Writing Gender on the Walls–Women and Graffiti Art

“…it’s a perfect example of how a seemingly inconsequential—or half-destructive act—like writing on the wall can actually promote social change… [simply by] making their gender visible on the wall.” —Jessica Pabón

I love graffiti art.  And I’m not talking about the sexist and racist tags you see in men’s bathroom stalls.  I’m talking about the artwork decorating urban spaces that graffiti artists refer to as “pieces.”  Graffiti is an interesting art form because the artists are–as Richard Lachmann put it–“involved simultaneously in an art world and a deviant subculture” (here: 230).

When walking past a particularly involved piece, I often find myself wondering lots of things.  “Who took the time to paint this?”  “Was it free hand or did the artist have a plan before starting?”  “What does it say?”  Or when I can read the writing, “What does it mean?”  “When did the artist do this?–In the middle of the night?”  “How did they get away with it?”  These are fleeting thoughts, but I’m always struck by the reclamation of public space.  It’s such a powerful, public statement, claiming and labeling social space.  As Jessica Pabón puts it:

Graffiti is a form of writing and writing is fundamentally a form of communicating.  So these writers are reclaiming public space.  They’re asserting their presence.  They’re saying, “I was here!… and here, and here, and here.” (here)

Rather than considering it a deviant act aimed at defacing property, sociologists have found that graffiti artists are drawn by twin processes of appreciating its aesthetic appeal in addition to considering graffiti a practice through which they can make friends and form and solidify communities (here).

In Elijah Anderson‘s Code of the Street, he addresses the ways that boys and young men navigate public space and engage in performances of self that garner “respect”–a resource providing status and safety.  While the book is primarily about boys and men, masculinity is not a dominant topic of analysis for Anderson.  Yet, his analysis of “the street” treats it as a masculine space–a space in which masculine identities and reputations are formed, validated, “put on,” challenged, and “on the line.”  Graffiti might be understood as part of Anderson’s code.  Graffiti has a very “masculine” feel to it, and–like Anderson’s work–scholarship on graffiti often implicitly assumes that it’s boys and men writing, drawing, and painting on walls.  Why men are doing this, and what graffiti means is the subject of the majority of research attention.  Less attention is given to analyzing why (or possibly if) girls and women might engage in graffiti too.  Jessica Pabón (above) articulates some of the ways women have been able to accomplish this within the masculinized subcultural arena of graffiti art.

Doing Gender with Wallets and Purses

Cross-posted at Sociological Images

I once heard a transgender woman give a talk about the process of socially transitioning to being recognized as a woman. She discussed various decisions she made in taking some final critical steps toward the social identity of woman.  She talked at length about her hair. She asked, “What kind of woman am I and how is my haircut going to indicate that?”  She talked about being preoccupied with her hair for a long time as she attempted to figure out a cut and style that “felt right.” But what struck me the most was her discussion of carrying a purse.  She said that getting used to carrying a purse everywhere was one of the more challenging elements of the transition.  If asked what I thought would be a significant everyday challenge if I were a woman, I don’t think purse would have been high on my list.  But, it was high on hers.  She discussed remembering to bring it, how to carry it, norms surrounding purse protection in public, but also more intimate details like: what belongs in a purse?

Purses and wallets are gendered spaces.  There’s nothing inherent in men’s and women’s constitutions that naturally recommends carrying money and belongings in different containers.  Like the use of urinals in men’s restrooms, wallets and purses are a way of producing understandings of gender difference rather than as a natural consequence of differences.

I got the idea for this post after reading Christena Nippert-Eng’s book, Islands of Privacy—a sociological study of privacy in everyday life.  One chapter deals specifically with wallets and purses.  In it, Nippert-Eng discusses one way she interviewed her participants about privacy.  She used participants’ wallets and purses as a means of getting them to think more critically about privacy.  Participants were asked to empty the contents of their wallets and purses and to form two piles with the contents: “more private” and “more public.”  As they sifted through the contents of their wallets and purses, they talked about why they carried what they carried as well as how and why they thought about it as public or private.

After collecting responses, she documented all of the contents and created categories and distinctions between objects based on how people thought about them as public or private.  One question that was clearly related to privacy was whether the objects were personally meaningful to the participant.  Invariably, objects defined as more personally meaningful were also considered more private.  Another question that routinely arose as participants made sense of the objects they carry around everyday was how damaging it might be for participants if a specific object was taken.  Based on this findings, she creates a useful table delineating participants concerns surrounding and understandings of the objects they carry with them (see left).

