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(TC Chapter 4: Intersectionality (pp. 141-168) )

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“Launius and Hassel scaffold feminist analysis in a way that makes its
underlying components highly accessible to novice students. This textbook
provides students with a critical framework, while giving the instructor the
flexibility to select companion texts for each of the threshold concepts.”
— Ann Mattis, Assistant Professor of English and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality
Studies, University of Wisconsin—Sheboygan
“Launius and Hassel are the mediums of metacognitive awareness in the field of
Women’s and Gender Studies, distilling threshold concepts so that students can
become active agents in critiquing and shaping our gendered world. This book
should be foundational in any Women’s and Gender Studies program.”
— Tara Wood, Assistant Professor of English and instructor in Gender Studies,
Rockford University
“Threshold Concepts is my go-to foundational text for both teaching Women’s
and Gender Studies classes and facilitating Safe Zone training. The extensive
end of chapter questions and learning roadblocks sections help students process
and apply the information. I appreciate that the authors succinctly frame and
contextualize complex gender studies topics.”
—Christopher Henry Hinesley, Associate Director, Women’s and Gender Studies,
Rochester Institute of Technology
2

Threshold Concepts in Women’s and
Gender Studies
Threshold Concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies: Ways of Seeing,
Thinking, and Knowing is a textbook designed primarily for introduction to
Women’s and Gender Studies courses with the intent of providing both
skills- and concept-based foundation in the field. The text is driven by a
single key question: “What are the ways of thinking, seeing, and knowing
that characterize Women’s and Gender Studies and are valued by its
practitioners?” Rather than taking a topical approach, Threshold Concepts
develops the key concepts and ways of thinking that students need in order
to develop a deep understanding and to approach material like feminist
scholars do, across disciplines. This book illustrates four of the most critical
concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies—the social construction of
gender, privilege and oppression, intersectionality, and feminist praxis—and
grounds these concepts in multiple illustrations.
The second edition includes a significant number of updates, revisions,
and expansions: the case studies in all five chapters have been revised and
expanded, as have the end of chapter elements, statistics have been
updated, and numerous references to significant news stories and cultural
developments of the past three years have been added. Finally, many more
“callbacks” to previous chapters have been incorporated throughout the
textbook in order to remind students to carry forward and build upon what
they have learned about each threshold concept even as they move on to a
new one.
Christie Launius directs and teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies
program at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. She has taught the
introductory course for over 20 years at six different institutions. She is also
active in the field of working-class studies; she is the book review editor for
the Journal of Working-Class Studies and served as president of the
association from 2014 to 2015.
3

Holly Hassel has taught in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
program and the English department at the University of Wisconsin
Colleges since 2004. Her work on teaching and learning in women’s studies
has been published in multiple books and journals. She is editor of the
journal Teaching English in the Two-Year College.
4

Titles of Related Interest
Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Carole McCann and Seung-kyung Kim
Women Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies,
Third Edition
Edited by Mary Wyer, Mary Barbercheck, Donna Cookmeyer, Hatice
Ozturk, and Marta Wayne
Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are
Changing Themselves and the World, Second Edition
Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radeloff
Reproduction and Society: Interdisciplinary Readings
Edited by Carole Joffe and Jennifer Reich
Gender Circuits: Bodies and Identities in a Technological Age, Second
Edition
Eve Shapiro
Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries
Vivian M. May
5

Threshold Concepts in Women’s
and Gender Studies
Ways of Seeing, Thinking, and Knowing
Second Edition
Christie Launius and Holly Hassel
6

Second edition published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of Christie Launius and Holly Hassel to be identified as authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2015
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Launius, Christie, author. | Hassel, Holly, author.
Title: Threshold concepts in women’s and gender studies : ways of seeing,
thinking, and knowing / Christie Launius, Holly Hassel.
Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017043817 | ISBN 9781138304321 (hardback) | ISBN
9781138304352 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780203730218 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women’s studies. | Feminism. | Sex role.
Classification: LCC HQ1180 .L38 2018 | DDC 305.42—dc23
7

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043817
ISBN: 978-1-138-30432-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-30435-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-73021-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Adobe Caslon and Copperplate
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Visit the eResources: www.routledge.com/9781138304352
8

https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043817

http://www.routledge.com/9781138304352

Contents
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 2 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER
This chapter focuses on distinctions between sex and gender, exploring
how gender is socially constructed, and to what ends, as well as how
social constructions of gender are shaped by issues of race, class, age,
ability, and sexual identity.
CHAPTER 3 PRIVILEGE AND OPPRESSION
Systems of privilege and oppression profoundly shape individual lives. This
chapter explains how these systems play out via ideology and societal
institutions, and are internalized by individuals.
CHAPTER 4 INTERSECTIONALITY
Intersectionality is at the heart of feminist analysis. This chapter explores
how different groups benefit from or are disadvantaged by institutional
structures, as well as how overlapping categories of identity profoundly
shape our experiences within institutions.
CHAPTER 5 FEMINIST PRAXIS
This chapter unpacks how Women’s and Gender Studies prioritizes social
change and discusses strategies for bringing about that change.
GLOSSARY
INDEX
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Preface
Threshold Concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies: Ways of Seeing,
Thinking, and Knowing is a textbook designed primarily for use in the
introductory course in the field of Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS)
with the intent of providing both skills- and concept-based foundation in
the field. The text is driven by a single key question: “What are the ways of
thinking, seeing, and knowing that characterize our field and are valued by
its practitioners?” Through extensive review of the published literature,
conversations with Women’s and Gender Studies faculty across the
University of Wisconsin System, and our own systematic research and
assessment of student learning needs, we identified four of the most critical
threshold concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies:
the social construction of gender
privilege and oppression
intersectionality
feminist praxis
This textbook aims to introduce students to how these four concepts
provide a feminist lens across the disciplines and outside the classroom.
The term “threshold concept” is defined by Meyer and Land as a core
disciplinary concept that is both troublesome and transformative. As they
go on to explain, “A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a
portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about
something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or
interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot
progress.” A threshold concept is integrative, and when students cross the
threshold and grasp a concept, “the hidden interrelatedness” of other
concepts within that discipline becomes apparent (Cousin 4).
What Makes This Book Unique
10

The majority of WGS textbooks tend to be organized around the
institutions that foster and reinforce gender hierarchies while also
acknowledging the intersections of gender with race, class, and sexuality.
Typical examples of these institutions include women and work, the family,
media and culture, religion and spirituality, health and medicine, etc. Some
focus exclusively on the U.S., while others integrate, to greater or lesser
degrees, a global focus. Most also conclude with a chapter on activism. This
approach privileges coverage of content over the disciplinary ways of
seeing, thinking, and knowing. These textbooks certainly introduce and
employ these four threshold concepts, but often as a one-shot definition,
with the assumption that students will come to understand the concepts’
centrality through encountering them repeatedly in the context of topical
units, without their centrality being made explicit. What Threshold
Concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies: Ways of Seeing, Thinking, and
Knowing does is not “cover” material but rather “uncover” the key
threshold concepts and ways of thinking that students need in order to
develop a deep understanding and to approach the material like feminist
scholars do, across the disciplines. The advantage of this approach is that
rather than the “one-shot definition” that characterizes most texts, students
continually learn and relearn how the threshold concept is illustrated
across multiple contexts, thus reinforcing their understanding in more
substantive ways. Further, foregrounding the “learning roadblocks” that
many students encounter as part of the learning process helps circumvent
and move more quickly past those misconceptions that keep students from
progressing in their understanding of Women’s and Gender Studies.
In Threshold Concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies, we make the
assumption that ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing in Women’s and
Gender Studies must be made transparent to students, and that learning
will be done most effectively if students understand the course goals, the
pedagogical approach, and the potential roadblocks to understanding. We
contend that the work happening on the part of the instructor and the work
happening by students should not be “parallel tracks” that each negotiates
independently, but part of the teaching and learning conversation itself,
happening in and about the content, as part of the work of the classroom.
11

Features
Threshold Concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies is organized
strategically and conceptually in a reverse pyramid structure. That is, each
threshold concept is introduced at a broad level as the key idea of the
chapter, while subsequent chapter components add layers of depth and
specificity. Each chapter contains the following elements:
Opening Illustration: The opening illustration engages readers in
the topic—typically these are drawn from historical, cultural,
biological, or current events topics.
A Feminist Stance: We use the framing concept of a “feminist
stance” (Crawley, et al.) to help students continue to understand the
nature and strategies of a feminist approach with each chapter they
read. Our intent is not to suggest that there is a singular, monolithic
feminist stance, or what that stance is; instead, we draw attention to
what a feminist stance does —employ a critical lens using the
threshold concepts.
Definition of the Threshold Concept: Each chapter focuses on one of
four threshold concepts. The chapter opens with a definition of the
threshold concept, drawing from established and relevant research
across interdisciplinary fields of study.
Framing Definitions and Related Concepts: More specificity is
offered by related concepts, or other explanatory terminology by
scholars in the field that help students see how the threshold
concept is supported and illustrated by related terms.
Learning Roadblocks: Once students have an initial grasp of the
concept and its related terms, the chapter introduces common
“learning roadblocks” or misconceptions that many students
encounter which prevent a full grasp of the idea. These
misconceptions are directly addressed along with tools that can
serve as a “check for understanding” so students are able to
understand not only why these learning roadblocks crop up but also
where their own learning is in relation to the roadblocks. The goal
of this feature is to help students identify common
12

misunderstandings that prevent them from “crossing the threshold.”
Anchoring Topics: To further develop students’ understanding of
the threshold concept, each chapter includes a discussion of it in
relation to three anchoring topics: work and family, language,
images, and symbols, and bodies. These three anchoring topics were
chosen because of their centrality to feminist scholarship and
activism. Selected issues within the anchoring topics are discussed
through the prism of the particular threshold concept in an effort to
help students develop a scaffolded, nuanced, and complex
understanding of the cluster of related issues within the anchoring
topics.
Case Study: The case study offers an in-depth and analytical
perspective on one key issue that should crystallize students’
understanding of the concept. Case studies have been selected based
on relevance to the threshold concept, and to represent a broad
range of interdisciplinary issues.
Evaluating Prior Knowledge Activities: As Ambrose and colleagues
have observed, students’ prior knowledge (particularly
commonsense understandings or everyday use of discipline-specific
terms) has a strong impact on how students absorb new knowledge.
Activities that ask students to evaluate prior knowledge, to monitor
their progress, and to develop a metacognitive understanding of
their knowledge building stem from this learning principle.
Application Exercises and Skills Assessments: Gender and women’s
studies classrooms typically emphasize several key related values
focused on participatory learning: validation of personal experience,
activism, reflexivity, action orientation, and local–global
connections (see Crawley et al., 2008; Stake and Hoffman, 2000;
Markowitz, 2005; Maher, 1987; Shrewsbury, 1993). This praxis
orientation (see Blake and Ooten, 2008) is reflected in application
exercises and skills assessments for each chapter in which students
are invited to connect disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge
with lived experience.
Discussion Questions: Consistent with the signature feminist
pedagogies of Women’s and Gender Studies classrooms that focus
13

on collaboration, interconnectedness, and creating a community of
learners (see Hassel and Nelson, 2012; Chick and Hassel, 2009), this
book adheres to the convention of providing discussion questions
for each chapter.
Writing Prompts: The text includes writing activities that encourage
students to process, reflect on, and integrate the course material.
Works Cited and Suggested Readings: In this edition, we have
separated the Works Cited section from the Suggested Readings.
Because the text is intended to serve as a critical introduction to key
concepts and not as a reader, we provide suggested, relevant
readings that instructors can use to support and develop students’
learning. In this way, we imagine the book to be part of a
customized course in which the instructor can structure the
curriculum around key ideas, then provide a deeper learning
experience for students by adding primary documents, classic
essays, or online texts to the course that reflect the instructor’s
specific learning goals and area of expertise.
Goals of the Book
As coauthors, our goals for this book have been to provide a text that
reflects what we have learned about student learning needs in Women’s
and Gender Studies throughout our collective years of teaching in the field
as well as current thinking in the field and in higher education more
broadly about what it means to learn within a discipline or
interdisciplinary area. The organization of the text around threshold
concepts is intended to reflect what Lendol Calder calls an “uncoverage”
model, one in which students learn to think, see, and know like feminist
scholars rather than absorb a body of knowledge to be “covered.”
As a result, our intent is to help students learn those ways of knowing
and then be able to apply them to new subjects, in the way that feminist
scholars do. We have tried to reflect in the text some of our shared values
as teachers and writers. We have aimed to reflect an up-to-date sensibility
14

in including recent data and research studies as well as current phenomena.
Our tone emphasizes that arguments about sex and gender (and any
number of other issues within feminist scholarship and activism) are
unresolved, ongoing, and controversial, and the text contextualizes a
feminist perspective by explaining what that perspective stands in contrast
to.
While we treat each of the four threshold concepts in a separate chapter,
which in one sense implies their separability and separateness, they are of
course interconnected, and we strive to make those connections explicit
within each chapter. In some instances this means returning to the same
topic across chapters and highlighting different elements of it. For example,
though feminist praxis has its own separate chapter, we have identified the
ways that discussions of “problems” within Women’s and Gender Studies
can be responded to with action or different ways of thinking. Similarly,
though intersectionality has its own chapter, we have attempted to
incorporate an intersectional perspective and intersectional analysis
throughout the book, addressing the interrelatedness of systems of privilege
and oppression as part of an intersectional examination both across and
within topics and themes.
Logistics of Using Text
While individual programs and pedagogical approaches may vary, the
threshold concepts we have identified are central to the content- and skills-
based learning outcomes of a large number of Women’s and Gender
Studies programs nationally (see Levin and Berger and Radeloff). As such,
we believe that using a text like ours can be helpful in making those
programmatic learning outcomes explicit, and can support the assessment
plans of programs and departments.
Logistically, one way to use this book in an introductory WGS course
would be to assign all five chapters in succession over the first half of the
semester before moving on to a varying number of topics (drawn from our
anchoring topics or others of particular interest to the instructor) that
15

would be spread out over the remainder of the semester. In this scenario, all
of the threshold concepts would be revisited in the context of each topic.
A different approach to using this book in an introductory WGS course
would be to spread the assignment and reading of the five chapters across
the course of the entire semester, using one or more topics in relation to
each threshold concept. This approach would allow for in-depth time with
each individual threshold concept before moving on to the next.
Instructors can find more materials to support their work in the
classroom using this text with the eResources
(www.routledge.com/9781138304352). Materials available online include the
following:
web resources
additional suggested readings
full text journal articles for use with the text
A Note on the Second Edition
We are grateful for all of the feedback we have received since the book’s
publication in January of 2015. We have presented on the threshold
concepts approach to teaching the introductory course at state, regional,
and national conferences for the past several years, and have had many
stimulating conversations with colleagues that have informed our revisions.
We also received a wealth of constructive feedback from reviewers that
was very useful to us as we began the process of working on the second
edition. Overall, this edition includes a significant number of updates,
revisions, and expansions. There are new opening illustrations in Chapters
4 and 5, and the case studies in all five chapters are either new or have been
revised and expanded. In this edition, we have separated the Works Cited
section from the Suggested Readings, and have significantly revised and/or
expanded the end of chapter elements for every chapter. We have also,
wherever possible, updated relevant statistics, and make numerous
references to significant news stories and cultural developments of the past
three years, including the 2015 Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v.
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Hodges, that legalized same-sex marriage, the 2016 U.S. presidential
election, the Movement for Black Lives, and trans* rights activism (and
backlash against it), just to name a few. We have also re-organized some
sections, added many new examples, edited extensively for clarity, and
moved some of the learning roadblocks so that they are more integrated
into the relevant section. Finally, we have also incorporated many more
“callbacks” to previous chapters throughout the textbook. As we have
taught with the textbook, we have found it helpful to remind students to
carry forward and build upon what they have learned about each threshold
concept even as they move onto a new one.
Works Cited
Ambrose, Susan, et al. How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based
Principles for Smart Teaching. Jossey-Bass, 2010.
Berger, Michelle Tracey, and Cheryl Radeloff. Transforming Scholarship:
Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves
and the World. Routledge, 2011.
Blake, Holly, and Melissa Ooten. “Bridging the Divide: Connecting
Feminist Histories and Activism in the Classroom.” Radical History
Review, vol. 102, 2008, pp. 63–72.
Calder, Lendol. “Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the History
Survey.” Journal of American History, vol. 92, no. 4, 2006, pp. 1358–
1371.
Chick, Nancy, and Holly Hassel. “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Virtual:
Feminist Pedagogy in the Online Classroom.” Feminist Teacher, vol. 19,
no. 3, 2009, pp. 195–215.
Cousin, Glynis. “An Introduction to Threshold Concepts.” Planet, vol. 17,
2006, www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/Cousin%20Planet%2017 .
Accessed 5 July 2017.
Crawley, Sara, et al. “Introduction: Feminist Pedagogies in Action:
Teaching Beyond Disciplines.” Feminist Teacher, vol. 19, no. 1, 2008, pp.
1–12.
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Hassel, Holly, and Nerissa Nelson. “A Signature Feminist Pedagogy:
Connection and Transformation in Women’s Studies.” In Exploring
More Signature Pedagogies. Eds. Nancy L. Chick, Regan Gurung, and
Aeron Haynie. Stylus Publishing, 2012, pp. 143–155.
Levin, Amy. “Questions for a New Century: Women’s Studies and
Integrative Learning.” National Women’s Studies Association, 2007,
www.nwsa.org/Files/Resources/WS_Integrative_Learning_Levine .
Accessed 5 July 2017.
Maher, Frances. “Inquiry Teaching and Feminist Pedagogy.” Social
Education, vol. 51, no. 3, 1987, pp. 186–192.
Markowitz, Linda. “Unmasking Moral Dichotomies: Can Feminist
Pedagogy Overcome Student Resistance?” Gender and Education, vol.
17, no. 1, 2005, pp. 39–55.
Meyer, Jan, and Ray Land. “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome
Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the
Disciplines.” Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in
Undergraduate Courses. ET L Project. Occasional Report 4, 2003.
https://kennslumidstod.hi.is/wp-
content/uploads/2016/04/meyerandland . Accessed 5 July 2017.
Shrewsbury, Carolyn. “What Is Feminist Pedagogy?” Women’s Studies
Quarterly, vol. 3, 1993, pp. 8–16.
Stake, Jayne, and Frances Hoffman. “Putting Feminist Pedagogy to the
Test.” Psychology of Women Quarterly, vol. 24, 2000, pp. 30–38.
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Acknowledgments
We owe a deep debt of gratitude to our faculty colleagues in the University
of Wisconsin System Women’s Studies Consortium. This project emerged
from conversations among our fellow Women’s and Gender Studies
teachers throughout the state of Wisconsin over several years. Their
expertise, critical insights, years of teaching experience, and generosity of
time and spirit shaped this project from start to finish.
In particular, we thank Helen Klebesadel, director of the Women’s
Studies Consortium for her tireless support and advocacy for this book;
former UW System Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian Phyllis Holman
Weisbard offered research support in the early stages of the project; and we
thank both Phyllis and JoAnne Lehman, editor of Feminist Collections, for
suggesting that we write a review of introductory WGS textbooks for
Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women’s Studies Resources, published
out of the UW System Office of the Women’s Studies Librarian. We
especially thank JoAnne Lehman for believing in the work and making
publication possible.
We are also thankful to the UW System Office of Professional and
Instructional Development for a conference mini-grant in 2011 that
supported bringing together Women’s and Gender Studies instructors to
discuss threshold concepts in the field.
Christie would like to acknowledge the support of the University of
Wisconsin Oshkosh Faculty Development Program, which funded her small
grant proposal. Holly is grateful to the University of Wisconsin– Marathon
County, which awarded her a Summer Research Grant to complete work
on this project, as well as to the UW Colleges Women’s Studies Program
that has supported her work on threshold concepts in Women’s and Gender
Studies in material and immaterial ways. Thanks especially to Susan
Rensing who helped us work through some of the initial organizational
challenges of the text and provided many helpful suggestions along the
way. And a thanks to our reviewers:
Courtney Jarrett
19

Beth Sertell
Daniel Humphrey
Jennifer Smith
Tanya Kennedy
JoAnna Wall
Shawn Maurer
Danielle DeMuth
Desirée Henderson
Beatrix Brockman
Marta S. McClintock-Comeaux
Lynne Bruckner
Angela Fitzpatrick
Harry Brod
Danielle Roth-Johnson
Julia Landweber
Lauren Martin
Murty Komanduri
Jocelyn Fenton Stitt
Katherine Pruitt
Ann Marie Nicolosi
Hope Russell
Jan Wilson
Ball State University
Ohio University
Texas A&M University
Pacific Lutheran University
University of Maine
University of Oklahoma
College of Holy Cross Grand Valley State
University of Texas, Arlington
Austin Peay State University
California University of Pennsylvania
Chatham University
Coastal Carolina University
University of Northern Iowa
20

University of Nevada
Montclair State University
Pennsylvania State University
Fort Valley State University
University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
Indiana Univ ersity—Purdue
University—Fort Wayne
The College of New Jersey
Niagara University
University of Tulsa
And a number of other anonymous reviewers.
Christie Launius and Holly Hassel
21

1
Introduction
Figure 1.1 Artist Anat Ronen blends images and words of Malala Yousafzai with
imagery of Rosie the Riveter Source: www.anatronen.com
Why “Ways of Seeing, Thinking, and
Knowing”?
Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) courses are a common feature on a
large number of college and university campuses, with over 700 programs
in the United States alone. Many students take an introductory WGS course
as a part of their general education requirements, whereas others wind up
in our classrooms as a result of word-of-mouth advertising from peers and
roommates. A smaller number of students eagerly seek out WGS courses
when they get to college after encountering Women’s and Gender Studies
22

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in their high school curriculum.
In their book Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender
Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World, Michele Tracy
Berger and Cheryl Radeloff state that “students pursuing questions in
women’s and gender studies are part of an emerging vanguard of
knowledge producers in the US and globally” (5). This is to say, WGS is an
exciting, vibrant, and growing field. This textbook aims to introduce you to
the ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing that characterize the field and
are valued by its practitioners. These ways of seeing, thinking, and
knowing can then be used throughout your academic study, not just in
WGS courses. More fundamentally, these ways of seeing, thinking, and
knowing can be (and perhaps should be) taken out of the classroom and
into the world. In fact, the bridging of the divide between academia and the
so-called real world is a big part of what Women’s and Gender Studies is
all about.
The image at the beginning of this chapter (see Figure 1.1) emphasizes
this real-world engagement. The words and image of Malala Yousafzai, a
young Pakistani woman, are highlighted because her struggle— to gain
access to education for girls in a Pakistani area in which the Taliban has
prohibited it—illustrates how feminist ways of seeing, thinking, and
knowing are actualized. The image, invoking the historically significant
“Rosie the Riveter” pose that has come to symbolize U.S. women’s entrance
into the workforce in the mid-20th century, shows the historical roots of
feminist movement and how they continue to influence women’s activism
for gender justice worldwide.
Using This Book
As you approach this text, we want to direct your attention to the ways
that we have organized it in order to provide an introduction to the ways of
seeing, thinking, and knowing in Women’s and Gender Studies. Each
chapter is structured in purposeful ways in order to introduce you to the
definitions of the threshold concept and to offer grounding examples that
23

will deepen your understanding:
The opening illustration in each chapter invites you to consider
how the concept is relevant to day-to-day life, either current events,
popular culture, historical moments, or other spaces.
We have indicated in each chapter how the concept suggests a
“feminist stance,” or ways of looking at the world.
Threshold concepts are defined, as are related or supporting
concepts from research, theory, or scholarship that are critical to
understanding the ideas in the chapter.
Each chapter includes examples of “learning roadblocks,” or the
kinds of barriers to fully understanding the threshold concept that
students typically encounter. We’ve drawn from our many years of
teaching introductory Women’s and Gender Studies courses as well
as conversations with colleagues to identify these roadblocks as
well as explain why they are common misconceptions, and how
students can move past them.
In order to illustrate in a fuller way how the threshold concept
operates in interdisciplinary forms, each of the concepts is discussed
through the lens of “anchoring topics,” or key ideas that will root
the concept within three overlapping and related areas of inquiry
within Women’s and Gender Studies: work and family; language,
images, and symbols; and gendered bodies. As you engage with
each of the chapters, you’ll develop not only a new understanding
of the threshold concept in that chapter, but an increasingly
deepening sense of how each of the anchoring topics is “inflected”
by the concepts.
Each chapter contains a case study that, like the opening
illustration, is intended to bring the threshold concept to life for
readers and to help you see how it can be understood through
specific cultural, historical, or other phenomena.
Finally, at the end of the chapter, you’ll find exercises and other
ways to test your understanding of the chapter material, to engage
in conversation with classmates, to write about the topic, and to
apply what you’ve learned to other contexts.
24

We hope that this organizational structure will create multiple ways of
“trying on” feminist ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing in academic
and nonacademic spaces.
Feminism, Stereotypes, and Misconceptions
First and foremost, in order to understand terms like “feminist stance” and
the idea that there are feminist ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing,
some definitions of feminism are in order. As a term, feminism has a
history; according to Estelle Freedman, it was “first coined in France in the
1880s as feminisme,” (3) and made its way to the United States by the first
decade of the 20th century. It was not used widely in the United States until
the 1960s, however. In No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the
Future of Women, Freedman offers a four-part definition of feminism:
“Feminism is a belief that women and men are inherently of equal worth.
Because most societies privilege men as a group, social movements are
necessary to achieve equality between women and men, with the
understanding that gender always intersects with other social hierarchies”
(7). In Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, bell hooks offers a succinct
definition of feminism as “the struggle to end sexist oppression” (26). She
goes on to argue that understanding and defining feminism in this way
“directs our attention to systems of domination and the inter-relatedness of
sex, race, and class oppression” (31). She concludes, “[t]he foundation of
future feminist struggle must be solidly based on a recognition of the need
to eradicate the underlying cultural basis and causes of sexism and other
forms of group oppression” (31). Given these definitions, a feminist, then, is
quite simply someone who advocates feminism. Each of the four threshold
concepts that this book is structured around is implicit, if not explicit, in
both Freedman’s and hooks’s definitions: the social construction of gender,
the concepts of privilege and oppression, intersectionality, and praxis.
Advocating feminism or being a feminist can take many forms; in this
book we emphasize the idea of taking a so-called feminist stance, which is
to say, adopting a feminist perspective or way of looking at the world. As
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Crawley and colleagues assert,
Although feminism is, in substance, always attentive to power differences that
create inequalities, particularly those that create differential opportunities for
women and men (but also those that create racial and ethnic, class-based, or
sexuality-based inequalities), feminism is also an epistemological shift away
from a history of androcentric bias in the sciences, social sciences, and
humanities. As such, it is not just an “area study” (again, not just about
“women”) but something much deeper: a way of orienting to academic work
that is attuned to power relations, both within the academy and within
knowledge construction itself.
(2)
We will discuss this at more length in the section on the history of
Women’s and Gender Studies as an academic field.
It also seems important to address here at the outset any lingering
misconceptions about feminism and feminists. Many stereotypes and
misconceptions about feminism, feminists, and the field of Women’s and
Gender Studies circulate in our culture. These stereotypes and
misconceptions pop up in the right-wing blogosphere and so-called lad
mags like Maxim, but also in magazines like Time and Newsweek, in
Hollywood movies and television shows, and in everyday conversations.
Most students taking this course have probably heard quite a few of them.
If you’re curious about whether your friends, family, coworkers, and others
believe those stereotypes and misconceptions, try this exercise: make an
announcement on the social media platform of your choice that you’re
taking this class, and see what sorts of responses are made and what sorts
of conversations develop. Chances are, people will supply some of the
following (and maybe come up with different ones as well):
Feminism is dead. This misconception is invoked as a way to try to
derail or shut down a discussion of gender inequality, a way to
dismiss someone’s critique by saying that we no longer need
feminism because equality has already been achieved. The most
charitable read on this stereotype is that people look at the real
gains made by feminism and mistakenly assume that the need for
feminism has passed. In this scenario, the person claiming that
26

equality has already been achieved is likely experiencing the world
from a position of relative privilege. The misconception doesn’t just
get perpetuated on an individual level, however; it is a frequent
headline in the news media. In response to Time’s cover story in
1998 declaring feminism dead, feminist writer Erica Jong noted that
“there have been no less than 119 articles in the magazine sticking
pins in feminism during the last 25 years.” All of this raises the
question, as Jessica Valenti puts it, “if feminism is dead, then why
do people have to keep on trying to kill it?” (11).
Feminists are ugly, hairy, braless, don’t wear makeup, etc. Emphasis
on the ugly. A feature called “Cure a Feminist,” which appeared in
the November 2003 issue of Maxim, does a good job of illustrating
this stereotype.1 It features four images of the same woman wearing
different clothing and displaying different body language that
purport to show the transformation from feminist to “actual girl.”
The “feminist” is wearing baggy jeans and a so-called wifebeater
tank top with no bra. Her hair is messy, and her arm is raised to
reveal a hairy armpit. She also has a cigarette dangling from her
mouth, and she is standing with legs apart, with one hand hooked
into the pocket of her jeans. By the end of her transformation, she is
wearing nothing but a lacy bra and panties with high heels,
standing with one hip jutted out and her hand tugging her
underwear down. Her hair is styled and she is wearing makeup.
The intent of this stereotype is fairly simplistic and transparent, but
nonetheless hard to shake. As Jessica Valenti puts it, “[t]he easiest
way to keep women— especially young women—away from
feminism is to threaten them with the ugly stick. It’s also the easiest
way to dismiss someone and her opinions” (8–9).
Feminists hate men. The Maxim piece hits this stereotype, too. The
implication here is that feminism is a hate-filled vendetta against
individual men. The thought bubble coming out of the so-called
feminist’s mouth says, “There’d be no more wars if all penises were
cut off! Argh!” This misconception is a strategy to dismiss and
mischaracterize feminism and feminists, by individualizing feminist
concerns and seeing feminism as a battle of the sexes, rather than a
27

structural analysis of systems of privilege and inequality. A more
accurate characterization recognizes that feminism is interested in
critiquing and combating sexism and patriarchy, not hating or
bashing individual men.
Only women can be feminists. It is clear, in the Maxim feature and
elsewhere, that the default assumption is that only women would
want to be feminists, given that feminists hate men, and that only
women stand to gain from feminism. This view is increasingly
being challenged, not only because a growing number of men are
committed to being strong feminist allies to the women in their
lives, but also because men increasingly see the ways in which they
are harmed by adhering to traditional masculine norms. These men
are stepping outside of the so-called man box and are modeling
feminist forms of masculinity.
Feminists are lesbians (or male feminists are gay). This
misconception often circulates as a dissuasion strategy that is
sometimes referred to as “lesbian-baiting” or “gay-baiting,” that is,
as a way of capitalizing on social stigma within some communities
to scare people away from openly identifying as feminist or even
supporting key principles of gender equity. As philosopher Sue
Cataldi has argued, “[t]he use of this word is a scare tactic. It is
intended to frighten people away from affiliating with or
associating with feminism” (80). In addition to harnessing the social
power of homophobia to discredit feminist action and theory, this
particular stereotype serves the purpose of reinforcing traditional
gender scripts and sexualities. As Suzanne Pharr explains in
“Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism”:
What does a woman have to do to get called a lesbian? Almost
anything, sometimes nothing at all, but certainly anything that
threatens the status quo, anything that steps out of role, anything
that asserts the rights of women, anything that doesn’t include
submission or subordination.
(73)
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Feminism is solely for privileged (read: white, cisgender, straight,
middle class) women interested in equality with similarly situated
men. This stereotype is a bit different than the others in that it is
born out of a history of feminism in the U.S. that is marked by
moments of outright exclusion of women of color, working-class
women, and lesbians, as well as the downplaying or ignoring of
issues important to them. The important point here is to
acknowledge this past while also acknowledging that women of
color, working-class women, lesbians, etc. have also always been
engaged in feminist activism. In recent years, the contemporary
feminist movement has made important strides toward becoming
fully intersectional, even as it still has a long way to go, as
evidenced by the January 2017 Women’s March on Washington.
While the march was initially referred to as the Million Women’s
March, intersectional feminists quickly pointed out that this
replicated and appropriated the name of a march led by African
American women in 1997. After this early organizing misstep, the
march changed its name and came to be organized and led by a
truly diverse group of women who crafted a deeply intersectional
platform asserting that “Gender Justice is Racial Justice is Economic
Justice.” Even so, many women of color felt unwelcome at the
march, and many white women bristled at being asked to check
their (white) privilege.
The effect of these stereotypes and misconceptions: many people,
particularly young women, are reluctant to identify as feminists. The title
of Lisa Hogeland’s oft-anthologized essay, originally published in Ms.
Magazine in 1994, spells it out: “Fear of Feminism: Why Young Women Get
the Willies.” Hogeland explains, aptly and pointedly, that at least one
reason is
The central feminist tenet that the personal is political is profoundly
threatening to young women who don’t want to be called to account. It is far
easier to rest in silence, as if silence were neutrality, and as if neutrality were
safety.
That is, calling into question current gender arrangements requires people
29

to actively and consciously challenge the ways that gender inequality
persists instead of, as Hogeland states, “hide from feminist issues by not
being feminists.”
More recently, feminist blogger Julie Zeilinger has jumped into the fray,
and the title of her book indicates that what she calls a “P.R.-problem” with
feminism is still going on: A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty
Word (2012). Both Zeilinger and Jessica Valenti, among many others,
bemoan what they call the “I’m not a feminist, but . . .” phenomenon, in
which people express feminist ideas and opinions but disavow the label.
Their response is to argue that most young people are feminists, but, as
Zeilinger puts it, “They just don’t know it” (79). Or as Valenti titles the first
chapter of Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why
Feminism Matters: “You’re a hardcore feminist. I swear” (5). In sum, while
both Zeilinger and Valenti grant that the stereotypes and misconceptions
about feminism and feminists continue to swirl through our news media
and popular culture, and get internalized and perpetuated by many, they
clearly believe that, with a dose of corrective information to counter the
stereotypes, people can and do see them for what they are, which is an
attempt to undermine feminism.
Proof that attitudes about gender equality have changed is abundant, as
documented, for example, in the results of a survey by the Pew Research
Center, which shows that almost three-quarters of young adults under the
age of 30 seek equal partnership marriages (see Figure 1.2).
Stephanie Coontz cites this research as a positive sign of feminist
progress, but she follows up by showing that in reality, many couples have
a very hard time putting these aspirations into practice. In “Why Gender
Equality Stalled,” she argues that the
main barriers to further progress toward gender equity no longer lie in people’s
personal attitudes and relationships. Instead, structural impediments prevent
people from acting on their egalitarian values, forcing men and women into
personal accommodations and rationalizations that do not reflect their
preferences.
The structural impediments Coontz is referring to are the gender wage gap,
the relative absence of family-friendly workplace policies, and the lack of
30

high-quality affordable and accessible childcare. How does this relate back
to the stereotypes and misconceptions about feminism and feminists, you
ask?
Figure 1.2 Young adults favor dual income marriage Source: Pew Research Center
survey, conducted Oct 1–21, 2010, N = 2, 691. Q wording: What kind of marriage do
you think is the more satisfying way of life? One where the husband provides for
the family and the wife takes care of the house and children, or one where the
husband and wife both have jobs and both take care of the house and children.
The fact that almost three-quarters of people under 30 aspire to an
egalitarian marriage shows that the discrediting of feminism and feminist
values through the dissemination of stereotypes has largely not succeeded,
at least in terms of the attitudes documented by research. On the other
hand, however, the demonization or dismissal of feminism has succeeded
insofar as the couples who try and fail to enact their egalitarian values tend
to think of their failure in personal, rather than political, terms. In other
words, they think that the problem lies with them rather than with broader,
structural factors outside of their immediate control. And most crucially,
they are less likely to turn those feelings of personal failure into a
recognition that this is a political issue that could be and is being addressed
by feminists and feminist organizations. Debunking and offering rebuttals
to those stereotypes about feminism and feminists is not just (or only)
about countering myth with reality, then, but about helping to give people
the necessary tools and perspectives they need to change the world in ways
that allow them to, as Stephanie Coontz puts it, “put their gender values
into practice.” All of this illustrates why the feminist mantra of the second
wave, “The personal is political,” resonates across issues and experience.
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Feminist ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing provide tools for the
critical analysis of stereotypes about feminism and feminists. Calling
yourself a feminist (or advocating feminism, as bell hooks puts it) may or
may not be the outcome of trying on these ways of seeing, thinking, and
knowing, and in any case, that’s not the point. The point is to clear the
space for everyone to consider feminism on its own terms, free from bias
and distortion.
The History of Feminist Movement
The awareness of gendered inequality and women’s (and male allies’)
efforts to eliminate inequality has a long history. However, in terms of
organized activism on the part of women’s groups in the United States to
address long-standing oppressions such as a lack of civil rights, access to
higher education and the professions, inequitable treatment by the legal
system, and a lack of social and cultural status, the history is more recent.
It should be noted that the term most commonly used to describe
feminist activism in the United States is waves, with chronological
groupings of the first wave, beginning in the mid-19th century and
progressing through the early 20th century; the second wave, starting in the
mid-1960s; and the third wave, starting in the early 1990s. However, this is
largely an organizational convenience and may not only overshadow the
ongoing, active efforts on the part of many activists to challenge patriarchal
values, norms, and practices, but also overemphasize the contributions of
white and middle-class feminists. In what follows we will acknowledge the
“waves” narrative while simultaneously complicating it.
The first wave of feminism is widely considered to have its origins in the
activist efforts of a group of early feminists: Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton attempted to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention in
London in 1840 and were barred from participating because of their sex. In
1848, Mott and Stanton joined Martha Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and
Jane Hunt in organizing a two-day meeting of women to be held at a
church in Seneca Falls, New York. Several hundred people attended, and
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another 100 (68 women and 32 men) signed the document drafted by
Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments,” modeled on the U.S. Declaration of
Independence. It included the first formal demand for access to the “elective
franchise,” or voting rights, for women, and claimed:
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the
part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an
absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid
world.
The document not only made demands for property rights and the right to
participate civically including voting, but also for recourse in the case of
marital abuse and custodial authority over their children in the case of
divorce. It also demanded greater participation in the activities of the
church and access to educational and professional opportunities.
An issue that feminists and suffrage activists dedicated a great deal of
attention to was the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), introduced in 1923
as an effort to cast in policy equal rights for women. However, it took 50
years before the amendment passed both houses of the legislature and
ultimately, because it could not win the ratification requirements of 38
states, the amendment failed to be adopted. The text of the amendment
reads as follows:
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date
of ratification.2
Consider that, although many feminist organizations campaigned tirelessly
for the passage of the ERA, a strong and vocal minority of women activists,
notably Phyllis Schlafly, campaigned against it in the 1970s. They argued
that it would eradicate a number of privileges that women enjoyed on the
basis of their primary roles as wives and mothers, including entitlement to
maintenance (alimony) and child support in the case of divorce and
protection from being drafted in times of war. The ERA’s opponents also
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attempted to incite fear and shore up opposition to the amendment by
claiming that gender-segregated public restrooms would be illegal if the
amendment passed. It is interesting to note that a similar kind of “bathroom
panic” is in evidence in recent attempts to regulate which public restrooms
transgender individuals can use.
The narrative of the first wave of feminism has been challenged by Paula
Gunn Allen in her book The Sacred Hoop, where she notes that a full 250
years prior to the Seneca Falls convention, Iroquois women held great
power and were respected within their communities. She argues that the
women-led tribes of the American continent “provided the basis for all the
dreams of liberation that characterize the modern world,” although they are
rarely credited with having done so. This supports some of the critiques
that have been made in the past about early feminist movement, focusing
primarily on the rights and activism of middle-class white women without
a clear focus on equivalent civic activism for women of color and working-
class women.
Since these early efforts at achieving suffrage—women were granted the
right to vote in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified—feminist
activism since the late 1960s has focused on an array of issues widely
considered to be the “second wave” of feminist activism. Early feminist
activism in the U.S. focused on gaining rights for women as citizens of the
United States; feminist activism starting in the 1970s maintained this focus
while adding an additional focus on tackling the cultural and interpersonal
dimensions of sexism. Issues during the 1960s and 1970s included:
reproductive justice, including not just the ability to prevent conception
and terminate unwanted pregnancy but also the freedom from involuntary
sterilization; access to prenatal care and breastfeeding support; expanded
educational and occupational opportunities; access to other political and
civic rights; safety from violence; and elimination of cultural sexism
including sexual objectification, lower social status, and the socialization
of women to meet the needs of men. Strong, tangible gains were made in
the 1960s and 1970s in particular, during the height of the second wave of
feminism, including:
National, legal access to contraceptive technologies, including the
contraceptive pill, which was prohibited by law prior to 1965.
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National, legal access to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy,
with the landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in
1973.
The establishment of women’s organizations such as the National
Organization for Women (NOW ), founded in 1966, largely focused
on equal opportunity in the workplace.
Advocacy for equal pay. In the 1970s, women made, on average, 52
cents to the average man’s dollar; today, that hovers around 80.8
percent of the male dollar, still short of equality. When breaking
these numbers down by race, they are even more troubling: as the
Institute for Women’s Policy Research documents, the percentages
fall to 68.1 percent for black women and 59.3 percent for Hispanic
women (Institute).
Activism for legislation like the Equal Pay Act (1963), intended to
ensure equal wages for all workers, prohibiting discrimination on
the basis of sex; the Civil Rights Act (1964), for the protection from
harassment on the basis of sex; the Pregnancy Discrimination Act
(1978), which protected women from job loss or consequences on
the basis of pregnancy.
Prevention of gender-based violence, including establishment of
Take Back the Night rallies (1976); creation of Rape Shield Laws
in the 1970s and 1980s on the state level preventing a rape victim’s
past sexual history from being used as evidence in a rape trial;
formation of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
(1978); and the passage of the Violence Against Women Act
(1994), which offered coordinated efforts to develop awareness and
prevent violence.
Passage of Title IX. This part of the Education Amendments of 1972
guarantees equal participation in any educational program or
activity that receives federal financial resources. Although
primarily associated with advancing women’s equal participation in
athletic activities, Title IX also affected women’s achievement of
postsecondary degrees and pay equity within schools, and
protection from any other discrimination taking place within an
educational setting (“Fast Facts”).
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Social advocacy for programs like affordable childcare; social safety
nets to support poor women; and rape crisis centers and domestic
violence shelters for women who have been victims of violence.
In addition to these tangible gains, second-wave feminism changed
American culture in substantial ways. In Feminism Unfinished, historian
Linda Gordon likens second-wave feminism to a “powerful and fast-
flowing river” that
radically changed the terrain. It moved rocks, carved out new courses, and
deposited new soil, producing new gender structures. The new riverbed was felt
everywhere: in health, in reproductive choices, media and culture, employment,
parenting, education, sex, and man-woman, woman-woman, and parent-child
relations.
(75)
The changes brought about by feminist action were absorbed into the
culture at large throughout the 1970s and 1980s, even as there was active
resistance in the form of anti-feminist backlash, which will be discussed in
more depth in Chapter 5.
A third wave of feminism arose in the early 1990s, sparked by the
Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas. The
hearings were marked by accusations that Thomas had sexually harassed
Anita Hill when she worked for him at the Department of Education and
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The televised hearings
riveted and outraged many, as Hill was subjected to harsh and dismissive
questioning, and Thomas pushed back against the accusations, calling the
hearings a “high-tech lynching.” Thomas’s remark referenced the nation’s
shameful history of white mobs lynching African American men for
supposed sexual misbehavior, thus casting the hearings in a racial frame.
Many others attempted to read the episode primarily using a gender frame,
highlighting the ways that Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment were
belittled and dismissed by both Thomas and the white male senators
conducting the hearings. Chapter 4’s focus on intersectionality will delve
further into the dangers of a single-axis analysis and explore the political
and analytical developments of an intersectional approach that is able to
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analyze incidents such as this one in all its complexity.
Rebecca Walker, daughter of prominent second-wave feminist Alice
Walker, penned what became the rallying cry for third-wave feminists. In
her essay, “Becoming the Third Wave,” Walker sounded the call for a
revitalization of feminist activism that in particular was aimed at young
women who were literally or metaphorically the daughters of second-wave
feminists. Subsequently, feminist movement in the United States has
focused on continued efforts for workplace rights for all women, work–life
balance policies, elimination of rape culture and the reduction of violence
against women; equality within institutions like religious institutions and
the military; resistance to the objectification of women in the media and
popular culture; racial justice; and LGBTQ rights. We will survey many
contemporary feminist activist issues, tactics, and strategies in Chapter 5.
Contemporary feminism in the U.S. has also taken a more global turn,
with the identification of issues that transcend national borders and the
creation of transnational feminist organizations. Feminist activism and
advocacy has particularly focused on girls and young women in recent
years, especially girls’ education, with a growing understanding that
keeping girls in school is a key to improving their lives by a number of
measures. And keeping girls in school requires tackling all of the factors
that cause them to drop out, including not just child marriage, but also a
lack of access to menstrual products, and lack of easy access to water
(which in many parts of the world requires that girls spend large chunks of
their days obtaining water and carrying it back to their homes). More
broadly, global feminist activists focus on economic equality for women
and the overall undervaluing of women’s labor, equal political
representation of women in leadership positions, as well as environmental
issues. They also focus on preventing forms of patriarchal violence3 like
sex-selective abortion and son preference, honor killings, the treatment of
women as a form of property, female infanticide, female genital
cutting/female circumcision, intimate partner violence and marital rape,
sex work and sex trafficking, and pornography. Feminists around the globe
use a variety of strategies and tactics in their work on these issues.
Sometimes they disagree about the best approach, as in the cases of sex
work and pornography, in which some advocate legalization, reform, and
37

regulation by the state, whereas others argue for abolition.
Returning to the second wave of feminism in the U.S., which arose in the
late 1960s, part of that activist work centered on the dearth of scholarly and
academic work by and about women, as well as the desire for an
institutional and educational infrastructure that could support and
implement feminist work. Out of these motivations, the field of women’s
studies emerged.
Women’s and Gender Studies as an Academic
Field
As a field of academic study, with courses, faculty, and majors and minors,
Women’s and Gender Studies stretches back over 40 years, with the first
women’s studies courses and programs created in the late 1960s and early
1970s.
The further away we get from the founding of the field, the harder it is
to remember what higher education was like prior to its creation. In their
Prologue to Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Jennifer
Baumgardner and Amy Richards open with a vignette about what life was
like in the United States in 1970 (the year they were born). In the section on
higher education, they remind us that in 1970 there were still a small
number of colleges and universities that barred women from enrolling, and
that women’s colleges were still referred to as “girls’ schools.” They also
note that many campuses maintained curfew times for female students
who lived in the dorms.
The timing of the field’s creation is no coincidence; as mentioned earlier,
it came into being in the United States during the second wave of
feminism, or the women’s liberation movement. Indeed, for many years
afterward, women’s studies was often referred to as the academic arm of
the women’s movement. Professors and students who identified as
feminists began questioning and critiquing many aspects of higher
education, including what was being taught, how it was being taught, and
by whom. They pointed out that women’s experiences and perspectives
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were for the most part absent in the curriculum, and they also noted the
relative absence of women in the ranks of professors and administrators.
According to Marilyn J. Boxer, the absence of women’s voices and
perspectives in academia itself constituted a “hidden curriculum of
women’s second-class status.” She continues, “[i]n this view, courses that
ignored women’s experiences and perspectives subtly reinforced old ideas
about female intellectual deficiencies while also perpetuating women’s
social, economic, and political marginality” (43). For example, students and
professors in English departments began to question why there were so few
women authors included in literary anthologies and therefore on course
syllabi. Professors’ efforts to rectify that situation led to the exploration of
broader issues such as canon formation and the role of publishers and
critics. During this initial period of field development, the main question
was, “Where are the women?”
In creating new courses and undertaking new research projects that
focused on women and placed their experiences at the center of inquiry,
early practitioners realized that they both wanted and needed to go beyond
the boundaries of any single academic discipline. Feminist scholars
interested in researching motherhood, for example, not only wanted to
explore how motherhood had been represented in literature, but also
wanted to look at psychological theories of motherhood, or sociological
studies that were focused on interviewing women about their experiences
of motherhood. The new courses and scholarship, then, frequently had a
multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach. This emphasis has endured
within the field; for example, the scholarship cited in this textbook comes
from the fields of history, psychology, sociology, literary studies, public
health, and media studies, to name a few. Today, Women’s and Gender
Studies programs have become the academic home of the courses and
scholarship that go beyond the boundaries of a single discipline. In
addition, disciplinary courses and scholarship with a feminist focus
continue to thrive; the difference in these courses is that they are more
focused on the conventions and conversations that practitioners of a single
field are interested in.
Over the last four decades, women’s studies has grown not just in terms
of its numbers and reach across campuses, but also in terms of how it
39

defines and understands its focus and objects of inquiry. For example,
while the field first started as “women’s studies,” the forms of academic
inquiry about gender, and new theories, paradigms, and empirical
evidence, have resulted in a field of study more accurately titled “women’s
and gender studies,” or “gender, sexuality, and women’s studies,” or
sometimes more pointedly, “feminist studies.” Titles of programs or
departments or courses often reflect the interests and emphases of
particular institutions or faculty in postsecondary education.
If the initial question of the field was “Where are the women?”, by the
1980s that question had shifted to “Which women?” Feminist historian
Estelle Freedman explains the shift this way: “I believe that we must
question both the assumption that the term man includes woman as well as
the assumption that the term woman represents the diversity of female
experience” (8). It was during this period that one of the threshold concepts
of this book, intersectionality, began to be developed by women of color
who correctly noted the limitations of scholarship that did not incorporate
considerations of difference. This concept is the focus of Chapter 4.
The name changes that included the terms gender and sexuality reflect
the fact that today, research and teaching are often focused not exclusively
on women, but also on men and masculinity, and look even further, to the
questioning of gender as a binary construct. Thus, for example, we are
seeing the emergence of courses on trans* issues and identities. At the
same time, many programs have incorporated content and degree programs
in LGBTQ Studies and the study of sexuality more generally. Finally, the
field has also become increasingly global and comparative in focus. The
National Women’s Studies Association notes that the field draws on the
“conceptual claims and theoretical practices of transnationalism, which
focus on cultures, structures, and relationships that are formed as a result
of the flows of people and resources across geopolitical borders.”
Today, the glass is simultaneously half-full and half-empty. On the one
hand, huge strides have been made in terms of the numbers of colleges and
universities offering courses, minors, and majors in WGS; in terms of the
broader integration of gender issues across the curriculum; and in terms of
the numbers of women who are professors and administrators. Many
students find that they are introduced to issues of gender and sexuality in
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any number of college courses, only some of which are explicitly
designated as Women’s and Gender Studies courses. On the other hand,
however, women are still overrepresented among the ranks of temporary,
part-time, and adjunct faculty, and are woefully underrepresented in the
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.
According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, for
example, women today currently earn 41 percent of PhDs in STEM fields,
but make up only 28 percent of tenure-track faculty in those fields.
Some disciplines more than others have been slow to integrate content
on women, gender, and feminism into their curricula; philosophy is a good
example. Not coincidentally, philosophy also has some of the lowest
numbers of female faculty members. A Chronicle of Higher Education story
explains that women earned
31 percent of bachelor’s degrees in philosophy in 2006–7, compared with 41
percent in history, 45 percent in mathematics, 60 percent in biology, and 69
percent in English, to name several other fields. Moreover, women earned just
27 percent of philosophy doctorates in 2006, and they currently make up only 21
percent of professional philosophers.
(Penaluna)
Some theories about these low numbers include explanations ranging from
the content itself—the canon of philosophy is almost exclusively made up
of male philosophers, or as Penaluna argues, “the canon is sexist and there
is little being done about it.” Other theories include the low regard for
feminist philosophy, overt sexism or misogyny within the field of academic
philosophy, and historical associations between men/masculinity and
analysis and logic, the hallmarks of academic philosophy.
The progress that has been made in academic and nonacademic settings
is in some ways a double-edged sword. As Howe explains:
In short, students—and some younger faculty as well—may have two different
kinds of experiences today: A majority may still be where we were thirty years
ago, unknowingly in a male-centered curriculum; a minority may think that
women have always been a part of the curriculum.
(29)
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This text aims to introduce you to the many important achievements of
feminist work—as well as draw attention to how a feminist stance or lens
can make visible the additional work to be done to gain full social equality
for all.
Case Study: Assessing Pop Culture
Feminist critics apply the lens of gender (and race and sexuality) to a
variety of settings; both inside and outside academia, those devoted to
gender justice have devoted much time and attention to how popular
culture can both reinforce and challenge dominant ideas about gender.
Ellen Willis, Manohla Dargis, GLAAD, and Allison Bechdel have all
created “tests” for critically evaluating pop culture artifacts.
In 1971 pioneering feminist rock critic Ellen Willis suggested a test for
measuring sexism in the lyrics of songs—take a song written by a man
about a woman, reverse the sexes, and analyze the assumptions that are
revealed. In a 2011 post on Jezebel, Erin Carmon dusted off the test and
applied it to Justin Bieber’s “One Less Lonely Girl,” pointing out that
reversing the sexes in this song reveals a condescendingly sexist attitude.
In a 1985 comic strip, “Dykes to Watch Out For,” Allison Bechdel
introduced a method for assessing gender bias in narratives: fiction, film,
TV shows—any text that offers a storyline. In order to pass the test, so to
speak, the narrative must feature: 1) at least two women characters; 2) who
speak to each other; 3) about something other than a man. Visit the Bechdel
test website to see how your favorite (or least favorite) films pass or fail
this test of gender and sexism in media.4 Anita Sarkeesian discusses “The
Oscars and the Bechdel Test” on her website, Feminist Frequency.5 Keep
this approach in mind as you read about gender and the Oscars in Chapter
2.
In a related vein, the Vito Russo test (named after the author of the
groundbreaking 1981 book The Celluloid Closet, which explored
representations of gay characters in Hollywood film from the 1920s
forward) was created by GLAAD in 2013 to assess both whether and how
people with LGBT identities are depicted in films. The bar for passing is a
42

