Aint No Way to Treat a Lady

When I first started learning about gender and gender norms in this class, I could not help but think of country music videos. As many people know, country music tends to stereotype men and women into gender roles, especially women. Girls wearing sexy or skimpy clothing, being objectified to please her man, and shown doing the domestic work are all interpreted from many country songs and music videos. Recently, Maddie and Tae’s breakout hit, “Girl in a Country Song,” breaks away from the stereotypes that have been laid on women and throws them right back at you. The artists took various hit country songs objectifying women and rewrote the lyrics for a twist outlook. Maddie and Tae’s lyrics tell us that girls are not a cliché and deserve some respect. The music video even takes a different approach and uses role reversal by dressing the men up as “the stereotypical country girl.” I think “Girl in a Country Song” is a humorous and lighthearted way of breaking away from the gender norms and showing that girls have the right to a little respect.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MOavH-Eivw[/youtube]

#LikeAGirl

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs#t=113[/youtube]

I was scrolling through Facebook and I always find myself getting sucked into watching all the videos posted on my newsfeed. I took a second to watch this video and couldn’t help but to think about Gender Media. The video makes a very good point, why is the phrase “like a girl” an insult?

Third Wave of Feminism

This article from Everyday Feminism written by Kelsey Lueptow really helps to elaborate more on the Third Wave of feminism discussed in the online lecture and in chapter 3 of the textbook. I found it really interesting and helpful with how in depth the article talks about this Third Wave of Feminism and also how it broke it down into different parts. Something that really stuck out to me from the article was where it says, “Therefore, language has a phenomenal power over internalized ideologies that comprise a culture.” I think that statement definitely sums up a lot of what we have been talking about in the course as far as gender and culture goes, but especially through a theory like symbolic interactionism where language plays a very important role.

Gender and Environmentalism

This Psychology Today blog talks about gendered attitudes about the environment. According to polls, women care more about protecting the environment than men, who are “more likely to support increased use of nuclear power and offshore oil and gas drilling (Burn, 2013).” The author says that this has to do with gender socialization, where females are “more likely to be socialized to be communal and other-centered (Burn, 2013)”. This is not saying that men don’t care about the environment, but that women are more likely to care because of the way they are socialized.

This blog is an example of gender socialization of the ego boundary. An ego boundary is how much a person separates their self and their identity from others and the rest of the world (Wood, 2013, p. 167). Females are socialized to have a more “permeable,” “thin,” or “open” identity, where their needs and interests are “interrelated” to others’ needs and interests. (Johnson, 2014; Wood, 2013, p. 167). Wood notes that this causes “women to feel responsible for others and for situations that are not of their own doing.”

In this case, Wood was talking about relationships, but ego boundaries affect a person’s worldview, too. Even though people with feminine socialization are not “responsible for” or “cause” environmental destruction or animal harm, they still feel like they need to do something. Their ego boundaries are “thin” so there is no “clear distinction” between their health and nature’s health (Wood, 2013, p. 167). Feminine people feel that all humans “are a part of nature (Burns, 2013).”

 

To Porn or Not to Porn?

*Disclaimer: This post concerns adult material that some readers may not agree with. Reader discretion is advised*

How do you feel about actors/actresses in the adult film industry?

Sex is a natural human occurrence. But when people perform sexual deeds on camera, that’s when opinions start flying. At Duke University a first year student is paying her way through college by acting as an adult film actress. Now whatever opinions any reader has, it’s great that you have them, let’s just keep them at bay. What I want to talk about, is the language targeted at this student.

In this case, I’ll follow the example of the Duke Chronicle and call the student Lauren and call her actress alter ego Aurora, in order to conceal any identities she may not want to reveal.

Lauren wrote an editorial blog post about her mistreatment due to her job as an adult film actress. She talks about being called a slut, prostitute, and someone who supports rape fantasies. She explains that the nature of the sex she performs is rough in nature, but is in no way a rape fantasy.

Now let’s go back to this whole name-calling business. She talks about how she feels empowered and free with her sexuality. She says that she enjoys what she does and does not regret her decision in becoming an adult film actress. She mentions that she has been antagonized and bullied on the web. She’s been called a slut, whore, and any other explicit remark you can think of. Interesting enough though is how much this applies to chapter five of Julia Wood’s book Gendered Lives

In her book, Wood describes specific stereotypes associated with men and women. For men, they’re typically perceived as someone who is “rational and strong.” Whereas women are typically perceived to be weak, submissive, and emotional. Wood also points out how language towards women’s actions are passive in nature. For example, in a recent Collegiate ACB thread one commenter stated, “So being choked, spit on and degraded is now empowering? Feminist Logic.” They’re assuming that she is the one being treated poorly and that the actions she performs are passive in nature. She argues that she is in full control of the situation when she performs, but the way our language and perceptions of gender roles are set up, everything she commits is conducted passively on her.

Wood also mentions in her book that women who are typically more expressive with their sexuality, tend to be labeled as prostitutes, ungrateful, sluts, etc. Whereas males are labeled as studs, champions, and receive support for being such. What if it were a male doing the same thing and acting as an adult film actor? Would he have gotten so much backlash? Would he have been called a slut, whore, etc? Well coincidentally there was another event that occurred that was similar to this one, but with a male.

There was another story where a student from a high school was reportedly expelled and told that he would not be able to graduate due to his performance with a gay adult film company. Although he had his fair share of opponents and antagonists, the majority of the community reached out to him in support and even rallied for him. He was later invited back to the school and was told that he was not “suspended” for his performance with an adult studio.

As far as I could see there was no banter for the male who performed in pornographic films against him. All I saw were the pictures with “#supportrobert” and his news stories about his particular case. However if you look up the Duke University college freshman, majority of what you see are confidential interviews with the student and opinionated blogs/posts about her “promiscuity,” calling her a multitude of things I dare not repeat.

Language is incredibly important in the way we communicate. Heck, without language we wouldn’t be able to communicate in the first place. It’s just very odd to see the language people use to describe others based on their gender. Now, I acknowledge that I might not have an insider’s perspective from either of these cases, but from the outside looking in, it’s very interesting, and very puzzling.

What If…

I came across this article on Facebook about what if women in commercials were played by men. It is interesting to watch these commercials because I felt that some of them did not completely make sense. I knew that women added to the sex appeal of products, but I did not realize how much the commercials changed when men entered the role. It is the language used and how people depict the “stereo-typical” women. http://www.buzzfeed.com/caitlincowie/what-happens-when-you-replace-the-women-in-ads-with-men