Why More Lesbians (Might) Live in Rural Communities than Gay Men

I recently posted on the fact that a larger proportion of gay people live in larger cities than “the country” in the U.S. (here). The post prompted a wonderful discussion about some additional issues that deserve more attention.  One is that the forces that may have called gay men and women to the city over the course of the 20th century might be subsiding.  For instance, Amin Ghaziani addresses the alleged demise of the “Gayborhood” as gay urban enclaves have recently started to be seen as less desirable places to live for more gay men and lesbians (this is an issue I discuss in more depth here).  Another issue that I briefly addressed in that initial post is whether “the city” has the same draw for (or effect on) gay men and lesbians alike, and/or whether different issues structure the geographic living considerations of gay men and lesbians in different ways.  It is this latter issue that I’ll discuss here.

In the initial post, I was prompted by a recent Gallup report presenting the relative prevalence of the LGBT population by state (a measurement that I felt concealed some important issues).  The finding that LGBT individuals are not evenly distributed throughout the U.S. is probably not that surprising.  But the “where,” “how” and “why” are wonderfully rich questions as sociologists are interested in how people make choices within systems of structured constraint.  When individuals and groups all start making the same or really similar decisions, sociologists get interested in the kinds of social and cultural forces at work helping them come to—or providing a framework for—those decisions.

At the conclusion of the initial post I addressed the two hypotheses proposed to account for the larger proportions of LGB-identifying individuals in cities.  One theory is that they move there (the “migration hypothesis”)–they migrate to spaces where more people who identify in similar ways might congregate. The other explanation is that living in the city plays a critical role in structuring sexual identity—that cities might either invite or allow people to identify as gay more readily (the “elicitation/opportunity hypothesis”).  Both hypotheses are likely at work, but the latter—the elicitation/opportunity hypothesis—had much more explanatory power for men than for women.  Simply put, cities—they suggested—play a larger role in inviting/allowing men to identify as gay than they do for women.  But what about the gay men and lesbians who elect to live in rural areas.  Does a migration or elicitation/opportunity perspective make sense of their experiences?  And if so, what might that mean?

Toward a Sociology of “Grindr”

–Cross-posted on Social (In)Queery

Apps like Grindr have really changed the ways gay men can interact in public.  I’ve heard Grindr described in different ways, but it—and apps like it—are often talked about as “gay GPS.”  They’ll tell you, based on your current location, who in your vicinity is also on the App.  As with Myspace, Facebook and other social networking sites, Grindr became popular among a diverse group of gay, bi, and curious men, prompting some groups to remain, while others migrate to different digital spaces.  The most recent I saw marketed is Distinc.tt which is clearly being marketed as a space for those looking for a gay digital space devoid of what are framed at Distinc.tt as the less savory elements of Grindr culture.

As they put it, Distinc.tt is “prettier and less sketchy.”  Organizing themselves around more than just Grindr’s “who, specifically around me is gay” approach, Distinc.tt also tells users about where local “hot spots” are (locations with a critical mass of Distinc.tt users).  So, while Grindr’s ploy has been to market the sheer volume of users it has, Distinc.tt is framed in a way that suggests fewer users–a smaller, elite collection of the “right” kind of gay men.

How these apps are marketed (i.e., who they’re “intended to be used by,” who they’re hoping to dissuade from use, and precisely what the app states as it’s intended use) illustrates racialized, classed, and gender-presentational tensions and dynamics at work in organizing gay men’s public erotic lives.  Distinc.tt (left) doesn’t state this explicitly, but it seems intended to be used by a more economically and culturally elite group of (primarily) white, young, gay men.  Conversely, Grindr (right) is presented as more of a free-for-all of younger gay men of all different races and classes.

Adam Isaiah Green’s theorization of sexual fields and erotic capital is a great analytical tool to discuss these social spaces that occupy that fuzzy terrain between the digital and physical.  “Sexual fields” refer to spaces within which a specific set of “erotic capital” are understood to have purchase.  Green defines erotic capital in this way: “the quality and quantity of attributes that an individual possesses, which elicit an erotic response in another” (here: 29).  So, a constellation of physical, emotional, sensual, and aesthetic elements of identity are at play in this definition.  Yet, like Bourdieu’s conceptualization of cultural capital—and similar to my theorization of gender capital—how much erotic capital one has depends on the field one occupies.  Green conceptualizes sexual fields—within Bourdieu’s theoretical framing of “fields”—as “semiautonomous arenas” (here: 26).  By this he is arguing that they are the social spaces defined by the erotic capital understood to have purchase.

