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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

• Changing age at first menstruation
• The social construction of sperm
• Overlap between male and female bodies: Infants’ gazes
• Overlap between male and female bodies: Breast reductions for men
• Gender ambiguity
• Third gender in Oaxaca

Intersexuality

• Sexual differentiation
• The Phall-o-Meter
• Caster Semenya

Patriarchy / Oppression

• Negative portrayals of men perpetuate patriarchy
• Oppression as a double bind: Women in politics

Patriarchy as Male Dominated

• Women in the Fortune 500
• Women in government
• Managing images of powerful women

Patriarchy as Male Identified

• Men as default category
• Men are “people,” women are “women”
• Example of “heroism” equated with men
• “Power” associated with masculinity

Patriarchy as Male Centered

• Looking for women’s presence in movies: The Smurfette Principle
• Looking for women’s presence in movies: The Bechdel Test
• Database of Bechdel Test movies

“Doing Gender,” Gender as Performance

• Using sex differences to infer gender differences
• Sex, gender, and toilet signs
• Learning how to stand like a girl
• When men stand like women
• Child pageants and the performance of gender
• Babies perform gender, too
• Where gender stereotypes come from

Intersectionality

• Social construction of race (“A Girl Like Me” video)
• Race, gender, and “good hair” (“Good Hair” trailer)
• Race, class, and gender
• Preference for light skinned women

White privilege

• White privilege
• White privilege as flip side of racial profiling
• Whites as default category (skin colors)
• Whites as default category (hair colors)

Childhood Gender Socialization

• Gendered language in TV toy commercials
• Kids’ rooms
• Barbie and math scores
• Barbie’s proportions
• Job segregation seen in gendered toys 1
• Job segregation seen in gendered toys 2
• Domestic toys for girls
• Breastfeeding dolls
• Save up for breast enhancement surgery
• Dora the Explorer makeover
• Learning to be a bride
• Gender roles hurt boys too

Gender & Language

• Changes in use of male/female pronouns
• Stereotypes of men’s and women’s language
• Smurfette and sexist language
• Ad—“If only men and women spoke the same language”

Gender & Mass Media

• Gendered body postures
• Sexism in hip hop
• Photoshopping 1
• Photoshopping 2
• Photoshopping 3
• Women of color in advertising
• Women of color associated with animals
• “You can never be too thin” ad
• Breast products
• Sexualization of violence: Dreamworlds 3 and Lady Gaga
• Dead-looking women in fashion
• Ads showing women dominating men
• Increasing sexualization of online video game ads
• Sexualizing and gendering food
• Comparing covers of Maxim and Cosmo

Gender & Work

• Data behind the Wal-Mart lawsuit
• Women in the Fortune 500
• Underrepresentation of women in Hollywood
• Gender gap in science and tech jobs
• Toys and career interests: Science and tech jobs

The Wage Gap

• Lifetime earnings by sex and race/ethnicity
• Earnings and hours worked, 1975-2009
• Earnings by education and age
• Occupational wage gap, 2010
• Job segregation and wages
• Wage gap by age, 1979 and 2008
• Comparing the wage gap across countries

Gender & Sports

• Participation in sports – high school
• Gendered organization of sport: Ski jumping for men only
• Images of women in sports: College teams
• Images of women in sports: Hope Solo
• Images of women in sports: Serena Williams
• Images of women in sports: Candace Parker
• Women bodybuilders
• Women collegiate athletes support the men’s teams
• Gender in figure skating
• Costume requirements in figure skating

Sexuality: Homophobia

• CJ Pascoe discusses homophobia as gender policing
• Example of gender policing: A boy’s pink toenails in the J. Crew catalog
• Example of gender policing: Yankee fans verbally assault Red Sox fans
• Attitudes towards gays and lesbians
• How terminology affects acceptance: “homosexual” versus “gay”

Sexuality: Sexual Behavior

• Orgasm for women
• Social desirability in online dating profiles
• Hook-up culture
• How porn is shaping our sex lives

Gender & the Body

• The Breast Portrait Project
• Asian eyelid cosmetic surgery
• Gendered reactions to male and female nudity
• Making bodies conform: Gymnast Shawn Johnson

Physical appearance and beauty work

• Physical attractiveness bias: Susan Boyle example
• Beauty work: Lifetime spending of men and women
• Beauty work: Routines and spending
• Trends in cosmetic procedures, 2000-2009
• The Beauty Myth – Naomi Wolf

Obesity and overweight

• Invisibility of “plus-sized” women
• Lane Bryant’s lingerie ad
• Can you be fit and fat? Health at Every Size
• Fighting the obesity “epidemic”
• Fatness as a shield from unwanted attention
• Can a feminist diet?

Gender and Family

• Gender and interracial marriage
• Gender gap in leisure time
• Housework
• Housework, international comparisons
• Gender non-conformity in kids
• Shared parenting as class privilege
• Nanny chain
• Gendered parenting in ads

Hegemonic Masculinity

• Changing images of masculinity
• Masculinity and violence
• Violent masculinity in energy drinks
• Masculinity and food marketing
• Men talk about their masculinity
• Comedic take on masculinity
• Satirizing men’s hygiene products

Intimate Partner Violence

• When do we intervene?
• Victim blaming: Headlines
• Percent of women who think DV is okay, by country

Sexual Harassment

• Who’s responsible for sexual harassment?
• The Toronto Slutwalk
• Women’s taxis as a response to harassment

Forced Sex & Sexual Assault

• Rape culture: Rape simulator game
• Rape culture: Celebrating incapacitated women
• Rape culture: T-shirts
• “No” doesn’t really mean “no”
• Yale fraternity: “No means yes, yes means anal”
• What counts as “real” rape: Polanski

Anti-Rape Campaigns

• UK campaign telling men not to rape
• Scottish campaign: Effective or sensationalist?
• Women don’t “ask for it”

Visions for the Future

• Degendering dance
• Positive portrayal of transgendered people
• Resistance to objectifying advertising
• Signs that show women as people
• Media showing range of women’s bodies
• Belly activism

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

This Course Guide is in progress and will be updated as I have time.