bit higher in the Russo test than the Bechdel test, which mainly focuses on
the presence or absence of women in a narrative, and not what they say or
how they are depicted. According to GLAAD, 6 in order to pass the Russo
test, a film must 1) contain a character who is recognizably lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and/or transgender; 2) that character must not be defined solely
by their sexual orientation or gender identity; and 3) they must be
embedded in the narrative in a meaningful way, as opposed to being the
object of humor, for example. GLAAD’s purpose in creating the Russo test
is explicitly activist; the organization provides a report each year on how
many Hollywood films pass the test, with the aim, as their website puts it,
of providing a “standard GLAAD expects a greater number of mainstream
Hollywood films to reach in the future.”
And finally, in 2016, film critic Manohla Dargis floated the idea of a
“Duvernay test,” named after film director Ava Duvernay. Dargis was
responding to the fact that Duvernay’s critically acclaimed film Selma,
about the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, AL, only
received two Oscar nominations, which was widely perceived as a snub,
and more specifically, as symptomatic of persistent racial inequality in
Hollywood. Dargis stated that in order to pass the test, a film would have
to have a narrative in which “African-Americans and other minorities have
fully realized lives rather than serve as scenery in white stories.” The
overall lack of films featuring the stories of people of color, and more
specifically, the lack of recognition of the films that do, prompted writer
and editor April Reign to create the hashtag #oscarssowhite in 2015. As
with GLAAD, the aim of Reign and Dargis is activist; in particular, Reign’s
hashtag, which went viral and received widespread media attention, was
intended not just to critique the Oscars, but to jolt the film industry into
change.
All of these tests show how critics use gender, race, and/or sexuality as
lenses to analyze pop culture artifacts, as well as how the results of those
tests can be used to advocate for change in the industries that produce
them. These tests also demonstrate how the work of feminist intellectuals is
not contained within academia but extends out to the general public in an
effort to increase levels of media literacy. We encourage you to give one or
more of these measures a try next time you’re listening to music, streaming
43

a movie, or watching your favorite television show.
End of Chapter Elements
Evaluating Prior Knowledge
1. Where have you encountered feminism, feminist activism, or
antiracist gender justice efforts in other contexts—your family,
friends, school, media and popular culture, etc.? What are your
major assumptions about the goals of feminist movement?
2. Which of the stereotypes and misconceptions about feminism and
feminists discussed in this chapter have you encountered before?
Where and in what context?
Application Exercises
1. To further investigate the Bechdel test and the Russo test, select
two or three of your favorite films. Watch them again with a
specific and careful eye toward dialogue, action, and interaction
between characters. Do they “pass” one or both tests? What would
the films look like if they did? How would they look different, and
what would need to be added or changed in order to increase the
representation and depth of the women/LGBT characters in it?
2. View the 2004 film Iron-Jawed Angels, an account of the suffrage
movement. Write out responses in which you explore the
following questions: Why did 19th-century activists focus so
heavily on women’s right to vote? In what ways is it a significant
form of civic participation? What other issues might have been
neglected because of a focus on suffrage, and why?
Skills Assessment
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1. Consider your own educational experiences. To what degree has
the study of gender and the inclusion of women been (a) made
visible? (b) part of the curriculum? (c) taken for granted? That is,
in history courses, were you taught about women’s roles and
contributions, or did your studies focus primarily on military and
political history? In literature courses, did you read work by
women writers? Are there other examples of gender equity or
inequity that stand out to you from your own academic
experiences? In your answers, consider your experiences in
elementary school, middle school, high school, and college.
Discussion Questions
1. Feminist bell hooks argues in Feminism Is for Everybody that
feminists in developed countries have oversimplified feminist
thinking, charging that
linking circumcision with life-threatening eating disorders (which
are the direct consequence of a culture imposing thinness as a
beauty ideal) or any life-threatening cosmetic surgery would
emphasize that the sexism, the misogyny, underlying these
practices globally mirror the sexism here in this country.
(47)
That is, bell hooks asks us to consider the relationship between
various forms of social control over women’s bodies and whether
one is more horrific than another (and if not, whose interests are
served by ranking them so). Do these parallels ring true to you?
Why or why not?
2. Review the core principles of the ERA described in this chapter.
What arguments can you see being made in favor of the ERA?
What arguments do you imagine being made against it? Which do
you see as more persuasive, and why?
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3. Read the Unity Principles of the Women’s March on Washington
(www.womensmarch.com/principles/). What did you learn about
the concerns and priorities of the contemporary feminist
movement from this document? Were any of the issues surprising
to you? If so, why?
Writing Prompts
1. Reflection: When people talk about feminism as “political,” they
often mean very different things. Critics of feminism and
Women’s and Gender Studies argue that it’s focused on electoral
politics and partisan issues (like abortion or pay equity) and
therefore is not academic. Proponents use “political” to mean that
it is rooted in concepts of power. Which meaning resonates the
most with you? What examples can you think of to illustrate it?
2. Select one of the following feminist issues mentioned in this
chapter and do some Internet research. What is the current status
of that issue? What policy or legislative efforts are currently at
work in that issue? How do you see the issue in your own day-to-
day life?
Access to contraception
Access to safe, legal abortion
Access to breastfeeding support and space
Social support services including Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program funding
Affordable childcare
LGBTQ rights
Trans* issues
Media and popular culture images of women (and men)
Working conditions, including recourse in the case of
unequal pay, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual
harassment
Gender violence
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http://www.womensmarch.com/principles/

Women in electoral politics
Notes
1 www.about-face.org/maxim-magazine-considers-feminism-a-disease-to-becured/
2 www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CONAN-1992/pdf/GPO-CONAN-1992-8 . “Proposed
Amendments Not Ratified by States” (PDF). United States Government Printing Office.
Retrieved 3 August 2017.
3 bell hooks defines “patriarchal violence” in her book Feminism Is for Everybody this
way: “Patriarchal violence in the home is based on the belief that it is acceptable for a
more powerful individual to control others through various forms of coercive force.
This expanded definition of domestic violence includes male violence against women,
same-sex violence, and adult violence against children. The term ‘patriarchal violence’
is useful because unlike the more acceptable phrase ‘domestic violence’ it continually
reminds the listener that violence in the home is connected to sexism and sexist
thinking, to male domination. For too long the term domestic violence has been used
as a ‘soft’ term which suggests it emerges in an intimate context that is private and
somehow less threatening, less brutal, than the violence that takes place outside the
home. This is not so, since more women are beaten and murdered in the home than on
the outside. Also most people tend to see domestic violence between adults as separate
and distinct from violence against children when it is not. Often children suffer abuse
as they attempt to protect a mother who is being attacked by a male companion or
husband, or they are emotionally damaged by witnessing violence and abuse.”
4 http://bechdeltest.com/
5 www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLF6sAAMb4s
6 www.glaad.org/sri/2016/vitorusso
Works Cited
Allen, Paula Gunn. The Sacred Hoop. Beacon Press, 1986.
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http://www.about-face.org/maxim-magazine-considers-feminism-a-disease-to-becured/

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CONAN-1992/pdf/GPO-CONAN-1992-8 .

http://bechdeltest.com/

http://www.glaad.org/sri/2016/vitorusso

Baumgardner, Jennifer, and Amy Richards. Manifesta: Young Women,
Feminism, and the Future. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2000.
Berger, Michele Tracy, and Cheryl Radeloff. Transforming Scholarship:
Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves
and the World. Routledge, 2011.
Boxer, Marilyn J. “Women’s Studies as Women’s History.” Women’s
Studies Quarterly, vol. 30, 2002, pp. 42–51.
Carmon, Erin. “The Willis Test Is the New Bechdel Test.” Jezebel, 2 May
2011. http://jezebel.com/5797747/the-willis-test-is-the-new-bechdel-test.
Accessed 23 January 2017.
Cataldi, Sue. “Reflections on Male-Bashing.” NWSA Journal, vol. 7, no. 2,
1995, pp. 76–85.
Cobble, Dorothy Sue, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry. Feminism
Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s
Movements. W.W. Norton, 2014.
Coontz, Stephanie. “Why Gender Equality Stalled.” New York Times, 16
February 2013.
Crawley, Sara, et al. “Introduction: Feminist Pedagogies in Action:
Teaching Beyond Disciplines.” Feminist Teacher, vol. 19, no. 1, 2008, pp.
1–12.
Dargis, Manohla. “Sundance Fights Tide with Films Like ‘The Birth of a
Nation.’” New York Times, 29 January 2016.
www.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/movies/sundance-fights-tide-with-films-
like-the-birth-of-a-nation.html. Accessed 5 July 2017.
“Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions.” The Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony Papers Project. Rutgers.
http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/seneca.html. Accessed 5 July 2017.
“Fast Facts: Title IX.” National Center for Education Statistics. U.S.
Department of Education. 2014.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=93. Accessed 5 July 2017.
Freedman, Estelle. No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the
Future of Women. Ballantine Books, 2002.
Hogeland, Lisa. “Fear of Feminism: Why Young Women Get the Willies.”
Ms. Magazine, 1 December 1994.
hooks, bell. Feminist Theory from Margin to Center. South End, 1984.
48

http://jezebel.com/5797747/the-willis-test-is-the-new-bechdel-test

http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/seneca.html

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=93

—. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. South End Press, 2000.
Howe, Florence. “Still Changing Academe after All These Years.” Women’s
Studies Quarterly, vol. 30, 2002, pp. 27–31.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “Fact Sheet: The Gender Wage Gap,
2013: Differences by Race and Ethnicity No Growth in Real Wages for
Women.” March 2014. https://iwpr.org/publications/the-gender-wage-
gap-2013-differences-by-race-and-ethnicity-no-growth-in-real-wages-
for-women/. Accessed 5 July 2017.
Iron-Jawed Angels. Dir. Katja van Garnier. Perf. Hilary Swank, Margo
Martindale, Anjelica Huston, Frances O’Connor, Vera Farmiga, and
Lois Smith. HBO, 2004.
Jong, Erica. “Ally McBeal and Time Magazine Can’t Keep the Good
Women Down.” New York Observer, 13 July 1998.
National Women’s Studies Association. www.nwsa.org/. Accessed 5 July
2017.
Penaluna, Regan. “Wanted: Female Philosophers, in the Classroom and in
the Canon.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 October 2009.
www.chronicle.com/article/Wanted-Female-Philosophers/48729/.
Accessed 5 July 2017.
Pharr, Suzanne. “Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism.” Women’s Voices,
Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. McGraw-Hill,
2007, pp. 71–74.
Sarkeesian, Anita. “The Oscars and the Bechdel Test.” Feminist Frequency,
15 February 2012. https://feministfrequency.com/video/the-2012-oscars-
and-the-bechdel-test/.Accessed 5 July 2017.
Valenti, Jessica. Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why
Feminism Matters. Seal Press, 2007.
Walker, Rebecca. “Becoming the Third Wave.” Ms. Magazine, vol. 2, no. 4,
1992, pp. 39–41.
White House. “Women and Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Math (STEM).” Department of Energy, 30 November 2011.
https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/White%20House%20OSTP%20Women%20in%20STEM%20Fact%20Sheet%202011
Accessed 5 July 2017.
Women’s March on Washington. “Guiding Vision and Definition of
Principles.”
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https://iwpr.org/publications/the-gender-wage-gap-2013-differences-by-race-and-ethnicity-no-growth-in-real-wages-for-women/

http://www.nwsa.org/

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Wanted-Female-Philosophers/48729/

The Oscars and the Bechdel Test

https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/White%20House%20OSTP%20Women%20in%20STEM%20Fact%20Sheet%202011

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/584086c7be6594762f5ec56e/t/587b8e5b15d5db2c4ba884d1/1484492383110/WMW+Guiding+Vision+%26+Definition+of+Principles
Accessed 5 July 2017.
Zeilinger, Julie. A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word. Seal
Press, 2012.
Suggested Readings
Basu, Amrita. Women’s Movements in the Global Era: The Power of Local
Feminisms. 2nd ed. Westview Press, 2016.
Cobble, Dorothy Sue, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry. Feminism
Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s
Movements. W.W. Norton, 2014.
Dicker, Rory. A Brief History of U.S. Feminisms. 2nd ed. Seal Press, 2016.
“Domestic Violence Prevention: A History of Milestones and
Achievements.” National Online Resources Center on Violence Against
Women. VAWNet.org. 2011.
Ferree, Myra Marx, and Aili Mari Tripp, eds. Global Feminism:
Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights. New
York University Press, 2006.
Freedman, Estelle, ed. The Essential Feminist Reader. Modern Library, 2007.
Gay, Roxane. Bad Feminist: Essays. Harper Perennial, 2014.
Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky, and Agatha Beins, eds. Women’s Studies for
the Future. Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Orr, Catherine, Ann Braithwaite, and Diane Lichtenstein, eds. Rethinking
Women’s and Gender Studies. Routledge, 2011.
Seager, Joni. The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. 4th ed. Penguin,
2009.
“The Women’s Rights Movement, 1848–1920.” History, Art, and Archives.
The United States House of Representatives.
https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawstime.html.Accessed 5 July
2017.
Wiegman, Robyn, ed. Women’s Studies on Its Own: A Next Wave Reader on
Institutional Change. Duke University Press, 2002.
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https://static1.squarespace.com/static/584086c7be6594762f5ec56e/t/587b8e5b15d5db2c4ba884d1/1484492383110/WMW+Guiding+Vision+%26+Definition+of+Principles

http://VAWNet.org

https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawstime.html

Yousafzai, Malala. With Christina Lamb. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood
Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. Back Bay Books, 2015.
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2
The Social Construction of Gender
Figure .1 The Genderbread Person Source: First published in The Social Justice
Advocate’s Handbook: A Guide to Gender by Sam Killermann,
http://samuelkillermann.com
Opening Illustration
In 1972, at the heart of the second wave of feminist movement, Lois Gould
published the fictional tale “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story” in Ms. Magazine.
The story’s narrator describes an imaginary parenting scenario in which a
baby is born, named “x,” and under the guidance of scientists is deliberately
raised in a gender-neutral way. The child is not subject to feminizing or
masculinizing influences through toy selection and clothing coded as
feminine or masculine, and is co-parented equally by different-sex parents.
The story calls attention to the many gendered messages we experience on
a daily basis:
bouncing it up in the air and saying how strong and active it was, they’d be
52

http://samuelkillermann.com

treating it more like a boy than an X. But if all they did was cuddle it and kiss it
and tell it how sweet and dainty it was, they’d be treating it more like a girl
than an X. On page 1654 of the Official Instruction Manual, the scientists
prescribed: “plenty of bouncing and plenty of cuddling, both, X ought to be
strong and sweet and active. Forget about dainty altogether.
(Gould)
Gould’s ultimate moral was that parenting that drew from a range of
human virtues would produce well-adjusted, functional children who were
free to express themselves and pursue their interests regardless of whether
those expressions and pursuits were coded as masculine or feminine.
A contemporary version of this fictional tale made news headlines in
recent years, with news journalists documenting the stories of two
contemporary couples whose decision not to reveal their baby’s sex (up
until the child reached school age) earned them a great deal of public scorn
and attention (Bielanko). As one of the parents, Beck Laxton, said in an
interview with the Cambridge News, “I wanted to avoid all that
stereotyping. Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you
want to slot people into boxes?” (“Couple”). Laxton, a UK-based online
editor, and her partner, Kieran Cooper, decided to keep Sasha’s sex a secret
when he was still in the womb. The birth announcement stated the gender-
neutral name of their child but skipped the big reveal. Up until recently, the
couple only told a few close friends and family members that Sasha was a
boy and managed to keep the rest of the world “in the dark.” Another
couple announced the arrival of their baby with an email that read “We’ve
decided not to share Storm’s sex for now—a tribute to freedom and choice
in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in
Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? . . .).”
Gould’s story and the contemporary versions of the Fabulous X
simultaneously illustrate how gender is encoded and maintained through a
variety of strong social cues (i.e., naming practices, parenting
responsibilities, toys, clothing, games, interpersonal interactions, and media
exposure) and the way that people struggle to carve out space and identities
that resist normative constructions of gender. This chapter explores how a
social constructionist approach to gender is a key feature of a feminist
theoretical lens.
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A feminist stance understands gender as a system of privilege and
oppression; it also assumes that gender is socially constructed, and is deeply
interested in mapping out how, where, and to what effect.
Why a Threshold Concept?
A core premise of feminist scholarship is that gender and sex are distinct
from each other, and that our gender identities are socially constructed and
not immutable. Key to this concept is that ideas and constructions of
gender change across time, between and within cultures, and even within
one’s lifespan. The specific ways that gender is socially constructed at any
given time also serve the purpose of establishing and perpetuating sexism,
defined as prejudice and discrimination based on sex. Furthermore, racial,
ethnic, and cultural identities frame expectations for appropriate gendered
behavior, as does social class and sexuality. Simply put, feminist scholars
focus on how gender is socially constructed, and to what ends, and they are
simultaneously interested in how social constructions of gender are shaped
by issues of race, class, age, ability, and sexual identity. This threshold
concept, then, is deeply intertwined with both the concept of privilege and
oppression, which is the focus of Chapter 3, and the concept of
intersectionality, which is the focus of Chapter 4.
Framing Definitions and Related Concepts
Social Constructionism
One of the early foundational theories underpinning a social
constructionist approach is C. Wright Mills’s articulation of the concept of
the sociological imagination. In his 1959 book of the same name, Mills
argues that
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the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only
by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life
only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.
(5)
Mills’s claims became the foundation of social science and sociology as a
discipline. As Mills contended, “[t]he sociological imagination enables us to
grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within
society” (6). As one of the foundations of feminist theory, social
constructionism can be distinguished from other theories about sex and
gender that are used to explain gender role socialization and how gendered
systems are created and maintained. There are several hallmark concepts
that distinguish a social constructionist approach to gender.
Sex and Gender
The “Genderbread Person” image that opens this chapter—and the
accompanying controversies around it—is a case in point of the unsettled
social understanding of the relationship between biological sex and the
various ways that gender is created, expressed, and defined. What the
image attempts to do is complicate our understanding of a binary gender
system—boys and girls, men and women—and present a more varied
spectrum of elements that make up sex, gender, and sexuality.
Although most scholars acknowledge that gender and sex exist on a
continuum, a simple definition pulls apart these two commonly conflated
terms into “sex,” which focuses on the biological, genetic, and physiological
features of people, and “gender,” which characterizes the behavioral (and
changeable/evolving) characteristics that we define as feminine and
masculine. Physical features of sex include reproductive organs and
secondary sex characteristics that develop at puberty, such as average
difference and variation in muscle-to-fat ratios between men and women,
and growth in body and facial hair. Gender, in contrast, is shaped by
behavioral cues and social codes that are coded as “masculine” or
“feminine.” In the social constructionist understanding of gender, then,
gender is performative, that is, something you “do” rather than something
55

that is built into or programmed into you.
The work of feminist sociologist Judith Lorber serves as a touchstone in
this area. Her work helpfully provides a number of terms that flesh out the
idea of gender as a social construction. She makes clear that gendering is a
process that has many dimensions and that occurs over time: first, there is
the assignment of sex and gender, which quickly becomes a gender status,
according to Lorber, through naming, clothing, and the choice of children’s
toys and room decor. From there, children continue to be socialized into
their gender, developing a gender identity, which is a person’s gendered
sense of self. The expression of that gendered sense of self is referred to as
one’s gender comportment, which Susan Stryker defines as “bodily
actions such as how we use our voices, cross our legs, hold our heads, wear
our clothes, dance around the room, throw a ball, walk in high heels” (12).
This category is referred to as gender expression in the Genderbread
figure that opens the chapter. Lorber also uses the term gender display,
defined as the presentation of self as a kind of gendered person through
dress, cosmetics, adornments, and both permanent and reversible body
markers.
A social constructionist approach to gender rejects the belief that there
are only two sexes and two genders, arguing instead that our current
binary sex/gender system is itself a social construction. Powerful evidence
for this argument comes from the intersex community (those who are
themselves intersexed, parents of intersex children, and researchers who
focus on intersexuality). The Intersex Society of North America defines
intersex as “a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a
person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to
fit the typical definitions of female or male” (“What Is Intersex?”). While it
has been diffi cult to get a handle on how frequently intersex babies are
born, Anne Fausto-Sterling estimates that intersex births account for 1.7
percent of all births. She helpfully puts this into perspective:
a city of 300,000 would have 5,100 people with varying degrees of intersexual
development. Compare this with albinism, another relatively uncommon human
trait but one that most readers can probably recall having seen. Albino births
occur much less frequently than intersexual births—in only about 1 in 20,000
babies.
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(51–53)
Another frequently cited point of reference is redheadedness: being
intersex is about as common as being born with red hair. For those who
believe that sex and gender are binary—that there are only two possibilities,
male and female—intersex babies are “really” male or female, and medical
management, including genital surgery, can bring their physical
appearance in line with their “true” sex. By contrast, Anne Fausto-Sterling
and many others argue that the birth of intersex babies indicates that sex
and gender are not binary, that is, that there are more than two categories,
male and female, and she envisions a future (an admittedly utopic one) in
which a wide range of gender identities and expressions would be
permitted, even encouraged. Toward this end, Fausto-Sterling and the
Intersex Society of North America call for an end to infant genital surgery
on intersex babies, both because they feel strongly that decisions about
making any permanent changes to the appearance and sexual function of
intersex people should be made by the people themselves, or at least in
consultation with them, and because the genital surgeries reinforce the idea
that there are really only two sexes. Cheryl Chase, founder of the Intersex
Society of North America and herself born intersex, argues that “children
should be made to feel loved and accepted in their unusual bodies” (Weil).
Recent legal victories would seem to suggest some small steps toward
Fausto-Sterling’s vision: India, Pakistan and New Zealand now recognize a
third gender, and in 2013, Germany enacted a law that allows parents to
refrain from marking “M” or “F” on their intersex baby’s birth certificate.
The law was intended to allow parents to defer the decision and allow the
child to decide later on whether to identify as male or female; however, the
law also stipulates that a child could continue to identify as intersex. In a
move that echoes the Gould story that opens this chapter, Germans can
choose to use an “X” in the gender field of their passport. And in 2016 in
the United States, Kelly Keenan, at the age of 55, successfully had her birth
certificate amended to read “intersex” rather than M or F, after finding out
what had been kept a secret from her throughout her life. Keenan’s is
thought to be the first birth certificate to read “intersex” (Levin). (Note:
Keenan was raised female, and continues to use feminine pronouns.)
While most people experience congruence between their gender
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assignment, gender identity, and gender expression, this is not
automatically the case, and a growing number of people are exploring
other identities and ways of being, and demanding legal recognition for
their right to do so. The term transgender has many complex meanings
and nuances, but a starting point is that it is used to describe an individual
for whom there is a lack of congruence between their gender assignment
and gender identity. In Transgender History, Susan Stryker uses the term
“to refer to people who move away from the gender they were assigned at
birth, people who cross over ( trans- ) the boundaries constructed by their
culture to define and contain that gender” (1). While it used to be more
common for that movement to remain within the boundaries of the binary
gender system, that is, by seeking sex reassignment surgery and
transitioning from identifying as a man to identifying as a woman (or vice
versa), many trans* people today are increasingly identifying themselves
and staking out territory outside the binary altogether. As Stryker points
out, some people “seek to resist their birth-assigned gender without
abandoning it,” whereas others “seek to create some kind of new gender
location” (19). Trans* people may or may not modify their bodies using
surgery and/or hormones and may or may not seek legal recognition for
their gender identity if it does not match the sex and gender they were
assigned at birth.
Conversely, the terms cisgender and cissexual are used to describe
people who experience congruence between their gender assignment and
gender identity. Stryker points out that the creation of this term helps to
name and mark that experience rather than assuming it as the norm. She
writes, “[t]he idea behind the terms is to resist the way that ‘woman’ or
‘man’ can mean ‘nontransgendered woman’ or ‘nontransgendered man’ by
default, unless the person’s transgender status is explicitly named” (22).
Social media have also responded to the expanding understanding of
gender identity that has emanated from a variety of sources, including the
intersex and the trans* communities. For example, Facebook in 2014
changed the gender field of its profile options to allow for a wider range of
user selections, moving from the binary “male/female” options to roughly
50 options including “cisgender,” “trans male,” “androgynous,” and
“genderqueer,” among others (Henn). Although the opportunity to choose
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one’s online gender identity, along with the legal recognition of a third
gender in several countries, indicates that change is afoot and many people
are actively working to create more cultural space for life beyond the
binary, this is not to downplay or diminish the realities of transphobia,
which Julia Serano defines as “an irrational fear of, aversion to, or
discrimination against people whose gendered identities, appearances, or
behaviors deviate from societal norms.” Even as many, especially younger
people, are actively embracing gender fluidity, there are powerful forces
that are working actively to police the boundaries of sex and gender. A
recent incident in the state of Colorado highlights the uneven nature of
change; the Girl Scouts (GSUSA) found themselves under attack over the
inclusion of Bobby Montoya, a grade-school-aged trans girl. In fact,
Bobby’s desire to join the Girl Scouts was initially thwarted by a troop
leader who cited Bobby’s “boy parts” as a barrier to joining, but that
decision was quickly reversed based on national GSUSA policy. The FAQ
section of the GSUSA website states that “if the child is recognized by the
family and school/community as a girl and lives culturally as a girl, then
Girl Scouts is an organization that can serve her in a setting that is both
emotionally and physically safe.” When Bobby’s story hit the news,
however, a group calling itself Honest Girl Scouts encouraged a cookie-
buying boycott, citing GSUSA’s “bias for transgenders [sic ]” (Hetter).
Many cities and states are also passing so-called “bathroom bills” which
seek to prohibit trans men and women from using the bathroom that
accords with their gender identity. Many of these bills constitute backlash
to recent political gains for transgender rights, and proponents of them
often disingenuously cite their desire to protect women and girls from
being preyed upon by men in the restroom.
Gender Socialization
Having made an initial pass through an explanation of the distinction
between sex and gender, as well as what gender is or consists of, we can
now ask and answer the question of where and how we learn about gender
in our culture. Where do we learn what it means to be a boy or girl in our
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culture, in terms of appearance and behavior, and what are the cues and
messages that we receive, both implicitly and explicitly? That is, we can
begin to think about where, but also how, we are socialized into our
gender. Some of the primary sites and arenas of gender socialization
include the family, education, religion, popular culture and the media,
sports, and the legal and criminal justice systems. What follows are a few
examples of how these societal institutions serve as a site of gender
socialization (note: institutions as sites and mechanisms for structuring
systems of privilege and oppression will be discussed in Chapter 3 as well).
Education
School settings are a key site of gender socialization. The messages children
receive about appropriate behavior, attitudes, and appearance for their
gender are both explicit and implicit, and come from school policies,
teachers, fellow students, as well as the curriculum. Dress codes in middle
schools and high schools are a good example of the role of school policy in
shaping ideas around gender. An increasing number of schools have
instituted dress codes that reinforce a double standard and convey the
message to girls and young women that their bodies, by definition, are a
distraction to boys and young men, and that it is their responsibility to
cover themselves. Some of these dress codes can also have the effect of
regulating the dress and appearance of trans* students. Many of these dress
codes are ostensibly gender-neutral, but the language in them often reveals
that women’s bodies are the prime focus of the policy. In Appleton, WI, for
example, the policy states that “[s]tudents may not wear scanty and/or
revealing clothing,” but then goes on to provide examples that are almost
exclusively feminine: “short skirts (need to be mid-thigh) or revealing
shorts, tube tops, halters, backless tops, spaghetti straps less than one inch,
exposed midriffs or undergarments.” Around the country, many students
are resisting these dress codes and calling out the sexist assumptions that
are implicit in them, as when a student in Appleton posted flyers urging
administrators to “teach male students and teachers not to over-sexualize
female body parts” (Zettel).
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The role of peers in educational settings can be seen powerfully in
discussions of boys’ underachievement. A recent article by sociologist
Michael Kimmel, “Solving the ‘Boy Crisis’ in Schools,” drawing from
qualitative evidence collected from surveys and interviews with middle
school students, links expectations about gender norms for boys to attitudes
about school, and more specifically, toward particular school subjects.
Kimmel argues that “[h]ow little they care about school, about studying,
about succeeding—these are markers of manhood in peer groups of middle
and high school boys across the country.” He further argues that “what
boys think it means to be a man is often at odds with succeeding in school.
Stated most simply, many boys regard academic disengagement as a sign of
their masculinity.” Kimmel concludes with a call to change the messages
that boys receive in school settings, saying that “[w]e must make academic
engagement a sign of manhood— which we can only do by interrupting
those other voices that tell our young boys to tune out.” On a related note,
the values of compliance and obedience are a key feature in many school
settings, a fact that has gendered (and racialized) implications. As Sadker
and Zittleman explain, boys are more likely to be overdiagnosed with
behavioral and emotional problems such as Attention Deficit Disorder,
whereas girls’ higher overall average grades and lower test scores may
reflect what they note is an educational setting that values “following the
rules, being quiet, and conforming to school norms” (78). In this way,
particular behaviors are rewarded even if they are not ultimately those that
will lead to “success” beyond school and in other settings that prize
assertiveness and risk-taking behaviors.
School curricula also contain gendered messages that affect children’s
perceptions of intelligence, as illustrated by a recent study published in the
journal Science. The study documented the shift that takes place as early as
age 5 regarding children’s perceptions of “brilliance” or intelligence. At 5,
both boys and girls associated brilliance with their own gender; by 6 or 7,
however, both boys and girls were significantly less likely to pick women
as brilliant. That assessment was distinct from girls’ beliefs about who does
well in school, where girls were more likely to identify girls, suggesting
that at least for girls, their beliefs about academic success were
disconnected from their perceptions of who is “really, really smart,” as the
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study framed the question to child participants. As the study concluded, by
age 6, then, girls in the study were avoiding activities that were framed by
the researchers as being for kids who were “really, really smart,” and the
authors assert that “[t]hese findings suggest that gendered notions of
brilliance are acquired early and have an immediate effect on children’s
interests” (Bian, Leslie, and Cimpian).
Family Structures and the Workplace
Social and policy structures that assume female caretaking and the primacy
of men’s careers send strong reinforcing messages and logistical cues about
the responsibility for childcare as women’s work. For example, paid family
and medical leave for the birth or adoption of a child (or to care for sick or
elderly family members) does not exist on a standard national level in the
United States (although it is common in other industrialized countries), and
the status of the U.S. leave program as unpaid reinforces the notion that
pregnant people can rely on the income of a (usually) male partner to
support them during childbirth and throughout infancy. When these are
heavily gendered responsibilities, messages about who belongs in the public
sphere and who belongs in the private sphere are clear. Children also learn
what is considered “women’s work” and what is considered “men’s work”
by observing both the amount and kind of domestic and unpaid work
performed by their parents and caregivers. Although the amount of
housework performed by women has gone down over the last 30 years, and
the amount of housework performed by men has gone up, a significant gap
remains between the average weekly hours spent by men and women
engaged in these tasks, with women still spending roughly twice as much
time as men. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes, women do 10.8 hours
more unpaid household labor than men, and among 25- to 34-year olds,
women perform 31.7 hours of household work compared with men’s 15.8
(“Hours”). And while recent studies show that men’s share of meal
preparation and childcare has increased, the biggest gap is around cleaning.
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Figure 2.2 Equal Education, Unequal Pay Source: LearnStuff.com
These messages are not just conveyed through observation of adults,
however; children are also socialized into their gender through the chores
they are (or aren’t) asked to perform around the house, and the money they
may receive in the form of an allowance. The Allstate Foundation’s 2014
Teens and Personal Finance Survey revealed that more boys than girls
reported receiving an allowance from their parents (67 percent v. 59
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http://LearnStuff.com

percent). A 2007 study by the University of Michigan Institute for Social
Research found that “girls spend more time doing housework than they do
playing, while boys spend about 30 percent less time doing household
chores than girls and more than twice as much time playing.” And finally,
several studies have shown that in families where both boys and girls get
allowances, boys’ allowances are higher (Dusenbery). Taken together, these
findings suggest that chores and allowances are key sites of boys’ and girls’
gender socialization.
Religions
Most major religions are based on a heavy foundation of masculine god
language, and masculine iconography as omniscient and omnipotent;
major religions are centered on male prophets and gods and around strict
rules for men’s and women’s conduct, particularly regarding sexuality,
reproduction, and marriage. Masculine god language that refers to deities
as “Him” and “Our Heavenly Father” reinforce an image of an all-powerful
male ruler. Religious texts as well often communicate oppressive notions
about gender relationships, such as Biblical passages regularly referenced in
Christianity including:
Women should keep silence in churches. For they are not permitted to speak,
but should be subordinate, as even the law says.
(1 Cor. 14:34)
I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of
the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
(1 Cor. 11:3)
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
(Col. 3:18)
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to
teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
(1 Tim. 2:11–15)
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Further, in a number of faiths, women are excluded from religious
practices. For example, Hindu women perform rituals of self-denial, such as
fasting, in order to create positive energy and power for their husbands.
The self-sacrifice of a woman for her husband is understood to be a
religious offering. Men do not perform such rituals for their wives (Burn).
Women are often also excluded from leadership positions. Female
ministers, bishops, priests, rabbis, mullahs, gurus, or sadhus remain
relatively rare or nonexistent in many religious traditions. Children who
attend worship services learn by observing the roles played by both
children and adult men and women in those places of worship, and they
also absorb explicit and implicit messages about their “proper” roles.
It should also be noted, however, that many women, both feminist
religious scholars and everyday activists, continue to work to challenge
power imbalances, including segregated and exclusionary practices, and
thereby send a different set of messages to their religion’s practitioners,
including children. For example, Kristine Stolakis’s documentary, Where
We Stand, traces the work of stay-at-home-mom Abby Hansen’s advocacy
for women’s ordination in the Mormon church, also known as the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Parker). Ordination of women as
Catholic priests is also among the many issues tackled by the Women’s
Ordination Conference, an organization described on its website as “A
Voice for Women’s Equality in the Catholic Church.” And finally, Muslim
women have opened a number of women’s mosques in various parts of the
world; the first in the U.S. opened in Los Angeles in 2015. These mosques
feature women imams (prayer leaders) and are seen as a part of women’s
empowerment efforts within Islam.
Popular Culture
From birth, children are exposed to gendered messages in the form of pink
or blue blankets and baby name signs, in the gendered division of toy store
aisles, and in TV shows geared toward girls or boys, as well as the
dominance of male characters in children’s media. Regarding children’s
media, research from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found
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that girl characters are outnumbered by boy characters by a ratio of 3 to 1
(Smith). Another example comes from looking at recipients of Best Picture
Oscar awards. For example, films that have been praised and rewarded in
the film industry are almost universally male-centered. A brief review of
the films receiving the Best Picture award over the last two decades
demonstrates that male-centered narratives are most typically perceived as
worthy of adulation.
For example, the majority of the films center on a heroic male
protagonist who overcomes a significant obstacle (such as The Departed’s
focus on the main character’s navigation of his life as a double agent; A
Beautiful Mind, documenting the main character as a genius suffering from
a mental illness; or Oscar Schindler’s acts of heroism during the Holocaust
in Schindler’s List). Films such as The Silence of the Lambs, while including
a central female character, largely are driven by her interaction with or
attempts to understand a more significant male character (in that film,
Hannibal Lecter). Other filmic conventions rewarded include vengeance
stories, such as a male character seeking out revenge for a wrong done to a
woman (Unforgiven); or the emotional life of a male character presumed to
be of depth and thus interest to a viewer, such as The English Patient or
American Beauty. Films centered on war or battle are also overrepresented
(such as Braveheart, Platoon, Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, The Hurt Locker,
and Schindler’s List ) relative to their overall proportion of film plots. This
emphasis on male-centered narratives and male-identified events and
activities (war, battle, math, detective work, the Old West) communicate
strong messages about what is culturally valuable and what (and who) is
interesting. On a similar note, a recent analysis of the roles played by the
winners of the Best Actress Oscar showed that almost a third of the
winners played roles that were defined primarily through relationship to a
man or men; that is, as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, or girlfriends.
Tellingly, there was no parallel “relational” category for the Best Actor
winners. While the number of relational roles among the Best Actress
nominations has slowed in recent years, Brie Larson won the Best Actress
Oscar in 2016 for her role in Room, about a mother and son who survived
long-term kidnapping. In addition, in the last decade more films featuring
central girl or women characters have been among Best Picture nominees,
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including Million Dollar Baby (2004), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Juno
(2007), Precious (2009), Black Swan (2010), The Help (2011), Zero Dark
Thirty (2012), and Beasts of the Southern Wild (2013). Recent progress is
uneven: in 2013, four of nine nominated films featured a woman as
protagonist, but in 2015, none of the eight films nominated featured a
woman as protagonist. And in terms of box-office success, as of May 2014,
two of the top three movie releases of 2013 featured female protagonists:
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen, evidence which counters the
notion that male viewers are not interested in paying to see films that
feature female protagonists and female-centered storylines. In early 2017,
the film Hidden Figures, about three African American women
mathematicians whose work was instrumental to the U.S. effort during the
Cold War space race, was doing extremely well at the box office and had
netted a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Recall the Case
Table 2.1 List of Best Picture Award Winners
2016 – Moonlight
2015 – Spotlight 1999 – American Beauty
2014 – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of
Ignorance)
1998 – Shakespeare in Love
2013 – Twelve Years a Slave 1997 – Titanic
2012 – Argo 1996 – The English Patient
2011 – The Artist 1995 – Braveheart
2010 – The King’s Speech 1994 – Forrest Gump
2009 – The Hurt Locker 1993 – Schindler’s List
2008 – Slumdog Millionaire 1992 – Unforgiven
2007 – No Countryfor Old Men
1991 – ‘The Silence of the
Lambs
2006 – The Departed 1990 – Dances With Wolves
2005 – Crash 1989 – Driving Miss Daisy
2004 – Million Dollar Baby 1988 – Rain Man
2003 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the
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King
2002 – Chicago 1986 – Platoon
2001 – A Beautiful Mind
2000 – Gladiator
Study in Chapter 1 on using media tests as a way of critically examining
gender, sexuality, and race in film.
Athletics
Sports is a primary site of gender socialization, especially for adolescents.
Cheerleading in its earliest incarnations was a male activity, developed in
1898 as “pep clubs” (International). Charged with generating crowd
enthusiasm, cheer clubs were male-only until 1923, but by the 1940s
women became the majority of cheerleaders in the United States. Today, 96
percent of cheerleaders are female (Bettis and Adams). Cheerleading is
suggestive of male-centeredness; as a “corollary” or “add-on” to, initially,
exclusively male athletic events, primarily football and basketball,
cheerleading has evolved to function as a method of (1) drawing attention
to the athletic activities and achievements of a group of culture-dominant
men, and (2) demanding particular highly compliant, traditionally
feminine, and surface-focused standards from its female participants. By
the 1970s, the emergence of professional cheerleading squads popularized
the erotic image of the female cheerleader and her support of the athletic
prowess of her team. As Bettis and Adams observe, “erotic tensions . . .
creep into the language, practices, and policies of cheerleading squads at all
levels, from preadolescent All-Star squads to collegiate competitive squads”
(123). With current cheerleading choreography including what Bettis and
Adams call “sexually suggestive” and “sexually provocative” moves,
cheerleading becomes outward-looking in its emphasis on drawing
attention to male athletics and in the efforts of female participants to
garner social status through male attention to the often erotic performance
of cheerleading routines. Competitive cheer has evolved as an offshoot of
traditional cheerleading; its growing popularity can be seen in movies like
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traditional cheerleading; its growing popularity can be seen in movies like
Bring it On (2000) and the television show Glee, which features an award-
winning squad called the Cheerios. Many people consider competitive
cheer to be a sport, and organizing bodies within the field have petitioned
the NCAA to officially recognize it as such on the collegiate level. Some
cynically see the push to have competitive cheer recognized as a collegiate
sport as a way for universities to comply technically with Title IX
regulations while not supporting more traditional sports for women
athletes. Proponents of recognizing cheerleading as a sport argue that
competitive cheer is highly athletic, and that those participating in it run
the risk of incurring severe sports-related injuries. But while competitive
cheer draws its own audience (as opposed to being on the sidelines of
another sporting event), it arguably maintains the requirement of
traditionally feminine appearance and sexually suggestive choreography.
Figure 2.3 Relational Roles and Best Actress Oscars Source: Infographic by Jan
Diehm for the Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/16/best-actress-
winners_n_4596033.html
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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/16/best-actress-winners_n_4596033.html

Electoral Politics
As of January 2017, according to United Nations data, there were ten
women serving as Head of State and nine serving as Head of Government.
Fifteen percent of the world’s lawmakers were female in 2003; by 2016, that
number had risen to 23 percent (UN Women). In the United States, women
are extremely underrepresented in elected office relative to their numbers
in the general population. As of 2017, according to the Center for American
Women and Politics, women represent 19.4 percent of Congress and 24.8
percent of state legislators; only 10 percent of governors are women. And
while the U.S. came close to electing its first woman as president (Hillary
Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election), Clinton was
ultimately defeated. The causes of Clinton’s defeat are numerous and
complex, but sexism was clearly among them.
When compared to women’s representation in elected office in other
countries, it appears that the United States is losing rather than gaining
ground. For example, in 1997, the United States ranked 52nd in the world
for women’s representation in government; as of 2016, that ranking had
fallen to 97th. The short answer for why we are losing ground, according to
Sarah Kliffand Soo Oh, is that, unlike in other countries around the world
(Sweden, Rwanda, Bolivia, Canada, Mexico, and France, just to name a
few) neither the U.S. government nor the country’s major political parties
have made increasing women’s participation a priority through instituting
quotas.
The patterns and expectations are set at an early age, with many high
schools and universities electing fewer young women to student
government positions. For example, in 2013 at Phillips Academy, an elite
prep
Figure 2.4 Gender and Race Breakdown of U.S. Legislators Source: Hill, Catherine.
“Barriers and Bias: The Status of Women in Leadership.” American Association of
University Women . 2016. www.aauw.org/research/barriers-and-bias/, accessed 5
July 2017
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https://www.aauw.org/research/barriers-and-bias/

