My scrap of dirt

A couple of serious links for tonight:

Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 3 about images of women in advertising - it's worth watching even if there are no groundbreaking points that are being made in there, and there's some funny. :)

The one quote I really liked was one when Jean was talking about the fact there's been a rise recently in images that objectify men, as well. And how sometimes that's used to say, look, men are treated just as badly as women.

The problem? Apart from the fact it doesn't happen with as much frequency, it is that the structure doesn't work the same for men and women. "There are no consequences to men for being objectified." The images that we circulate that perpetuate an image of masculinity as necessarily violent and unemotional have much more power, and are much more dangerous.

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An interesting post, An exegesis on same-sex marriage, in particularly because it goes over the history of marriage as an institution.

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And I'll throw a lighter link in there, Nathan Fillion and Joss Whedon being adorable together. RL bromance FTW. :D

Reading about heterosex and feeling a little down at how male hegemony is just so closely intertwined with the way we see sex - it's like even when we think we're in an egalitarian relationship where the woman is treated the same as the man, our accounts of sex reveal systemic inequalities. :/ I find myself wondering if it's possible to have non-hegemonic heterosex and the thought that maybe it's not is incredibly depressing.

"The way these activities were described, as in these two extracts, often represented her orgasm as something that she had as a result of what he did or gave her. In contrast, his orgasm, achieved through intercourse, was not typically framed as her giving – instead, it was something ‘we’ did together, or about where his orgasm took place. In these accounts, the man is represented as more active in the production of orgasm – both hers and his own – than is the woman. In this way, it is a subtle account of the relative passivity traditionally expected of women in heterosex (e.g. see Gavey and McPhillips, 1999; Gilfoyle et al., 1992)."

[...] "Numerous studies have pointed to the links between male sexuality and performance/competence (e.g. Gilfoyle et al., 1992; Kilmartin, 1999). It also points to how ‘saturated’ heterosexual reciprocity is with unequal status. If a woman’s orgasm is ‘given’ by a man, as it is in the discourse of reciprocity, men stand to gain positive identity positions (sensitive and unselfish) through this discourse. Furthermore, the caring, sensitive man partaking in reciprocal heterosex is also imbued with ‘sexpertise’ (Potts, 1998, 2002) – the competence to know how to meet the complex challenge of producing orgasm in the female body, as well as the more straightforward task of his own orgasm. Women’s ‘gift’, on the other hand, is recognized less as an active gift than as a taken-for-granted expectation. As such, the positive identities to be gained by women through the discourse are less clear (although the negative implications of not participating are clear)."

[...] "It is ironic . . . that the ‘enlightened’ male discourse, in which men take some responsibility for their partner’s pleasure, is yet another example of men abrogating power to themselves, as they take away women’s ability to be an independent sexual agent. (Gilfoyle et al., 1992: 224)"

(Extracted from Virginia Braun, Nicola Gavey and Katrhyn McPhilips, “The ‘Fair Deal’? Unpacking Accounts of Reciprocity in Heterosex,’ Sexualities 6:2 (2003): 237-261.)

I've mentioned Martin Firrell before for his HERO project (which he did with Nathan Fillion). You can see that project if you click the following links: part 1 and part 2.

I ended up on his Myspace today, and if you have a Myspace account, check out his gallery. Some of these quotes are very powerful, and I love how he projects them onto buildings.

My favorite one is possibly the quote that I used for my subject line.

We need new heroes.

Like we had any doubt that our Big Damn Captain was one.

I ended up never saying a word about the presentation on gender and work I did with littlegothsin last week for our UK Civilization class. It went really well, and people asked questions afterwards. Made me so happy people actually had things to say - and it was sort of funny because afterwards Tara (one of the girls who'd asked a question) came up to me and was like, I hope it didn't bother you I asked something. Er, how about NO.

What struck me is that the few girls who took part in the discussion after the presentation seemed pretty optimistic about the situation improving in the next twenty years - Tara said something about how our generation of women wouldn't let the guys do no housework at home. It made me realize how pretty pessimistic I am about the issue - when I see how little boys (and little girls) are still raised today? I cannot bring myself to believe things will improve that greatly in a decade or two. I also get a feeling it's getting better for the higher, more educated classes, but in the meanwhile? The situation isn't getting any better for the lower classes. Listening to some kids when I go to schools with the MAG, I have a feeling things might even be getting worse.


While I'm on gender issues and gender perception in a society that's supposedly moving away from patriarchy, here's an interesting article about advertising in the men's magazine GQ.

In the same vein... the other day I was biking back from school when a couple of ads caught my attention. They're ads for one of the latest Suzuki car, the Swift. The first one says "Who said cars were solely a male fantasy?" which I was like, hey! Challenging stereotypes, yay! So it's for a tiny city car and not a Hummer, but it's a start. And then immediately after I discovered another ad for the same car, which this time reads "sensuality, seduction, swift... words are never feminine by chance." (French words always have a gender, unlike in English.) And I was like, *facepalm*.

I find interesting that this is the same ad campaign, which possibly reflects our current society's struggle between trying to challenge stereotypes while still heavily relying on those same stereotypes. Of course, the gender of word doesn't always follow a patriarchal pattern : strength (la force) and intelligence, for example, are both feminine in French. But it's never innocent to associate seduction and sensuality with women - and we can't pretend it is.

For more positive models of masculinity in advertising, see the Jules ad campaign "Il paraît que les hommes sont..." ("they say men are..."), which I really love, especially as a photographer (how much do I wish I'd taken those pictures?). It's too bad because they only have a sample there of all the cards they printed out for the campaign, but already some are pretty telling. (First one says "they say men are obsessed" and the second one, "they say men are abrupt".)


The more I go on, the more I realize this is really what I'm most interested in - gender studies, basically. Too bad that we basically don't what it is in France. Or that it doesn't lead to anywhere very precise. But hey, I guess it's still a step ahead of everyone who doesn't even know what they're really interested in!