Leading Post: Fausto-Sterling & Douglas

Hormonal Hurricanes – Fausto-Sterling



Here, Fausto-Sterling interrogates the biological claims that justify patriarchy and the reason why women should be discriminated in higher education and the workplace. It’s shocking to see how many medical “experts” perpetuate stereotypes of women being emotional wrecks in order to sustain the ideology of patriarchy. In addition to that, feelings of discomfort during menstruation are taken lightly and even categorized as psychosomatic – all in the head.

Fausto-Sterling reveals the faultiness of all the prevailing studies by contrasting proper research techniques and the ones used to reinforce patriarchy and the perpetual diseased state of women. She comments on an insufficient sample size and homogenous sample population, a correlation and causation mistake, and a disregard of double-blind research techniques to control bias among other things. The bias caused researchers to either design their hypotheses and collect evidence that only supports that hypothesis or gather information and create a hypothesis as a conclusion or an interpretation of the evidence as opposed to objectivity and systematic research. This is a huge problem because if done right, statistics do not lie, statisticians do (a saying commonly repeated in my sociology class). It is the interpretation to these studies that are taken as a matter of fact when in reality, the research itself cannot stand alone to back these claims up.

Unfortunately, on the account of these poorly conducted research, society is convinced that women cannot be leaders, should not be paid equally, and should not attend schools as a preventative measure for triggering a “hormonal hurricane.”

The problem I see in these studies is how it reproduces and legitimizes the society we live in instead of coming up with new possibilities. Instead of looking at alternative explanations or information on menopause and menstruation, we are paralyzed by the erroneous studies from the past.

Lean & Mean – Douglas



The link above is a link to Tyra’s discussion of a new phenomenon – pregorexia, where preganant women over-exercise or go on extreme diets in order to not gain any weight during their pregnancy. I couldn’t find the entire episode, but that’s the quick description.

This relates to Douglas’ discussion on the “Lean & Mean” chapter and the beauty standard we have today – a combination of a size 0 everything except for the breasts. Douglas explores the history of beauty standards between second-wave feminists and third-wave feminists and compares the difference. Whereas the impossible beauty standard of her generation required many to submit to extreme dieting and lapsing into anorexia, our generation is more intrigued by going under the knife to balance out the anorexia looking body with a killer pair of breasts. Douglas points out the shows that perpetuate our young women to seek plastic surgeons such as The Swan.
After pointing this out, Douglas says something I found to be very profound and true. She observes how we have “reconfigured anti-feminism to feminism,” (Douglas, 222). Things that at rock bottom do not benefit women’s rights are framed as feminist. It seems as if that is society’s tactic – to dilute the concept and definition of feminism so much that it will soon encompass anything that has to do with the female sex. Everything.

In her focus of the mean nature of girls, Douglas talks about the popular caricature of a rich, snobby girl that denigrates other girls in order to gain popularity for herself. Douglas interprets this new character in films to be a re-channeling of frustrations on patriarchical structures in society to other women. Instead of attacking the system that is being oppressive, we attack each other.

What I found to be extremely interesting from this chapter is how beauty is becoming increasingly class-based. We have knock offs, we have thrift stores, we have generic brand beauty and skincare products, but what is the plastic surgery alternative that looks just as good? There is none. To be beautiful is to have the money to cut oneself into piece and reconfigure it into a mold that society has deemed appropriate. Beauty is a social construct that evolves very rapidly. Hopefully, this beauty standard will evolve into something more positive. Douglas seems doubtful.

A Response to Rich and Rupp

Rich brought up something that I was not aware of. I did not know that feminist literature was lacking in lesbian existence and often narrated from a hetero-normative point of view. I think my surprise stems from the stereotype that there is a sizable population of feminists who identify as lesbians so I would imagine that their fight for equality would be put pretty highly on the feminist agenda. Rich shows in this article that this is not necessarily true. It makes me wonder about why this is so. Is it because of its controversy in society and politics that makes feminists decide to focus on something else?

I then had another question after reading Rupp. Why is our society so intolerant of anything that deviates from the norm of heterosexuality? It seems like our past generations were more tolerant and accepting of different-gender relationships. In fact, they were embodied with particular cultures. However, there were some problems that I did see. Being a accepting of different-gender relationships does not always mean that the change is automatically positive. After reading Rupp’s descriptions of the power relationship that can be observed through particular sexual acts such as anal penetration or fellatio, I didn’t necessarily think that this was healthy for society. Yes, the society was less hetero-normative, but the problem that we have with sex today is still there. Sex is for political purposes and for any other purpose other than pleasure and love. There always seemed to be a domineering role and a submissive role with one enjoying the power and one enduring the submission. Perhaps I can’t understand because I was not raised in that culture, but it seems contradictory for one to sacrifice one’s dignity for familial honor or a higher social status.