Figure 2.5 U.S. Congressional Demographics Source: Hill, Catherine. “Barriers and
Bias: The Status of Women in Leadership.” American Association of University
Women. 2016. www.aauw.org/research/barriers-and-bias/, accessed 5 July 2017
school in Andover, Massachusetts, students spoke out about the lack of
female student leadership since the school opened its ranks to female
students in 1973. According to a New York Times article written about the
campus controversy, only four young women have been elected to the
position of school president in the past 40 years. In an effort to increase
female representation in student government, the school’s administration
adopted a co-president model in the hope that mixed-gender groups would
run for office. Although the intended effect was not produced in 2013
(when two young men were elected), each pair of finalists in the 2014
election consisted of one young man and one young woman, ensuring the
election of a woman to the co-presidency (Seelye). At the postsecondary
level, the American Student Government Association estimates that 40
percent of student presidents are women, also noting, however, that that
number does not distinguish between two-year and four-year campuses;
the assumption is that the number of women presidents on four-year
campuses is lower (Johnson). A May 2013 report by the Center for
Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement adds nuance
to the discussion of women’s underrepresentation in political office by
pointing out that although women are “severely underrepresented at
virtually all levels of elected office,” girls and young women outpace their
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male peers “on many indicators of civic engagement, including
volunteering, membership in community associations, and voting”
(Kawashima-Ginsberg and Thomas 2). The report attempts to explain what
leads to and creates the gender gap in leadership, and several of those
factors clearly stem from the differing gender socialization of boys and
girls. More specifically, they point to a gap in both confidence and
expectations. They cite survey data from the Higher Education Research
Institute that shows that women in their first year of college “are far less
likely to claim personal characteristics such as leadership and public
speaking skills, competitiveness, social skills, and popularity, all of which
are commonly named characteristics of a political leader” (4), and they note
that the gap has not narrowed in the past 50 years. Finally, they cite a study
from American University that found that 30 percent of young college
women had been encouraged to run for office, compared to 40 percent of
young college men. More specifically, women “were less likely to be
encouraged by parents, grandparents, teachers, religious leaders, coaches,
and even friends” (6). In sum, both the implicit and explicit gendered
messages boys and girls receive about political leadership shape the paths
they pursue in adolescence and adulthood.
The Legal System
Broadly speaking, the legal system, including courts of law, the police, and
the prison system, are sites that convey powerful messages about gender.
According to the Sentencing Project, over half of incarcerated women are
mothers of children under the age of 18. And the number of incarcerated
women has grown enormously over the past 30 years, more than 700
percent, from 26,378 in 1980 to 215,332 in 2014. While there continue to be
far more men than women in prison, “the rate of growth for female
imprisonment has outpaced men by more than 50 percent between 1980
and 2014.” Children, then, are increasingly learning about the criminal
justice system from an early age as a result of having an incarcerated
parent, an increasing number of whom are mothers. According to the Pew
Research Center, there were 2.7 million children in the U.S. with an
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incarcerated parent as of 2010 (Reilly). However, in spite of the fact that the
numbers of incarcerated women have grown tremendously in recent
decades, women (particularly white women) are treated more leniently
than men (both white men and men of color) within the criminal justice
system, by a number of measures. According to a study entitled “From
Initial Appearance to Sentencing: Do Female Defendants Experience
Disparate Treatment?,” which analyzed almost 4,000 felony cases from
2009, they are less likely to be detained while awaiting trial, their bond
amounts are lower than men’s, and they are less likely to be sentenced to
prison. Racialized gender stereotypes, then, clearly operate within the
criminal justice system in ways that directly impact both men’s and
women’s experiences.
Children and teens are also increasingly encountering the criminal
justice system through what has been termed the school-to-prison pipeline,
which describes the ways that some K–12 students are being pushed out of
schools and into the criminal justice system as a result of increased police
presence in schools and the criminalization of minor infractions of school
rules. This so-called pipeline disproportionately affects students of color
and disabled students, and also has a gendered dimension, according to a
2015 report from the African American Policy Forum entitled “Black Girls
Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Under-protected.” According to
Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the authors of the report, the disparity in
punishment between black girls and white girls is greater than the disparity
between black and white boys. In an interview with NPR News’s Karen
Grigsby Bates, Crenshaw hypothesizes that this disparity is a result of the
fact that black girls are targeted for school discipline not only because of
their race, but also because their behavior does not conform to normative
expectations of white femininity. In short, black girls are often
misperceived as defying authority because their gender expression is not
seen as properly feminine.
A social constructionist approach argues that our gender identity, that is,
our personal understanding of our own gender, is shaped by the
intersection of experience and institutions. We receive implicit and explicit
messages through our interactions with each of these institutions that
fundamentally shape our understandings of ourselves and our beliefs about
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the world.
A final point here is that as we learn about gender through these societal
institutions, masculinity and femininity are defined in relation to one
another. More specifically, masculinity is defined in opposition to
femininity. As Raewyn Connell puts it, “‘[m]asculinity’ does not exist
except in contrast with ‘femininity’” (252). In Full Frontal Feminism, Jessica
Valenti puts a finer point on it: “masculinity is defined as whatever isn’t
womanly” (185). The oppositional and relational nature of socially
constructed masculinity and femininity is evident in Table 2.2.
Gender Norms, Gender Policing
Reinforced across institutions and ideologies, gender norms are
communicated in many settings that individuals experience throughout
their lives. In the discipline of psychology, gender norms might be called
Table 2.2 Stereotypical Gender Qualities
“Masculine” Qualities “Feminine” Qualities
aggressive/assertive passive
logical/analytical indirectly aggressive (“catty”)
physically strong, athletic sensitive
responsible other-oriented
protective physically weak/er
self-oriented compromising
emotionally unexpressive emotionally expressive
in control collaborative
authoritative submissive
invulnerable nurturing
sexually aggressive chaste or pure
“gender roles,” while sociologist Lisa Wade uses the term “gender rules.”
Whatever the term, those messages communicate our society’s norms or
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expectations for gender, in ways that we may only dimly be aware of. It is
often only when we inadvertently break a gender rule that we become
consciously aware that it exists.
Gender norms of both masculinity and femininity are maintained
through many mechanisms, including what is referred to as “policing.” In
this context, “gender policing” means monitoring behavior or gender
display, and granting or withholding social approval based on those
behaviors. Gender norms are internalized to greater or lesser degrees by
everyone, and we all participate (again, to greater or lesser degrees) in
policing our own and others’ gender expression. An example of this type of
policing is the phenomenon of “ slut shaming,” in which a woman’s sexual
choices and behaviors (or presumed choices and behaviors) are critiqued by
others; gender studies scholar Leora Tanenbaum’s book-length study, Slut!,
traces how women who violate traditional sexual expectations for their
gender are subject to direct and indirect social consequences ranging from
virtual or real-life name-calling, harassment, and assault. When oppressed
groups police other members of that group, this is referred to as horizontal
hostility, a phenomenon that will be discussed more fully in Chapter 3.
Gender Ranking
The concept of gender ranking helps us understand the purpose and
function of gender rules or norms. Masculinity and femininity are not
valued equally in our culture; instead, greater value is typically attached to
masculine qualities than feminine qualities. In The Gender Knot:
Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, Johnson argues that androcentrism, or
centering on and valuing of those qualities associated with masculinity, is a
part of our cultural norms. This male-centeredness becomes visible through
a close look at how status and power are distributed in our society. With
positions of power that are male-dominated, and higher value attached to
masculine personality traits like
control, strength, competitiveness, toughness, coolness under pressure, logic,
forcefulness, decisiveness, rationality, autonomy, self-sufficiency, and control
over any emotion that interferes with other core values (such as invulnerability)
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. . . these male identified qualities are associated with the work valued most in
patriarchal societies—business, politics, war, athletics, law, and medicine.
(7)
This gender ranking is often framed as both biological in origin and
immutable, with masculine qualities defined in opposition to—and more
culturally valued than—feminine qualities.
Within a society that engages in gender ranking, it is important to police
people’s gender expression in order to ensure the “proper” distribution of
rewards and punishments. Within a sex/gender system that privileges
masculinity, a certain latitude is given to girls and women to emulate
masculinity. In other words, we have space in our culture for girls to be
“tomboys,” because there is a certain logic in many people’s minds to why
a girl would want to adopt masculine styles of dress, behavior, and play.
But because femininity is devalued, boys who are termed “sissies”
frequently endure merciless teasing. In adulthood, masculine styles of
dress, within certain parameters, are open to women; think, for example, of
the popularity of “boyfriend” jeans, chinos, sweaters, and button-down
shirts. The same cannot be said of men’s clothing; there is no parallel
“girlfriend” styling of men’s clothing. This point will be explored visually
in the “Bodies” portion of the Anchoring Topics section.
But aside from clothing, the emulation of masculinity by adult women
can be fraught. There is a double standard of behavior for men and women
in the workplace and in politics, for example, where the same behavior is
judged very differently depending on whether the person engaging in the
behavior is a man or woman. Sheryl Sand-berg’s Lean In organization is
attempting to raise awareness of one manifestation of this double standard
with its “Ban Bossy” campaign. As the campaign’s website puts it, “When a
little boy asserts himself, he’s called a ‘leader.’ When a little girl does the
same, she risks being branded ‘bossy.’”
Closely related to this concept of a gendered double standard of
behavior is the idea of the double bind, whereby women in the public
sphere are faced with two less-than-desirable options of adhering to or
rejecting feminine gender norms, risking negative repercussions either way.
Amanda Fortini captured this double bind in an article she wrote about the
2008 U.S. presidential race, in which Hillary Clinton sought the Democratic
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presidential nomination and Sarah Palin was the Republican vice
presidential candidate. Clinton’s style was deemed more masculine,
whereas Palin’s was more traditionally feminine, but both received
negative media attention. Fortini’s title: “The ‘Bitch’ and the ‘Ditz’ (How
the Year of the Woman Reinforced the Two Most Pernicious Sexist
Stereotypes and Actually Set Women Back)”. This gendered double
standard also has everything to do with race and class; traditional
femininity is often implicitly coded as both white and middleclass. African
American women in positions of power in the workplace and in politics, for
example, have to negotiate a gendered double standard that is also
interwoven with racial stereotypes, such as the Angry Black Woman trope.
Associations between traditionally gendered behavior—and unequal
penalties for men and women who do not adhere to expectations—is
illustrated in a series of public columns by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam
Grant, who examine how biases and assumptions about the superiority of
masculine qualities—but the simultaneous social consequences for women
who behave in traditionally ‘masculine’ ways—operates in the workplace.
For example, Grant and Sandberg report on a study that
asked managers to read a transcript from a job interview of a candidate
described as either female or male. At the end of the interview, the candidate
asked for higher compensation and a nonstandard bonus. . . . they were 28
percent less interested in hiring the female candidate. They also judged her as 27
percent less likable. The same information did not alter their judgments of male
candidates.
(Grant and Sandberg, 2014)
Only being told that stereotypes exist had a negative impact on
participants’ abilities to moderate their stereotypes, but if they were told
not only that stereotypes were present but also that most people work to be
aware of and act in ways that counter them, people in the study were much
less likely to have discriminatory reactions. As Grant and Sandberg report,
“[w]ith this adjustment, discrimination vanished in their studies. After
reading this message, managers were 28 percent more interested in
working with the female candidate who negotiated assertively and judged
her as 25 percent more likable.” What this demonstrates is the complicated
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relationship between gendered behaviors and qualities and the lived
experience of gender—and the complex challenges of navigating
institutions that have been built upon and around traditional ideas about
gender rules and gender roles.
Reimagining Masculinity
Gender ranking serves the purpose of maintaining and perpetuating sexism,
that is to say, a system of male dominance. However, there is a growing
realization that boys and men often experience deep and lasting harm as a
result of adhering to, striving to adhere to, or failing to adhere to the very
masculine gender norms that form the foundation of sexism. Paul Kivel’s
articulation of the contents of the act-like-a-man box, as well as its
purpose and function, has been key in this area. He calls it a box to
emphasize the rigidity, narrowness, and confining aspects of the social
construction of masculinity. He writes,
[I]t feels like a box, a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week box that society tells
boys they must fit themselves into. One reason we know it’s a box is because
every time a boy tries to step out he’s pushed back in with names like wimp,
sissy, mama’s boy, girl, fag, nerd, punk, mark, bitch, and others even more
graphic. Behind those names is the threat of violence.
(148)
Kivel points out that this policing of boys can come from other boys, but
also from girls, who “don’t seem to like us when we step out of the box”
(148). This policing can also come from adults, who “seem convinced that if
they ‘coddle’ us, we will be weak and vulnerable” (148). A graphic
illustration of the policing of the “act-like-a-man-box” can be found in the
story of a young boy in Raleigh, North Carolina, who attempted suicide in
February 2014 after a long period of being bullied because he was a fan of
the television show My Little Pony.
A growing body of psychological and medical research has linked boys’
and men’s adherence to traditional masculine gender norms with a number
of connected negative outcomes: loss of intimate friendship, high rates of
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depression, and lower life expectancy. Regarding friendship, according to
sociologist Lisa Wade, the qualities needed to extend and receive friendship
are coded feminine in our culture, thus causing a gender role conflict for
men. She writes,
To be close friends, men need to be willing to confess their insecurities, be kind
to others, have empathy and sometimes sacrifice their own self-interest. “Real
men,” though, are not supposed to do these things. They are supposed to be self-
interested, competitive, non-emotional, strong (with no insecurities at all), and
able to deal with their emotional problems without help. Being a good friend,
then, as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly.
She cites research by psychologist Niobe Way that found that younger boys
report having close, intimate friendships with other boys, but that there is a
shift around the age of 15 or 16, when boys “start reporting that they don’t
have friends and don’t need them.” Later in adulthood, however, many
adult men report wanting intimate friendships but are not sure how to
forge them. This example not only illustrates the limitations of adhering to
traditional norms of masculinity, but it also reveals the need to consider
how the social construction of masculinity changes across an individual’s
life span. Put differently, these examples show the importance of thinking
about gender in relation to age.
Beyond identifying the limitations and harm of traditional masculinity, a
growing number of men are making strides in their personal, professional,
and activist lives toward reimagining masculinity. Guante, a hip hop artist,
poet, and social justice educator, has a spoken word piece, “Ten Responses
to the Phrase ‘Man Up,’” that resonates deeply with audiences. Another
poet, Carlos Andres Gomez, published a book entitled Man Up:
Reimagining Modern Manhood in 2012. Both men offer analysis of
masculinity as a forced performance, make public declarations that they
reject traditional masculinity, and instead claim for themselves a
reimagined manhood that, as Guante puts it, entails having meaningful,
emotional relationships with other men, admitting weakness, and being
“strong in a way that isn’t about physical power or dominance.” Indeed, a
huge emphasis of the work of men like Guante and Gomez, and groups like
A Call to Men, is reimagining masculinity toward the end of preventing
violence, whether that’s men’s violence against women, against themselves,
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or against other men. Men’s work to reimagine masculinity benefits girls
and women, then, in the sense that it is focused on reducing violence
against women, but it also benefits boys and men per se, in the sense that it
can result in raising their quality of life, even as it may entail giving up
some of the unearned privileges of masculinity.
The examples described in this section give a sense of how complex the
gender landscape is in the 21st century. Many people, young and old, chafe
against the restrictions of the gender binary that dictate that masculinity
and femininity are relational and oppositional, and that masculinity is more
highly valued. Simultaneously, however, other individuals, along with
structural forces, work hard, in ways both visible and invisible, to shore up
traditional norms and gendered expectations.
Learning Roadblock
“It’s how you were raised. ” It can be tempting to analyze gender through a
lens that imagines family structures are the sole and most important
influence on a person’s gender identity. Typically, these binary
characterizations of gender are psychoanalytic in origin. Psychoanalytic
theories typically explain gender differentiation through relationships to
others. Such theories originated from two different sources: Freudian
views and those of other psychologists about how humans develop their
sense of gender identity from deep roots in their childhood experience of
family origin (experiences that are gendered); and theories that build on
those psychological evolutions by positing essentialized views of masculine
and feminine ways of developing psychologically, morally, and
emotionally. Freudian theories undergird the psychological approach
because of Freud’s role in laying the groundwork for the study of the
human psyche. Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex is sometimes used to
explain the difference between male and female development of identity; in
sum, Freud theorized that male children must individuate from their
primary (female) caretaker and identify with the male parent in order to
fully develop into an adolescent and adult. Freud’s theory supposed a deep
and unconscious basis in an unrealized sexual desire for the mother, one
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that is displaced by identification with the father. In contrast, female
children do not need to individuate and become independent in their
identity formation because their primary caretaker is the same-sex parent.
Thus, boys and men, in this view, develop an identity characterized by
separation, independence, and individuality whereas girls maintain an
emphasis on identification, interdependence, and cooperation/mutuality.
Other theories, such as that of feminist Carol Gilligan (in response to
Lawrence Kohlberg), challenge assumptions about moral development that
emphasize independent decision-making based on a moral truth and
disconnected from the needs of others as the pinnacle. By this logic, women
(in general) were perpetually “immature” in their moral development
because they were more likely to be driven by moral decision-making that
accounted for the needs and feelings of others—the emotional or affective
dimension—than by disconnected or objective applications of a moral
principle. Psychoanalytic theories typically use essentialist assumptions
about the moral or psychological orientation of men and women; as such,
psychoanalytic explanations of occupational segregation focus on women’s
attraction to and suitability for relational care work and work guided by a
sense of moral obligation to others. Conversely, more independence, or
what Gilligan calls an “ethic of justice,” is ascribed to men, which
purportedly explains their attraction to fields that provide work that is
objective, mechanical, or conducted independently.
However, as this chapter illustrates, families themselves are subject to
and part of structural and cultural contexts that grant privileges to certain
types of family structures and withhold them from others; parents
themselves absorb and reproduce cultural values about gender. Family
structures are part of larger institutional contexts that reproduce values
around class, race, gender, sexuality, and other categories of identity—
values that do not begin and end around the boundaries of families of
origin. In short, it’s not inaccurate to say that “how you were raised”
shapes one’s ideas about gender, but what is inaccurate is the assertion that
the only necessary changes that need to be made to the structure of gender
can be brought about through child-rearing practices.
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Learning Roadblock
“ Women and men are naturally _.” Historically and in our contemporary
“commonplace” understandings of gender, biology holds a great deal of
explanatory power, because physical differences between men and women
are typically the first “cues” we experience about gender identity.
Biological determinist explanations for gender role development are rooted
in assumptions about men’s greater average muscle mass and physical
strength, in theories about genetics and hormonal differences between men
and women, and in claims about reproductive strategies and the influence
of women’s reproductive life cycles, for example, on the development of
their emotional and psychological priorities. A biological determinist looks
at the occupational segregation of labor and locates the explanation for this
division in genetic, biological, and evolutionary differences. The
determinist might assert that because women are biologically responsible
for reproduction, gestation, and lactation, as well as, because of these
physiological realities, caring for children, that women are attracted to
fields that make use of these “natural” dispositions. Lower-compensated
and lower-status work such as early childhood education, childcare, social
work, secretarial work, and nursing are naturally suited to women’s
biological and evolutionary impulse toward caring for others, they would
argue. On the flip side, the physically demanding occupations such as
logging and construction, for example, are occupied by men, whose larger
bodies and greater muscle strength make them physically suited for this
work. Further, historical associations between men and logic as well as
spatial skills (borne out by some neurological research) are used to justify
the concentration of male workers in fields like law, architecture, and
engineering.
Although the idea that gender and sex are biologically and genetically
determined can have great explanatory power, scientific research as well as
careful reflection reveal that many of the gendered behaviors we take for
granted are actually highly socially constructed by the overlapping
institutions we experience on a daily basis: the family, media, medical
communities, religion, educational institutions, and so forth. The scientific
and historical evidence of the malleability of gender—the wide range of
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sexualities across cultures; the range of expectations for masculine and
feminine behavior across culture, time, and even an individual’s life span;
and the significant cultural energy spent on ensuring that boys and girls
conform to particular gendered ideologies (through such mechanisms as
gay- and lesbian-baiting, stigmatizing gender nonconforming behavior, and
maintaining policies and practices that reward traditional gendered
behaviors)—suggests that gender is not quite as “natural” as we suppose. A
story featured in the online arts and culture magazine Slate showcases the
strong explanatory power of biological and genetic explanations for gender
differences. Calling attention to the media coverage of two studies
published in the prestigious scholarly journal Nature, the story observes
that
[t]he Huffi ngton Post quoted one of the studies’ authors as saying that these
“special” genes “may play a large role in differences between males and
females.” Yet what the Nature articles actually show is the exact opposite. The
12 genes residing on the Y chromosome exist to ensure sexual similarity.
(Richardson)
Although the original study findings emphasized sexual similarity, the
story was “translated” to emphasize sexual difference—even though this
was not actually borne out by the research.
Taken together, these interrelated framing concepts—social
constructionism, the relationship between sex and gender, gender
socialization, gender identity, gender expression, and gender ranking—are
all part of understanding how a social constructionist approach is critical to
feminist analysis.
Anchoring Topics through the Lens of Social
Constructionism
Work and Family
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One way of understanding the varying theories about gender construction
is to look at the phenomenon of what is called occupational segregation
of labor and how it illustrates gender ranking and gender role
socialization. Specifically, the predominance of men in some occupations
and women in others both communicates expectations about work and
gender, and is valued and compensated differently based on the
predominance of men or women in that workforce.
Overview of Gender Wage Gap/Occupational Segregation of
Labor
As research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources
consistently shows, occupations are strongly separated by gender; that is,
particular segments of the labor market are occupied by women, and men
are clustered in other labor segments. As the chart below illustrates in
broad terms, particular types of work such as administrative and clerical
work are fields that women are concentrated in; by contrast, production
and craft work is largely done by male workers (91 percent).
A more fine-grained analysis suggests that very particular jobs such as
secretaries and administrative assistants are mostly done by women (97
percent); work that involves small children is almost entirely performed by
female workers (preschool teachers, 97.7 percent). By contrast, male-
dominated occupations—those that typically pay significantly higher wages
—are also as disproportionately dominated by men as those clerical
positions are by women. Law enforcement officers are 84.5 percent male, 98
percent of automotive technical work is performed by men, and 97 percent
of construction workers are men. Occupational segregation of labor is a
useful and robust topic through which to develop a more complicated
picture of how the gender wage gap—the common gap between men’s and
women’s earnings, with women generally receiving lower pay—is
promoted and reproduced. However, for the purposes of
Table 2.3 Gender Differences in Occupational Distributions among Workers
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this chapter the topic is discussed to illustrate various theories about how
and why men and women occupy different labor market segments. As
Gabriel and Schmitz explain, “31 percent of men or women (or a
combination of percentages that add up to 31 percent) would have to
change occupations for there to be complete gender equality in
occupational distributions” (19). The social construction of gender is both
reflected and reinforced by the gendered segregation of labor.
Two terms that capture the issues in labor segregation include vertical
segregation of labor and horizontal segregation of labor. For example,
women are more likely to work in administrative and clerical positions
whereas men are more likely to work in manufacturing and skilled labor;
this is the horizontal segregation of labor, and this clustering of women in
lower-paying occupations partly explains the gender wage gap. Vertical
segregation takes place simultaneously, and refers to the fact that even in
fields where there is a more even mix of men and women working, women
tend to be clustered in positions with lower pay and prestige. For example,
as the U.S. Department of Labor notes, more women than men work in
professional fields, but women are more likely to be found in health and
education professional fields (68 percent of women in this category worked
in these types of fields compared with 30 percent of men) and are paid less
than those occupied by men, such as computer science and engineering. For
example, “[i]n 2015, 9 percent of women in professional and related
occupations were employed in the relatively high-paying computer and
engineering fields, compared with 45 percent of men” (2). Other notable
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statistical information includes the higher proportion of female workers in
part-time positions—as the Department of Labor data show, “[w]omen who
worked part-time made up 26 percent of all female wage and salary
workers in 2010. In contrast, 13 percent of men in wage and salary jobs
worked part-time” (2). Even within the same field, for example, medical
professions, women are more likely to occupy lower-paying specialties such
as public health or pediatrics, with men in higher-paid specialties like
neurosurgery or internal medicine.
In this way, thinking back to Table 2.2 in this chapter, the connections
between traditional notions about gender—and socialization into these
qualities—maps fairly clearly on to the occupational segregation of labor.
Occupations that focus on managing the emotions, logistics, or bodies of
others (education of young children, administrative support for professions,
hands-on healthcare fields) are vastly female-dominated, while occupations
that focus on interactions with objects or things and that call for
objectivity, mechanical skills, and less human care work are male-
dominated. The relationship between traditional ideas about masculinity
and femininity, gender role socialization, and reproduction of gender
norms, in this way, is complicated and recursive. As women and men
cluster in particular occupations, this communicates a “norm” about the
gendered nature of types of work; this, in turn, is represented through other
institutions like education or media, which are thus part of creating a
network of images and symbols that shape perceptions of gendered norms.
Notably, then, gender ranking is demonstrated by the occupational
segregation of labor by the different compensation that single-gender
dominated fields receive. For example, on average, according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, returning to the highly single-gender dominant fields
mentioned at the start of this section, average wage comparisons reveal
how fiscal value follows gender ranking, considering the level of
postsecondary education required for these trade and technical fields:
Tab le 2.4 Comparison of Single-Gender Dominant Occupations and Annual Wages
Occupation
Percent
Gender
Average Annual
Wage
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Preschool teachers 97.7% women $32,500
Secretaries and administrative
assistants
79% women $39,360
Law enforcement officers 84.5% men $56,860
Construction trades workers 98% men $46,290
Automotive technical work 98% men $41,290
Source: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm
Certainly some of this differential valuing comes from cultural
assumptions about the relative difficulty of types of work. Work that
requires physical labor rather than emotional or social labor has been
valued as more challenging. Feminist sociologists and feminist scholars
from other fields continue to reframe this assumption in order to make the
cognitive and emotional work required to do quality care work visible and
press for compensation that appropriately values that work.
For women in elite and/or corporate positions, the construction of
leadership itself may be gendered. For example, as Joan Williams and
Rachel Dempsey discuss in What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns
Working Women Need to Know, even as women make up the majority of
college students and have made inroads into many professions, positions of
power remain starkly gendered masculine. Just 3.6 percent of Fortune 500
CEOs are women, for example (4), and just 15 percent of law firm partners
are women. Workplace values centered on the unencumbered worker—
historically, a male employee with few if any commitments outside the
workplace—exert unequal pressures on men and women workers. Williams
and Dempsey report that motherhood is the strongest trigger for bias:
women with children are 79 percent less likely to be hired, only half as
likely to be promoted, and earn a lot less money than women with identical
resumes but without children, while this bias was untrue for men with
children (5). A 2013 research study showed that women CEOs were more
likely to be fired than their male counterparts—38 percent versus 27
percent, partly because they tend to be “riskier” hires brought in at times of
corporate crisis (Duberman). Leadership qualities that require
unencumbered workers and that are synonymous with traditionally
masculine characteristics—self-assuredness, assertiveness, daring, and
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https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm

authoritative and commanding demeanors—all work against women and
construct leadership work as masculine in nature. Further, expectations
about women’s roles within the workplace often reproduce the social
expectations of other environments. As Grant and Sandberg discuss,
women workers who demonstrated stereotypically feminine behaviors
were neither helped nor hurt by their conformity to gender socialization;
however, women who did not conform experienced social and economic
consequences. Reporting on a study by psychologist Madelin Heilman, the
New York Times column shows that when comparing the performance of
two employees who were asked to stay late to help with preparations for an
important meeting the next day,
[f]or staying late and helping, a man was rated 14 percent more favorably than
a woman. When both declined, a woman was rated 12 percent lower than a
man. Over and over, after giving identical help, a man was significantly more
likely to be recommended for promotions, important projects, raises and
bonuses. A woman had to help just to get the same rating as a man who didn’t
help.
(Grant and Sandberg, 2015)
Differential penalties between men and women for similar behaviors like
those documented by Grant and Sandberg are illustrative of the key
concepts in this section: gender ranking, the double bind, and a gendered
double standard.
Methods of untangling socially constructed gender norms from
biological ones are complicated but still present a strong picture of the gap
between “natural” or “biological” explanations and the realities of gender
construction. For example, although there is a stereotype that boys and
men are better at mathematics and related fields than girls are, the gap in
performance on standardized tests between boys and girls has narrowed.
Further, gaps in standardized math test scores vary by country—there are
no sex differences between boys and girls in Russia, India, and Japan, and
in Iceland and Japan, girls outscored boys on math tests. Were
mathematical or other abilities fixed, we would not see cross-cultural
variation at this rate, nor could we explain the increase in the number of
women engineers from 0.3 percent of bachelor of science degrees in 1970 to
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18.9 percent in 2012.
Further, cross-cultural expectations for gender vary widely, suggesting
that, were genetics or biology at work in shaping an immutable set of
expectations around men and women, boys and girls, we would not see so
much variation between cultures and nations about what is considered
masculine and what is considered feminine, nor occupational segregation at
the rate we see it in the United States.
Language, Images, and Symbols
As mentioned previously, a key aspect of assigning a gender to infants
when they’re born happens through the naming process (side note: many
parents find out the sex of their baby, using ultrasound technology, in
utero, which means that the process of gender assignment begins even
before birth, particularly if parents-to-be take seriously the suggestion to
talk to the fetus and begin addressing it by name while still in the womb).
In the United States, the majority of given names are unambiguously
gendered and considered appropriate only for girls or only for boys,
although there are exceptions that add nuance to this discussion.
Studies have looked at how names that were historically considered
masculine, like Ashley or Courtney, have been claimed and appropriated as
girls’ names. There are two related aspects of this sort of shift that connect
to how gender operates in our culture. In terms of explaining why parents
have chosen “boy” names for their daughters, it would seem that gender
ranking comes into play here, meaning that within the logic of patriarchy,
giving a girl a boy’s name is an act of emulating privilege. That same
“logic” also explains why there has been no parallel trend of parents
choosing “girl” names for their sons; giving a boy a girl’s name would be
adopting the status of the less-valued gender (an interesting take on this
issue can be found in Johnny Cash’s classic country song, “A Boy Named
Sue”). In terms of the consequences of parents choosing “boy” names for
their daughters, we see that as more parents choose these names for their
daughters, fewer parents choose those same names for their sons. In effect,
then, there seems to be a tipping point; if too many parents choose a
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“masculine” name for their daughter, parents of male children avoid that
name as it comes to be seen as feminine.
The popular website Nameberry, which tracks baby naming trends, has
noted, however, that some new trends may be emerging. The site reports,
in a 2012 post, seeing “parents ‘reclaiming’ for their sons unisex names that
had veered girlward and names rising in tandem for both sexes.” Another
phenomenon that has yet to be quantified but has been reported
anecdotally is that more parents are deliberately choosing gender-neutral
names. Some parents, for example, are choosing not to find out the sex of
their baby before its birth and decide on a name that could be used for
either a boy or a girl.
Fast forwarding to adulthood, two recent studies that focus on gender
bias in the workplace highlight the role that gendered names play in
maintaining inequality. In one study referenced perhaps most notably by
Sheryl Sandberg in her Lean In- based TED Talk, a business school
professor gave his students a case study of a successful entrepreneur named
Heidi Roizen, only he changed the name to Howard in one section. The
professor, Francis Flynn, recalls
[b]efore class, I had the students go online and rate their impressions of
“Roizen” on several dimensions. As you might expect, the results show that
students were much harsher on Heidi than on Howard across the board.
Although they think she’s just as competent and effective as Howard, they don’t
like her, they wouldn’t hire her, and they wouldn’t want to work with her. As
gender researchers would predict, this seems to be driven by how much they
disliked Heidi’s aggressive personality. The more assertive they thought Heidi
was, the more harshly they judged her (but the same was not true for those who
rated Howard).
The ultimate point here, of course, is not about names per se, but about the
gendered double standard for workplace behavior. And yet the study is a
stark reminder that names almost always convey our gender, and that
gendered stereotyping and double standards often kick in on that basis
alone.
In another recent study published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States, researchers asked natural sciences
professors to rate the application materials of college students applying for
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a position as a laboratory manager. As with the Flynn study, the materials
were identical in every way except for the name of the applicant: Jennifer
or John. According to the study’s authors, “[f]aculty participants rated the
male applicant as significantly more competent and hirable than the
(identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher
starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant”
(qtd. in Sharp). A final study shows how names are not only gendered but
racialized. In this study, published by the Social Science Research Network,
researchers sent an identical email to 6,500 professors across the United
States. The researchers posed as prospective students asking to meet with
the professor, with the only thing distinguishing the emails from one
another being the names of those prospective students: Brad Anderson,
Meredith Roberts, Lamar Washington, LaToya Brown, Juanita Martinez,
Deepak Patel, Sonali Desai, Chang Wong, and Mei Chen. The findings:
“faculty ignored requests from women and minorities at a higher rate than
requests from Caucasian males, particularly in higher-paying disciplines
and private institutions” (Milkman, Akinola, and Chugh). In other words,
professors were more likely to respond to the prospective students who,
based on their name, were perceived to be white and male. These examples
clearly reveal some of the workplace and education-related implications of
gendered and racialized naming practices, and how social constructionism
is at work in large and small ways in communicating gender and race, as
well as social roles and status.
A different way that gender comes into play in relation to naming has to
do with the use of first names, last names, and/or titles in social
interactions. Henley and Freeman argue that status is often communicated
and reproduced by the levels of intimacy allowed to be expressed between
two people depending on their social or employment status. Subordinates
and superordinates have varying levels of freedom to address each other by
first or last names, with the superordinate granted greater levels of
familiarity than the subordinate. On a related note, many women
professors note the tendency of students to refer to them either by first
name or as “Mrs.,” but not by their title of Doctor or Professor. While
campus culture varies greatly across the United States, anecdotal evidence
suggests a gendered dimension to this, with female professors consistently
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experiencing this phenomenon to a greater degree than their male
colleagues.
Perhaps one of the most notable gendered controversies around naming,
and socially communicated messages about naming and status, is the issue
of (typically) heterosexual women changing their last name upon marriage.
As Scheuble, Johnson, and Johnson explain, “[t]he practice of married
women taking their husband’s last name originates from the patriarchal
family system under which women were considered their husband’s
property” (282); yet, despite the many strides toward gender equity, this
practice continues for the majority of women. Research and demographic
information suggests that 80 percent to 90 percent or more of heterosexual
women choose to take their husband’s last name upon marriage, with
women with greater levels of educational attainment and who marry at
older ages less likely to adopt their husband’s surname (Lockwood, Burton,
and Boersma 827). As part of the social construction of gender roles, name
changing remains a controversial practice among feminists, but a widely
held cultural norm. One research study reported that women who change
their surnames identified tradition and relationship bonding as key reasons
for their decision, yet Lockwood, Burton, and Boersma concluded that
concern for family dynamics—including upsetting extended family
members with nontraditional naming choices—remained an important
consideration for many women (837). That is, despite feminist critique of
this patriarchal tradition, many women continue to adhere to traditional
values. Some arguments suggest that with other strides in gender equity,
taking a spouse’s last name is not as meaningful now as in the past, such as
Lynn Harris’s argument in a 2003 Salon article, “Mrs. Feminist”:
[t]oday, a woman’s decision to take her husband’s name is not necessarily, or
merely, “retro.” When it comes to such political-slash-personal acts, the stakes
have changed, and therefore so have the statements we’re making with them. I
would argue that we’re not losing battles; we’re choosing them. We’re not
retreating; we’re showing, subtly, how far we’ve come.
Although a clear minority, some women keep their name upon marriage or
take their husband’s name without ditching their own, through
hyphenation. An even smaller number of couples have gone further, by
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having the husband take his wife’s name (either alone or through
hyphenating with his last name), or by the couple legally declaring a new
last name that is sometimes a combination of their two names. Whatever
the decision and accompanying rationale, the argument seems to rest on
the value attached to names and the weight ascribed to this practice within
the context of cultural values around names and identity.
Bodies
Gender is inscribed on our bodies in terms of their shape, size, and
appearance, and is also performed through how we use and move our
bodies in the world. Our culture constructs masculine and feminine bodies
in opposition to one another, with feminine bodies expected to be slender,
soft, and hairless, and masculine bodies expected to be taller, broader, more
muscular, and hairy. One way to explore and reveal how this works is to
look at images that deliberately reverse these constructions.
As feminist sociologist Judith Lorber asserts, “[g]ender is such a familiar
part of daily life that it usually takes a deliberate disruption of our
expectations of how women and men are supposed to act to pay attention
to how it is produced.” Among fans of comic books, there are extensive and
ongoing conversations about the gendering of comic book characters, with
a vibrant feminist critique of the way that women characters are depicted
and the storylines they are given. Below is an example of one artist, Aaron
Clutter, who draws attention to how gender is constructed in this aspect of
popular culture by depicting male superheroes in feminine clothing and
poses. Note that the artist has separated out three distinct aspects of the
social construction of gendered bodies: (1) the bodies themselves, in terms
of their size and muscularity; (2) the clothing; and (3) bodily
posture/presentation. The bodies themselves are still coded masculine, with
broad shoulders, square jaws, and defined, bulging muscles, but the
clothing and poses are distinctly feminine and sexualized.
Artist Hana Pesut’s photographic series entitled “Switcheroo” explores
similar terrain. The series consists of paired, side-by-side photographs; in
the first, a couple poses together wearing their own clothing, whereas in
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the second the couple switches places and clothing, and also recreates the
other’s pose an d posture.
In this example, we get a visual reminder and confirmation that in some
ways, the boundaries of femininity are more elastic than the boundaries of
masculinity when it comes to clothing. When the women in these
photographs swap the clothes previously worn by the man, they are often
oversized but not necessarily categorically different than clothing we
would recognize as commonly seen worn by women, whereas the reverse is
much less often true for the men in the photographs. At the same time,
however, the postures and poses are often quite different, such that seeing
the women mimic the men’s posture and pose and vice versa is startling
and upsets expectations. Feminist philosopher Sandra Bartky has explored
these gender differences in “gesture, posture, movement, and general bodily
comportment,” noting that “[f]eminine movement, gesture, and posture
must exhibit not only constriction, but grace and a certain eroticism
restrained by modesty: all three” (81). Henley and Freeman’s early work in
this area explores similar territory; they note that
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Figure 2.6 Depiction of Male Superheroes in Feminized Postures Source: Aaron
Clutter, Editor-in-Chief, Comic Booked, www.comicbooked.com
[i]t is often considered “unladylike” for a woman to use her body too forcefully,
to sprawl, to stand with her legs widely spread, to sit with her feet up, or to
cross the ankle of one leg over the knee of the other. Many of these positions are
ones of strength and dominance.
(82)
They further note that differences in masculine and feminine clothing
styles help reinforce these differences, as masculine clothing allows greater
range of motion and more coverage. Bartky makes a similar point when
noting that “women in short, low-cut dresses are told to avoid bending over
at all, but if they must, great care must be taken to avoid an unseemly
display of breast or rump” (83). While the increasing sexualization of
women’s bodies has meant that there are, for better or worse, fewer
restrictions on exposing bare skin, we can see evidence of the continuation
of this gender norm on websites devoted to celebrity gossip and
entertainment “news”; these sites delight in posting paparazzi photos of so-
called wardrobe malfunctions or inadvertent flashing, not only to titillate
viewers but also to subtly or not-so-subtly shame said celebrities for lapses
in ladylike presentation.
Figure 2.7 Artist Hana Pesut draws attention to gender cues in her photographic
series “Switcheroo” Source: Photography by Hana Pesut, www.sincerelyhana.com
Yet another way that gender is inscribed on the body is through
tattooing. The global history of tattooing is long and complex, and social
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Home – Update

https://www.sincerelyhana.com

norms related to tattoos have changed considerably in the past few
decades. While historically it was considered to be a significant
transgression of feminine gender norms for women to be tattooed, the
norms are much more nuanced today, and there is no longer a significant
gap between the number of men and women who get tattooed. Hawkes,
Senn, and Thorn (2004) cite a study that estimates that “women currently
acquire half of all tattoos, a rate that has quadrupled since the 1970s” (594).
In spite of the relatively equal numbers of men and women getting
tattooed, however, studies seem to suggest that there are gendered
differences in perceptions of tattooed people.
In order to get at the nuanced ways that tattoos inscribe gender on the
body, we need to consider a number of factors, including the placement,
type, and size of those tattoos, as well as the race/ethnicity and social class
of tattooed women. As we consider each of these factors, we are reminded
of how women’s bodies are a central site of social negotiation and struggle.
On the one hand, many women get tattooed as a way to deliberately reject
normative constructions of femininity, whereas other women do so with
deliberate and conscious attention toward staying within the bounds of
gendered social expectation. With regard to placement, there is first the
question of whether a tattoo is visible or generally hidden from view while
wearing clothing. Hawkes, Senn, and Thorn’s (2004) study found that both
men and women had a more negative attitude toward women whose
tattoos were visible. For some women, this is precisely the point; they aim
to defy expectations of feminine appearance. A 2013 study in the journal
Archives of Sexual Behavior found that tattooed women were more likely
to be viewed as sexually promiscuous and were quicker to be approached
by men in the experiments conducted, while their level of physical
attractiveness was unaffected by the presence of the tattoo (Guéguen),
suggesting that body modifications like tattooing become social indicators
with particular symbolic, and gendered, functions.
Beyond visible versus hidden, however, is the question of where on the
body the tattoo is placed. Some parts of the body are particularly laden
with meaning when it comes to both gender and sexuality. Many young
women get tattooed on the small of their back; in slang terms, these tattoos
are frequently called “tramp stamps,” language that is both gendered and
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sexualized, in that it is an aspect of slut shaming. Arguably, there are also
classed associations with the “tramp stamp” label. A tattoo in that location
is often described as “trashy,” as opposed to respectably middle-class.
Research shows that the size of a woman’s tattoo is also a factor in whether
and to what extent it is seen as a violation of feminine gender norms, with
smaller tattoos being seen as more feminine than larger ones. Color and
type are also important factors; pastel or primary-colored tattoos of
butterflies, hearts, roses, the names or footprints/handprints of children,
and inspirational words or phrases are all generally considered feminine.
A final point here is that the consumer marketplace has responded to
women’s desire to navigate this tricky gender landscape and perhaps to try
to have it both ways, so to speak, as evidenced by the cosmetic company
Sephora’s tattoo concealer makeup, which carries the name of Kat Von D,
celebrity tattoo artist, star of reality television show LA Ink, herself heavily
tattooed. From the Sephora website:
Kat says, “If you wanna hide a tattoo just for one day, the proper concealer can
make that happen! No one has to see what you don’t want them to see!” Take it
from the tattoo pro: “I think just as much as people have the choice to be
tattooed, they should also have the liberty to look whatever way they want
whenever they want.” This is your ticket to tattoo freedom!
Case Study
Gender Shifts in Professions
Clerical and Secretarial Work
In today’s labor force, clerical work generally and secretary or receptionist
positions specifically are female-dominated; however, clerical work up
through the late 19th century was an exclusively male profession. As
England notes, prior to the 20th century, few women engaged in paid work;
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less than one-fifth of women worked outside the home, and they were
typically employed in the areas of domestic work, agriculture, and factory
work (particularly textiles). In 1871, according to England and Boyer,
clerical work accounted for a tiny proportion of all workers, less than one
percent in the US in 1870 and Canada in 1871. Clerical work in the US grew by
over 450 percent between 1900 and 1903, at which point 9 percent of the labor
force held clerical jobs.
(310)
Workers performing clerical functions were almost exclusively male, and
the clerical occupation was “high status work, offered good job security
and for those men in senior positions was a most prestigious job of the sort
associated with middle management today” (310). With the development of
technologies like typewriters and stenography, in 1880, cultural attitudes
about women’s stereotypical traits like compliance and fine motor
coordination/dexterity led to occupational shifts, although these were
visions of femininity typically connected to white women; over time
(through various media imagery and advertising campaigns, an increase in
demand for clerical workers that accompanied technological and industrial
shifts from agricultural to urban industries), the demand and rewards for
this type of work changed. England notes, “[i]n the popular imaginary,
clerical work was promoted as a desirable job for young, educated white
women to do for a few years prior to marriage” (313); race and ethnic bias
accompanied this shift as office work was believed to be “reserved only for
young, white protestant women” (314). Feminist scholars have examined
the way that secretarial work offered some women opportunities to enter
the labor market, while simultaneously positioning the work as low status,
even as the technology aptitude and literacy required to do the work
effectively was high. For example, Liz Rohan has challenged the class bias
that has framed salaried professional work as higher skilled than the hourly
wage work done by secretaries and clerical staff, even when the “amount of
technological skill [and] . . . the amount of training and literacy the
secretaries need to proofread technical documents” is substantial (Rohan
242).
In today’s economy, secretarial work is almost exclusively performed by
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women and yet the tasks associated with this occupation have not
substantially changed. An occupation once assumed to be high status and
requiring traditional masculine traits has become dramatically female-
dominated with no accompanying change in duties. This transformation
highlights the way that social institutions can shift and adapt our
understanding of gender over time.
Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Medicine
A contemporary example of the feminization of a profession comes from
veterinary medicine, which went from being male-dominated to being
female-dominated over a relatively short span of time. In 1960, only 2
percent of veterinarians were women, but as of 2015, according to the
American Veterinary Medicine Association, women comprised 55.2 percent
of veterinarians in private practice, and 52.2 percent of veterinarians in
public or corporate settings (“Market Research Statistics”). Women’s
numbers in the profession may grow even larger in the decades to come,
because women now constitute almost 80 percent of all students studying
veterinary medicine. Sociologist Anne E. Lincoln studied the feminization
of veterinary education and found that
what’s really driving feminization of the field is what I call “preemptive
flight”—men not applying because of women’s increasing enrollment. Also,
fewer men than women are graduating with a Bachelor’s degree, so they aren’t
applying because they don’t have the prerequisites.
Lincoln’s research challenged the belief that women’s entry into veterinary
medicine was an expression of caretaking, as well as the belief that women
are less concerned than men with high earnings (Lincoln, 2010). It should
be noted that Lincoln’s research comes from outside the field itself (as
noted above, she is a sociologist), and that professionals and professional
organizations within the field have struggled to go beyond offering guesses
as to why the gender composition of the profession has changed so rapidly
and thoroughly in recent decades. A final note is that though women have
represented the majority of veterinarians in the U.S. for several years,
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leadership in the field’s professional organizations, as well as leadership in
schools of veterinary medicine, is still largely male. The Women’s
Veterinary Leadership Initiative is focused on eliminating this leadership
gap in the profession.
Though the first two examples of the feminization of a profession
discussed here resulted in declining prestige and pay, feminization does not
of necessity have that result, as can be seen in the case of pharmaceutical
medicine, which was dubbed “The Most Egalitarian of All Professions” in a
2012 report by two Harvard University economists, Claudia Goldin and
Lawrence Katz. According to Goldin and Katz, only 8 percent of
pharmacists were women in 1960, but that number had risen to over 55
percent by 2012. Unlike veterinary medicine, however, in which women’s
entry both coincided with and resulted in a decline in pay and status, the
earnings of pharmacists continue to be strong, the status of the profession
has not fallen, and women pharmacists earn 92 cents for every dollar
earned by men in the field, the smallest wage gap in health care fields, and
a lower wage gap than in most other high-paying professions, according to
the National Bureau of Economic Research. What sets the profession apart
from the others discussed here is that women began entering the field at
the same time that it was undergoing many structural changes; the number
of jobs available for pharmacists has remained strong, and there has been a
decline in small-business owners running their own pharmacies. Today,
there are far more available positions for pharmacists in the pharmacies of
chain drugstores (Walgreens and CVS, for example) and big box stores
(Target, Wal-Mart, etc.). Significantly, these types of positions offer more
flexible schedules and fewer responsibilities than being a pharmacist who is
also a small-business owner. Goldin and Katz also report that “[p]harmacy
earnings appear to be highly linear in hours and in that sense pharmacy
has a relatively low ‘career cost of family.’” For a number of reasons, and
for better or worse, the market for pharmaceuticals has expanded in recent
decades in ways that have positively impacted women’s entry into and
experience of the field.
End of Chapter Elements
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Evaluating Prior Knowledge
1. . Think about your own exposure to gender identity and gender
awareness. Do you remember when you first became aware (or
were made aware) of your gender? What moment or moments in
your life have you experienced a sense of what it means to be a
boy or a girl? What cues did you get that led you to that
awareness? How was your awareness of your gender intertwined
with other aspects of your identity, such as your social class, your
race/ethnicity, and/or your sexual identity?
2. Have there been moments in your life that you’ve felt limited or
empowered by your gender identity? In what settings did you
have those experiences?
3. This chapter briefly discusses several of the sites or arenas where
gender socialization takes place. What do you recall about your
experiences with those institutions when you were growing up?
And today?
4. Prior to reading this chapter, had you ever encountered the word
“cisgender” or “cissexual”? If so, where? If you had not
encountered these terms before, what do you make of them? If you
identify as cisgender, how does it feel to have a label to describe
that identity?
Application Exercises
1. Occupational segregation by gender is one explanation for the
gender pay gap. See Tables 2.3 and 2.4, which document the
occupational segregation of labor, and examine the dominance of
each gender in particular occupations. Select one female-
dominated field and explain what qualities are typically associated
with the responsibilities of that work environment. Do the same
for a male-dominated occupation. How might a biological
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determinist explain this occupational clustering? What would a
social constructionist focus on?
2. Choose a favorite film genre, and screen at least three films in that
genre. Take note of the number and type of women characters and
relevant identity factors—marital status, educational attainment,
race, class, sexual orientation. What conclusions can you draw
about “women in X genre” of film based on your analysis? What
messages about gender would you draw as a viewer just paying
attention to norms, values, and behaviors exhibited by female
characters in that genre?
3. Take a field trip to a local department store like Wal-Mart or
Target and peruse the toy aisles. Jot down what you observe about
the messages, implications, and subtext communicated by the
arrangement of the toys; how they are divided, marketed,
packaged, and directed; and what they communicate about gender.
4. While the kind of dress codes discussed above in the gender
socialization section are not nearly as widespread at the collegiate
level as they are in middle schools and high schools, this is not to
say that the explicit and/or implicit gender policing of clothing
does not occur on college campuses. For example, investigate
whether the recreation and wellness center on your campus has a
dress code; if so, analyze it for gendered messages. Also, what are
the tacit rules on your campus for classroom attire, and how are
those rules gendered?
Skills Assessment
1. View the 2016 science fiction film Passengers, paying careful
attention to the gendered identities of the two main characters,
played by Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. Analyze the film’s
plot using chapter concepts.
2. Two of the academic fields with the smallest percentage of women
earning doctorates are engineering 1 (22 percent) and philosophy 2
(21.9 percent). Explore your impressions and associations with
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these two fields of academic study; are they “gendered masculine”
in ways that explain this disparity? If so, are they gendered
masculine in similar or different ways?
3. Gender reveal parties are becoming more popular in the United
States. Here’s a description of a typical gender reveal party:
The house was filled with balloons and confetti, and the guests
were decked out in team colors, ready to cheer. Minutes before the
party kicked off, they eagerly cast votes on the outcome. But this
festive gathering was not a Super Bowl celebration. The
decorations were all in pinks and powder blues, and the sides
involved were “Team Boy” and “Team Girl.” This was a gender-
reveal party, during which expectant parents share the momen t
they discover their baby’s sex, unveiling results of the ultrasound
test among loved ones.
Write a two to four paragraph analysis of the gender reveal party
as a cultural phenomenon. Using concepts from this chapter, how
can you complicate our understanding of these parties and what
they signify about our culture?
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think that biological explanations for gender roles
and expectations are so powerful and common sense? In what
ways do biological explanations fail to account for human
experiences broadly or your own experience specifically?
2. In what ways can you observe race, class, and sexuality operating
in definitions of masculinity and femininity?
3. Review the chapter sections on institutions as agents of gender
socialization. In what ways do you see institutions operating not
just independently but in overlapping ways? Explore how
different pairs of institutions operate together to reinforce gender
socialization. For example, organized religion and the family are
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interconnected both because of theological beliefs about gender
roles and family responsibilities and because religious involvement
can be a significant source of support and community for families.
4. Read Charlotte Alter’s article in Time, “Seeing Sexism from Both
Sides: What Trans Men Experience”
(http://time.com/4371196/seeing-sexism-from-both-sides-what-
trans-men-experience/). How might trans men be uniquely poised
to shed light on how gend er is socially constructed in our society?
Writing Prompts
1. Describe a gender norm that you regularly perform and that, for
the purposes of this assignment, you are willing to break for a set
period of time. Describe how you broke the norm and who saw
you break it. What reactions did you receive? How does your
experiment support and/or challenge the arguments contained in
this chapter? How does your experiment illustrate this chapter’s
key concepts?
2. Screen the documentary Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood, and
American Culture or The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture
Creates Sexist Men. Then do some Internet research into some of
the school shootings that most traumatized Americans: the
Columbine shooting in 1999 and the Newtown shootings in 2012.
Write an essay in which you examine the phenomenon of school
shootings through a social constructionist lens that considers the
formation of masculine identities in the United States.
3. Select two of the following comedic films targeting young male
viewers. What vision of masculinity do they construct? Van
Wilder, Old School, Pineapple Express, Caddyshack, The Big
Lebowski, Tropic Thunder, The Royal Tenenbaums, Swingers,
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.
4. Take a brief tour through a department store or big box store like
Target or Wal-Mart (or their websites), looking carefully at the
newborn, baby, and toddler sections of clothing and accessories
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http://time.com/4371196/seeing-sexism-from-both-sides-what-trans-men-experience/

(e.g., bibs and pacifiers). Make a list of all the gendered messages
that are communicated through text, images, colors, styles, and so
forth. What conclusions can you draw about how gender is
“framed” even as early as infancy? What qualities, activities, and
characteristics are emphasized for girls versus boys?
5. Watch the following commercial, entitled “Pretty” for Droid
phones: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=w83UQkiuNZQ). Here is the
text of the voiceover in the commercial:
Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing
digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast?
Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So
we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a
circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain
figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It’s not a princess. It’s a robot. A
phone that trades hair-do for can-do.
How does this ad illustrate several key concepts from this chapter?
Write a three- to five-paragraph essay that analyzes the cultural
messages that this commercial reinforces.
Notes
1 www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/14/doctorates#sthash.1uZBi8e6.dpbs; see also
Yoder.
2 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/women-in-philosophy-do-the-math/?
_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=2&
Works Cited
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http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/14/doctorates#sthash.1uZBi8e6.dpbs

Patriarchal Power.” In The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality,
Appearance, and Behavior. Ed. Rose Weitz. 3rd edition. Oxford
University Press, 2010, pp. 76–97.
Bates, Karen Grigsby. “Study: Black Girls are Being Pushed Out of School.”
NPR News. 13 February 2015.
www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/13/384005652/study-black-
girls-are-being-pushed-out-of-school. Accessed 5 July 2017.
Bettis, Pamela, and Natalie Guice Adams. “Short Skirts and Breast Juts:
Cheerleading, Eroticism, and Schools.” Sex Education, vol. 6, no. 2, 2006,
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Bian, Lin, Sarah-Jane Leslie, and Andrei Cimpian. “Gender Stereotypes
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Interests.” Science, vol. 355, no. 6323, 2017, pp. 389–391.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/389.Accessed 5 July
2017.
Bielanko, Monica. “Boy or Girl? 4-Month-Old Being Raised Genderless.”
Yahoo Shine. www.babble.com/baby/boy-or-girl-4-month-old-being-
raised-genderless/.Accessed 24 May 2011.
Boyer, Kate. “Place and the Politics of Virtue: Clerical Work, Corporate
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Twentieth Century Montreal.” Gender, Place, and Culture, vol. 5, no. 3,
1998, pp. 261–276.
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http://kristinestolakis.com/portfolioitem/where-we-stand/

