Category: Gender & Sexuality

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...

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

Sexting and the Criminalization of Teen Desire

The New York Times recently ran an expose on teen “sexting” as a part of a slew of recent articles on the topic. Unfortunately, this article failed to take into account the fact that teens, especially girls, have sexual desire. A couple of quotes from the article: “Having a naked picture of your significant other on your cellphone is an advertisement that you’re sexually active to a degree that gives you status,” said Rick Peters, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney...

Gender & Sexuality / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Lessons learned from Hollaback!: On the development of social networking sites for qualitative research

While social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have gained global notoriety for their influential stake in recent political movements, a recent article in the New York Times has shed light on another form of new media praxis that includes neither a “like” button nor a hashtag. The article, titled “Keeping Women Safe Through Social Networking,” brings attention to the success of an organization called Hollaback!, a project that, according to the website, “is a movement dedicated to ending...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Lara Logan, agenda-setting, and the politics of sexual assault coverage in mainstream media

After CBS released a statement (15 February) that their chief foreign correspondent, Lara Logan, had been, “surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers,” news of the unfortunate event (which occurred on 11  February, the day Mubarak stepped down) instantly spread to various mainstream news media outlets, including BBC News (“CBS’s Lara Logan attacked by Egyptian mob in Cairo”) to The Huffington Post...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Professor gives away course…for free

Nathan Palmer, creator and author of SociologySource.com, has recently launched the Soc101 Class Pack, an entire set of introductory sociology course material including syllabus, PowerPoint presentations, class activities, and assignments in an easily customizable, freely downloadable file. Why would anyone give away something like this for free? What does he hope his site accomplishes? And where did he get all these great ideas for the classroom?  I had Nathan sit down for an interview to get some answers. “I believe...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Science & Technology / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

New issue of Sociology Compass out now! (Vol 4, Issue 12)

Sociology Compass © Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 4, Issue 12 Page 999 – 1078 The latest issue of Sociology Compass is available on Wiley Online Library Crime & Deviance Parole Revocation in the Era of Mass Incarceration (pages 999–1010) Jeffrey Lin Article first published online: 1 DEC 2010 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00335.x Gender Men and Erotic Oases (pages 1011–1019) Richard Tewksbury Article first published online: 1 DEC 2010 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00343.x Science & Medicine Fat Studies: Mapping the Field (pages 1020–1034)...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

FREE SPECIAL ISSUE: Papers from the 2009 Compass Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference

We are delighted to announce the publication of a Special Issue made up of papers presented at the 2009 Compass Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference. The following papers are now AVAILABLE FOR FREE until January 2011! Communicating about Communication: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Educating Educators about Language Variation (pages 245–257) Christine Mallinson and Anne H. Charity Hudley Abstract | Full Article (HTML) | PDF(99K) | References Beyond ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’: Breaking Down Binary Oppositions in Holocaust Representations of ‘Privileged’ Jews (pages 407–418) Adam...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Video Resources

Come as you are: The social experiences of sexual identity and mental health

On August 4, Federal Judge Vaughn R. Walker struck down California’s ban on same sex marriage ruling that the prohibition violated the right to equal protection as afforded by the United States Constitution.  Judge Walker went to great lengths to lodge his ruling in an extensive review of the facts presented. Ultimately, he determined, “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition...

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

Social Media: Have We Built a Society without Closets?

Today, we are all familiar with with what it means to be closeted. In fact, coming out has become among our most widely recognized cultural narratives. No doubt, large swaths of the American landscape still present environments hostile to sexual preferences that deviate from prevailing hetero-patriarchical norms, but progressive circles, and increasingly, society writ large, have embraced the belief that coming out (i.e., rending oneself visible) is the road to empowerment. If this is true, the queer community should be...

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

Legislation and identity politics: The case of France versus Muslim women and the facial veil

By Rachael Liberman As any respectful Western feminist knows, meddling in the affairs of non-Western women is a theoretical faux pas. Concerns, of course, are one thing, but condemnation outside of historical and cultural contexts, or “border crossing” has been ruled as downright oppressive (see Chandra Mohanty, Gayatri Spivak and Uma Narayan, among others). Issues such as genital mutilation have been fiercely debated among feminists, focusing more on the matter of Western normalizing judgment than the act itself. Discussion over...

Gender & Sexuality / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Replacing rhetoric with praxis: Australia's stand against negative body image

By Rachael Liberman As endless rhetoric surrounding youth and body image continues to proliferate both in and outside of the academy, it appears that ephemeral panic has taken the place of organized action. The profitable persistence of homogenized and suggestive messages/imagery coupled with the lack of media (and sex) education in the United States has resulted in a version of empty empathy: a fleeting visceral response unsupported by contextual comprehension (E. Ann Kaplan). While Americans are becoming increasingly “empathetic” to...

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

OkCupid Grants Special Privileges to Attractive Users

Before you ask: I did not make this picture up.  It is a screenshot taken directly from my email.  And, yeah, this is probably a bit of inexcusable narcissism. I, like millions of other Americans (OkCupid has 500,000 active users, eHarmony has had more than 20 million registered users in its history, and Match.com sees more than 20,000 users register each day), have turned to the enigmatic world of online dating.  Being a less than affluent Ph.D. student, I naturally...

Class & Stratification / Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Black Feminist Thought: Nearly twenty years on

Current policy that puts black men behind bars keeps black women in confines of their own. According to a recent Economist editorial, “between the ages of 20 and 29, one black man in nine is behind bars. For black women of the same age, the figure is about one in 150.” The author pointed to this statistic to demonstrate the decreasing dating pool for black women who are looking to start a family with black men. As incarceration rates rose...

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

News flash: (some) Women in the Church are addicted to pornography

By Rachael Liberman In a recent article from The New York Times, titled “Church Counsels Women Addicted to Pornography,” writer John Leland reveals predicable information regarding the Church’s response to overt female sexual behavior. While the fact that the Church is openly acknowledging this as a “problem” is newsworthy, it is the reaction and subsequent treatment that seems obvious and problematic. Leland writes, “The programs at Ms. Renaud’s group and XXX Church diverge from secular sexual theory by treating masturbation...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

The Queer Politics of Chatroulette

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/9669721[/vimeo] Chatroulette has swept the the nation.  I say “swept” because, like many things on the Internet, the novelty and hype surrounding chatroulette is proving ephemeral.  That’s not to say that chatroulette is going away any time soon.  In fact, we should expect Internet culture to continue to produce new opportunities for the random interactions at the heart of the chatroulette experience.  Fellow Sociology Lens commentator Nathan Jurgenson not unfairly described chatroulette as a “downright capricious and aleatory experience.” Perhaps...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

Fake proms and the stabilization of heterosexuality

By Rachael Liberman If the normalizing laws against gay marriage weren’t enough of a reminder that heterosexuality is being “threatened” in the United States, the case of Constance McMillen and her “prom saga” appears to discredit any naive notion that homosexuality is widely accepted. McMillen, a lesbian-identified teenager living in Mississippi, was initially denied admittance to her high school prom due to her otherwise “abnormal” sexual orientation. After taking the matter to a federal court (along with the ACLU), she...