The NiqaBitch video protests France's burqa ban
Tags: art/music, bodies, crime/law/deviance, gender, immigration/citizenship, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, religion, sex/sexuality, burqa, burqa ban, chandra talpade mohanty, femininity, feminism, male gaze, niqa, postcolonialism, racism, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 2:17 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip features a protest against France's recent Burqa ban, which went into force in 2011. The new law stipulates that anyone caught wearing the niqab or burqa in public could face a fine of €150, or be forced to take lessons in French citizenship. The performance of the two women in the video challenges the resistance/subordination binary, which typically frames discussions about what it means when non-Western women don the veil. By sexualizing their veiled bodies, the women challenge ideas about whether wearing a veil is necessarily an expression of women's oppression, just as it challenges whether wearing hot pants and high heels is necessarily an expression of women's ability to resist oppression (Note that the ban went into force after the video was made). Moreover, by performing a sexualized femininity they are apparently able to navigate the streets of Paris without being disciplined, and their short walk raises a number of provocative questions. First, to what extent are the two women able to “break” the law because they have garnered the approval of the heterosexual male gaze? How might people react to these women if they did not fit the archetype of attractive females? This clip provides an excellent window into Chandra Mohanty's acclaimed paper “Under Western Eyes.” Mohanty takes issue with the way that Western feminists assume that wearing the veil is a symbol of oppression and fail to give a voice to the women who wear these clothes. It is unfair for Westerners to assume that the way they themselves dress is a symbol of empowerment without unpacking the systems of patriarchy that inform Western modes of dress. Viewers can also consider whether Westerners have the authority to make judgments about the way non-Westerners dress. Does the government have the right to create laws that ban certain styles of dress? If so, why aren't the religious symbol laws enforced for nuns who wear veils? Submitted By: Pat Louie
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A man considers how he protects himself from sexual violence.
Tags: gender, inequality, violence, male privilege, patriarchy, rape, rape culture, sexual assault, victim blaming, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 4.40 Access: YouTube Summary: This video clip, which was produced by a senior-seminar class at James Madison University focused on the sociology of interpersonal violence, exposes the lived realities of navigating a rape culture under patriarchy. By asking women and men what they do on a daily basis to protect themselves from being sexually violated, the video highlights the myriad strategies that women are socialized to employ in an attempt to protect themselves. Men, by and large, do not think about the threat of sexual violence in their lives, nor do most men, on a daily basis, do anything to protect themselves from such a threat. This is not to say that men are never raped or assaulted, but to highlight the realities of a culture in which women, but not men, are systematically targeted for acts of sexual aggression. Violence is one resource used in the reproduction of gender inequality, and as the video points out 100% of women experience the threat of that violence. Many men do think about this because it is not an issue that affects their daily lives directly. Many women don’t think about it in these terms because men’s violence against women is normalized under patriarchy. Importantly, the video is not intended to demonstrate things women "should" be doing. Instead, it highlights the realities of women's lives. Whatever decisions a woman makes regarding her safety, they are arguably the right decisions for her, but victim blaming persists when it comes to men's violence against women. As the video notes, it is never the victim's fault. We are often quick to ask what a woman did or didn’t do following an assault, but we rarely ask why a man assaulted a woman; nor do we ask why acts of men’s violence against women are normalized within our culture. Something to bring to the discussion is the fact that although women are targeted for acts of aggression by men, and although women's lives are constrained in important and material respects as a result of that, we still expect women to bear the brunt of the effort to challenge gender inequality. Men, as the recipients of male privilege (including the "privilege” of not having to carry the weight of being systematically targeted for acts of sexual aggression), have cultural space and influence to stand up—as allies to women—and challenge the patriarchal oppression of women, including men's violence against women. Although not all men are actively engaged in efforts to reinforce patriarchy and gender inequality, all men receive the conferred advantages of male privilege under patriarchy (but not all men have equal access to the patriarchal dividend as a result of other aspects of identity). As a result, men who are not actively anti-sexist are passively reaping the benefits of a sexist system. This video can stand as a springboard for class discussion about interpersonal violence (specifically men's violence against women), the rape culture, patriarchy, male privilege, victim blaming, and strategies of resistance. Submitted By: Matthew Ezzell Tags: children/youth, crime/law/deviance, gender, media, sex/sexuality, masculinity, patriarchy, sexism, socialization, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 