Disclaimer: If you’re thinking about writing a course guide.  I totally overdid it on this one!  It doesn’t have to be nearly this extensive.

Course Guide for
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
(last updated 5/2012)

Developed by Gwen Sharp
Nevada State College

C. Wright Mills and the Sociological Imagination

Intersection of biography and history as illustrated by:

• Year of birth and life success
• Kids’ exposure to technology
• Baby naming practices and media trends
• Other historical trends in baby names

“the capacity for astonishment is made lively again”

• The background of “Scotch” tape
• Applying the anthropological lens to “dark, mysterious Austria”

Karl Marx/Marxist analysis

• Marxist analysis of current economic crisis
• Invisibility of workers

Emile Durkheim

• The dangers of the ecological fallacy: measuring “sin” statistically

[Because the course guide has gotten to be so long, I’m putting the rest of it after the jump.]

more...

Cross-posted at Family Inequality.

It’s been a big week for stories of families denied and disrupted by the state.  Family denial came up in the form of bodily intervention (as in North Carolina’s eugenics program), border control (as when Jose Antonio Vargas‘s mother put him on a one-way plane for the U.S.), parents’ incarceration, or legal denial of family rights (the refusal to recognize gay marriage, or what I suggest we call homogamous marriage).

(1)  North Carolina’s eugenics program was the subject of hearings this week, dragging on with no compensation for the 7,600 people who were involuntarily sterilized between 1929 and 1977. A collection of literature at the State Library of North Carolina includes this 1950 propaganda pamphlet:

(2) Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, recounted his life as an undocumented immigrant. His mother put him on a plane for the U.S. with false papers, maybe never to see him again.

(3) While a judge declared the federal law against recognizing gay marriage unconstitutional, the New York legislature maybe moved toward legal recognition, and President Obama’s support of gay marriage apparently stalled.

(4) The 40th anniversary of the drug war was a bleak reminder of the millions of U.S. families separated by incarceration during that time.

The text says, “more women and mothers are behind bars than at any time in U.S. history,” from (www.usprisonculture.com).

(My graph from data in an article by Wildeman and Western in The Future of Children)

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

Sandra F. sent in a link to “Prop 8: The Musical,” a parody starring Jack Black, Margaret Cho, Andy Richter, John C. Reilly, Neil Patrick Harris, and other celebrities:

The clip, though a parody, brings up a reason some groups that might not care about the reasons gays and lesbians want to get married, or about gay rights more broadly, nonetheless supported gay marriage: money. The New York Times discussed this issue here. Weddings are big business, and the more people who are eligible to be married, the more money is potentially available to wedding-related businesses. In 2004, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the impact legalizing same-sex marriage would have on the budget (end result: an estimated $1 billion a year for the 10-year estimation period). That’s just the federal budgetary effect; it doesn’t include private-sector benefits.

This anti-Prop 8 video makes an explicitly economic argument for gay marriage:

You might compare these videos to the commercials in this post; in those ads, advocates of gay marriage try to rhetorically frame the issue as being about love–that is, gay marriages are equated with straight marriages by focusing on the idea that what is important in a marriage is love, regardless of the sex of the spouses. Clearly you could use them to discuss gay marriage, but they might also be good for illustrating the idea of framing of social issues.

Thanks, Sandra!

In our comments on this post featuring a “Future Trophy Wife” and “Future M.I.L.F.” t-shirts for very young girls, Penny linked to some lefty stores that carry these leftist t-shirts for babies and kids (found here and here).

“Future Feminist”

“Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism since 1492”

“Hate is not a family value”

There was interesting discussion in the comments as to whether having your child wear ANY idea that attributed characteristics to them was okay.  An anonymous commenter wrote:

As much as I would love to have a child wearing a “future feminist” or “future president” shirt, I think forcing any sort of rules on them as to what they should be is wrong. Sure, I’d love to have a son or daughter grow up to be a feminist, or even the president, but I would want them to know that I support them in whatever decisions they make for themselves.

To which Penny replied:

I’m not sure a t-shirt is “forcing any sort of rules” on a baby (who are notoriously oblivious to any kind of written propaganda). Honest, an 18-month-old will never feel bound to the politics of her t-shirt. She’ll mostly just feel bound to dribble strawberry stains into it, message or no message. Even if it’s 100% organic sweatshop-free cotton, the stains will soon detract from the message somewhat. All babies’ clothes reflect their parents’ ideas, whether subtly or blatantly. There’s no way around that–even letting them run naked is a statement, and one they may come to detest later, when they see the videos.

I thought this was an interesting discussion.  What’s your take?  If you are for the shirts above, must you also be for “God Hates Fags” t-shirts and their ilk?  Is it not okay to place any characteristics on your child?  If it’s not, do you also have to keep them out of pro-gay marriage and Fred Phelps rallies?

For another example of politicizing kids, see this post.