gender

As most of you probably know, yesterday Representative Gabrielle Giffords, of Arizona, was one of 18 people shot at a public event yesterday. Elliott J. went online to find more information and came across this piece from Fox News:

The piece has now been expanded somewhat, with a photo of Giffords added, the photo of her husband pushed to the bottom of the page, and the title changed.

When I was googling looking for the Fox story, I came upon this from the website of the Orlando Sentinel:

I get that the point of a title is to draw people in and give them information that might make the topic seem interesting or relevant to them. And I guess NASA has a center in Florida, so maybe being married to an astronaut has special resonance there.

But really: a woman had a person walk up to her in a crowd and shoot her in the head, also shooting other people and killing some of them. I would hope that, even if she weren’t a member of Congress, that in and of itself would be sufficient material for a headline, regardless of who the victim’s husband was.

UPDATE: Kat P. sent in another example from the Galveston County Daily News. The headline reads: “Wife of shuttle commander shot during rampage.”

In the article “In Pursuit of the Perfect Penis: The Medicalization of Male Sexuality” (available for free if you search for the title and Tiefer’s name), Leonore Tiefer discusses the way that the increasing attention paid by the medical community to conditions defined as “impotence,” and the way it has become medicalized, requiring any number of surgical, psychological, and/or pharmacological interventions. While some men have undoubtedly benefited, the largest beneficiary is the medical community itself. The broadened definition of what counts as “erectile dysfunction,” for instance, has created a larger market for drugs such as Viagra and Cialis.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a trailer for the documentary Orgasm Inc., which documents efforts to medicalize “sexual dysfunction” among women. In the 3-minute trailer, we see cultural commentators and doctors discussing the shocking prevalence of sexual problems among women (43%! 83%! It’s an epidemic!) and some potential medical solutions. It’s a fantastic example of the medicalization of sexuality (and pretty safe for work). Enjoy!

Eight readers — Christine B., Hermes, Yvette, Hope H., Tyler D., Pris S., John G., and Dmitrity T.M. — alerted us to a photo spread in the December issue of French Vogue. The series of photographs is another piece of evidence of the adultification of young girls, an adultification that looks suspiciously like child porn, given the sexualization of adult women.  New York Magazine reports that the girls are 6 years old.  Don’t miss the lipstick, high heels, and disinterested pouts.

The thing is: the adultification/sexualization of young girls is paralleled by a infantilization of adult women.  This adds up to a conflation of women and children which serves to uphold prejudice against adult women and the exploitation of girls.

More at Gawker.

For more on the infantilization of adult women, see our posts on lady spanking, Glee, this collection of examples, a vintage example, and the Halloween edition.

For more on the adultification/sexualization of young girls, see our posts on sexually suggestive teen brands, adultifying children of color, “trucker girl” baby booties, “future trophy wife” kids’ tee, House of Dereón’s girls’ collection, “is modesty making a comeback?“, more sexualized clothes and toys, sexist kids’ tees, a trifecta of sexualizing girls, a zebra-striped string bikini for infants, a nipple tassle t-shirt, even more icky kids’ t-shirts, “are you tighter than a 5th grader?” t-shirt, the totally gross “I’m tight like spandex” girls’ t-shirt, a Halloween costume post, and girls in the World of Dance tour.

And, yes, it happens to boys too.  For examples of the sexualization of young boys, see our posts on Lil’ Wayne’s virginity loss, the depiction of a 13-year-old boy having a relationship with his teacher, the sexy marketing of both Jaden Smith and Justin Bieber, with a follow up here.

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.

Justin G., an adjunct instructor in the Department of Sociology at Marymount University, recently received a gender lesson from his local Target. I’ll let him tell the story:

I grabbed the pack of eight depicted in the photo because they match our towels and bathroom wall colors and, to my surprise, when I scanned them for the price, I was told by the machine that they were “feminine casual” washcloths! I stood there and wondered how much darker the shades of blue and green would need to be for them to be “masculine”? Even when it comes to washcloths, it seems that Target and/or the manufacturer feels we need to be told what color we should be comfortable scrubbing our naked bodies with in the privacy of our own showers.

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.

Emory University has a very detailed database about the Atlantic slave trade, titled Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which I don’t believe we’ve posted before (my apologies if we have). It includes nine maps providing information on major points of departure and destination ports for the trans-Atlantic trade; here’s a general overview:

Initially the vast majority of slave voyages were organized by firms or individuals in Spain and Portugal; however, over time the slave trade was dominated by groups from northern Europe. Great Britain eventually played a major role, and over 1/3 of documented slave voyages were organized there.The description of Map 6 explains, “vessels from the largest seven ports, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Liverpool, London, Nantes, Bristol, and Pernambuco carried off almost three-quarters of all captives removed from Africa via the Atlantic Ocean.”

