sexual orientation

Elizabeth T., my awesome former student, asked us to write about Taylor Lautner’s Rolling Stone cover.

Of course, everyone’s been talking about  It’s either “oh he’s so hot!” or “he’s just seventeen! child pornography!”  But what I think is hilarious is the fact that they had to have him posing with a football.

You see, in this photograph, Lautner is a sex object.  And, as I’ve written before, a “sexual object is to be presented as passive, consumable, inert (remember, only one person gets “fucked”).”  And who does the fucking?  Men.  Real men.  And who gets fucked?  Women and womanly men (you might know them as “fags”).

So Lautner, by virtue of being objectified, threatens to also be seen as gay:

Apparently they’d rather break one of the golden rules of photography (don’t have anything coming out of the subject’s head), than allow Lautner’s sexual objectification call his sexuality into question.

Yes, yes we get it.  Lautner is a guy’s guy.  I mean, wait a second, he’s a girl’s guy.  Wait!  I mean he likes dudes!   No, not that way!  In a bros before hos way.  He likes dudes best, unless it’s for sex, then he likes girls!  He likes girls!  Even though he’s all sexy and wet and objectified, he’s not a fag okay!  We swear!  Look!  THERE’S A FOOTBAAAAAALLLLLLL!

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.

Gwen M. and David B. sent us a link to a story on the Globe and Mail website about a video game that has a gay scene in it and the reaction in the gaming community:

The game is Dragon Age: Origins, which, according to the website, is “an epic tale of violence, lust, and betrayal.”

From the Globe and Mail article:

Earlier this year, to promote Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II , one of the biggest games of the year, the game’s developer, Infinity Ward, released a video online asking players to Fight Against Grenade Spam. The company eventually pulled the ad following complaints about the acronym.
…
Last year, Microsoft was accused of homophobia after banning gay-related gamertags – the names created by Xbox users to identify themselves online – such as theGAYERgamer and RichardGaywood.

As the article points out, it’s not that gay or bisexual characters/scenes haven’t appeared in video games before, but they’ve often been portrayed in very stereotypical or negative ways. And while some gamers have reacted positively, many have basically responded with “ew, gross!”

As Gwen said, this effort to normalize gay relationships in a popular video game, and the reactions to it, are “both encouraging — and saddening.”

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

Amanda C. caught John McCain with some interesting presumptions! The contact part of his webpage has a drop down menu for the senders’ honorific(s) (see a close up below):

Close up:

So, the list is heteronormative (no “Mr. and Mr.” or “Ms. and Ms.”).

Further, because no write-ins are allowed, it also forces people who aren’t gender-typical to choose a gender if they want to send McCain a note.

And it bizarrely erases women doctors (no “Mr. and Dr.” or “Dr. and Mr.”).

Nice catch, Amanda!

UPDATE: After seeing this, Danielle F. sent in a screenshot of the honorifics choices that came up when she ordered tickets to “The Nutcracker” at the Detroit Opera House:

So you could theoretically be a single female Rev., Col., Capt., and so on, but the married versions of those all assume a female spouse. Notice they also have a listing for King, but not Queen.  I guess they get a lot of male royalty at the Detroit Opera House.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Nora R. sent us a link to an article at Band of Thebes about how promotional materials for the movie “A Single Man,” staring Colin Firth, have been altered to imply that the central relationship in the movie is heterosexual, and to eliminate references to the fact that Colin Firth’s character also has male lovers. A poster for the movie:

The first trailer:

The second trailer, which emphasizes heterosexual desire:

From the post at Band of Thebes (quote is originally from another article, but you have to sit through a 30-second ad to get to it; there’s a link at the Band of Thebes post if you want to see it):

Peter Knegt reports:

“The new trailer essentially is altered to suggest the core of the film is the relationship between Colin Firth and Julianne Moore’s characters, even removing from the end of the trailer the names of both Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult (who play Firth’s love interests). Moreover, in the first trailer, we see Firth’s character kiss both Goode and Moore, in the second we just get Moore. There’s also a sequence of shots in the first trailer which crosscuts Firth, who plays a professor in the film, staring into the eyes of both a female student and a male student. In the second, as you might guess, we only get the female (in a telling twist, instead of cutting to the male eyes, the trailer cuts to a quote from Entertainment Weekly saying ‘[Firth’s] performance is bound to win attention in this year’s Oscar race’).”

