{"id":47545,"date":"2012-05-27T17:38:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-27T22:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=47545"},"modified":"2017-09-17T14:48:55","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T19:48:55","slug":"absence-of-women-in-u-s-naval-academy-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/05\/27\/absence-of-women-in-u-s-naval-academy-ritual\/","title":{"rendered":"Absence of Women in U.S. Naval Academy Ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week a series of photographs of sweaty men climbing a greased up phallic symbol<\/a> went ’round the blogosphere. \u00a0The pictures were of a naval tradition: at the end of their first year, students enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy come together to climb a monument covered in lard. \u00a0 In a ritual designed to mark their completion of their first year, they swap a newbie’s sailor’s hat for\u00a0the next iteration of their headgear, one that looks a little bit more like the one worn by naval officers.<\/p>\n

What was interesting to me about the series of photos is the absence of women. \u00a0It might not immediately strike you as odd — given that, symbolically, the U.S. military is a strongly masculine space — but, in fact, 31% of the USNA class of 2015 is female<\/a>. \u00a0So almost one in three of the students pictured should be female. \u00a0But they are almost\u00a0entirely<\/em>\u00a0absent and are never featured close up. \u00a0Shots of the crowd of students suggest that this wasn’t the photographers’ choice; even among the students on the ground, women are few and far between. \u00a0They weren’t excluded from participation, since we see one here and there. \u00a0So, where are they? \u00a0What kept them from participating in this time-honored tradition?<\/p>\n

Lots of photos at Buzzfeed<\/a>.<\/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":"

Earlier this week a series of photographs of sweaty men climbing a greased up phallic symbol went ’round the blogosphere. \u00a0The pictures were of a naval tradition: at the end of their first year, students enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy come together to climb a monument covered in lard. \u00a0 In a ritual designed […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-47545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47545","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=47545"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71516,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47545\/revisions\/71516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}