This map shows where voyages were organized, and the % of all documented African slaves that voyages from that country/area transported:

In the U.S., students generally learn about slavery in relation to cotton plantations and, to a lesser extent, tobacco. However, overall those two crops played a relatively minor role in the growth of the global slave trade. It was the growing taste for sugar, and the creation of sugar plantations, particularly in the Caribbean and South American coastal areas, that produced such an enormous demand for African slaves in the Americas. According to the Voyages website, less than 4% of all Africans captured were sold in North America.

The website also has a database of thousands of documented trips in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, including everything from point of origin, destination, number of slaves, % who died during voyage, length of trip, and so on. Some include many more details than others, as you’d expect. You can also create tables to display the variables you’re interested in. Here’s the table showing the slave trade, broken into 25-year intervals and by destination. We can clearly see that the slave trade made one big jump in the late 1500s (going from 4,287 in the 1551-1575 interval to 73,865 between 1576 and the end of the century) and another huge jump in the late 1600s, with the height of the slave trade occuring in the 1700s through the mid-1800s:

You can also create various graphs and charts. Here is a graph of the % of slaves who died during the trip, by year:

I presume the extremely high numbers in the 1550s must be skewed by some ships that sank or met some other disaster that led to the death of everyone aboard.

Over time, ships carried larger numbers of individuals per trip:

The individuals taken as part of the slave trade were predominantly male:

Documented types of resistance from captives or from Africans trying to free them:

You can spend quite a bit of time on this, I warn you — creating timelines, graphs, and so on. It’s taken me an hour to write this post because I keep getting distracted creating charts and tables. Overall, the site is a fantastic resource for both specific information and for helping illuminate the enormity of the Atlantic slave trade. Thanks to Shamus Khan for the tip.

Mab R. sent in a nice example of how children are socialized into gendered expectations. Chunky Monkey Mind has a post about the cut-out trading cards that appeared on the back of Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes a while back. Each card features a Cap’n Crunch character. Here’s the card for Smedley:

Ok, so for the male character we get basic stats, and he’s clearly an active guy who has thrilling adventures.

On the same box that featured the Smedley card was a card for Magnolia Bulkhead, who is shown with hearts hovering around her face as she clasps her hands together in rapture:

But of course, being female, she isn’t going to give us all of her vital statistics — in particular, age and weight are secrets women should guard carefully. Also notice the reinforcement of the idea that women are obsessed with romance. While Smedley’s hobbies involve action, Magnolia’s only listed hobby is daydreaming about a man (and his cereal). And her greatest adventure? Why, almost getting married, of course. Yes, the most amazing adventure of her life is something she failed at, but since it held out at least the possibility of romance, and she’s female, it was still the highlight of her life.

Ah, gender stereotypes! Fun for kids of all ages!

Wandering around Las Vegas, Gwen and I happened upon a High School Musical-themed book complete with a little gadget that allows small children (3+) to practice texting.  The gadget allows children to press 1, 2, or 3 to send a pre-fabricated message to High School Musical characters, who send pre-fabricated messages back, and so on.

Kids, of course, like to do what they see adults doing.  That’s why they like getting play vacuums and lawn mowers.  It’s not inherently fun, it’s just fun to copy.  So it makes sense that, in a world where adults text, little kids would want to text too.

Just like play vacuums and lawn mowers, however, a toy phone to text on is training children how to be adults or, in this instance, teenage girls; ones who flirt with boys, spend a lot of time socializing on their cell phones, and use text-speak (the book includes a lingo dictionary explaining, for example, that LOL means “Laugh Out Loud” and WAZ UP means “What’s up?”).

Front:

Back:

Thanks to Jordan G. for help on this one.

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.

Michaela sent in two Australian ads for Selleys sealants. Both target men and caution them about the consequences of neglecting home maintenance projects:

So men who fail to do the type of housework that is consistent with ideals of masculinity — fixing things — face threats to other areas of masculinity as well, since, of course, women (who cannot, themselves, caulk a shower, obviously) will be unable to resist a hot dude who can (and will) fix stuff, thus proving himself to be the ideal man. Who doesn’t love emasculation as a marketing tool?