{"id":57721,"date":"2013-11-14T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=57721"},"modified":"2015-02-01T03:05:42","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T08:05:42","slug":"doing-gender-with-wallets-and-purses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/11\/14\/doing-gender-with-wallets-and-purses\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing Gender with Wallets and Purses"},"content":{"rendered":"

I once heard a transgender woman give a talk about the process of socially transitioning to being recognized as a woman. She discussed various decisions she made in taking some final critical steps toward the social identity of woman.\u00a0 She talked at length about her hair. She asked, \u201cWhat kind of woman am I and how is my haircut going to indicate that?\u201d\u00a0 She talked about being preoccupied with her hair for a long time as she attempted to figure out a cut and style that \u201cfelt right.\u201d But what struck me the most was her discussion of carrying a purse.<\/p>\n

She said that getting used to carrying a purse everywhere was one of the more challenging elements of the transition.\u00a0 If asked what I thought would be a significant everyday challenge if I were a woman, I don\u2019t think purse would have been high on my list.\u00a0 But, it was high on hers.\u00a0 She discussed remembering to bring it, how to carry it, norms surrounding purse protection in public, but also more intimate details like: what belongs in a purse?<\/p>\n

Purses and wallets are gendered spaces.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing inherent in men\u2019s and women\u2019s constitutions that naturally recommends carrying money and belongings in different containers.\u00a0 Like\u00a0the use of urinals in men\u2019s restrooms<\/a>, wallets and purses are a way of producing understandings of gender difference rather than as a natural consequence of differences.<\/p>\n

I got the idea for this post after reading\u00a0Christena Nippert-Eng<\/a>\u2019s book,\u00a0Islands of Privacy<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>\u2014 a sociological study of privacy in everyday life.\u00a0 One chapter deals specifically with wallets and purses.\u00a0 In it, Nippert-Eng discusses one way she interviewed her participants about privacy.\u00a0 She used participants\u2019 wallets and purses as a means of getting them to think more critically about privacy.\u00a0 Participants were asked to empty the contents of their wallets and purses and to form two piles with the contents: \u201cmore private\u201d and \u201cmore public.\u201d\u00a0 As they sifted through the contents of their wallets and purses, they talked about why they carried what they carried as well as how and why they thought about it as public or private.<\/p>\n

After collecting responses, she documented all of the contents and created categories and distinctions between objects based on how people thought about them as public or private.\u00a0 One question that was clearly related to privacy was whether the objects were personally meaningful to the participant.\u00a0 Invariably, objects defined as more personally meaningful were also considered more private.<\/p>\n

Another question that routinely arose as participants made sense of the objects they carry around everyday was how damaging it might be for participants if a specific object was taken.\u00a0 Based on this findings, she creates a useful table delineating participants concerns surrounding and understandings of the objects they carry with them (see left).<\/p>\n

\"photo1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just for clarification, there\u2019s sort of a sliding scale of privacy going from most to least private as one proceeds from the bottom left cell to the top right cell.\u00a0 Thus, items classified by participants in the lower left cell (1) are the most private objects. \u00a0Here, participants identified things like prescription medications, letters from friends, and a variety of personally meaningful objects that were thought of as completely private and carried only for the self.<\/p>\n

Other items were still considered private, but \u201cless private\u201d than objects in cell 1 because they were shared selectively.\u00a0 Consider cell 2.\u00a0 While credit cards, bank cards, memberships, credit cards and money were all classified as \u201cprivate,\u201d individual\u2019s also thought of them as \u201cmore public\u201d than object in cell 1 because they were required to share these objects with institutions throughout their lives.<\/p>\n

Similarly, some objects were thought of as \u201cprivate,\u201d but were also carried to share with certain others, such as photographs of children (cell 4).\u00a0 Finally, items classified in the top right cell (3) are the most public objects in wallets and purses\u2014carried for the self and, potentially, \u201canyone\u201d else.\u00a0 Items here include things like tissues, lip balm, money classified as \u201cextra,\u201d gum, breath mints, etc.<\/p>\n

Objects from most of the cells exist in both wallets and purses, but not all of them.\u00a0 The contents of cell 3 (containing the \u201cmost public\u201d objects in wallets and purses) are inequitably distributed between wallets and purses.\u00a0 As Nippert-Eng writes, \u201cThis is the one category of objects that is overwhelmingly absent for participants who carry only wallets, yet universally present for those who carry purses\u201d (here<\/a>: 130).\u00a0 She also found that some of her participants only carried objects all fitting the same cell in the above table.\u00a0 These participants \u2014 universally \u201cwallet carriers\u201d in her sample \u2014 carry only objects necessary for institutional transactions (cell 2).<\/p>\n

This is, I believe, a wonderful analysis of one of the more subtle ways in which\u00a0gender is accomplished<\/a>\u00a0in daily life. Certain objects are simply more likely to be carried in purses.\u00a0 Interestingly, this class of \u201cfeminine\u201d objects are also objects that play a critical role in social interactions.\u00a0 Indeed, many of us are able to travel without these objects because we can \u201ccount on\u201d purse-carriers as having them.\u00a0 Things like packs of gum, tissues, breath mints and more might seem like inconsequential objects.\u00a0 But, they play a crucial role in social interactions, and many of us count on purse-carriers to provide us with these objects when we are \u201cin need.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s an aspect of care work by which some (those carrying purses) care for others (those without purses).\u00a0 And if they\u2019re any good at it, the caring goes virtually unacknowledged, though potentially highly acknowledged when these objects are absent in purses.\u00a0 Children routinely ask their mothers for objects they presume they\u2019ll be carrying in their purses.\u00a0 Indeed, these objects may be carried in anticipation of such requests.\u00a0 It\u2019s a small aspect of doing gender, but a significant element of social interactions and life.<\/p>\n

When I was learning about interviewing and ethnography, I was told to always carry a pack of gum, a pack of cigarettes (something \u201clite\u201d), and a lighter.\u00a0 My professor told me, \u201cIt opens people up.\u00a0 It\u2019s a small gesture that comforts people\u2013puts them at ease.\u201d\u00a0 These are the ways you might want people to feel if you\u2019re asking them to \u201copen up\u201d for you.\u00a0 I still remember my first foray into \u201cthe field.\u201d\u00a0 I bought my gum and cigarettes (objects I don\u2019t typically carry) and the first thought I had was, \u201cWhere the heck am I going to keep these things?\u201d\u00a0 What I didn\u2019t realize at the time was that I was asking an intensely gendered question.<\/p>\n

Tristan Bridges<\/a>\u00a0is a sociologist of gender and sexuality at the College at Brockport (SUNY). \u00a0Dr. Bridges blogs about some of this research and more at\u00a0Inequality by (Interior) Design<\/a>. \u00a0You can follow him on twitter\u00a0@tristanbphd<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I once heard a transgender woman give a talk about the process of socially transitioning to being recognized as a woman. She discussed various decisions she made in taking some final critical steps toward the social identity of woman.\u00a0 She talked at length about her hair. She asked, \u201cWhat kind of woman am I and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":57722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[225,36,329,55,23677,2088,2106,272,304,293],"class_list":["post-57721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-clothesfashion","tag-economics","tag-emotion","tag-gender","tag-gender-doing-gender","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-gender-transgenderintersex","tag-marriagefamily","tag-the-state","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/10\/photo1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57721","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=57721"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62925,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57721\/revisions\/62925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}