{"id":25540,"date":"2010-07-16T13:20:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T18:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=25540"},"modified":"2013-05-04T17:51:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-04T22:51:00","slug":"power-masculine-weakness-feminine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/07\/16\/power-masculine-weakness-feminine\/","title":{"rendered":"Power = Masculine, Weakness = Feminine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Edna Sednitzer, who blogs at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redlightpolitics.info\/\" target=\"_blank\">Red Light Politics<\/a>, sent us in two screencaps of what she came across during a recent search on Thesaurus.com. She searched the word &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/thesaurus.com\/browse\/power\" target=\"_blank\">power<\/a>&#8221; and this is one of the entries that came up, for &#8220;related adjectives&#8221; (some words I found notable highlighted in red):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/07\/16\/power-masculine-weakness-feminine\/power-synonyms-power-antonyms-_-thesaurus-com\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25541\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-25541 aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/Power-Synonyms-Power-Antonyms-_-Thesaurus.com_-500x396.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"396\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/Power-Synonyms-Power-Antonyms-_-Thesaurus.com_-500x396.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/Power-Synonyms-Power-Antonyms-_-Thesaurus.com_.jpg 654w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Out of curiosity she then searched &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/thesaurus.com\/browse\/weakness\" target=\"_blank\">weakness<\/a>,&#8221; and here are the suggested adjectives:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/07\/16\/power-masculine-weakness-feminine\/weakness-synonyms-weakness-antonyms-_-thesaurus-com\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25542\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25542 aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/Weakness-Synonyms-Weakness-Antonyms-_-Thesaurus.com_.jpg\" width=\"496\" height=\"597\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/Weakness-Synonyms-Weakness-Antonyms-_-Thesaurus.com_.jpg 614w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/Weakness-Synonyms-Weakness-Antonyms-_-Thesaurus.com_-415x500.jpg 415w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 496px) 100vw, 496px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At least according to this thesaurus, masculinity is powerful, capable, competent; femininity is weak and incompetent. There&#8217;s a sexual component as well &#8212; notice that power is associated with being virile, while weakness = lustless. Of course, we also associate men and masculinity with the active pursuit of sex, while women are supposed to be the objects of pursuit, not actively sexual.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, it&#8217;s a great example of how language is gendered in a way that privileges masculinity and men over femininity and women.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em>Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edna Sednitzer, who blogs at Red Light Politics, sent us in two screencaps of what she came across during a recent search on Thesaurus.com. She searched the word &#8220;power&#8221; and this is one of the entries that came up, for &#8220;related adjectives&#8221; (some words I found notable highlighted in red): Out of curiosity she then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,55,2096,2087],"class_list":["post-25540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-masculinity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25540"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55151,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25540\/revisions\/55151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}