Happy Birthday, Inequality by (Interior) Design!—The Year in Review

Inequality by (Interior) Design just turned 2!  My initial goal was to try to post four times a month, and I’m sorry to say that I did a bit worse toward that end this year than my first.  In terms of traffic, however, there were a lot more people reading than my first year.  Year 1 saw about 30,000 visits.  This year, I received just over 150,000 visits.  On the busiest day this year, 12,387 people came to the site.  This is far beyond what I’d imagined when I started this project.  But, it’s been immensely rewarding.

I also started a few other blog and bloggish projects while I’ve been continuing to work on my own research.  I recently joined the Girl W/ Pen! team—C.J. Pascoe and I now have a monthly column, “Manly Musings.”  That’s been enormously rewarding and a great deal of fun.  After the success of our initial post (which received an “award” this year from The Society Pages), it was re-posted at the Huffington Post, and we were invited to write a separate piece at Slate.com on how white, cis-gender, straight, male allies benefit in under-appreciated ways from their support.

The amazing teams at Sociological Images and Social (In)Queery have continued to be incredibly supportive and shared a few of my posts over the year as well.  Thank you!  I’ve also posted once on the new Gender & Society blog (check it out if you haven’t yet) and have another piece forthcoming there.

My blog now officially has more friends on Facebook than I do.  If that’s not the mark of success, I’m not sure what is.  And, while the U.S. is still where most visitors come from, Inequality by (Interior) Design has a significant following now in Canada, the U.K., Australia, India, France, Germany, Ireland, and Spain.

Below is a list of the top two posts this year and a list of some of the most popular by topic (along with some of my personal favorites that didn’t receive much of an audience, but were a lot of fun to write).

Top 2 Posts for 2013

1. The biggest post this year, by far, was a short piece I wrote on using Calvin and Hobbes cartoons on my syllabi to teach sociology—“About a Boy: On the Sociological Relevance of Calvin (and Hobbes).”
2. A close second was my post on baby cages and urbanization—“On the Social Construction of Childhood: Making Space for Babies.”  This is a post that a few people have shared with me that they’re using in courses, which was an incredible honor.  It’s not my area of expertise, but the social construction of childhood is a literature I love to read.

James Messerschmidt and “Masculine Resources”

Since I was first interested in masculinity, I’ve been interested in the situatedness of it.  The thing about masculinity is, it’s a moving target.  What “counts” as masculine is not something we can measure in any straightforward way.  Masculinity’s flexible, it’s adaptable.  When we say that people “have” it—that is, when we say that people are masculine—this is really best qualified by a follow-up question: Where?  Where are they masculine?  Gender is contextually contingent; it’s fluid.  What “counts” as masculine shifts—sometimes subtly, sometimes substantially—from culture to culture, generation to generation, as we age, and from context to context.  Studying the “saying and doing” of gender (as Martin puts it) sometimes disguises the fact that we often say and do gender a bit differently around different groups, in different settings, and depending on what kinds of cultural tools are around on which we can rely.

The example I most often discuss in classes is men’s locker rooms.  We often think of the locker as a space in which men perform masculinity a bit differently than they do outside of this space.  It’s often presented as a cultural “safe space” for men—a space in which they can talk and act however they want without fear of reprisal.  And though I’ve never formally studied men’s locker room experiences, I’d imagine that it’s experienced as a safe space for some boys and young men more than others.  Men’s locker rooms are also often cast as hallowed spaces—what happens in the locker room stays in the locker room.  What’s interesting about the “locker room phenomenon” to me is not only what goes on in there (though that’s interesting too), but that masculinity is understood to change shape behind those doors.

There are really two key questions when considering this issue: (1) What’s salient?—What kinds of performances, objects, knowledge, etc. “count” when considering masculinity?; and (2) Where?—Where do all of these different components of gender count?  Sometimes we construct contexts within which the masculinities we might fancy ourselves as “having” will be highly valued (like club houses, man caves, bachelor pads, and more).  But, possibly more often, we seek out social contexts within which our “gender capital” is afforded cultural status and esteem.