Taking on Men Who Solicit Sex

“Prostitution” is an unfortunate term that groups together a diverse body of sex work, people, practices, ideas, and ideals.  While a majority of the research and public policy focuses primarily on the (mostly) women who work in this industry, since the 1970’s attention has increasingly started focusing on a different population: the clients.  Using economic metaphor, police and public policy officials often discuss this as getting at “the problem” from the demand side rather than focusing all of their attention on supply.

Collectively, these strategies are referred to as “anti-john” initiatives or tactics, and they actually date back to the early 1900s.  But, feminist critiques in the 1970s that called for equal enforcement laws caused anti-john tactics to be taken more seriously.  There are a variety of methods for countering sexual commerce that fall under the “anti-john” umbrella: use of surveillance cameras, seizing the cars used to solicit sex (sometimes taken and sold at auction as part of the penalty), community service, “John School” educational programs for men arrested for purchasing sex, “Dear John” letters sent to the homes of johns, reverse stings involving the use of women officers posing as sex workers, and public and private shaming (sending letters to registered auto owners and publicizing identities of arrested johns in newspapers, police website, and on billboards).

A Department of Justice assisted research program—DEMANDforum—has mapped where various strategies have been put to use in the U.S. (see left as well).  It’s interesting to see how sex crimes are dealt with differently throughout the U.S.  But, the map is also useful for getting a sense of the states that are making use of these strategies at the greatest rates and where such strategies are less relied upon.  Zooming in on my community, I found that anti-john tactics are employed in both Buffalo (right) and Rochester (left), though Rochester uses more tactics than Buffalo.

Book Review–“Punished” and “Hidden Truth”

I just finished two books in anticipation of assigning one in my “Sociology of Men and Masculinities” course next semester: Victor Rios’ (2011) Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys and Adam Reich’s (2010) Hidden Truth: Young Men Navigating Lives In and Out of Juvenile Prison.  Both deal broadly with masculinity, youth, race, class, inequality in urban spaces, and criminalization and incarceration.  I talked about the books recently with a colleague who suggested that both offer a glimpse into what might have happened next in the lives of Ann Arnet Ferguson’s “bad boys.”

Ferguson’s book is so powerful because she manages to show how those who are there to help these young African-American boys in school (teachers, principals, school staff) often play an unintentional, but integral role in reproducing inequality.  Rios and Reich illustrate the ways in which it is not only schools that play this role in young, lower-class, and often non-white boys’ lives.  The spaces in which they work, play, live and learn are shaped by structures and discourses of “punishment” that constrain these boys’ likely futures, but simultaneously provide the seeds of enabling the critical thinking necessary to move beyond them.  Both authors show, in different ways, how young boys navigate hostile social spaces that might claim to be designed to help them stay off the “wrong path,” but also seem to systematically make finding a “right path” all the more challenging.

Feminism as a Gendered Space — “Gendering Feminism”

Feminism isn’t really a space—but it’s certainly an ideological terrain of sorts.  It’s an identity people “adopt,” a stance people “take,” and insult people “hurl,” a set of theories people “cite,” a part of a movement people “join,” and more.  British suffragist Rebecca West famously stated: “Feminism is the radical notion than women are people.”  Feminism—to me—is the revolutionary idea that gender inequality exists, but that it doesn’t exist of necessity or inevitably.

In my research on men’s participation in marches dedicated to raising awareness about issues of violence against women (here), I came to think of feminism as a gendered space—as gendered ideological terrain.  Men’s adoption or support of “feminist” views or issues often seemed to be implicitly understood as a gender transgression.  This was all the more interesting, because, at the particular events I observed, men were required to transgress other gender boundaries as well—they dressed in drag.

“Walk a Mile in Her Shoes®” marches require participants to walk one mile wearing “women’s” shoes—which are almost also understood as high heels.  The event is gender segregated by design: men walk, women watch.  Playing on the adage that to truly understand someone else’s experience requires walking a mile in her/his shoes, this event makes literal that which was perhaps never meant to be taken literally.  The movement-sponsored shoe is a 4-inch, red, patent leather, heel.  Men (not all, but some) at all of the marches I attended referred to these shoes as “stripper heels”).  Some men wear traditional masculine attire aside from the shoes (business suits, sports team uniforms, jeans and shirts, etc.).  But many men take the event as an opportunity to dress in drag.  And when these–primarily heterosexual–men dressed in drag, they often also performed stereotypes of women and gay men that seemed directly opposed to the message organizers sought to send with the event.  Although I did see examples of women (and less often men) uncomfortable with some of the men’s behaviors, the majority of marches and audience members laughed with and at them.

