gender

A new example prompts us to re-post this fun one from 2010.

We’ve posted in the past about the way in which “male” is often taken to be the default or neutral category, with “female” a notable, marked, non-default one. For instance, the Body Worlds exhibit, “regular” t-shirts are men’s, Best Buy assumes customers are male, stick figures on signs are generally male, and default avatars tend to be male.

We’ve collected several more examples of the tendency to present men as the norm, while women are a marked, non-default category. @LydNicholas tweeted us this example of a LEGO product advertised on their website.  Notice that the blue version is a LEGO Time-Teach Minifigure Watch and Clock, while the pink version specifies that it’s for girls:

Jessica J. noticed that Wal-Mart Target helpfully lets you know where to find both neutral, plain old deodorant and women’s deodorant:

Jane G. sent us this photo of t-ball sets, one for girls and the other with no sex specified:

Aline, in Brazil, found these two wall painting kits.  One is just a painting kit and the other is specifically “for women” (“para mulheres”).  The latter, she said, claims to be a special offer, but is actually about $2 U.S. dollars more.

Eric Stoller pointed out that ESPN differentiates between college basketball and “women’s” basketball:

Lindsay H. pointed out that when you go to the U.S. Post Office’s website to forward your mail, it offers you the chance to subscribe to magazines. Those aimed at women (Cosmopolitan, First for Women, etc.) are in the category “Women,” while equivalent magazines for men (Esquire, Maxim) are not in a category titled “Men” but, rather, “Lifestyle”:

And Jane V.S. noticed that REI has various types of marked, “non-standard” sleeping bags, including those for tall people and women:

Renée Y. sent along another example, bike helmets:

 Jessica B. spotted this pair of sibling outfits, coming in “Awesome Girl” and “Awesome Kid”:

E.W. searched Google for men’s specific road bikes and Google asked, “Don’t you mean women’s specific road bikes”?  Because there are road bikes for people and road bikes for women.

Ann C. sent a screenshot of bubblebox, a site for children’s games.  Notice that along the top there are seven options.  The last is “girls,” suggesting that all the rest are for boys.

So, there you have it.  In this world, all too often, there are people and there are women and girls.

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

Originally posted in 2010. Re-posted in honor of the holiday.

In the U.S., Valentine’s Day is pretty much for women. While women do give Valentine’s gifts to male partners, the emphasis among adults is on men giving items to women: flowers, candy, cards, taking them out to dinner, and so on. In many cases women aren’t expected to reciprocate, or can give a less expensive/significant present, and I doubt many give flowers or chocolate in heart-shaped boxes.

In Japan, however, the roles are reversed: women give chocolates to men, as well as often buying gifts and providing meals. It apparently isn’t entirely clear how this tradition emerged.

There are two types of chocolates that women give men. Giri-choco, or “obligation chocolate,” is relatively cheap and is what you give to coworkers and the like. Honmei-choco is higher-quality chocolate reserved for men a woman is close to–partners or perhaps a family member. Some women choose to make their own honmei.

Men aren’t off the hook, however. A month later, on March 14th, is White Day, a day when men give candy and other gifts to women. According to wikipedia, these gifts are supposed to be more expensive than what the men received on Valentine’s Day.

A lot of websites say that White Day was invented by a marshmallow company in the ’60s as a way to increase sales, but I can’t find any reliable source for this explanation.

It’s a good example of the social construction of holidays and food. In the U.S., chocolate is highly feminized–we think of it as a food that women particularly like, and ads about chocolate, especially fancy chocolates, are usually aimed at women (or men buying for them). Valentine’s Day and big heart-shaped boxes with large bows on them are likewise feminized. Valentine’s Day is, primarily, a day when men are expected to show their affection for women through the purchase of these things (and, as a side note, the chocolate that comes in those heart-shaped boxes is often pretty unappealing). Insofar as women reciprocate with gifts for men, they’re unlikely to come in a similar heart-shaped box. When I brought up this possibility to my students, they said that would be really unusual and the male recipient would probably feel strange about it.

In Japan, clearly chocolates for Valentine’s Day (even expensive, fancy chocolate), heart-shaped boxes, and big bows are considered appropriate gifts for men. It makes it clear how our association of chocolate with women is culturally specific.

Of course, the fact that on White Day men are supposed to give women more expensive gifts than they received indicates that, while Valentine’s Day specifically is for men, the expectation is that overall, the balance of gift-giving requires men to show more affection-via-spending, similar to U.S. expectations surrounding the holiday.

Other posts: the social construction of chocolate and marketing chocolate to men.

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

Originally posted in 2011. Re-posted in honor of the holiday.

