Cross-posted at Scientopia.
fds sent us a link to a set of “extreme” ads. One of them was an Italian ad designed to draw attention to the seriousness of child sexual abuse. I’ve placed it after the jump because it is VERY disconcerting. My comments may be quite provocative as well.
I don’t play video games. The few times I have played a game it involved a furry animal working his way through some kind of tropical forest and the most violent it got was when he hit a villainous turtle on the head with a coconut. So, I am not familiar with Duke Nukem.
Of course, one Google search tells me he is a supremely popular, freakishly over-muscled, machine gun-wielding, hyper-aggressive action “hero” who is described in the Wikipedia entry as “frequently politically incorrect.” His character profile also claims that when he was first introduced, he was a CIA operative hired to save Earth from Dr. Proton. But the current marketing materials make clear what the really important aspects of the game are. Exhibit A is this ad, which greeted me as I came out of the subway this morning:
Duke Nukem is sitting on a throne while two women in schoolgirl outfits sit at his feet. The caption leaves no doubt about the main attractions: “This game has bazookas. Both types.”
The game’s website presents a guy who looks intensely devoted to his steroid regimen, has a penchant for unloading 50 rounds into anything with tentacles, and who appears to live in a post-apocalyptic land which is somehow still able to generously supply women with fetish outfits, bikinis, and manicures. In a video promo for the game on YouTube there are scenes of Duke on a shooting rampage interspersed with what appears to be him walking into a room and seeing a switched-on vibrator skidding around the room. He then encounters two women (the Holsom Twins, Mary and Kate) in schoolgirl outfits who drop their weapons to touch and caress each other in sexually suggestive ways. Duke is watching this while pointing a gun at them, saying, “allll right, time for my reward” (NSFW due to images and language):
Unfortunately for the twins, they later have sex with an alien and get themselves into trouble (thanks to Michael R. for this clip; also NSFW):
Many other reviews of Duke Nukem have also pointed out its violent sexual imagery and encouragement of sexually violent behavior towards women. Just to tally up, we have:
People learn by watching. This can be good and bad. It can make us more accepting of others’ opinions and outlooks, and it can also desensitize and normalize harmful opinions and behaviors. In regards to Duke, the latter is where the risk lies — the more one sees images like those presented by Duke Nukem, the more likely they are to be seen as what is acceptable and usual. Normalizing harmful, degrading, and insulting stereotypes of and behavior toward women seems like a high price to pay for a video game’s success.
———————-
Larkin Callaghan is a doctoral student at Columbia University studying health behavior and education. She is particularly concerned with gender disparities in access to healthcare and prevention services, and has done research on adolescent female sexual health, how social media operate as an educational platform, and differences by gender in the effectiveness of brief health interventions. You can follow her on Twitter, Tumblr, and at her blog.
Last week I went to see the last Harry Potter movie. I was a bit startled that the pre-movie commercials included this ad (thanks to Melissa H.-J., Tom Megginson, and carlafrantastic for the link!):
I was startled both because I hadn’t expected a Summer’s Eve ad at a Harry Potter showing (the 14-year-old boy I had taken with me seemed to desperately wish he could disapparate on out of there) and by the idea that the most powerful thing in the entire world is women’s vaginas — or, as Melissa points out, men’s desperate desire to get access to them through violence toward one another, with women passively waiting around to see who wins so they know who to have sex with.
And as Tom (who blogs at Work that Matters) says, if someone is going to show their vagina “a little love,” perhaps they would best do so by avoiding irritating, unnecessary products that can actually exacerbate problems like yeast infections.
Summer’s Eve also released several more “Hail to the V” ads (all posted at Gawker), sent in by Leila R., Jamie D., Joel T., YetAnotherGirl, Maeghan D., and Finette. The ads inform women that they need to carry wipes for their genitals with them at all times, because you need to clean yourself down there multiple times a day to avoid being gross; Summer’s Eve helpfully created ads targeting different ethnic groups to be sure everyone understands how important this issue is:
Here’s the African-American version:
[Video removed]
This Latina version:
[Video removed]
And the White version:
[Video removed]
Vertical smile? Are they serious with this? And as Finette says, “They’ve managed to combine ‘less than fresh down there’ vagina-shaming [omg, what subtle hints has your vagina been trying to get your attention with?!] with ethnic stereotypes! Awesome!”
