{"id":302,"date":"2014-05-02T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-02T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2007\/12\/09\/power-asymmetry-as-sexy\/"},"modified":"2017-09-17T16:47:08","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T21:47:08","slug":"power-asymmetry-as-sexy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/05\/02\/power-asymmetry-as-sexy\/","title":{"rendered":"Eroticized Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Flashback Friday. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>We are a species that reproduces sexually and has a penchant for power hierarchies. \u00a0One thing that we&#8217;ve eroticized, then, is inequality. \u00a0In other words, we have sexualized power asymmetry. \u00a0I&#8217;m not necessarily talking about BDSM, though that may very well be part of it; I&#8217;m talking about the everyday gentle or not-so-gentle eroticization of power difference. \u00a0 If you&#8217;ve ever been turned on by the idea of overpowering or being overpowered, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m talking about.<\/p>\n<p>An image of a pear next to and curving over an apple, used to illustrate a <em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/12\/09\/magazine\/09vegansexuality.html?ref=magazine\">article<\/a>\u00a0about the sexual partners of vegans, is a striking example of eroticized inequality.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The image, apparently, was chosen because it was a story about sexual relationships between vegans, or &#8220;fruity&#8221; types. But in order to make fruit look <em>sexual<\/em>, they positioned them asymmetrically with the pear not just standing next to the apple, or even taller than the apple, but <em>towering over it<\/em>.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the implication of power difference (and the satin sheets) that make this seem like a sexual image instead of, say, a sleepy one.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>This post originally appeared in 2007.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flashback Friday. We are a species that reproduces sexually and has a penchant for power hierarchies. \u00a0One thing that we&#8217;ve eroticized, then, is inequality. \u00a0In other words, we have sexualized power asymmetry. \u00a0I&#8217;m not necessarily talking about BDSM, though that may very well be part of it; I&#8217;m talking about the everyday gentle or not-so-gentle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2124,55,2096,2087,120],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-foodagriculture","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2007\/12\/1-2-Copy1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","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\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71661,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/71661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}