Why Keeping Little Girls Squeaky Clean Could Make Them Sick →
A fantastic example of the intersections of nature/nurture— something I was just trying to find new examples of for my class that is struggling with the sex/gender distinction this week!
There’s a growing body of research showing that children exposed to lots of germs early in life are less likely to develop allergies, asthma or autoimmune disorders as they grow up.
Girls are expected to stay squeaky clean while boys are encouraged to play outside, Clough argues. And that might explain why women have higher rates of certain illnesses.
U.S. to allow women into combat? A move Canada made decades ago →
It may also surprise some Canadians — and likely many Americans — that Canada has allowed women into all military trades, including combat arms, for 22 years. The only exception was submarine service, a final bastion that fell in 2001. About a dozen other countries also allow women into active ground combat roles, including Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, France, Germany, Serbia, New Zealand and Israel.
But the United States doesn’t. At least, that’s the official policy. The reality is that it’s happening anyway. In Iraq and Afghanistan, officers don’t formerly “assign” women to combat units; they “attach” them, which skirts the policy while exposing the women to the same dangers as the men.
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Women at War - Women's Roles During the Civil War →
Another great example of how tensions over competing definitions of masculinity and femininity are a part of the lead-up to war.
“Moreover, gender tensions over competing definitions of manly and womanly comportment, worked to escalate the sectional conflict. Attacks on the manhood and womanhood of one’s political opponents — the charge that they were not “true” men and women — were a staple of antebellum politics, and such attacks, which became more pointed in the 1850s, greatly eroded the trust between the North and South. Indeed, by the eve of war, many Northerners and Southerners had come to believe that the gender conventions of the two regions were antagonistic and incompatible.”
Fantastic Gender & Politics teaching resources from the International Museum of Women’s “Women, Power and Politics” exhibit.
What is the internet? What does “@” mean? It’s impossible for us in 2011 to think of even asking those questions, but just 17 years ago, people did. This is a great example of how much our lives are embedded within specific historical and cultural contexts.
Haunting Images of Detroit’s Decline
A new book called Ruins of Detroit displays Detroit’s downtown landmarks in decay: Abandoned hotels, houses and schools line the streets as a reminder of the city’s economic downfall over the past century. The devastation takes on an eery beauty, as captured by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.
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"A Teachable Moment in Tucson: Guns, Mental Illness, and Masculinity" by Jackson Katz →
“Much of what needs to happen is an honest conversation about issues related to masculinity and violence. Many people have circled around this subject, especially in terms of the intensifying debate about guns. The Tucson massacre has revived debate (for the moment) about our country’s gun laws, and the astounding power of the NRA to block commonsense regulations. Some people go beyond the power of the gun lobby and ask larger questions about our culture, such as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who asks repeatedly: what’s the obsession with guns? But few if any voices in mainstream media have discussed the connection between guns, violence, and American ideals of manhood.”
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Teaching Bias, World Views and Social Location →
“You have a worldview. You mistake your version of reality for THE version of reality. This is a challenging concept to teach students, particularly in an intro class, especially during the first week of class. However, if you can plant this seed in the first week and keep coming back to it throughout the semester it will pay dividends.
There Are Multiple Realities.
To students who have never taken a sociology course before this can seem like some Matrix stuff. But this concept is so central to everything we teach in sociology. When you tell a student about a national trend or some other fact that is true in aggregate, the student is likely to disbelieve it if the fact runs counter to their lived experience. For example, if I tell students that most Americans who use welfare only do so for a short period of time, but they know someone who they perceive to be “gaming the system” the social fact can ring untrue to them.
Let’s stop for a second and break down this reaction. If what the teacher says is incongruent with what the student has experienced as reality it must be untrue. Central to this line of thinking is the idea that there is a single version of reality; that there is a single truth. If you hope to challenge your students to see beyond their limited worldview and use sociological facts to inform them as they develop a new worldview, you must FIRST get them to accept that worldviews exist and they have one.
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So many great documentaries, too little classroom time…
This semester I’m planning to use the following documentaries in my classes. I really wish I had the time to show more— and I’m actually looking for a few more documentaries to show in my Gender & Politics class if anyone has suggestions.
Sociology of the Family:
Big Mama (2000): About a grandmother raising her grandchild within the welfare system.
People Like Us (1999): About families and class differences. Class is always a difficult thing to talk about so I hope the film helps. I’m using this in conjunction with Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods.
The Business of Being Born (2008): A fantastic film about the medicalization of birth in the U.S.
Motherhood Manifesto (2006): The stories of different mothers in American, covering issues of work/family policy, welfare, politics, childcare etc. all interspersed with great old film footage of family life.
Consuming Kids (2008): A film about marketing and advertising to children
Power and Control (2010): This is a new domestic violence documentary I’m using to replace one from the 1990s. I’m going to show it at the beginning of our week on domestic violence, hoping this will encourage discussions about this issue.
Gender and Politics:
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008): About the women’s peace movement in post-war Liberia. One of my all time favorite documentaries. If you haven’t seen it yet, do it now.
Maquilapolis (2006): This movie is another gem— about factory workers in Mexico, gender, and U.S-Mexican labor relations.
Remembering the Forgotten King: Thoughts on Breadth of MLK Legacy
A fantastic essay written by a colleague— worth a read today!
King connected his public anti-war position to what he saw as a desperate need to develop a new plan for addressing urban violence, poverty, and alienation. “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos,” King told the Riverside audience, “without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government.” For the rest of his life, King admonished President Lyndon Johnson’s contradictory goals of trying to create a Great Society at home, based on a “war on poverty,” while he spent millions of dollars and sacrificed thousands of lives in a war against Communism in Vietnam.
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Changes to women’s pathway to citizenship? As mothers and/or as serving their country?
Ban On Women In Combat Is Discriminatory, High-Level Military Panel States
Women serving officially in combat (as opposed to the unofficial combat roles they’ve held) has interesting implications for women’s citizenship— will women be seen as citizens through their ability to serve their country and/or their ability to reproduce?
“Women currently make up 14.6 percent of the active-duty military. Since 2001, 137 female service members have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 1994, women have been barred from serving in units at the level of battalion and below that engage in direct ground combat.
A draft report by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, a group established by Congress in 2009, concludes that the current policy is outdated and discriminatory. Commissioners include 24 senior retired and active-duty members of the military, in addition to leaders in the business community and academia.”
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