Terms and People List up to 11/13

Sex

a medical term designating a certain combination of gonads, chromosomes, external gender organs,

secondary sex characteristics, and hormonal balances

Genetic Sex

DNA testing for "male"—XY chromosomes or "female"—XX chromosomes

Phenotypic Sex

internal and external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, and hormones & receptors—all of which morph over the life of a subject

Intersex Person(s)

umbrella term for individual(s) born with the condition of having physical sex markers (chromosomes, gonads, genitals, or hormones) that are neither clearly male nor female

Gender

a complex system of roles, expressions, identities, performances, and more that are given gendered meaning by a society and usually assigned to people based on the appearance of their sex

characteristics at birth.

Gender Identity

how an individual expresses gender, regardless of the binary male or female label you were assigned at birth. It can influence how you choose to present yourself through your appearance and behaviors, although it is not necessarily stable over time and can fluctuate throughout your life.

Sexuality

Encompasses all aspects of a person's sexual behavior, including gender identity, orientation, attitudes, and activity in the social world

Scopophilia

The pleasure of looking at a person or object

Odalisque

reclining female nude with attributes of the "Orient" (Ottoman Empire and/or Middle East) or conspicuous ornament

Contrapposto

"counterpoise;" depicting a human figure standing with most of its weight on one leg, with the other leg bent at the knee, which causes a tilt in hips, shoulders, and head

Popular Culture (historical definition)

Until the 20th century, popular culture was always associated with folk culture or subcultures, such as youth cultures or ethnic cultures. (From the 20th c. forward, popular culture may begin as the collective creation of a subculture, but it is then appropriated by the market system and brought into the marketplace of commodity culture.)

Mass or Commercial Culture

Media objects, entertainment and leisure, fashion and trends, and

linguistic conventions that embody the most broadly shared meanings of a social system. In a capitalist mode of economic production, popular culture is seen as a set of commodities produced

through capitalistic processes driven by a profit motive and sold to consumers

Other Important Terms

-Heroic male nude v. Ephebic male nude

-Naturalism

-Naked v. Nude (nude is "transformed" from living, "real," body; idealized, re-made, artistic form)

-Active v. Passive Gaze

Culture Industry

Term of culture theory defined in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) What and How the Culture Industry is Produced:

• A commodity (or image thereof); any good or service that is exchanged between people; YOU BUY IT

• Produced by a corporation for profit—actually "made" with labor of people who do not own the product after its production

• Standardized product mass produced using industrial reproduction; must maximize profit; predictability ensues

• Reproduce the "real" world; films, television, video games, etc simulate the physical world

• Consumed with little or NO EFFORT; requires only passive involvement from spectator/user; opposed to subject's "work" time or labor time

• Satiates subject: brings pleasure that dissipates quickly

• Monopolies of industry (telecommunications; steel; oil; chemicals; entertainment— what is the difference?)

Commodity Fetishism

The social and economic phenomenon where the social value of goods is perceived as inherent to the objects themselves rather than as a result of the social labor that produced them

• Consumer goods are imbued with symbolic, "mystical" meanings, instead of their use value or the labor behind their creation.

• Commodities relate to one another in a social manner via exchange value; people are alienated from the social labor and value of the consumer good.

Ideology

Represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence; its material existence is the "given" way of social practices and behaviors in any society. These social practices work to "reproduce the conditions of production and the relations of production. (Louis Althusser).

Interpellation

The process by which ideological systems call out to social subjects and tell them about their place in the system. In popular culture, it refers to how cultural products address consumers and recruit them into a particular ideological position (Louis Althusser).

Naked body vs. Nude in art

Using natural materials—stone, linen, pigments, etc.—the artist transforms the naked, physical body into an ideal form, wherein any primal, sexual desire for the Other is sublimated into a "transcendent work" of art.

Naked

De-formed, actual, matter/material, nature, physicality, inside, excess, sensory body, repulsion, kinetic, mobile, individual, agency, base desire, sexual

Nude

Re-formed, ideal, form/fixed, culture, geometry/proportion, outside, limits, contemplative, mind, attraction, static, fixed, perfected, muted, sublimation, aesthetic

Active vs. passive gaze

Most visual culture (film, TV, painting, etc.) is structured from the perspective of the active male gaze, such that men are both the subject (protagonist) of the gaze and the ones who shape the action; women are the objects of the gaze and the ones who are shaped by the action and structure of the gaze.