UPDATE: After a lot of criticism, Summer’s Eve has pulled the ads and seems to have gotten them removed from YouTube, so none of the videos we initially posted are available any more. However, Laura S. found a clip from TYT Network discussing the ad campaign, so you can get an idea of what they were like. Thanks, Laura!
Rising Immigration and Intermarriage
Today we see both increased immigration and rising rates of intermarriage. In 1960, less than 1% of U.S. marriages were interracial, but by 2008, this figure rose to 7.6%, meaning that 1 out of every 13 U.S. marriages was interracial. If we look at only new marriages that took place in 2008, the figure rises to 14.6%, translating to 1 out of every 7 American marriages.
The rising trend in intermarriage has resulted in a growing multiracial population. In 2010, 2.9% of Americans identified as multiracial. Demographers project that the multiracial population will continue to grow so that by 2050, 1 in 5 Americans could claim a multiracial background, and by 2100, the ratio could soar to 1 in three.
At first glance, these trends appear to signal that we’re moving into a “post-racial” era, in which race is declining in significance for all Americans. However, if we take a closer look at these trends, we find that they mask vast inter-group differences.
For instance, Asians and Latinos intermarry at much higher rates than blacks. About 30% of Asian and Latino marriages are interracial, but the corresponding figure for blacks is only 17%. However, if we include only U.S.-born Asians and Latinos, we find that intermarriage rates are much higher. Nearly, three-quarters (72%) of married, U.S.-born Asians, and over half (52%) of U.S.-born Latinos are interracially married, and most often, the intermarriage is with a white partner. While the intermarriage rate for blacks has risen steadily in the past five decades, it is still far below that of Asians and Latinos, especially those born in the United States.
The pattern of multiracial identification is similar to that of intermarriage: Asians and Latinos report much higher rates of multiracial identification than blacks. In 2010, 15% of Asians and 12% of Latinos reported a multiracial identification. The corresponding figure for blacks is only 7 percent. Although the rate of multiracial reporting among blacks has risen since 2000, it increased from a very small base of only 4.2 percent.
The U.S. Census estimates that about 75-90% of black Americans are ancestrally multiracial, so it is perplexing that only 7% choose to identify as such. Clearly, genealogy alone does not dictate racial identification. Given that the “one-drop rule” of hypodescent* is no longer legally codified, why does the rate of multiracial reporting among blacks remain relatively low?
Patterns in Racial/Ethnic Identity
These are some of the vexing questions that we tackle in our book, The Diversity Paradox, drawing on analyses of 2000 Census data, 2007-2008 American Community Survey, as well as 82 in-depth interviews: 46 with multiracial adults and 36 with interracial couples with children.
Turning to the in-depth interviews with the interracial couples, we found that while all acknowledged their children’s multiracial or multiethnic backgrounds, the meaning of multiraciality differs remarkably for the children of Asian-white and Latino-white couples on the one hand, and the children of black-white couples on the other. For the Asian-white and Latino-white couples, they may go to great lengths to maintain distinctive elements of their Asian or Latino ethnic and cultural backgrounds, but they believe that as their children grow up, they will simply identify, and be identified as “American” or as “white,” using these terms interchangeably, and consequently conflating a national origin identity with a racial identity.
The Asian-white and Latino-white respondents also revealed that they can turn their ethnicities on and off whenever they choose, and, importantly, their choices are not contested by others. Our interview data reveal that the Asian and Latino ethnicities for multiracial Americans are what Herbert Gans and Mary Waters would describe as “symbolic”—meaning that they are voluntary, optional, and costless, as European ethnicity is for white Americans.
By contrast, none of the black-white couples identified their children as just white or American, nor did they claim that their children identify as such. While these couples recognize and celebrate the racial mixture of their children’s backgrounds, they unequivocally identify their children as black. When we asked why, they pointed out that nobody would take them seriously if they tried to identify their children as white, reflecting the constraints that black interracial couples feel when identifying their children. Moreover, black interracial couples do not identify their children as simply “American” because as native-born Americans, they feel that American is an implicit part of their identity.
The legacy of the one-drop-rule remains culturally intact, explaining why 75-90% of black Americans are ancestrally multiracial, yet only 7% choose to identify as such. It also explains why we, as Americans, are so attuned to identifying black ancestry in a way that we are not similarly attuned to identifying and constraining Asian and Latino ancestries.
On this note, it is also critical to underscore that a black racial identification also reflects agency and choice on the part of interracial couples and multiracial blacks. Given the legacy behind the one-drop rule and the meaning and consequences behind the historical practice of “passing as white,” choosing to identify one’s children as white may not only signify a rejection of the black community, but also a desire to be accepted by a group that has legally excluded and oppressed them in the past, a point underscored by Randall Kennedy.