How people make decisions about how to “do” masculinity is best understood in context.  We do masculinities a bit differently depending on where we are, who and what is around, and possibly just as important, who and what is not around.

Why We Should Care How Straight Allies Benefit From Their Support

By Tristan Bridges and C.J. Pascoe

–Originally posted at Slate.com—

Let’s talk about allies for a moment. What is an ally? The term is used to describe those who support and stand by marginalized groups as they work to combat various social and legal inequalities. For instance, white people can work as anti-racist allies alongside communities of people of color, pro-feminist men can act as allies to women, and straight people can stand as allies alongside sexual-minority communities.

How one can best be an ally has recently come up for debate in the blogosphere (see here, here, and here). Indeed, being an ally is a tricky business. It requires careful thinking through and distinguishing between intentions and the effects of one’s actions.

Given recent changes in public opinion on civil rights for sexual minorities in the United States, it is perhaps little surprise that straight white men are publicly “coming out” for gay rights in an unprecedented way. Survey studies have shown that Americans’ opinions about sexual prejudice and inequality have taken a sharp turn for the liberal. Gallup reports that, for the first time since it has been asked, more than 50 percent of the American public identifies gay and lesbian relations as “morally acceptable.” Similar trends are happening across all manner of beliefs about sexual inequality (support for same-sex marriage, opinions regarding the legality of same-sex sexual behavior, and so on). Demographically speaking, this is a huge shift. The hearts and minds of Americans appear to have altered dramatically in a short period of time. This is wonderful, and it certainly deserves to be celebrated and recognized.

Part of this shift has included increasing numbers of public figures acting as straight allies on issues like marriage equality, school bullying, and workplace discrimination against GLBTQ people. The intentions of straight allies are significant and merit recognition. And yet … as sociologists, we are also interested in the consequences of people’s actions regardless of their intentions. Sociologists often find, for instance, that the consequences of individual or collective actions may be at odds with the intentions driving those actions. For example, when Macklemore (a young, straight, white hip-hop artist) came out with his 2012 song “Same Love” in support of gay marriage, he had great intentions. Macklemore, the nephew of gay uncles, claims he was frustrated with the homophobia in hip-hop music and wrote a song to simultaneously challenge it and to “come out” in support of gay marriage. That’s great, and it deserves recognition. But, here’s our question: How much recognition?

Masculinity, Gender (Non)Conformity, and Queer Visibility

by Tristan Bridges and CJ Pascoe

Originally posted at Girl W/ Pen

Coco Layne got a haircut.  She shaved both sides of her head, but left the top at a length that falls roughly to the bottom of her face.  As a feminist fashion, art, and lifestyle blogger, she was quick to recognize the ways that she could subtly re-style her hair and dramatically alter her presentation of gender (here).   So, in classic feminist art blogger style, she produced an art project depicting her experience.  Coco’s project—“Warpaint”—comes on the heels of several other photographic projects dealing critically with gender: JJ Levine’s series of photographs—“Alone Time”—depicting one person posing as both a man and a woman in a single photograph (digitally altered to include both images); the media frenzy over Casey Legler, a woman who garnered attention, recognition and contracts modeling as a man; the Japanese lingerie company that recently went viral by using a man’s body to sell a push-up bra, just to name a few.

Along with these other photographic projects on gender, Warpaint is critical commentary on what gender is, where it comes from, how flexible it is, what this flexibility means, and what gender (non)conformity has to do with sexuality.  Coco’s work provides important lessons about how gender is produced just below the radar of most people most of the time.  These projects all point out the extensive work that goes into doing gender in a way that is recognizable by others. Indeed, recognition by others is key to doing gender “correctly.” It is what scholar Judith Butler calls performativity or the way in which people are compelled to engage in an identifiably gendered performance. When people fail to do this, Butler argues that they are abject, not culturally decipherable and thus subject to all sorts of social sanctions. Butler points out that the performance of gender itself produces a belief that something, someone, or some authentic, inalienable gendered self lies behind the performance.  These photographic projects lay bear the fiction that there is this sort of inevitably gendered self behind the performance of gender.  This is precisely why these projects produce such discussion and, for some, discomfort.  It makes (some of) us uncomfortable by challenging our investments in and folk theories surrounding certain ways of thinking about gender and sexuality.

