The Business of Being Born

While I got a little queasy at times, I though the Business of Being Born was very interesting and eye-opening. The most shocking statistic for me was the one about how the rate of Cesarean sections for women has increased so dramatically as of late, and how the prevalence of C-sections increases around 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. This suggests that doctors are performing them so that it will be quicker for them, with no regard for the baby or the mother.

For me, this doesn’t change my preference for a sterile, clean hospital environment with the latest technology as an environment for my child to be born into. However, it does underscore the importance of having a doctor that you can trust and that you are sure will respond to your wishes. This reminded me of the scene in Knocked Up where Katherine Heigle’s doctor is out of town, and the doctor who fills in doesn’t want to perform a natural birth as she requests.

I really appreciated how the movie was very balanced on how it presented different views of the best way to give birth. They included accounts from a variety of doctors, midwives, and other experts that all had different opinions and input on the birthing process. I also like the way the producer followed around a couple who were deciding how to have their child. This humanized all the facts and figures that they threw at you, and helps the audience to see that the people who choose alternative birthing practices aren’t crazy, uneducated hippies.

Our Bodies, Our Crimes: Bad Mothers

I had mixed feelings about the "Bad Mothers" chapter of Our Bodies, Our Crimes. On the one hand, I think Flavin makes several good points about how a woman's substance abuse or past mistakes should not automatically make her ineligible for parenting. I had never thought before about what it would be like to have the right to parent your child completely stripped away, and cannot imagine the pain this would cause a mother.

However, I think the way that Flavin portrays social workers, government agencies and foster families as the "bad guys" who are trying to strip away incarcerated mothers' rights to their children is wrong. As one woman she quotes says, "Don't go throwing words around like 'partnership'. Because no one who has the power to take away my child is my partner." (Flavin 156).

Though I'm sure there has been several cases where the rights to their children have been stripped from mothers unjustly, and foster families have not taken care of children of incarcerated mothers as well as they should have, it is unfair to portray these people as simply wanting to take children away at all costs. Foster parents and social workers make many sacrifices and receive extremely low compensation for putting the rights of these children first.

While Flavin makes many references to the rights of women being breached, she makes little reference to the rights of the children in question- such as the rights to a permanent and stable home and adequate care. While there may be instances where permanency should be sacrificed for reunification, as Flavin suggests in the end of the chapter, often it is difficult for incarcerated women to secure things like housing after release.

Flavin also fails to bring up the rights of the child when it comes to visitation rights of the mother in prison. Children who are old enough should have the right to discern for themselves whether or not they want to visit their mothers in prison. In some cases, the lack of reunification or keeping in touch with their mother while she is incarcerated, especially in cases of neglect or abuse by the mother, may end up being beneficial for the child in the long run.

Michael Dixon and Mizzou Rape Culture

Though we haven't done much discussion in this class on gender and how it directly relates to the pervasive rape culture of our school (and our country), I thought it would be timely to do a post on the recent events and buzz surrounding Michael Dixon.

As everyone at Mizzou now knows, Dixon was named in two separate rape allegations in the past week. Nearly everyone I've spoken with about it is either confused or misinformed about what happened, what it means, and perhaps most importantly, what actually constitutes rape.

The Maneater recently published an editorial  addressing many of the arguments that "Dixon supporters" have been using- and shockingly, there are quite a few. The hashtag #FreeMikeDixon has been all over Twitter. The editorial brings up several great points- that reporting rape in this culture that we have created is almost more trouble than it's worth, and inflicts even more pain on the survivor.

It's important to look at the gender constructs that have created this culture... where did it come from? At the very heart of the matter, I believe that most people as humans believe that rape is wrong... so where did these shades of grey and victim blaming come into play? How did we, as gendered and sexualized human beings, get to this point?

Several of our readings have touched on this point, and how we can prevent and hopefully reverse it. Jeanne Flavin suggests that we need to get rid of the "patriarchal structure"and blames it for the unequal and anti-woman culture that we live in. This may be the case... but what steps can we take today to begin reversing this structure? I believe it will take the large amount of men and women who are sick of the horrifyingly frequent sexual assaults and rape on our campus to begin the movement and truly unify us as One Mizzou.

Our Bodies, Our Crimes: Baby Killers

This book has brought up many points that I've never considered before, especially the chapter on infant abandonment. I had never heard of "safe havens" for women who want to abandon their children  and was surprised that they aren't better advertised as a last-resort option for women who have unintended pregnancies- especially considering the high rate of neonaticide.

