The Women’s Media Center has compiled a series of clips exposing the racist and sexist discourse surrounding Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
Via Racialicious.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Julie Lewis-Dreyfus Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Christina Applegate, Jane Krakowski, and Mary Louise-Parker candidly discuss getting older in Hollywood. The discussion starts about about 1:00. It’s not particularly organized, but it’s nice to hear perspectives from the inside:
Via Feministing.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Feminist scholars argue that patriarchy relies not just on a hierarchy that places men above women, but a hierarchy of men that punishes men who don’t obey rules of masculinity.
An advertising campaign for Oberto Beef Jerky, sent in by Kate S., nicely illustrates the threat to men if they don’t comply with patriarchy.
The threat is: If you’re not an “Alpha,” then you’re a “Sidekick.”
The Alpha is first; the Sidekick is second. The Alpha gets served; the Sidekick serves. The Alpha gets the hot chick; the Sidekick gets the “ugly friend.” The Alpha makes the decisions; the Sidekick takes them.
In one part of the website, it actually encourages you to “establish your dominance.” It features taunting emails and cards that you can send to your friends to trick them into looking like idiots/being your sidekick.
UPDATE: In the comments thread, Toban B. (T B) had a really nice observation:
As Murray Bookchin has written, language about ‘alpha males’ naturalizes hierarchy.
Bookchin highlights how people have conflated animal and insect interactions (e.g. ‘queen’ bees) with societal structures created by humans — as opposed to the far more instinctual of relations of non-human creatures. (For Bookchin, there is a continuum between humans and other life forms, so these distinctions aren’t binaries.) Basically, the point here is that if human hierarchies are the same as instinctual hierarchies (e.g. interactions with a lion ‘king’), then the human hierarchies must be just as natural and inevitable — which just isn’t the case.
Joanne suggests, further, that humans, invested in patriarchy and hierarchy, actually project it onto the natural world:
Using the terms “alpha” and “dominance” just reinforces the belief that nature exists within a patriarchal, hierarchical model. It actually doesn’t. I do a lot of work with horses, researching and observing the horse-human relationship, and this whole idea of “dominance” is one that has started with and is kept alive by the patriarchal worldview of Western culture. Many observers of animal behavior are brought up in and continue to live in that worldview, so they impose it on animals and the natural world. If you step outside of that worldview, what you find in the natural world is something entirely different.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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.
Kristin W., Brad W., and Deb G. sent us the Bacardi Breezers “Get an Ugly Girlfriend” ad campaign, discussed over at Jezebel. The message? Ladies, if you want to look better, get an ugly female friend to stand next to:
There are profiles of the various ugly girlfriends you can get:
Of course this ad campaign suggests to women that the most important thing about them is how they look. But, more insidiously, as Sweet Machine points out, it places women “in competition with other women for male attention” in a world where “self-esteem is a zero-sum game.”
This is how patriarchy creates in-fighting among women: If men have the power, and the only way to get power is to get men, then women feel compelled to try to get (the attention of) a man (or men). Other women are their competition.
Women are stereotyped as bitchy and catty as if it is an inherent feature of femininity when, in fact, women’s subordination to men creates the conditions that force them into competition.
We see it happen live in this horrendous clip from Battle of the Bods.
More examples of cultural endorsements of the idea that women and girls are always in competition with one another here, here, and here.
UPDATE: Commenter Joanne pointed out an update, via Shapely Prose:
Sean-Patrick Hillman of bacardi.com comments below:
June 21, 2009
Thank you for taking the time to post your story regarding Bacardi Breezer.
The campaign you are referring to ran in 2008 for two months in Israel. Even though Bacardi Breezer is not sold or distributed in the United States, we immediately notified the appropriate Bacardi affiliate and had this website shut down.
Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site.
We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.