Much of the commentary the Warpaint project focused on Coco’s ability to get a retail job when she displayed her body in ways depicted on the bottom row.  Indeed her experience reflects research indicates that different workplaces reward particular gender appearances and practices. Kristen Schilt’s research on transmen at work, for instance, highlights the way that performances of masculinity get translated into workplace acceptance for these men. Yet doing gender in a way that calls into question its naturalness can put people (including those who do not identify as gender queer or tans) at risk. In Jespersen v Harrah, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals held that female employees can be required to wear makeup as a condition of employment (in a workplace where men are not required to wear it).  While recent decisions have been more favorable to trans identified employees, most states do not have employment law or school policies protecting gender non-conforming individuals.  Simply put, most states do not have laws addressing —to use Coco’s language—gender expression.

Color by… Gender?

By Tristan Bridges and Peter Rydzewski*

Colors are one way that the gender of different spaces can be communicated.  Pink and blue are the most identifiable, and recent research shows that men do seem to prefer blue (though, so do women).  Men’s aversion from pink, however, is stronger than women’s (though it’s also true that pink can be framed as masculine for select groups of men).  While this can feel timeless, like most aspects of gender, it hasn’t always been around.  And even when we began assigning gender to colors, pink was not always associated with girls.

Jo B. Paoletti’s incredible history of children’s fashion in America—Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America—is a beautifully written and carefully researched examination this strange issue.  Prior to the 1900s, children in America were dressed in ways that illustrated their age rather than gender (and both little boys and girls wore white dresses and had long hair).  But, right around the turn of the 20^th century, we started to see children being dressed in more colors and certain colors coming to be associated with either girls or boys—but not both.  Paoletti  starts a chapter with an excellent quote from a department store publication in 1918 explaining children’s clothes to parents in the responding to readers section.  It reads:

Pink or Blue?  Which is intended for boys and which for girls?… There have been a great diversity of opinion on this subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for a boy and blue for a girl.  The reason is that pink, being a decidedly stronger color, is more suitable for a boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for a girl. (here: 85)

Today, we think of pink as a “girl color,” and few of us would struggle if asked whether it was for girls or boys.  But, the parents addressed in this publication were less sure.  Apparently, these parents didn’t know what we know and, by contemporary standards, the author seems to have the colors mixed up.  So, colors are capable of acquiring a gender, and when they do, framing is clearly key.

This issue is dramatically highlighted in a recent advertising campaign by CIL paints.  The campaign is entitled “Paint Chip Names for Men” and it was accompanied by a pamphlet—CIL Ultimate Man Caves—that listed the actual names of CIL paint colors along with a “manly name” (like switching a dark tan from “Monterey Cliffs” to “Wolfden”) along with a series of images of different kinds of man caves.

Bro-Porn: Heterosexualizing Straight Men’s Anti-Homophobia

by Tristan Bridges and C.J. Pascoe

Originally posted at Girl W/ Pen

Every year, since 2009, the men of England’s Warwick University’s Rowing Team pose nude together in a series of photos that can be purchased individually or collectively as a calendar. The sales from this calendar go toward supporting their team and to raise awareness about bullying and homophobia among youth. This year, however, the team received international attention (prompting the development of a twitter account, a website, and a store to sell the photos and other team paraphernalia—like their 2013 film, “Brokeback Boathouse”). At first glance it may seem surprising that (presumably) straight men would pose naked with one another to raise money. But, when looking at other straight, young, white men’s stances on homophobia it becomes clear that, ironically, part of what is happening here is a shoring up of a particular form of heterosexual masculinity. Indeed the Warwick Women’s Rowing Team produced a similar calendar without the same amount of media attention (significantly, however, the attention they did receive was more often condemnatory).