Male:

• The one who looks

• Advances the narrative (hero who makes things happen)

• Controls the fantasy ("projects fantasy onto female figure, which is styled accordingly")

• Bearer of the look of the spectator

Female:

• Erotic object for the characters within the story

• Freezes the narrative (stalls the flow of action with moments of performance, seduction, eroticism)

• Figures as spectacle within the fantasy (styled as object or exhibitionist)

• Erotic object for the spectator

Objectification

The process of turning people into objects—sex objects, fragments of an individual, a onedimensional character.

• A form of dehumanization: bodies are seen as sex objects available to be disciplined into a state of submission, sometimes violently

• A significant step in justifying violence (sadism) against person or group of people

• It teaches viewers (esp. young people) to monitor their appearance and behaviors in order to suit harmful cultural norms

• Denigrates individuals and persons in images that work to naturalize violence and punishment

• Jean Kilbourne, "Two Ways a Women Can Get Hurt," from Can't Buy Me Love

Disconnection

Position of reader allows for disconnect or distance from an actual social relation with "object" (here, the objectified person)—YOU do not consciously see yourself as either subject (actor) or object in the image

• Viewer is interpellated as innocent viewer rather than named in a position of power/control OR object/submissive

• Incongruities may arise between what one sees/believes and how one actually feels over time = sense of insufficiency or failure to attain "correct" state of "man" or "woman" [Images say you are dominant; yet you feel vulnerable // Images say you are dependent, victim; yet you feel strong]

• Jean Kilbourne, "Two Ways a Women Can Get Hurt," from Can't Buy Me Love

Common Archetypes in Mass Visual Culture (Advertising): WOMEN

• The Model Mother

• The Passive Little Girl

• The Observed Woman

• The Sexualized Woman:

• The Pretty Face

• The Magical Grandmother

• The Ticked Box

The Model Mother

Women are disproportionately shown as the primary caretakers of both home and children caring, dressing, cooking and cleaning.

The Passive Little Girl

Ads show boys engaging in active play and girls sitting passively, often with one another, playing with dolls and house appliances and everything is pink.

The Observed Woman

The observed woman loses her agency and authority in the male gaze

The Sexualized Woman

This stereotype demonstrates that a woman's value comes only from her sex appeal.

The Pretty Face

This stereotype depicts women as secondary and "just a pretty face" without intelligence or independence.

The Magical Grandmother

Older women are generally missing from ads, commonly have few spoken lines, and are often in the kitchen serving food, smiling and supporting younger characters; or the "older" women have few physical signs of age beyond gray hair.

The Ticked Box

Characters included to check diversity boxes, commonly limited to the background.

Neoliberal Feminism

A type of feminism centered on individual freedoms and neoliberal rationality, which

centers capitalist market forces as an equalizer.

• Claims that there are still gender-related inequalities today, especially in the workplace, and that it's up to women to put themselves forward more.

• Each individual/woman is responsible for her personal success.

• Collective action is not required, nor is it a goal.

• The capitalist marketplace offers avenues of free expression = liberation and equality are private desires—NOT collective goals

Power Femininity

now that we are in a "post-feminist" society (b/c full equality for all women has been achieved???), women's empowerment is tied to possession of a specific type of body—smooth, sleek, slim, controlled, conditioned, curvy, youthful, active, fun/lighthearted, and sexy—whichalwaysempowers.

• Linked to neo-liberal feminism & consumer feminism

• Seemingly any behavior or commodity can claim to "empower" women—but especially those that work within a heteronormative, patriarchal economy of desire.

• Rosalind Gill's 3 recognizable figures or archetypes in early 21st -century advertising:

o The Midriff as sign of sexual agency and feminist empowerment

o The Vengeful Woman who uses her newfound power to "turn the tables"

o The Hot Lesbian—her "other"or double—evades charges of sexism but caters to male gaze.

Productive Disciplinary Power

"disciplinary power" is not always punitive/repressive; rather systems of discursive power invite the subject—who feels rational, autonomous, and in control—to reconstruct patterns of behavior, thoughts, desires,and interests, all of which prevent bodies from resisting or revolting against systems of power and ideology. (Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1975)

• Heternormativity; patriarchal, nuclear family, etc.