Comparing history to contemporary society, I wonder about the notion of progress and whether we are regressing or progressing. Will there be a shift in thinking and what will it take to influence his shift?

Response Post Feb. 24

Leila Rupp’s article provides the best points of argument I’ve seen for understanding our concepts of “normal” sexuality as completely constructed. She breaks down the idea of any “natural” sense of sexuality by exploring sexual politics across the world and across time. She introduces some useful vocabulary such as “different-gender sexuality” to refer to alike-genital partners that view themselves as a different gender than defined by their anatomy. But Rupp’s most interesting contribution is her ability to make us question what exactly constitute “sexuality” or “sexual acts.” We get so caught up in categorizing sexual behaviors we have failed to really question what makes a relationship sexual and whether or not that line may be different for different people.

It happens on a smaller, more acceptable scale if you really think about it. Any person who has kissed more than one person or even just kissed more than one time can tell you that the act means different things and can mean more or less on different occasions. The same is even acceptable for sex. We all know people (like Samantha on Sex and the City) who engage in sex casually. And we all know people that view sex as a monumentally important act. This fact should be a hint that there are no clear definitions of a sexual-relationship or sexual acts, and we need to develop a broader understanding of what these wide range of relationships mean to people on an emotional level. Our society has a tendency to define things by purely physical facts rather than by what the situation means to the individuals involved. In my opinion, this Western mentality is the source of our stereotyping and judging habits.

I’ve always been slightly confused by Adrienne Rich’s arguments on feminism, unable to wrap my head around her view of everything as an institution aimed at oppression. I know that it is her intention, but I find her writing to be too confrontational and too much of an accusation. But reading these articles together seems to bring them into some kind of agreement and makes Rich slightly more approachable for me. They support one another and the concept that we need to question everything and constantly take into consideration our social and historical context.

Main Post 2.23

Leila Rupp: “Toward a Global History of Same-Sex Sexuality”

In Rupp’s “Toward a Global History of Same-Sex Sexuality”, she discusses the social constructions of sexual relationships. In today’s society, we consider the “normal” romantic relationship to take place between a man and a woman who both have straight sexual orientations. However, Rupp discusses many societies where, historically, romantic relationships were defined very differently. For example, in an ancient Athenian society, adult male citizens would often have sex with their slaves, young boys, and other social inferiors instead of having sex with women. Rupp discusses this in graphic terms and even quotes an Earl from Restoration England: “missing my whore, I bugger my page” (289). I’m not sure that this quote is necessary, but conveys Rupp’s point that some societies did not consider heterosexuality the only sexual norm. There is also evidence that it was very common in ancient Japan for men to develop relationships with younger boys at a young age. The beginning of the article is all about age difference and homosexuality being the normal sex practice in some societies.

Rupp brings up the idea of female relationships of this nature. She cites a few examples, but reminds us that “a young girl at the breast is reminiscent of motherhood, while a boy enclosing a penis has nothing to do with traditional men’s roles” (291). I think that is self explanatory.

Next, Rupp discusses transgender individuals. She focuses on societies in Tahiti, Brazil, India, and North America where men feel “womanly”, so they engage in genital reconstruction or take hormones to look/feel like a woman. It is important to note that Rupp mentions that women who tried to pass for men in early modern Europe may have been doing so for “occupational or literal mobility”. She then goes on to show some examples of female relationships that would be considered “transgender” today.

One of the big points that Rupp is trying to make is that instead of calling these types of relationships “same-sex”, they should be called “different gender” relations…because gender is a social construct, and the people in homosexual relationships usually have different self-identified genders.

Rupp’s second main question asks how we define same-sex sexuality versus same-sex dominations. Were the same-sex age-difference relationships between men in Ancient Athens or New Guinea truly about sexual desire? Or were they about social domination?

Rupp discusses the difficulty we have determining if relationships between women are just relationships of “affection” or if they are truly romantic/sexual. This is because it has always been hard to define sex between two women. She mentions that some women have “bosom sex”, while others prefer to manually stimulate the clitoris/vagina. Finally, Rupp makes her last point: “I have spent all this time undermining the term ‘same-sex sexuality’ but, in fact, I think that it is the best one we have.”

