violence

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Since Lisa posted about the Old Spice guy today, I thought I’d post about a reaction to it. Stephanie V. let us know about Brut’s new feature on their website, Some Men Just Need to be Slapped. The…game (?) presents Man in a Towel, clearly meant as a parody of the Old Spice character:

You are then invited to slap him with various items:

In each case the hand shown slapping him is a woman’s, though for some reason when you click the option to slap him with Brut, it’s just an empty hand, not the actual bottle. Presumably her palm has Brut on it.

You can also then choose who should be the next slapping option — a character called The Incident (a parody of The Situation from Jersey Shore) or a mime:

Brut is going with the theme common in men’s hygiene products, which is to reinforce a certain stereotypical type of masculinity. Their website refers to Brut as “essence of man”:

As Stephanie says, “I didn’t even know they still made Brut — but clearly they’re trying to hone in on the Old Spice crowd by challenging their manhood.” And how better to denigrate a guy as insufficiently masculine? Show him being slapped by a woman, of course.

Cross-posted at Ms.

Happy A. sent in an article at comment dit-on about a new anti-domestic violence ad in Chile that tells men not to hit women by using openly homophobic language — specifically saying that a man who hits a woman is a “maricón,” the equivalent of “faggot”:

Translation of the main text: “A faggot is one who hurts a woman.”

It’s a blatant example of the way leftist groups often undermine each other, fighting one form of inequality or discrimination by reinforcing another (see: everything PETA ever did). The group that put out the PSA added that a man who hits a woman is “poco hombre,” or barely a man, reinforcing the idea that gay men are insufficiently masculine. As the comment dit-on post author says, “Clearly, a larger conversation needs to take place about what it means to be powerful and attitudes that marginalize the powerless.”

UPDATE: Reader chinamorena says, “adding an interesting layer is the fact that the second man who speaks in the ad is Jordi Castell, a publicly gay tv personality.”

A former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon (R) is running in Connecticut for a seat in the U.S. Senate.  In an essay at the Huffington Post, sent in by Dr. Caroline Heldman, Jackson Katz explains that her company has promoted “…some of the most brutal, violent and hateful depictions of women in all of media culture over the past twenty years.”  The violence and misogyny in professional wrestling is an issue that Katz has taken on personally in his documentary, Wrestling with Manhood.

Media actors, he argued, have not focused on the substance of her company’s product, so much as its amazing success.  Katz, however, challenges the idea that her business acumen is more important than the fact that she spent 20 years promoting and excusing violence against women:

…incredibly, the rampant misogyny of McMahon’s WWE has gotten scant coverage during this fall’s U.S. senate campaign in Connecticut. Political reporters have largely rolled over and bought the McMahon campaign line that what goes on in professional wrestling is only entertainment, that the WWE has gotten more family-friendly in recent years, and that we should all just lighten up and focus on what really matters about Linda McMahon’s stewardship of the WWE: her savvy business skills and experience.

Hoping to bring attention to the kind of messages the WWE sent under McMahon’s leadership, Katz put together this 11-minute clip from his documentary (trigger warning):

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.

Alex C. sent in an example of the belittling of men by men in the context of sport.  Two teenager fans of the Red Sox found themselves verbally assaulted by Yankee fans for the sin of sitting amongst them.  They surround the boys and sing, aggressively, to the tune of YMCA, after a mostly indecipherable lead in:

Why are you gay!
I saw you suckin’ it, D-I-C-K.
They have every size, you’re about to enjoy.
You can hang out with all the boys!
Why are you gay!
I saw you suckin’ some D-I-C-K.

It should be clear to everyone that this behavior represents a sick society. Team affiliation follows the rules of the minimal group paradigm: humans appear to be willing to form meaningful groups based on just about anything.  Sports just happens to be an arena in which hypermasculinity is rewarded, even demanded.  This makes it acceptable to be cruel to one another and makes it inevitable that that cruelty will take the form of hatred towards gay men (deemed masculine failures) in the form of homophobic slurs.  It’s not even that they think the kids are gay, but calling them gay is good for a laugh and a great insult.

This is what it’s like to be a man under patriarchy: moments of inhumanity in which men accept and reproduce hatred against others and moments of victimization when other men aim that hatred at you.

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.

Please welcome Guest Blogger Ashley Mears.  Mears is a model-turned-sociologist who is doing fantastic work on the modeling industry.  In her forthcoming book, Pricing Beauty: Value in the Fashion Modeling World (UC Berkeley Press), she examines the production of value in fashion modeling markets.  When Osocio‘s Tom Megginson forwarded us a link to a trailer for a new documentary on the topic, Picture Me, we turned immediately to our resident expert.  We’re so pleased that she agreed to share her thoughts.