Black Exceptionalism
But regardless of choice or constraint, the patterns of intermarriage and multiracial identification point to a pattern of “black exceptionalism.” Why does black exceptionalism persist, even amidst the country’s new racial/ethnic diversity? It persists because the legacy of slavery and the legacy of immigration are two competing yet strangely symbiotic legacies on which the United States was founded. If immigration represents the optimistic side of the country’s past and future, slavery and its aftermath is an indelible stain in our nation’s collective memory. The desire to overlook the legacy and slavery becomes a reason to reinforce the country’s immigrant origins.
That Asians and Latinos are largely immigrants (or the children of immigrants) means that their understanding of race and the color line are born out of an entirely different experience and narrative than that of African Americans. Hence, despite the increased diversity, race is not declining in significance, and we are far from a “post-racial” society. That we continue to find a pattern of black exceptionalism—even amidst the country’s new racial/ethnic diversity—points to the paradox of diversity in the 21st century.
——————-
* The one-drop rule was first implemented during the era of slavery so that any children born to a white male slaver owner and a black female slave would be legally identified as black, and, as a result, have no rights to property and other wealth holdings of their white father.
———————
Jennifer Lee is a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in intersection of immigration and race and ethnicity. She wrote, with Frank Bean, a book called The Diversity Paradox, that examines patterns of intermarriage and multiracial identification among Asians, Latinos, and African Americans. Lee wrote the following analysis of her research for Russell Sage. And we’re happy to post it here.
I traveled to Silsbee, Texas five times in the past six months, with conservative blogger Brandon Darby, to investigate why, despite the volume of evidence, a grand jury did not indict two football players accused of raping a high school cheerleader (who was later kicked off the squad for refusing to cheer for one of them). The case is a troubling example of what many victims experience when they dare to report their rape and proceed with a prosecution. In this post, I’d like to highlight the community reaction.
Hillaire was found half-clothed and crying under the pool table, saying she’d been raped. She reported that Rakheem Bolton, a star high school football player, raped her while another football player, Christian Rountree, held her down. Three students outside the room heard her cries of “stop” and broke through the door, only to find that three of the four athletes in the room had fled out the window, breaking it in the process.
As Bolton ran off, Stacy Riley, the homeowner, heard him yell:
I didn’t rape no white girl. I wouldn’t use anyone else’s dick to fuck her. I didn’t put my dick up inside her. I don’t know if she has AIDS. I don’t even know that girl.
Bolton would later admit to penetrating Hillaire.
This was not a he said/she said situation and you can read the evidence in more detail in the full report at my blog. Suffice to say: Witness statements from the police report confirm that Hillaire was raped. An inexperienced drinker, Hillaire was exceedingly intoxicated after drinking a beer and six shots and could not legally consent. Before her friends cut her off, Hillaire made out with a guy in the living room and was egged on to kiss a female friend by a group of ogling young men. Bolton and his friends arrived late to the party, and, seeing an intoxicated and flirtatious Hillaire, isolated her in the pool room.
Hillaire spent the early morning hours after the rape at the police station and at a nearby clinic. Of the four guys in the room, Bolton and Rountree were charged with “child sexual assault” (because Hillaire was a minor and they were “of age”) which carries a prison term of two to twenty years.
Hillaire assumed this crime would be fairly prosecuted. Instead, she faced intense mistreatment from her peers, many residents of Silsbee, school officials, public officials prosecuting the case, and the local press. When she returned to school she faced a chilly environment from her peers and school administrators. School officials urged her to take a low profile, and the cheer squad wanted Hillaire to skip homecoming because, according to a fellow cheerleader, “Someone from another city had called and threatened her. If she cheered at another game, they were going to shoot her.” Hillaire went anyway, and some students painted Bolton’s and Rountree’s jersey numbers on their faces to protest their removal from the football team. Students also chanted “free tree” (referring to Rountree) at the homecoming bonfire within earshot of Hillaire.
Many in Silsbee bought the “slut” defense – that Hillaire was to blame for what happened that night because she made out with several people at the party. Describing Hillaire’s sexual behavior at the party, Sarah [name changed], a fellow student and cheerleader, told me that she believe Hillaire was raped and that “a majority of the school felt this way.” Hillaire was called a “slut” several times to her face.