Considering the Significance of Space in Family Relations

Family minivan sticker sets signify a common fallacy in considerations of family life: the belief that “the family” is composed of certain people (and not others), and that it exists in a certain form (and not others). In fact, the stickers themselves–along with the vans to which they are often affixed–are part of an elaborate, and often very public, performance of family. Families are conceptualized in competing ways in sociological research. A great deal of scholarship presents “the family” as an enduring relationship form that structures our lives. Talcott Parsons mistakenly theorized the “traditional family” as though it was a timeless universal—or that it ought to be—glossing over the very real diversity in family forms and family relations.

The problems with Parsons’ understanding of gender and family life are now well-documented (see here and here for two of my favorite critiques), but much of the transformation in gender and family sociology stems from how these apparently static forms (Parsons’ perspective) are actually produced. Speaking of “the family” is already an illusion as the term itself inhibits consideration of the diverse forms families take. Considering “the family” as a collective accomplishment rather than an objective state of being opens up new kinds of questions. Are the joys of the accomplishment of families equally distributed to all of its members? Are the burdens? How are spaces mobilized by families and put to use in the ongoing drama of family life? Do different groups, living in different social contexts, with different kinds and amounts of economic and symbolic resources have equal access to accomplishing the families they want?

Toward a Spatial and Structural Analysis of Bullying

The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is the only organizations I know of that sponsors a national study examining the experiences of LGBT youth in American schools.  The findings from the 2011 survey revealed–for the first time since the survey has been in existence–that homophobia, heterosexism, sexual prejudice, and discrimination in America’s schools appear to be declining.  Part of this has to do with an increase in LGBT student resources and support.  This is encouraging as it illustrates that an impact can be made.  The availability of resources and support have a direct relationship with the experiences of students.  So, things like Gay-Straight Alliances, anti-bullying policies, a school staff sensitive to the identities and challenges of LGBT students, and a more inclusive curriculum are changing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender student experiences.

The real challenge, however, is to transform the very cultures within which students interact with each other.  Each of these interventions is associated with school culture, but school cultures are something more as well.  While teachers can monitor a great deal of student interaction, and safe spaces now exist in many schools, more toxic school cultures will continue to support violence and intimidation in spaces we are less capable of monitoring.  Survey results indicated, for instance, that LGBT students feel most threatened in locker rooms (39%), bathrooms (38.8%), and in gym class (32.5%).

The Gender of Life at and in the Family Home in the Twenty-first Century

During a five year period (2001-2005), a group of physical and cultural anthropologists along with an ethnographic photographer (Jeanne E. Arnold, Anthony P. Graesch, Enzo Ragazzini, and Elinor Ochs) undertook an in-depth study of contemporary family life as a part of the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families.  Some of their findings are published in a short book—Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open their Doors.  The book itself is a dizzying array of information, beautifully depicted in ways that illustrate the rhythms of household life, transformations in social interactions between family members that may not have been anticipated by the architects who designed the homes they live in, the massive collections of stuff that American families collect and consume, and new data helping to understand both how members of the household understand their homes, how they use them, and how they feel inside of them.

The study itself is not generalizable for a number of reasons.  For one, the sample size is only 32 families.  All of the families self-identify as “middle class” (a problematic measure), representing a broad range of neighborhoods in southern California, including a range of ethnic and racial groups, with various occupations.  Most of the families were heterosexual, but two of the families were not.  As the authors put it:

Each family that joined the study consists of two parents who both work full time (or close to it), and two or three children, one of whom is 7-12 years old.  We sought families that were negotiating the many challenges associated with having both parents in the workforce while they were raising young children. (17)

The data collected is the really interesting part of this study.  In addition to interviews with family members, video documentation of their homes, photographs and counts of all of the objects and rooms in the homes, site visits at various points throughout the day, house history questionnaires, detailed architectural floor plans of the homes (included maps of when and how various rooms and spaces were used during the study), the team also had each family use a video camera alone and provide a self-guided tour through their home describing the various rooms as they deemed fit.