Flavin did a great job of showing the complex issue of neonaticide from many different angles. While it is easy for most of the world to condemn women who kill their children as merciless, cold blooded baby killers, she explains the different facets of these women and the complex emotions that they feel. It was also interesting to me the way that women who kill their babies often serve much lesser sentences in prison that those that kill their children or other adults. This suggests that newborn babies are not considered as "people" as others are. This leads to the question of when "personhood" happens for a human life. It seems that Flavin does not see fetuses or even late-term fetuses as people and wants all women to have the option to abort whenever they feel they want to- but when do you draw the line for those that have been born?

One topic that I was surprised Flavin didn't discuss further was that of adoption. With so many men and women faced with infertility, as well as an increase in the number of gay and lesbian couples that want children, adoption seems like it would be a very viable option.

Women who want to give up their babies for adoption also have a large amount of control over the family their child will be raised by.

However, when I looked up statistics, it seems that many women with unplanned pregnancies do not choose this option for their children. In 2006 and 2007, only 136,000 children were adopted in the US according to a report by the Child Welfare Information Gateway.  There was a 5 percent decrease in the number of adoptions per 100,000 adults between 2000 and 2008.

You Throw Like a Girl: Sex, Gender and Sports

I thought our guest speaker on sex, gender and sport this week was really interesting. The topics we discussed related very closely to topics I covered in my paper about how gender is demonstrated and "done" at the Rec Center.

After talking about the different stereotypes that are attributed to women in sports, such as women not being athletic or strong, or that only homosexual women play men's sports, I tried to do a little bit of research to dive deeper into why this was the case. In class we discussed historical factors and the "psychology of the uterus" as factors in why we attribute different behaviors to different genders.

Outside of class, I found a few interesting articles that try to give physical explanations for this. Most of them recognize that there are far more similarities between men and women than there are differences, and that biological factors cannot explain the vast differences in stereotypes concerning sport. However, many studies suggest that men and women display different throwing patterns at a very young age.

While the common phrase "you throw like a girl" can be seen as offensive, this may be a contributing factor to this stereotype. This particular graphic was taken from a 2010 Washington Post  article that summed up various studies on throwing styles of young girls and young boys. The author also makes the argument that boys are taught to throw at a younger age and in a different way than girls are, which could also be a factor. However, to decrease this for the sake of the study, they also studied aboriginal boys are girls who are both taught to hunt and throw in very much the same way. This study also concluded that boys threw "better" than girls.

Our Bodies, Our Crimes?

I am 37 pages into "Our Bodies, Our Crimes" by Jeanne Flavin, and I am already frustrated with this book.

In the introduction, Flavin condemns everyone from abortion activists who focus too much on abortion when it comes to rape and harm of the mother all the way down to members of the judicial system who attempt to combat the problem of fathers who don't pay child support by issuing "pay up or zip up" orders. She says that "incarceration punishes women not just for their crimes but for their perceived shortcomings as women and mothers" (Flavin 4).

This frustrated me not because I completely disagree, but because, as in many sociological readings and articles we have been assigned, she presents one side of the issue with a universal look on an issue as a whole- and offers no explanation for a way that these problems could be remedied or fixed. I agree that women  who are pregnant in prison do not receive adequate care for their unborn children- but wouldn't the mother's addiction to drugs, mental instability, or violent tendencies be more than "perceived" shortcomings? Flavin addresses this by saying that the government should not have a right to limit a woman or man's reproductive rights, even when they are "perceived" to be unfit mothers or fathers. If we go with this logic, is it not the government's right to limit a person's freedom because they are "perceived" to be criminals because of rape or murder?

I do agree with Flavin on a few points. She talks about the problem of "reproductive rights" being reduced down to simply pro-choice or pro-life abortion stances. While I feel that the topic of abortion is a very important and very divisive issue that is still at the forefront of society today, reproductive rights should also include things like the right to pre- and post-natal care.

The Bear Hugger and What it Means in a Gendered World

There's been lots of hype about the "bear hugger" this week after two clery releases were sent out about  a third-degree assault on the MU campus. 

Pretty much everyone had something to say on the topic, and whatever your stance on the police, the subsequent arrest of the alleged assaulter, and the wording of the clery releases, it got me thinking about how this whole ordeal and the buzz surrounding it was affected by gender.