Yogachandra, Natascha. “Teaching Positive Masculinity.” The Atlantic. 14
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3
Privilege and Oppression
Figure 3.1 Kathrine Switzer runs the Boston Marathon in 1967 Source: Getty
Images/Boston Globe
Opening Illustration
In 1967, the idea of women participating in a long-distance race as grueling
as the Boston Marathon was so farfetched that no offi cial document stated
that women were prohibited. Kathrine Switzer, a 19-year old Syracuse
student, loved running and had been training with her coach Arnie Briggs
to do long-distance races; she even completed a 30-miler to prepare herself
to compete in the flagship race in the United States. Registering as K. V.
Switzer, Kathrine started the race with Briggs and her boyfriend, Tom
Miller. Two miles in, race offi cials attempted to eject her from the race,
with race director Jock Semple lunging at her, attempting to pull her from
117

the course and tear offher race number (see Figure 3.1). Miller and Briggs
deflected Semple, allowing Kathrine to finish the 26.2 mile race in a
respectable 4 hours and 20 minutes. The experience was a life-changing one
for Switzer, as her experience inspired her to become a lifelong advocate
for equal opportunity for women in athletics and beyond (Butler). More
broadly, Switzer’s historic run helped propel a sea change in women’s
sports, marked in 1972 by women’s offi cial inclusion in the Boston
Marathon and the passage of Title IX legislation, which prohibited
discrimination in education, including athletic programs. Change came a
bit more slowly to the Olympics, however; it was not until 1984 that the
women’s marathon was first included as an event.
We open the chapter with this story because it illustrates the chapter’s
threshold concepts, privilege and oppression, particularly institutional
structures that shape our individual experiences, and how activism, agency,
and advocacy—as well as the action of feminist allies—can challenge and
ultimately change those structures. As you read this chapter, consider how
the key concepts outlined are at work in Switzer’s historical action as part
of completing the end of chapter Application Exercise.
A feminist stance posits that systems of privilege and oppression
profoundly shape individual lives. These systems play out via ideology and
societal institutions and are internalized by individuals.
Why a Threshold Concept?
Now that you have started to develop an understanding of the concept of a
socially constructed sex/gender system, the next step is to broaden our
inquiry, or widen our lens, to use a visual metaphor. Imagine a film that
opens with a close-up shot and then quickly pans out to show the viewer
the bigger picture. That’s precisely the move we’ll be making in this
chapter. Although we began this textbook by focusing on the power
dynamics that are at play in the gender system, when we widen our lens
we are able to see that similar dynamics structure many other systems of
difference and inequality. Sexism, the system of oppression and privilege
118

based in gender, is but one type of oppression. What’s more, these
additional structures of oppression and privilege are interconnected and
mutually reinforcing (a point that will be developed more fully in Chapter
4 on intersectionality).
Definitions
Oppression
The concepts of privilege and oppression provide a fundamental framework
for understanding how power operates in society. This framework helps
explain people’s experiences in the world, and it provides us with tools to
name and describe our social location. Oppression can be defined as
prejudice and discrimination directed toward a group and perpetuated by
the ideologies and practices of multiple social institutions. A number of
scholars and activists have explored the ways of thinking and the
mechanisms through which these systems are created and perpetuated. For
example, legal scholar Mari Matsuda notes that “[a]ll forms of oppression
involve taking a trait X, which often carries with it a cultural meaning, and
using X to make some group the ‘other’ and to reduce their entitlements
and power.” This terminology of privilege and oppression, then, gives us
the tools to name and describe not just sexism but the whole “-ism family,”
as Gloria Yamato calls it; for example, racism, classism, heterosexism,
and ableism.
Type of Oppression Corresponding Type of Privilege
Racism White privilege
Sexism Male privilege
Classism Middle-class privilege
Heterosexism/homophobia Heterosexual privilege
Ableism Able-bodied privilege
Cissexism/transphobia Cisgender privilege
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Within each system of privilege and oppression, we can see that there is
a dominant group and a marginalized group, one group who is considered
to be the norm, with their counterpart being the “other.” Audre Lorde calls
it a mythical norm, “usually defined as white, thin, male, young,
heterosexual, christian, and financially secure,” and goes on to argue that
“[i]t is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within
this society” (116). Those who are outside the mythical norm in one or
more ways are seen as lesser as a result of being judged in relation to it. As
discussed in Chapter 2, masculinity is the default norm in our culture, and
it is valued more highly than femininity. The same can be said for being
able-bodied, young, white, and so forth. Audre Lorde argues that
we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us
with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore
it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if
we think it is subordinate.
(115)
As we will discuss in this chapter, idealization of the mythical norm
manifests in many ways, both material and ideological.
In addition to the scholarship that has explored the ways of thinking that
create and perpetuate systems of privilege and oppression, many scholars
have also explored in depth how these systems manifest, that is, what
forms they take. Oppression can take cultural and symbolic forms
(discussed in the Ideologies section), such as images of beauty and success,
and material forms (discussed in the Institutions section), such as
structured forms of failure that disproportionately impact some groups
more than others.
For members of marginalized groups, as Marilyn Frye notes, the
experience is
that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which
are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically
related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them
and restrict or penalize motion in any direction.
(43)
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Labeling one’s experience with oppression, framed through the “wide
lens” that we described previously, means using the sociological
imagination discussed in Chapter 2, and situating one’s experience within a
broader framework; often, this means revising a personal understanding of
successes, failures, and circumstances from narratives of individual action
and personal will to a paradigm that considers how those experiences fit in
with social, material, and economic forces. In order to fully understand the
concept of oppression, we have to be willing to think on a “macro level,”
which is not particularly easy to do. In our experiences of talking about and
teaching about this concept (as well as the concept of privilege, discussed
below), we have found that some misconceptions and misunderstandings
crop up over and over again. We detail a few of them in this chapter.
Misconception Alert
Racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression happen only on an
individual level. One of the most challenging concepts to understand in
many sociologically based disciplines and in Women’s and Gender Studies
specifically are the differences between what feminist scholar Beverly
Daniel Tatum identifies as bigotry, prejudice, and racism. It’s important to
distinguish between these three ideas, because whereas the first two
happen on a practical and potentially individual level, the last is structural
and systemic. As with patriarchy, racism is not the product or conduct of
an individual person but what Tatum defines as “a system involving
cultural messages and institutional policies and practices as well as the
beliefs and actions of individuals” (362). Some people use “prejudice” and
“bigotry” as interchangeable with “racism”; bigotry is a personal belief
system that may manifest in acts of meanness or hostility on an individual
level. Prejudice is a preconception about an individual on the basis of a
racial identity. Racism differs from either of these because it involves what
David Wellman has called a “system of advantage based on race” and
means prejudice plus bigotry plus power, or the ability to grant privileges
to groups and withhold them from others (qtd. in Tatum).
The critical elements differentiating oppression from simple prejudice
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and discrimination are that it is a group phenomenon and that institutional
power and authority are used to support prejudices and enforce
discriminatory behaviors in systematic ways. Everyone is socialized to
participate in oppressive practices, either as direct and indirect perpetrators
or passive beneficiaries, or—as with some oppressed peoples—by directing
discriminatory behaviors at members of one’s own group.
Internalized Oppression and Horizontal Hostility
Institutional and ideological manifestations of privilege and oppression are
internalized by members of both dominant and marginalized groups. In
other words, it is often the case that members of marginalized groups come
to internalize the dominant group’s characterizations of them as lesser and
inferior. This phenomenon is called internalized oppression, and can be
seen as a marker of the “success” of the dominant group’s use of ideology.
For example, when working-class and poor people internalize classism,
they come to believe that their class position is deserved, that their failure
to succeed economically is the result of their failure to work hard enough
and exert enough effort to achieve class mobility. Gay men and lesbians
internalize heterosexism if they accept the belief that they are unfit to
parent or are undeserving of protection from discrimination. Women
internalize sexism if they come to believe that they are less capable in
mathematics and the natural sciences.
A related concept is that of horizontal hostility, introduced in Chapter 2,
whereby members of marginalized groups police each other’s behavior
and/or appearance. Horizontal hostility happens when a member of a
marginalized group identifies with the values of the dominant group. The
phenomenon of women slut shaming other women is an example of
horizontal hostility, as it entails women internalizing the sexual double
standard, and monitoring and casting judgment on other women’s
appearance and behaviors. “Respectability politics,” or the politics of
respectability, is a term used to describe horizontal hostility and
internalized oppression in a racial context. Members of marginalized racial
groups who engage in respectability politics police the language, behavior,
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and appearance of other members of their same group, out of the belief that
conforming to norms of the dominant group is a key component of
combating racial oppression.
Oppression is internalized by individuals, then, and as such, has a
psychological dimension that must be addressed when working to
dismantle it. As Audre Lorde writes,
[f]or we have, built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old
structures of oppression, and these must be altered at the same time as we alter
the living conditions which are a result of those structures.
(123)
Privilege
Privilege can be defined as benefits, advantages, and power that accrue to
members of a dominant group as a result of the oppression of the
marginalized group; individuals and groups may be privileged without
realizing, recognizing, or even wanting it. A key point here is that
oppression and privilege are inextricably linked; they are opposite sides of
the same coin. For every type of oppression, a corresponding set of
privileges exists. That is, the flip side of sexism is male privilege; of racism,
white privilege; of heterosexism, heterosexual privilege; of transphobia,
cisgender privilege, and so forth.
One of the best known essays on the topic of white privilege is Peggy
Mcintosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” where she
writes: “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not
in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group” and
I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets
that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to
remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of
special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank
checks.
Mcintosh’s essay is now a classic because of its trenchant enumeration of
all the (mostly unconscious) assumptions that white people make on a day-
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to-day basis about their social location and role in the world. Some of the
clearest include her notes on “Daily Effects of White Privilege”:
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am
shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that
testify to the existence of their race.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin
color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will
tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries
about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to
my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color
who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any
penalty for such oblivion.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be
sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-
seeking.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative
episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
46. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them
more or less match my skin.
What Mcintosh’s ideas call attention to are the specific ways that
privilege operates in daily life. She argues that, although whites may have
experiences that feel like discrimination, those experiences are generally
not attributable to their racial identity. Further, McIntosh’s examples show
individual experience within the context of larger structures and
institutions: law enforcement, government agencies, educational
institutions, and so forth.
The Black Lives Matter movement was created in 2012 by a group of
activists in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting
of African American teenager Trayvon Martin. Subsequent police shootings
or deaths of African American people while in police custody strengthened
the movement, and unrest in Ferguson, MO in August of 2014 after
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teenager Michael Brown was shot by a white police officer brought the
movement into greater public visibility. The online and media discourse
around the #blacklivesmatter hashtag and the subsequent “counter-
hashtags,” #alllivesmatter and #bluelivesmat-ter, shows the tension that
emerges around the recognition of privilege and oppression, particularly
how both are woven into individual experience of institutions like law
enforcement and the justice system. In this instance, a documented pattern
of police militarization, racial profiling, systematic racism, and questions
about the use of force in encounters with people of color are clearly
interrelated with the power and social authority of police. The experiences
of people of color as they interact with police are differently inflected by
systemic racism than whites; the #alllivesmatter hashtag reflects white
privilege in that it fails to account for the documented violence and
brutality disproportionately experienced by people of color in the justice
system.
Many writers and activists have been inspired by Mcintosh’s list to
generate similar lists to name other types of privilege; this strategy of
explicitly enumerating instances of privilege continues to be powerful in
raising awareness and provoking reflection among members of the group
who experience it. There are many lists that explore able-bodied privileges
and cisgender privileges, for example. Interestingly, a point of confluence
on these lists is around the issue of bathroom access. Sam Dylan Finch’s
list, published on the Everyday Feminism website, includes the following
cisgender privilege: “You can be sure that when you go out, you will be
able to find a restroom or locker room that corresponds with your gender
identity”; another list, which uses first person perspective, asserts, “I do not
have to worry about whether I will be able to find a bathroom to use or
whether I will be safe changing in a locker room” (“Daily Effects”). Many
lists of able-bodied privilege mention that able-bodied people don’t have to
give thought to how and where they can find a restroom that
accommodates their needs. More generally, the experience of being able-
bodied is one of not having to give thought to how one will enter, exit, and
navigate through public buildings, including opening and closing doors,
operating light switches, moving through hallways and around corners, etc.
If you would like to explore issues of accessibility on your campus, consider
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using one of the checklists created to gauge public facilities’ compliance
with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suggested readings section at
the end of the chapter includes several of these lists and checklists; we
recommend exploring a variety of them.
Antiracist activist Tim Wise has used his own experience to illustrate the
concept of white, male privilege. Wise argues that
to be white [in the US] not only means that one will typically inherit certain
advantages from the past but also means that one will continue to reap the
benefits of ongoing racial privilege, which itself is the flipside of discrimination
against persons of color.
(xi)
Here he details the historical and legal circumstances of his family that
ultimately allowed him, as a white man, to benefit from those injustices
and advance socially and educationally. For example, as the child of a
middle-income household with relatively modest standardized test scores,
Wise found himself a not particularly competitive applicant to the selective
Tulane University. Wise traces back his mother’s ability (even as a woman
who had never owned a piece of property) to take out a loan to help him
pay tuition, with his grandmother as a cosigner. His grandmother also had
never worked outside the home, and her ability to cosign was inextricably
linked to her marriage to a white man whose financial fortunes rested on
his racial whiteness— working in the military and government in an era
when people of color were systematically denied such opportunities, and
buying a house in a neighborhood where, due to a lack of legal structures
to prevent housing discrimination, people of color did not live (Wise 12–
13). As Wise concludes,
[a]lthough not every white person’s story is the same as mine, the simple truth
is that any white person born before 1964, at least, was legally elevated above
any person of color, and as such received directly the privileges, the head start,
the advantages of whiteness as a matter of course.
(13)
Learning Roadblock
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Defensiveness and denial of privilege: Research on learning has shown that
a learner’s existing understanding strongly influences how that learner
absorbs new information. The use of “privilege” in this discipline-specific
context requires some rethinking of the commonsense use of the term
“privilege,” or the way we refer to it in everyday life. Most frequently, we
think of a privilege as something like a “gift” or “honor,” an opportunity of
some kind. What differentiates privilege as a kind of term used in Women’s
and Gender Studies is the notion that privilege refers not just to individual
opportunity but to structured and social opportunities, particularly those
that are systematically granted on the basis of a social category of identity
rather than merit or individual will and that become woven into the fabric
of institutions. Examinations of structural forms of privilege seek to help
people situate themselves within these larger contexts and cultivate self and
cultural awareness of how privilege and oppression operate, as well as
strategies for challenging them.
But it’s not just that our commonsense understanding of privilege gets in
the way of grasping how we use that term here. Another more
fundamental kind of misunderstanding can come from the fact that this
framework of privilege and oppression runs counter to the values and
assumptions of many people in our culture. Several examples illustrate this
point. At Delavan-Darien High School in Wisconsin, a parent complained
about a teacher’s use of materials on white privilege in an “American
Diversity” course. After looking at the course materials, which drew on the
work of Tim Wise and Peggy McIntosh, the parent drew the conclusion
that the materials were divisive, and that they had the intention of
inducing “white guilt.” It seems clear that the parent rejected the overall
premise that society is structured into systems of oppression and privilege,
and she was quoted as saying that, in her understanding of them, the
course materials were saying, “If you’re white, you’re oppressing. If you’re
non white, you’ve been a victim” (Starnes). The parent seems to have been
thinking only in individual terms, as opposed to structural, macro-level
terms. Michael Kimmel, a sociologist who has written extensively about
privilege, argues that statements like these “are as revealing as they are
irrelevant.” He notes the strong impulse in our culture to “individualize and
personalize processes that are social and structural” (2), and goes on to
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point out that this type of response is a way to dodge and avoid taking
these issues seriously. Such misunderstandings can extend even into the
political landscape; for example, a proposed January 2017 bill in Arizona,
HB120, called for the prohibition of many courses that the bill interpreted
as causing “division, resentment or social justice toward a race, gender,
religion, political affiliation, social class or other class of people” (Flaherty),
a bill proposed in response to a course called “Whiteness and Race Theory.”
A similar case emerged in Wisconsin that same year, where representative
Dave Murphy called for state funding ramifications to be imposed on the
University of Wisconsin–Madison for offering a course entitled “The
Problem of Whiteness.”
Learning Roadblock
“If I don’t see it, it must not exist.” One of the biggest barriers many
students experience in understanding the “big picture” or structural
contexts of privilege and oppression is the temptation to use one’s own
experience as a “measuring stick.” For example, it may be hard to grasp the
enormity of rates of violence against women if it is an issue that has not
touched one’s life personally. Julie Zeilinger calls this the “If I don’t see it, it
must not exist” mentality, and she argues that this mentality is often a
product of being unaware of our privileges. The important point to
remember here is that although personal experience is a critical source of
knowledge in Women’s and Gender Studies, it also has to be measured
against other kinds of knowledge that can provide a framework within
which to place one’s personal experience and compare it with the
experiences of others. Students who are learning to think, know, and see
like Women’s and Gender Studies practitioners learn to position their own
experiences and awareness of the world alongside the statistical,
demographic, and theoretical knowledge gained by systematic evidence
collection by researchers, as well as the varying perspectives that their
classmates and conversation partners can bring to their understanding.
What this means is that new students of Women’s and Gender Studies
should think about how their own personal experience is reflective of
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others’ gendered experiences of the world, and how it departs from others’
experiences.
Institutions
In Chapter 2, we introduced the concept of gender socialization. As a part
of that discussion, we asked you to consider both where and how we are
socialized into our gender, that is, where we learn what it means to be a
boy or a girl, a man or a woman, in our society. Those sites of gender
socialization are our society’s institutions, and as we mentioned there, they
consist of marriage, family, the educational system, the health care system,
religion, mass media, the military, the political system, the legal and
criminal justice systems, sports, and the economy. We return to a
discussion of institutions in the context of this chapter on oppression and
privilege because systems of oppression and privilege are embedded within
and are played out through these societal institutions.
In Chapter 2, we focused on how societal institutions are patriarchal in
nature; that is, as Allan Johnson explains, male-dominated, male-identified,
male-centered, and obsessed with control, particularly of women. Here we
go one step further by stating that (1) societal institutions also structure
oppression and privilege based on race, class, and sexual identity, as well as
other categories of identity; and (2) these systems of oppression and
privilege overlap with and reinforce one another. In other words, these
systems cannot be understood in isolation from one another.
The terms “institutions” and “institutional or structural” forms of
oppression are used frequently to highlight the way that systems function
to grant resources and privileges to some groups and withhold them from
others. Institutions can be formal, organized structures like law and policy-
making groups (the House of Representatives and Senate, the Food and
Drug Administration, or the medical profession and its related professional
organizations), or they can be less formal but still an agreed-upon way of
organizing and reproducing social norms (e.g., mass media and popular
culture). In other ways, institutions can have a combination of formal and
informal structural elements. For example, “marriage” as an institution is
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governed by formal laws that dictate who can marry and under what
conditions; it is simultaneously shaped by formal religious organizations
that grant benefits to certain couples and not others, and that enact
doctrine that participants in that faith are expected to comply with in order
to remain in good standing. Social norms about marriage are promulgated
via other informal institutions such as mass media and other aspects of
popular culture (think, for example, of the number of magazines, television
shows, and websites that are devoted to wedding culture). The example of
marriage also illustrates the points made in the previous paragraph, in that
not only is the institution of marriage historically patriarchal but it is also
heterosexist. And in the 21st century, marriage is increasingly becoming a
middle-class institution that consolidates and protects the privileges of
those with economic means and serves to further marginalize working-
class and poor people. This point will be explored more fully in the
Anchoring Topics section below.
Ideologies
The concept of ideology might be one that you have heard before, as
academics tend to use it a lot, but you might not really know what it means
or why it’s used so much. We are introducing it in the context of this
chapter on privilege and oppression, along with institutions, because it is
the other primary means or method through which those systems of
oppression and privilege manifest and are played out.
Quite simply, ideologies are sets of ideas or beliefs. Just as there are
dominant and marginalized groups in society, so there are dominant
ideologies. Ideologies always represent the attitudes, interests, and values of
a particular group. Lynn Weber defines dominant ideologies as “pervasive
societal beliefs that reflect the dominant culture’s vision about what is right
and proper. Controlling images (stereotypes) are dominant-culture
ideologies about subordinate groups that serve to restrict their options, to
constrain them” (117). Legal scholar Mari Matsuda asserts that “[l]anguage,
including the language of science, law, rights, necessity, free markets,
neutrality, and objectivity can make subordination seem natural and
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inevitable, justifying material deprivation” (336). What we invite you to do
is to develop a heightened awareness of the ways that ideologies operate in
culture at large as well as in your own life and thinking. This involves
developing metacognition— or thinking about one’s own thinking or
thinking processes. Understanding ideologies means being able to (1)
identify patterns of thinking, (2) monitor one’s own thinking for those
patterns of belief, and (3) critically reflect on how one’s ideas and attitudes
are shaped by those beliefs.
Health Care
Privilege and oppression play out in the institution of health care in the
United States, where the amount and quality of health care people have
access to is shaped by economic resources or the lack thereof, as well as
racism. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of
Minority Health, for example, has documented significant disparities in the
health outcomes of marginalized racial and ethnic groups. Their action plan
to reduce health disparities notes
[i]ndividuals, families and communities that have systematically experienced
social and economic disadvantage face greater obstacles to optimal health.
Characteristics such as race or ethnicity, religion, SES, gender, age, mental
health, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity, geographic location, or
other characteristics historically linked to exclusion or discrimination are
known to influence health status.
(Office)
The report notes that these health disparities are not only about lack of
access to care, but about the kind of care that people of color receive when
seeking it. More specifically, they note that “[r]acial and ethnic minorities
are more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to report experiencing poorer
quality patient–provider interactions.” These patient–provider interactions
are often of poor quality because providers may bring stereotypical
understandings of patients into their treatment. In other words, ideology
also plays a role in shaping people’s experiences of the institution of health
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care. We will return to this topic in Chapter 4.
A related example focuses on gender in health care. While women obtain
health care in equal if not greater numbers than men, their experiences
may be negatively shaped on a number of levels by gender stereotypes. As
we discussed in Chapter 2, in a binary sex/gender system, masculinity is
associated with the mind and rationality, and femininity with the body and
irrationality. These characteristics have made their way into gender
stereotypes of women as hysterical, with their physical complaints not
being taken seriously by their health care practitioner. As Laurie Edwards
notes in “The Gender Gap in Pain,” the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 report
“Relieving Pain in America” “found that not only did women appear to
suffer more from pain, but that women’s reports of pain were more likely
to be dismissed.” Instead, Edwards observes, women’s pain is often
characterized as “ ‘emotional,’ ‘psychogenic’ and therefore ‘not real.’ ”
Anchoring Topics through the Lens of
Privilege and Oppression
Work and Family
Two societal institutions through which women experience varying
degrees of privilege and oppression are the workplace and the family. For
example, workplaces are governed and authorized by a variety of laws,
acts, and policies regarding labor, safety, and leave for illness or family
obligation. And as discussed in Chapter 2, gendered ideas and images of
work and leadership deeply impact women’s experiences of the workplace.
Family structure is also subject to laws, acts, or policies, particularly in
relation to marriage, and particular family structures may be reinforced,
acknowledged, or ignored by those policies and laws. For example, even
though the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell had the effect of
legalizing same-sex marriage in this country, as of 2017, some state and
county courts and vital records offices continue to refuse legal recognition
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to the families of same-sex lesbian couples in the form of parentage orders
and birth certificates. Ideology surrounding the family is also especially
strong, and many of us have internalized these ideas and images about
what constitutes a family and what a “normal” family looks like, as well as
how families function in terms of assumed roles and responsibilities.
Among these internalized ideas and images of a “normal” family is that
it is nuclear in structure, with a married (heterosexual) couple at its center.
This image, however, is deeply out of touch with reality, as evidenced by
data from the 2010 Census, which revealed that married couples now
constitute a minority of households (48%). By contrast, in 1950, married
couples represented 78 percent of households; this significant decrease has
been attributed to a number of factors, including later ages for first
marriage and cohabitation for longer periods before marriage. In addition,
while divorce rates have stabilized overall, a growing number of people are
choosing not to marry, or not to remarry after getting divorced or being
widowed. There is a particularly striking change evident among middle-
aged Americans. Reporting on a study that appeared in The Gerontologist,
Rachel Swarns notes that “[a]bout a third of adults ages 46 through 64 were
divorced, separated or had never been married in 2010, compared with 13
percent in 1970.”
These changes to rates of marriage and family form in the last several
decades stand in complex relationship to women’s rates of participation in
the paid labor market. In some segments of society, women’s increasing
participation in the labor market has contributed to delaying the age of first
marriage, and sometimes shaped women’s choices around whether to stay
married and/or to remarry after divorce. On the flip side of this is the
reality that more and more families rely on women’s earnings, whether as
the primary or sole income. In 1948, only 17 percent of married mothers
were in the paid labor force; as of 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 69.9 percent of all mothers with children under the age of 18
participated in the labor force, a substantial increase over the span of
slightly less than 80 years. The participation rate for married mothers with
a spouse present was slightly lower (67.6%) than those who were single,
divorced, or separated (74.8%). Further, although women were less likely to
be in the labor force when their children were not yet of school age, almost
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two-thirds of women with children under the age of 6 participated in the
labor force (64.2%), and even a majority of married women with infants less
than 1 year old worked outside the home (57.6%). The importance of
women’s paid work is underscored by the finding that, as of 2015, “42% of
mothers were sole or primary breadwinners, bringing in at least half of
family earnings” (Glynn). One key point, then, is that a majority of women
(regardless of marital status) in the U.S. want and/or need to combine
childbearing and childrearing with paid work, and their earnings are an
indispensable part of their household’s income.
When discussing women’s rates of marriage and participation in paid
work (and the relationship between the two), we also must pull back and
look at how economic forces shape both. Women’s rates of marriage vary
widely by economic class in ways that suggest that marriage is itself
becoming a marker of class privilege. While rates of marriage are declining
across the board, the decline is sharper among people with lower incomes
and levels of education. More specifically, the decline in rates of marriage
for women is both a cause and a consequence of economic inequality. It is a
cause of economic inequality because single women who are heads of
household bear the brunt of the gender wage gap even more sharply than
do their married heterosexual counterparts. It is a consequence of economic
inequality because studies are finding that marriage feels increasingly out
of reach for women in lower income brackets. The results of a 2014 Pew
Research survey, for example, reported that “never-married [heterosexual]
women place a high premium on finding a spouse with a steady job.
However, the changes in the labor market have contributed to a shrinking
pool of available employed young men.” When faced with a potential
spouse who has experienced significant under- or unemployment, many
women choose instead to remain single, out of a fear that, as Stephanie
Coontz puts it, “legally hitching yourself to a man who might lose his job
or misuse your resources can leave you worse offthan if you stayed single.”
The divorce rate also differs quite dramatically by income and education,
with rates of divorce significantly lower for those with more education and
income. One study cited by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example,
showed a gap of 20 percentage points in the rates of divorce for those with
less than a high school degree (50% divorce rate) and those with a college
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degree (30% divorce rate). While there are many factors that contribute to
the difference in divorce rates by income and education, one key factor that
increases a couple’s chance of divorce is instability caused by
under/unemployment and the resulting financial stresses and worries.
Policy Implications
U.S. social policy reflects the dominant ideology idealizing the heterosexual
two-parent nuclear married family in several key ways that conflict with
the reality of the family lives of most U.S. women. For example, looking at
the statistical and demographic realities of women, marriage, and
motherhood reveals how misaligned the relationship between family
structures and responsibilities is with workplace and public policies,
structures that subsequently oppress women—poor women and women of
color most of all. That is to say, in spite of the fact that a majority of
women (regardless of marital status) in the U.S. want and/or need to
combine childbearing and childrearing with paid work, and their earnings
are an indispensable part of their household’s income, our societal
institutions and many of our governmental policies have not kept pace with
this reality. In some cases this gap or mismatch can be characterized in
terms of a time lag; that is, we can expect that our institutions and policies
haven’t caught up with the pace of change (but they eventually will), but in
other instances the gap or mismatch represents deliberate efforts to stem
the tide of changes to family structure based on the belief that these
changes are problematic and even destructive.
Relevant policies are the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of
1993, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
of 1996, and the provision in the Affordable Care Act of 2010 regarding the
rights of breastfeeding workers. An analysis of these policies shows how
these realities of family structure and labor force participation by women
are misaligned with current public policies that support work–life balance,
that allow women to fully participate in the workplace, and that promote
particular sorts of economic dependence for women while discouraging
and stigmatizing others, resulting in privilege for some women and
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oppression for others.
The FMLA illustrates how public policy has not kept pace with changes
in women’s roles and women’s workforce participation—and the resistance
to establishing the policy shows how ideologies can determine material
realities. Pregnancy, lactation, and child care are a regular part of many
women’s life course, but it wasn’t until 1993 under President Clinton that
the United States adopted the FMLA, the first step toward ensuring that
women could retain the right to return to their jobs after any leave to
accommodate family needs. Although the passage of the FMLA represented
a positive first step toward creating policy that would help make
workplaces more accommodating of the needs of women workers, this Act
has several limitations. First, FMLA provides a good example of something
that privileges certain women but does not serve others: workers may only
avail themselves of its benefits if they have worked a certain number of
hours within a year and if they work for an employer with more than 50
employees. The Act may not protect their right to return to their exact
position, only a similar one within that workplace. For professional women
who work full time and who have access to a second wage in their
household, FMLA may cover their needs. However, FMLA provides only
unpaid leave, and unless a specific workplace complements this leave with
paid leave, most women who are not partnered with a second wage earner
(and even many who are) may not be able to take the full twelve weeks of
unpaid leave.
In these regards, the current legislative protection for women lags far
behind that of other countries. As the Project on Global Working Families
has documented in its report, The Work, Family, and Equity Index, of 173
countries studied, 168 offer guaranteed leave with some associated income
in connection with childbirth; 98 countries offer fourteen weeks or more of
paid leave. The United States offers none (Heymann, Earle, and Hayes, see
Figure 3.2). For a variety of reasons, it seems unlikely that significant
federal-level paid family leave legislation will be passed in the next few
years, though Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have
proposed what they call the FAMILY Act, which stands for the Family and
Medical Insurance Leave Act. Their proposed legislation would provide
workers with up to twelve weeks of partial income, and would cover
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workers in all companies no matter their size. In the meantime, a small
number of states (California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New York)
have created family and medical leave insurance programs in recent years.
Figure 3.2 Maximum Paid Leave (Maternity & Parental) Available to Mothers in
Countries Providing Paid Leave Source: New York Times
Further, despite overwhelming scientific evidence in support of
breastfeeding infants, the United States only minimally supports and
protects breastfeeding mothers legislatively. As the Centers for Disease
Control reports, mothers are the “fastest-growing segment of the U.S. Labor
Force.” With the passage of the 2010 Affordable Healthcare Act, employers
are now required to “provide reasonable break time and a private, non-
bathroom place for nursing mothers to express breast milk during the
workday, for one year after the child’s birth” (United States Breastfeeding
Committee). Although this is a welcome policy, not all workplaces are
covered under the law (the law contains an exemption for workplaces with
fewer than 50 employees), and there is a long way to go in terms of raising
awareness and ensuring compliance. Furthermore, as of 2017, the fate of the
Affordable Care Act is unknown, as Congress and President Trump attempt
to repeal it in part or in full.
Additionally, as of 2016, 49 states, as well as the District of Columbia and
the Virgin Islands, have legislation protecting women’s right to breastfeed
in public, though just twelve have a protective law with an enforcement
provision. As we discuss in Chapter 4, breastfeeding support and resources
are also particularly tied to social class and the types of work environments
that are amenable to promoting a climate friendly for lactating mothers.
Women working in salaried, professional positions are more likely to have
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access to unmonitored breaks and private working spaces that will allow
them to pump or breastfeed. What this means is that these laws and
policies offer protection to women with class privilege, often in stable work
environments with greater levels of autonomy, whereas other women will
be disempowered by their workplaces. Overall, the diffi culties many
women face when attempting to maintain their supply of breast milk upon
returning to work after the birth of a child reveal U.S. society’s continued
ambivalence about working mothers. Facing barriers to combining work
with parenthood, some women feel pushed out of the workplace. Other
women are not in a position to leave the workforce, even if they would like
to, but instead may have to stop breastfeeding, because their employer is
not accommodating.
A different dimension of ambivalence about combining paid work and
mothering can be discovered through a discussion of the 1996 Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA),
which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (which provided
cash benefits to recipients) with the new program Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF). Generally referred to as “welfare reform,” the
Act made some significant revisions to support benefits available to
recipients, including placing a lifetime limit of 60 months on recipients,
mandating work outside the home or work-seeking behaviors, and more
stringent consequences for failure to comply with the program
requirements.
The ideological assumptions underpinning welfare reform reflect the
threshold concept of privilege and oppression around gender, class, and
race. There is a classed double standard; whereas married mothers with
class privilege are seen as good mothers for prioritizing family over paid
work, poor unmarried mothers, within the rhetoric of welfare reform, are
seen as bad mothers for wanting to do the same thing. In truth, poor
mothers experience not just a double standard but a double bind, being
judged bad mothers whether they stay at home or work. Because they are
poor, they are often seen, by definition, as unfit parents.
The mandate that women seeking TANF funds must look for and find
jobs does not account for the individual circumstances and social location
of those who are in need of and seek government assistance. For example,
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many TANF recipients face significant barriers to employment. As the
Office of Public Affairs notes, 42 percent of welfare recipients did not have
a high school diploma or its equivalent; another one-third had serious
health issues; and about one-third did not have recent work experience that
would make them employable. Recipients often faced additional challenges
to paid employment including young infants at home, language barriers, or
care responsibilities for family members/children with disabilities.
Under TANF, poor unmarried mothers are required to seek work, but
they also often receive explicit encouragement to marry as a way to lift
themselves and their children out of poverty. In her 2008 study of low-
income mothers, Marcella Gemelli notes the tension in this approach:
“advocating for independence and self-suffi ciency through working for
wages, yet encouraging marriage seems contradictory” (102). More
specifically, PRWORA included “Marriage Promotion” policies and funding
—a set of policies and allocated resources dedicated toward promoting
marriage, particularly out of concern from social conservatives that
providing financial support to poor women created a disincentive to marry.
Provisions of the bill supported public advertising campaigns on the value
of marriage, the support of high school curricula promoting marriage,
premarital education and training, marriage workshops, and divorce
reduction programs focused on relationship skills (Dailard). The privileging
of the heteronormative family—and the consequent structural oppression
that results from the imposition of one ideological perspective on family
configuration, particularly on poor women—present clear evidence that
race, class, and gender are central in determining social location and status.
The policy changes brought about by PRWORA reinforce the notion that
particular forms of dependence—dependence on a male breadwinner—are
acceptable forms (and the nuclear family is an ideal to which all families
with children should aspire) while reflecting a prevailing assumption that
financial dependence on government benefits should be curbed. Policies
aimed at marriage promotion also discount the personal autonomy of
women with multiple responsibilities by channeling resources into the
promotion of an ideological ideal that is based on male dominance and
compulsory heterosexuality.
An analysis of a range of marriage promotion programs around the U.S.
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has shown that they have not worked in promoting marriage or preventing
divorce, much less in lifting women out of poverty, in spite of the fact that
nearly a billion dollars has been spent on them (Covert). Marriage, then, is
not a panacea for poverty, for reasons that have already been touched on in
this section. In a 2014 report for the Council on Contemporary Families, Dr.
Kristi Williams makes the case that social and economic family supports,
rather than the promotion of marriage, are keys to improving the
circumstances of single mothers and their children. She cites a study
showing the impact of three specific policies on rates of poverty in single
parent households: “(1) family allowances (direct payments to parents of
dependent children), (2) paid parental leave, and (3) publicly funded
childcare for children under age 3.” She continues,
[p]aid parental leave and publicly funded childcare for children under age three
appear especially advantageous in reducing poverty among single mothers,
largely by increasing their employment rates—a primary goal of the 1996
welfare reform legislation. Such policies benefit all families and are likely to be
more effective than marriage promotion in reducing poverty and improving the
lives of the growing number of single mothers and their children.
As our discussion above shows, social policies such as these would benefit
not only single mothers living in poverty, but working- and middle-class
women, married and unmarried.
Overall, the institutions of work and family profoundly impact women’s
lives. In the arenas of work and family—which have perhaps some of the
most significant impacts on an individual’s quality of life—macro-level and
micro-level forms of privilege and oppression intersect at multiple levels.
Women’s ability to combine paid labor with reproductive labor; the choices
they have with regard to partners, their personal finances, and their
occupational trajectories; and the quality of their health and relationships
are shaped by policies affecting the workplace at local and national levels.
Language, Images, and Symbols
Privilege and oppression manifest in symbolic ways as well as material
ways (for example, language and images versus material conditions such as
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institutions like work and education). Three key examples illustrate how
privilege and oppression play out through language, images, and symbols:
Language, Voice, and Power: “Mansplaining” and
“Whitesplaining”
One way that privilege and oppression play out in language is through
whose words are (and are not) listened to and granted authority. In 2008,
author Rebecca Solnit published the piece “Men Explain Things to Me,” a
more cerebral and socially conscious meditation of the phenomenon
subsequently coined mansplaining. As stated in a “Words We’re
Watching” blog post on the Merriam-Webster site, mansplaining “occurs
when a man talks condescendingly to someone (especially a woman) about
something he has incomplete knowledge of, with the mistaken assumption
that he knows more about it than the person he’s talking to does.” Use of
the term has subsequently gone mainstream. In her short essay, Solnit
originally described a dinner party experience where a male guest insisted
on describing a new book he had read a review of, summarizing its thesis
and holding forth on the topic until being made to realize, only after
several interruptions by another party guest, that Solnit herself was the
author of the book under discussion. What Solnit ultimately tries to show is
that, although for some women mansplaining may be a minor “social
misery,” for others she argues, “[a]t the heart of the struggle of feminism to
give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual
harassment legal standing as crimes has been the necessity of making
women credible and audible.” That is, the power dynamic at play in
mansplaining illustrates a key aspect of male privilege, which is the
assumption of the right to speak, the assumption that one is knowing and
has something to say worth listening to, and the expectation that one’s
words will be listened to. Conversely, the phenomenon of mansplaining
reveals the extent to which many women still struggle to be heard. As
Solnit explains, mans-plaining is a phenomenon that
keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that
crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the
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street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-
limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.
Solnit’s point about the feminist struggle to make violence against women
a crime speaks to the diffi culty that members of all marginalized groups
have when it comes to being heard when they describe their experiences of
oppression. A pernicious manifestation of privilege is the belief that
members of dominant groups are the best judges of what does and doesn’t
count as oppression. The term whitesplaining was coined to describe the
phenomenon of white people explaining to people of color how they should
feel about issues of race and racism, and offering their unsolicited
judgment about whether those experiences could be considered legitimate
examples of racism. A recent example
Figure 3.3 Tweet from Rob Schneider Source: Twitter,
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4126906/Rob-Schneider-fire-MLK-Day-tweet-
John-Lewis.html
made social media headlines when 1980s celebrity Rob Schneider tweeted
comments to Georgia congressman John Lewis in response to Lewis’s
critiques of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump (Figure 3.3).
Extensive online and media commentary pegged this as an example of
whitesplaining because of John Lewis’s role as a close collaborator with
Martin Luther King and one member of the group that organized the 1963
Civil Rights March on Washington, a group that included Dr. King.
On a related note, whitesplaining can also entail derailing and tone
policing. The site Everyday Feminism provides a visual definition of this
term:
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4126906/Rob-Schneider-fire-MLK-Day-tweet-John-Lewis.html

Figure 3.4 Definition of Tone Policing Source:

No, We Won’t Calm Down – Tone Policing Is Just Another Way to Protect Privilege


The phrase captures the challenges of dialogue around issues that bear
emotional weight for oppressed groups whose lived reality is dismissed or
made invisible by demands for a particular type of communication
preferred by a dominant group. This is sometimes an unintentional
silencing, while in other scenarios it could be viewed as a strategy to shut
down public resistance to oppression. For example, as the Black Lives
Matter movement gained momentum, the types of public protest that
individuals and groups engaged in frequently came under scrutiny. San
Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick made headlines when he
knelt rather than stood with his hand to his heart during the national
anthem at professional football games. Other athletes, professional or
otherwise, subsequently used this same strategy to register opposition to
police violence against people of color. Backlash against this method of
protest—as well as the range of protest strategies from marches to sit-ins to
other demonstrations—led activists to critique these efforts to control the
conversation and set terms for dialogue in ways that reinforce and derive
from race, class, and gender privilege.
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No, We Won’t Calm Down – Tone Policing Is Just Another Way to Protect Privilege

Online Presence and Wikipedia
As the increasingly ubiquitous source of information for online users,
Wikipedia is an important part of the construction of knowledge and
popular access to knowledge on the widest range of topics of practically
any compendium, print or online. A number of new studies (and
subsequent activist work) have centered on the gender disparity in the type
and quality of contributions and edits made to Wikipedia, as well as the
virtual environment experienced by Wikipedia contributors.
Research published by the Association of Computing Machinery and
cosponsored by Yahoo showed that women editors of Wikipedia made
fewer revisions in numbers to entries but made qualitatively more robust
and fuller revisions, even though they make up an overall total of just 18
percent of Wikipedia editors. Other research estimates female contributions
at 9–15 percent of editors. Research from the University of Minnesota’s
GroupLens Research Lab offered three key findings in their 2011
examination of over 110,000 Wikipedia editors: in terms of sheer numbers,
just 16 percent of editors identified as women. They observed that women
editors were more likely than men to leave or cease editing, particularly
when, as newcomers, their edits were challenged or “reverted.” In 2014, the
Isla Vista, California shooting tragedy became the subject of a social media
and Wikipedia battle illustrating this online tension. Shooter Elliot Rodger
killed six people, and investigations revealed his self-reported motivation to
fulfill what he himself called his “war on women” (Covarrubias, Mather,
and Stevens). Harnessing the power of social media in response to the
tragedy, women took to Twitter with the hashtag #yesallwomen to call
out violence and sexism; this hashtag served as a counterpoint and
challenge to the previously existing tag, #notallmen, which was created by
men’s rights activists to contradict the effort to make visible and to critique
sexism and violence. A battle for control over the message around the
shooting became visible in the Wikipedia page over how the shooting and
subsequent social media coverage was presented. One draft of the entry
specifically identified Rodger’s misogyny as his motivation for the
shootings, while a counter-edit charged that such claims reflected “feminist
propaganda” and “misandry” (Dries). The Wikipedia entries for
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“#YesAllWomen” and “Isla Vista Shootings” saw heated disagreement on
the discussion page about how this tragic event could be discussed in terms
that critiqued male privilege and made women’s oppression visible.
More recently, there have been intense editing conflicts over Gamergate,
a term applied to a series of controversies within gaming culture and
gaming communities centered on a game created by Zoe Quinn, and
subsequent video game publication coverage of the game. Heated online
battles—often rooted in misogyny and using tactics like “doxxing”—
publicly posting the home addresses and contact information of individuals
as a way of making them vulnerable—culminated in a review at the highest
levels of Wikipedia’s organizational review body that banned some editors
from making changes to the Wikipedia Gamergate entry. Feminist media
critic Anita Sarkeesian faced similar online harassment after producing a
series of YouTube videos called “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” which
critically analyzed depictions of women in video games—for example the
“damsel in distress,” “women as background decoration,” and “the lady
sidekick”; partway through the series debut she received death threats and
had to vacate her home.
A second area of investigation concluded that topics traditionally of
greater interest to women received less attention than those that have been
historically of interest to men. For example, discussions of films aimed at
female audiences were shorter or of lower quality than those with
primarily male audiences, leading researchers to conclude “Wikipedia
seems to be growing in a way that is biased toward topics of interest to
males” (Zurn).
Finally, in terms of the community and culture of Wikipedia editing, the
researchers observed, in conflicts among editors, entries by women were
more likely to be “undone” than those of men, and female editors were
more likely than male editors to be “indefinitely blocked.” Sue Gardner,
Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, explains in her blog that
women’s contributions to Wikipedia are inhibited or discouraged for a
variety of reasons, ranging from hostile editing tactics (for example, editing
wars over the difference between identifying a rape scene in a film as a
“sex scene” and meeting the standards of “neutrality”), to the unfriendly
interface, to men’s greater level of self-confidence and willingness to speak
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with authority, to the conflict-heavy culture. The “Gender Gap Manifesto”
appears on the Wikimedia Foundation and aims to “foster an environment
where people can express their thoughts, feelings, and solutions regarding
the gender gap on Wikipedia. The goal is to collaboratively find solutions
to improve the presence of women on Wikipedia and its sister projects.”
As part of actualizing these goals, several initiatives have emerged. For
example, the FembotCollective hosts annual “Edit-A-Thons” at the offices
of Ms. Magazine to generate content that will narrow the gender gap.
Large-scale efforts such as the partnership between the Wikipedia
Education Program and the National Women’s Studies Association support
Wikipedia article content creation, expansion, or revision by integrating it
with teaching and learning in the college classroom. Instructional modules
and support for instructors is housed at the NWSA Wikipedia Initiative
website. This kind of activism is sometimes referred to as crowdsourcing.
Through these strategies, contributors from a variety of positions are
aiming to change the culture of online contributions to Wikipedia to make
it a more welcoming space for women to contribute and to challenge an
online culture that is exclusionary, adversarial, or belittling. In this way,
privilege and oppression are demonstrated by the ways that women’s
voices are more systematically closed off whereas men’s voices are
dominant, whereas the efforts to correct the situation show how
marginalized groups resist their oppression.
Marked vs. Unmarked in Language
In the early days of second-wave feminism, much attention was paid to the
ways in which sexism was embedded in language. This feminist critique of
language took many forms, including a critique of the default use of
masculine pronouns in English and the default use of masculine gendered
occupational titles like “mailman,” “fireman,” “chairman,” and
“congressman.” While these critiques resulted in widespread change, it is
also clear that there are significant ways in which oppression and privilege
continue to play out in language.
One of the markers of privilege is invisibility, and one of the ways this
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invisibility manifests is through identity terms and labels. In other words,
dominant groups that are a part of the mythical norm have the privilege of
being unmarked and unremarkable because of their presumed neutrality
and normality. To return to the term transgender that was introduced in
Chapter 2, for example, current usage of the term refers to people whose
gender identity is at odds with their birth-assigned gender, but until very
recently there was no term to describe people whose gender identity is
consistent with their birth-assigned gender. The term cisgender was coined
to fill this vacuum, and arguably to draw attention to, and make visible, the
privilege of the dominant group. In Transgender History, Susan Stryker
explains that the term cisgendered “names the usually unstated assumption
of nontransgender status contained in the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ ” (22).
Another example comes from politicized groups within the autism
community; they have coined the term neurotypical to describe people who
are not on the autism spectrum. To be in the unmarked group is to be
considered the default norm.
A slight variation on this point comes from considering when we do and
don’t attach qualifiers to our descriptions of and references to people and
institutions; for example, it is still fairly common practice to specify race
only when referring to a person of color, to specify gender when referring
to women, to specify sexual identity when referring to someone who is
gay, lesbian, or bisexual, and so forth. As Gloria Steinem wryly points out,
“adjectives are mostly required of the less powerful. . . . As has been true
forever, the person with the power takes the noun— and the norm—while
the less powerful requires an adjective.” Similarly, marriage is frequently
modified with the word “gay” when referring to same-sex couples. As
GLAAD’s “Ally’s Guide to Terminology” points out, however, “[j]ust as it
would be inappropriate to call the marriage of two older adults ‘elder
marriage,’ it is inappropriate to call the marriage of a same-sex couple ‘gay
marriage’ or ‘same-sex marriage.’ Simply talk
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Figure 3.5 Marked and Unmarked T-Ball Sets Source: Image, Jane George
about marriage instead.” The argument here is that marriage is marriage
regardless of the sex of the couple. To do otherwise, whether with regard to
people or institutions, is to reinforce the mythical norm and the notion that
those outside the mythical norm are both “other” and lesser-than.
Contributors to the blog Sociological Images have documented this
phenomenon of marked and unmarked language as it plays out in public
signage, as well as in product packaging and products themselves; new
examples of this phenomenon continue to be added to the Pinterest site as
they are discovered. For example, one posted photo shows an end-of-aisle
sign in the health and beauty section of a big box store that describes what
customers will find in that aisle; it lists “Deodorant” and “Women’s
Deodorant.” Figure 3.5 shows an example of this phenomenon in children’s
toy packaging. In the examples they document, maleness is an unmarked,
invisible category, and only girls/women have a gender.
This illustrates how the mythical norm and unearned privilege manifest
in language, although the example about the coinage of new terms to name
dominant groups that are a part of the mythical norm shows that language
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can also be harnessed to bring previously invisible privilege to light.
Bodies
The threshold concept of privilege and oppression (as well as the social
construction of gender) is illustrated through the operation of rape culture,
which Lynn Phillips defines as “a culture in which dominant cultural
ideologies, media images, social practices, and societal institutions support
and condone sexual abuse by normalizing, trivializing and eroticizing
violence against women and blaming victims for their own abuse”
(Kacmarek and Geffre). The term was coined and is used to neatly capture
and describe the fact that sexual violence is socially tolerated and woven
into the fabric of our society. Phillips’ definition echoes the overall focus in
this chapter of asserting that privilege and oppression play out through
institutions and ideology; examples of both will be explored in this section.
It is also important to note in this context that rape culture is an aspect
of multiple forms of oppression, not just or only sexism. Put slightly
differently, violence, or the threat of violence, is a mechanism that helps
maintain many types of oppression, including sexism, but also racism,
heterosexism, and transphobia, to name a few. Given that reality, queer
men, trans and non-binary people, and men and women of color all
experience high rates of violence, and often fear for their safety and
security. Chapter 4, which focuses on the threshold concept of
intersectionality, will delve more deeply into how and why systems of
oppression intersect.
Rates of violence in the U.S. (both intimate partner violence and sexual
violence) are consistent with the existence of a rape culture. Data from the
CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey shows that
nearly 1 in 5 (18.3%) women reported experiencing rape at some time in
their lives. This survey data is further broken out by race and ethnicity, and
reveals that many groups of women of color experience violence at even
higher rates. For example, in a survey of 2,000 Native American and
Alaskan Native women, 56 percent have experienced sexual violence.
Transgender people, especially trans women, also experience significantly
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higher rates of sexual violence; according to the Offi ce for Victims of
Crime, one in two transgender people are sexually abused or assaulted at
some point in their lives.
In a rape culture, sexual violence is normalized, and when perpetrated by
members of the dominant group, their behavior is more often than not
excused and minimized and/or made to seem inevitable. The normalization
of sexual violence among young girls and women that is a characteristic of
rape culture was documented by sociologist Heather Hlavka in a 2014
research study that concluded that many young women view sexual
violence and accompanying behaviors such as objectification, abuse, and
harassment by boys and men as a normal part of daily life. One young
woman quoted in the study says, of young men’s sexually aggressive
behaviors, “It just happens” and, “They’re boys—that’s what they do” (344).
The study focused on explaining why few girls and women report sexual
violence, offering “normalization” as one explanation, as well as the lack of
confidence young women have in authority and the lack of support from
other girls and women. The “naturalization” of violent masculinity also
played a role. The lack of support from other girls and women is a good
example of how oppression is internalized.
The lack of confidence in authority figures (including the police and
courts) documented in Hlavka’s study is often warranted, as seen in the
high-profile rape case of Brock Turner, who was convicted in 2016 of three
felony charges: intent to commit rape, sexual penetration with a foreign
object of an intoxicated person, and sexual penetration with a foreign
object of an unconscious person. In spite of the jury finding him guilty on
all three counts, judge Aaron Persky issued what many considered to be an
extremely lenient sentence of only six months in county jail (he was
released after three months). Prosecutors had recommended that he serve
six years. Persky was seen as diminishing or downplaying Turner’s
culpability in the crimes, and many argued that Turner’s privileged status
as an affluent, white male athlete factored into Persky’s decision. Indeed, in
his sentencing decision, Persky noted that a longer sentence would have “a
severe impact” and “adverse collateral consequences” on Turner. Public
outrage was further fueled by Turner’s father’s statement, in which he
argued for leniency in sentencing, that his son had “paid a steep price” for
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“20 minutes of action.” The Brock Turner rape case illustrates how privilege
and oppression manifest through societal institutions, and both the judge’s
decision and Turner’s father’s statement constitute evidence that we live in
a rape culture.
Rape culture is also often perpetuated through how news media (another
example of a societal institution) choose to write about and frame their
reporting of sexual assault cases. Analysis of news coverage of the outcome
of the 2012 Steubenville rape case, in which two young men were convicted
of assaulting a young woman, revealed that many media outlets framed the
case in a way that engaged in victim-blaming. As Annie-Rose Strasser and
Tara Culp-Ressler write in a piece on Think Progress, “[b]y emphasizing
the boys’ good grades and bright futures, as well as by describing the
victim as ‘drunk’ without clarifying that the defendants were also drinking,
many mainstream media outlets became active participants in furthering
victim-blaming rape culture.” Their analysis focuses on news coverage by
CNN, ABC News, NBC News, The Associated Press, USA Today, and
Yahoo News.
An ideological manifestation of rape culture can be seen in the
prevalence of rape jokes in American culture. The film The Bro Code: How
Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men highlights the ubiquity of
humorous treatments of rape and sexual assault in popular culture and
mass media; one only has to peruse a newspaper, news magazine, or
Internet news site to identify many daily examples of rape and sexual
assault, including gang rape. As The Bro Code notes, 99 percent of rapists
are men, and popular shows such as Family Guy and comedians such as
Daniel Tosh of the show Tosh routinely take comic approaches to rape that,
instead of deconstructing or critiquing rape culture, endorse or embrace it.
The “Rape Joke Supercut” 1 short at the Women’s Media Center highlights
the difference between these two types of rape jokes: See also Jessica
Valenti’s “Anatomy of a Successful Rape Joke” 2; and Lindy West’s “How
To Make a Rape Joke” 3 for trenchant critiques of this element of rape
culture.
Another characteristic of rape culture is that the burden for preventing
sexual violence is carried primarily by members of marginalized groups
who are expected to limit their behavior, actions, dress, and other aspects
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of their daily life to try to minimize the likelihood that they will be
victimized. These internalized and routinized behaviors and habits are
referred to as a “rape schedule.” In his essay “Why I Am a Male Feminist,”
filmmaker Byron Hurt recalls an experience that raised his consciousness
about this phenomenon. In a workshop about preventing gender violence,
the facilitator
posed a question to all of the men in the room: “Men, what things do you do to
protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?” Not one man,
including myself, could quickly answer the question. Finally, one man raised his
hand and said, “Nothing.”
By contrast, when the facilitator asked the women in the room the same
question, nearly all of them raised their hands to offer examples. Hurt
continues, “[t]he women went on for several minutes, until their side of the
blackboard was completely filled with responses. The men’s side of the
blackboard was blank. I was stunned.” Women’s oppression, then, is
illustrated by the mental self-monitoring that many must continually do to
assess themselves, their surroundings, and their conduct for threats of
violence or “gender-based miscommunications,” whereas male privilege is
illustrated by the fact that men are typically not expected to monitor
themselves or their conduct for safety and security and freedom from
sexual violence.
A marker of privilege is the ability not to have to live one’s life according
to a rape schedule; as such, feminist activism focused on eliminating rape
culture works to shift responsibility for preventing sexual violence offof
victims and onto potential perpetrators. An alternative model, then, places
primary responsibility on members of dominant groups to engage in
conduct that creates safe communities, workplaces, and homes, and calls
out practices and messages that perpetuate victim-blaming. Feminist
activist groups on many college campuses, for example, have criticized the
messages directed at women by administrators and campus police that
perpetuate the idea that preventing sexual violence is their responsibility
alone by only mentioning what they should or shouldn’t do in order to
lower their chances of being raped. Many of these groups have then
worked with campus leadership to change the messaging in ways that
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attempt to change the campus culture and climate.
In a rape culture, the bodies of people in marginalized groups are
vulnerable and subject to violation. The perpetuation of rape culture shores
up the privilege of dominant groups and is a mechanism through which
marginalized groups experience oppression.
Case Study
The role of both institutions and ideology in maintaining systems of
privilege and oppression can be seen through an examination of the
bootstraps myth, which is the idea that upward class mobility is not only
possible but probable, and that individual will and hard work are the only
requisites for moving out of poverty and into the middle class. One of the
consequences or implications of this myth is that poor people are then
blamed for their continued poverty. Within the logic of the bootstraps
myth, if individual will and hard work are the only requisites for moving
out of poverty and into the middle class, then poverty can be explained by
a lack of will and hard work on the part of poor people.
The ideology of upward class mobility has its roots in the long history of
the United States as a colony, but was popularized by a series of novels in
the 1890s written by Horatio Alger, novels about hardworking boys whose
work elevated them from a hardscrabble life to one of success and luxury.
So-called Cinderella or rags-to-riches stories continue to be popular and
have been continually updated over the past century in such movies as
Pretty Woman, Maid in Manhattan, The Blind Side, and Slumdog
Millionaire. Rags-to-riches stories are also a frequent premise of reality
television shows. These narratives have the effect of reinforcing belief in
the possibility of dramatic upward mobility. This ideology is also
buttressed by the language we use to talk (or avoid talking) about class in
the United States. Politicians, for example, almost always use the term
“middle-class Americans” to refer to the broad mainstream and rarely use
class labels that reflect the reality that a full majority of Americans are in
fact working-class. The bootstraps myth has great explanatory and
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persuasive power because it builds upon a cultural belief in self-
determination that resonates with many U.S. residents, the idea that we are
each the captain of our own destiny, as it were.
However, data on the realities of social mobility demonstrate that, in
fact, movement from one class to a higher or lower one, particularly from
the lowest rungs of the American economic ladder to a higher one, is
uncommon and diffi cult, as data from a New York Times special feature on
social class reveal. In covering the topic of “How Class Works,” the New
York Times tracked American families by income quintile (breaking down
family income by quintile) and examining how, over time, people in those
income brackets moved up or down the “economic ladder.”
As these data illustrate, social class is fairly immutable; that is, the
bottom fifth of the U.S. population in 1988 largely remained in that
economic quintile, with relatively few people born into poverty rising up
even a single income quintile. The same immutability is demonstrated for
those in the top income quintile. In sum, the class a person is born into
greatly shapes life experiences and has a huge impact over the life course.
Gregory Mantsios puts it even more bluntly: “[c]lass standing, and
consequently life chances, are largely determined at birth,” a reality that
frames our discussion of the institutions and the various experiences of
them.
Table 3.1 Economic Mobility in the U.S.
Top
20%
Of those in the top quintile, 52%
remained there a decade later.
Just 5% had dropped to the
bottom quintile.
Upper
Middle
20%
Those in the upper middle quintile
largely remained there, with 30% in
the same income bracket.
Seven percent of the upper
middle had dropped to the
bottom quintile, while 25%
had moved up to the top, and
27% had dropped to the
middle.
Bottom
20%
Most notably, those who occupied
the bottom quintile generally
remained there. The same number of
bottom 20 percenters remained poor
as top 20 percenters remained rich:
Similarly, just 5% of bottom
quintile earners had reached
the top 20%, and a small
number had reached the
upper middle income bracket:
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52%. 7.5%.
Many questions follow: why is it that the class structure in the United
States is fairly static? And how can we account for the persistence of the
belief in widespread class mobility given the data that disproves it? There
are many answers to these questions, but one key factor is the societal
institution of education, an institution that reinforces privilege and that
some can experience as oppressive. We’ll start by looking at the
relationship between baccalaureate degree attainment and social class.
As the chart below shows, income quartile has enormous predictive
power in attainment of four-year degrees, and this disparity between
fourth-quartile (the poorest) families and first-quartile (the wealthiest)
families has grown in the last 40 years. Eighty-two percent of those
individuals in the top quartile of the economic spectrum earned a four-year
degree, a rate that has doubled in the last four decades to result in the
majority of wealthy families producing college graduates; by contrast, the
very small percentage of degree-earners from the bottom quartile in 1970
(just 6.2%) has barely budged, up to 8.3 percent; that is, children raised in
wealthy households are ten times as likely to earn a baccalaureate degree—
essentially, entrance into stable employment and household security as well
as the starting point for most professional occupations—as those from the
poorest families (see Figure 3.6).
Further, the profound interrelationships between nearly all measures of
academic achievement and socioeconomic status (SES) reveal the
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Figure 3.6 Estimated Baccalaureate Degree Attainment by Age 24 by Family Income
Quartile, from 1970 to 2012 Source: Tom Mortensen, PEO Newsletter
deep roots of privilege and oppression, particularly how social strata
reproduce and maintain inequality despite the efforts of individuals to
navigate them—or to transform them. As Rebecca Zwick reports in “Is the
SAT a Wealth Test?,” the connections between social class and academic
achievement are demonstrated by both the major standardized tests, the
SAT and ACT. When comparing student achievement of the benchmark
score for admission to selective colleges, a combined verbal and math score
of 1100 (in 2001), students from high socioeconomic status (SES) were three
and a half times more likely to meet the benchmark (32%) compared with
low-SES students (9%). The average SAT score for low-income students was
156