I recently posted a vintage cartoon featuring men showering. Today, in the context of “don’t drop the soap” jokes, it seems obviously homo-erotic (or -threatening).   At the time, however, it likely didn’t because homosexuality didn’t hold such a central place in our collective imagination.

Dmitriy T.M. sent along a series of vintage Valentine’s Day cards that, similarly, have a different effect given our contemporary cultural sensibilities. After decades of efforts to draw attention to and problematize men’s violence against women, these cards seem misguided at best:

Cards borrowed from Funny or Die and Buzzfeed.

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.

Over at Feministing, Maya Dusenbery made a great observation about the conservative response to Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime show.  Conservatives widely criticized her for sexually objectifying herself.  She made her “sex appeal the main attraction,” said one commentator, who said that Beyoncé “humping the stage and flashing her lady bits to the camera” made her “sad.” Another said that her performance was “tasteless and unedifying.”

Dusenbery notes that the definition of sexual objectification is the reduction of a person to their sex appeal only.  And, ironically, this is what the conservative commentators did to Beyoncé, not something she did to herself.  Sexual objectification is not found in a person’s clothing choices or dance moves; instead:

[Objectification is] watching Beyoncé’s show — where she demonstrated enormous professional skill by singing live, with an awesome all-women band I might add, while dancing her ass off in front of millions of people — and not being able to see anything besides her sexy outfit.

Indeed, these conservative commentators are arguing that Beyoncé’s talent can only be fully be appreciated in the absence of sex appeal (whatever that might look like).  And that is the problem. Dusenbery continues:

These commentators reflect a “culture in which too many people seem to find it difficult to understand that it is possible to simultaneously find a woman sexually attractive and treat her like a full human being deserving of basic respect.”

Right on.  To me, Beyoncé’s performance — along with those of her band mates and fellow dancers and singers — embodied strength and confidence; the pleasure of being comfortable in one’s own skin and the ability to use your body to tell a story; and the power that comes from being admired for the talents you’ve worked so hard to cultivate.  I don’t see how you could watch this and only see a sexual object:

Via Racialicious.

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.

This post originally appeared in 2011.  Revised and re-posted in honor of Mardi Gras.

If you attend a Mardi Gras parade this year, you’ll likely notice that the float riders will be all-White or all-Black and all-female or all-male.  In fact, the majority of krewes — clubs that sponsor parades and other festivities — are race- and gender-segregated.  This is not de facto, but according to official krewe policy. And it remains legal to discrimate along these lines.  How did this happen?

According to Kevin Fox Gotham‘s book, Authentic New Orleans, Mardi Gras was transformed from an unorganized local festival to a rationalized tourist attraction by white elites. The first organized parade occurred in 1857 and was organized by the Mystick Krewe of Comus, several dozen social elites. This krewe, like many that followed, was race, gender, and class specific. Only white males who could afford membership in the krewe (essentially a social club) could participate.

Krewe of Comus (1867):

White only parades were part of a strategy to make New Orleans a tourist destination for white travelers. Unlike today, when New Orleans capitalizes on its multicultural heritage, for a very long time New Orleans tried to suppress popular knowledge of its non-white population, disinvested in that population, and drove them out of touristy areas.

It was not until 1991 that the City Council proposed banning racial segregation of the krewes and the Council voted unanimously to make bias illegal. Krewes that refused to integrate (in principle, if not in reality) would be denied “city services and parade permits, and would require jail time and fines” (p. 182). Mayor Sidney Barthelemy said:

We close off streets. We deny the taxpayer the right to drive down the street to give a segregated club the opportunity to parade. Now that’s unbelievable in 1991.

The decision brought simmering racial tension to a boil. Two krewes, the Krewe of Comus and the Knights of Momus, cancelled their parades in 1992 rather than comply with the new law. Another, the Krewe of Proteus, canceled the following year. An African American krewe, the Krewe of Zulu, mocked the decisions of the all-white krewes in 1992.

Ultimately the anti-bias law came under fire from all-female krewes such as Krewes of Isis. Wanting to preserve their exclusive membership, Iris and Venus “opposed any discrimination ordinance because they recognized that it would undermine their power to exclude men” (p. 185).

In the end:

…the City Council voted to remove the jail sentence provisions in the ordinance and shifted the burden of proof onto individuals who maintained that they had been discriminated against if they attempted to join a krewe (p. 185).

But even this did not hold. Courts decided that the anti-bias laws violated laws of free association and, when the case came before the Supreme Court, they declined to revisit it. So, race and gender segregation of krewes remains legal.