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Picture Me documents ex-model Sara Ziff’s 4-year rise and exit through the fashion modeling industry.  It sets out to expose the grit behind the glamour, chronicling models’ exhausting work and travel schedules, warped body images (include hints of anorexic and bulimic practices), debt to agencies, innocent youth and the attendant vulnerability to sexual predatory clients.  It is a long, wandering complaint of the industry, and in the end, Ziff equates all bodywork with exploitation and dismisses modelling work as cheap thrills—albeit emotionally costly ones.

While critical of the industry, the film glamorizes what it supposedly condemns, most insidiously by portraying Ziff’s meteoric success as normal for a model.  Twice the camera zooms in on the many digits of her paychecks.  As her co-filmmaker/boyfriend Ole Schell wryly notes, “It’s not everyday you see a check for $112,000.”  This is especially the case, they should add, for most working fashion models.  As a winner-take-all market, modelling is extremely unequal; very few women reach this kind of success.  At any given modelling agency, in fact, dozens of women owe significant debt, an issue far more complex—and exploitive—than the moments it gets in Picture Me.  Models accrue debt for start-up costs advanced by their agencies, from plane tickets and visas to pocket money and apartment rent in an agency-owned apartment (to the tune of about $250 per week to stay regardless of how full or vacant its state).  They are charged anywhere from $5 to $50 for bike messengers to deliver their portfolios across town daily.  These costs are not negotiable or traceable; they are deducted automatically from her future earnings.  And they add up; at one New York agency I studied, a model was in the hole up to $18,000 even before stepping foot into her first casting audition.  To recoup their losses, agencies count on the top 5% of their models who bill more than $100,000 annually, people like Ziff who are statistical anomalies in their field.

A model who leaves an agency with a debt is legally bound by contract to repay it, though accountants will tell you that they don’t bother to pursue these debts, since indebted models are an unlikely source from whom to recoup losses.  Instead, agencies write off negative accounts as business expenses.  However, models’ negative accounts will by law transfer to their next agencies should they attempt to work elsewhere, which is unlikely as agencies are hesitant to represent models with existing negative balances from prior agencies.  In other words, once in debt, everywhere in debt.  It is an independent contractor status designed to alleviate the organization’s responsibility for its worker, pushing all market risks onto the freelancer in a work relationship that can resemble indentured servitude.  Thus, Ziff sits at the top of the pile, nonchalantly waving a wad of cash in her hand that masks a precarious career structure in which, for every Sara Ziff, there are thousands of women struggling to make ends meet.

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Another telling omission in the film is men.  Ziff’s accusations of systemic sexual abuse are distressing, and something I heard all too commonly in interviews with models—male models, that is.  I found women were far less likely than men to recount ordeals of sexual advances by clients.  There are a couple of explanations for this discrepancy.  First, it is likely that female models may not report or even recognize as report-worthy sexual advances by men, given the ubiquity of sexual harassment women are likely to face on any job.  Second, the filmmakers seem to have encouraged their subjects to recount their ordeals in confessional-style video diaries, a technique quite different from open-ended interviewing.

Also likely, I think male models do experience more unwanted come-ons than female models.  In an industry over-represented with gay men in decision-making positions, male models report feeling pressure to flirt with men in order to book jobs.  Male models earn considerably less than their female peers, making each job more important to them, and their agents often instruct them to charm important clients.  It’s referred to jokingly in the industry as going “gay for pay,” similar to male porn actors who do gay sex scenes to boost their earnings.  Male models do not as a population identify as gay, but it’s widespread and openly acknowledged that straight men must flirt shamelessly with gay clients to get work.  As one male model told me, “Everyone has to play his cards.”

But it’s not a game to the men I interviewed who told horror stories of such performances turning into threatening situations.  Men reported being “felt up” by stylists while dressing, told to wear revealing clothes, or no clothes at all, and being kissed and hugged by prestigious clients at parties.  One model described how, on a shoot with a male photographer, he was asked to make himself semi-erect.  This is not to downplay women’s encounters with sexual harassment in the industry, but to note that all models are relatively powerless in this market, and given the sex composition of those in power, male models are especially vulnerable.

Picture Me revolves around shocking personal narratives, and as a biting (and I think unfair) NY Times review notes, the filmmakers go straight for the easy critiques at the expense of their social context.  It’s hard to contextualize economics, gender and sexuality, and a complicated career structure in a 75-minute documentary, especially when stomach-turning confessionals and eye-catching runway pictures are so readily available.  And this is what sociologists are for anyway.

For more of Mear’s insights on the modeling industry, see our posts on the contrasting aesthetics of high end and commercial modeling, the ugly other side of the model search, and control and thinness.

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.

Lest you think that rape culture is confined to simply excellent institutions of higher education, Salon reports that Yale students pledging the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity were marched by women’s dorms marching “no means yes, yes means anal.”  Salon’s Tracy Clark-Flory writes:

Now, DKE President Jordan Forney has been forced to apologize for this blatant sexual intimidation by calling it “a serious lapse in judgment by the fraternity and in very poor taste.” But this sort of hateful crap isn’t a “lapse in judgment.” It doesn’t innocently happen that you’re guiding male pledges by young women’s dorms in the dark of night chanting about anal rape. It isn’t a forehead-slapping slip-up, it’s a sign that you need major reprogramming as a human being.