887, according to Zwick’s findings, while scores steadily increase, with the
average score for students with family income above $100,000 reaching
1126 (307). Research shows a similar gap on the ACT score, as well as many
other standard measures of academic achievement including completion of
a rigorous, college-preparation curriculum and high school grades. This is
largely attributable to the differential access to resources both at home and
in their educational systems including variation in teacher preparation
(more teachers with advanced training and credentials teach at schools
with lower percentages of students receiving free and reduced lunch). In
this way, privilege and oppression in the forms of access to the cultural
capital that produce social mobility are structured into a system that
reproduces itself with each generation.
This is not to say that working-class and poverty-class people cannot do
well in school, but that their chances of academic success are lower than
their more affl uent peers. A 2014 New York Times story highlights the gap
between high-income and low-income students’ rates of graduation:
[a]bout a quarter of college freshmen born into the bottom half of the income
distribution will manage to collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, while almost
90 percent of freshmen born into families in the top income quartile will go on
to finish their degree.
(Tough)
Further, even nonacademic experiences at college can be framed by
social class. A 2013 Harvard University book by Armstrong and Hamilton,
Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, traced the ways
that university and social structures facilitate upward class mobility for affl
uent students whose class background influenced their social groups,
majors, and extracurricular activities, preserving what the authors call a
“pathway to privilege,” while low-income students lacked the benefits
provided by college-educated and high-income parents. Jessica Valenti
summarizes the intersection of class and gender, emphasizing from
Armstrong and Hamilton’s study that
[r]egardless of the success, class impacted almost every aspect of the college
women’s lives—even sexual assault. Female students who had parents who went
to college were able to warn their daughters about the tactics of fraternity
157

predators, and were actually less likely to be targeted because, as Armstrong
and Hamilton write, ‘insulting a highly ranked woman in a top sorority was
akin to affronting her whole sorority.’ Lower-income students—especially those
women who were perceived as garish— were more likely to be assaulted and
less likely to be believed.
(Valenti, “How to End”)
Another important point is that working-class and poverty-class students
who do manage to succeed are often pointed to as proof that structural
inequality does not exist, which is not only a mistake but cruel when an
individual’s success is used to berate those who, because of structural
inequality, are unable to follow suit. Neither is our point to diminish or
dismiss the success that middle- and upper-class students achieve through
hard work; rather, the point is to acknowledge the enabling conditions that
provided a context for those students’ hard work in the first place.
Further complicating the relationship between educational access, social
mobility, and identity is the role of race. Disaggregating and pinpointing
racially disparate outcomes in education adds another layer to and
understanding of privilege and oppression. Research from the Community
College Research Center documents that, four years after graduation, black
college graduates have nearly twice the student loan debt as white students
($52,726 vs. $28,006); and black students are more likely to take out student
loans and more likely to leave college without completing a degree
(Goldrick-Rab, Kelchen, and Houle). Also notable is the increase in
enrollment by black students at for-profit universities, which, as the same
report notes, “can account for all of the differential growth in black
graduate school enrollment between 2004 and 2012: at public and private
not-for-profit institutions, black students have remained a roughly constant
percentage of the graduate population,” with 28 percent of black students
enrolling in a for-profit graduate university program compared with 10
percent of white students. With traditionally much higher tuition rates, for-
profit colleges have been criticized for preying on students to take
advantage of a 2005 piece of federal legislation that increased the amount of
borrowing allowed for students (Deruy).
One final point: the class-based structural barriers to educational
achievement are buttressed by controlling images of working-class and
158

poverty-class people as dumb and buffoonish. These images and
characterizations appear both in the news media and in popular culture,
from Homer Simpson to MTV’s short-lived reality TV series “Buckwild.” In
other words, ideology purports to show that working-class and poverty-
class people of all races and ethnicities are poor as a result of both poor
choices and lesser innate intelligence.
As the previous illustrations suggest, the bootstraps myth serves an
important function in suggesting that certain kinds of privilege and
oppression (namely, economic) are irrelevant to social and educational
achievement even though there is strong statistical and demographic data
to suggest that those social indicators have a great deal of power over who
achieves traditional markers of success in the United States.
End of Chapter Elements
Evaluating Prior Knowledge
1. Write briefly about how and in what context you have heard the
terms “privilege” and “oppression” before. Generate some
examples of how the terms are typically used (for example, in
childrearing, in educational contexts, or other settings). Then
discuss how your understanding has changed after reading
Chapter 3 as well as any lingering questions you have about these
key terms.
2. Reflect on how you have, historically, conceptualized or would
describe your class background. What aspects of your identity,
family context, or life experiences have factored into this
conceptualization?
Application Exercise
1. Consider the opening illustration about Kathrine Switzer’s entry in
159

the Boston Marathon in 1967. In conversation with a partner or in
an informal writing activity, think about how the key concepts
from this chapter are illustrated by Switzer’s story:
a. Privilege
b. Oppression
c. Institutions
d. Ideologies
2. Visit the website, the Americans with Disabilities Act Checklist for
Readily Achievable Barrier Removal: www.ada.gov/racheck .
Identify a location where you spend significant amounts of time
and assess it using the checklist for accessibility.
Skills Assessment
Figure 3.7 Poor Kids Who Do Everything Right Don’t Do Better than Rich Kids
Who Do Everything Wrong Source:
www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/18/poor-kids-who-do-
everything-right-dont-do-better-than-rich-kids-who-do-everything-wrong/?
utm_term=.7e6326328ed0
1. Review this bar graph from the Washington Post story “Poor Kids
160

http://www.ada.gov/racheck

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/18/poor-kids-who-do-everything-right-dont-do-better-than-rich-kids-who-do-everything-wrong/?utm_term=.7e6326328ed0

Who Do Everything Right Don’t Do Better than Rich Kids Who
Do Everything Wrong,” with specific attention to socioeconomic
and educational privilege and oppression. In what ways do you see
chapter concepts demonstrated by the data?
2. Using concepts from Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, discuss how access
to and support for participation in athletics demonstrates the social
construction of gender as well as privilege and oppression.
3. Select a term or concept from the chapter that seems “muddy” to
you. With a partner, talk through the muddiness. What is creating
a learning block? Why is it difficult? What would clarify it for
you? Use a strategy called a “difficulty log” to map out the parts of
the idea that are challenging you, including background
knowledge you wish you had, challenging or confusing
vocabulary, unclear relationships to other chapter concepts or
other chapters, or unfamiliarity from your experience. As an
additional activity, once you’ve had a chance to work through a
muddy/difficult concept, try your hand at writing a
“Misconception Alert” or “Learning Roadblock” like those featured
in the chapter in order to spell out (a) what the learning challenge
is and (b) how other students can overcome it.
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Figure 3.8 You Throw Like a Girl Source: https://medium.com/matt-bors/you-
throw-like-a-girl-c5cc1d098b6c
Discussion Questions
1. Which concepts from this chapter are the most challenging for you
and why? Which seem intuitively easy to grasp?
2. With particular attention to the case study on the bootstraps myth,
consider why this concept has such explanatory power,
specifically within the context of the United States. Are there
examples not provided in the chapter that you can think of that
reflect this ideology?
3. Building on your understanding of rape culture from the Bodies
Anchoring Topics section, think about how and where you see
examples of rape culture around you. Conversely, how and where
have you seen rape culture being challenged?
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https://medium.com/matt-bors/you-throw-like-a-girl-c5cc1d098b6c

Writing Prompts
1. Navigate to Harvard University’s Implicit Bias Test
(https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html) and take one
or more of the available tests. Write about your results and include
reflection analysis of the ways in which the results help you
understand concepts from the chapter including privilege,
oppression, horizontal hostility, internalized oppression, or others.
2. Select a topic of personal interest to you (a band, recreational
activity, intellectual interest, book or TV show) and that you know
a lot about. Next, search for related entries on Wikipedia. First,
read over the entry and do your own independent assessment of
neutrality standards—is the topic presented in accurate and
objective ways? Are there aspects that you believe reflect a
specific bias or slant? Second, click on the “Talk” tab at the top of
the page. What kinds of discussions are Wikipedia editors having
about the information presented and does it match with your own
assessment? In what ways, if any, do you see particular beliefs or
perceptions being privileged (or underrepresented, or
misrepresented) in the conversation?
Works Cited
Notes
1 www.womensmediacenter.com/blog/entry/rape-joke-supercut-i-cant-believe-you-
clapped-for-that
2 www.thenation.com/blog/168856/anatomy-successful-rape-joke
3 http://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke
Americans with Disabilities Act. www.ada.gov/racheck . Accessed 6
July 2017.
163

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/blog/entry/rape-joke-supercut-i-cant-believe-you-clapped-for-that

http://www.thenation.com/blog/168856/anatomy-successful-rape-joke

http://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke

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Steinem, Gloria. “Women Have ‘Chick Flicks.’ What About Men?” New
York Times. 2 March 2017.
Strasser, Annie-Rose, and Tara Culp-Ressler. “How the Media Took Sides in
the Steubenville Rape Case.” Think Progress . 18 March 2013.
https://thinkprogress.org/how-the-media-took-sides-in-the-
steubenville-rape-case-e92589afbadf. Accessed 6 July 2017.
167

https://nationalseedproject.org/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack

http://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/mansplaining-definition-history

http://www.nwsa.org/wikiedu

http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/foundation-health-measures/Disparities

http://www.ovc.gov/pubs/forge/

http://TomDispatch.com

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/public-school-teaches-white-privilege-class.html

https://thinkprogress.org/how-the-media-took-sides-in-the-steubenville-rape-case-e92589afbadf

Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Seal Press, 2008.
Sun, Feifei. “What MTV’s Teen Mom Doesn’t Deliver.” Time Magazine. 14
July 2011.
Swarns, Rachel. “More Americans Rejecting Marriage in 50s and Beyond.”
New York Times. 1 March 2012.
Tatum, Beverly Daniel. “Defining Racism: Can We Talk?” Women, Images
and Realities: A Multicultural Anthology. Eds. Amy Kesselman, Lily
McNair, and Nancy Schniedewind. 3rd edition. McGraw-Hill, 2003.
Tough, Paul. “Who Gets to Graduate?” New York Times Magazine. 15 May
2014.
United States Breastfeeding Committee. “Existing Laws.” 2013.
www.usbreastfeeding.org/laws. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Valenti, Jessica. “How to End the College Class War.” Guardian. 27 May
2014. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/27/how-to-end-
college-class-war. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Weber, Lynn. Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality. 2nd ed.
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Williams, Kristi. “Promoting Marriage among Single Mothers: An
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Families. 6 January 2014. https://contemporaryfamilies.org/marriage-
ineffective-in-war-on-poverty-report/. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Wise, Tim. White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Soft
Skull Press, 2005.
Yamato, Gloria. “Something about the Subject Makes It Hard to Name.” In
Making Face, Making Soul. Ed. Gloria Anzaldua. Aunt Lute Books,
1990, pp. 25–30.
Zeilinger, Julie. A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism is Not a Dirty Word. Seal
Press, 2012.
Zurn, Rhonda. “University of Minnesota Researchers Reveal Wikipedia
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Zwick, Rebecca. “Is the SAT a Wealth Test?” Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 84, no.
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http://www.usbreastfeeding.org/laws

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/27/how-to-end-college-class-war

https://contemporaryfamilies.org/marriage-ineffective-in-war-on-poverty-report/

https://cse.umn.edu/news-release/university-of-minnesotaresearchers-reveal-wikipedia-gender-biases/.

Suggested Readings and Videos
“Able-Bodied Privilege Checklist.” MIT School of Architecture and
Planning. www.sap.mit.edu/content/pdf/able_bodied_privilege .
Antin, Judd, et al. “Gender Differences in Wikipedia Editing.” Wikisym.
October 2011.
Aughinbaugh, Alison, Omar Robles, and Hugette Sun. “Marriage and
Divorce: Patterns by Gender, Race, and Educational Attainment.”
Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review. October 2013.
Braun, Nicole. “Taken-for-Granted Social Class Privileges.” Classism
Exposed . Class Action. 19 January 2015.
http://www.classism.org/taken-granted-social-class-privileges/.
“Breastfeeding State Laws.” National Conference of State Legislatures.
www.ncsl.org/research/health/breastfeeding-state-laws.aspx#State.
Accessed 6 July 2017.
Carbone, June, and Naomi Cahn. “Family Values? Conservative Economics
Have Shredded Marriage Rates.” Next New Deal: The Blog of the
Roosevelt Institute. 9 August 2011. http://rooseveltinstitute.org/family-
values-conservative-economics-have-shredded-marriage-rates/.
—. Marriage Markets: How Inequality Is Remaking the American Family.
Oxford University Press, 2014.
Coontz, Stephanie. “Why Gender Equality Stalled.” New York Times. 16
February 2013.
Crittenden, Ann. The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in
the World Is the Least Valued. Holt, 2002.
“Daily Effects of Cisgender Privilege.” University of Texas Gender and
Sexuality Center. http://diversity.utexas.edu/genderandsexuality/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/Handout-Cisgender-and-Heterosexual-
Privilege-2016 . Accessed 1 March 2017.
Edwards, Laurie. “The Gender Gap in Pain.” New York Times . 16 March
2013.
“Fact Sheet.” National Partnership for Women and Families. February 2017.
www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/work-family/paid-
leave/family-act-fact-sheet . Accessed 6 July 2017.
“Family Income and Educational Attainment 1970–2009.” Postsecondary
169

http://www.sap.mit.edu/content/pdf/able_bodied_privilege

Taken-for-Granted Social Class Privileges

http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/breastfeeding-state-laws.aspx#State

http://rooseveltinstitute.org/family-values-conservative-economics-have-shredded-marriage-rates/

http://diversity.utexas.edu/genderandsexuality/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Handout-Cisgender-and-Heterosexual-Privilege-2016

http://www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/work-family/paid-leave/family-act-fact-sheet

Education Opportunity: Public Policy Analysis of Opportunity for
Postsecondary Education. November 2010.
Ferber, Abby, and Michael Kimmel. Privilege: A Reader. 2nd edition.
Westview Press, 2010.
Finch, Sam Dylan. “130+ Examples of Cis Privilege in All Areas of Life For
You to Reflect On and Address.” Everyday Feminism. 29 February 2016.
Heldke, Lisa, and Peg O’Connor, eds. Oppression, Privilege, and Resistance:
Theoretical Perspectives on Racism, Sexism, and Heterosexism. McGraw
Hill, 2004.
Hess, Amanda. “Are You a Slut? That Depends. Are You Rich?” Slate.com.
28 May 2014.
Jacobi, Tonja, and Dylan Schweers. “Justice, Interrupted: Gender, Ideology,
and Seniority on the Supreme Court.” SCOTUSblog. 5 April 2017.
Johnson, Allan. Privilege, Power, and Difference. Mayfield, 2001.
Kacmarek, Julia, and Elizabeth Geffre. “Rape Culture Is: Know It When You
See It.” Huffington Post Blog. 1 June 2013.
Konnikova, Maria. “Lean Out: The Dangers for Women Who Negotiate.”
The New Yorker. 10 June 2014.
Leistyna, Pepi. Television and Working Class Identity: Intersecting
Differences. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
McDonough, Katie. “Report: Many Girls View Sexual Assault as Normal
Behavior.” Salon. 14 April 2014.
Mcintosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
Peace and Freedom Magazine, July/August, 1989, pp. 10–12.
Miller, Claire Cain. “The Motherhood Penalty vs. The Fatherhood Bonus.”
New York Times. 6 September 2014.
Office of Justice Programs. U.S. Department of Justice. 26 May 2017.
https://ojp.gov/.
Peralta, Katherine. “Marriage Gap Widens with Income Inequality.” U.S.
News & World Report. 16 December 2014.
Pharr, Suzanne. Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism. Chardon Press, 1997.
Ridgway, Shannon. “19 Examples of Ability Privilege.” Everyday Feminism.
5 March 2013. Web.
Rooks, Noliwe. “The Myth of Bootstrapping.” Time Magazine. 7 September
2012.
170

http://Slate.com

https://ojp.gov/

Scott, Judith Clayton, and Jing Li. “Black-White Disparity in Student Loan
Debt More Than Triples After Graduation.” Economics Studies.
Brookings Institute. 20 October 2016.
http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/black-white-disparity-in-
student-loan-debt-more-than-triples-after-graduation.html. Accessed 6
July 2017.
Solnit, Rebecca. “A Rape a Minute, A Thousand Corpses a Year.” Mother
Jones. 25 January 2013.
—. “Men Explain Things to Me.” GuernicaMag. 20 August 2012.
https://www.guernicamag.com/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-
me/. Accessed 20 October 2017.
Tatum, Beverly Daniel. “Defining Racism: Can We Talk?” In Women,
Images and Realities: A Multicultural Anthology. Eds. Amy Kesselman,
Lily McNair, and Nancy Schniedewind. 3rd edition. McGraw-Hill, 2003.
Unslut . Dir. Emily Lindin. The Unslut Project, 2015. Film.
Urban Institute. “A Decade of Welfare Reform: Facts and Figures.” Urban
Institute. 26 July 2006.
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/decade-welfare-reform-
facts-and-figures.
Van Galen, Jane. “Middle Class Privilege.” Education and Class: Exploring
the Intersections of Social Class, Education, and Identity. 16 May 2008.
https://educationandclass.com/2008/05/16/middle-class-privilege/.
Wang, Wendy, and Kim Parker. “Record Share of Americans Have Never
Married.” Pew Research Center. 24 September 2014.
www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-share-of-americans-have-
never-married/. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Yamato, Gloria. “Something about the Subject Makes It Hard to Name.”
Making Face, Making Soul. Ed. Gloria Anzaldua. Aunt Lute Books,
1990, pp. 25–30.
Zeilinger, Julie. “6 Forms of Ableism We Need to Retire Immediately.” Mic.
7 July 2015. Web.
171

http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/black-white-disparity-in-student-loan-debt-more-than-triples-after-graduation.html

Men Explain Things to Me

https://www.urban.org/research/publication/decade-welfare-reform-facts-and-figures

Middle Class Privilege

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-share-of-americans-have-never-married/

4
Intersectionality
Table 4.1 Percent of Infants Exclusively Breastfed in the Past 7 Days (First Four
Rows)
Opening Illustration
Discussions of breastfeeding have increasingly been in the public eye for
the last several years, in both news stories and social media memes. Part of
what has fueled these discussions is the fact that rates of breastfeeding in
the U.S. have risen in the last decade, as a result of public health
campaigns. Recent news reports tout the increase in mothers breastfeeding
their newborns, noting “[m]ore mothers in the United States are
breastfeeding their babies, a practice that could potentially save billions in
health care costs, the Centers for Disease Control said in a study released
on Wednesday” (Abutaleb). Aggregate data from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) show, for example, that
[w]hile 35 percent of babies were breastfed at six months in 2000, that figure
climbed to 49 percent in 2010, and the 27 percent of babies still breastfeeding at
12 months was up from 16 percent over that same decade.
(Abutaleb)
As these rates have increased, however, controversy has arisen in some
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quarters over whether women should breastfeed in public spaces. Many
women have reported facing negative responses, being told that it is
somehow inappropriate to breastfeed where others might see, and in other
cases, being asked to move into a private space. As we discussed in Chapter
3, almost every state in the U.S. protects women’s right to breastfeed in
public, though this has not stopped disapproving individuals from
expressing their opinions and attempting to shame women for doing so.
Groups of people who believe strongly in women’s right to breastfeed in
public have pushed back against these attempts to constrict that right by
engaging in “nurse-ins” and pressuring offending businesses to issue
apologies and create or clarify their policies regarding the accommodation
of nursing parents.
But as a public health and social justice issue, discussions of
breastfeeding that focus only on gender as a lens will not accurately
capture or target the needs of diverse groups of women. A “single-lens”
axis understanding of the data above, for example, might focus exclusively
on the average overall percentage of infants who were receiving nutrition
exclusively through breast milk, a practice endorsed by major medical and
public health organizations as best for mothers and infants; in such an
approach, the number under the “neonatal” category would show that
about 39 percent of mothers of newborns are exclusively breastfeeding.
However, an intersectional analysis that examines breastfeeding will
acknowledge that discussions of gender in relation to race, class, and age
will result in a more nuanced picture of infant feeding practices, potential
public health initiatives, and breastfeeding activism. As Sy Mukherjee
notes, “there is a shifting but stubborn disparity between rich, white
women’s breastfeeding rates and those of low-income and minority
mothers—disparities that are enshrined through policies in this area that
disproportionately hurt the poor.”
An intersectional analysis of breastfeeding asks and attempts to answer
the question of why this disparity exists. Mukherjee posits that one major
factor that accounts for the disparity can be traced back to where women
give birth and the health care they receive in those settings. More
specifically, many hospitals that serve large numbers of low-income
women have experienced budget cuts that have eliminated positions for
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lactation consultants, trained professionals who help new mothers establish
breastfeeding. Mukherjee notes that many of these hospitals are “over-
burdened and understaffed, making it easier for doctors and nurses to hand
out formula milk rather than engage in the time-consuming process of
preparing a first-time mom for the challenges of breastfeeding.” Kiran
Saluja also notes that women’s experiences in these health care settings
also contribute to this stubborn disparity:
[d]isempowerment is pervasive among poor women of color; even when they
know why and how they should breastfeed exclusively, they are often unable to
advocate for their rights in health care facilities with practices that
systematically override the mother’s verbalized desire to breastfeed. This
simultaneously erodes her ability to produce breast milk.
(Geraghty, Saluja, and Merchant 207)
Other factors include how much family and social support a new mother
has for nursing; how much financial support and time away from paid
labor she has access to; and cultural norms influencing infant feeding
decisions.
Knowledge about what causes and perpetuates the disparity should of
course be brought to bear on efforts to eradicate the disparity. Public health
interventions that attempt to increase the number of women who are able
to and choose to breastfeed that only consider gender would miss important
information about other identity factors that may influence women’s
choices and affect their ability to breastfeed when they desire to do so.
More fundamentally, an intersectional approach to public health initiatives
and activism around breastfeeding understands breastfeeding as a social
justice issue. In other words, increasing rates of breastfeeding for all
women entails not only tackling the sexism nursing parents face from
employers or from strangers in public, but also racism and income
inequality. This is not to say that “nurse-ins” are not a viable form of
activism, but rather to say that the struggles faced by low-income women
and women of color when it comes to breastfeeding differ from the
struggles of white, middle-class women. Chapter 5, Feminist Praxis, will
explore some of the organizations and initiatives that are tackling this issue
through an intersectional lens.
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A feminist stance explores how systems of privilege and oppression
intersect.
Table 4.2 Percent of Babies Exclusively Breastfed in Past 7 Days by Infant Age and
Selected Demographics
Why a Threshold Concept?
As previous chapters have asserted, in order to understand how individual
social locations are shaped, it’s important to see how systems of privilege
and oppression intersect. This notion of “intersectionality” is at the heart of
feminist analysis. As this chapter will explore, different groups benefit from
or are disadvantaged by institutional structures, and this chapter will
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review how overlapping categories of identity profoundly shape our
experiences within institutions. You should build on the learning you have
done to this point about social constructionism and privilege and
oppression in order to gain a greater understanding of those threshold
concepts by applying an intersectional lens to your thinking. Although
gender as a category of analysis is useful, it is incomplete without
understanding that other categories of identity (race, sexuality, class, age,
etc.) are equally as important in gaining accurate knowledge about people’s
lives and experiences. As Estelle Freedman asserts in No Turning Back: The
History of Feminism and the Future of Women, “[f]eminists must
continually criticize two kinds of false universals. We must always ask not
only, ‘What about women?’ (what difference does gender make?) but also
‘Which women?’ (what difference do race, class, or nationality make?)” (8).
Definitions, Key Terms, and Illustrations
We begin here by returning to and expanding on the point that
intersectionality is at the heart of feminist analysis, or what Patrick
Grzanka calls a “leading paradigm” and an “indispensible tool” (xiii). This
fact has a history that is important to recount here, at least briefly. Early
models of intersectional analyses of race and gender have been offered by
African American women writers dating back to the 19th century (see, e.g.,
Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s collection, Words of Fire ). Sojourner Truth’s
powerful and foundational 1851 speech to the Women’s Convention in
Ohio, for example, is suggestive of an intersectional approach:
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and
lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps
me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I
a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and
gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could
work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash
as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all
sold offto slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus
heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
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What Truth aimed to critique were assumptions about womanhood and
femininity, and what her speech gets at is the ways that, in the mid-19th
century as in contemporary society, womanhood has no single, monolithic
definition; race, class, sexuality, and other identities are profound
influences on an individual woman’s experience, and all of these rich
identities are equally valid forms of womanhood. Intersectionality must be
an important consideration when attempting to define, understand, and
advocate for the needs of “women.”
Intersectionality as a central, formal, and scholarly concern of the field
of Women’s and Gender Studies did not come about until the late 20th
century, and was a result of the powerful critiques leveled by U.S. women
of color against some elements of second-wave feminism. Many of these
critiques had their origins in the experiences of women who struggled to
reconcile their involvement in both antiracist and feminist activism. Latina
women, for example, decried the sexism they experienced from Latino
men, even as they themselves experienced racism when organizing with
white women against sexism. This double bind was succinctly captured by
the title of a classic anthology, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks
Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Many Black
and Chicana women, personally faced with both racism and sexism, carved
out a middle ground in which they maintained the importance of working
in solidarity with men of their racial group. As Elizabeth Martinez writes in
“La Chicana,”
We will not win our liberation struggle unless the women move together with
the men rather than against them. We must work to convince the men that our
struggle will become stronger if women are not limited to a few, special roles.
We also have the right to expect that our most enlightened men will join the
fight against sexism; it should not be our battle alone.
(115)
On a similar note, the Combahee River Collective writes, “[w]e struggle
together with black men against racism, while we also struggle with black
men about sexism” (118). What these sources did, along with other texts
like This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color,
edited by feminists of color Cherie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, as well as
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work by Patricia Hill Collins, including “Toward a New Vision: Race, Class
and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection,” was articulate what
ultimately became a pillar of social justice and scholarship that supports
such work.
In addition to sometimes facing overt discrimination, a variety of
women, including women of color, lesbians, and working-class women,
found that their experiences and perspectives were not always reflected in
the agendas of feminist organizations, nor reflected in early feminist
theorizing. For example, working-class women (both white women and
women of color) rightly critiqued the liberal feminist assumption that
working outside the home was a key to women’s liberation; these women
countered that women of their economic class had been working outside
the home for generations in ways that had not transformed their
experience of sexism, nor had it alleviated their economic struggles. In
short, these women revealed the implicit classed assumptions of some
liberal feminist agendas, and they challenged feminists to incorporate the
perspectives of poor and working-class women into their work. As bell
hooks writes in “Rethinking the Nature of Work,” some white middle-class
feminists in the early second wave
were so blinded by their own experiences that they ignored the fact that a vast
majority of women were . . . already working outside the home, working in jobs
that neither liberated them from dependence on men nor made them
economically self-sufficient.
(95)
Some conceptions of second-wave feminism, for example, consider Betty
Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique to be a touchstone text that relaunched
feminist critique of women’s social roles. Friedan’s illustration of the
frustrated ambitions of educated, middle-class women, however, while
driving some feminist movement, did not reflect or speak to women who
already worked in factories, as domestics, or in service positions, and who
felt neither liberated nor empowered by wage work.
Women of color, working-class women, and lesbians were critiquing
what Chela Sandoval has called hegemonic feminism: that is, a feminism
that was “white led, marginalize[d] the activism and world views of
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women of color, focuse[d] mainly on the United States, and treat[ed]
sexism as the ultimate oppression” (Thompson 56). Rather than abandoning
feminism, however, women of color, working-class women, and lesbians
asserted their right to claim and expand its focus. Barbara Smith, an
African American lesbian feminist from a working-class background,
coined an expanded, reconfigured definition of feminism that succinctly
articulates this critique of and challenge to hegemonic feminism:
[f]eminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of
color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women,
lesbians, old women—as well as white economically privileged heterosexual
women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-
aggrandizement.
(48)
In this way, intersectionality can be seen as part of the evolution of
feminist thinking and action; as the social and political activities
surrounding feminist movement matured and gained more ground, so, too,
did the focus of feminist theory, and a greater level of alignment between
feminist ideals and feminist practice developed.
One way to better understand intersectionality is by exploring what it is
not, that is, what it stands in contrast to. As a theoretical framework and an
analytical approach, intersectionality stands in contrast to a single-lens or
single-axis approach. Going back to our opening illustration about
breastfeeding, a single-lens approach doesn’t look beyond gender by
considering which women breastfeed and why or why not. Grzanka writes,
“[s]ingle-axis” is the term used in intersectional research to denote those
perspectives, methods, and modes of analysis that privilege one dimension of
inequality (e.g., race or gender or class) and which derive ideas, knowledge, and
policy from that single dimension such that all members of a racial, gender, or
class group are thought to have essentially the same experiences of race, gender,
or class.
(xv)
But acknowledging that a single lens is insufficient doesn’t just mean
adding in another separate lens, what Elizabeth Spelman calls an “additive”
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approach to understanding multiple social categories. In an additive
approach, sex and race and class are treated as separate categories, as
opposed to intersecting. The Combahee River Collective make this point
succinctly when they use the term “simultaneity” to capture the
interconnectedness of their identities and oppressions. They write, “[w]e
know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither
solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by
white men as a weapon of political repression” (118). As Richard Delgado
and Jean Stefancic concur in their primer, Critical Race Theory,
[t]hese categories . . . can be separate disadvantaging factors. What happens
when an individual occupies more than one of these categories, for example, is
both gay and Native American, or both female and Black? Individuals like these
operate at an intersection of recognized sites of oppression. Do such cases
require that each disadvantaging factors be considered separately, additively, or
in some other fashion?
(57)
By now we hope it is clear that an intersectional approach requires us to
consider them as overlapping, and that without that perspective, we can’t
fully understand how multiple identities overlap to shape women’s
experiences on the individual (micro) and institutional (macro) level.
Having given a sense of why and how intersectionality as a framework
and tool came about and what it stands in contrast to, it is also important
to say more about what it is and what it can do, or rather what can be seen
and understood when adopting it as a lens or category of analysis.
Intersectionality is a theoretical framework that posits that multiple
social categories (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation,
socioeconomic status) intersect at the micro level of individual experience
to reflect multiple interlocking systems of privilege and oppression at the
macro, social-structural level (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism,
compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormativity, ableism).
When introducing the concept of intersectionality to undergraduate
students, one place to start is with the micro level of individual identities
and experiences. Generally speaking, it is relatively easy to grasp the notion
that the experiences and perspectives of women differ in relation to various
180