• Internalized Male Gaze (for cis hetero women) acts as "sexual agency" (Rosalind Gill) • Women "choose" to emulate the body type typical to male gaze, but it is called a "choice." • Similar to Althusser's concept of ideological apparatuses: "given," naturalized structures of power

Narcissistic Identification

viewer's identification with "Ideal-I" or ideal ego; viewer identifies with the active, empowered gaze of the camera as it structures and controls the dominant gaze of the protagonist

• An inherent form of "misrecognition," in which the Mirror Stage's phantasy of omnipotent power and completeness is psychically restaged

• Mainstream films produce the heteronormative, white, patriarchal subject as the "active" looker, with the white woman as object of desire

• From Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975)

Imaginary Order

the subject's fundamental narcissism by which the subject creates fantasy images of both him and his ideal object of desire; associated with pre-lingual subjectivity (Jacques Lacan)

Symbolic order

the social world of linguistic communication, intersubjective relations, knowledge of ideological conventions, and the acceptance of the Law (Jacques Lacan)

Voyeristic looking

a type of scopophilia wherein the controlling gaze is unknown to the object of desire— which allows for the subject's satiation of desire w/o threat; the desiring subject looks without being seen by the object of his gaze.

• Associations with sadism (punishment and/or demystification); "pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt—asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness."

• From Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975)

Fetishistic looking

A type of scopophilia where the subject substitutes the object of desire with a fetish object or turns the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous

• Builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying;

• Attention is focused on pure "image;"

• The camera's frame is not a narrative tool of storytelling, but a space to stylize, fix, perfect the other as pure spectacle

• From Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975)

Femininity as Masquerade (constructed image)

• "Woman" is constructed out of clothing, accoutrement, various "fetishes," which produce her as a site of exhibitionism for the cis, hetero male gaze.

• Hence, femininity or "woman" is NOT real—it's purely an image/spectacle.

• The image of femininity is constructed, built, embodied—not innate.

• Tania Modleski, Femininity by Design: "woman" is revealed to be a construction, one that Scottie attempts to re-construct to prove it is REAL.

Overidentification

Process wherein the subject's boundaries between self and other become blurred, and desire for and identification with the other are not clearly separable; extreme fascination with the other risks the annihilation of self into the other

• A passive, hypnotic, and ultimately masochistic fascination with the woman and her desire (versus the active, sadistic attempt to gain control over her, to possess her).

• Tania Modleski, Femininity by Design: Scottie overidentifies with Madeleine and risks"falling into" femininity (the Other) and annihilating distinction between self and Other.

Hegemonic Masculinity

configuration of gender practices which embody currently accepted answers to the problem of the legitimation of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women."

• Consent to a particular social order creates gender hegemony, where men are analogous to the ruling class

• = the "most honored ways of being a man" in a given culture or group

• Necessitates that men, whether hegemonic or otherwise, orient themselves toward its practices to capitalize on the patriarchal dividend—CONFORMITY TO MASCULINE NORMS

• Historical, contextual, locally produced, and always plural

• Must facilitate (RETURN TO) SOCIAL ORDER

• can only be constructed in tension with emphasized femininity and, as such, "gender is always relational, and patterns of masculinity are defined in contradiction to some model (whether real or imaginary) of femininity"

• equates homosexuality with femininity (lack of power)

• rewards men for engaging in homophobia and participating in heterosexism, as it reduces anxiety about their own masculinity

Homosocial relations

(Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1985) same-sex relationships that are not of a romantic or sexual nature, but develop and strengthen bonds between men and perpetuate patterns of male dominance in specific historical, social, and familial structures

• Examples: sport teams (locker room, game fields); the military (bases, camps, training), workplace comrades (offices, bars), mentorship relations (school/business), men's "clubs" (Lions Club, Rotary Club, etc.) or fraternities (frat houses), friendships In general

• Historical behaviors, conventions, rituals, knowledge, and everyday practices

• Bonds that work to retain power and control over specific spaces/places and society in general; men can be more vulnerable and remain dominant: w/o fear of the "other"

• Form of male bonding often accompanied by fear or hatred of homosexuality—includes ritualized social practices of ridicule (name calling, teasing, etc.) = homophobia

• Often involves erotic desire of third, feminine "other," a triangular structure of desire: where feminized "other" serves as the conduit through which those bonds are expressed; "other" is often a woman (trope of "love triangle"), but is not limited to a woman character.

