Blog Archives
Natural Bodies Are Hard Work
by Lisa Wade, PhD @ Sociological Images
We commonly hear claims that men are naturally more muscular and physically intimidating than women. “It’s a biological fact,” someone might say. If that were true, though, we wouldn’t have to work so incredibly hard to make it so.
@IllMakeItMyself sent in this great example of the way in which we are pushed to force our bodies into a gender binary that we pretend is natural. On the upper right part of the Men’s Health cover, it reads: “Add 15lb of muscle” and, right next door on the Women’s Health cover, it reads “5 ways to lose 15 lbs.” Read the rest of this entry
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Cross-Dressing Pleasure and Pain
Miss Rose Beauty Pageant
Musing on the enchantments of the cross-dressing “Miss Rose Beauty Pageant,” artist and transvestite, Grayson Perry opines,
That’s when the fantasies take flight… (but also) I thought: ooh, there’s a lot of pain in this room…They were doing their best to meet their own very emotional needs…
I slightly cringe when people say “Oh, it’s just a bit of fun,” because these guys are risking often their marriages, their careers, their relationship with their children and their neighbors — not to mention their bank balance sometimes, with the size of their wardrobes.
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Don’t Be Kind To Everyone
By Sandra Arias
What did your parents teach you that you won’t teach your kids?
A young woman answered, “My parents always told me to be kind to everyone. I won’t teach my children that. It’s not always good to be kind to everyone.”
She was so young, but she knew this. Why did it take me so long to learn?
That’s from Debra Anna Davis’ piece, “Betrayed by the Angel.”
It takes me back to a time when I too was young, shy, and intimidated by boys. I didn’t know why I was a target. I was polite, spoke when spoken to, and never caused a scene. I thought being a good girl would keep problems at bay. But it made me weak.
I am a different person today.
If only I had known then what I know now. Read the rest of this entry
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Gender MashUp at Anime Conventions
By Demon Ted
Wanna see a gender-bending mashup? The world turned round? Or at least halfway around? Then check out an Anime Convention.
Anime is Japanese cartooning — a stylized way of drawing that appeals to every gender. At the conventions fans dress as their favorite characters. It’s called “cosplay” from costume + play.
The conventions are remarkably egalitarian, and possibly tilting toward matriarchy.
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Girls Hit On Guys Like (Some) Guys Hit On Girls
Luckily, most men already know that when approaching a woman you’re interested in, the best move does not involve leering, catcalling, groping or acting the know-it-all.
Here’s a video for those who don’t. Reversing sexual come-ons:
Also, The Guardian’s Leah Green reverses gender roles in London. Each gender-flipping encounter is based on real experiences women have tweeted about on @EverydaySexism, a project chronicling women’s everyday encounters with sexism. Read the rest of this entry
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Pose Once to Look Female, Again to Look Male
Erika Linder plays both male and female in JC Jeans commercial.
Sex is biological: testosterone, estrogen and xx or xy chromosomes…
But gender is performance.
The act is easy to see when boys put on a tough guise and girls act sexy, because sexy on little girls and tough on little boys just looks a little weird. (Think “Little Miss” beauty pageants, for instance.)
But then we grow up and what had once been play and mimicry begins to feel natural and normal.
Then along comes model, Erika Linder, posing one way to look female and another to appear male. Read the rest of this entry
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Girls Chasing Boys Chasing Girls
Ingrid Michaelson’s “Girls Chase Boys” is a tribute to Roger Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible.”
A tribute. And a commentary on changing times.
When I first saw “Simply Irresistible” years ago, it seemed pretty natural and normal. But after seeing Michaelson’s gender bending switch — and thu more feminist eyes — I see so much more.
In “Simply Irresistible” the girls are dolled up to passively attract.
In “Girls Chase Boys” it’s the guys:
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How I Overcame My Misogyny
By Laura Wolff
I was a pre-teen bitch.
I wasn’t exceptionally mean or catty — in fact, I was an anti-bullying advocate. But my deeply internalized sexism led me to disdain anything and everything considered “girly,” from “Twilight” to dresses to teenybopper Disney stars. And the girls who enjoyed them. Read the rest of this entry
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Do Men Want Women To Ask Them Out?
Some guys wonder why women don’t ask men out. Some women wonder how men would feel if they did. So I asked guys in my women’s studies class for their thoughts.
Out of a class of 46 I’ve just got nine men (this is women’s studies, after all) — and only seven of them showed up in time to take the survey, so this is a very small sampling. And between a willingness to take that class and living in the Bay Area, they may be more liberal than most.
Here’s what I asked them:
Has a woman ever asked you out? If yes, what did you think and why? If no, would you like a woman to ask you out, or would it make you feel uncomfortable? Should it be socially acceptable for women to ask men out?
And here’s what they said: Read the rest of this entry
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How Women Experience The World
In case you’ve missed it, the video below shows the life of a woman — you might say an extremely bad day in the life of a woman — through the body of a man.
In this gender reversal you’ll see things, ranging from a passively obedient man, to a man being dismissed (men shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads about important stuff) to sexual harassment and assault.
It all may be more jarring when a man experiences it. Partly because we can grow numb to things we are used to seeing and hearing about. So this video breaks the taken-for-grantedness of it. And, since these things don’t typically affect men, they don’t really have to think about it. Read the rest of this entry
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