An anonymous letter to Hillaire’s family laid bare the “slut” defense that so many in Silsbee seem to hold:
These boys are nice respectable boys and you can’t tell me that there were no other girls that wanted to be with them so they raped your daughter (please). Just think how you have ruined these children [sic] lives and your daughter gets to carry on and be a cheerleader after drinkingherself and going against your family values… This makes your daughter [sic] reputation look very bad and if you think people will forget, remember we live in Silsbee. Someone will always remember! (Don’t think she won’t be talked about).
A toddler approached Hillaire at a town parade shortly after the rape and called her a “bitch.”
Hillaire’s status as a popular cheerleader at the high school couldn’t compete with the popularity of high school sports that grants the best male players special privileges. The high school stadium seats 7,000—equal to the town’s population—and it’s full on game days. Celebrating high school sports is ingrained in Southeast Texas cultures, so it’s no wonder that many in Silsbee rallied behind Bolton and Rountree. A common argument, articulated to me by one student, is that Bolton wouldn’t rape anyone because “he was popular. A lot of girls wanted to be with him.”
Bolton and Rountree did not receive the same chilly treatment as Hillaire. In a taped interview with The Silsbee Bee, Rountree’s mother thanked “all the members of the Silsbee community that have supported us; all the love and prayers that have been sent out. We’ve had a tremendous, just a tremendous outpouring of support and we just appreciate everyone and thank you for believing in these boys.”
[wpvideo eWIYrDXp]
The local paper, The Silsbee Bee, favorably covered the accused, even publishing an article titled, “Sexual Assault Prosecutions Cost County Nearly $20,000.” It was hard to miss the implication that this was money ill spent.
Later the editor of the Silsbee Bee would resign.
In many ways Hillaire was the perfect victim. She’s pretty, white, and underage; a cheerleader in a football-loving town. She went to the police and the health clinic immediately after her assault. In addition to the physical evidence that was collected, she brought into court the testimony of witnesses and a threat from her rapist. Detective Dennis Hughes, the officer assigned to the case, told Hillaire’s father that, given his four decades of police experience, “This is a slam dunk case. There’s more evidence than we see in most sexual assault cases, and we’ve got lots of witnesses.”
Still, despite all of this, the community turned against her. It’s no wonder that rape victims are reluctant to report their assaults; how much evidence, and how much privilege, does one need to get justice? Three months after the rape, a grand jury dismissed the case. Later Bolton would plea guilty to assault, a misdemeanor.
——————
For more — including ways to help Hillaire and protest her treatment, as well as details about the role of the NAACP and highly suspicious ties between Bolton’s family, the police, and the district attorney – see the unabridged reporting on this story here.
In this 10-minute video, Cindy Gallop argues that young men are getting a false sex education from pornography. The average age that kids first view porn is 11-years-old and, by the time that boys are men, they have learned to imitate the kind of sex that they see in pornography. She argues that this effect — the way that porn is shaping our actual sexual behavior — is the greatest impact of technology on human behavior. Period.
Not opposed to porn, Gallop nevertheless believes that we need a counterpoint to porn so that we get a more diverse set of messages about sexuality (not dissimilar to the argument I make about hook up culture).
In service of her message, Gallop also has a TED Talk, a short book, and a website, Make Love Not Porn, with some great content.
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 Caroline Heldman’s Blog.
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” the third installment in this $1.5 billion franchise that just set a new record for a Fourth of July weekend opening, follows what has become a Hollywood action movie tradition of virtually erasing women, despite the fact that women buy 55% of movie tickets and market research shows that films with female protagonists or prominent female characters in ensemble casts garner similar box office numbers to movies featuring men.
Only two featured characters in the large ensemble Transformers cast are women, and none of the Transformers (alien robots, for the uninitiated) are female. And the two female humans consist of an unmitigated sexual object and a caricatured mockery of female leadership.
Let’s start with “the object,” Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), the one-dimensional, highly sexualized damsel-in-distress girlfriend of protagonist Sam Wikwiki (Shia LaBouef). Carly wears stiletto heels, even when running from murderous machines (except when the filmmakers slip up and her flats are visible), and she is pristine in her white jacket after an hour-long battle that leaves the men filthy.