(Cultural) Backlash

a hostile pushback by groups who feel threatened by new laws, cultural shifts, and social norms, which usually occur after years of civil and legal action by oppressed groups

Discourses of Crisis-Masculinity

1) Loss of male purpose: men are now w/o social value b/c women are unnaturally appropriating the essential, genetically-determined duties of the male (men).

• Society has always been gynocentric: focused on the needs and protection of women, while men perform dangerous work of building societies

• Society was better in the past before women tried to be men (gender nostalgia)

• Men no longer feel necessary

• Women still play the victim (need protection), but they also want all the power.

2) Aggrieved Entitlement (Michael Kimmel, Angry White Men, 2017)

• Men are feeling / witnessing a loss of their own power and privileged role in society, primarily at the hands of social justice movements and feminism.

• Men are socialized to feel entitled to this power and privilege, and are therefore aggrieved at it being taken away

3) 1 & 2 are part of larger "culture war," which is itself gendered: Metapolitical "culture war" depicts its enemies as feminine and uses women as justifications for fighting ("protect women and children") against domestic enemies who seek to feminize and weaken the nation through "gender ideology," feminism, and social justice.

Gender Nostalgia

experience of sentimental longing for an ostensibly bygone era related to traditional gender dynamics and norms; involves the following distinct but related beliefs, perceptions, and motivations

1. Endorsees traditional gender ideologies (women as submissive wives, mothers, nurturers w/ little private or public power)

2. Believes that men and/or women have become less traditionally masculine and feminine over time and such changes are negative and wide-reaching

3. Believes that gender and sex are biological and that gender/sex categories are discrete and nonoverlapping categories: male/masculine and female/feminine characteristics ( = gender essentialist beliefs)

4. Motivated to undo or "fight against" these changes in everyday life and in structures of power across the private and public spheres

Nostalgic Masculinities

the cowboy and the astronaut (and Rocky)

• White & American (heteronormative)

• Physically strong and heroic

• Inner determination / restraint

• Charismatic adventurer—takes risks

• Independent explorer: enacts autonomous acts outside of social authority

• Far from civilization—ventures into the unknown

• Rugged attitude toward landscape, nature • Does not seek wealth; seeks "truth" (inner knowledge/science)

• Must face unknown enemies ("others) and unknown entities (universe)

• Women / Culture / Law are peripheral

• Receives respect and admiration, w/o close, public relations

Jonathan Katz, "Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity"

• Angry, aggressive, and/or white working-class male as anti-authority rebel

• Violence as genetically programmed male behavior

• Use of military and sports symbolism to enhance the masculine identification and appeal of products

• The association of muscularity with ideal masculinity

• The equation of heroic masculinity with violent masculinity

Double Consciousness

(DuBois) African Americans are defined by a "sensation," a consciousness of one's Self, but which falls short of a unified, "true" self-consciousness; rather, black consciousness is a complex feeling of "two-ness," of disparate and competing "thoughts," "strivings," and "ideals"

• Not an inherent quality, but one born out of experiencing "self" in a society that denigrates and oppresses you

• State of being forced to view self through white perspectives, while maintaining your own self-definitions.

• Torn between European (American) and African heritage

• W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

Split Consciousness

concept of double consciousness expanded beyond ontological ("soul") arguments to the lived, experiential realities of women, colonial subjects, queer folk, and intersections thereof

• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1948): "one is not born a woman, but becomes one"

o Women exist as "Other" in patriarchal society; hence a woman's consciousness is formed from her own lived experience and always/already her experience as object of (men's) desire; her body is her own experience and her body is experience as conduit or vehicle of another's desire

• Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952): concerned w/ blackness in the U.S. and all colonial subjects

o In the chapter "The Fact of Blackness" Fanon argues that Blackness was created in, and continues to exist in, negation to whiteness in the colonial subject, especially in relationship to the gaze, the body, and language

Oppositional Gaze

bell hooks (1952-2021)

• Black female spectators "actively" choose not to identify with the film's imaginary subject because such identification is disenabling; pleasure is found in the critical analysis

• Black women must have the desire to critique: a) the phallocentric gaze, b) the construction of white femininity as object of desire, and c) representation of blackness in the media

o THERE IS POWER IN THE GAZE: agency is not limited to those in power—"the ability to manipulate one's gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it opens up the possibility of agency."