additional aspects of identity. For many students, they need look no further
than to their fellow classmates to understand this. For example, trans
women know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they don’t experience the
privilege of cis women; lesbian students immediately grasp that their
experience of navigating their social world differs from that of their
straight peers; upon reflection, white students can acknowledge that the
experiences of students of color differ dramatically from theirs; and
students from impoverished and working-class backgrounds know from the
start that their lives have differed from their middle-class peers in
fundamental ways that shape their perspectives on a wide number of
issues. In other words, it is relatively easy for students to “get” that it is
inaccurate to assume that there is some monolithic set of experiences that
are shared by all women.
Learning Roadblocks
“We’re all different but equal” and “Intersectionality is just or only about
personal identity.” Starting a consideration of intersectionality with a focus
on micro-level identities can become a roadblock to learning, however,
when students don’t integrate the lessons learned about privilege and
oppression; namely, that identities outside the mythical norm have less
power than those inside it. In this scenario, students might be able to
recognize differences among them, but be thinking in terms of being
“different but equal,” i.e., acknowledging differences, but not
acknowledging that society ranks these differences hierarchically in ways
that privilege dominant groups and oppress marginalized groups. This
wrong but ostensibly well-meaning tactic can be seen, for example, when
white students embrace the belief that they “don’t see color” or are “color
blind.” To be clear, this is not what it means to take an intersectional
approach. Ignoring or not acknowledging racial identity can erase
important features of a person of color’s identity and simultaneously close
offopportunities for much-needed critical thinking and discussion about
racism and anti-racism efforts. Overall, the challenge is to name and
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recognize differences of identity, and think about those differences among
women in the context of systems of privilege and oppression (see Chapter
3). Otherwise, we lapse into relativism and lose sight of the significance or
implications of those differences in terms of power and privilege.
On a related note, Kimberlé Crenshaw points out that some people
mistakenly believe that intersectionality is only about micro-level personal
identity. As she writes in “Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait,”
“intersectionality is not just about identities but about the institutions that
use identity to exclude and privilege.” In a similar vein, Patrick Grzanka
points out, “[w]hile intersectionality helps us to explore social and personal
identities in complex and nuanced ways, intersectional analyses direct their
critical attention to categories, structures, and systems that produce and
support multiple dimensions of difference” (xv). A feminist stance offers us
macro-level and critical perspectives on how institutions and other social
structures create and maintain these differences—with varying impacts on
people affected by them, which is to say, all of us.
Focusing on the macro level allows us to see and consider how systems
of oppression intersect and are interlocking. One clear example is the
connection between class oppression and ableism. As Rebecca Vallas and
Shawn Fremstad succinctly put it, “[d]isability is a cause and consequence
of poverty.” In other words, disability can and does cause poverty, and
poverty can and does cause disability. As Vallas and Fremstad point out,
poverty as a consequence of disability can be seen in the fact that “the
poverty rate for working-age people with disabilities is nearly two and a
half times higher than that for people without disabilities.” Likewise, the
experience of living in poverty increases the likelihood of becoming
disabled, as “poverty can limit access to health care and preventive services,
and increases the likelihood that a person lives and works in an
environment that may adversely affect health.” In her work on the social
construction of disability, Susan Wendell broadens this point even further
when she points out that “[t]he social factors that can damage people’s
bodies [resulting in disability] almost always affect some groups in a
society more than others because of racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism,
and advantages of class background, wealth, and education.” Some forms of
oppression, then, are frequently linked.
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The intersecting and interlocking nature of oppressions can also be seen
through the issue of gendered violence. One of the pioneering texts on the
topic of intersectionality is legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw’s essay
“Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.” What she illustrates is how an intersectional
approach to the issue of gendered violence can support social justice by
acknowledging that “woman” is not an essential, stable category, and all
women who are in violent situations do not face the same challenges or
have the same resources. Recognizing, for example, that the role of social
class and access to economic resources is of profound importance for
women seeking to leave a violent situation, or that national
status/immigration status shapes the needs of immigrant women who
experience violence, Crenshaw’s analysis points to the ways that
institutions, as they intersect with individual women’s needs, must be
examined if we hope to have a full understanding of how to combat racism,
sexism, or other forms of social oppression.
Crenshaw observes that the provisions in the Immigration Act of 1990
allowed for exceptions to the standard “marriage fraud rules,” requiring
that immigrant women be married for two years before being considered
for permanent citizenship; this made immigrant women particularly
vulnerable to battering and abuse because they (a) fear deportation, (b) may
possess limited language or literacy skills that would prevent them from
accessing the resources and securing the documentation required to pursue
the exemption process, and (c) face cultural barriers that might discourage
women from proceeding with the process. In this case, intersecting
institutions—government and legal agencies, family structures, cultural
norms, employment status, legal status, marriage structures—all overlap to
shape individual women’s experiences; simultaneously, immigrant
women’s language status, age, class, and national identity make up “micro”
categories that are also important in understanding—and interrogating—
essentialist rhetorics around equality of choice and autonomy.
Thinking about the issue of combating gendered violence at the level of
praxis, without an intersectional approach, a shelter for victims of violence
might not consider the need to ensure that their facility was accessible via
public transportation so that it could be reached by a wide range of people,
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not just those who had the economic means to own and/or have access to a
car. Similarly, without an intersectional approach, the same shelter might
not consider the need to provide their written materials in multiple
languages, not just English. And finally, without an intersectional
approach, a shelter might not consider that some women seeking their
services might be in same-sex relationships, and that some people seeking
their services might not be women. More discussion of intersectional praxis
will be found in Chapter 5.
At the level of analysis, intersectionality is also an invaluable tool for
making sense of the world around us and for complicating our thinking
and understanding. For example, 1970s research about men’s gender role
expectations by David and Brannon (and popularized by Michael Kimmel)
identified four dictates of masculinity: (1) No Sissy Stuff (i.e., a prohibition
on expression of feminine characteristics); (2) Be a Big Wheel (i.e., strive for
status and success); (3) Be a Sturdy Oak (i.e., be confident, stoic, and self-
reliant); and (4) Give ’em Hell (i.e., take risks, be daring and aggressive). If
we take a new look at these four dictates of masculinity from an
intersectional perspective, we might ask the question of whether and how
some of these dictates also have a basis in, or association with, men of
different races or classes in ways that don’t fully account for men’s
experiences of male gender socialization. The status and success associated
with being a Big Wheel, for example, is clearly defined in terms of material
goods and affl uence, more typical of a middle-class and upper-middle-class
masculinity grounded in consumer capitalism. In other words, we would
not be content to think about masculinity exclusively in terms of gender
but would ask how race and class, for example, shape its expression. We
might also ask whether there are internal tensions or even contradictions in
the performance of masculinity that are related to race and class.
One arena in which to try out these ideas would be in the media
coverage of male heads of state. Arguably, male heads of state epitomize
the second dictate of masculinity, the Big Wheel, but the activities, clothes,
and mannerisms that go along with that aspect of masculinity run the risk
of overshadowing or perhaps undermining the fourth dictate (“Give ’em
Hell”), and also the first, “No Sissy Stuff.” Thinking about masculinity in
this way can help us understand why Vladimir Putin of Russia so
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frequently appears shirtless in rugged natural settings; why President
George W. Bush was photographed so frequently during his presidency
wearing Western-style clothing while engaged in manual labor on his
ranch and grabbing a beer with constituents in rural bars; or why former
President Obama felt compelled to respond publicly and repeatedly to
journalists and critics who dubbed the pants he wore to the 2009 Major
League Baseball All-Star game “mom jeans.” Writing in the Washington
Post about the “mom jeans” episode, Robin Givhan reflects on the
difficulties faced by all campaigning politicians:
[w]hen they’re angling for votes, they know any hint of rarefied tastes or an
aesthetic sensibility that is more Barneys New York than Macy’s raises
questions about whether they are fit for the job of representing all the regular
folks. When it comes to clothes, the president must appear to be as mass market
and main floor as possible.
Givhan’s remarks hint at the class tensions in the president’s appearance,
but the gender dynamic evident in the descriptor of his jeans is evident as
well. The ways that masculinity is classed and racialized will be discussed
again in the Language, Images, and Symbols anchoring topic.
Closely related to the issue of what intersectionality, as a tool or lens,
can do, then, are its goals, or what it aims to accomplish. Dill and
Zambrana identify four main goals of intersectional scholarship:
1) reformulate the world of ideas so that it incorporates the many contradictory
and overlapping ways that human life is experienced;
2) convey this knowledge by rethinking curricula and promoting institutional
change in higher education institutions; 3) apply the knowledge in an effort to
create a society in which all voices are heard; and 4) advocate for public policies
that are responsive to multiple voices.
(177)
Anchoring Topics through the Lens of
Intersectionality
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Work and Family
In this section, we build upon Chapter 3’s discussion of work and family by
looking at three topics through an intersectional lens: 1) work–life balance;
2) the horizontal segregation of the labor market; and 3) the gendered
division of household labor and child care.
Work–life balance refers to how working families attempt to balance the
demands of paid labor with the demands of personal responsibilities,
including children and eldercare. Different countries take different
approaches to developing policies that will support this kind of balance—
paid family leave to accommodate the birth or adoption of a child or care
of a sick family member, for example—as well as policies to support
breastfeeding, to accommodate family responsibilities, to care for sick
children, or to limit maximum work hours per week. One way to take an
intersectional approach to the issue of work–life balance is to explore how
the experiences of working women differ depending on their social class.
As discussed in Chapter 3, social class is profoundly important in
shaping women’s experiences of the labor market and the various kinds of
privileges and rights they are entitled to. Even within certain classes of
employment—for example, professional work—there are varying levels of
work–life balance and policies that guarantee those. Women working part
time, for hourly wages, or in low-income occupations face particular
challenges in securing paid leave and time offto accommodate family
responsibilities, the birth of a child, or to cover sickness or the illness of a
family member. The current FMLA eligibility policies, for example,
disproportionately limit the access of part-time and low-income women to
its provisions. As mentioned in Chapter 3, FMLA applies only to private
employers with at least 50 employees, which excludes employees who work
for small businesses. It also only applies to those employees who have been
working close to full time (1,250 hours/ year) and for at least 12 months.
For women whose caretaking responsibilities require them to work limited
or part-time hours, federal policies are inadequate, such that policies aimed
only at “working women” miss an important opportunity to carefully assess
the diverse needs of women and make appropriate accommodations and
interventions.
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Professional women in the labor force with what Sylvia Ann Hewlett has
called “extreme jobs” may face a double bind—although they may be
salaried employees with a relatively greater degree of job security,
corporate culture may dissuade such women (and men) from availing
themselves of the policies that do exist to accommodate work–life balance.
Marissa Mayer, CEO of online search engine Yahoo from 2012 until 2017,
provides a case study of this dilemma. Mayer caused public controversy
throughout her 2012 pregnancy and childbirth. Prior to giving birth, Mayer
told Fortune, “‘I like to stay in the rhythm of things,’ she said. ‘My
maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I’ll work throughout it.’” In
response, Kara Nortman, a fellow woman tech entrepreneur and Senior
Vice President of Consumer Businesses at CityGrid Media, wrote an
impassioned blog post asking Mayer to “take a real maternity leave of some
variety!” Nortman wrote:
Whether Marissa realizes it or not, the way she treats maternity leave will serve
as an example or an anti-example for all woman looking for a path, for those
women who do not want “to gap” their ambition, but also want to enjoy being a
parent.
Later, Mayer stated at a public event, “The thing that surprised me is that
the job is really fun . . . and the baby’s been easy. The baby’s been way
easier than everyone made it out to be. I’ve been really lucky that way”
(Grose).
Mayer’s decision to double available family leave for new mothers from
8 weeks to 16 weeks, but to prohibit telecommuting and working from
home, also engendered public discussion when Yahoo’s new policy was
announced. The human resources department released a statement arguing
“[s]peed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” and
“[w]e need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being
together” (Swisher). In Sylvia Hewlett’s Off-Ramps and On-Ramps, she
critiques the “male competitive model” that structures work expectations
around extreme hours, office “face time,” and relentless demands on the
time of employees, along with what she calls “cumulative, lockstep careers
and a continuous, linear employment history,” a model that can derail
women employees in their childbearing years without structural and
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institutional policies that allow for work– life balance, as the debate around
Mayer’s pregnancy and postpartum work schedule illustrates.
Benefitting from resources and institutional power, Marissa Mayer’s
array of choices in work–life/work–family balance stands in striking
contrast with those women who do not hold jobs in the professional class.
As Working Mother magazine reports, the majority of hourly employees
(those who have less secure employment and are more likely to work part
time) are women, with women making up 61 percent of the 75 million
hourly employees and a median wage of $11.49 per hour (Working
Mother). Simultaneously, the average cost of full-time child care for an
infant ranges in 2016 from $9,484 per year in Mississippi to $29,878 in
Massachusetts. Center-based child care fees for two children were greater
than the cost of household expenditures for rent in all 50 states and average
mortgage costs in 20 states (Childcare Aware).
The contrast between the experiences of the professional middle class
and working-class people can be seen even more sharply by looking at one
company’s two-tiered benefits package. In 2015 Netflix made headlines
when it announced that it would be providing twelve months of paid
parental leave to its employees. The move was heralded as progressive and
a good step toward helping the U.S. catch up with other countries. Praise
for the policy was quickly tempered, however, as people realized the catch:
the policy did not apply to all of their employees. The new policy pertained
only to white-collar, salaried employees on the streaming side of the
business, and not to the more blue-collar hourly workers in their DVD
distribution centers. In his commentary on the Netflix policy, Robert Reich
not only criticized the company for creating a two-tier policy that provided
more generous benefits to a select few, but also noted that the select few
were unlikely to take advantage of the policy, which echoes the discussion
above about Marissa Mayer and Yahoo. As Reich noted of the elite, salaried
workers at Netflix, “[f ]orget work–life balance. It’s work-as-life.”
Petitions demanding that Netflix extend its generous benefits to all of its
workers quickly circulated and gathered 100,000 signatures; in response,
Netflix defended its two-tier policy, pointing out that the twelve weeks of
paid leave offered to its hourly employees was more generous than most
companies, many of whom offer no paid family leave. In a 2015 article
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about the controversy over the policy, Emily Peck notes that “only 12
percent of workers in the U.S. are offered paid family leave by their
employers,” and that “[a]bout 25 percent of women in the nation return to
work just two weeks after giving birth.” Peck and many others argue that
two-tiered policies like Netflix’s are the result of leaving family leave up to
employers, as opposed to mandating paid family leave at the federal level.
This argument echoes the point made in Chapter 3 that federal-level
policies (or the lack thereof) have the effect of privileging some groups of
women while oppressing others, and further illustrates how macro-level
policy making reinforces privilege and oppression that is understood more
effectively through an intersectional analysis (in this case, of gender and
social class).
The second topic in this section returns us to the discussion, in Chapter
2, of the horizontal segregation of the labor market. To review, the
horizontal segregation of labor refers to the fact that many occupations and
professions are dominated by either men or by women. As discussed in that
chapter, women tend to dominate in fields where the work is seen as
feminine, while men tend to make up the majority in fields where the work
is seen as masculine (and in both cases, it is important to remember that the
traits and characteristics of masculinity and femininity are socially
constructed). Given that masculinity is valued more highly in our culture,
male-dominated occupations and professions tend to have higher status
and pay than female-dominated ones. The case study in Chapter 2 looked
at examples of how some professions have changed their gender
composition over time, and to what effect; in those instances, the focus was
on women entering previously male-dominated professions. If we take an
intersectional approach to this topic and look at race and class in relation to
gender, however, we can see a more nuanced picture of who does what
kinds of work and why.
Claire Cain Miller recently reported on a research study that shows that
in the last fifteen years, men have been as likely to move into previously
female-dominated occupations as women have been to move into male-
dominated occupations. Miller quickly follows up this assertion with a
qualification that points to how the researchers, sociologists Patricia A.
Roos and Lindsay M. Stevens, used an intersectional lens when conducting
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their research; as she puts it, men are now just as likely to move into
previously female-dominated occupations as the other way around, “but
not all men.” The question to ask, then, is which men are moving into
previously female-dominated jobs such as counter clerks and product
promoters? Miller’s answer
“[i]t’s those who are already disadvantaged in the labor market: black, Hispanic,
less educated, poor and immigrant men. While work done by women continues
to be valued less, the study demonstrates, job opportunities divide not just along
gender lines but also by race and class.
Referring back to Chapter 2’s focus on women moving into previously
male-dominated fields, we could ask a similar question: which women are
moving into the higher paying, higher status previously male-dominated
fields? According to the researchers, the women “are likely to be white,
educated, native-born, and married.” One of the takeaways of this research
is that if we only focus on gender when looking at the labor market, we fail
to fully understand how and why the gender composition of occupations
changes over time. As Raewyn Connell puts it, in order to understand
gender “we must constantly go beyond gender.”
The final topic in this section brings an intersectional focus to the
division of labor within families; more specifically, non-heterosexual
families. Discussions of the gendered division of labor in heterosexual
families are a staple of Women’s and Gender Studies courses. A significant
body of feminist scholarship focuses on who does what kind of work and
how much of it within the home, in terms of housework and childcare in
particular, as a way of charting whether and how men’s and women’s
expectations and societal roles have changed over time. While data show
that, within heterosexual families, men do markedly more household work
than they did in the past (an average of 12.5 hours a week in 2005,
compared to about six hours a week in 1976), overall, women still perform
more household labor than men (16.5 hours per week in 2005). Likewise,
according to Bianchi et al. (2012), married heterosexual men have increased
the amount of time spent in caring for children over the last several
decades (from 2.4 hours per week in 1975 to 7.2 hours per week in 2009/10),
but the gap between the time married heterosexual men and women spend
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in childcare is even more pronounced than the gap in housework, with
women spending 13.7 hours. In this body of research, the explicit focus is
on gender inequality, but what is often not named explicitly or taken for
granted is the sexual identity of the couples. What happens when the lens
is expanded to look at families other than heterosexual ones?
Until relatively recently, there was very little research done on families
with same-sex couples. As such, the 2015 survey “Modern Families: Same-
and Different-Sex Couples Negotiating at Home” is interesting for many
reasons, but especially because it includes both same-sex and different-sex
couples. Including same-sex couples in the survey along with different-sex
couples allows for comparisons to be made across the two groups,
comparisons that can shed light on the extent to which traditional gender
roles shape contemporary family life for heterosexual couples, and how
same-sex couples negotiate the division of labor in their homes in the
relative absence of those gender role expectations. One of the more striking
findings of the survey is that the same-sex couples surveyed reported
sharing childcare more equally than the different-sex couples. And even
when household work was not equally shared by same-sex couples, it
seemed to be for different reasons than in different-sex couples. More
specifically, according to the report, “[a]mong different-sex, dual-earner
couples, gender, income, and work hours are predictive of how
responsibilities are divided,” whereas in same-sex, dual-earner couples,
“relative income and work hours are not reliable predictors for how they do
divide responsibilities.” Research like this that goes beyond a single-axis
lens is more inclusive and sheds light on a previously under-researched
group (same-sex couples), but as significantly, in doing so, it also sheds
light on the dominant group.
But research on the division of labor within same-sex couples could go
even further in adopting an intersectional approach, as pointed out by
Abbie E. Goldberg in her 2013 article, “‘Doing’ and ‘Undoing’ Gender: The
Meaning and Division of Housework in Same-Sex Couples.” Goldberg
points out that most research on same-sex couples and housework has
focused on middle-class couples, and she posits that “[r]esearch on
working-class same-sex couples’ experiences of dividing labor may more
fully reveal how both structural and attitudinal factors associated with
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social class affect the negotiation and perception of housework.” While this
research has not yet been conducted, Goldberg imagines possible reasons
why working-class same-sex couples may have either an easier or more
diffi cult time equally sharing household chores than same-sex middle-class
couples.
All three of these examples illustrate how intersectional approaches to
issues of work and family help us see those issues more fully, deeply, and
complexly.
Figure 4.1 Division of Routine Childcare by Couple Type Source: Modern Families:
Same and Different Sex Couples Negotiating at Home, Families and Work Institute
Note: N = 52 couples with children where both members agree one or both of them
takes responsibility for routine child care; p < .01 Figure 4.2 Division of Sick Child Care by Couple Type Source: Modern Families: Same and Different Sex Couples Negotiating at Home, Families and Work Institute Note: N = 52 couples with children where both members agree one or both of them takes responsibility for routine child care; p < .05 192 Figure 4.3 Weekly Hours of Basic Housework by Gender Source: U of Michigan Institute for Social Research Panel Study of Income Dynamics Language, Images, and Symbols Chapter 3 presented the idea that systems of privilege and oppression play out through the arena of cultural images and representations. One of the ways that the power of a dominant group manifests is through its ability to produce and control images and representations not only of its own group but of marginalized groups, who by definition have less power. A substantial body of feminist scholarship has focused on the creation and perpetuation of feminine beauty ideals and masculine body ideals. This scholarship has focused on the fact that the cultural images and representations of feminine beauty ideals are often not created by women themselves. Feminist communication and media studies scholarship seeks to explain how the beauty and body ideal functions in the context of consumer capitalism for both men and women. A related focus of feminist scholarship has been the exploration of how people both internalize and resist these images and representations. An intersectional approach to masculine and feminine norms of appearance emphasizes that those norms differ by race and class. That is, gendered norms of appearance are racialized and classed. Theorist R.W. Connell, for example, writes about “multiple masculinities: black as well as white, working-class as well as middle-class” (256). The popular and controversial reality television show Duck Dynasty provides a good 193 example of how masculinity is classed, and more generally shows the socially constructed and performative aspects of masculinity. The hair and clothing of the men featured on the show have become iconic in American culture: consumer products everywhere feature the clan with long hair and beards, wearing camouflage clothing. Photos of the men surfaced in 2012, however, which revealed that prior to their show, they performed masculinity very differently, wearing polo shirts and khaki shorts, with short haircuts and clean cut faces. One photo features the men posed with golf clubs. The outrage some expressed after these photos surfaced came from a sense that the men on the show were attempting to appeal to their largely politically conservative, working-class, and male audience through being inauthentic, performing a working-class masculinity that drew from recreational activities (hunting, for example) and male-dominated institutions (military-inspired appearances) to create a hugely profitable popular culture product. At the very least, the two sets of images reveal that masculinity is not monolithic or one-size-fits-all, but rather co- constructed with other aspects of identity and that individuals or groups may and can choose to express those gender constructions differently. Complicating this point, however, is the notion that gender constructions can be wielded for commercial and/or political purposes. Furthermore, Connell and others have emphasized that some forms of masculinity are valued more highly than others; this point builds on Chapter 2’s discussion of gender ranking. Just as masculinity is valued more highly than femininity in our culture, so some forms of masculinity are valued more highly than others. For example, Connell asserts, “[g]ay men are subordinated to straight men by an array of quite material practices” (257). Paul Kivel makes a similar point when he asserts that while the act-like-a-man box (discussed in Chapter 2) “is a metaphor for the pressure all boys must respond to, the possibility that a boy will have control over the conditions of his life varies depending on his race, class, and culture” (149). Returning to the arena of images and symbols, working- class men and men of color are frequently pathologized in popular culture representations of them, and gay men are frequently represented in stereotypical and one-dimensional ways. For example, men of color occupy central roles in particular types of 194 popular culture—athletics, particularly football and basketball and to a lesser degree baseball—high status and well-compensated cultural venues that resonate with the “big wheel” and “no sissy stuff” dictates of masculinity. However, male athletes of color must simultaneously occupy a space in which this violent masculinity is particularly fraught because of the intersection of gender and race. For example, the 2014 controversy over remarks made by Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman illustrates this dilemma. Following a game-winning play, Sherman conducted a post- game interview with white female sports reporter Erin Andrews, in which he offered comments filled with a range of emotion. Sherman’s intense interview resulted in widespread Internet and media characterization of him as a “thug,” a term Sherman astutely deconstructed in later interviews, observing “[t]he only reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s the accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays. Because they know” (Petchesky). Although Sherman’s remarks to Andrews used the typical athletic rhetoric of dominance (against an opposing team player), Sherman’s “outburst” drew a heated public response in which an analysis of television discourse the following day revealed the term “thug” to have appeared three times as frequently as the day before (Wagner). Although Sherman’s outburst was hardly more extreme than those that white players offer with regularity, the cultural response supports Greg Howard’s claim that [t]oo many of us think that one ecstatic, triumphant black man showing honest, human emotion just seconds after making a play that very well could be written into the first appositive of his obituary, is not only offensive, but is also representative of the tens of millions of blacks in this country. And in two weeks time, in the year 2014, too many of us will be rooting for the Denver Broncos for no other reason than to knock Richard Sherman down a few notches, if only to put him back in his place. (Howard) Many of those criticizing Sherman’s behavior and calling him a thug seemed to do so because they perceived his words and actions to be an affront to Erin Andrews’s white womanhood (in one highly publicized tweet, her reaction was described as “petrified”). In other words, an 195 intersectional analysis of Sherman’s racialized masculinity must be understood in relation to Andrews’s racialized femininity. An intersectional approach to representations of the feminine beauty ideal focuses on the fact that beauty, at least in mainstream, mass-market culture, continues to be defined primarily as white, able-bodied, young, and heterosexual. This means that older women, women of color, women with disabilities, and queer women are featured less often in advertisements, on television, in movies, and on magazine covers. In 1978, Tuchman and colleagues coined the term symbolic annihilation to describe the relative absence of marginalized groups in the mass media. This absence has the effect of sending the message that these marginalized groups are unimportant and beneath notice. With regard to beauty ideals, the message is that women who are not white, able-bodied, young, and heterosexual are not attractive or desirable. For example, in their 2006 study of bridal magazines, Frisby and Engstrom asked the question, “How often and in what roles are African American women represented as brides and bridesmaids in advertisements in national bridal magazines over the past five years?” (11–12). They looked at over 6,000 ads in 57 issues of three different bridal magazines and found that less than 2 percent of the ads featured an African American woman as a bride, and no issues featured an African American bride on its cover, although African Americans make up 13.1 percent of the U.S. population (U.S. Census). Feminist scholars engaged in this kind of inquiry pose and investigate these questions in order to make visible such gaps in mass media, popular culture, or other forms of symbolic representation. Furthermore, when women whose identities place them de facto outside the feminine beauty ideal are represented in the media, those representations tend to be stereotypical and to reinforce the dominant culture’s ideas about these marginalized groups. Women of color and poor women in particular tend to be represented in ways that reinforce their otherness. For example, Patricia Hill Collins has written about the “controlling images” of African American women; in Black Feminist Thought she writes, “[p]ortraying African-American women as stereotypical mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients, and hot mommas helps justify U.S. Black women’s oppression. Challenging these controlling 196 images has long been a core theme in Black feminist thought” (69). Vivyan Adair, a white, female professor of Women’s Studies raised by a single mother on welfare, uses similar language. In “Branded with Infamy: Inscriptions of Poverty and Class in the United States,” she writes, “[t]he bodies of poor women and children, scarred and mutilated by state- mandated material deprivation and public exhibition, work as spectacles, as patrolling images socializing and controlling bodies within the body politic” (461). Adair’s claims are clearly shown in some of the most popular contemporary forms of television entertainment. For example, reality television is a genre where working-class women and women of color frequently appear, but often in negative and stereotypical ways (think Here Comes Honey Boo Boo ). One show, VH1’s Charm School (itself an offshoot of Flavor of Love and Rock of Love, which are similar to The Bachelor ), not only shows that the feminine beauty ideal is racialized and classed, but also reveals that there is a hierarchy of femininity, with the femininity of working-class women of all races being characterized as deficient or pathologized. The premise of the show is that the feminine behavior and appearance of the women featured on the show is problematic and dysfunctional; the show offers to teach these women the proper, correct type of femininity, which is to say, a dominant culture (read: white and middle-class) femininity. An intersectional approach to representations of the feminine beauty ideal not only focuses on whether and how diverse groups of women appear in the mass media; it also focuses on how diverse groups of women respond to and are affected by the mainstream culture’s narrow construction of beauty. Lisa Duke, for example, notes “the interest media scholars and critics have shown in identifying the ways in which the mass media might be implicated in producing negative psychic effects in women and girls” (367). In her article “Black in a Blonde World: Race and Girls’ Interpretations of the Feminine Ideal in Teen Magazines,” she set out to explore how “race influence[s] girls’ readings of teen magazines and the magazines’ portrayals of the feminine ideal” (368). Media critics interested in an audience’s response to a text and whether and how they are affected by it have noted that responses range from accommodation to rejection and all points in between— what Stuart Hall 197 referred to as dominant hegemonic, negotiated, and oppositional readings. In Duke’s findings, based on interviews with middle-class white and African American teen girls, the African American girls invested less authority in the teen magazines’ prescriptions about beauty and body image than the white girls did. When asked, the African American teens defined beauty more often in terms of personality than physical appearance, and valued a different body aesthetic (curvier and heavier) than the white girls did. This is not to say, however, that African American girls and women, as well as other women of color, do not experience self- doubt or lowered self-esteem as a result of their symbolic annihilation in the media, but rather that their relative absence from beauty magazines in particular is a double-edged sword, providing the message that they are outside the dominant beauty ideal, but also allowing some space for the creation of an alternate ideal. That is to say, there are competing beauty ideals that are community specific, that is, within a lesbian community, various racial-ethnic communities, and so forth. Some scholars have argued that the increasing visibility of women of color in the entertainment industry (popular music, television, movies, modeling and fashion, etc.) has contributed to a diversification and expansion of previously very narrow beauty ideals. Celebrities like Beyonce Knowles, Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, Nikki Minaj, and others have highlighted their voluptuous figures and given rise to the term “bubble butt,” referring to curvaceous rear ends, a contrast to the previous era’s emphasis on slim physiques. Though it could be argued that this expansion of beauty standards to include physical attributes previously associated with women of color represents progress in the media, scholars like Naomi Wolf have pointed out that it is exactly the constant changing of beauty standards themselves that oppresses women—what she calls the “ beauty myth ” is the notion that beauty is objective and unchanging, when historical examination of beauty standards reveals continued changes in cultural standards about what constitutes beauty as well as variation from culture to culture about what physical beauty looks like. In this way, women are preoccupied with an ever-changing standard such that, as Wolf asserts, “[t]he beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.” 198 Many women engage simultaneously in acts of accommodation and resistance, choosing to emulate the mainstream beauty ideal in some ways while rejecting other aspects of it. The work of scholars such as Connell, Hill Collins, Adair, and Duke, among many others, illustrates that questions about the symbolic dimensions of gender are intersected with race and class and not homogeneously connected to critiques of sexism or misogyny in ways that are generalizable to all men and women. Bodies One of the core issues that centered the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s was health care, particularly around women’s access to bodily autonomy and choice within the medical industry. A notable contribution to feminist activism was the formation of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, a group of twelve women in Boston whose activist concerns centered around women’s access to accurate, women-centered knowledge about their bodies. These early advocacy efforts called attention to the ways that male-dominated medical practices were the products of patriarchal values; an even closer examination using an intersectional lens can pull apart how privilege and oppression as experienced in healthcare must be understood on multiple axes. Within the medical industry, the four values of patriarchal culture identified by Allan Johnson (a society that is male-dominated, male- identified, male-centered, and obsessed with control) are evident and reveal women’s oppression within the infrastructure, policy, and practices that reframe childbirth from a natural part of a woman’s reproductive life cycle to a medical event of a pathological nature often requiring pharmaceutical and sometimes even surgical intervention. As the report “Evidence-Based Maternity Care” illustrates, many interventions to physiological childbirth are overused, while those that can offer equal benefit are underused, with women’s ability to achieve physiological childbirth often undermined or questioned through medical practices. As the report explains, many practices that are disproved or appropriate for mothers and babies only in limited circumstances are in wide use. Conversely, numerous beneficial 199 practices are underused because they offer limited scope for economic gain, are less compatible with predominant medical values and practices, or have only recently been favorably evaluated. (Sakala and Corry 9) In a culture that privileges control, efficiency, and convenience over tolerance for the timing uncertainties of natural processes such as labor and delivery, the overuse of convenience methods such as induction of labor, episiotomies, and vacuum- and forceps-assisted deliveries predominate at levels well beyond the logical benefits to women and babies (see Table 4.3). Table 4.3 Rate of Birth Interventions and Practices Intervention or Practice 2000- 2002 2005 2011- 2012 Care provider used drugs or some other technique to try to cause labor to begin 44% 41% 41% Had epidural or spinal analgesia for pain relief 63% 76% 67% Midwife attended baby’s birth 10% 8% 10% Had narcotics intravenously for pain relief 30% 22% 16% Used no pain medication 20% 14% 17% Doula provided supportive care during birth 5% 3% 6% Obstetrician/gynecologist attended birth 80% 79% 70% Family physician attended birth 4% 7% 6% Had a spontaneous vaginal birth 64% 61% 59% Had forceps or vacuum extraction 11% 7% 11% Had cesarean section 24% 32% 31% Used immersion in tub or pool for comfort na 6% 8% Used shower for comfort na 4% 10% Drank anything during labor 35% 43% 41% Ate anything during labor 14% 15% 20% Gave birth lying on back na 57% 68% Episiotomy 35% 25% 17% Women who indicated a desire to exclusively breastfeed 200 who received formula or water to supplement breast milk 47% 38% 29% Source: Data provided by the Listening to Mothers Surveys1 conducted by Childbirth Connection A good example of this kind of intervention beyond levels of sound medical practice is the increase in deliveries by cesarean section. The rate of cesarean section—or surgical intervention in childbirth, both emergency and planned—has skyrocketed in the last several decades. As Sakala and Corry document, the C-section rate in the United States rose from 9.5 percent as recently as 1990 to 22.3 percent in 2005, and in 2010, the rate had risen to 32.8 percent, nearly a third of all births (Centers for Disease Control). The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in 2010 that, in 2008, some 6.2 million C-sections were performed unnecessarily (and another 3.18 million should have been performed but weren’t, primarily in developing countries with little access to advanced medical technology and facilities). In 1985, WHO declared, “[t]here is no justification for any region to have C-section rates higher than 10–15%” (Gibbons 4). In terms of privilege and oppression, these data reveal how the patriarchal medical profession imposes assumptions and values that serve to control women’s choices, to normalize the medicalization of childbirth, and to present differential (and often medically inferior) care to a specific group served by this institution (women). A closer look at the data, however, reveals that not all women have C- sections at the same rate. In their analysis of all recorded births from the year 2006 in the U.S., for example, Louise Roth and Megan Henley found that non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic/Latina, and Native American women had higher rates of delivery via C-section than non-Hispanic white and Asian women. Through an intersectional lens of privilege and oppression, the data show that women with race and class privilege use that privilege to, in the researchers’ words, “avoid medically unnecessary cesarean deliveries rather than to request them” (207). On the flip side, Roth notes “pervasive racial-ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in maternity care (and) health care more generally, yet there has been little scrutiny of how overuse of cesarean deliveries might be linked to these disparities.” 201 Figure 4.4 Infant Mortality Rates by Race Source: www.npr.org/2011/07/08/137652226/-the-race-gap Similar disparities can be seen in the rates of pre term births and infant mortality rates. While 11.4 percent of all infants were born preterm in 2013, that rate rose to 16.3 percent for non-Hispanic black infants; meanwhile, 25 percent of all preterm births (because of the greater number rather than percentage) are to Hispanic women. Preterm birth is concerning because of its role as a leading cause of infant mortality (March of Dimes), and as the March of Dimes reports, “[b]lack women are about 60 percent more likely than white women to deliver babies early, and black infants are about 230 percent more likely than white infants to die before their first birthdays.” While researchers know that some risk factors are greater for black mothers including inadequate prenatal care, substance abuse, or health factors like obesity or diabetes, research also shows that [t]he gap does not narrow with age and educational attainment. In other words, white women’s health outcomes improve as they climb the socioeconomic ladder and give birth in their 20s and early 30s, rather than in their teen years. Not so for black women, whose health problems seem to compound with age. (Norris) Public health scholars have identified a phenomenon called “weathering” that is at work—the stressors of racism and social disadvantage are difficult to compensate for even with greater levels of educational attainment and socioeconomic resources. The topic of women’s reproductive control, particularly the female- 202 https://www.npr.org/2011/07/08/137652226/-the-race-gap controlled hormonal, oral contraceptive, illustrates how an intersectional lens can deepen our understanding of women’s sexuality and the multiple identities that inflect it. As the PBS documentary, The Pill, explains, one of the early goals of the women’s movement, after suffrage, was female- controlled birth control (“Timeline”). However, limiting conversations around women’s access to birth control overlooks a number of the intragroup differences that shape women’s needs: for example, lesbians may have different reproductive needs than heterosexual women; historically, many African American women’s concerns had different emphases than white women; women with class privilege had a much larger array of options in terms of birth control and abortion than working- class and working-poor women; and marital status and age were, and continue to be, important in reflecting and determining a woman’s reproductive needs and her level of reproductive control. A look at the historical conditions out of which the female-controlled oral contraceptive emerged provides insight into the way institutions intersect and individual women’s identities frame their experiences. Birth control activist Margaret Sanger opened a birth control clinic in the United States in 1916. With the financial backing of wealthy philanthropist Katharine Dexter McCormick, Sanger spearheaded the efforts on contraceptive research, ultimately collaborating with McCormick and scientist Gregory Pincus to explore hormonal birth control methods. An intersectional lens shows that social class played an important role in allowing Sanger and McCormick to advocate for access to female- controlled birth control, as did their respective educational achievements. McCormick had access to higher education; she earned a degree in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology—only the second woman to do so. Sanger pursued nursing training as a young woman. In the development of the pill, two particular features deserve attention in order to illustrate how intersectional approaches can complicate and unpack discussions around reproductive control. Sanger and McCormick led the development of the new technology, but the scientific work was done by Gregory Pincus, and the human trials—required for any such drug —were led by Dr. John Rock. However, given that distributing contraceptives or information about contraceptives was illegal in most 203 places in the United States, Rock sought out another region and population that could participate in the human clinical trials: Puerto Rico. Region and race play roles here in understanding the significance of the pill’s development, as the Puerto Rican women who participated in the study were typically illiterate or semiliterate and were part of a developing industrial culture that was producing more opportunities for women’s employment outside the home. Charges of racial discrimination—or put differently, racial and class exploitation— have been retrospectively alleged regarding this work because of the lack of what we now know as infor med consent. Participants in modern-day studies such as these would have been required to receive a more substantial education about the potential side effects of the drug and would not have been participants for the length of time that they were. Because of the heavy dosages used in the early versions of the pill, close to 17 percent of study participants had significant side effects, and 25 withdrew because of the seriousness of those effects. One participant died of congestive heart failure. In this instance, participants’ identities as working-class puertoriqueñas intersected with their gender in the lack of access to social power, information, and protection afforded them during the study process. Objections from African American Communities Emerging from past coercive sterilization practices imposed on African American women, controversy about black women’s use of the pill complicated the discussion of reproductive control and the development of the oral contraceptive. A story in the Nation in 1974 documented multiple cases of coerced sterilization, such as two adolescent sisters who were sterilized after their mother, who was illiterate, was presented with misleading information about the nature of the procedure. Another case reported on the coerced sterilization of Nial Cox, 26, who was told her family would not be eligible for welfare benefits if she did not undergo the procedure. Against this backdrop and in the simultaneous cultural context of the Black Power movement, an outgrowth of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, African American men and women were justifiably suspicious 204 of what they viewed as efforts on the part of whites to limit black fertility. Whereas for many white women the pill heralded a new level of self- determination and autonomy around controlling the timing and spacing of pregnancies, African Americans were concerned that oral contraception was “just another tool in the white man’s efforts to curtail the Black population” (Roberts). Simultaneous public debates about the eugenics movement and research agendas focused on documenting the inferiority of immigrants and people of color provided reason for African Americans to believe that racial genocide was part of the explanation for the widespread availability of oral contraceptives. Within the black community, opinions were split, with many African American women welcoming access to a tool for reproductive control; however, other African American feminist activists, such as Toni Cade in her 1969 essay “The Pill: Genocide or Liberation?,” drew attention to the lack of resources for women raising children: abysmal family leave policies; gendered divisions of labor around childrearing; abortion fatalities; and employment discrimination as framing the conversation for African American women around the use of the pill. What this history and ongoing practice reveals is not just the vexed relationship between African American women and birth control, but the critical importance of recognizing multiple identity factors and intragroup differences that will enrich and provide a finer-grained understanding of complex issues like those studied by feminist scholars—in this case, reproductive justice. Case Study: 2016 Presidential Election The 2016 U.S. presidential election was characterized by a contentious campaign, an outcome not predicted by most news pundits, and a resultant scramble by media commentators and scholars to make sense of what was for many an unexpected result. The two major political party candidates were positioned as polar opposites: the Republican candidate Donald Trump, a real estate mogul, reality TV star, and self-professed “political outsider” with no prior experience in government work and the Democratic 205 candidate Hillary Clinton, with an extensive record of government service, a legal background, and leadership at the national and international level. With polls showing Clinton in the lead up to the day of the election, her supporters eagerly anticipated her victory, using the hashtag #Imwith-her and creating a Facebook group, “Pantsuit Nation,” which garnered over 1 million members who shared stories of advocating individually and publicly for inclusive values and empowerment of marginalized groups. Similar zeal was attributed to supporters of Donald Trump, whose campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” positioned him as a “change” candidate who would break from the social, political, and policy work of the sitting president, Barack Obama. Further, some media headlines and punditry framed Trump supporters in terms of their race, class, and gender demographics, with the New York Times characterizing Trump’s election as “a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism” (Flegenheimer and Barbaro). The Guardian wrote “the working-class white people who make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base show up in amazing numbers for the candidate, filling stadiums and airport hangars, but their views, by and large, do not appear in our prestige newspapers” (Frank) while The Atlantic asserted “[t]he billionaire developer is building a blue-collar foundation” (Brownstein). These demographic analyses, especially those focused on gender lines, ultimately failed to have predictive or explanatory power when the votes were tallied on November 8, 2016. Analysis of the election results focused on a single axis (such as gender, class, or race) proves inadequate to a full explanation of the factors that shaped the results of the election. As Amanda Martinez observes in Women’s Studies in Communication, “[w]e can assume little about women as a voting constituency, but we can enrich our understanding of women by centering intersectionalities that meaningfully and critically interrogate important differences” (Martinez 147). Single-axis lenses may lend themselves to easy generalizations about the election, but do not create an accurate account of who voted how and why, and who didn’t vote at all. Early accounts of the election focused heavily on analyzing the election 206 results in ways suggesting that women as a collective group supported the first female presidential candidate for a major political party, while rhetoric surrounding hostility to globalism, economic decline, and multiculturalism drove men to support Trump. On first glance, this might seem true: Table 4.4 All 2016 Presidential Election Exit Polls, CNN Gender Clinton Trump Other/No Answer Male: 47% 41% 52% 7% Female: 53% 54% 41% 5% Data from www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls A more fine-grained analysis, however, reveals the ways that race, educational attainment, social class, and gender intersect to shape voting0 patterns. Table 4.5 Presidential Election Exit Polls, by Race and Gender What becomes apparent here is the fact that a majority of white women voters supported Trump, challenging the narrative of widespread support by women for Clinton as a candidate; women of color had far greater levels of support for Clinton. A further analysis bears out the role of education, race, and gender as they intersect, with some data confirming the prevailing narrative and others challenging it; for example, the numbers do become more striking when education is factored in, with non-college-educated men supporting Trump at a rate of 71 percent—here, too, the gap widens for women, with a clear majority of white women without a college degree supporting Trump at 61 percent. 207 http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls In addition, voter income—assumed to be a factor in terms of voter support for the two candidates’ economic, domestic policy, and foreign policy platforms—proves to be negligible in terms of dictating whether a clear majority of voters support one candidate or the other. High-income voters supported each candidate at literally the same rate—47 percent, while lower-income and middle-class voters differed by just 4 percent in their support for the two candidates. Last, it is as important to pay equal attention to those who chose not to vote or were excluded from voting as to those who did cast votes. In the 2016 election, a single-axis analysis of non-voters that attributes voter dissatisfaction with candidates or overall apathy to their decision not to vote is inadequate, as it fails to account for dramatic differences when looking at the relationship between race and voting status. Comparing data between the 2012 and 2016 elections also yields more nuanced results. In the 2012 election, 13 percent of people who reported not voting cited dissatisfaction with candidates as their primary reason (Lopez and Flores). When this data is further broken out by race, however, we see a big gap, with white non-voters at 15 percent and black non-voters at 3 percent in the 2012 election. This shows that black non-voters were Table 4.6 2016 Presidential Election Exit Polls, Whites and Educational Attainment White women college graduates White women non college White men college grad White men non college grad Clinton 51% 34% 39% 23% Trump 44% 61% 53% 71% Data from www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls Table 4.7 2016 Presidential Election Nonvoter Dissatisfaction with Candidates or Campaign Issues Widespread across Demographic Groups Among registered voters who did not vote, % who said not liking the candidates or campaign issues was main reason they did not vote 2012 2016 Diff 208 http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls All 13 25 +12 Men 14 25 +11 Women 12 24 +13 White 15 26 +11 Black 3 19 +16 Hispanic 9 25 +16 Asian 8 21 +14 Millennial 11 24 +13 Generation X 12 27 +15 Boomer 17 27 +10 Silent/Greatest 11 19 +9 U.S. born 13 25 +12 Foreign born 8 22 +14 Less than high school grad 12 23 +12 High school graduate 13 24 +11 Some college 14 26 +13 College+ 11 25 +14 Northeast 12 24 +12 Midwest 16 28 +12 South 12 24 +12 West 11 24 +14 Note: Whites, blacks and Asians include only non-Hispanics. Hispanics are of any race. “Some college” includes those with two-year degrees. Source: Pew Research Center analysis of the Current Population Survey, November Supplements for 2012 and 2016 www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2017/06/01/dislike-of-candidates-or-campaign-issues-was-most- common-reason-for-not-voting-in-2016/ft_17-06- 01_nonvoters_demographics/ far less likely than white non-voters to stay home from the polls because of the perceived quality of the candidates. By contrast, the 3 percent of registered black voters who did not vote in 209 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/dislike-of-candidates-or-campaign-issues-was-most- 2012 because of dissatisfaction with the candidates rose to 19 percent in 2016. However, this percentage did not reach the overall non-voting because of candidate dissatisfaction total of 26 percent. What this suggests is that white registered voter dissatisfaction seems to have had a stronger role in their decision not to participate in the election than it did for non- voting registered voters of color. Other analyses have looked at overall changes in voter turnout, broken down by race, with the finding that whites overall turned out in larger numbers in the 2016 election, as did Latinos, but black turnout fell by 4.7 percent compared to the 2012 election (Fraga et al.). In short, it is important to be wary of election analyses that offer reductive pronouncements based on single-axis perspectives. This is especially true for the 2016 presidential election. As Allison Hurst writes, “who really put Trump into the White House? The short answer is, many of us did.” End of Chapter Elements Evaluating Prior Knowledge 1. What previous uses have you heard of the term “intersections” or “intersect”? What other commonplace uses are there of these terms? What connotations or associations do you have with the term? Do these associations help you think more about this discipline-specific use of the term? In other words, how do those “commonsense” understandings of intersections help to amplify, elaborate, or illuminate your understanding of the material in this chapter? 2. Consider previous learning you’ve done in an educational context which may or may not explicitly have focused on gender, women, or power and privilege; for example, courses on history, in literature, politics and government, or psychology may address relevant topics. Can you identify any course materials, readings, 210 lectures, or topics that used an intersectional approach? If not, explain how your learning about that topic would have been enriched by using an intersectional lens. Application Exercises 1. Watch the following clip from MTV’s Braless, in which Franchesca Ramsey and Laci Green discuss intersectional feminism: www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-nmxnmt_XU. A few minutes into the clip, they name three feminist issues (equal pay, birth control and abortion access, and street harassment) and then succinctly explain how an intersectional approach to the issue differs from a non-intersectional approach. Choose another issue from the list below and describe what a non-intersectional or single-axis approach to the issue looks like, as opposed to an intersectional approach. a. “Staying at home” versus working outside the home for pay b. Gender violence c. Breastfeeding d. Beauty and body standards e. Mass incarceration f. Eating disorders g. Homelessness 2. Consider an area of your own interest or expertise (this could be a hobby, an academic major, or an important co-curricular activity you engage in), and identify an important issue, question, or controversy within that area of interest. How might an intersectional approach that accounts for multiple overlapping identities help you approach that issue? Share your findings with a classmate. 3. Choose a favorite film genre and screen at least three films in that genre. Take note of the number of women characters, the type of 211 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-nmxnmt_XU women characters, and relevant identity factors—marital status, educational attainment, race, class, sexual orientation. What conclusions can you draw about “women in X genre” of film based on your analysis? How does an intersectional approach help you with that analysis? Skills Assessments 1. In 2014, two different women (one American and one Australian) made headlines when photos circulated online of them breastfeeding their babies while wearing cap and gown at their college graduations. Though the two images shared many similarities, the online response to them differed in significant ways. After reading about the two photos (www.buzzfeed.com/simoncrerar/breastfeeding-student-goes- viral?utm_term=.ftJLwaAkw#.yc2qLk5YL and www.today.com/parents/breast-feeding-moms-college- graduation-photo-stirs-controversy-2D79780389) write a short essay in which you employ an intersectional lens to consider why the two photos received different responses. 2. Locate the following two articles through a Google search and develop an analysis in which you identity a) how successful the research study was at using an intersectional approach and b) how you would revise the study protocol or findings to be more intersectional. Yong, Ed, “XY Bias: How Male Biology Students See Their Female Peers,” The Atlantic, February 16, 2016. Rivera, Lauren and Andras Tilcsik, “Research: How Subtle Class Cues Can Backfire on Your Resume,” Harvard Business Review, December 21 2016. 3. Read Lisa Wade’s brief discussion of the results of a 2015 survey of women working in STEM fields (https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/07/02/nearly-half-of- 212 http://www.buzzfeed.com/simoncrerar/breastfeeding-student-goes-viral?utm_term=.ftJLwaAkw#.yc2qLk5YL http://www.today.com/parents/breast-feeding-moms-college-graduation-photo-stirs-controversy-2D79780389 https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/07/02/nearly-half-of-black-and-latina-stem-workers-mistaken-for-janitors-and-assistants/ black-and-latina-stem-workers-mistaken-for-janitors-and- assistants/) and analyze the findings. What have you have learned in this chapter (and in previous chapters) that would help you make sense of these findings? Be sure to refer to specific concepts and terms in your response. Discussion Questions 1. In her classic essay “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions,” Audre Lorde points to a local effort to censor LGBTQ content in works in school libraries. As an African American, she asserts, I know that I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts on which I must battle these forms of discrimination. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you. Having read Chapter 4, how do you interpret Lorde’s assertions? Reflect on how Lorde’s comments elaborate on one or two of the chapter concepts. 2. Revisit the chapter case study on the 2016 presidential election, this time looking at the candidates rather than voter demographics through an intersectional lens. You might look not just at the major party candidates—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—but other contenders in the primary such as Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio, Bill Richardson, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, or Jeb Bush. In what ways do you see race, social class, gender, or sexuality factoring into the campaign strategies, platforms embraced by candidates, or media representation? 3. In Chapter 4’s opening illustration on breastfeeding through an intersectional lens, we often use gendered language when discussing breastfeeding, referring to mothers and of course 213 breasts. But there is a growing recognition that not all parents who give birth identify as women, and some of those people may not have breasts. A recent article in The Atlantic, “What It’s Like to Chestfeed,” discusses this issue. Find the article here: www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/chestfeeding/497015/. After reading it, please consider the following questions: how and where could the experience of these transmasculine parents be incorporated into the textbook discussion? And what are the implications of moving away from using gendered language when discussing infant feeding practices? Writing Prompts 1. In 2012, then-15-year-old tennis player Taylor Townsend (an African American female) won the Australian Open junior title and was the top-ranked junior player in the world. Later that same year, however, the U.S. Tennis Association strongly discouraged her from competing in the U.S. Open Junior Tennis Tournament, citing their concerns about her lack of physical conditioning. Thinking about the discussions in this chapter, consider the following questions: what does her experience reveal about the racial, gender, and class politics of the sport of women’s tennis? In what ways can you “read” Townsend’s experience through an intersectional lens that considers identity as well as institutional structures? 2. In June 2013, the World Health Organization released a report on the prevalence of physical and sexual violence against women globally. Review the key findings of the report “Global and Regional Estimates of Violence Against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-partner Sexual Violence” 2 (www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/violence/9789241564625/en/ and conduct an intersectional analysis. What identity factors gesture toward or account for women’s experiences? What policy 214 http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/chestfeeding/497015/ http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/violence/9789241564625/en/ interventions seem most promising? 3. A number of studies have documented the fact that race plays a big role in online dating, with some groups receiving more attention, in the form of messages, swipes, etc., than others. Do some Internet research on the subject to familiarize yourself with some of these studies (several are included in the suggested readings below), and then write an essay in which you summarize and analyze what (if anything) these studies say about how race intersects with gender and sexual identity to affect online dating. A few questions to consider: are queer online dating apps marked by racial hierarchies? If so, are the patterns the same as for heterosexual dating apps? If they differ, how? 4. Social media provides unprecedented opportunities for users to make identities important to them visible. For example, what has been referred to as Black Twitter is a cluster of trending hashtags that emerge in particular by black Twitter users, a population which is nearly double (proportionally) the African American population (13% of the U.S. population vs. an estimated 25% of Twitter users). Similarly, #rainbowrollcall offers a strategy for queer Twitter users to categorize their tweets, while #Icantbreathe and #blacklivesmatter are two hashtags intended to show solidarity with victims of state violence against African Americans. Explore some of the trends in hashtags that tweeters opt to use to “mark” their social media contributions in specific ways and write an essay about your findings. 215 Figure 4.5 Tennis Player Taylor Townsend Source: AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic Notes 1 http://transform.childbirthconnection.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/LTMIII_Pregnancy-and-Birth 2 www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/violence_against_women_20130620/en/ Work Cited Abutaleb, Yasmeen. “Nudged by Hospitals, More U.S. Moms Are Breastfeeding: CDC.” Reuters. 31 July 2013. www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-health-breastfeeding- idUSBRE96U18E20130731. Accessed 6 July 2017. Adair, Vivyan. “Branded with Infamy: Inscriptions of Poverty and Class in the United States.” Signs, vol. 27, no. 2, 2002, pp. 451–471. Bianchi, Suzanne M., Liana C. Sayer, Melissa A. Milkie, and John P. Robinson. “Housework: Who Did, Does, or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?” Social Forces, vol. 91, no. 1, 2012, pp. 55–63. Brownstein, Ronald. “The Billionaire Candidate and His Blue-Collar 216 http://transform.childbirthconnection.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/LTMIII_Pregnancy-and-Birth http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/violence_against_women_20130620/en/ http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-health-breastfeeding-idUSBRE96U18E20130731 Following.” The Atlantic. 11 September 2015. www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-billionaire- candidate-and-his-blue-collar-following/432783/. Accessed 5 July 2017. Cade, Toni. “The Pill: Genocide or Liberation?” In The Black Woman: An Anthology . Ed. Toni Cade. Signet, 1970. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Births: Method of Delivery.” 13 January 2013. www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/delivery.htm. Accessed 7 July 2017. Childcare Aware. Parents and the High Cost of Childcare . 2016 Report. 21 June 2017. http://usa.childcareaware.org/advocacy-public- policy/resources/research/costofcare/. Accessed 7 July 2017. CNN Politics. “Exit Polls.” 23 November 2016. www.cnn.com/election/results/exitpolls. Accessed 5 July 2017. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment . Psychology Press, 2000. —. “Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection.” In Oppression, Privilege, and Resistance: Theoretical Perspectives on Racism, Sexism, and Heterosexism . Eds. Lisa Heldke and Peg O’Connor. McGraw Hill, 2004, pp. 529–543. Combahee River Collective. “A Black Feminist Statement.” In Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. Eds. Carole R. 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5
Feminist Praxis
Figure 5.1 Amanda Nguyen Source:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBvICshXsAAi30K
Opening Illustration
Amanda Nguyen is a sexual assault survivor. She is also the founder of a
national nonprofit called Rise, which, according to its website, is “spear-
heading the effort to enshrine the rights of survivors of sexual assault in
law.” As a survivor of sexual assault, Nguyen quickly realized that “the
system meant to protect and deliver justice is broken” (Arter). After
experiencing sexual assault in 2013 while a college student in
Massachusetts, Nguyen went to the hospital, where medical staffcompleted
a rape kit, collecting evidence that could potentially be used to prosecute
the perpetrator. At the time, however, Massachusetts law stipulated that
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBvICshXsAAi30K

her rape kit could be destroyed after six months unless she filed an
extension (which she would have to do again every subsequent six
months), in spite of the fact that the statute of limitations for pressing
charges is fifteen years. Nguyen astutely understood that the “six-month
rule makes me live my life by date of rape” (Bess), and upon investigation,
she found that other states didn’t have that requirement. She came to the
realization that “[j]ustice shouldn’t be dependent on geography. It’s
completely unconscionable that a survivor in one state would have a
completely different set of rights than a survivor in another state.” More
broadly, as Neesha Arter puts it, Nguyen came to believe that “current legal
protections were insuffi cient and in complete disarray.” From that first-
hand experience of victimization (and subsequent revictimization by the
state), Nguyen began an intense process of research and self-education
about the issue. From there came the idea for Rise and for a bill of rights for
survivors of sexual assault.
With the help of Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and many
other legislators (the bill had 51 co-sponsors, both Democrat and
Republican), the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act was introduced in
Congress in February of 2016, passed in September of 2016, and signed into
law by President Barack Obama the next month. The bill was carefully
crafted to receive bipartisan support, and indeed passed unanimously, an
extremely rare occurrence; as Nguyen writes in an open letter on the Rise
website, “[b]efore Rise came along, only 20 bills, or 0.016% in modern
United States history, had passed through Congress with unanimous
support. Ours became the 21st.” The bill affirms survivors’ right to not be
charged a fee to have forensic evidence collected after a rape; their right to
not have their rape kit destroyed for 20 years or until the statute of
limitations runs out, whichever comes first; and the right to be informed of
the results of their rape kit, as well as a copy of any filed police reports
relating to the assault (Cauterucci).
While passage of the bill represents a huge victory, it is ultimately only
the first step in a larger struggle. As of 2017, Nguyen and members of Rise
are engaged in the process of introducing similar legislation in all 50 states
of the U.S., because most sexual assault and rape cases are prosecuted at the
state level, rather than at the federal level. Nguyen asserts,
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[t]his movement is grounded in the belief that the voices of ordinary citizens
matter—no matter the background, no matter the age. That’s why it is named
Rise—to remind us that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can rise
up and change the world.
Amanda Nguyen’s experience of navigating the criminal justice system
in the wake of her experience of rape provides a powerful reminder of the
persistence of rape culture, but the actions she has taken and the support
she has received from many people and institutions shows that many are
invested in upsetting and dismantling it. These actions illustrate the
threshold concept in Chapter 5, feminist praxis. In this chapter, we explore
the strategies that feminist activists and educators use to effect change that
supports gender justice.
A Feminist Stance
Stresses the importance of locating oneself within structures of
privilege and oppression;
analyzes how systems of privilege and oppression operate in a
number of contexts (for example, in one’s personal life and
relationships, in experiences of one’s body, in societal institutions,
etc.);
prioritizes generating visions for social change and identifying
strategies for bringing about that change.
Why a Threshold Concept?
The field of Women’s and Gender Studies in the United States arose out of
and as a result of second-wave feminism. In fact, many early practitioners
in the field referred to it as the scholarly or academic arm of the women’s
movement, suggesting not just that it arose from the movement, but that it
was literally a part of that social movement for change. Although it is now
227

granted that the academic field and feminist social movements operate
independently, the concept of praxis is still considered central to the field.
As the earlier chapters of this book have made clear, the threshold concepts
of the social construction of gender, privilege and oppression, and
intersectionality provide ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing that help
us describe and diagnose social problems that are rooted in inequality. In
this chapter, we will build on the knowledge and skills gained from the
previous chapters and learn about how feminists apply their knowledge
and skills in the service of tackling those problems. We will also consider
whether and how we might join them.
Framing Definitions and Related Concepts
In Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students
Are Changing Themselves and the World, Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl
Radeloff define feminist praxis as the “integration of learning with social
justice” (44). As they go on to explain, for students of Women’s and Gender
Studies, “[p]raxis is about applying one’s knowledge to challenge
oppressive systems and unequal traditions” (44). The same pertains to
scholars in the field, as Sharlene Hesse-Biber notes in her introduction to
Feminist Research Practice:
[o]ne of the main goals of feminist research projects is to support social justice
and social transformation; these projects seek to study and to redress the many
inequities and social injustices that continue to undermine and even destroy the
lives of women and their families.
(3)
Many instructors in the field even think about their teaching as a form of
praxis in which they seek to raise students’ awareness and consciousness of
their location in systems of privilege and oppression.
Activism and praxis are related concepts but not synonymous. Praxis,
the intersection of theory and practice, involves a visible and deliberate set
of actions informed by theory, by research, and by evidence. As Charlotte
228

Bunch explains in “Not By Degrees: Feminist Theory and Education,”
theory is useful because it helps guide, and therefore strengthen, activism;
without it, she argues, we run the risk of falling into the “‘any action/no
action’ bind. When caught in this bind, one may go ahead with action—any
action—for its own sake, or be paralyzed, taking no action for lack of a
sense of what is ‘right.’” Bunch envisions a two-way street between theory
and activism, in which theory guides activism, and then the knowledge
gained from engaging in activism is used to revise and refine one’s theory.
As she puts it, “[t]heory thus both grows out of and guides activism in a
continuous, spiraling process.” As we saw in the Opening Illustration, the
legislation that Amanda Nguyen helped write and shepherd through
Congress was shaped by theory-informed research and evidence.
Many practitioners of Women’s and Gender Studies have sought to help
students cultivate knowledge and skills that support their ability to link
their classroom learning with their experiences outside of the classroom.
This focus can be seen in many of the hallmarks of Women’s and Gender
Studies courses; these key features of WGS courses serve as the foundation
on which the threshold concept of feminist praxis is built.
Critical thinking: although critical thinking is often identified as an
important goal of a postsecondary education generally, Women’s
and Gender Studies places an especially high premium on critical
approaches to everyday assumptions or “commonsense”
understandings of the world. For example, Berger and Radeloff note
that one of the most important concepts students in such programs
grasp is the social construction of gender, which often involves
stripping away “naturalized” ideas about men, women, gender, and
sexuality, and reexamining assumptions about how gender operates
both as a system and on an interpersonal level. Another example is
that of privilege, oppression, and inequality. As one student wrote,
I learned that some issues I saw as personal shortcomings were
actually the result of structural inequality directed at women. It also
helped me to interpret the situations of other women in my family
in this light. This was liberating, to say the least.
229

