gender

This campaign ad from 1988 is part of the larger politicization of the black underclass. “Willie Horton” and the “welfare queen” both emerged as symbols during this period with which to demonize poor blacks for political clout. Ultimately, using the name Willie Horton became a powerful tool to criticize politicians for being weak on crime and not protecting the innocent white population from the guilty black population.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y[/youtube]

Ultimately, increasing toughness of the criminal justice system led to a situation, today, where about 1/2 of all black men are in the prison system. See an interesting entry on Willie Horton on wikipedia here.

This website created by the American Anthropological Association is a great way to explore the social construction of race. There’s an awesome timeline that traces political and scientific trends where you can click on any part of it and get more information. It’s a great resource.It also includes this great 7 minute video called “A Girl Like Me”:

I’d actually love to get some feedback on this video. I really like it, but last time I showed it (in a social psychology portion of a Race and Ethnicity course), the class had a hard time recovering. It was depressing and I wasn’t very successful in DOING something SOCIOLOGICAL with it. Any ideas?

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.

Yan sent me this link to the Brigham Young University dress code. Here are some examples:

One of the things I think is really interesting is how aggressively multicultural the posters are. The Mormon church did not allow black men to be priests (and therefore they could not ascend to the highest level of heaven) until 1978.

Thanks Yan!

Borrowed from Grad Student Madness.

Discussion of gender bending and transgender children on The View:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78ND3vqPz90[/youtube] 

Text:

YOUR DAD WAS NOT A METROSEXUAL. H didn’t do pilates. Moisturize. Or drink pink cocktails. Your Dad drank whisky cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. Served in a rocks glass. They tasted good. They were effortless. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT.

Toph sent in another Canadian Club ad that makes it clear that it’s awesome if your dad was a player:

Text:

Your Mom wasn’t your Dad’s first.  He went out.  He got two numbers in the same night.  He drank cocktails.  but they were whisky cocktails.  Made with Canadian Club.  Served in a rocks glass.  They tasted good.  They were effortless.

I’m going to use this to talk about the sexual double standard–try to imagine the same ad, but saying “Your dad wasn’t your mom’s first” with pictures of her with several different men. I don’t think the impression would be the same.

Thanks, Toph!

NEW: Outdoor version of “Your Dad had a van for a reason.”

This is an image that graces the cover of a new documentary about intersex individuals called Black and White.

In general, though, I think it’s a really powerful image that refuses to accept that women who are not young, with a teenage girl’s body, and a submissive attitude are somehow offensive.

Courtesy of feministing.com and the SWS listserv.

These are pretty disturbing for a number of reasons. Maybe it is just my wish that they aren’t real, but I’ m skeptical about whether they really exist. They don’t appear to be photoshopped, but even though they’re linked all over the internet, I couldn’t find the actual place/s that sell them. And while I was searching around I found this mouse pad. Note that the size of the mini skirt is really very disturbingly small.

And I also found a lot of people who want to buy that pencil sharpener. And one person who thinks that this knife holder is “far more offensive” than the pencil sharpener.

What do you think? Oh, and the knife holder is available multiple places including here.