o The act of looking has historically been maneuvered to oppress black men and women: Saartjie Baartman (Hottentot Venus), Emmet Till

• hooks writes, "Identifying with neither the phallocentric gaze nor the construction of whitewomanhood as lack, critical black female spectators construct a theory of looking relations where cinematic visual delight is the pleasure of interrogation"

Minstrel Tropes of blackness in popular culture:

Minstrel shows: (early 19th -century - early 20th -century) a genre of American theater, performed by mostly white actors in blackface makeup, portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-golucky. Morphed first into illustrated journals, paintings, novels, and music sheets—followed by early film, radio, and TV characters and plots

•Mammy

•Jezebel

•Sapphire

•Uncle Tom

•Sambo

Mammy

Drab clothes, masculine characteristics (non-threatening to white women); serves white femininity; loves and preserves white family and its property; aggressive to her own family or black people outside of house

Jezebel

Seductive, alluring, worldly, beguiling, tempting, and lewd; an Innately promiscuous, even predatory "bad girl"

o Dates to slavery: Africans and descendants as "breeders," inclined to have many children—a stereotype that was "proved" via forced procreation (given food, animals, housing to encourage reproduction)

o Morphed into myth of "Welfare Queen" of 1980s and 90s

Sapphire

Older, matriarch type; loud, bossy, headstrong, independent, cantankerous; emasculates husband with verbal put-downs; lack of femininity = no fashion sense, bad wigs, etc.

Uncle Tom

(Harriet Beecher Stowe novel, 1852): "a large, broad-chested, powerfully made man ... whose truly African features were characterized by an expression of grave and steady good sense, united with much kindliness and benevolence."

o Innately submissive, obedient, in constant desire of white approval

o Overly polite; constantly indebted to white family o Little to no ties to black community

Sambo

Simple-minded, docile black man ; the "happy slave" image of a jolly, overgrown child happy to serve his master; naturally lazy and therefore reliant upon his master for direction

Retrospectatorship

Patrica White in Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability (1999); refers to experience of understanding one's past spectatorship as formative; a "scene" or character—viewed in the past—becomes meaningful in retrospect (now) because one understands it in relation to one's present subjectivity

• Term drawn from psychoanalytic notion of Nachtraglichkeit (deferred meaning or retrospection)

• A kind of "second-sight;" b/c workings of fantasy between the film text and the individual spectator is unpredictable; depends on a mis-reading of the dominant narrative

Hays Code

Motion Picture Association of America's self-censorship of films between 1930/34 and 1968. Prohibited a film from "lowering the moral standards of those who see it . . . [including] those of susceptible minds" (i.e., women, children, working class, minority populations) and / or depicting the ridicule of law or sympathy for the violation of Law.

• No sex outside of marriage, unless depicted as immoral

• No profanity, nudity, or suggestive scenes • No interracial romantic relations; no "perversions" of sexuality (anything not cisheterosexuality)

• No depiction of crime, drug use, and promiscuity in a positive or sympathetic light

"Sarah Bartmann," known as Saartjie Baartman, (c.1789-1915), the so-called "Hottentot Venus:"

•From Khoekhoe people of South Africa

• Bought and taken to London for display in 1810; taken to Paris in 1814

• Steatopygic condition: a genetic characteristic leading to increased accumulation of adipose tissue in the buttock region

Tragic Mulatto

trope or archetype of mixed-race young woman "passing" as white

• Lydia Maria Child introduced the literary character, the Tragic Mulatto in two short stories: "The Quadroons" (1842) and "Slavery's Pleasant Homes" (1843).

• A light-skinned woman who is the offspring of a white slaveholder and an enslaved black female: she is ignorant of both her mother's race and her own.

• She believes herself to be white and free—a symbol of the white feminine ideal.

• Her heart is pure, her manners impeccable, her language polished, and her face beautiful.

• But her "negro blood" is discovered; she is remanded to slavery (or some tragedy), deserted by her white lover, and dies a victim of white male violence or her own ignorance.