I noticed that most people took it as a joke, especially the first email, which described the assault as a "bear hug"- not a stranger forcibly holding a female or another more detailed description of what happened. When people did stand up for the victim, whether it was through social media or verbally, it was almost always women. Perhaps as fellow women, we feel an empathy with the female victim more than men do.

As far as the actual assault goes, both victims were women- and African American women, which adds  another cross-sectional factor into the mix.

I wondered if the clery release would have been worded the same- or even been reported at all- if a male had been the victim. To me, this would be another way that masculinity and hegemonic masculinity can get in the way of health and safety- a man would feel too "manly" to report something that may seem harmless to some, but made him feel threatened or uncomfortable. Similarly, I wondered if the same outcome would have occurred if the "bear hugger" was a female- would the circumstances have played out the same way, or would it have been reported at all? Women are seen as more docile and weak- perhaps a victim wouldn't have felt as threatened by a female as opposed to an unknown male.

Gender and Work

Gender and work was an interesting topic for us to discuss this week, as I recently received a job offer in Chicago for after I graduate. It got me thinking about how many things I will need to plan about a move to Chicago- obviously where to live, who to live with, etc.,  but even other things in the more distant future. I realized that if I plan to stay at the same company for a while, I will also need to look at factors like how long they allow for maternity leave, how flexible hours are to allow for family-work balance, and the quality of school districts in the city. I then realized many of these things are factors that men don't usually have to worry about, especially this early in the future. 

As Joan Acker says in our recent reading, "Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations," the typical 9-5 workday is structured around the needs of a white, middle class man who does not need flexibility for childcare and has no other worries during the day except making a living. It wasn't until I read this that I realized how true- and how outdated- this was.

With all the technology available to us, and the ability to communicate halfway across the world with just a touch of a button, a work-life balance should be easy to maintain. The typical rigid, 8-hour, Monday to Friday workday is not necessary or conducive to the normal family now- nor does it allow for a balance of power in families who have dual incomes. 

Gender Relationships and Roles in Marriage

This week in lecture we talked a lot about gender differences in the family and how mothers and fathers often have different roles. In one of our assigned readings, "Thinking About Gender and Power in Marriage," Veronica Tichenor discusses the idea of gendered power in marriages and how this can affect the family dynamic. She talks about how since men are seen as the breadwinners and the ones that must provide for the family through working, this takes power away from the woman and puts her in a more submissive position.

We discussed this same idea in class when we watched the video about the struggle that one family had while trying be fair and balanced in the amount of housework they did and the time they spent with their children. They took days off work and split household chores 50/50 for the amount they did. This family was held up as the standard to which we should all model our families and didn't present any other ways that a marriage could be evenly split in power.

I was raised in a very traditionally-structured home where my father was the breadwinner and my mother was the stay at home mom who cleaned and cooked. I know from first hand experience that they had a very fair and balanced marriage and that this kind of family structure can work. I always had enough time to spend with both parents, and both of them made important decisions together- they just had a different kind of "work."

I think that several of the examples and readings we have had in class have looked at the issue of power balance in marriage in a very universal way and have not presented all the options that are available for families who want to have more balance of power in their lives. The issue must be taken on a case by case basis, accounting for the unique situations of each family and what is best for the members in it.

If it's not on, it's not on: College Edition

Reading "If it's Not On, It's Not On" by Gavey, McPhillips and Doherty reinforced the "Hookup Culture" that we learned about last semester. In college and (in my observation) in the Greek system, both the coital imperative and the scarcity of discourse around female desire coupled with the male sex drive discourse are both exhibited prominently.

A coital imperative is defined as "how much control women (or men) have in determining what sexual activity counts as 'real sex' (Gavey, McPhillips and Doherty 323).  I have often heard my friends, especially girls, talking about their night with a guy or boyfriend. Their friends will ask them if they "hooked up" "made out" or "had sex," and each "category" has a specific meaning. When they ask if the girl "had sex," they almost always mean traditional heterosexual coitus.

This also reinforces what the women interviewed said when they often felt like using condoms meant a relationship was less serious. They said condoms were more of a "one night" thing. In the same way, girls in college often feel like going "all the way" means they may get more serious, while they save other sex acts (not "real sex") for one-night stands.

