Category: Gender & Sexuality

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies

"Real Moms" and Embodied Pregnancy.

Recently, it seems as though every newspaper and headline in the media includes the words,“diet, new regimen, or lose ten pounds instantly.” The amount of media reports can prove to be very confusing, problematic, and undermining of the larger health issues at hand. In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report titled “Obesity Trends Among U.S. Adults Between 1985 and 2010,” which offers an interactive map and state-by-state breakdown of obesity rates in the United States. According...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology Compass Issues / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

The State of Oklahoma vs. Female Offenders: Vengeful Equality at Work?

In January 2010, 24-year-old Patricia Spottedcrow was arrested for selling $31 worth of marijuana to a police informant from her home in Kingfisher County, OK. Because her children were home at the time, Spottedcrow was charged with possession of a dangerous substance in the presence of a minor in addition to being charged with distributing a controlled substance. Since she had no prior criminal record and since the amount of marijuana sold was small, Spottedcrow elected to enter into a...

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

Gender and Race Politics in the Discourse of Mothering

Mothering has been in the news lately. TIME Magazine’s cover story on breastfeeding in May caused quite a stir; so did Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece for the Atlantic, which discussed the difficulty women face when trying to balance work and family. TIME’s piece points to the increasing pressure on women to do everything right when it comes to being a mom: The rise in attachment parenting (even in a watered-down form) places great responsibility on women to do all they can,...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

Embodied Pregnancy and Weight Loss Fads

It often seems like we are bombarded with the words “diet,”  “new weight loss regimen,” or “loose ten pounds instantly” when channel surfing or catching up with current events. As record high temperatures continue to be registered across the country, the media is not reluctant to remind us that fewer clothes and “summer bodies” require that extra twenty minutes on the treadmill, or even a whole new diet regimen. I am a big advocate for a healthy lifestyle and live...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

The Attack on Anita Sarkeesian: From Media Analysis to Anti-Feminism and Online Harassment

AUTHOR’S WARNING: This post, and especially the links leading from it, contains images and language that some readers may find offensive or unsettling. Anita Sarkeesian is clever, eloquent, and seemingly fearless, but the recent fame she has achieved is not entirely pleasant. With a B.A. in communications from California State University, Northridge and a Master’s degree in social and political thought from York University, Sarkeesian is thoroughly knowledgeable and aptly qualified for her role as media critic and feminist activist....

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

Childcare and Work: The Privilege of Choice

“If you don’t believe that childcare is work, then try telling your parents or whoever took care of you that raising you was not work.  I don’t imagine that would go over well.”  I say this in my social problems class as a counterpoint to the assertion that welfare-recipients are lazy and immoral.  Most recently the sentiment was employed to defend wealthy “stay-at-home mom,” and wife of presidential candidate, Ann Romney.  The sentiment that childcare is work is fairly uncontested...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

Investigating Female Delinquency: The Role of Gender Construction

The shared hypothesis that delinquency—by far and wide— is a male phenomenon is an erroneous conception. Even though males have historically been recognized as violent perpetrators and females as passive and non-threatening victims, the increase in female violence and gang membership has become a cause for concern in several cities across the country. There has been marginal emphasis placed on females’ involvement in crime and delinquency due to entrenched stereotypical notions of females as “biologically incapable” of committing certain heinous...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

The Hate Crime Statistics Report – Gender-Motivated Violence

Editor’s note: This post has been reprinted with permission of the author. The original can be found on the University of Missouri-Kansas City Department of Criminal Justice and Criminolgy Blog: http://umkccjc.blogspot.com/2011/12/hate-crime-statistics-report-gender.html. By Dr. Jessica Hodge As someone who studies hate crimes and teaches a class about the subject, I find myself anticipating every year the release of the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics report.[1] In this report, the FBI provides a variety of statistics involving the types of hate crime incidences that occurred during the...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Teachable Moments?: The Case of Penn State

I’ve read a lot about the shocking revelation that a former coach at Penn State allegedly molested up to 8 boys and raped at least one.  The story is all the more shocking given the grand jury testimony that points to a possible cover up by Penn State officials.  Indeed, media coverage of who knew what and when has almost eclipsed coverage of the original alleged crimes.  Two Penn State administrators were charged with perjury and amid the outrage the...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

On Multicultural Centers and Class Discussions…

AJ shrugged when I asked him why he didn’t even mention the panel. He had been working on it since last semester. Yet during the class period when the very theme of his panel was central to the topic at hand in his upper-level Gender and Families seminar, AJ said nothing of his own work. He spoke, of course. And as usual, his teacher and his classmates seemed engaged in what he said. They nodded; they looked at him when...

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Teaching & Learning Guide

New issue of Sociology Compass out now! (Vol 5, Issue 5)

      Sociology Compass © Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 5, Issue 5 Page 311 – 398 The latest issue of Sociology Compass is available on Wiley Online Library   Gender Rethinking Gender and Violence: Agency, Heterogeneity, and Intersectionality (pages 311–322) S.J. Creek and Jennifer L. Dunn Article first published online: 2 MAY 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00360.x Race & Ethnicity Navigating a Hostile Terrain: Refugees and Human Rights in Southeast Asia (pages 323–335) Pei Palmgren Article first published online: 2...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Media practice analysis and the evaluation of cultural impact: Misconnections as missed opportunities

In a new study from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, it was revealed that women are both underrepresented and sexualized in the mainstream motion picture industry. The study, headed by Dr. Stacy L. Smith and Marc Choueiti, evaluated 100 films released in 2008 though survey and content analysis methodology and focused on the gender of all speaking characters, behind-the-scenes employees, and the hypersexualization of on-screen characters. Overall, their findings show that only...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Another Two Cents on England (and Crawley): Masculinity, Culture, and Tucson

As is often the case with graduate students, I just spent several months in a dissertation-induced haze and only recently had a chance to go through the latest issues of Gender & Society. Among these was the February 2011 issue that included a symposium on Paula England’s 2010 article on the “uneven/stalled gender revolution.” England’s over-reliance on the structural and institutional aspects of gender was underscored by several savvy pieces of Sociology, including a response by Sara Crawley that emphasizes...

Books and arts / Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

Beautiful and Pointless?

David Orr half-smiled at me from the pages of the New York Times Book Review this morning. In his dark blue button down shirt, head cocked sympathetically to the side, wire-rimmed glasses gracefully seated at the bottom of a long forehead, this man has clearly selected an author photo of himself that represents his belief in the power of ideas. His own, surely, and those of others so long as they are expressed in poetry. But Orr’s new book Beautiful...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Gender disparity in global newsrooms: New findings and continued concerns

On March 25, The International Women’s Media Foundation revealed its two-year study, “Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media” during its Leaders Conference in Washington, revealing that – not surprisingly – there is gender disparity in newsrooms worldwide. According to the final report (2011), “More than 150 researchers interviewed executives at more than 500 companies in 59 nations using a 12-page questionnaire” (p. 7). Although the report offers a regional breakdown of findings, the global results...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Sociology in Court: Wal-mart v. Dukes

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Wal-mart v. Dukes, in which the key issue is whether hundreds of thousands (or even up to 1.6 million, depending on what you read) female employees of Walmart should be certified as a class and therefore pursue a class action lawsuit. Here I review some details relevant to class certification, including the two types of sociological claims made their way to the heart of the case: empirical claims regarding...