Colorism

the process of discrimination that marginalizes darker-skinned people over their lighter-skinned

counterparts

• Often occurs within the same racial or ethnic group (e.g., favoring lighter-skinned individuals over darker-skinned individuals inside Black, Latino, or Asian communities)

• Historically, colorism has colonial roots, ranging from early class hierarchies in Asia to its impact on Latinos and African Americans through European colonialism and slavery in the Americas

• May psychologically affect individuals' sense of self-worth, sense of what is "attractive, " and ideas about who is more deserving of opportunity

Disidentification

where subject must reconstruct matrices of power to empower the disenfranchised; viewer/subject must transform and critically challenge the film or image—re-work the text—to find an alternative reading or interpretation of power structures (Amelia Jones / José Esteban Muñoz)

• Whiteness is therefore analyzed as construct—not "given" or invisible—and disassembled as sole site of agency

• Patriarchy is therefore analyzed as construct—not "given" or invisible—and disassembled as sole site of agency

• Bourgeoisie is therefore analyzed as construct—not "given" or natural—and disassembled as sole site of agency

Intersectionality

interaction and cumulative effects of multiple forms of discrimination affecting the daily lives of individuals, particularly women of color; NOT a hierarchy of identities, a

metaphoric model to understand how various aspects of individual's subjectivity interact to create unique experiences of privilege or oppression

• Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989): "a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It's not simply that there's a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things. "

Unearned powers conferred systematically:

power from unearned advantage that gives a group

permission to escape punishment or dominate, distorting the humanity of the holders of privilege and the groups without unearned power.

• Peggy McIntosh claims the term white "privilege" is misleading: "I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred systemically. Power

from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the

expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups."

Peggy McIntosh

"Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (1989)—list of unearned power conferred systematically to white people in the U.S.A.; includes "assumptions," such as:

• Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

• I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

• If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I want to live.

• I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

• I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

• I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

• I can turn on the television or look at the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

• I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

• 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.

• If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

•McIntosh, 2010: "My work is not about blame, shame, guilt, or whether one is a "nice person." It's about observing, realizing, thinking systemically and personally. It is about seeing privilege, the "up-side" of oppression and discrimination. It is about unearned advantages, which can also be described as exemption from discrimination. "

Judith Butler's theory of Gender Performativity (1988)

gender is tenuously constituted in time; an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts and the stylization of the body—the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self

• Gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; gender is not "interior" to body; gender is not an innate, fixed essence of biological sex

• "Woman," and by extension, any gender, is an historical situation rather than a natural fact

• The possibilities of gender transformation are "found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style"

• Gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanctions and taboo.

• The system of compulsory heterosexuality is reproduced and concealed through the cultivation of bodies into discrete sexes with "natural" appearances and "natural"

heterosexual dispositions.

• Individuals can contest gender's status as "natural" or "interior" to body by way of gender's performative possibilities

Julia Serano's theory of Intrinsic inclination model of sex/gender:

sex, gender expression, and sexual orientation are separate "inclinations" that vary independently from one another

• Also known as subconscious sex

• Each of these inclinations should be understood as "intrinsic"—that is, not the product of either conscious choice or social construction; instead, rooted deep in the body, stubbornly resistant to attempts to purge, repress, or ignore them.

• NOT biological reductionism or essentialism: each of these inclinations is itself the product of a complicated interplay of genetic, hormonal, environmental, cultural, and psychological factors

Essentialism or Biological Reductionism

gender is an essential characteristic of biological sex,

and there are distinct, intrinsic qualities to women and men

• There are certain universal, innate, biologically (or psychologically) based features of gender that are at the root of many of the group differences observed in the behavior of men and women

• Men and women are the only two genders, which are intrinsically and irrevocably linked to male and female biological sex

• Gender is an immutable, biological fact across all histories and all cultures.

• Men and woman are innately distinct, such that women are submissive/irrational/emotional and men are dominant/rational/cerebral.

Drag as Subculture

drag as a site of protest, carnival, family—a counterhegemonic subculture; a challenge to heteronormativity

• Oppositional "counterpublic"

• Often formed from punk, camp, anti-establishment fringe groups and aesthetics

• Expression of marginalization; resist assimilation

• Group sanctioned norms that are local, but often invisible to "stranger" or hegemonic public, necessitating a shift towards becoming more mainstream (b/c the "public" is

always/already infused w/ dominant cultural norms

• After group is made visible to the subculture MUST BE PALATALBE TO MAINSTREAM AUDIENCE (RuPaul's Drag Race)

