bodies

Caroline Cossey (also known as Tula) is a British male-to-female transsexual who had a successful career as a model and some small movie roles; Cossey also appeared in Playboy in 1981. In 1982 a tabloid broke the story that she was a transsexual, which ended her modeling career. Here is the cover (found here) of her autobiography, which she wrote soon after being outed:

Cossey was born with Klinefelter’s syndrome, a form of genetic intersexuality.

Here are some other pictures of her:

Found here.

Found here.

You can watch a segment on her that aired on the TV program Hard Copy here.

These might be interesting for discussions of intersexuality, sex-reassignment surgery, and our ideas of the gender binary that everyone must fit into–as well as the outrage people often feel if they’ve been “fooled” by someone who manages to “pass” as a gender different from what they “really” (read “biologically”) are. You might compare this to the story of Brandon Teena, a female-to-male transsexual who was raped, beaten, and murdered by two men in a small town in Nebraska in 1994 after they discovered he was a transsexual (who had not had sex-reassignment surgery). Teena was, of course, the subject of the movie “Boys Don’t Cry,” but there is also a documentary about him, “The Brandon Teena Story,” which includes interviews with his girlfriend and members of the community.

Two readers, Breck and Miguel, sent in this post:

Boingboing put up this post that shows how common “spread legs” imagery is in old book covers. A commenter to that post pointed out this example (found here) from the Broadway version of Cry-Baby.:

Another commenter thought this FatBoy Slim album cover is interesting:

And there’s this Pooh-Man album cover:

And:

Miguel pointed out that the exact same stance can seem threatening or sexual inviting, depending on whether it’s a man or a woman in the pose.

Thanks to Breck and Miguel for sending these along!

NEW: Larry sent along this image from the June 2008 issue of Esquire magazine (p. 112), which also uses the “spread legs” motif:

One thing you may not know about the peoples of the pre-Columbian Andean region: they were fond of making pottery with exaggerated penises. These were often pipes or water vessels and forced the user to place his or her mouth on the gigantic penis. Images can be found here, here, here and here.

I like these because they remind students that sexual humor (making pottery that forces someone to drink out of a penis, for instance) is not even close to being a modern invention. I’m sure there are lots of other interpretations–that this actually shows an obsession with the penis than indicates a patriarchal culture, that it was part of a cult of warrior potency, and so on–but I bet there was also a level of joking going on too.

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

This is pretty old by now, but I’m not a regular watcher of Nickelodeon’s Teen Choice Awards, so I hadn’t seen this before. The audience reactions are really interesting, I think.

Watch how this 60 Minutes clip from August 2006 manages to completely confuse three very different things: sex identity (believing you are biologically female or male), gendered behavior (conforming to cultural rules about girls/women and boys/men are supposed to do and like), and sexual orientation (which sex you are attracted to sexually). For examples, you know your boy is going to grow up wanting to have sex with men because he likes to “help out in the kitchen” or thinks he’s a girl. These are all very different things. It also includes some wretched study design.

Part I

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoZoRbP-0WM[/youtube]

Part II

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTLAof9oXCI[/youtube]

By the way, funny story: When my nephew was about 2 years old he loved brooms and vacuums. My parents told me that it was because he liked “tools.”

Thanks to Joseph DeM. for the tip!

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.

These dolls have been available for purchase for at least 6 years (when I first found out about the website) and I’m surprised they haven’t made it on Soc Images yet!

I want to clarify that while these dolls are created for the use by the anti-choice movement, I’m not trying to make a pro-choice argument here. Rather, I think it is interesting to think about how fetal development is depicted (especially to children), and how these micropreemie dolls compare to medical depictions of fetal development. Not to mention that these are among some of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.

According to the website:

Micropreemie models are life size portrait models of real micropreemie human babies.

[…]

All models are portraits of real babies. Models 6 weeks and 7 weeks are original one of a kind sculpts. They can have a hat and tiny blanket. They are fragile and not poseable. Models eight weeks and over have jointed bodies and come dressed or undressed. All are medically accurate in size and human development.  They have been checked for accuracy by Physcians, [sic] Neonatal Intensive Care Nurses, Dulas and the actual parents of the babies represented here. We recommend dressed models for use with children. Children are naturally drawn to these models.

The comparison pictures are from this website.

6 weeks gestation:

7 weeks gestation:

8 weeks gestation:

10 weeks gestation:

12 weeks gestation:

And some other random micropreemie images from the website:

8-18 weeks gestation:

In apples and cups:

And there is one non-white micropreemie on the website:

Size comparison with gummy bear and quarter:

Featured accessories: (yes, that is a micropreemie in a baby bottle. Yikes!)

Keeley c. sent in this comic strip:

Keeley writes:

I think this strip is an amazing commentary on the fluidity of gender and especially gender identity, and how unrelated it can be to one’s outward biology.  I also love how it’s unclear whether the speaker’s ability to shift from man to woman is their own perception of themselves or the way they believe others perceive them when they don’t conform to the norm of thier biological gender. There’s a lot of layers piled into the very simple text.

Thanks!

By Leonie Martine Janssen (from Miguel via Inspire Me, Now!):