Of course, studios often manipulate what a movie appears to be about to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. If you saw some of the previews for “Twilight” that were shown before movies that targeted men, you’d think the movie was a lot more violent and action-heavy than it actually was (I presume to the dismay of some of the viewers who went to see it thinking they were seeing a vampire action movie).

But it’s interesting that a movie in which the main male character’s relationships with other men is a central element is advertised with that main plot point obscured.

I was at the Pittsburgh airport last week and I saw this concourse map and I thought to myself, “Wow, they used pink and they’re not trying to signify WOMAN!  That’s something else!”

Then I looked closer and noticed that this concourse map was specifically for the shopping in the concourse.  Notice it’s a map of the “AirMall”:

Sigh.

Rebecca H. sent us a link to the Clorox website and I thought “Holy Moly! There is actually a MAN on a cleaning product website!” (in the lower right):

Then I looked closer and realized that the man in question is a gay man famous for being on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Sigh.

Two opportunities for suffocating stereotypes to be undermined; two opportunities lost.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

John L. sent in a link to a visual illustrating support for gay marriage by state and age:

The data supports the notion that younger people are more supportive of gay marriage than older people. I also think it’s interesting that, even in states that we normally consider quite hostile to gay rights (the ones at the bottom of the table), there is still a significant age difference:  18-29 year-olds in Alabama, for example, are more supportive of gay marriage than people 65 and older in Massachusetts.  So, while we like to think about states as “liberal” or “conservative,” spreading out the data by age tells a much more complicated story.

For more data on support for gay rights, see here and here.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Kathleen K. was recently looking at the Credit Education Week Canada website, where they have a number of quizzes for couples to take. At the end of each quiz there is a picture of a couple along with your results. She was pleasantly surprised that this image accompanied the results of one quiz:

It’s a rare example of the normalization of gay/lesbian couples in media not specifically targeted at the GLBT community. The couple is presented as a legitimate image of love for both straight and gay couples, and there is no ambiguity about whether or not they’re a couple. Given the general invisibility of gay and lesbian couples in media outlets, and the use of only heterosexual couples as “neutral,” unmarked examples, it’s quite striking to see this.

Also see our post on a commercial by an Argentinian bank that depicted transgendered individuals positively.

Hermes sent in a link to a feature in The Morning News titled “Men at Their Most Masculine,” in which men were asked about what made them feel masculine and photographed in situations that reflect their masculine identities. Some quotes from men included in the project:

“I feel masculine when I am home, I can take care of myself. I often feel emasculated when I leave my apartment though, with everyone asking me if I need help. I don’t need any help.”

“To be masculine is to dominate in one’s field of study.”

“I want to show that, despite stereotypes, gay men can be masculine too.”

“I feel most masculine when I am lying in bed naked.”

“I am strong emotionally, have always stood up for myself, and fear nothing. I happen to be physically strong but that isn’t where I derive my masculinity.”

“I am masculine because I abandon women after taking their love. Because when you study Freud, you don’t let him study you. Because I study philosophy, not literature.”

Visit at photographer Chad States’s website. He apparently found all of the featured men via craigslist.

The photos and quotes illustrate some interesting contradictions in definitions of masculinity. Several of the men define masculinity in fairly traditional terms, using words like “dominate” or expressing masculinity as the ability to use women and then leave them. There is also an emphasis on being independent and not needing help from anyone else.

In other cases, the men redefine masculinity to at least some extent, such as the gay man who reclaims masculinity for gays, the guy who focuses on being emotionally strong, and the man shown posed in a way we’re more used to seeing with women.

It’s an interesting look at some of the ways men define masculinity at a time when we expect men to be more emotionally available and involved in family life (as opposed to the 1950s emotionally closed-off model) but provide mixed signals by also still judging men harshly if they seem too emotional or don’t meet ideals of what “real” men should be like.

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