LGBTQ+ Tropes in Mainstream Media:

common plots or roles for LGBTQ+ persons in TV and film

• Bad Old Days: allows viewer to feel righteous for having found solutions to every failure past decades; "they" were/are unenlightened v. us (now), we are enlightened

• Gay Best Friend: an out gay character that is a "helper" to main character; facilitates the narrative of more prominent character

• "Confused" Gay character

• Gay/Straight "friendship or lovers?" confusion

• Tragic Gay character (must die in the end)

• Straight Men Cross-dress

• Exotic Foreigner is Gay or Gay Man is especially "Camp"

• Psychotic Lesbian

• Pedophiliac Gay Man

• Lesbian Kiss for Ratings/Controversy

• Gay Men Who Never Kiss/Have Sex

• Gay & Parents in Coming Out Story

Misogynoir

a particular brand of hatred directed at Black women in U.S. visual and popular culture

• Intersectionality of sexism, racism, and heteronormativity

• Often involves tropes (or archetypes) of American popular culture, which picture Blac women as caricature types (Sapphire, Jezebel, Mammy), rather than subjects with full selves and rich lived experiences

Heteronormativity

alignment of biological sex, sexuality, gender identity and gender roles; associated with compulsory heterosexuality

compulsory heterosexuality

system of oppression that denies people's sexual self-determination by presenting heterosexuality as the sole model of acceptable sexual and romantic relationships.

• A systemic problem, reinforced by interlocking institutions—including political, religious, economic, legal, medical, familial, and educational—that work in concert to maintain the privilege of man/woman heterosexual couplings and emotional pairings.

• Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" (1980)

Emphatic femininity

modern and youthful, middle-class, white femininity defined by niceness, bodily preoccupation, endless fun, and glamour—naturalizing Barbie's commodity fetishism, overt

sexuality, and sex-less compulsory heterosexuality, thus safe-guarding white capitalist patriarchy (Mary F. Rogers)

• Physical features include long blonde hair, big blue eyes, unblemished fair skin, very small waist, large perky breasts, long thin legs w/ thigh gap, & always in heels

• Independence and Power that defies conventional femininity: Barbie has many social relations, but no mundane responsibilities or dependents—closer to hegemonic

masculinity's autonomy; she is not considered selfish (no kin obligations); she is also not ambitious (she mainly "tries on" careers)

• Fashion is her Powerful Ally (Cosmo-girl; Sex and the City): commodification of success; one can "buy" happiness, careers, experiences; conspicuous consumption is HAPPINESS

• Matrix of domination (term borrowed from Patricia Hill Collins): white, hetero-normative, economically empowered, youthful, able-bodied—ALL SITES OF PRIVILEGE, which

reinforce one another

Commodification of difference

process wherein corporations produce and reproduce the Other, not in her own image or via her own experiences, but through the compound fractures of universalization and interpellation; all races and ethnicities are produced and reproduced in the mold of white emphatic femininity (Anne duCille)

Collectible Cultures

corporation produces and reproduces multiculturalism or diversity by marketing a pleasant pluralism of global femininity; the marketing of tokenism such that the ethnic

Other does not upset Western white capitalist patriarchy (Anne duCille)

• Marked by cheery, anecdotal facts about dress, language, or customs

• Cultures are a-historical, "authentic," and less modern than U.S.

• Black and Latina Barbies are relegated to "friend" roles in videos, films, television

The Abject (or abjection)

term most related to Julia Kristeva (c. 1982): neither object nor subject; the abject is situated prior to the Symbolic Order, and represents a dis-order of the Symbolic

• "Abjection preserves what existed in the archaism of pre-objectal relationship, in the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to be:" a rejection of the essentialist meaning of identity which separates the self and "other," subject and object, and creates gender binaries

• The abject marks a "primal repression," one that precedes the establishment of the opposition conscious/unconscious, and prior to the moment in our psychosexual development when we established a border or separation between human and animal, between culture and that which preceded it.