The attention the Warwick boys received echoes that directed at Seattle-based hip-hop artist Ben Haggerty (Macklemore) upon the release of his hit song “Same Love” in 2012.  The song, a ballad of support for gay and lesbian rights, was recorded during the 2012 campaign in Washington state to legalize same-sex marriage. It reached 11 on Billboard’s “Hot 100” list in the U.S., and hit number 1 in both New Zealand and Australia.  The single cover art features an image of Ben’s uncle and his partner, Sean. Macklemore, who “outs” himself as straight in the song’s opening, claims that the song grew out of his frustration with hip-hop’s endemic homophobia.*

What do the Warwick University men’s rowing team and Macklemore have in common?  They are all young, straight, attractive, white men taking a public stance against homophobia and receiving a lot of credit for it. This development seems to contradict a great deal of theory and research on masculinity (as well as conventional wisdom) which has consistently shown homophobia to be an important way in which young men prove to themselves and others that they are truly masculine (see here, here and here for instance). Upon first glance it seems that Macklemore and the Warwick University Rowers are harbingers of change – young, straight, white men for whom homophobia is unimportant and undesirable. That is, homophobia is no longer a building block of contemporary forms of masculinity.  Indeed, such a reading may be part of the story.

A Note on Masculinities in Context—Bodybuilders and the Significance of Setting

In my Sociology of Gender course this week, we discussed what it means to talk about gender as subject to variation and why this matters.  I typically go over four kinds of variation to which gender is subject and talk with students about how this helps us begin to understand what it means to talk about gender as “socially constructed.” If it weren’t, then why or how would it be subject to such wild variation?  Gender varies cross-culturally, it varies throughout history, it varies over the course of an individuals’ life, and it also varies contextually.  This last one often requires a bit of explanation.  And I often use my research with bodybuilders as a way to discuss this issue.

I initially started this blog to think more critically about both how social spaces get gendered and sexualized.  But I have also always been interested in tying performances of gender and sexuality to the specific contexts in which those performances emerge.  In graduate school, I studied a group of bodybuilders for about a year.  Much of the existing literature at the time framed male bodybuilders as an insecure population—and indeed, this is how they are culturally portrayed as well.  There’s an excellent ethnography by Alan Klein entitled Little Big Men that helps to bolster this claim.  We like to think of bodybuilders as overcompensating for some other weakness.  And consistent with Klein, I found many bodybuilders insecure—but I became much more interested in where they seemed insecure than with the simple fact that they seemed insecure.

I began my study simply observing them in the gym and gradually began gaining enough confidence to approach them to ask for interviews.  The men are extraordinarily large and many of them emit incredible sounds while working out.  So, it’s easy to get a bit squeamish.  They’re sweaty, they’re enormous, they’re lifting massive objects, grunting and yelling at each other—it’s pretty intense.  So, asking for an interview might seem like an easy task, but it took me a couple weeks to work up to actually approaching one of them.

What Can Testicles tell us about Dads?

 

Cross-posted at Girl W/ Pen

So… I’m going to go ahead and say that this is the wrong question to be asking. This question proceeds from a belief that testicles CAN tell us something about dads. A new study is making the rounds in the news that addresses the relationship between testicle size and parenting behavior among men (well… 70 men… not randomly sampled…). The paper is entitled “Testicular Volume is Inversely Correlated with Nurturing-Related Brain Activity in Human Fathers” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. I can think of more than a few titles that might have been catchier (and clearly, journalists reporting on the research had a similar idea).