(Berger and Radeloff 151)
Students in Women’s and Gender Studies develop the ability to
strip away and “re-see” the world, calling into question previous
assumptions, a foundation of critical thinking.
Empowerment and leadership: two interconnected features of a
Women’s and Gender Studies education that support feminist
praxis are students’ development of empowerment and leadership.
Linking empowerment with self-confidence, Berger and Radeloff
note that being empowered means being able to stand up for
oneself, to challenge prevailing assumptions, and to act on one’s
convictions. Shrewsbury defines the women’s studies classroom as
built on a foundation of empowerment, or what she describes as a
“concept of power as energy, capacity, and potential rather than as
domination” (10). By developing self-confidence and becoming
empowered to have a vision and act on that vision, students
educated in Women’s and Gender Studies can exercise leadership,
but a particular kind of leadership that involves collaboration,
responsibility, and respect. Berger and Radeloff identify the
development of negotiation skills, responsibility, presentation
abilities, and collaborative learning as outgrowths of a feminist
education.
Community and community engagement: Carolyn Shrewsbury
identified a sense of community in her 1993 essay “What Is Feminist
Pedagogy?” as key to the feminist classroom, but it’s also an
important dimension of feminist praxis—developing a sense of
communal identity, shared purpose, and collective values and then
translating that into action in the service of those shared goals are
central to the notion of community engagement. Many instructors
in Women’s and Gender Studies seek to help students develop a
sense of community identity and “build connections and
relationships inside and outside of [the] workplace, family, and
neighborhoods” (Berger and Radeloff 161).
Connecting knowledge and experiences and applying knowledge for
social transformation: Amy Levin, in her 2007 report to the National
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Women’s Studies Association summarizing assessment practices in
national programs, identified the application of academic
knowledge to the world outside the classroom as an important
learning goal in WGS courses. Many Women’s and Gender Studies
classrooms incorporate an “action research” or consciousness-
raising project in which students are asked to do original research,
engage in an advocacy or activism project, or in some other way
connect the academic learning they do with the world outside the
classroom. As Levin notes, successful students in Women’s and
Gender Studies courses are able to take what they learned—whether
it’s how to use an intersectional lens to approach a complex
problem, how to apply standpoint theory, or a shifting
understanding of gender as socially constructed—and integrate that
knowledge with their own lived experiences and that of others. A
current example of this kind of focus is the Know Your IX project,
which is a campaign designed to both educate college students
about their rights under Title IX, and empower them to advocate
for change on their campuses based on what they learn about their
school’s compliance with Title IX (or lack thereof).
But moving from the broad and general to the concrete and specific, we
can ask the question, how to get started with this kind of thinking and
action? In Chapter 1 of Fight Like a Girl: How to Be a Fearless Feminist,
Megan Seely lays out twelve action steps in a kind of how-to guide for
those new to activism. The first three are: 1) Define the issue that you want
to raise awareness on; 2) Work with other activists, and dialogue the issue
to clarify the feminist analysis of the problem and the solution; and 3)
Decide what action to take (20). As a result of learning about the first three
threshold concepts, you have been introduced to a large number of issues,
and have likely read a variety of feminist perspectives on those issues.
What this chapter shines a light on are the actions and strategies that can
be used to tackle the issue(s). In what follows, we outline some of the
different approaches to activism that make up feminist praxis.
Feminist action: an event or phenomenon that raises awareness and/ or
creates change on issues of patriarchy, gender systems, the inter-
sectionality of identities and oppressions, and/or the overall structural
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inequalities experienced by women. Some examples include participating in
an organized event, like a march, rally, candlelight vigil, protest, or sit-in;
raising awareness about a feminist issue through traditional and/ or social
media; organizing a speak-out about a pressing feminist issue; hosting an
ongoing book club or discussion circle to discuss books by feminist authors;
calling for a boycott; hosting a benefit to raise money for a local feminist
nonprofit agency; and creating a petition and gathering signatures.
Membership and participation in formal and organized activist
organizations: an array of organizations, agencies, commissions, and
foundations exist that illustrate the principle of feminist praxis and whose
advocacy emerged from a small group of dedicated activists. Organizations
are varied and emerge from a wide range of local contexts and catalysts;
however, organizations galvanize around a particular issue or focus. This
can be the product of a small or large group of like-minded individuals, or
the brainchild of one particularly ambitious leader. For example, the
National Organization for Women (NOW) emerged from the Third
National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in 1966,
where a group of similarly interested professionals, activists, and other
participants discussed priorities for social justice for women. Out of that
conference and the leadership of writer and activist Betty Friedan, the
formal, nonprofit organization NOW was formed. Similarly, the group 9to5
originated from a small group of office workers whose gatherings to discuss
sexism in the workplace led to the establishment of a formal, nonprofit
group with a national policy agenda around workplace equity. Planned
Parenthood, currently a network of public health clinics as well as an
advocacy organization, has been around for nearly 100 years and was the
product of both action and activism on the part of Margaret Sanger. More
recently, INCITE!, an organization focused on combating violence against
women of color, came about after a group organized a conference in 2000.
The conference organizers were frustrated with feminist organizations that
marginalized women of color, and so sought to fill that gap of analysis and
activism. Since then, their work has expanded to include gender
nonconforming and trans people of color. Their structure has multiple
parts: their website lists city-based grassroots chapters of INCITE!, working
groups, and affiliate groups, as well as a national collective. They also
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continue to host conferences around the country that bring together
scholars, students, and activists who are engaged in analyzing, organizing,
and mobilizing around issues of gendered violence against people of color.
Many of these organizations predate the rise of Internet activism, although
they almost all now have strong online presences. For those looking to get
involved in their local communities, a good place to start would be to
research where you’ll find the nearest chapter of NOW, 9to5, INCITE!, or
Planned Parenthood.
Activism with limited capital: although large-scale, organized, and
formal organizations can effect change in ways that exert influence over
institutions and policies, smaller-scale and locally based activism can also
bring about change in local communities. A good example of this is Shelby
Knox, whose local activism on the topic of comprehensive sex education
versus abstinence-only education became the subject of a PBS
documentary, The Education of Shelby Knox. As a 15-year-old high school
sophomore in a Texas high school, Knox identified as a supporter of
abstinence-only education and a politically conservative Southern Baptist.
Over the course of the documentary period, Knox struggles to reconcile her
school’s abstinence-only education with the high rates of teenage
pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease among her peers. Ultimately,
Knox’s participation in a teen group consulting with local government and
an unsuccessful year-long campaign to convince the local school board to
discontinue its abstinence-only sex education policy leads to her self-
redefinition as a liberal Democrat. She could not accept the basic principles
upon which her school’s health education curriculum was founded, and
eventually continued her education in college and beyond as a political
science major and now as the Director of Women’s Rights Organizing for
Change.org, as well as an organizer, public speaker, and commentator.
Other types of activities blend these types of activism, operating with
limited capital to create a formal or informal organization. At Colby
College, for example, starting in 2012, student Jonathan Kalin created
“Party with Consent,” a movement that includes events and products that
emerged counter to a series of fraternity-initiated apparel items labeled
“Party with Sluts.” Kalin responded by organizing social gatherings
centered on critical, reflective practice:
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“I don’t know how different those parties feel to students than a party that is
not labeled Party With Consent, but I think that putting this language out there
in the community invites people to reflect and consider, ‘Am I doing the things I
want to be doing? Is this consistent with the experience I want to have?’ I think
a big part of the movement is just posing that question,” said Director of
Campus Life Jed Wartman.
(Ohm)
Feminism as text: in “From a Mindset to a Movement: Feminism Since
1990,” Astrid Henry observes that “the feminism that emerged in the mid-
1990s developed primarily through the publication of individually authored
texts. Texts named the generation, texts energized it, and reading texts
became a way of participating in the contemporary movement” (173).
While written texts have always been an important part of feminism, they
are uniquely central to feminists of the past 20 years, both because third-
wave feminism focused less on the formation of face-to-face activist
groups, and also because the rise of third-wave feminism roughly coincided
with the explosion of Internet technologies. Today, feminist ideas continue
to flourish both in books and online on blogs and various social media sites,
including Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This has been a boon
for feminism; as Henry points out, “a fourteen-year-old girl today is much
more likely to discover feminism online than at her local library or
bookstore. That means she is much more likely to discover feminism in the
first place” (176). The immediacy of the Internet has allowed feminists,
especially young feminists, to respond to, analyze, and theorize about the
world around them as events unfold in real-time, and to reach and engage
one another in the discussion of feminist ideas instantaneously. From there,
it is easy to see how the Internet has increasingly become the space in
which feminist action is organized and undertaken, as will be discussed in
the next section.
Online activism: feminist activism has increasingly moved online and
has demonstrated that it can produce tangible results. Julie Zeilinger boldly
claims that “[t]he Internet is one of the greatest things ever to happen to
the modern feminist movement” (140), citing its capacity for community
building, organizing, and consciousness raising in particular. In terms of
activism, online petitions are one prominent tactic of digital feminism. For
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example, a number of petitions at Change.org have resulted in “victories”
for women’s rights, such as a petition to Sprint to change its fees for
victims of domestic violence,1 and another Change.org petition launched to
request that the South African government tackle the national problem of
“corrective rape,”2 or the rape of lesbians in order to convert them to
heterosexuality. As a result of the petition, the South African Parliament
agreed to convene a National Task Team to end the practice of “corrective”
rape.
Online feminism is not without its critics, however. Slacktivism is a
derisive term that has been coined to reflect what some have critiqued as
“easy” actions that can be taken through, for example, social media, and
that sometimes become a substitute for what many perceive as more
demanding forms of activism such as letter-writing campaigns, lobbying
legislators, protests and rallies, or other types of advocacy. With the ease of
signing online petitions, posting Facebook status updates, sharing links and
blogs, or tweeting one’s views, slacktivist approaches have garnered
skepticism about their effectiveness in terms of bringing about social
change. Zeilinger humorously admits that it makes sense when older
generations of feminists “watch us tapping away on our computers,” they
may think, “‘Um, no, I think you’re confused. That’s not activism, that’s
actually the ancient art of sitting on your ass’” (140).
Those involved with online feminist organizing see petitions as a starting
point, however, rather than an end in themselves. In “Girls Tweeting (Not
Twerking) Their Way to Power,” Courtney Martin refers to what is called
the ladder of engagement, whereby “someone signs a petition, before long
they’re creating their own, then running a full-fledged campaign.” Martin
makes clear that online feminist organizing should and does distinguish
between short-term and long-term “wins.” Online activism is still in its
early years, and those who are invested in it are currently doing the hard
work of figuring out what both its potentials and its limitations are.
Another form of online feminist activism involves the creation and
circulation of hashtags on Twitter. For example, #solidarityisfor-
whitewomen was created by Mikki Kendall as a way to critique the
tendency of some white feminists to exclude or marginalize the issues of
women of color. Writing on the blog Racialicious, blogger Lindsey Yoo
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http://Change.org

argues that the hashtag “led to robust and much-needed discussions that
unmasked the tendency of all progressive circles to work in silos instead of
calling for true solidarity across multiple race and gender identities.” In this
instance, the hashtag was used primarily to facilitate an internal
conversation among feminists to air grievances and call for change.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, the #yesallwomen hashtag sprang up in the
immediate aftermath of the Isla Vista, California shootings in late May
2014, in which a young man set out on a killing spree motivated by his
hatred of women, as demonstrated in videos he posted online and in a 140-
page “manifesto.” Within three days, 1.5 million tweets using the hashtag
had been made. The #yesallwomen hashtag served the purpose of raising
consciousness and awareness about the ubiquity of sexism in our culture,
and gendered violence in particular, as people wrote posts expressing their
experiences of living in a patriarchal culture. According to Sasha Weiss,
“[t]here is something about the fact that Twitter is primarily designed for
speech—for short, strong, declarative utterance—that makes it an especially
powerful vehicle for activism, a place of liberation.” In this way, Twitter is
a forum with instant, global reach that is suited, to reference the title of a
famous essay by Audre Lorde, to the transformation of silence into
language and action. In her essay, Lorde writes, “. . . [a]nd where the words
of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our
responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and
examine them in their pertinence to our lives” (43). Discussion in the
aftermath of the Isla Vista shootings focused on how the misogynist views
of the shooter, as well as the views expressed in the anti-feminist men’s
rights online forums he frequented, are a part of the fabric of our culture. In
addition, the #yesallwomen hashtag references and is intended as a retort
to a sentiment expressed by those attempting to derail or dismiss feminist
critiques of sexism, #notallmen.
Popular hashtags in recent years include Janet Mock’s #girlslikeus
(focused on trans women); the African American Policy Forum’s #say-
hername (created to raise awareness of police brutality against African
American women and girls); #whyistayed and #whyileft, which inspired
speak-outs about the misconceptions surrounding intimate partner
violence; Laura Bates’s #everydaysexism, which is connected to the
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Everyday Sexism project (everydaysexism.com); and
#effyourbeautystandards, created by plus-sized model Tess Holliday, and
#metoo, which exploded in late 2017 around issues of sexual harassment
and assault.
Everyday activism: while the quote from Megan Seely at the beginning
of this section suggests that feminist praxis is by definition undertaken by
and with a group, this is not necessarily the case. There is increasing
recognition that another component of feminist praxis is individual,
everyday actions that reject or challenge oppressive practices. Jessica
Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism
Matters dedicates a chapter to identifying “acts of everyday feminism,”
ways that individual life choices can challenge oppressive practices.
Regarding sex, Valenti argues that women should educate themselves,
refuse to participate in “slut-bashing,” take control of their sexuality, and
think critically about exhibitionist behaviors. She encourages young
women to critically scrutinize popular culture and mass media, and to
reject misogynist male-targeted publications like Maxim and Playboy.
Regarding dating and marriage, Valenti advocates that (heterosexual)
women pay their own way rather than expecting men to do so, and also
strongly advocates that women not take their husband’s name when they
get married. Valenti also identifies reproductive rights as an area for
everyday activism, exhorting women to take birth control, volunteer at a
local clinic, find out local pharmacies’ policies on providing women with
birth control and emergency contraception, and call out public attitudes
that are anti-choice. She also encourages women to talk to the men in their
lives about feminism, and to reject dieting and beauty standards. In her
book A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word, Julie Zeilinger
argues that the individualization of feminism is a hallmark of the third
wave, and points to an emphasis on the rejection of sexist social norms and
self-acceptance in the face of societal pressure to conform to those norms,
as in the body positivity movement.
Everyday feminist acts can also be undertaken by men, as the XO Jane
article “35 Practical Steps Men Can Take To Support Feminism” makes
clear. The post identifies and explicates specific everyday actions that
cisgender and straight men can take to support feminist movement,
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including admonitions to do
50% (or more) of emotional support work in your intimate relationships and
friendships, consume cultural products produced by women, and educate
yourself about sexual consent and make sure there is clear, unambiguous
communication of consent in all your sexual relationships.
(Clark)
But in addition to living one’s politics through individual choices in your
personal life about what to do and wear (or not), what to buy (or not), and
who to date and/or be intimate with (or not), everyday activism can extend
into other places and roles, including the workplace. A growing body of
research, for example, has focused on documenting the existence and
negative effects of implicit or unconscious bias in many arenas. Implicit
biases are biases that we have that are below the conscious level, and are
based on internalized stereotypes about marginalized groups that help
reinforce and perpetuate systems of oppression. An important kind of
individual, everyday activism that everyone can engage in is to bring those
implicit biases to a conscious level and work against them. Given the large
body of research that backs up the existence and negative effects of implicit
bias, this is a powerful example of feminist praxis.
One way to become aware of implicit biases is by taking the Implicit
Association Test. Jessica Bennett, author of Feminist Fight Club: An Office
Survival Manual (For a Sexist Workplace), offers concrete strategies (aimed
at both women and men) for working against implicit gender bias in the
workplace; one tip has to do with instituting a “no interruption” rule to
help ensure that women’s voices are heard in meetings. Implicit racial bias
in the workplace (most notably, in the criminal justice system) has also
been amply documented, and can be worked against; in her article,
“Implicit Bias Means We’re All Probably at Least a Little Bit Racist,” Jenee
Desmond-Harris lists six approaches to combating implicit bias: counter-
stereotypic training; exposure to individuals who defy stereotypes;
intergroup contact; education efforts aimed at raising awareness of implicit
bias; taking the perspective of others; and mindfulness-meditation
techniques. Tackling our own implicit biases is a micro-level activist
strategy, but it can have lasting, wide-reaching effects as we consider how
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countering those biases will impact how we act and how we treat members
of marginalized groups in our friend circles, in encounters with strangers in
public, and in our roles as workers and parents.
Bystander intervention: another related type of everyday activism is
bystander intervention. Bystander intervention is a technique for
preventing rape and sexual assault by teaching people (bystanders) to
intervene when they spot a situation (on the street, at a party, in their
residence hall, etc.) that seems headed in that direction. According to
E. J. Graff, bystander intervention programs teach “young men and
women that they can look out for others in trouble, and show them
how to intervene without confrontation or danger.” These programs
are offered by organized activist organizations such as Green Dot,
Men Can Stop Rape, Coaching Boys into Men, and Mentors in
Violence Prevention, but the technique itself, once taught, can be
modeled and practiced by individuals as they go about their everyday
lives. Bystander intervention programs are a good example of praxis;
social science researchers have begun to study whether they are
effective, as measured by, for example, a drop in reported cases of
sexual assault and rape on a campus that has instituted a program. As
the results of these studies emerge, they will be used to modify
existing bystander intervention programs.
Misconception Alert
“I’m not a member of group x, so I can’t be a part of their movement. ”
Some people mistakenly think that they have to be a member of a
marginalized group in order to be an advocate or activist for that cause. By
this mistaken logic, men can’t be feminists, and straight people can’t be a
part of the LGBTQ movement. Nothing could be further from the truth,
however. The operative term here is “ally,” which Andrea Ayvazian defines
as “a member of a dominant group in our society who works to dismantle
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any form of oppression from which she or he receives the benefit” (724).
Allies have many important roles to play in creating social change, but one
of the most important, perhaps, is their role in working with other
members of their dominant group. PFLAG’s “Guide to Being a Straight
Ally,” for example, invites straight allies to “[b]e part of the solution even if
you’re not part of the GLBT community” by challenging heterosexist and
homophobic comments, jokes, and stereotypes:
[w]hether it is around the water cooler, at a restaurant, or with your kids on the
way to soccer practice, speaking up changes minds. And the more you do it,
you’ll find that the less your help is actually needed as people on the whole
begin to change.
Resistance to Feminist Praxis
It is important to remember that feminist praxis, and Women’s and Gender
Studies education, are not embraced by all. As discussed in Chapter 1, there
are those who believe that the aims of feminist movement have been
achieved over the course of the last 150 years, and therefore that there is no
longer a need for further feminist activism. The perpetuation of this idea
that feminism is no longer needed is a form of resistance to challenging
sexism and is one aspect of a phenomenon known as backlash. In the
context of feminism, the term was popularized by journalist Susan Faludi’s
book of the same name, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American
Women. Published in 1991, Faludi’s book documented media and public
discourse that she identified as a form of cultural backlash against the
advances of the second wave of the women’s movement in the 1960s and
1970s, which had been a tidal wave of social and cultural change in key
areas such as workplace equality and pay equity, reproductive rights, and
changing social norms around gender expectations for women. Calling into
question the conclusions of media pundits and writers who claimed that
feminism was to blame for women’s purported ennui and dissatisfaction
with their “liberation,” Faludi indicts such claims as part of a larger cultural
resistance to true liberation and equality for women.
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Backlash against feminism and other progressive social movements
continues in the 21st century, but its forms have shifted over time. In
addition to overt rejection and demonization of feminism, we are now
seeing what Susan J. Douglas terms “enlightened sexism,” which she
describes as “more nuanced and much more insidious” (11). Enlightened
sexism
takes the gains of the women’s movement as a given, and then uses them as
permission to resurrect retrograde images of girls and women as sex objects,
bimbos, and hootchie mamas still defined by their appearance and their
biological destiny.
(10)
The nuance or subtlety that Douglas refers to comes from the fact that
these retrograde images are often presented ironically, with a level of self-
awareness that they’re sexist, which positions the viewer or consumer of
the images as in on the joke. In a post on her blog, Feminist Frequency,
entitled “Retro Sexism and Uber Ironic Advertising,” Anita Sarkeesian uses
the term “retro sexism” to analyze advertisements that use this type of
irony, and she argues that advertisers do this in order to simultaneously
present sexist images while distancing themselves from them.
According to Douglas, media stories about women opting out of the
workforce are another aspect of enlightened sexism. A 2003 New York
Times story, the “Opt-Out Revolution,” suggested that feminism had failed
in its aims to liberate women through access to education and economic
self-sufficiency and that, instead, professional and educated women were
returning in droves to the home, “opting out” of the hectic demands of the
workplace for the halcyon sanctuary of domesticity. A range of cultural
and media responses have questioned these assumptions from multiple
angles. For example, an August 2013 New York Times story claimed “The
Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In,” asserting that those women who had
“opted” for domestic responsibilities over paid labor were realizing that
“opting out” of careers and opting in to unpaid work subsidized by a
working partner’s labor was unsustainable. Article author Judith Warner
uses the case study of Sheila O’Donnel to illustrate the consequences of
“opting out”:
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[e]ven with the reduced schedule, the stresses of life in a two-career household
put an overwhelming strain on her marriage. There were ugly fights with her
husband about laundry and over who would step in when the nanny was out
sick. “All this would be easier if you didn’t work,” O’Donnel recalled her
husband saying. “I was so stressed,” she told me. “I said, This is ridiculous. We’d
made plenty of money. We’d saved plenty of money.”
Subsequently, in describing the case of O’Donnel, as well as the seismic
economic changes since the initial “opt-out” story was published in 2003,
Warner claims that individual women have reconsidered their decisions in
light of the personal sacrifices and uncertainty and dependence that such a
“choice” engenders.
A number of feminist theorists and critics have argued that the current
cultural obsession with girls’ and women’s physical appearance in terms of
the shape, size, and sexiness of their bodies is a form of backlash against
feminism. Gender norms for girls and women have inarguably changed in
significant ways over the past 50 years as a result of feminism, but even as
women have greater freedoms in many areas of life, there is a
corresponding greater scrutiny of their bodies. Sandra Bartky, for example,
points out that “[w]omen are no longer required to be chaste or modest, to
restrict their sphere of activity to the home, or even to realize their properly
feminine destiny in maternity.” Instead, she argues, “normative femininity
is coming more and more to be centered on woman’s body—not its duties
and obligations or even its capacity to bear children, but its sexuality, more
precisely, its presumed heterosexuality and its appearance” (41–42).
Further, Bartky argues that the latter type of control only started to assume
greater importance as the former waned as a result of feminist struggles to
redefine women’s roles. Jessica Valenti calls it a distraction: “[t]he more
we’re worked up about how fat we are or how hot we want to be, the less
we’re worried about the things that really matter, the things that will affect
our lives” (199–200). In other words, reorienting women’s attention to their
physical appearances is as much about directing women’s behavior and
time as it is surveilling their appearances and conformity to a narrowly
defined ideal of feminine beauty.
A related term is postfeminism, which rests on the premise that the
aims of feminist movement(s) have been achieved and that we live in a
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society where women experience a full range of choices equal to those of
men, or as Angela McRobbie explains, “post-feminism positively draws on
and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account, to suggest
that equality is achieved, in order to install a whole repertoire of new
meanings which emphasise that it is no longer needed” (255). Another
definition uses postfeminism interchangeably or as an alternate to the term
“backlash.”
A different but related form of backlash can be seen in recent trans-
phobic efforts to force transgender people to use public restrooms that
correspond with the sex assigned on their birth certificate, as opposed to
using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. These anti-
trans policies, bills, and referenda can be seen as a reactionary response to
the growing visibility of trans people in our society, and the recent legal
and political gains made by and for them. An especially insidious aspect of
some of these anti-trans efforts is that they have attempted to garner
support by claiming that they are championing (cisgender) girls’ and
women’s safety. These appeals claim that allowing trans women to use
women’s restrooms will lead to violence against women and girls in those
spaces, as trans women are, in this transphobic view, really men who dress
in women’s clothing in order to prey on women and girls. But as Alex Berg
succinctly articulated in a recent article,
invoking women’s safety while ignoring real violence faced by women and girls
on college campuses, on the street and in their own homes is nothing more than
a veil for hate. This so-called protection is a justification for transphobia—and as
cisgender women, we’re done being your excuse.
Another form of backlash can occur at the micro level, and takes the
form of potential negative personal consequences to individuals in the
workplace who engage in what one research study refers to as “diversity-
valuing behaviors.” The study, reported in the Harvard Business Review,
demonstrated that employees who engaged in these behaviors, “whether
they respected cultural, religious, gender, and racial differences, valued
working with a diverse group of people, and felt comfortable managing
people from different racial or cultural backgrounds” did not benefit from
them in terms of how their bosses rated their competence or performance
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and in fact,
women and nonwhite executives who were reported as frequently engaging in
these behaviors were rated much worse by their bosses, in terms of competence
and performance ratings, than their female and nonwhite counterparts who did
not actively promote balance. For all the talk about how important diversity is
within organizations, white and male executives aren’t rewarded, career-wise,
for engaging in diversity-valuing behavior, and nonwhite and female executives
actually get punished for it.
What we want to highlight here is that actively valuing diversity within a
range of environments has differential consequences, and these should be
recognized; it also showcases the importance of the roles of allies from a
range of demographic sectors toward achieving diversity goals. Johnson
and Hekman’s research suggests that those within the mythical norm may
not be rewarded for the work, but if they engage in it they are not
punished, and their actions have the long-term potential to shift the
workplace culture so that members of marginalized groups can engage in
diversity-valuing behavior without fear of repercussion.
Finally, backlash includes cultural, media, and interpersonal reactions to
movements like Black Lives Matter, which was discussed in Chapter 3.
Black Lives Matter began as a reaction against “extrajudicial killings of
Black people by police and vigilantes” and has extended into a larger
movement for racial justice. Reactionary hashtags and products like “All
Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” bumper stickers and posters aim to
shift the public narrative about and undercut the attention to the very real
risks and effects faced by people of color when interacting with institutions
broadly and law enforcement specifically; reframing the narrative is an
example of how social movements are not necessarily lockstep narratives of
progress.
Understanding the causes and manifestations of backlash is a necessary
skill for those engaged in feminist praxis.
Misconception Alert
White men are frequently victims of “reverse discrimination.” One
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misconception about feminism and feminist movement is that not only
have the goals of feminist movement been achieved, but that in fact women
(or other groups such as men of color) have distinct advantages over men,
or that men are significantly disadvantaged by women’s achievements or
by affirmative action and equity efforts. As a brief review of key issues
shows, in fact reverse discrimination is uncommon, partly because, by
using a macro lens as outlined in Chapter 3, we can see how systems of
privilege and oppression interact to grant some groups privileges and
withhold them from others. In this system, white men are usually an
advantaged group. In this sense, feminism in the popular imagination is at
odds on some key issues with the demographic and statistical realities of
women’s lives in the United States and globally.
Although there have been important achievements in improving the
quality of life for many women in the United States and internationally,
demographic and statistical realities reveal that, in fact, there is a good deal
of work to be done to bring about gender equity, particularly because such
claims about feminism having reached its goals typically operate under the
assumption that the goals of middle-class, white women are the goals of
feminist movement. However, feminist movement takes many forms and
serves a broad spectrum of women’s needs. For example:
Women and girls globally experience high rates of violence and
cultural sexism ranging from son preference to dowry deaths to
sex-selective abortion.
Female circumcision, the nonmedical removal of all or part of a
women’s genitalia, persists across many parts of Africa, Asia, North
America, and Europe.
Males outnumber females three to one in family films. In contrast,
females make up just over 50 percent of the population in the
United States. Even more staggering is the fact that this ratio, as
seen in family films, is the same as it was in 1946 (Geena Davis
Institute on Gender in the Media).
As UNICEF reports, women are dramatically underrepresented in
national representative and legislative bodies, making up just 17
percent of elected representatives, and 6 percent of heads of state
(UNICEF).
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Although women have made substantial gains in efforts for
economic justice, wage inequalities continue to persist. According
to 9to5.org, an advocacy organization for women workers,
a significant pay gap exists for women and people of color. Women
earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2011 annual
earnings. For women of color the gap is even wider— African-
American women earn only 69 cents and Latinas just 60 cents for
every dollar earned by males, the highest earners.
(9to5)
Legislative efforts such as the Paycheck Fairness Act aim to reduce
this gap, but women still make less than their male coworkers.
As the National Center for Education Statistics explains, “Title IX of
the Education Amendments of 1972 protects people from
discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities
that receive federal financial assistance.” As a result of this
legislative act, there is some cultural perception that equity for
women in athletics has led to inequities or disadvantages for men.
However, the Women’s Sports Foundation explains that, in fact,
men’s participation in athletics is increasing; they observe:
[t]his misinformation campaign takes the focus away from the facts
that (1) women continue to be significantly underrepresented
among high school and college athletes, (2) the gap between men’s
and women’s sports participation and support is not closing and (3)
it is the wealthiest athletic programs in NCAA Division I-A that are
dropping men’s minor sports, typically because they are shifting
these monies to compete in the football and men’s basketball arms
race.
(Women’s Sports Foundation)
On the whole, female athletes receive fewer scholarship dollars
($965 million female vs. $1.15 billion male) and fewer athletic
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participation opportunities (3.2 million female vs. 4.5 million male)
than male athletes. A news story in the Christian Science Monitor
reveals the more common explanation for the elimination of men’s
sports:
[t]he NCAA also points out that non-revenue men’s sports are often
cut to provide more funds for the two big revenue sports, football
and basketball. In 2006, for instance, Rutgers University dropped
men’s tennis, a team with a budget of approximately $175,000. The
National Women’s Law Center points out that Rutgers spent about
$175,000 in the same year on hotel rooms for the football team—for
home games.
(Goodale)
Anchoring Topics through the Lens of Feminist
Praxis
Work and Family
There is a wide range of feminist praxis that focuses on issues related to
work and family. Some takes the form of formal organizations focused on
achieving economic justice for women as workers and mothers. Other
examples include programs focused on addressing racial disparities in
breastfeeding rates, as well as the high-profile initiative to bail mothers out
of jail for Mother’s Day, thereby raising awareness in the general public
about the bail system in the U.S. and the impact of mass incarceration on
women.
MomsRising: serves as a kind of clearinghouse that takes multiple
approaches to activism on behalf of women. They are focused on a range of
issues including maternity and paternity leave, flexible work options,
health care access, early childhood education, and paid sick leave. Since
2006, the group has been engaged in organizing grassroots activists, for
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example, providing online resources for lobbying legislators to support fair
wages or family leave. MomsRising also hosts a blog where women can
share their stories on the topics supported by the organization; it also aims
to “amplify women’s voices and issues in the national dialogue and in the
media” in order to advocate for positive social and legislative change that
will support work–life balance.
Pride at Work: Pride at Work is a nonprofit organization that focuses on
identifying issues of mutual importance to the labor movement and the
LGBTQ community. According to their website, they focus both on
improving the climate for LGBTQ people in labor unions and on forging
connections between the labor movement and LGBTQ communities.
Members of the organization recognize that labor unions can be an
important source of protection from discrimination in the workplace for
LGBTQ people; for example, they point out that in 33 states, union
contracts are the “only legal form of protection against employment
discrimination for transgender working people.” They also note that OSHA
(Occupational Safety and Health Administration) offers guidelines for
restroom access for transgender employees, noting that access to a
restroom is a workplace safety and health issue for all employees, and
uniquely so for transgender employees. Among other things, Pride at Work
offers support and trainings to labor unions seeking to be more inclusive of
their membership.
Mother Nurture: the Opening Illustration in Chapter 4 focused on
intersectional approaches to breastfeeding. In Detroit, MI, a program called
Mother Nurture has been created, building on the work of a diverse group
of health activists and health care professionals. The program focuses on
addressing the racial disparities in breastfeeding rates and has done so by
drawing on the wealth of research findings that have documented the
disparities, pinpointed their sources, and studied the most effective means
of shrinking them, making the program an excellent example of feminist
praxis. For example, according to Molly Ginty, studies have shown that
“people of different ethnicities were significantly more receptive to
receiving health information when it was delivered by someone with
whom they identified— someone who looked like them, talked like them,
and was in their same peer group.” As a result, Mother Nurture has focused
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on providing training to African American women to become breastfeeding
peer counselors and lactation consultants.
Mama’s Bail Out Day: in the lead up to Mother’s Day in 2017, a coalition
of more than 20 organizations across the United States worked together to
provide bail money for over 100 women. Actions like this are a part of the
larger Movement for Black Lives, the platform for which lays out the case
for abolishing money bail because the bail system is racially discriminatory
and disproportionately negatively impacts low-income people. As noted on
the National Bail Out website,
[p]re-trial incarceration has catastrophic effects on our communities in
particular. Black people are over two times more likely to be arrested and once
arrested are twice as likely to be caged before trial. Our LGBTQ and gender
nonconforming family are targeted and caged at even more alarming rates, and
once in jail are significantly more likely to be sexually and physically abused.
People who cannot afford to post bail, even in amounts of only a few
hundred dollars, are consigned to sit in jail while awaiting trial, perhaps
losing their jobs, their housing, and sometimes even losing custody of their
children. Many plead guilty to charges against them, even if they are
innocent, in an effort to be released from jail more quickly. Actions like
Mama’s Bail Out Day serve dual purposes; a small percentage of
incarcerated people are literally freed through community bail funds, and
the publicity surrounding the action raises the level of awareness in the
broader community about this aspect of inequality in the criminal justice
system. Allies can also donate money to one of the many community bail
funds. As law professor Jocelyn Simonson puts it, “this unprecedented
coordination of efforts to bail out poor people of color exemplifies the kind
of mass acts of resistance that can disrupt the status quo in the criminal-
justice system.”
Language, Images, and Symbols
Although critical to the development of social norms and assumptions
around gender, language, images, and symbols can be particularly
challenging to reshape. Unlike work and family or reproductive rights—
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which are often subject at least in part to public policy (whether laws,
regulations, funding priorities, initiatives, etc.), symbolic representations of
gender in the form of art, music, popular culture, literature, film, are much
less subject to such forms of social and political legislation, and so activism
around language, images, and symbols takes different approaches to
critiquing, reframing, and influencing symbolic representations of women,
gender, and race.
One group, active since the 1980s, is the Guerrilla Girls. Following an
exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art on “An International Survey of
Painting and Sculpture,” protests about the white, male, Eurocentric, and
U.S.-centric content of the “international survey” emerged. Feminists in the
art world critiqued the exclusion of women and people of color from
important temporary exhibits such as these, and that critique broadened
out to include an analysis of whose work was included in museums’
permanent collections and exhibited in commercial galleries. They created
colorful, sarcastic, and humorous posters and posted them as a way to draw
attention to the art world’s gender and racial disparity. As the group
themselves explains, the Guerrilla Girls are
a bunch of anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists as
pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. We have produced
posters, stickers, books, printed projects, and actions that expose sexism and
racism in politics, the art world, film and the culture at large.
Highlighting the exclusion of women artists and artists of color from
mainstream galleries, the loosely organized group engages in a range of
activities from demonstrations to “flash mob” type protests, to billboards
and posters as well as authoring books and public letters.
A similar effort to reshape media representation of girls and women
across many types of media is the Institute on Gender and Media, founded
by actress Geena Davis in 2004. The institute takes a three-pronged
approach to changing the “media landscape” around gender
representations, including research, education, and advocacy. First, as the
sponsor of research studies, the organization is able to support
investigations into media representations, providing a sound and robust
empirical foundation for its education and advocacy. For example, the
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institute has sponsored studies of industry leaders’ perceptions of gender in
family films, investigations into gender disparities both on-screen and
behind the camera, and assessments of the portrayal of occupations in G-
rated, family films. Such research investigations have allowed the institute
to draw important conclusions, for example, about the representation of
women in particular fields, such as the finding that in one study, not a
single female character was depicted in medical science, executive business,
or politics (Smith 2). The institute uses this research in two equally
important ways. First, the institute and its organizational partners seek to
educate stakeholders and leaders about the impact of gender
representations in media. In other words, the institute reaches out to the
makers of media in an attempt to shape the content that they produce.
They also reach out to consumers of media; the institute offers an array of
web-based resources including lessons and curricula that can be used by
teachers in a variety of settings to teach critical thinking and media literacy
skills to young people. Finally, the institute engages in advocacy by
providing public presentations, consulting with professional and industry
groups, using social media, and interfacing and partnering with other
organizations such as UN Women and the Girl Scouts.
Feminist praxis can take other forms around symbolic representation—
such as the #notbuyingit Twitter campaign initiated by
Missrepresentation.org, a nonprofit social action campaign and media
organization emerging from the documentary of the same name, written
and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Miss Representation focused on
making visible the underrepresentation and degrading representations of
women in the media. The #notbuyingit campaign is one way that
organizations can use social media to highlight, critique, and mobilize
action about symbolic representation, in this case, products that offer
stereotyped, degrading, or harmful messages. For example, an August 2013
tweet highlighted an Etsy product, a glass with the message “You’ve Just
Been Roofied” that reveals itself at the bottom after the drinker has finished
the beverage. One of the goals of the campaign is to call attention to such
products and hold manufacturers accountable for misogynist products as
well as to discourage consumers from purchasing them.
Another powerful example of hashtag activism focused on
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representations is #oscarssowhite, created by April Reign in 2015, which
was briefly mentioned in the Case Study at the end of Chapter 1. Reign
coined the hashtag in response to the nomination list of the four categories
for acting which included no people of color among its 20 nominees. In
2016, #oscarsstillsowhite emerged when a similar slate of white nominees
was announced for the four categories in 2015 films, even though two
commercially and critically successful films— Creed and Straight Outta
Compton— featured performances by highly praised actors like Samuel
Jackson, Will Smith, and Idris Elba. It’s hard to know the specific impact of
Reign’s hashtag activism precisely on subsequent years, but the 2017
nomination list had a record number of African American nominees and
saw the most black Academy Award winners in the history of the awards.
Bodies
A key focus of feminist activism has been the idea that women have a right
to control their own bodies. There is a long history of feminist organizing
around the issues of rape, sexual assault, and street harassment. In its
earliest forms, this activism focused on marital violence and was sometimes
linked to the temperance movement, as many saw alcohol as the chief
cause of men’s violence against their wives and children. It was not until
the second wave of feminism, however, that the impact of feminist efforts
began to be felt. A brief discussion of this activism over the past 40 years
reveals both continuity and change in terms of its targets, tone, tactics and
strategies.
A well-established form of activism around violence against women is
the international movement Take Back the Night. Starting in 1976 in
Brussels, Belgium, this activist effort uses marches, protests, and
demonstrations as well as candlelight vigils and accompanying speakers to
call for the elimination of violence against women. Take Back the Night
marches are a symbolic reclamation of public space after dark, which girls
and women are taught to fear through the messages they receive about
their responsibility in protecting themselves against attack. The Take Back
the Night Foundation, established in 1999, describes its goals as follows:
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“[t]he Take Back The Night Foundation seeks to end sexual assault,
domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse and all other forms of
sexual violence. We serve to create safe communities and respectful
relationships through awareness events and initiatives” (“About”). Take
Back the Night marches are especially prevalent on college campuses,
where they continue to play a crucial role in raising young people’s
awareness of these issues and also provide a powerful forum for survivors
to speak and heal. Critiques of the movement have centered on the
potential implication that “stranger rape” and nighttime attacks in the
bushes are the primary form of sexual violence against women, when in
fact a small minority of sexual assaults are committed by someone
unknown to the victim.
Similar in its goals but different in its tone and tactics is the Slut-Walk
movement. SlutWalks began after a police officer at a safety forum at York
University in January 2011 claimed that women “should avoid dressing like
sluts in order not to be victimized.” Outraged, a grassroots and social media
campaign led by Heather Jarvis and Sonya Barnett emerged in major cities
across the United States and Canada in which thousands took to the streets
with chants and signs to protest the victim-blaming attitude reflected in
Constable Michael Sanguinetti’s comments. Even though the officer later
apologized, his comments set off hundreds of organized SlutWalks, starting
with the April 3 march in Toronto. The foundation of SlutWalk is the
rejection of the idea that women’s sexuality, sexual behavior, or sexual
expression is the cause of sexual violence against women or of rape culture.
Marchers come together in their rejection and condemnation of victim-
blaming. SlutWalks proved to be controversial, even among feminists,
however, in part because some feminists reject the idea that “slut” can be
co-opted or repurposed because of its sexist and patriarchal origins.
Rebecca Traister, for example, wrote that
[s]cantily clad marching seems weirdly blind to the race, class, and body-image
issues that usually (rightly) obsess young feminists and seems inhospitable to
scads of women who, for various reasons, might not feel it logical or
comfortable to express their revulsion at victim-blaming by donning bustiers. So
whereas the mission of SlutWalks is crucial, the package is confusing and leaves
young feminists open to the very kinds of attacks they are battling.
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Many women of color also pointed out that because of racialized
stereotypes that construct them as hypersexualized, they have an even
more ambivalent relationship to the term “slut.”
A controversial activist strategy related to combating rape and sexual
assault is the practice of posting (physically and/or virtually) the names of
alleged perpetrators. In the past, names might have been posted on a
photocopied flyer and posted in women’s restrooms or in residence halls on
campus, whereas now the names might circulate online. In spring of 2014
an unknown person or persons posted a list of four names under the
heading “Rapists on Campus” around the campus of Columbia University.
The act received national attention, in large part because Columbia was
already in the news as a result of 23 students filing a federal complaint
against the university alleging the mishandling of sexual assault cases.
According to CNN, the complaint alleges “the Ivy League university
discouraged students from reporting sexual assaults, allowed perpetrators
to remain on campus, sanctioned inadequate disciplinary actions for
perpetrators and discriminated against students based on their sexual
orientation” (Crook). Whereas some defended this approach as a way of
empowering students to protect themselves when the university
administration had failed to do so, others rightly pointed out this tactic’s
potential for abuse.
Another way that feminist activism around violence has changed in the
last 40 years is that it increasingly includes (and is sometimes led by) men.
The White Ribbon Campaign, based in Canada, describes itself as the
“world’s largest movement of men and boys working to end violence
against women and girls, promote gender equity, healthy relationships and
a new vision of masculinity.” Primarily educational in its focus, the White
Ribbon Campaign offers workshops, conferences, and trainings. An
organization whose focus is more parallel to Take Back the Night and
SlutWalks is Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, which is an international men’s
march that features men walking in high heels. While lauded for raising
men’s awareness of gendered violence and facilitating their active
involvement in the movement against it, this event has been criticized for
not always being thoughtful about the way it is organized and advertised.
More specifically, some local marches have played up the idea that men
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walking in “women’s” shoes is funny, thereby reinforcing rather than
challenging traditional constructions of masculinity. One response to this is
for march organizers to challenge attendees’ assumptions by reminding
them that not all women wear heels, and not all who wear heels are
women. Another example is the activist group Men Can Stop Rape, a
nonprofit organization engaging in education programs, awareness
building campaigns, and training projects with the goal of combating men’s
violence against women. The organization “mobilizes men to use their
strength for creating cultures free from violence, especially men’s violence
against women,” and operates from the assumption that men are “vital
allies with the will and character to make healthy choices and foster safe,
equitable relationships” (“What We Do”). Their 2014 “Take a Stand”
campaign provides strategies for bystander intervention—ways men (and
women) can support women who are in uncomfortable or dangerous
situations (see Figure 5.2 for an example of a public awareness campaign of
this nature).
Activism around street harassment has further gained new visibility in
recent years as a result of the creation of Hollaback. Hollaback, which is
described as a “non-profit and movement to end street harassment,” is a
good example of activism that has been enhanced by technological
innovation. According to the website, “[a]t Hollaback!, we leverage
technology to bring voice to an issue that historically has been silenced,
and to build leadership within this movement to break the silence.” It was
inspired by one woman who was so fed up by her experience of street
harassment that she decided to take out her phone and snap a picture of the
man who was masturbating on the subway while staring at her. She
initially took her complaint to the police, but they did nothing, so she
posted the photo online, and the story eventually got considerable media
attention. In response, a group of young people decided to start a blog
where people could share their experiences of street harassment. From
there, the project has grown to include the creation and dissemination of a
mobile app that people can use to document the nature and location of
street harassment. On an individual level, it can
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Figure 5.2 Bystander Intervention Source: Men Can Stop Rape
(www.mencanstoprape.org)
be empowering for someone who has experienced harassment to fight back
by documenting their experience and connecting with others who have had
similar experiences. On a broader level, to do so also contributes to the
collection of data that can be used when approaching police and policy
makers about addressing the issue. Importantly, Hollaback employs an
intersectional approach to street harassment, rightly pointing out that street
harassment can be “sexist, racist, transphobic, homophobic, ableist, sizeist
and/or classist. It is an expression of the interlocking and overlapping
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oppressions we face and it functions as a means to silence our voices and
‘keep us in our place.’”
Case Study: The Spark Movement
In 2010, the American Psychological Association published the “Report of
the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Young Girls,” the results of
work conducted by a subcommittee of the national organization of the field
of psychology. The group was charged to
examine and summarize the best psychological theory, research, and clinical
experience addressing the sexualization of girls via media and other cultural
messages, including the prevalence of these messages and their impact on girls,
and include attention to the role and impact of race/ethnicity and
socioeconomic status.
Defining early sexualization as the objectification of girls and women,
exclusive value attached to the sexual attributes of individuals, and
inappropriate imposition of sexuality on a person, the group’s report
documented the ample evidence of sexualization of young girls, as well as
the cognitive, emotional, psychological, and physical harms caused by early
sexualization. The group made recommendations for future directions for
research, public policy, practice, education, and training, and as a result of
that report, the Spark Movement emerged.
The Spark Movement describes itself as “a girl-fueled, intergenerational
activist organization working to ignite and foster an antiracist gender
justice movement to end violence against women and girls and promote
girls’ healthy sexuality, self-empowerment and well-being.” They do so “by
providing feminist, girl-focused training, consulting services, curricula and
resources.” Their website has pages that are addressed to and for girls,
while other pages are for adult educators and activists who work with girls.
The movement illustrates feminist praxis because of its blending of
research, education, training, and “everyday activism,” such as publicly
critiquing those products that objectify, stereotype, and demean girls and
women through protest, social media, or other methods. Some of the
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organization’s victories include launching a Change.org petition asking
Seventeen Magazine to include at least one photo spread each issue that
included “unaltered images” (Bluhm). Other recent efforts include
providing resources for tagging gender stereotyped toys in store aisles with
the note “You’ve Been Sparked” to invite shoppers to recognize such
stereotypes or sexualized products, and Spark Activist Theater, with online
toolkits available to launch activist performances within one’s community.
Another ongoing project involves a collaboration with Google’s Field Trip
app called “Women on the Map.” Those involved in the project identified
and wrote profiles of over 100 women around the world who have made
history, and then linked them to particular geographical spots. According
to the Spark Movement website, “[w]hen you download Field Trip and turn
on Spark’s Women on the Map, your phone will buzz when you approach a
place where a woman made history.”
The Spark Movement directs activist efforts through its blog (which
features posts by both girls and adults), recommendations for taking action
(such as a recent fundraising campaigns directed at supporting girl
activists), and documenting efforts to intervene in harmful practices or
correcting gaps in education and training (such as a national effort to
educate athletic coaches about sexual assault prevention). The work of the
Spark Movement illustrates how activism can emerge from research and
inform policy and practice. It also shows that awareness of injustice and
the agency to address injustice is not the sole province of adults.
Misconception Alert
I’m only one person and can’t make a difference, being an activist is a full-
time job, activism is all about marching in the streets. When taking a
Women’s and Gender Studies course, students sometimes feel
overwhelmed and unsure how to take action. As this chapter demonstrates,
however, there are large- and small-scale activist efforts that any one
individual can take—and that allies are critical to the achievement of social
justice.
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End of Chapter Elements
Evaluating Prior Knowledge
1. Think about past educational experiences you’ve had in school. To
what degree have you seen intersections between your classroom
learning, or academic knowledge, and your lived experience?
Which classes most commonly “translated” into your non-school
life? Which seemed disconnected?
2. Think about the key terms presented in this chapter, including
feminist praxis, ally, backlash, rape culture, postfeminism, and
activism. Which of these have you used previously in your
everyday vocabulary? Which take on new meanings in the context
of this chapter material?
Application Exercises
1. Spend a day paying careful attention to gender dynamics in your
own life—to interactions with friends, family, and coworkers; to
your workplace culture, practices, or discourse; to your own use of
language and ways of communicating. Framing your discussion in
terms of feminist praxis, reflect on how you see threshold concepts
from the texts manifested in your everyday experiences and how
you might engage in “everyday activism.”
2. What are the activist organizations on your campus and in your
community? What issues are these organizations working on, and
how? Do you know anyone who is connected to one or more of
them? What opportunities do they provide for getting involved? In
your opinion, are there pressing issues on your campus and/or in
your community that are not currently being addressed by an
activist organization? If so, what are they?
3. Visit the website of one of the following organizations. In what
ways do you see the organization engaged in feminist praxis?
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a. http://9to5.org/
b. www.incite-national.org/home
c. www.feministfrequency.com/
d. www.transequality.org/
e. www.ihollaback.org/
f. http://upsettingrapeculture.com/
g. www.womensmediacenter.com
h. www.onebillionrising.org/
i. www.knowyourix.org/
Skills Assessments
1. Read Abigail Jones’ article, “The Fight to End Period Shaming Is
Going Mainstream,” published in Newsweek in April of 2016, and
write an analytical response that uses concepts and framework
from Chapter 5 as a lens. What forms is menstrual activism taking,
and in what institutions, both in the U.S. and in other parts of the
world? How, where, and why is backlash experienced by
menstrual activists? In what ways is menstrual activism informed
by research and data?
2. Select an anti-feminist or pro-feminist website and thoroughly
explore the site, paying attention to both the content of the site
and how the site functions. Answer the following short-answer
prompts with several paragraphs each, drawing on specific
examples from the website.
a. Summarize the overall point of view of the website.
b. How does the website connect to a broader feminist
movement?
c. What opportunities for activism/action beyond reading
does the website offer?
d. How does the website situate feminism within a broader
framework of interlocking oppressions/intersectionality?
e. Describe how the website acknowledges the social
construction of gender, privilege, and oppression (or
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resists such a construction).
f. Describe the role that community and/or collaboration
plays in the website. Is it supported or acknowledged? Is
it suggested as a value?
g. Analyze the persona of the website—that is, analyze the
tone, mood, and “personality” of the website. Here, you
should draw from both visual and textual cues that
contribute to the overall persona of the website.
h. Finally, drawing on your previous answers, evaluate the
website’s effectiveness as an anti-feminist or pro-feminist
site. This answer should be longer than your previous
answers, and should synthesize the elements from
questions a through g.
Discussion Questions
1. Think about some of the recommendations made throughout this
chapter for small- and large-scale activism. Are there ways that
you have engaged in activism? Describe your previous
experiences.
2. What are the major barriers or challenges to social change? What
are the major barriers or challenges to your personal involvement
in activism for social justice?
3. One of the goals of a feminist perspective is “the importance of
locating oneself within structures of privilege and oppression” and
to “analyze” how systems of privilege and oppression operate in a
number of contexts (for example, in one’s personal life and
relationships, in experiences of one’s body, in societal institutions,
etc.). How does your personal social location connect to a larger
social structure? What forms of feminist praxis would be most
appropriate and comfortable for you to engage in, based on that
location? Which would be uncomfortable and why?
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Writing Prompts
1. Feminist praxis is the ability to apply and/or enact feminist
theoretical principles to your own life and experience. Create a
self-reflection or narrative that demonstrates your participation in
and analysis of a feminist event or act of social change of which
you were a part. This will include supporting documentation (e.g.,
photos, documents, Internet coverage) of the event/action. Write a
personal narrative reflection describing and analyzing a particular
experience/event/action in which you have participated that meets
the criteria of feminism action offered in this chapter. Collect and
assemble a series of artifacts that document your participation in
this event. Write an essay in which you:
a. Explain the event
b. Explain/describe your documentation and how they
represent the event
c. Describe your role in the event
d. Address your perception of the outcome of the event
e. Connect your experience in this event to the definition of
feminist action
2. Building on Megan Seely’s “action plan” in Fight Like a Girl,
review the first three of her twelve-step approach to engaging in
feminist praxis.
1. Define the issue that you want to raise awareness on;
2. Work with other activists, and dialogue the issue to
clarify the feminist analysis of the problem and the
solution; and
3. Decide what action to take.
(20)
Write an essay in which you get started on a praxis plan that uses these
first three steps, documenting your interest in the issue (and demonstrating
262

familiarity with research and evidence on that issue); researching the
current work (and organizations or groups involved in it) on the topic; and
laying out action steps you could take to effect change.
Notes
1 www.change.org/petitions/sprint-improve-policies-to-keep-domestic-violencevictims-
safe
2 www.change.org/petitions/south-africa-take-action-to-stop-corrective-rape
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Home New with slider

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We need the Paycheck Fairness Act

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http://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7443979/racism-implicit-racial-bias

http://SeeJane.org

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266

http://www.nwsa.org/Files/Resources/WS_Integrative_Learning_Levine

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=93

https://feministfrequency.com/video/retro-sexism-uber-ironicadvertising/.