0:30 Access: YouTube Summary: Following Judith Lorber, patriarchy can be defined as simultaneously the process, structure, and ideology of women's subordination. Sexism, then, denotes anything that promotes or reinforces the system through which this persistent subordination operates. People often have trouble working with formal definitions, so illustrations from the real world, such as this thirty-second commercial from Allstate, can be helpful. The ad features an insurance agent chatting with a homeowner, who is quite pleased with the tree house he recently built in his backyard. "The boys love it," he boasts, "They are up there day and night!" Then with deft comedic timing, the agent informs his prideful client that the boys love their new tree house primarily because it looks into their neighbor, Mrs. Koslowski's, window. It is important to move beyond simply calling commercials distasteful. To articulate why this Allstate ad is sexist is to articulate how it contributes to the systemic subordination of women. It is an exercise in describing how patriarchy works. As I see it, the sexist problems with this commercial are of two sorts. First, the narrative relies on a very problematic myth about the irrepressible sexual desires of boys and men. Plainly stated, Allstate has conjured a scenario of three prepubescent boys in their new tree house with binoculars, but they are not there to play as children. Rather, viewers are to conclude that their incipient male sexual drive is leading them to seize upon a rare voyeuristic opportunity, and a non-consensual one at that. This particular representation of men is sexist because it attempts to justify an abusive and exploitative pattern of behavior among men as it pertains to women. While there is really no evidence that men's libidos ever render them incapable of moral behavior, it is fairly clear that cultures which assure men they have irrepressible sexual urges give men permission to act as if their libido occasionally renders them incapable of moral behavior. But if the first problem has to do with justifying predatory behavior among men, the second problem is the commercial's claim about what constitutes an appropriate response to men who behave as sexual predators. There is a sense in the ad that viewers are witnessing a family memory in progress, perhaps a funny story that might some day be told at a party. But it's important not to lose sight of the fact that the boys are engaging in behavior that is both morally and legally reprehensible (real world examples can be found here). The boys are committing a serious crime; yet the tone of the commercial assures the viewer that it is just another banal instance of boys being boys. Note that the agent is laughing, and while the father is clearly uncomfortable, his response is to spray the boys with a hose. On this last point, the commercial is sexist because it downplays the seriousness of this subordinating behavior among men. To paraphrase sociologist Michael Kimmel, the often made conclusion that "boys will be boys" really means that boys and men will always be violent, rapacious animals. Such a conclusion is a sexist posture of resignation. Submitted By: Lester Andrist
A Georgia high school holds its first-ever integrated prom in 2013.
Tags: inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, integration, segregation, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 2:17 Access: ABC news Summary: As ABC news reported, "For any teenager, prom is a monumental night, but for students at a Georgia high school, it has been more than 40 years in the making. For the first time ever, students at Wilcox County High School, in Rochelle, Ga. danced together at a prom that wasn’t segregated. For decades, the school board has avoided officially endorsing prom festivities, instead relying on parents to host and control invitations leading to year after year of two dances — one for white students, and one for the black students. Students have lobbied over the years to end the practice. This year, a group of Wilcox County seniors decided to take matters into their own hands." The students successfully organized their own prom event, attended by "nearly half" of the school's seniors. However, white parents and/or students organized another segregated whites-only prom. This serves as an example of how racial segregation continues to be reproduced in everyday life through the actions of students and parents, and supported through institutions (i.e. schools). These different actions illustrate competing racial ideologies, or the frameworks for understanding race that either legitimate and justify racial difference or challenge existing race relations. While we do not hear from proponents of the racially segregated prom, viewers can speculate on how and why those individuals might explain and justify their actions. Viewers can be encouraged to reflect on how racial segregation continues to persist in neighborhoods and cultural events such as this prom. Like many other videos here on race/ethnicity, it serves as another example of how race continues to shape social outcomes today. Submitted By: Vicky Herbel
Kevin Kline learns how to practice gender