I’m a bit confused, though–I did a quick google search, and Bacardi Breezer seems to be sold in a lot of places, including Canada and the U.S., but maybe they’re imported by a third party and not directly by Bacardi? I know I’d heard the name Bacardi Breezer before I saw these ads. Apparently I’m going to have to go on a tour of local liquor stores to see. What a horrible life I lead.
And I also agree with several of the other commenters–how awful must it be to be cast as an “ugly” person?
Taylor sent in this ad, found at Blame It on the Voices:
It ran in Esquire in 1959 and our post on the emergence of Playboy Magazine may give the ad some interesting context.
What do we really mean when we ask someone if they’re a dog person or a cat person? Wait… think hard… what are you really asking?
I think we’re asking if a person is more masculine or feminine. After all, don’t we stereotype women as cat people and men as dog people? And don’t we think men with cats are a little femmy or, at minimum, sweeter than most… even, maybe, gay? And don’t we imagine that chicks with dogs are a little less girly than most, a little more rough and tumble? The cat person/dog person dichotomy is gendered.
This might explain why we continue to insist that dogs and cats are natural enemies. We tend to insist that dogs and cats don’t get along in the face of millions of households in which they get along just fine. These are Gwen’s pets (clockwise Shadow Cat, Rocky, and Corky):
They are clearly at each other’s throats constantly.
And, have you ever noticed that being a dog person is sort of cooler? Like, it’s cool to be a dog person, but less cool to be a cat person? I mean, no one ever fears ending up a “crazy dog lady,” and it’s not just because of the lack of alliteration. You see because gender is hierarchical, so is the dog person/cat person dichotomy. I hate being asked if I’m a dog or cat person. I have two cats, but I love dogs equally, and that doesn’t make me less cool than Gwen. (We’re obviously equally cool.)
Also!
Cats aren’t all alike. Neither are dogs. So you can’t be a dog person or a cat person. It’s nonsensical.
And another thing!
If you want to get all stereotypical about it, I’ll just say that (1) if dogs are dependent, passive, and happily subordinated to their owners, while cats are independent but offer nice companionship, and (2) women are “cat people” and men are “dog people,” then (3) men are really oppressive bastards who can’t stand a relationship with an equal and women are inherently democratic and don’t desire power (none of which I believe). So let’s not go there, okay?
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.
Fascinating:
Bush’s comment is offensive (yes, all pro-choice women are ugly, angry, and undesirable). Clinton’s complicity is unfortunate.
In the comments, Sabriel asks what my “sociological angle” is. Sabriel, I think Bush’s comment and Clinton’s complicity reveals that it’s still essentially fine to be hateful towards women, especially those who refuse to play by the rules of patriarchy (whether that be measured by attention to their attractiveness to men or accepting that their role of mother should take precedence over any and all other needs and desires). Regarding Clinton’s complicity: Imagine the flak he would have taken had he defended the woman that Bush castigates. By and large, at least in politics, it is easier to be sexist than it is to be feminist.
Via Feministe.
Politics has long been considered a masculine domain. After all, there are issues, and there are “women’s issues.” However, in this election season, The View has delved deeply into politics. Reactions to this reveal the assumption that politics are for men.
First, Bill O’Reilly’s appearance on The View can be described as nothing if not sexist. Essentially, his message was “Don’t worry your pretty, little emotional heads about politics, ladies!” The View is just “entertainment,” according to O’Reilly, because it’s for women.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6rR2OwaY1c[/youtube]
Second, soon after Joy Behar appeared on Larry King, King asked her “When did ‘The View’ become this? When did it go off-track?” King’s question reveals his assumption that women’s media is for women’s issues, and those are, simply, not real politics (read the transcript here).
Ironically (awesomely), after 12 years on the air, this election season marks the first time that The View has been the #1 watched daytime show, “…garnering its biggest aud[ience] ever (6.2 million) on Nov. 5, the Wednesday after the election” (source).
So, it turns out, women are interested in politics after all.
(Thanks to Gwen for help on this post.)