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2011.
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Accessed 26 August 2013.
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Suggested Readings
Ayvazian, Andrea. “Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression: The Role of
267

http://www.sparkmovement.org/about/

http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/The_State_of_the_Worlds__Children__2007_e

http://www.mencanstoprape.org/Our-Mission-History/

http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/understand-domestic-violence/facts-violence-women/

http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocate/title-ix-issues/what-is-title-ix/title-ix-myths-facts/

http://www.filthyfreedom.com/blog/solidarity-is-for-white-women-and-asian-people-are-funny

Allies as Agents of Change.” In Race, Class, and Gender in the United
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2007, pp. 724–730.
Baumgardner, Jennifer, and Amy Richards. Grassroots: A Field Guide for
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Little Bit Racist.” Vox. 15 August 2016.
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7 July 2017.
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Accessed 7 July 2017.
Hernandez, Daisy, and Bushra Rehman, eds. Colonize This! Young Women
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Kingcade, Tyler. “This Is Why Every College is Talking About Bystander
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Accessed 7 July 2017.
268

http://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7443979/racism-implicit-racial-bias

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/11/10/anti_trans_bathroom_propaganda_has_roots_in_racial_segregation.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/colleges-bystander-intervention_us_56abc134e4b0010e80ea021d

http://www.pflag.org/sites/default/files/guide%20to%20being%20a%20straight%20ally

Rush, Curtis. “Cop Apologizes for ‘Sluts’ Remark at Law School.” Toronto
Star. 18 February 2011.
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2011. www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/slutwalk-united-states-
city_n_851725.html. Accessed 7 July 2017.
Stewart, Nikki Ayanna. “Transform the World: What You Can Do with a
Degree in Women’s Studies.” Ms., Spring 2007, pp. 65–66.
Sullivan, J. Courtney, and Courtney E. Martin. Click: When We Knew We
Were Feminists. Perseus Books, 2010.
Turner, Cory. “Bias Isn’t Just a Police Problem, It’s a Preschool Problem.”
NPR. 28 September 2016.
www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/09/28/495488716/bias-isnt-just-a-police-
problem-its-a-preschool-problem. Accessed 7 July 2017.
Valenti, Jessica. Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why
Feminism Matters. Seal Press, 2007.
Zeilinger, Julie. A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word. Seal
Press, 2012.
269

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/slutwalk-united-states-city_n_851725.html

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/09/28/495488716/bias-isnt-just-a-police-problem-its-a-preschool-problem

Glossary
#notallmen: A Twitter hashtag created by men’s rights activists to
contradict the effort to make visible and to critique sexism and violence
#yesallwomen: A Twitter hashtag created in response to #notallmen to call
out misogynist violence and sexism
ableism: Institutionalized practices and individual actions and beliefs that
posit the able-bodied as the norm. It works to promote negative images of
disabled women, such as the myth that it is not possible for someone with a
disability to have a positive and equal relationship
act-like-a-man box: Paul Kivel’s articulation of masculine gender norms
and expectations that men are socialized to adhere to
activism: Conscious efforts to raise awareness about a social problem and
and/or to bring about social change
allies: Defined by Andrea Ayvazian as “a member of a dominant group in
our society who works to dismantle any form of oppression from which she
or he receives the benefit”
backlash: Popularized by journalist Susan Faludi in her book of the same
name, and refers to media sources who claimed that feminism was to
blame for women’s dissatisfaction with the results of feminist activism.
Characterizes these claims as part of a larger cultural resistance to true
liberation and equality for women
beauty myth: In Naomi Wolf’s 1991 book of the same name, she argued
that orienting women’s attention to their physical appearances is as much
about directing women’s behavior and time as it is surveilling their
appearances and conformity to a narrowly defined ideal of female beauty
bootstraps myth: The idea that upward class mobility is not only possible
270

but probable, and that individual will and hard work are the only requisites
for moving out of poverty and into the middle class
bystander intervention: A technique for preventing rape and sexual
assault, which teaches people (bystanders) to intervene when they spot a
situation (on the street, at a party, in their residence hall, etc.) which seems
headed in that direction
cisgender: A person who experiences congruence between their gender
assignment and gender identity
cissexual: A person who experiences congruence between their assigned
sex and their gender identity
classism: Oppression based on social class or socioeconomic status
compulsory heterosexuality: Social messaging, policies, and practices that
privilege heterosexual behavior and identity
consumer capitalism: An economic and social theory building on the
definition of capitalism as an economic system based on private goods,
private property, the accumulation of wealth, and free market economics
and laws of supply and demand. Consumer capitalism adapts this economic
theory to cultural value attached to aspirational consumption and
consumerism
contraception: Reproductive technologies that prevent pregnancy
crowdsourcing: Social media platforms that allow multiple users to
contribute to the building of a text, database, or website
double bind: When an individual faces two equally problematic choices
(e.g., for a woman, being sexually active, or choosing not to be sexually
active)
egalitarian: A belief in human equality, especially with respect to social,
political, and economic rights and privileges
271

electoral politics: Processes associated with the democratic principles of
representative government
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA): Proposed constitutional amendment
introduced in 1923 as an effort to cast in policy equal rights for women. It
reads: “[e]quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The amendment was
never ratified
everyday activism: The notion that activism happens on a daily basis,
with everyday actions that may reject or challenge oppressive practices
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA): An act passed in 1993 that
guarantees U.S. employees twelve weeks of unpaid leave to attend to family
responsibilities or personal illness
female genital cutting/female circumcision: Procedures involving partial
or total removal or modification of the external female genitalia or other
injury to the female genital organs for cultural or other nonmedical reasons
feminine mystique: Concept introduced by Betty Friedan in her 1963 book
of the same name, arguing that domestic responsibilities alone were
unfulfilling to middle-class, educated women
femininity: Socially defined principles associated with the feminine gender
feminism/feminist: The social and political movement advocating for
women’s equality
feminist action: Associated with achieving the goals and aims of feminism
Freudian: Refers to the work of Sigmund Freud, the “father of
psychoanalysis,” who developed influential theories about human
psychology
gender: A social concept referring to a complex set of characteristics and
behaviors prescribed for a particular sex by society and learned through the
socialization process. The socially treated expectations for the looks,
272

behavior, and functions of that sex are, however, often perceived as innate
and not learned. Identifies people as feminine or masculine; see also social
constructionism
gender assignment and gender status: The gender assigned to a baby
when born, translated into gender-specific treatment and socialization
throughout childhood
gender comportment/expression: The expression of the gendered sense of
self, which Susan Stryker defines as “bodily actions such as how we use our
voices, cross our legs, hold our heads, wear our clothes, dance around the
room, throw a ball, walk in high heels”
gender display: The presentation of self as a kind of gendered person
through dress, cosmetics, adornments, and both permanent and reversible
body markers
gender identity: A person’s gendered sense of self
gender ranking: Social value attached to masculine and feminine
attributes (with higher value attached to masculinity)
gender socialization: The processes (social feedback, institutional
organization, policies) that communicate socially appropriate roles for boys
and men and girls and women; see also social constructionism
gender wage gap: The common gap between men’s and women’s
earnings, with women generally receiving lower pay
gendered double standard: A double standard of behavior for men and
women (e.g., in the workplace and in personal relationships), where the
same behavior is judged very differently depending on whether the person
engaging in the behavior is a man or woman
hegemonic feminism: According to Chela Sandoval, a feminism that was
“white led, marginalize[d] the activism and world views of women of color,
focuse[d] mainly on the United States, and treat[ed] sexism as the ultimate
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oppression”
heteronormativity: Cultural, material, and institutional messages and
policies that validate and encourage heterosexuality
heterosexism: Attitudes, actions, and institutional practices that privilege
heterosexuality and subordinate people on the basis of their gay, lesbian,
bisexual, or transgender orientation
Hollaback: A nonprofit online-based activist movement to end street
harassment
homophobia: The irrational fear, distrust, hatred of, and discrimination
against homosexuals
honor killings: A tradition whereby a man is obliged to kill a close female
blood relative if she does something that is believed to tarnish the family
honor
horizontal hostility: Whereby members of marginalized groups police
each other’s behavior and/or appearance. Horizontal hostility happens
when a member of a marginalized group identifies with the values of the
dominant group
horizontal segregation of labor: Describes the segregation of men and
women into different occupational/professional fields
ideology: Ideas, attitudes, and values that represent the interests of a group
of people. Cultures generally support a dominant ideology, as well as
several other minor or less powerful ideological systems. People who accept
the dominant beliefs of a culture are more successful within the culture and
thus part of the dominant ideology. The dominant ideology includes the
ideas, attitudes, and values that represent the interests of the dominant
group(s); for example, the ideological role of the idealized nuclear family is
to devalue other family forms
infanticide: The murder of infants; historically a strategy for reproductive
274

control in the absence of other forms of contraceptive technology
informed consent: The practice by which participants in modern-day
medical research studies receive a substantial education about the potential
side effects and outcomes of participation in such a study
institutions: Social arrangements that have survived over time and become
standard or “normalized” so that we forget they are only one possible
response or way of organizing a situation. For example, the nuclear family,
the military, and a capitalist economy all provide formulas for routine
action (like scripts for the actors), backed up by ideology that stresses their
rightness as well as their being the only possibility
internalized oppression: Attitudes and behavior of some oppressed people
that reflect the negative, harmful, stereotypical beliefs of the dominant
group directed at oppressed people; when a victim of oppression accepts
her situation as natural, normal, or deserved and enables her oppression to
take place at least partly through her own efforts; the behaviors include
holding negative beliefs about people in their own group. An example of
internalized sexism is the view of some women that they and other women
are inferior to men, which causes them to adopt oppressive attitudes and
behaviors toward women
intersectionality: The ways multiple forms of oppression and identity
interact to create someone’s experience of and access to social influence
and individual and institutional power
intersex: Defined by the Intersex Society of North America as “a general
term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a
reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical
definitions of female or male”
intimate partner violence: Physical, emotional, sexual, or other forms of
violence and abuse that take place between intimate partners
ladder of engagement: Within the context of activism, Courtney Martin
refers to this process whereby “someone signs a petition, before long
275

they’re creating their own, then running a full-fledged campaign”
LGBTQ: Acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or
questioning; reflects a range of sexual and gender identities and
orientations distinct from traditional heterosexuality
macro/micro: Macro refers to viewing social issues from a structural,
institutional, and global perspective; micro refers to the individual or local
perspective on such issues
mansplaining: Popularized by Rebecca Solnit and defined by
urbandictionary.com as “[t]o explain in a patronizing manner, assuming
total ignorance on the part of those listening”
marked and unmarked: One of the markers of privilege is invisibility, and
one of the ways this invisibility manifests is through identity terms and
labels. In other words, dominant groups that are a part of the mythical
norm have the privilege of being unmarked and unremarkable because of
their presumed neutrality and normality
masculine god language: Linguistic and imagery conventions referring to
and conceptualizing God as male, despite theologians’ claims that God is
not to be considered in sexual terms at all, despite such terminology
masculinity: The set of characteristics or attributes traditionally ascribed to
maleness
mythical norm: A dominant group and a marginalized group; one group is
considered the norm, with their counterpart being the “other.” According to
Audre Lorde, the mythical norm is “usually defined as white, thin, male,
young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure”
objectification: Attitudes and behaviors by which people treat others as if
they were “things”; the objectification of women through advertising
images
occupational segregation of labor: Explains the pay gap by noting that
276

http://urbandictionary.com

even when men and women have the same occupation, women tend to be
represented in lower ranks than men within the same occupation. Explains
the pay gap in terms of the tendency for occupations mainly held by men
to have substantially higher pay rates and status as compared to those
mainly held by women. Cf. vertical segregation of labor
online activism: A form of feminist activism taking place online, including
social media activities, online petitions, and community building
oppression: Prejudice and discrimination directed toward a group and
promoted by the ideologies and practices of multiple social institutions. The
critical elements differentiating oppression from simple prejudice and
discrimination are that it is a group phenomenon and that institutional
power and authority are used to support prejudices and enforce
discriminatory behaviors in systematic ways. Everyone is socialized to
participate in oppressive practices, either as direct and indirect perpetrators
or passive beneficiaries, or—as with some oppressed peoples—by directing
discriminatory behaviors at members of one’s own group
opting out: Emerged in the 1990s; suggests that feminism had failed in its
aims to liberate women through access to education and economic self-
sufficiency and that, instead, professional and educated women were
returning to stay-at-home motherhood
patriarchy: Literally, rule of the fathers; a family, social group, or society
in which men hold power and are dominant figures; a social order in which
men, for the most part, have primary access to resources and hence to
power and authority that they use to maintain themselves in power and
resources
the personal is political: A feminist and women’s studies idea that came
about in the second wave; it is a starting point for explaining how things
taken as personal or idiosyncratic have broader social, political, and
economic causes and consequences. In other words, situations that we are
encouraged to view as personal are actually part of broader cultural
patterns and arrangements
277

postfeminism: The premise that the aims of feminist movement(s) have
been achieved and that we live in a society where women experience a full
range of choices equal to those of men
praxis: The intersection of theory and practice, involving a visible and
deliberate set of actions informed by theory, by research, and by evidence
privilege: Benefits and power from institutional inequalities; individuals
and groups may be privileged without realizing, recognizing, or even
wanting it
racism: Racial prejudice and discrimination supported by institutional
power and authority. In the United States, racism is based on the ideology
of white (European) supremacy and is used to the advantage of white
people and the disadvantage of peoples of color. Also, a system of
advantage based on race. In this sense, racism is not a personal ideology
based on racial prejudice, but a system involving cultural messages and
institutional practices and policies as well as the beliefs and actions of
individuals. Also defined by antiracist educators as “prejudice plus power”
rape culture: As defined by Lynn Phillips, a lecturer in communication at
the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, “a culture in which dominant
cultural ideologies, media images, social practices, and societal institutions
support and condone sexual abuse by normalizing, trivializing and
eroticizing male violence against women and blaming victims for their own
abuse”
Rape Shield Laws: A set of policies that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s on
the state level preventing a rape victim’s past sexual history from being
used as evidence in a rape trial
Roe v. Wade: Landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that made abortion legal
sex: The specific biological categories of female and male; identification by
sex is based on a variety of factors including chromosomal patterns,
hormonal makeup, and genital structures
278

sex/gender system: A set of interrelated biological, institutional,
psychological, and ideological elements that classifies people by biological
sex; organizes a division of labor that patterns productive and reproductive
activities; instills within individuals an internalized self-definition as
woman or man; and promotes itself as true, proper, and appropriate
sexism: Material and ideological prejudice and discrimination based on sex
and gender enacted and supported by institutional authority
sexual orientation: A term suggesting a person’s preferred sexuality
slacktivism: A derisive term that has been coined to reflect what some
have critiqued as “easy” actions that can be taken through, for example,
social media, and that sometimes become a substitute for what many
perceive as more demanding forms of activism such as letter-writing
campaigns, lobbying legislators, protests and rallies, or other types of
advocacy
slut shaming: Social messaging that judges women’s sexual conduct
SlutWalk: A grassroots and social media campaign led by Heather Jarvis
and Sonya Barnett that emerged in major cities across the United States
and Canada, in which organized thousands took to the streets with chants
and signs to protest victim-blaming attitudes for sexual assault
social constructionism: The view that gender, race, and sexual orientation
are defined by human beings operating out of particular cultural contexts
and ideologies. The definitions are systematically transmitted, and attitudes
and behaviors purported to be appropriate are learned through childhood
socialization and life experience. In this view, for example, heterosexuality,
manhood, and womanhood are learned— socially constructed—not innate
socioeconomic status (SES): Economic and social indicators of groups
generally defined by a combination of income, occupation, educational
attainment, and accumulated wealth; sometimes referred to as social class,
SES is also communicated by various language, cultural, and taste
markers/associations
279

sociological imagination: Foundational concept of the discipline of
sociology posited by C. Wright Mills, who argues that “the individual can
understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating
himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by
becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances”
suffrage: The right to vote and have representation in participatory
democracy
symbolic annihilation: Described by Tuchman and colleagues in 1978 as
the relative absence of marginalized groups in the mass media, which has
the effect of signaling to the public that these groups are less important and
beneath notice
Take Back the Night: An activist effort that began in 1976 in Brussels,
Belgium. It uses marches, protests, and demonstrations as well as
candlelight vigils and accompanying speakers to call for the elimination of
violence against women
threshold concept: Defined by Meyer and Land as a core disciplinary
concept that is both troublesome and transformative and that allows
students to enter into new ways of disciplinary thinking
Title IX: This part of the Educational Amendments of 1972 guarantees
equal participation in any educational program or activity that receives
federal financial resources. Though primarily associated with advancing
women’s equal participation in athletic activities, Title IX also affected
women’s achievement of postsecondary degrees, pay equity within schools,
and any other discrimination taking place within an educational setting
trans*: A shortened term to encompass the various gender- and sexuality-
based identities that depart from the mythical heterosexual and binary
gender norms
transgender: An individual for whom there is a lack of congruence
between their gender assignment and gender identity
280

transphobia: Julia Serano defines this as “an irrational fear of, aversion to,
or discrimination against people whose gendered identities, appearances, or
behaviors deviate from societal norms”
Twitter/tweeting: Social media platform that allows users to post links and
messages of fewer than 140 characters
vertical segregation of labor: Explains the pay gap by noting the fact that
even in fields where there is a more even mix of men and women working,
women tend to be clustered in positions with lower pay and prestige
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA): A U.S. law passed in 1994 that
offered coordinated efforts to develop awareness and prevent violence
waves: Most commonly used to describe chronological groupings of
feminist activism in the United States
Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS): An interdisciplinary academic field
of study emerging from feminist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries;
examines the experiences, status, and disciplinary contributions of women
in academic and extra-academic sites of inquiry
women’s liberation: Second-wave feminist activism in the United States in
the 1960s
work–life balance: The relationship between the policies and lived
experiences of working families, particularly those who are managing the
demands of paid labor with the demands of personal and work
responsibilities, including childcare and eldercare
281

Index
Note: bold page numbers indicate tables; italic page numbers indicate
figures; numbers preceded by n are chapter endnote numbers.
#blacklivesmatter 97, 184
#effyourbeautystandards 203
#everydaysexism 203
#girlslikeus 203
#notallmen 117, 203, 233
#notbuyingit 217–218
#oscarssowhite #oscarsstillsowhite 22, 218
#rainbowrollcall 184
#sayhername 203
#solidarityisforwhitewomen 202
#yesallwomen 117, 202–203, 233
ableism/able-bodied privilege 91, 91, 97–98, 150, 151, 223, 233
abortion 13, 14, 16, 25; sex-selective 16, 211
act-like-a-man box 55–56, 233
action research 197
activism x, xii, xiii–xiv, 2, 8, 10, 22, 56, 90, 233; and breastfeeding 143;
crowdsourcing 118–119; everyday 203–205, 225, 234; in feminist movement
history see feminist movement, history of; and feminist praxis 195, 197–205,
216–223; hashtag see hashtag activism; with limited capital 199–200; menstrual
16, 226; misconceptions about 224–225; online 200–202, 237; trans* rights xv; and
women’s health/birth control 168–169, 172–173
Adair, Vivyan: “Branded with Infamy” 166, 168
Adams, Natalie Guice 45
advertisements 76, 82, 207
Affordable Care Act (2010) 107, 109
African American Policy Forum: “Black Girls Matter” 50
Akinola, Modupe 68–69
Allen, Paula Gunn: The Sacred Hoop 13
allies 7, 11, 206, 210, 215, 225, 233
282

Alter, Charlotte: “Seeing Sexism from Both Sides” 81
American Beauty 43, 44
American Psychological Association 223
American Student Government Association 48–49
American Veterinary Medicine Association 77
Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) 98, 132
Andrews, Erin 164, 165
Angry Black Woman 54
Anzaldua, Gloria 147
Archives of Sexual Behavior 74
Armstrong, Elizabeth 129–130
art/artists 216
Arter, Neesha 192
athletics see sports
The Atlantic 175, 181, 182
Attention Deficit Disorder 38
autism 119
Ayvazian, Andrea 205
backlash 15, 206–211; against transgender rights 36
“Ban Bossy” campaign 53
Barnett, Sonya 219
Bartky, Sandra 72, 208–209
Bates, Laura 203
Baumgardner, Jennifer: Manifesta 17
Beasts of the Southern Wild 44
A Beautiful Mind 43, 44
beauty myth 168, 233
Bechdel, Allison: “Dykes to Watch Out For” 21
Bechdel test 21, 23
Bennett, Jessica: Feminist Fight Club 204–205
Berg, Alex 209–210
Berger, Michele Tracy: Transforming Scholarship 2, 194, 195–196, 197
Bettis, Pamela 45
Bian, Lin 39
Bianchi, Suzanne M. 160
283

Bieber, Justin 21
The Big Lebowski 82
bigotry 93–94
biological determinism 59–61, 81
birth control see contraception
Black Lives Matter 97, 116, 210–211
Black Power movement 174
Black Swan 44
black women see women of color
blogs 5, 9, 121, 200, 201, 202, 214
bodies 70–75, 168–173, 208–209; and clothing 71–73, 72, 73; and feminist praxis
218–223; and privilege/ oppression 121–125; and tattooing 73–75
Boersma, Katelyn 70
bootstraps myth 125–126, 131, 134, 233
Boston Marathon 89, 90, 131–132
Boston Women’s Health Collective 168–169
Boxer, Marilyn J. 18
Boyer, Kate 75–76
Braless 180
Brannon, Robert 153
Braveheart 43, 44
breastfeeding 13, 25; and feminist praxis 213, 214–215; and intersectionality 141–144,
141, 144, 148, 155, 181; and privilege/oppression 109–110
Briggs, Arnie 90
Bring it On 45
The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men 82, 124
Brown, Michael 97
Bunch, Charlotte: “Not By Degrees” 195
Bureau of Labor Statistics 61, 64, 105–106, 107
Burton, Caitlin 70
Bush, George W. 154
bystander intervention 205, 221, 222, 233
Caddyshack 82
Cade, Toni: “The Pill” 174
A Call to Men 57
284

Carmon, Erin 21
Cash, Johnny: “A Boy Named Sue” 67
Cataldi, Sue 7
Catholic Church 42
Center for American Women and Politics 47
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 141–142
CEOs 65, 156
Charm School 166–167
Chase, Cheryl 34
cheerleading 45
child care 9–10, 15, 25, 39, 155, 157
childbirth 169–171, 169–170; and cesarean section 170–171; and infant mortality
rates 171–172, 171; and patriarchy 169
children: and boy’s/girls’ names 66–67; intersexual 33–34; and prisons 50; and
social construction of gender 29–31, 33, 42, 42–43, 57–59; and violence 26n3, see also
education
children’s toys 30, 31, 33, 43, 80, 120, 121
Christian Science Monitor 213
Christianity 41–42
Chugh, Dolly 68–69
Cimpian, Andrei 39
cisgender/cissexual 35, 36, 79, 97, 119, 204, 234
Civil Rights Act (1964) 14
class x, 4, 5, 8, 31, 54, 142–143, 144, 147, 148, 152–158; and birth control 172; and
femininity 166–167; mobility 94, 125–131, 127, 128, 132, 132; and
privilege/oppression 106–107, 110–111; and 2016 presidential election 175, 176
clerical work 61, 62, 63, 75–77
Clinton, Bill 108
Clinton, Hillary 47, 54, 175–179
clothing 53, 71–72, 73, 82; dress codes 37–38, 80
Clutter, Aaron 71, 72
collaboration xiii
Combahee River Collective 147, 149
comic books 71
community 196–197
285

Connell, Raewyn 51, 159, 163–164, 168
conscription 13
consumer capitalism 153, 163, 234
contraception 13, 14, 25, 172–174, 203, 234
Coontz, Stephanie 106; “Why Gender Equality Stalled” 9, 10
Corry, Maureen 169, 170
Cox, Nial 174
Crawley, Sara 4–5
Creed 218
Crenshaw, Kimberlé 15, 50, 151; “Mapping the Margins” 152–153
critical thinking 195–196
crowdsourcing 118–119, 234
Culp-Ressler, Tara 123
Dargis, Manohla 21, 22
David, Deborah 153
Davis, Geena 216
DeLauro, Rosa 108–109
elavan-Darien High School, Wisconsin 99–100
Dempsey, Rachel 65
The Departed 43, 44
department/big box stores 78, 80, 82, 121
Desmond-Harris, Jenee: “Implicit Bias Means We’re All Probably at Least a Little
Bit Racist” 205
Dill, Bonnie Thornton 154–155
disability 151–152
diversity-valuing behaviors 210
divorce 12, 13, 105, 106–107
domestic labor 39, 41, 75, 147, 155, 159–160; in heterosexual/same-sex households
159, 160–161, 161, 162
domestic violence 14, 15, 16, 25–26n3
dominant ideologies 102–103
double bind 53–54, 66, 110–111, 234
Douglas, Susan J. 207
dress codes 37–38, 80
Duck Dynasty 163
286

Duke, Lisa 167, 168
Duvernay, Ava 22
education 10, 12, 16, 17–18, 23–24, 60; and dress codes 37–38, 80; and gender
socialization 37–39; and gendered names 67–69; and perception of intelligence
38–39; and privilege/oppression 127–131, 128, 132, 132; STEM 20, 181; and
student government positions 47–49; and Title IX 14–15; and 2016 presidential
election 177, 177; women underrepresented in 18, 20; Women’s and Gender
Studies see WGS
The Education of Shelby Knox 199
Edwards, Laurie 104
empowerment 196, 223
England, Kim 75, 76
The English Patient 43, 44
Engstrom, Erika 165–166
enlightened sexism 207
Equal Pay Act (1963) 14
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) 12–13, 24, 234
everyday activism 203–205, 225, 234
Everyday Sexism project 203
Facebook 35–36, 175, 200, 201
Faludi, Susan: Backlash 206–207
family x, 12, 57–59, 60; and feminist praxis 213–215; and gender socialization 37, 81;
and housework see domestic labor; and intersectionality 155–162; and paid leave
39, 155, 156–158, 213; policies affecting 107–113; and privilege/oppression
104–105, 107–113
Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY, proposed) 108–109
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA, 1993) 107–108, 155–156, 234
father/fatherhood 58
Fausto-Sterling, Anne 33–34
female circumcision/genital cutting 16, 24, 212, 234
FemBotCollective 118
femininity 51, 51, 52, 53, 54, 81, 104, 208–209, 234; and beauty ideals 163, 165–168,
209; and bodies/clothing 71–73; and tattooing 74–75, see also gender ranking
Feminism Is For Everybody (hooks) 24, 25–26n3
feminism/feminists 4–17; backlash against 15, 206–211; death of 5–6; defined 4, 234;
287

men as 7, 204, 206; stereotypes/misconceptions of 5–11
feminist action 7, 15, 198, 234
feminist activism x, xii, xiii–xiv, 8, 10, 16
feminist movement, history of 4, 7–8, 10–17, 173–174; first wave 10–13; second
wave see women’s liberation movement; third wave 15–16, 200, 204; fourth
wave/contemporary 16–17, 24; and ERA 12–13; and Native American tribes 13
feminist praxis see praxis, feminist
feminist stance xi, xiii–xiv, 3, 4–5, 21, 31, 193
Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (hooks) 4
Ferguson, Missouri 97
Finch, Sam Dylan 97
flash mob protests 216
Flynn, Francis 68
FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act, 1993) 107–108, 155–156, 234
Fortini, Amanda: “The ‘Bitch’ and the ‘Ditz’” 54
Freedman, Estelle 4, 19, 145
Freeman, Jo 69, 72–73
Fremstad, Shawn 151
Freud, Sigmund 57–58, 234
Friedan, Betty 198; The Feminine Mystique 147–148, 234
Frisby, Cynthia 165–166
Frozen 44
Frye, Marilyn 92–93
Gabriel, Paul 63
Gamergate 117
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media 43, 212
Gemelli, Marcella 111
gender 234–235; as binary construct 19, 32, 34, 35, 57; as non-binary see
intersexuality; as performative 33; and sex 32–36; social construction of see
social construction of gender
gender assignment/status 29–31, 35, 235
gender bias tests 21–23
gender comportment/expression 33, 34, 35, 235
gender display 33, 235
gender expression 33, 35, 51, 52, 53, 60–61, 207
288

gender identity 31, 33, 34, 51, 235; and biological determinism 59–61; and evaluation
of prior knowledge 79–80; and psychoanalysis 57–58; and social media 35–36
gender inequality 5, 8, 9–10; and marriage 9, 10, 10; and voting/ property rights 12
gender norms 51–52, 54; negative outcomes of 56
gender policing 52, 55–56
gender ranking 52–55, 60–61, 64, 164, 235; and naming of children 67
gender reveal parties 80–81
gender socialization 36–39, 60, 65, 101, 235; discussion question on 81; and dress
codes see dress codes; and education 37–39; evaluating prior knowledge of 79;
and household chores/allowances 41; and leadership 49; and sport 45
gender wage gap 9, 14, 40, 61–63, 64, 64, 78, 79, 207, 212, 235
Genderbread Person 29, 32
gendered double standard 53–54, 66, 68, 235
gendered violence see violence, gender-based
genetics 60
The Gerontologist 105
Gillibrand, Kirsten 108–109
Gilligan, Carol 58
Ginty, Molly 214
Girl Scouts (GSUSA) 36, 217
Givhan, Robin 154
GLAAD 21, 22, 120–121
Gladiator 43, 44
Glee 45
Goldberg, Abbie E.: “ ‘Doing’ and ‘Undoing’ Labor” 161
Goldin, Claudia 78
Gomez, Carlos Andres: Man Up 57
Gordon, Linda: Feminism Unfinished 15
Gould, Lois: “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story” 29–30
Graff, E.J. 205
Grant, Adam 54–55, 65–66
Green, Laci 180
Grzanka, Patrick 145, 148–149
Guante 56–57
The Guardian 175
289

Guerrilla Girls 216
Hall, Stuart 167
Hamilton, Laura 129–130
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle 82
Harris, Lynn: “Mrs. Feminist” 70
hashtag activism 22, 97, 117, 175, 184, 202–203, 217–218
Hawkes, Diana 74
health/health care x, 103–104, 152
hegemonic feminism 148, 235
Heilman, Madelin 65
Hekman, David R. 210
The Help 44
Henley, Megan 171
Henley, Nancy 69, 72–73
Henry, Astrid: “From a Mindset to a Movement” 200
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene: Feminist Research Practice 94
heteronormativity 105, 112, 150, 235
heterosexism 91, 94, 102, 122, 150, 235
Hewlett, Sylvia Ann 156; Off-Ramps and On-Ramps 157
Hidden Figures 44
Higher Education Research Institute 49
Hill, Anita 15–16
Hill Collins, Patricia 168; Black Feminist Thought 166; “Toward a New Vision” 147
Hinduism 42
Hlavka, Heather 122
Hogeland, Lisa: “Fear of Feminism” 8
Hollaback 221–223, 235
Holliday, Tess 203
Hollywood movies 5, 212, 217; and activism 22; application exercise on 79; and
gender bias tests 21–23; and social construction of gender 43–45, 44, 46, see also
Oscars
homophobia 7, 206, 235
honor killings 16, 235
hooks, bell 11; Feminism Is For Everybody 24, 25–26n3; Feminist Theory from
Margin to Center 4; “Rethinking the Nature of Work” 147
290

horizontal hostility 52, 94–95, 235
horizontal segregation of labor 63, 155, 158–159, 235
hospitals 142–143
housework see domestic labor
Howards, Greg 165
Howe, Florence 20–21
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 44
Hunt, Jane 11
Hurst, Allison 179
Hurt, Byron: “Why I Am a Male Feminist” 124–125
The Hurt Locker 43, 44
immigrant women 152–153
Immigration Act (1990) 152
implicit bias 204–205
INCITE! 198–199
individuation 58
infanticide 16, 236
informed consent 173, 236
Institute on Gender and Media 216–217
institutions x, 16, 37–52, 59, 60, 77, 236; and intersectionality 152–153, 183;
masculine/feminine opposition in 51, 51; and privilege/oppression 39, 90,
101–102; privilege/oppression in 90, 101–102, 121, 123
intelligence, perceptions of 38–39
interconnectedness xiii, xiv
internalized oppression 52, 94, 236
Internet 21–22, 25, 82, 184; activism 199, see also blogs; social media
intersectional feminism/feminists 8, 180
intersectionality x, 16, 141–184, 197; and bodies 168–173; and breastfeeding 142–144,
148, 155, 181; and childbirth see childbirth; and class see under class; and
contraception 172–174; definitions/key terms in 145–150, 236; discussion
questions on 181–182; evaluating prior knowledge on 179–180; and feminine
beauty ideal 163, 165–168; and gendered violence 152, 153; goals of 154–155; and
institutions 152–153, 183; and language/images/symbols 162–168; and learning
roadblocks 150–155; and micro-macro-levels 150–152, 158; and praxis 153; in
scholarship 19; skills assessment for 181; and sport 164–165, 182–183, 183; as
291

threshold concept ix, xiv, 4, 145; 2016 presidential election case study 175–179,
176, 177, 178, 182; and work/family 155–162
Intersex Society of North America 33, 34
intersexuality 33–35, 236; and the law 34–35
Iron-Jawed Angels (film) 23
Isla Vista shooting (2014) 117, 202–203
Islam 42
Jarvis, Heather 219
Johnson, Allan 101, 169; The Gender Knot 52–53
Johnson, David R. 69
Johnson, Katherine M. 69
Johnson, Stephanie K. 210
Jones, Abigail: “The Fight to End Period Shaming Is Going Mainstream” 226
Jong, Erica 6
Juno 44
Kaepernick, Colin 116
Kalin, Jonathan 200
Katz, Lawrence 78
Keenan, Kelly 34–35
Kendall, Mikki 202
Kimmel, Michael 100, 153; “Solving the ‘Boy Crisis’ in Schools” 38
Kivel, Paul 55
Kliff, Sarah 47
Knox, Shelby 199
Kohlberg, Lawrence 58
LA Ink 75
Land, Ray ix–x, 239
language, marked/unmarked 119–121, 120, 236
Larson, Brie 43–44
Latina women 146
Lawrence, Jennifer 80
Laxton, Beck 30
leadership 65, 77, 196
lean In 53
learning roadblocks x, xi–xii, xv, 3, 57–61, 150–155
292

legal/criminal justice systems 192–193; and social construction of gender 37, 49–51,
see also prisons, women in
lesbianism/lesbians 7, 147, 167, 201
Leslie, Sarah-Jane 39
Levin, Amy 197
Lewis, John 114, 115
LGBTQ 16, 19, 25, 181–182, 206, 214, 215, 236
Lincoln, Anne E. 78
literature, women’s 17
Little Miss Sunshine 44
Lockwood, Penelope 70
Lorber, Judith 33, 71
Lord of the Rings 43, 44
Lorde, Audre 92, 95, 181–182, 202, 237
McClintock, Mary Ann: “White Privilege” 11
McCormick, Katharine Dexter 173
Mcintosh, Peggy 95–97, 99–100
McRobbie, Angela 209
Mama’s Bail Out Day 215
man-hating 6–7
mansplaining 113–114, 236
marriage 9, 10, 10, 12, 152–153; and name-changing 69–70, 203; and
privilege/oppression 102, 104–105, 106–107; promotion programs 111–112; same-
sex xv, 105, 120–121, see also domestic violence
Martin, Courtney: “Girls Tweeting (Not Twerking) Their Way to Power” 201–202
Martin, Trayvon 97
Martinez, Amanda: Women’s Studies in Communication 176
Martinez, Elizabeth: “La Chicana” 146–147
masculinity 7, 19, 38, 51, 51, 52–53, 54, 81, 104, 163–165, 221, 237; and academic
fields 80; and bodies/ clothing 71, 73, 163; and class/ race 153–154, 163, 164–165;
four dictates of 153–154; and labor market 158–159; negatives outcomes of 56;
and privilege/oppression 92; ranking of 164; reimagining 55–57; violent 123, 164;
writing prompts on 82, see also gender ranking
maternity care see childbirth
maternity leave 156–157, 213
293

Matsuda, Mari 91, 103
Maxim 5, 6, 7, 203
Mayer, Marissa 156, 158
media x, 60, 73, 203, 207–208, 216–218; advertisements 76, 82, 207; feminine beauty
ideal in 165–168; and gender socialization 37; objectification of women in 16;
and rape culture 123; stereotypes/misconceptions of feminism in 5; and symbolic
annihilation 165, 239
medical industry 168–169
medical professions 63, 77–78
Men Can Stop Rape 221, 222
menstrual activism 16, 226
metacognition 103
Meyer, Jan ix–x, 239
middle class 125, 126, 153, 157, 161, 177; women/feminism 7–8, 13, 54, 147–148, 167,
211
military 13, 16
Milkman, Katherine 68–69
Miller, Claire Cain 159
Million Dollar Baby 44, 44
Mills, C. Wright 31–32; Sociological Imagination 32, 238–239
Miss Representation 217–218
Mock, Janet 203
MomsRising 213–214
Montoya, Bobby 36
Moraga, Cherie 147
moral development 58
Mormon church 42
Mother Nurture program 214–215
mother/motherhood 18, 58, 65, see also breastfeeding
Mott, Lucretia 11
Movement for Black Lives xv, 215
Ms. Magazine 8, 29, 118
Mukherjee, Sy 142–143
Murphy, Dave 100
mythical norm 92, 119, 121, 150, 210, 237
294

Nameberry 67
names, gendered 66–70
Nation 174
National Center for Education Statistics 212
National Organization for Women (NOW) 14, 198, 199
National Women’s Law Center 213
National Women’s Studies Association 19, 118, 197
Nature 60
Netflix 157–158
New York Times 48, 65–66, 129, 175, 207, 208
Newsweek (magazine) 5
Nguyen, Amanda 191, 192–193, 195
9to5 98, 199, 212
Norris, Michele 172
Nortman, Kara 156
NOW (National Organization for Women) 14, 198, 199
Obama, Barack 154, 175
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) xv, 104–105
objectification of women 13, 16, 223, 237
occupational segregation of labor 61–66, 62, 237; application exercise in 79; and
gender wage gap 64, 64; horizontal/ vertical 63; and leadership positions 65, 77;
and performance expectations 65–66; and traditional gender norms 63–64
O’Donnel, Sheila 208
Oedipus complex 58
office/clerical work 61, 62, 63, 75–77
Oh, Soo 47
Old School 82
online dating 184
oppression ix, 4, 91–93, 237, see also privilege/oppression
opting out 207–208, 237
Oscars 21, 22, 43–45, 44, 46, 218
Palin, Sarah 54
parents/parenting 29–31; and gender reveal parties 80–81; and naming of children
66–67, see also fatherhood; motherhood
part-time work 155–156
295

“Party with Consent/Sluts” 200
Passengers 80
patriarchy 7, 69–70, 102, 168–169, 237
Paycheck Fairness Act (proposed) 212
Peck, Emily 158
Penaluna, Regan: A Chronicle of Higher Education 20
Persky, Aaron 123
personal is political 8, 10, 70, 237
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA, 1996)
107, 110–112
Pesut, Hana 71, 73
P ew Research Center 9, 10, 50, 106
PFLAG: “Guide to Being a Straight Ally” 206
pharmaceutical profession 78
Pharr, Suzanne: “Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism” 7
Phillips, Lynn 121, 238
The Pill 172
the pill see contraception
Pincus, Gregory 173
Pineapple Express 82
Planned Parenthood 198, 199
Platoon 43, 44
police 49, 50, 193, 203, 219; racism of 97, 116, 210–211
politics/politicians 25, 154, 212, 234; and social construction of gender 47–49, 47, 48,
53, 54, see also 2016 presidential election
popular culture 3, 21–23, 37, 203, 216; and privilege/oppression 102; and social
construction of gender 42–45, 44, 46, see also Hollywood movies
pornography 17
postfeminism 209, 225, 237
poverty 15, 110–111, 112, 125–126, 151–152
power relations 4–5, 25, 91
Pratt, Chris 80
praxis, feminist ix, 191–228, 237; and activism 195, 197–205, 216–225; application
exercises on 225–226; and bodies 218–223; and community 196–197; and critical
thinking 195–196; and empowerment/ leadership 196; evaluating prior
296

knowledge on 225; framing definitions/related concepts in 194–205; and
intersectionality xiv, 153; and language/images/symbols 215–218;
misconceptions about 211–213, 224–225; resistance to 206–211; skills assessments
on 226–227; and social transformation/ action research 197; Spark Movement
case study 223–224; as threshold concept ix, 4, 194; and work/family 213–215;
writing prompts on 227–228
Precious 44
Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978) 14
prejudice 93–94
Pride at Work 214
prisons, women in 49–50, 213, 215
privilege/oppression 6, 7–8, 89–134, 193; application exercise on 131–132; and bodies
121–125; class mobility case study 125–131, 127, 128; defensiveness over/denial
of 99–101; definitions in 91–99, 237; discussion questions on 134; evaluating
prior knowledge on 131; feminist stance on 90; gender as 31; in health care
103–104; and ideologies 92, 94, 102–103; and institutions 39, 90, 101–102; and
internalized oppression/ horizontal hostility 52, 94–95, 235; and intersectionality
150, 151, 152, 158, 169, 181–182; and language/ images/symbols 113–121,
162–163; and marked/unmarked language 119–121, 120, 236; and maternity
care/childbirth 169, 170–171;
misconceptions with 93–94; and mythical norm 92; skills assessment on 132–134; as
threshold concept ix, 4, 31, 90–91; and Wikipedia 116–119; and work/family
104–113; writing prompts on 134
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 68
professional women 65, 156, 157–158
Project on Global Working Families: The Work, Family and Equity Index 108
property rights 12
PRWORA see Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
psychology/psychoanalysis 57–59, 223
public health 18, 63, 141, 142, 143, 172, 198
Putin, Vladimir 154
Quinn, Zoe 117
race/racism x, 4, 5, 8, 15–16, 54, 119, 237–238; and athletics 164–165; and
bigotry/prejudice 93–94; in criminal justice system 50; and education 130; and
feminine beauty ideal 165–168; and gender 31; and implicit bias 205; and
297

intersectionality 142, 143, 144, 146–147, 148, 151, 153–154, 159; and masculinity
152–153; and online dating 184; and the pill 173–174; in pop culture 22; and 2016
presidential election 176–177, 176, 179; in workplace 14, 78
Radeloff, Cheryl: Transforming Scholarship 2, 194, 195–196, 197
Ramsey, Franchesca 180
rape/sexual assault 14, 15, 192–193, 205; and activism 218–223, 222; “corrective” 201;
and victim-blaming 123, 125, 219
rape culture 16, 121–125, 134, 225, 238
rape jokes 124
Rape Shield Laws 14, 238
Reich, Robert 157–158
Reign, April 22, 218
religion/spirituality x, 12, 16; and gender socialization 37, 81; and social construction
of gender 41–42
reproductive rights/justice 13, 14, 203, 207, see also contraception; sex education
respectability politics 94–95
restrooms 13, 36, 97–98, 209–210
reverse discrimination 211–213
Richard Delgado: Critical Race Theory 19
Richards, Amy: Manifesta 17
Richardson, Sarah 60
Rise 192–193
Rock, John 173
Rodger, Elliot 117
Roe v. Wade (1973) 14, 238
Rohan, Liz 76
Roizen, Heidi 68
Ronen, Anat 1
Room 44
Roos, Patricia A. 159
Rosie the Riveter 1, 2
Roth, Louise 171
The Royal Tenenbaums 82
Russo test 21–22, 23
Russo, Vito: The Ce lluloid Closet 21–22
298

Sadker, David 38
Sakala, Carol 169, 170
Salon 70
Saluja, Kiran 143
same-sex marriage xv, 105, 120–121
Sandberg, Sheryl 54–55, 65–66; Lean In 53, 67–68
Sandoval, Chela 148
Sanger, Margaret 172–173, 198
Sarkeesian, Anita 21, 117, 207
Scheuble, Laurie 69
Schindler’s List 43, 44
Schlafly, Phyllis 12
Schmitz, Susanne 63
Schneider, Rob 114, 115
school shootings 82
Science (journal) 38–39
secretarial/clerical work 61, 62, 63, 75–77
Seely, Megan: Fight Like a Girl 197, 203, 228
Selma (film) 22
Senn, Charlene Y. 74
Serano, Julia 36
Seventeen Magazine 224
sex 238; and gender 32–36, 60–61
sex education 199
sex reassignment 35
sex work/trafficking 16–17
sex/gender system 33, 238
sexism 4, 7, 31, 37–38, 91, 211, 238; enlightened/retro 207; in politics 47; in pop
culture 21–22
sexist language 119–121
sexual assault see rape
Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act (2016) 192–193, 195
sexual harassment 15–16
Shaheen, Jeanne 192
Sherman, Richard 164–165
299

Shrewsbury, Carolyn 196
The Silence of the Lambs 43, 44
Sinonson, Jocelyn 215
slacktivism 201, 238
Slate 60
slut-shaming/-bashing 52, 74–75, 94, 203, 238
SlutWalks 219–220, 238
Smith, Barbara 148
social construction of gender 29–82; application exercises for 79–80; discussion
questions on 81; and education 37–39; and electoral politics 47–49, 47, 48;
evaluating prior knowledge of 78–79; and family/workplace 39–41, 40; and
gender norms/policing 51–52; and gender ranking 52–55; and gender
socialization 36–37; and learning roadblocks 57–61; and legal system 49–51; and
popular culture 42–45; and religion 41–42; and segregation of labor see
occupational segregation of labor; and sex/gender 32–36; skills assessment for
80–81; and social cues
31; and sport 45–46; as threshold concept ix, 4, 31; workplace case studies 75–78;
writing prompts on 81–82
social constructionism 31–32, 33, 51, 60–61, 238; anchoring topics through 61–75;
and bodies 70–75, 72, 73; and gender wage gap/segregation of labor 61–66, 62;
and gendered names/titles 66–70; and masculine identities 82
social justice 142, 143, 147, 194, 225, 227
social media 5, 117, 184, 200–201; and breastfeeding 141; and gender identity 35–36,
see also Facebook; Twitter
Social Science Research Network 68–69
Sociological Images (blog) 121
Spark Movement 223–224
Spelman, Elizabeth 149
sport 45–46, 89, 90, 116, 133, 133, 164–165, 182–183, 183, 212–213
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 11–12; “Declaration of Sentiments” 12
Stefancic, Jean: Critical Race Theory 19
Steinem, Gloria 120
Stevens, Lindsay M. 159
Stolakis, Kritsine: Where We Stand 42
Straight Outta Compton 218
300

Strasser, Annie-Rose 123
street harassment 180, 218–223
Stryker, Susan 33; Transgender History 35, 119
suffrage movement 12, 13, 23, 239
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program 25
Swarns, Rachel 105
Swingers 82
Switzer, Kathrine 89, 90, 131–132
symbolic annihilation 165, 239
Take Back the Night 14, 219, 220, 239
the Taliban 2
Tanenbaum, Leora: Slut! 52
tattooing 73–75
Tatum, Beverly Daniel 93
television 5, 43, 45
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) 25, 110–111
Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women (1966) 198
Thomas, Justice Clarence 15
Thorn, Chantal 74
threshold concepts xi, xiii, xiv–xv, 4, 145, 194; definitions in ix–x, xi, 3, 239;
interconnectedness of xiv
Time (magazine) 5, 6, 81
Title IX 14–15, 46, 90, 197, 212, 239
tomboys 53
tone policing 115
Tosh, Daniel 124
Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood, and American Culture 82
Townsend, Taylor 182–183, 183
Traister, Rebecca 219–220
trans* xv, 19, 35, 239
transgender 35, 119, 239; and activism 19; and Girl Scouts 36; parents 183; and public
restrooms 13, 36, 209–210; represented in pop culture 22
transnationalism 16–17, 19
transphobia 36, 209–210, 239
Tropic Thunder 82
301

Trump, Donald xv, 109, 115, 175–179
Truth, Sojourner 145–146
Tuchman, Gaye 165, 239
Turner, Brock 123
Twitter 114, 115, 117, 184, 200, 201, 202–203, 217, 239
2016 presidential election 175–179, 176, 177, 178, 182
ugly stereotype 6
UN Women 217
Unforgiven 43, 44
universities 48–49, 98, 100, 220
U.S. Congress 47, 48
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Office of Minority Health 103–104
U.S. Department of Labor 63
U.S. Supreme Court xv, 14, 15–16
Valenti, Jessica 6, 124, 209; Full Frontal Feminism 9, 51, 203; “How to End” 129–130
Vallas, Rebecca 151
Van Wilder 82
veterinary profession 77–78
victim-blaming 123, 125, 219
video games 117
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, 1994) 14, 239
violence, gender-based 14, 16–17, 25–26n3, 57, 82, 122, 209, 211; and intersectionality
152, 153, 183; organizations combating 192–193, 198–199, see also domestic
violence; rape/sexual assault; rape culture
Von D, Kat 75
voting rights see suffrage movement
Wade, Lisa 52, 56, 181
wage inequality see gender wage gap
Walk a Mile in Her Shoes 220–221
Walker, Rebecca: “Becoming the Third Wave” 16
Warner, Judith 208
Washington Post 154
Way, Niobe 56
Weber, Lynn 102–103
Weiss, Sasha 202
302

Wellman, David 93–94
Wendell, Susan 152
West, Lindy 124
WGS (Women’s and Gender Studies) ix–xv, 2, 17–21, 29, 146, 224–225; and
community 196–197; and critical thinking 195–196; and
empowerment/leadership 196; history of 5, 17–19; signature pedagogies of xiii;
and social transformation/action research 197; threshold concepts in see
threshold concepts; and ways of seeing/ thinking/knowing x–xi, 2–4
white privilege 95–97, 98–99
White Ribbon Campaign 220
whitesplaining 114–116
Wikipedia 116–119, 134
Williams, Joan 65
Williams, Kristi 112
Willis, Ellen 21
Wise, Tim 98–100
Wolf, Naomi 168
women of color 8, 13, 54, 146–147, 212, 220; and childbirth 171–172; and
contraception 172–174; and education/scholarship 19; and feminine beauty ideal
165–168; violence against 198–199, 203; and wage inequality 14
Women’s and Gender Studies see WGS
women’s liberation movement 10, 13–15, 17, 29, 119, 146, 147, 194, 206–207, 218, 239
Women’s March on Washington (2017) 8, 24
W omen’s Sports Foundation 212–213
women’s studies 17–19, see also WGS
Women’s Veterinary Leadership Initiative 77
work–life balance 108, 155–157, 158, 214, 239
work/workplace x, 9–10, 14, 16, 61–66, 68, 207; and diversity-valuing behaviors 210;
and feminist praxis 213–214; feminization case studies 75–78; and horizontal
segregation of labor 63, 155, 158–159, 235; and intersectionality 155–162; job
interviews 54–55; and paid leave 39, 108–109, 109, 112, 155, 156–158, 213; and
privilege/oppression 104, 105–113; and social construction of gender 39–41, 40,
53, 54; and women in the labor market 105–106, see also occupational
segregation of labor
working from home 156–157
303

Working Mother magazine 157
working-class women 8, 13, 166–167
World Health Organization (WHO) 170, 183
Wright, Martha 11
XO Jane 204
Yahoo 116, 156–157, 158
Yamato, Gloria 91
Yousafzai, Malala 1, 2
Zambrana, Ruth Enid 154–155
Zeilinger, Julie 100, 201; A Little F’d Up 9, 203–204
Zero Dark Thirty 44
Zettel, Jen 38
Zimmerman, George 97
Zittleman, Karen R. 38
Zurn, Rhonda 118
Zwick, Rebecca 128
304

目录
Title 6
Copyright 7
Contents 9
PREFACE 10
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 19
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 22
CHAPTER 2 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF
GENDER 52
CHAPTER 3 PRIVILEGE AND OPPRESSION 117
CHAPTER 4 INTERSECTIONALITY 172
CHAPTER 5 FEMINIST PRAXIS 225
GLOSSARY 270
INDEX 282
305

Title
Copyright
Contents
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 2 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER
CHAPTER 3 PRIVILEGE AND OPPRESSION
CHAPTER 4 INTERSECTIONALITY
CHAPTER 5 FEMINIST PRAXIS
GLOSSARY
INDEX

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