Tags: gender, achieved status, gender socialization, masculinity, performativity theory, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1997 Length: 3:35 Access: YouTube Summary: Many gender scholars gravitate towards the concept of gender practices because the explanatory model is so multifaceted. First, practicing gender captures how gender is something most men and women do regularly in their daily lives. However, the concept of gender practices also highlights how these ways of doing gender are socially structured or socially institutionalized because, somewhat like the rules of a sport, socially-shared normative guidelines set the parameters for how we practice gender. Lastly, most individuals become so well-practiced in their gender, it is done reflexively or without thinking, which explains how gender is ever-present and especially-salient in our lives (yet so regularly overlooked and seemingly inconsequential). However, what would happen if a man never learned his gender practices? In this clip from the movie In & Out, Kevin Kline uses a self-help audio book to help him learn to be masculine. It teaches him to more effectively monitor his gender practices—thus drawing on humor to illuminate the subtle ways gender dictates much of our daily behavior. Furthermore, because this example revolves around the interconnections between dancing and masculinity, the clip can spark discussion about manhood and ethnicity, especially since dancing is a gendered practice that exemplifies masculine athletic ability and prowess in many cultures. Submitted By: Jason Eastman Tags: capitalism, corporations, knowledge, marx/marxism, media, political economy, theory, censorship, fox, ideology, monsanto, news, 00 to 05 mins, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2003; 1999 Length: 10:20; 4:17 Access: YouTube (clip from The Corporation) YouTube (clip from The Insider) Summary: This pair of excerpts exposes corporate censorship of the news via a documentary (The Corporation) and through a Hollywood film (The Insider). In recent years, the news media has become increasingly concentrated and controlled by corporations. The implications of this is that corporations are responsible to shareholders and must earn high profits. This concentration of corporate news has led to conflicts of interests when a news source wants to air a story that could hurt their advertisers or their shareholders. The first clip from The Corporation shows this process. In 1997, investigative journalists Steve Wilson and Jane Akre of Fox News, had prepared a story about Monsanto and the negative impacts of their bovine growth hormones (e.g. their milk was potentially carcinogenic to humans). Monsanto was an advertiser for the Fox News channel, and the company threatened to both sue Fox and pull their ads. Because this would have cost Fox News significant advertising revenues, Fox decided to edit the news story so Monsanto would not pull their ads. The clip describes the process of 83 rewrites that either removed or minimized any negative effects of the hormone, until the journalists were ultimately fired and the story never aired. The second clip, from The Insider, features Al Pacino arguing how a story at 60 Minutes was being censored because of financial interests. The film is based on a true story about a whistle blower who worked for Big Tobacco and CBS was hesitant to air the interview on 60 Minutes because it might jeopardize the sale of CBS to Westinghouse Electric. Both clips illustrate the political economy of news media and Marx's concept of ideology, in which ideas and knowledge reflect the interest of the ruling class. Marx argues that the class having the means of material production (e.g. technology, money, labor, tools, etc.) also has control over the means of intellectual production (newspapers, schools, books, broadcast media, etc). One can see Marx’s claim come to life with the influence that Monsanto had over Fox News. Corporate interests shaped what news was aired, and a Fox executive later told the journalists "the news is what we say it is"; when the journalists used the courts to fight back, a Florida appeals court ruled that falsifying the news is not against the law. In both cases, financial interests shaped what constituted the news, and how it was presented--ultimately shaping knowledge in the interest of the dominant class. Submitted By: Avery Winston and Paul Dean Gustav experiences modern life as an iron cage. Tags: rural/urban, theory, weber, gesellschaft, iron cage, rationalization, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1965 Length: 4:51 Access: YouTube Summary: This short cartoon comes from Hungarian animation. There are no words, but it skillfully and humorously illustrates the rationality and iron cage of modern life. It follows the main character, Gustav, from the end of his work day as a drone through his evening as he slowly descends into isolated madness. From a Weberian perspective, we might view the organization of modern urban life, with its highly efficient bureaucracies, traffic systems, and living spaces as overly rationalized spaces of social life. People are driven not by traditions, values, or emotions but rather by calculated efficiencies, and experience life in isolation from other humans. These systems of efficiency, calculation, and control constitute Weber's notion of an iron cage. It also works as an example of gesellschaft, where individuals act in their own interest (in contrast to gemeinschaft, where individual action is shaped via community norms and interaction). Ultimately, this existence drives Gustav to (unsuccessfully) attempt suicide and then to try to escape the monotony through alcohol and sleeping in the street, only to find he cannot escape the iron cage. Viewers can be encouraged to identify the elements of daily life that reflect the rationalization, iron cage, and gesellschaft. Submitted By: Sydney Hart Youth poets critique the "Oppression Olympics" Tags: art/music, intersectionality, lgbtq, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2012 Length: 4:12 Access: YouTube Summary: This poem, performed by two young women in the youth poetry competition Brave New Voices, is an excellent way to introduce students to the