• The abject includes those rejected, fluids of our base bodies: excretions, discharges, blood, excrement, placenta, and all the "waste" —as well as the intimate bodily relations—that marks the months of pregnancy, birth, after-birth, nursing, and care-taking

• The abject defines the earliest moments of all persons' lives, before language

nostalgic masculinities

the cowboy and the astronaut

• White & American (heteronormative)

• Physically strong and heroic

• Inner determination / restraint

• Charismatic adventurer—takes risks

• Independent explorer: enacts autonomous acts outside of social authority

• Far from civilization—ventures into the unknown

• Rugged attitude toward landscape, nature

• Does not seek wealth; seeks "truth" (inner knowledge/science)

• Must face unknown enemies ("others) and unknown entities (universe)

• Women / Culture / Law are peripheral

• Receives respect and admiration, w/o close, public relations

Gender nostalgia

experience of sentimental longing for an ostensibly bygone era related to traditional gender dynamics and norms; involves the following distinct but related beliefs, perceptions, and motivations

1. Endorses traditional gender ideologies (women as submissive wives, mothers, nurturers w/ little private or public power)

2. Believes that men and/or women have become less traditionally masculine and feminine over time and such changes are negative and wide-reaching

3. Believes that gender and sex are biological and that gender/sex categories are discrete and nonoverlapping categories: male/masculine and female/feminine characteristics ( = gender essentialist beliefs)

4. Motivated to undo or "fight against" these changes in everyday life and in structures of power across the private and public spheres

New Masculinities or Hybrid Masculinities

alternative or hybrid masculinities available to men in an era of feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and strides in racial and economic parity

• Symbolically distances men from hegemonic masculinity, BUT simultaneously "conceals systems of power and inequality in historically new ways" and reproduces existing social and symbolic boundaries (unless it transgresses into "resistant masculinity")

• Hegemonic masculinity strategically negotiates, appropriates, and reformulates to secure external hegemony; hegemonic masculinity borrows aspects of alternative or hybrid masculinities that are strategically useful for continued domination

• The New Man: sometimes vulnerable, community oriented, inter-dependent, open to "others" input (see list below)

• Geek Masculinity: embrace some aspects of hypermasculinity—such as the valorizing of intellect over emotion—but does not comply with others, such as sexual and sporting prowess; therefore, they often position themselves as marginalized

• Plus many other hybrid types of performative masculinity

Alpha Male vs. New Man (Gillam and Wooden)

Alpha Male:

Unquestioned authority

Physical power

Social dominance

Competitive

Status

Leader Role

Lack of/limited emotion

Independent

Autonomous

Heroic

New Man:

Shares power

Sometimes physically vulnerable

Builds community

Learns to share

Group Identity

Friend who sometimes leads

Learns to feel/share emotion

Leans on others

Inter-dependent

Part of a team

"Alpha Male" Masculinity's Mental Health Outcomes

among male populations, conforming to traditional hegemonic masculinity is associated with a number of negative outcomes

• Psychosocial Outcomes:

1) Gender role stress, shame, anger, and hostility (Jakupcak, Tull, & Roemer, 2005): constant performance of "being a man"

2) Increased alcohol use (Lemle & Mishkind, 1989; Peralta, 2007): internalization of feelings of inadequacy

3) 4) Reduced help-seeking attitudes (Addis & Mahalik, 2003): "suck it up" or "be a man" Depression and anxiety (Good & Mintz, 1990; Sharpe & Heppner, 1991).

• Social Outcomes:

1) Adopt a "tough" masculine image (e.g., alpha male) out of fear of being seen as weak or being seen as inferior among their peer group

2) Acute loneliness

3) Unaddressed vulnerability

4) Figurative emasculation at any perceived disempowerment

Homosocial Relations

(Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1985) same-sex relationships that are not of a romantic or sexual nature, but develop and strengthen bonds between men and perpetuate patterns of

male dominance in specific historical, social, and familial structures

• Examples: sport teams (locker room, game fields); the military (bases, camps, training), workplace comrades (offices, bars), mentorship relations (school/business), men's "clubs" (Lions Club, Rotary Club, etc.) or fraternities (frat houses), friendships in general

• Historical behaviors, conventions, rituals, knowledge, and everyday practices

• Bonds that work to retain power and control over specific spaces/places and society in general; men can be more vulnerable and remain dominant: w/o fear of the "other"

• Form of male bonding often accompanied by fear or hatred of homosexuality—includes ritualized social practices of ridicule (name-calling, teasing, etc.) = homophobia

• Often involves erotic desire of third, feminine "other," a triangular structure of desire: where feminized "other" serves as the conduit through which those bonds are expressed; "other" is often a woman (trope of "love triangle") but is not limited to a woman character.