I also see the male sex drive discourse at work in the college/Greek environment. Girls often talk about going further than they normally would, but say that they "feel bad" because they're giving guys "blue balls," which guys often complain about to get girls to do just that. I've heard several different girls talk about how they feel like a "tease" if all they do is kiss, even if that's all that they personally want to do. They want to have a reputation as a good date or a fun girl, and not as a tease or a prude.

One extreme example of this that I have come across is a man who is in the same fraternity as my friend. He once said that if a girl doesn't go "far enough," he criticizes them or their sorority. Girls feel like they need to "prove themselves" and go further than they really want to so that they can protect their and their sorority's reputation. This is the opposite of what sororities are supposed to stand for: educated, strong and empowered women and sisterhood, and shows how women buy into the male sex drive discourse.

Dude, You're a Fag

Our required reading of "Dude You're a Fag" struck a chord with me at several different points. Though the high school was extremely different from mine, which was a small private high school with only two black students and one Latino, the fag discourse among the males was very much the same.

The fact that "the fag because a hot potato that no boy wanted to be left holding" (Pascoe 61) was very relatable to my high school experience. I remember often feeling that the more the guys in my high school classes lobbed the words "fag" and "faggot" at each other, the more self conscious they seemed and the more they seemed to need to pass on the fag epithet to others to avoid it themselves.

However, in some discussion of the fag discourse and other gendered topics in the book, I feel Pascoe went a little too far in interpreting immature teen behavior as inherently homophobic or gender stereotyped. For example, when the boys are playing the "cock game" in class- which boys in my classes frequently did- I saw it as more of a immature prank of seeing how far they could push the boundaries rather than an attack on another boy.

This was even more applicable with the discussion of the Basketball Girls and Rebecca. Pascoe outlined the way that the Basketball Girls were loud, popular and well liked, especially Rebecca. She describes her as "a darling girl with a vivacious smile and tangible energy, and she made friends easily.... both straight boys and straight girls at River High commented on her attractiveness" (Pascoe 125). She contrasts this with the story of Ricky, who was often mercilessly teased for his gender-bending clothing, called a fag daily, and was the subject of heavy discrimination. She ascribes this difference to the fact that boys who act like girls and adopt typically feminine sex roles are treated a lot differently than girls who adopt typically masculine sex roles. While this is true, and while a man in a dress and heels walking down the street would almost certainly be scrutinized more than a woman wearing baggy pants and a t-shirt, I think Pascoe fails to examine all the other factors and characteristics that go into the different treatments of Ricky and Rebecca.

From my prior experience, both in high school and everyday life, lesbians and women who choose to exhibit some male-type roles do not escape scrutiny and judgement. The fact that Rebecca was "attractive" and had a "vivacious smile," along with being a basketball star and having many friends, certainly influenced her position in the eyes of her classmates. As Pascoe goes on to explain, the GSA girls feel this discrimination much more than Rebecca seems to.

Mickey Mouse Monopoly

The Mickey Mouse Monopoly documentary we watched in class on Thursday was definitely eye opening on the topic of the dark underbelly of the magical world of Disney. Though I didn't necessarily agree with everything the film said, it did have a lot of interesting content, especially concerning the way Disney markets itself and its products to children. As a strategic communication major, any insight on the thinking behind image and brand protection interests me, and I'm taking several different classes right now on the same subject.

One part of the documentary that stood out to me was when when they explored how Disney is constantly changing to keep up with the times, but still has the undertones of sexism and gender stereotypes. For example, in The Little Mermaid, Ariel defies her father, but then gives up her power of speech all for a man. In Beauty and the Beast, she excuses his cruelty and abuse and eventually falls in love with the Beast. As a child, these were the kinds of characters I looked up to and patterned myself after- and the kind of Halloween costumes, dolls, and toys that I wanted. I had never really thought about how influential these characters and stories were on a child until I looked back and my own experiences and realized that I did the exact same things the children profiled in the documentary did. Because Disney toys were so similar to the characters in the movies, when I played with these toys, I was basically re-creating the movie instead of making up my own stories. This caused the same gender and racial stereotypes from the movie to be even further drilled into my head.

Interesting project on strength and male dominance stereotypes in Disney movies.

I also grew up in a mostly white, middle class neighborhood and had little exposure to other races or national origins besides those very like my own. I drew a lot of what I knew about other cultures from the movies and TV that I watched, including Disney. As a child I'm sure I didn't see the overt racism, but looking back, it's plain to see that the Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Latino characters in Disney were not portrayed in a positive way.