The movie opens with a tight shot of Carly’s nearly bare ass as she walks up the stairs:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC32Bw9uYho]
In a later scene, Carly is reduced to an object as her boss (Patrick Demsey) compares her to an automobile in a conversation with Sam:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2WI7f9eeUM]
And in case the audience doesn’t know to leer at Carly, they get constant instruction from a duo of small robots that look up her skirt and Sam’s boss (John Malkovich) who cocks his head to stare at her ass:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byC8cmWg6K8]
Sam’s “friend,” Agent Simmons (John Turturro), also ogles Carly and suggests she be frisked against her will:
[wpvideo ojm7ZvjZ]
In a disturbing scene of sexualized violence, Carly’s (robot) car sprouts “arms” and threatens to violate her:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-yEghxhpMk]
Normalization of female objectification causes girls/women to think of themselves as objects, which has been linked to higher rates of depression and eating disorders, compromised cognitive and sexual function, decreased self-esteem, and decreased personal and political efficacy. Ubiquitous female sexual objectification also harms men by increasing men’s body consciousness, and causes both men and women to be less concerned about pain experienced by sex objects.
Transformers 3 is pitched as a “family movie” and the film studio carefully disguises it as such with misleading movie trailers showing a story about kid’s toys. (Okay, I still have an Optimus Prime robot…) Young kids were abundant at both screenings I attended, taking in the images with little ability to filter the message.
************
It would have been easy for Michael Bay to positively present the second female character, Director of National Intelligence Charlotte Mearing (Frances McDormand). Instead, she is a tool to openly mock female leadership and promote female competition.
McDormand does her best to breathe some realism into Director Mearing, but the script calls for a caricature with “masculine” leadership traits – arrogance, assertiveness, stubborness, etc. – who is ultimately “put in her place” at the end of the movie with a forced kiss. Women continue to be vastly under-represented in positions of corporate and political leadership, partially due to the double-bind of women’s leadership where, in order to be considered acceptable leaders, women have to project a “masculine” image for which they are then criticized.
Director Mearing’s authority is challenged by virtually everyone she encounters in a way that simply wouldn’t make sense for a male character in her position. Sam openly challenges her in this scene:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYahdFFjZXk]
Director Mearing’s authority evaporates when Agent Simmons comments, “moving up in the world, and your booty looks excellent”:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb4m0JuROnU]
Director Mearing is even challenged by a transformer. [SPOILER ALERT: Director Mearing is the only one to challenge this transformer’s intentions, and she gets no credit when it turns out she was right.]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEz8DOa9I78]
This Transformer again puts her in her place with the dual meaning of “I am a prime. I do not take orders from you”:
[wpvideo EDGYfp2T]
Director Mearing also has a running theme of not wanting to be called “ma’am.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srsWDT6w8HI]
The “ma’am” theme doesn’t readily make sense since Director Mearing isn’t young and doesn’t appear to be trying to look young. But it does make sense when viewed through the lens of director Michael Bay intentionally mocking women’s leadership. Remember the flap when Senator Barbara Boxer at a hearing requested that a general use her professional title instead of “ma’am”?:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0CprVYsG0k]
The “ma’am” theme resurfaces in a particularly troubling scene where Director Mearing meets with Sam and Carly, who, in good double-bind fashion, challenges whether she is even a woman:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIZOWPaoiDk]
Bay does include a few minor female characters with lines – Sam’s mother, the nagging mother/wife; Director Mearing’s subservient Asian assistant; a scene with both the “Olga” and “Petra” Russian woman stereotypes; and a Latina with a bare midriff who has a “Latin meltdown”:
[wpvideo pLgrLBNm]
If Michael Bay can buy off the most accomplished actors and even musician/social activist Bono to participate in such harmful media, what hope is there in the war that pits girls/women (the Autobots) against unrepentantly sexist movies makers (the Deceptacons)?
Over the past few months, a number of readers have sent in examples of college-related advertising with a distinctly sexual theme. There’s something interesting here. College pursuit, preparation, and achievement are being conflated with sexual prowess (the size of one’s dick, no less). I suppose it was never was really about smarts. Still, the overt conflation of (masculine) sexual superiority with academic achievement seems new to me. Am I wrong?
Scott M. and Ed A-N. sent in which penis size is used as a proxy for preparedness for the LSAT:
Stephanie A. sent in this ad for MyEdu, a college management site (whatever that is) that makes an obvious reference to Viagra (the little blue pill that makes for not-so-little erections):
Last but not least, Becky E. and Monica Y. sent in this facebook ad encouraging women to apply to a school loan by suggesting that very-sexy-ladies do the same:
See also our post: using sex to sell the most unlikely things (like organ donation!).
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.
