gender

Men and women are told, in a myriad of daily ways, that being masculine is good and feminine bad. It sneaks into our daily language in ways that are so common that we fail to even see it anymore. For example, a recent New York Times article about Google’s effort to determine what makes managers successful featured a list, written by Google, of what makes a good boss.

I noticed that they added The New York Times added the phrase “Don’t be a sissy” to “Good Behavior” #4.  It reads “Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented.”   It’s the only Good Behavior that includes a derisive slur. And while I’m accustomed to seeing terms like “sissy” thrown around as insults, it occurred to me that the very next rule #5, “Be a good communicator and listen to your team,” could easily have been prefaced with “Don’t be a man.”

But being a “sissy” (that is, feminine) is something that we can all agree is bad, while being a man is good.  So, even when the rules suggest that men take on feminized traits, they’re unlikely to adorn the suggestion with a denigration of masculinity.

Via Teppo at OrgTheory.

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.

My great-grandma was born in 1914 and lived until 2005, so she witnessed an enormous amount of technological and cultural change during her life. I asked her once what single thing she found most impressive or was most grateful had been invented. She answered, without hesitation, “the electric washing machine.” As the mother of 7 children with a husband who did not do housework, laundry had been the bane of her existence. Getting a washing machine that had a hand-powered wringer helped, but it was still exhausting. The way she saw it, getting an electric washing machine changed her life. Her fear of ever again having to do laundry by hand with a washboard was so great that she kept the hand-crank-powered washer next to her electric one until the early 1990s, just in case.

In this TED clip, “Hans Rosling and the Magic Washing Machine,” sent in by Dmitriy T.M., Rosling discusses the ethical problems involved in efforts to combat climate change that rest primarily on telling individuals in developing nations that because we need to use less energy globally, they just can’t have the same appliances and conveniences, like electric washing machines, that those of us living in (post-) industrialized nations do:

Transcript after the jump.

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Feminist Frequency‘s Anita Sarkeesian has released the first of her series of short videos examining the roles women are often assigned in movies and television.  In this one she goes after the “manic pixie dream girl,” or the female side character who helps the male main character find himself, love life again, or overcome some obstacle.  This character, Sarkeeisan argues, is problematic because she “perpetuates the myth of women as caregivers at our very core”; her main role is to “‘fix’ these lonely sad men, so that they can go ‘fix the world.'”  The women themselves?  They’re too busy being adorable.

(Transcript after the jump.)

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Lisa recently posted about Abercrombie Kids selling push-up bikini tops (though I just went to the website and they seem to have removed the “push-up” description). In another example of encouraging pre-teens to sexualize their bodies, Meghan L. sent in the clip “You’ve Got Snooki” from AOL Video in which Snooki, from Jersey Shore, does a makeover on an 11-year-old girl, since you’re “never too young to look bangin'” or to start thinking about how you look to boys:

In a perfect example of the tendency to sexualize women but not men, MM sent in a screen capture of an image for the graphic t-shirts section of the Urban Outfitters website, in which the men are all fully clothed and the women…less so:

Mindy Jovanovic sent in a vintage advertisement for “Stuffed Girl’s Heads”: fake heads meant to mimic the taxidermied trophies of hunted game oh-so-popular among some types.  Mindy said, “Now I think I’ve seen it all.”

Well Mindy, I hate to disappoint you, but I think I have something even more offensive to show you: Jingle Jugs.  At least the girls have heads in this “conquest,” Jingle Jugs are just fake dancing boobs mounted on a board (hard nipples included).  And they’re not vintage.  Oh no, they’re for breast cancer awareness.

Image borrowed from Dangerous Minds.

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.

In early 20th century America, eugenics was promoted as a new way to scientifically shape the human race. The idea was to change the human population for the better through selective breeding and sterilization. As you can imagine, this led to serious abuses. People of color, the poor, and those deemed otherwise unfit for reproduction were disproportionately targeted, and usually the sterilization was accomplished by targeting women’s bodies in particular.

One interesting facet of the effort to promote eugenics is the language used, or the framing of the issue. Indeed, just last week I introduced my students to the notion of “Birthright.”  The term birthright suggested that all children have the right to be born into a sound mind and body.  Why was it important to sterilize individuals deemed morally, culturally, or biologically inferior?  Why, we must do it for the children, of course!

I was reminded of the idea of children having such a birthright by a vintage ad (posted at, predictably, Vintage Ads).  The ad is for a school designed to improve the future of the human race by improving parenting.  The school would, therefore, teach parents how to engage in civilized “intelligent” “parenthood.”  The idea that such parenting can be taught points to the way that eugenics evolved from a biological to a cultural basis.  And in several places you see the term “birthright” (excerpted below).

Excerpts:

For a time, pro-sterilization laws were very popular.  The U.S. map below, for example, shows which states had pro-sterilization laws in 1935 (striped) and states with laws pending (black). As you can see, most of the United States was on board at this time.  Later, condemnation of the practices in Nazi Germany would take the blush off of the eugenics rose.

(source)

For a wonderful book on the history of eugenics, read Wendy Kline’s Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom.

For more on eugenics and sterilization, see our post with additional pro-eugenics propaganda and two contemporary examples of coercive sterilization campaigns by your health insurance carrier and politician who’ll pay the “unfit” to get tied.

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 at Jezebel.

There was a time when the idea of sticking needles into one’s face was something that was to be avoided at all costs.  Then there was botox.  And it didn’t take long before certain segments of society were flocking to the needlers, begging to be stuck.  Face needling has become so commonplace — so desirable, even — that non-needly products have been disguising themselves as needles, so as to attract consumer dollars.

Of what am I speaking?  A product sent in by Ella Dilkes-Frayne.  Ella saw posters in a mall in Melbourne, Australia for non-injectable beauty products sold in containers that mimicked syringes.   The product, hoping to capitalize on the new acceptance of and desire for botox, is a great example of how socially and personally acceptable bodily intervention is always changing.

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.