concepts of intersectionality and Oppression Olympics. "Oppression Olympics is a term used when two or more groups compete to prove themselves more oppressed than each other." Intersectionality is the theory of thought that draws attention to the ways in which inequalities are intersecting and interlocking, and thus proves the difficulties associated with comparing one group's experience with oppression to another's. The poem specifically chronicles what happens when members of the African American community and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community engage in comparisons of who has had it worse. While the practice of comparing the harms of racism to homophobia isn't new, as sociologist Eric Anthony Grollman points out in this blog post, "the supposed black-versus-gay divide is old, and frankly a little tired." Indeed, as Grollman and the youth poets show, the experiences and activist histories of these two marginalized groups have much in common. Such insight supports what the bisexual Caribbean-American activist poet June Jordan wrote in her book, Some of Us Did Not Die: "Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine." In addition to pairing this video with Jordan's work, the clip would work well with scholarship by other intersectional thinkers such as Audre Lorde, Allan Johnson, and Patricia Hill Collins. Submitted By: Kendra Barber George receives a massage from a man Tags: emotion/desire, foucault, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, 00 to 05 mins Length: 1:57 Year: 1991 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip is from the Seinfeld episode entitled "The Note," which is the first episode of the show's third season (note: the audio is low; turn up the volume when screening this clip). After receiving a massage from a man, George shows up at Jerry's apartment, clearly distraught. George reveals to Jerry that he thinks he might have had an erection during the massage and he fearfully exclaims: "That's the sign! The test…if a man makes it move." Jerry reassures George saying, "That's not the test. Contact is the test. If it moves as a result of contact." This clip can be used to teach several concepts. First, the clip can be use to illustrate how sexuality is not a fixed concept; it is fluid and not easily defined. For example, is sexuality defined by sexual desire? Sexual behavior? Sexual identity? In this case, George focuses on sexual desire. Despite not identifying as gay or engaging in sexual behavior with men, George wonders if his erection is a sign of same-sex desire, a desire presumably unbeknownst to him. Jerry shifts the focus by narrowing in on behavior, stating that the sign of gay entails physical contact that results in sexual arousal. This discussion points to the complexity of sexuality. Viewers can be encouraged to consider various scenarios in order to highlight this complexity. For example, if George dates women, has sex with women, self-identifies as straight, yet is aroused by a man, is he gay? What if he identifies as gay but has sex with women? Viewers can further be encouraged to question our cultural obsession with defining sexuality in the first place. In his book The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault calls this a discourse of knowledge and, similarly, power. The clip also illustrates how heterosexuality gets renormalized in our culture through social interactions—that is, there is no need for George and Jerry to debate the definition of being straight. Presumably, that's just known and normal. Finally, the clip also supports elements of Michael Kimmel's concept of masculinity as homophobia, or the notion that men are terrified to be gay or, even more, be perceived as gay. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp Tags: class, inequality, knowledge, marx/marxism, theory, class consciousness, privilege, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2001 Length: 1:51 (00:00-01:51) Access: SouthParkStudios.com Summary: In his famous work The German Ideology, Karl Marx talks about class consciousness in the context of the proletariat (working class) and the bourgeoisie (ruling class). Class consciousness is the state of being aware of one's own social or economic rank in society, and privilege is "a special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all." The American animated sitcom South Park is well-known for its humor, satire, and social commentary. In this clip, after Butters, Cartman, and Token present their science projects to the class, their teacher gives them each a grade for their projects. Butters receives a "check" for his fake volcano, Cartman receives a "check minus" for his taped together pen and pencil, and Token receives a "check plus" for his computer animated weather pattern predictor program that he showed from his laptop. After Token gets his grade, Cartman protests, criticizing Token's grade specifically and the check system as a whole. Cartman argues that, because Token is rich, he has access to more resources, enabling him to make a more sophisticated science project compared to the other kids in the class. The rest of the students agree with Cartman, knowing that their own lack of resources will inhibit them from getting ahead in the class. Aware that their socioeconomic status is holding them back, the students demonstrate class consciousness. Token is confused when his classmates call him rich, who cite the size of Token's home and Token's name brand clothes as evidence of his high class status. Token's confusion shows that he is unaware of his privilege, unable to see the numerous ways he has benefited from his socioeconomic status in society. Submitted By: Avery Winston |
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