Adrienne Rich: “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”

Rich’s article entitled called “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” is based on the idea that society’s assumes that all women should be sexually attracted to men. I think it is safe to say that our society 100% makes this assumption, and therefore Rich’s forward is important. Her forward includes a discussion of four books that are written from different political orientations, but are all considered to be feminist texts. Rich argues that all of the texts would have been more powerful if the author had recognized lesbian sexuality as a real thing that exists in society. Additionally, Rich wishes that the authors would have discussed the institution of heterosexuality in terms of the male dominance that heterosexuality promotes.

As a psychology major, I couldn’t believe that one of the books that Rich discusses, entitled Toward a New Psychology of Women, is “written as if lesbians simply do not exist” (14). That is an insult to the discipline of psychology. Psychology is all about understand human behavior, and sexual orientation is highly studied by social psychologists. In contrast to this book that denies the existence of lesbians, Rich notes that Nancy Chodorow’s book “comes close to the edge of an acknowledgement of lesbian existence”.

Rich discusses Kathleen Gough’s essay “The Origin of the Family”, which includes a list of characteristics of male power. Rupp expands on these points and shows how male power forces heterosexuality upon women. This is incredibly hypocritical of men, because a large part of the male population enjoys watching “lesbian porn”, which Rich discusses.

Another important point in Rich’s paper is the MacKinnon study, which illustrates that women in the workplace are taught that sex is power, and this is a terrible cycle. Women will endure sexual harassment in order to keep a job, and they will act heterosexual because women know that lesbians are may be likely to be hired. However, women are also careful not to be too “careful” about displaying their sexuality in the workplace, because if they are not a little sexy they could risk having their sexuality be questioned.

Rich closes her article with a discussion of what she calls the “lesbian existence” and the “lesbian continuum” (36). The lesbian continuum includes women who love each other as friends and mentors, and women who take pleasure in romantic relationships. The recognition of the “lesbian existence” is liberating for all women, according to Rich. Recognizing the lesbian existence requires moving past the women that Rich mainly discussed in her essay and studying different cultures.

Response Post 2.21

Douglas’ chapter “Sex ‘R’ Us” was interesting to me because I am a huge fan of Sex and the City. I enjoyed reading what Douglas had to say about the show, because I remembered the specific episodes that she referenced. I began watching the show after it finished it’s run on primetime because my parents said it was “inappropriate” and didn’t want me to watch it (understandably so…). I watched it mostly towards the end of high school and I’ll watch it whenever reruns are on television now. I never thought much of the show. I live right outside Manhattan, so I know that the show paints a way-too-pretty picture of life in the big city. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha are an extremely tiny minority of the female Manhattan population.

The part of Douglas’ chapter that really struck me came towards the end. She writes: “if sex and the city has been such a phenomenon, why is there, on my campus and many others, the “walk to shame” that only applies to girls walking back to their dorm rooms or apartments in the early mornings after spending the night with a guy” (182). I think this idea is especially applicable to Colgate’s campus. I cannot count the number of times that I’ve been involved in conversations about the “walk of shame” when a friend returns home in the morning. However, whenever a boy leaves my building, he never gets taunted with walk-of-shame remarks. Furthermore, I am willing to bet a lot of money that when that boy gets back to his room, his friends are congratulating him instead of teasing him about his morning stroll back home. I am guilty of participating in this discourse surrounding the walk of shame…but what can we do to stop it?

Although Sex and the City paints a very nice picture of “sex positive” women, I think that real women have a lot of trouble adopting the attitudes of women in the show. As a woman in today’s society, it believe that it is nearly impossible to embrace our sexuality without being called a “slut”. On Sex and the City, the women flaunt their sexuality and have no problem discussing the many men that they sleep with. However, if women at Colgate do this, they quickly gain the reputation of “slut”, “skank” or some other equally demeaning term. I would argue that most women here at Colgate are classy and middle-upper class, similar to the women on Sex and the City. So...how do we get women here to adopt the attitudes of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte, without having to deal with the consequence of gaining a bad rep?

