’ that include themes of love and/or affection, such as this one:

The cards marked ‘Dad from son,’ however, mostly consisted of attempts at humor involving sports (especially golf), building things (or the lack of ability to do so), and, well, farts:

Obviously, we can’t draw too much from the greeting cards in one store, but in this store, at least, there was only one card explicitly marked for sons that primarily communicated feelings of love and affection; all of these were either marked for daughters to give or did not specify what gender should give them. Pairing this with the kinds of fatherly masculinity represented by the cards, Father’s Day cards are sold through the use of traditional gender representations.

Note: all photos licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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John McMahon is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he also participates in the Women’s Studies Certificate Program. He is interested in post-structuralism, issues relating to men and feminism, gendered practices in international relations, gender and political theory, and questions of American state identity. John blogs at Facile Gestures, where this post originally appeared.

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

Celebrate Father’s Day this year with the weird American habit of gendering food!

(source)

Let us not forget that steak = manfood.  Like catfood and dogfood, manfood must be carefully produced so as to cater to man’s natural diet.  His ancestors hunted the wild baked potato, the shy ale, and the feisty tenderloin.  Today, Manfood Inc. scientifically calibrates each and every Father’s Day dinner to man’s instinctual stomach, so you can treat your man to the best.  We call it a MENu.

For more, see this vintage Campbell’s ad marketing meat for men, the gendered menu at Brick House, this ad campaign warning of sissified dogs, and this extensive collection of gendered and sexualized food.  See also this counter-example: a vintage ad arguing that vegetables make you tough and strong.

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.

Please enjoy these posts from Father’s Days past:

Stereotyping Men on Dad’s Day

• Feed Them Meat!
• Buy Them Non-Emasculating Cooking Supplies!

Also…

• Are You Coming on to me Daughter?
• Including Daughters in Father’s Day

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.