{"id":54678,"date":"2013-04-07T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T17:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=54678"},"modified":"2013-04-05T21:17:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-06T02:17:15","slug":"men-are-people-and-women-are-women-obituary-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/04\/07\/men-are-people-and-women-are-women-obituary-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Men-are-People and Women-are-Women: The Obituary Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;You just have to be cheerful about it and not get upset when you get insulted,&#8221; said rocket scientist Yvonne Brill.<\/p>\n<p>She must be chuckling in heaven, because her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/31\/science\/space\/yvonne-brill-rocket-scientist-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">obituary<\/a> at the <em>New York Times<\/em> made the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.feministe.us\/blog\/archives\/2013\/04\/02\/how-to-write-about-lady-scientists\/\" target=\"_blank\">common mistake<\/a> of making her femaleness and femininity a central part of their retrospective. \u00a0After objections, NYT corrected the obit. \u00a0Here are the tracked changes, courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsdiffs.org\/diff\/192021\/192137\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/31\/science\/space\/yvonne-brill-rocket-scientist-dies-at-88.html\" target=\"_blank\">NewsDiffs<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/04\/15.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-54679\" alt=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/04\/15.jpg\" width=\"624\" height=\"399\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/04\/15.jpg 963w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/04\/15-500x319.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsdiffs.org\/diff\/192021\/192137\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/31\/science\/space\/yvonne-brill-rocket-scientist-dies-at-88.html\" target=\"_blank\">Feministe<\/a>, Caperton offers a nice discussion of this phenomenon and draws our attention to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doublexscience.org\/the-finkbeiner-test\/\" target=\"_blank\">the Finkbeiner Test<\/a>, named after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doublexscience.org\/what-im-not-going-to-do\/\" target=\"_blank\">journalist Ann Finkbeiner<\/a>. \u00a0Inspired by the <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/05\/20\/the-bechdel-test\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bechdel Test<\/a> for movies, the Finkbeiner Test is used to judge whether stories about women focus excessively on the fact that they are women. \u00a0To pass the test, the story cannot mention:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The fact that she\u2019s a woman<\/li>\n<li>Her husband\u2019s job<\/li>\n<li>Her child care arrangements<\/li>\n<li>How she nurtures her underlings<\/li>\n<li>How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field<\/li>\n<li>How she\u2019s such a role model for other women<\/li>\n<li>How she\u2019s the \u201cfirst woman to\u2026\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Awesome.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve documented lots of instances of the <a href=\"http:\/\/pinterest.com\/socimages\/women-vs-people\/\" target=\"_blank\">men-are-people and women-are-women phenomenon<\/a>. \u00a0It&#8217;s no wonder it shows up in obituaries too. \u00a0I&#8217;m glad that we&#8217;re becoming sensitive enough to the issue to notice it and that institutions like the NYT are responsive enough to change the most egregious examples of it. \u00a0Next step: prevention.<\/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>&#8220;You just have to be cheerful about it and not get upset when you get insulted,&#8221; said rocket scientist Yvonne Brill. She must be chuckling in heaven, because her obituary at the New York Times made the common mistake of making her femaleness and femininity a central part of their retrospective. \u00a0After objections, NYT corrected [&hellip;]<\/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":[55,2098,129,283],"class_list":["post-54678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-prejudicediscrimination","tag-media","tag-prejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54678","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=54678"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54682,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54678\/revisions\/54682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}