{"id":34022,"date":"2011-05-12T10:53:54","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T15:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=34022"},"modified":"2015-09-01T21:28:28","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T02:28:28","slug":"marriage-and-the-intersection-of-gender-and-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/05\/12\/marriage-and-the-intersection-of-gender-and-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage and the Intersection of Gender and Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Jezebel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Drawing on data from the\u00a0Pew Research Center<\/a>, I recently wrote a post showing that inter-racial and -ethnic marriages are on the rise<\/a>. \u00a0Not all groups, however, intermarry at the same rate. \u00a0Asians are more likely than Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity. \u00a0Whites are the least likely to do so:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Gender matters too. \u00a0Whereas White and Hispanic men and women tend to outmarry at about the same rate, the outmarriage rates for Blacks and Asians are dramatically different.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The gendered rates of outmarriage likely reflect the way in which we gender race and racialize gender. \u00a0I’ve written about this in a previous post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Consider: according to American cultural stereotypes, black\u00a0people<\/em>, both men and women, are more masculine than white people. Black men are seen as, somehow, more masculine than white men: they are, stereotypically, more aggressive, more violent, larger, more sexual, and more athletic. Black women, too, as seen as more masculine than white women: they are louder, bossier, more opinionated and, like men, more sexual and more athletic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Likewise, Asian people are feminized. \u00a0Both Asian men and women are seen as somehow smaller, more passive, the women sweeter, the men less virile.<\/p>\n

These are cultural stereotypes derived from the particular history of the U.S. \u00a0White elites masculinized Black women in order to justify their hard labor during slavery. \u00a0The idea that Black men were hypermasculine emerged after emancipation; the idea that Black men were sexually-vicious\u00a0brutes was used by some Whites to terrorize Black men into continued subservience.<\/p>\n

Asians were feminized after the completion of the transcontinental railroad. \u00a0The Chinese immigrants who had labored on the railroad, now out of work, found niches in feminized occupations in the mostly-lady-free American West. \u00a0They became cooks, tailors, and launderers, and domestic servants. \u00a0The gendered nature of their work contributed to their feminization.<\/p>\n

So, race and gender intersect in history, and today, in ways that shape sexual desire and supposed romantic compatibility. \u00a0If men are supposed to be sexy by virtue of their masculinity and women sexy by virtue of their femininity, then Black men and Asian women will be seen as more sexually attractive, and as more ideal marital partners, than Asian men and Black women.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Jezebel. Drawing on data from the\u00a0Pew Research Center, I recently wrote a post showing that inter-racial and -ethnic marriages are on the rise. \u00a0Not all groups, however, intermarry at the same rate. \u00a0Asians are more likely than Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity. \u00a0Whites are the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[778,23695],"class_list":["post-34022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-intersectionality","tag-intersectionality-gender-x-race"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34022","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=34022"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58877,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34022\/revisions\/58877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}