In fairness, I don’t have access to the complete study (though I’ve requested it). But the problem is also in how this study gains attention in the media. It’s a great example of how a correlation combined with cultural stereotypes and assumptions can run wild. When correlations combine with popular stereotypes concerning a particular topic (like, say, the relationship between testosterone and any number of socially undesirable behaviors), questions about the science sometimes get lost because it looks like something was “scientifically proven” that we already wanted to believe anyway.

So, here’s the relationship the researchers found: men with smaller testicles tested more positively for nurturance-related responses in their brains when shown pictures of their children. The study reports that men with smaller testicles had roughly three times the level of brain activity in the area of the brain associated with nurturing. These men (with smaller testicles) were also men with lower levels of testosterone—something that has previously been shown to be associated with nurturing behavior among men.*

Steampunk–Hybridity and Fantasy

I attended my first ever Steampunk festival/carnival/fashion show this past weekend.  I’d never heard of the fashion or the sub-culture before attending.  But, like any good subculture, people get really “into” it.  It’s a great example of the fine line between appropriation and innovation.

The movement comes out of a literary sub-genre of science fiction–future (sometimes post-apocalyptic) societies are imagined in which 19th century industrialized Western fashion is combined with America’s “Wild West” fashion ideals (and just a splash of “punk”) all within a world in which steam power is imagined to either have gained mainstream use, or was the primary technology utilized.  One of the key features of Steampunk is the sort of retro-futuristic technologies and inventions associated with the genre.  Many of the people I saw outfitted themselves with aviator goggles, Victorian fashion, and an odd assortment of historical cultural items from either the U.S. or other European nations.  And they were keen to ask each other about their accessories.  Authenticity–particularly among the more heavily costumed participants–seemed to be prized.

Architecturally Isolating “Feminine” Emotional Displays

I recently moved to upstate New York.  So, there’s a lot more Victorian-style architecture in my neighborhood.  I’ve posted on the interesting ways that Victorian architecture gender segregates activity within the domestic space before (here and here).  One room I’ve been interested in lately is a room with a few different names and a history that’s not entirely known.  It’s sometimes referred to as a “roofwalk.”  But, it’s more commonly called either a “widow’s walk,” “widow’s perch,” or a “widow’s watch.”  When I first learned about it, it was written about as a widow’s watch.  And there’s a bit of cultural mythology that surrounds these rooms in homes.  Here are two houses in my neighborhood with the room (right and left).

The story that I’ve always heard about this room is that it was designed for the wives of sailors to watch and wait for their husbands to return.  Women whose husbands died at sea–so I was told–would sit in these rooms, pining for their long-lost lovers.  As it happens, there’s not a great deal of evidence that this was, in fact, the original purpose of the room, nor that this is how these rooms were actually used.  They did initially appear during the period when the sailing industry produced international trade on a level previously unimaginable and during which naval warfare dominated (~1500’s through the mid 1800s).  But the rooms could have equally been intended for (and used by) mariners themselves (rather than their wives) to look out for ships due back in port.  Indeed, in some communities, these rooms are referred to as “captain’s walks.”

And it’s also true that a great deal of these rooms were initially built around the chimneys of homes to provide quick and easy access to the chimney both in case it needed repair, and for a quick way to put out chimney fires–a constant dilemma in early American architecture.  This was the reason people had their chimneys “swept” every so often.  The accumulated ash and soot, if not regularly removed, could ignite.  Sweeping chimneys was serious–and extremely dangerous–business.  Children were often used because of their size, but it was a job often given to orphaned children.  It’s also a powerful illustration of historical understandings of children and childhood.  Despite being illegal, it would be unthinkable to ask a child to do something this dangerous today.  Chimney fires were serious business.  So, having quick access to pour sand down might have saved your home.

Yet many of these rooms today are not around chimneys, and if they were intended for either men or women, they were a room gendered by design.  And if intended for women, then they continued a tradition within Victorian architecture of designing rooms specifically intended to segregate (and/or isolate) certain emotional displays of women, keeping them out of sight.