Today, krewes segregated by race and gender still persist (and people without means are excluded from krewes generally, as they are very expensive), though newly formed krewes are often integrated on both axes, including Harry Connick Jr.’s Krewe of Orpheus.

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.

Last month the New York Post ran with this unflattering cover photo of Hillary Clinton responding strongly to congressional questioning and the tagline “No Wonder Bill’s Afraid.”

The not-so-subtle sexist messages include:

• Even if you’re secretary of state in the most powerful country in the world, it’s not alright to get angry if you’re a woman;
• when a powerful woman raises her voice to make a point, she is out of control — “exploding with rage”;
• and when a man is married to a powerful woman, even a man who used to lead the free world, he is automatically cowed by her.

Despite rapid gains in women’s political and corporate leadership since the 1970s, powerful women are still held to the damaging double-bind of appearing “properly” masculine in order to appear
leaderly and “properly” feminine so as to not violate social expectations.

Caroline Heldman is a professor of politics at Occidental College. You can follow her at her blog and on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

Why do women wear high heels?  Because men did.

Men were the first sex to don the shoe. They were adopted by the European aristocracy of the 1600s as a signal of status.  The logic was: only someone who didn’t have to work could possibly go around in such impractical footwear.  (Interestingly, this was the same logic that encouraged footbinding in China.)

Women started wearing heels as a way of trying to appropriate masculine power.  In the BBC article on the topic, Elizabeth Semmelhack, who curates a shoe museum, explains:

In the 1630s you had women cutting their hair, adding epaulettes to their outfits…

They would smoke pipes, they would wear hats that were very masculine. And this is why women adopted the heel — it was in an effort to masculinise their outfits.

The lower classes also began to wear high heels, as fashions typically filter down from elite.

How did the elite respond to imitation from “lesser” people: women and workers?  First, the heels worn by the elite became increasingly high in order to maintain upper class distinction.  And, second, heels were differentiated into two types: fat and skinny. Fat heels were for men, skinny for women.

This is a beautiful illustration of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of class distinction.  Bourdieu argued that aesthetic choices function as markers of class difference.  Accordingly, the elite will take action to present themselves differently than non-elites, choosing different clothing, food, decor, etc.  Expensive prices help keep certain things the province of elites, allowing them to signify their power; but imitation is inevitable.  Once something no longer effectively differentiates the rich from the rest, the rich will drop it.  This, I argue elsewhere, is why some people care about counterfeit purses (because it’s not about the quality, it’s about the distinction).

Eventually men quit wearing heels because their association with women tainted their power as a status symbol for men.  (This, by the way, is exactly what happened with cheerleading, originally exclusively for men).  With the Enlightenment, which emphasized rationality (i.e., practical footwear), everyone quit wearing high heels.

What brought heels back for women? Pornography.  Mid-nineteenth century pornographers began posing female nudes in high heels, and the rest is history.

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.

The Ethical Adman’s Tom Meggison sent along a new ad campaign by Molson.  The campaign coins the word “guyet,” a supposedly masculine alternative to “diet.”

If dieting is working out in order to be thin, then guyeting is “working out to justify eating the foods you love… Bacon, nachos, and burgers.”

There’s a very simple thing going on here: things associated with women are NOT-FOR-MEN, so anything that rings feminine must be covered in bacon, dipped in beer batter, and fried masculinized. See, for lots of examples, our Pinterest page on the phenomenon with almost 100 examples.

Importantly, this isn’t just about maintaining a strong distinction between men and women, it’s about maintaining gender inequality.  We disparage and demean femininity, which is why men want to avoid it.  Listen to the tone of voice that the narrator uses when saying the word “diet” at 21 seconds:

Dieting is stupid ’cause girls and everything associated with girls is stupid.  Guyeting is awesome ’cause guys are awesome.

The reverse doesn’t apply. Women who do things men like to do — drink whiskey, play sports, become surgeons, have dogs, etc — somehow rise in our esteem.  Men’s worth, in contrast, is harmed by their association with femininity.  This is a layer of gender inequality above and beyond sexism, the privileging of men over women; it’s androcentrism, the privileging of the masculine over the feminine.  Since women are required to do femininity, it means being required to do trivial, demeaned, and disparaged things.  Meanwhile, men have to come up with stupid excuses for participating in basic healthy activities like going for a jog.

More posts on androcentrism: “woman” as an insult, being a girl is degrading, making it manly: how to sell a car, good god don’t let men have long hair, don’t forget to hug like a dude, saving men from their (feminine) selves, men must eschew femininity, not impressed with Buzz Lightyear commercial, dinosaurs can’t be for girls, and sissy men are so uncool.

UPDATE: Comments closed.

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.