Shrek and Gender Socialization

This week's lectures and readings about gender socialization made a lot of sense to me, and got me thinking about how it applied to my own life.

One reading that really spoke to me was "The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children's Fairy Tales" by Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz. In this reading, the authors discuss the importance of children's literature for assimilating children socially, setting their values, and setting gender power structures in society from an early age. Classic fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White show girls that outer beauty and being "saved" by a man are what girls should value. Laziness, ugliness and blackness are contrasted with whiteness and goodness, setting gender and racial stereotypes in young girls' minds.

These are the same movies that I watched and treasured as a child. I had Disney princess dolls, a bedspread, and dressed as a different Disney princess for every Halloween. Though I don't attribute my girliness exclusively to Disney and fairy tales, I do believe it played a major role, and that "this emphasis on a feminine beauty ideal may operate as a normative social control for girls and women" (Baker Sperry and Grauerholz, 191). As the authors say in the conclusion, movies like Shrek will hopefully change this idea and stop the pattern of teaching young girls hegemonic femininity so early in their lives. However, I was old enough when Shrek came out to remember that I didn't really like the movie and watch it over and over like I did my other favorites, like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella- simply because Shrek doesn't follow the pattern of beautiful princesses falling in love and living happily ever after. How many little girls want to dress like an ogre for Halloween? Definitely not me.

On the other hand, some argue that the Shrek franchise, rather than crossing this masculine/feminine beauty and gender boundary,  "reproduces white heterosexuality as the norm" and is actually "simultaneously reproducing normative ideas in new ways." This is written by Elizabeth Marshall and Ozlem Sensoy in their discourse on "The same old hocus-pocus: pedagogies of gender and sexuality in Shrek 2." They say one ongoing theme of the movie is "girl powerlessness," and that girls are taught to "kick ass to keep their man," among other gendered topics.

Gender at the Auto Body Shop

I saw the importance of gender and the way that people will automatically put a person they meet into a sex category today while at the auto body shop with my boyfriend.

His car had needed a jump start, so we took it to the shop to get the battery tested. After it had been tested, the mechanic confirmed that he had a bad battery and that he would need a new one. We followed him inside and he began asking us questions about what kind of car my boyfriend had so that he could give him the correct type of battery.  I noticed that even when I was answering some of the questions he asked, he always addressed my boyfriend and didn't turn to me for any of the questions he had about the car. After he had located the correct battery, he told us that he couldn't install it for liability reasons, so he may need to call a "buddy" to help him put it in. The mechanic automatically assumed that I wouldn't be able to help him, and that he would need to call a male friend. This was a stereotypical assumption of typical feminine and masculine traits. Since I was a female, the mechanic assumed that I didn't know about cars, since this is an attribute of the male sex category.

Post 1: Toddlers and Tiaras

This is my first post in our semester-long class project for Sociology of Gender. I'm excited about the project, since I'm a journalism major and obviously enjoy writing, but also because class material we've covered thus far is interesting and relevant to everyday life- something I can't necessarily say about some classes.

We've been talking a lot about gender stereotypes and how our society is very binary and rigidly structured when it comes to gender. The ideas of masculinity and femininity are very clearly defined and predetermined in our minds from a very early age, in part due to environmental stimuli- the way we are raised, what toys we are given to play with, what we learn in school, etc.

A popular TV show right now that clearly illustrates this is Toddlers and Tiaras, a reality show about the world of child pageants for teens all the way down to infants. Flipping through the channels today, I stopped and watched the show for a few minutes. In the limited amount of time I spent on the channel, there were dozens of examples of ways the parents portrayed in the show were forcing hyper-femininity onto their young girls. Girls wear frilly pink dresses that are often revealing. In one episode, a four year old girl even wears fake stuffed boobs and butt enhancements to look like Dolly Parton- the same outfit her mother wore in pageants years earlier and was now putting on her own daughter.

The mothers on the show dress up their daughters in fake hair, makeup, fake eyelashes, even fake teeth, giving them the impression that they aren't good enough as they are and are better as this perfect, hyper-feminine and often hyper-sexualized doll.

With parents forcing these gender rolls on their children at such a young age, how will the gender stereotypes that have long permeated society be disproved? More importantly, how will kids learn to find their own gender and choose their own path?