UPDATE: Sociologist Michael Kimmel has a fantastic analysis of the second half of the chant:

This chant assumes that anal sex is not pleasurable for women; that if she says yes to intercourse, you have to go further to an activity that you experience as degrading to her, dominating to her, not pleasurable to her. This second chant is a necessary corollary to the first.

Thanks to feminism, women have claimed the ability to say both “no” and “yes.” Not only have women come to believe that “No Means No,” that they have a right to not be assaulted and raped, but also that they have a right to say “yes” to their own desires, their own sexual agency. Feminism enabled women to find their own sexual voice.

…

This is confusing to many men, who see sex not as mutual pleasuring, but about the “girl hunt,” a chase, a conquest. She says no, he breaks down her resistance. Sex is a zero-sum game. He wins if she puts out; she loses.

That women can like sex, and especially like good sex, and are capable of evaluating their partners changes the landscape. If women say “yes,” where’s the conquest, where’s the chase, where’s the pleasure? And where’s the feeling that your victory is her defeat? What if she is doing the scoring, not you?

Thus the “Yes Means Anal” part of the chant. Sex has become unsafe for men–women are agentic and evaluate our performances. So if “No Means Yes” attempts to make what is safe for women unsafe, then “Yes Means Anal” makes what is experienced as unsafe for men again safe–back in that comfort zone of conquest and victory. Back to something that is assumed could not possibly be pleasurable for her. It makes the unsafe safe–for men.

In this way, we can see the men of DKE at Yale not as a bunch of angry predators, asserting their dominance, but as a more pathetic bunch of guys who see themselves as powerless losers, trying to re-establish a sexual landscape which they feel has been thrown terribly off its axis.

For more indications that we live in a rape culture, see our posts on media coverage of a rape video game and the George Sodini murders, rapists as hyperconformists to ideal masculinity, the rape scene in Observe and Report, t-shirts endorsing sex with “drunk girls”, and, of course, the Purdue Exponent’s sex position of the week.

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.

Angi S. alerted us to a cartoon that ran this month in Eastern Michigan University’s student newspaper, The Echo. It featured two people in white supremacist hoods in front of a noose hanging from a tree. One says to the other: “Honey, this is the tree where we met.”

The ensuing conversation is a good example of how claims that materials are racist are dismissed by their producers.  After receiving criticism, The Echo made the following “response” (here):

We understand the “You Are Here” cartoon may have offended some readers. We apologize for the lack of sensitivity some felt we showed for publishing the piece.  The cartoon points out the hypocrisy of hate-filled people. Its intent was to ask how can someone show affection for one person while at the same time hating someone else enough to commit such a heinous act as hanging. We wish to remind readers that they are free to express their opinion on our discussion boards and we hope to continue to foster free thought and open discussion on campus and in the community.

– The Eastern Echo

First, notice that it is a typical “we are sorry that you were offended” non-apology.  The first sentence acknowledges that some readers “may have [been] offended” and then says that “some felt” that there was an insensitivity.  It does not say that the cartoon was offensive or insensitive.

Second, it also explains that the intention was to point out the “hypocrisy of hate-filled people,” not make light of lynching, without interrogating the relative importance of intent and reception.  One could argue that cultural producers are at least somewhat responsible for the  myriad of ways that an item could be reasonably interpreted.

Third, it backs into the free speech corner by claiming to be open to all opinions (using the word “free” twice in one sentence).

The Detroit News covered The Echo’s response and also added that while one African American student objected to the cartoon, another thought it was funny.  So…

Fourth, the coverage relied on the idea that if just one member of the relevant group is not offended, then maybe the rest are over-reacting.

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.

As Anthropologist Peggy Sanday has shown, societies can be more or less rape-free or rape-prone.  A rape-prone society is characterized by a rape culture, one in which women’s desires are unimportant and emotional, psychological, and physical sexual coercion is normative.   In the U.S., pressuring or convincing women into sex is, in fact, well-tolerated.  So goes the saying, ” ‘No’ doesn’t mean ‘no’; it’s just the beginning of negotiations.”

Claire B. and Sylvia M. sent in matching sartorial testaments to the dismissal of the requirement that women consent to sex.  The first, on a website called teesbox (trigger warning), is a t-shirt that reads “I heart drunk girls.”  In case you don’t get the point, along with the shirt are photos of drunken or incapacitated women and captions like, “She’ll let you do anything you want to her, any hole, any time (as long as it’s while she’s still wasted).”

This second t-shirt (text below) is sold on Amazon.com:

Text:

two beers $7
three margaritas $15
four jello shots $20
Taking home the girl who
drank all of the above…
Priceless

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.