Main Post February 22

This selection of reading from Patricia Hill Collins’ book Black Sexual Politics is among my favorites of the semester. Her approach is very academic and her language is highly intellectual, but approachable. She elegantly takes into account America’s broader history, colonial background, and globalization in her discussion about sexual politics as they concern both men and women of dominant and marginalized races. This is something I think Douglas fails to do; understandably, Douglas’s focus is more on the way things are and the way sexual politics manifest themselves in the contemporary context (mostly through media), but Collins is able to draw a well defined outline of these manifestations without excluding the history behind them, which I think is of upmost importance to a genuine understanding of the present. In the same vein, Collins takes into account the male’s role in her discussion of sexual politics. As we discussed in class, Douglas makes no attempt to include or even gesture toward the many examples of sexual exploitation of males that correspond to the scenarios of embedded feminism in her book. Regardless of whether or not Douglas was conscious of this exclusion while she wrote her book, I think anything written about sexual relations or politics in our society must, at the very least, acknowledge the ways that females and males are affected by the constructs of our society. Limiting your scope does not allow you to be more specific or detailed; it makes your points incomplete and makes your argument lack perspective. Collins achieves the most well-rounded perspective of any author we have read to date. Even though the title is Black Sexual Politics, and she has a notably feminist perspective, Collins embraces the fact men and women of all races and earlier time periods play a role in shaping the sexual and political climate of today. This is particularly true for Black Americans, a demographic that Collins notes has had trouble defining sexuality for themselves. Throughout history Black men and women have been relegated to an image of “wild” sexuality by the White majority; they have been constricted to a very well defined sexual “other.” Collins touches on something that I have been waiting to come up in our reading for some time now: America’s puritan heritage. Our Puritan foundation is of fundamental importance to any discussion of the contemporary sexual climate. Remember, it was only 300 years ago that the Puritan lifestyle completely dominated this continent. In my opinion it is the entire reason that Douglas is able to discuss embedded feminism; our Puritan heritage is the source of our desire to subdue sexuality and maintain a façade of propriety in our media. Collins makes the terrifyingly true statement that this is also how color-blind racism can permeate even our most progressive discussions about sexual politics. Our culture and Black Americans in particular have a very difficult task in navigating this sexual climate, which is fraught contradictions and catch-22s.

My response has already briefly touched on Susan Douglas’ article because I feel like these two readings overlap so poignantly. Douglas focuses this “Sex R Us” chapter on the way our society has visibly moved away from the Puritan mindset (taking a few risqué Calvin Klein advertisements as an example) without abandoning the Puritan conscience completely (most people seem to think there is something inherently “wrong” or “too far” about all of our media). The clever title of this chapter emphasizes how sexuality is used to sell anything and everything in Western society. Douglas gives her standard two-sides-of-the-coin argument for how this may appear, in one hand, as a liberated sexual society in which we are free to express ourselves and our bodies. While, in the other hand, it reinforces the sexual pressures, expectations, and power structures of our social environment.

This same argument surrounds what Douglas calls the “sexpert” and the very gendered sexual advice magazines that Cosmo and Maxim have turned into. The sexpert knows about sex, talks about sex, initiates sexual encounters and discussions, etc. Douglas argues, though, that their expertise often reinforces the idea that sexual power comes from an ability to please; essentially, it continues the ever-important search for sexual approval. This is another point where I think Douglas’ book falls short in its discussion of the male situation. In a way, I think society’s pressure on males to perform sexually is just as strong and much more embedded than the females pressure to “Please Your Man” as so many Cosmo headlines read. I think women, in general, are much more inclined to discuss sexuality openly, especially in public forums like the media. Men, however, are expected to know how to perform and any open discussion or questions about sex is usually taken as a sign of an inability to do so. Sue Johansen is the Sexpert for the Oxygen network. She interviewed with Conan O’Brien and Ray Romano (two men known to making fun of themselves by joking about their sexual insecurities) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANML1tTa7W4 . It is easy to see that, as comedians, Ray and Conan have to make fun of themselves in order for this interview to work. Sue is allowed to talk openly and make suggestive puns. But the men are clearly uncomfortable talking about these things. Both Ray and Conan turn themselves into the butt of the joke by feigning complete ignorance. The imbalance in our society’s willingness to talk about sex is not a reflection of a heavier burden on women to “know about sex.” Instead, it is a sign that our society places expectations of knowledge on men more heavy-handedly. I think this is why our media and our society is cluttered with the patriarchal and degrading media that we know so well. It is more acceptable for a man to rap about his sexual prowess and make music videos with scantily clad women than it is for him to have any discussion about sex that might lead people to believe he is anything less that well equipped or well practiced in sexual activity (unless, of course, their goal is to make us laugh).