Images of Gender in Media Advertising
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Until the 1970s, it was lawful for a man to force sex on his wife even if she did not want it.
Activists in the 1970s demanded the recognition of forced sex within marriage as rape. It finally achieved the status of a crime in all 50 states in 1993.
Activists at the time also called for police to intervene in cases of domestic violence as, historically, it was thought of as a "private matter" and officers were not required or instructed to respond.
And activists brought attention to sexual harassment in the workplace, which was seen all too often as normal.
In fact, all of these were often justified on the basis of being "only natural", until they were socially and publicly problematized.
Recent research suggests that today, 1 in 3 American women will experience physical violence in her lifetime, typically at the hands of an intimate partner. And battery is THE leading cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 45.
2017 saw an apparent public re-awakening to the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. A widespread, #Metoo social media movement appeared amid high-status cases of alleged abuse, reminding the public of the persistence and pervasiveness of harassment and the threat of violence in womens' everyday lives.
But is this a veritable moment of cultural change?
As we rightly examine the behavior of individuals today in relation to alleged cases of harassment and abuse, let's also turn attention to the broader, more fundamental context of such behavior. We can seek justice in individual cases and seek to stop the silencing of allegations of abuse or sexual assault, and we should, but these are just some important steps in changing the cultural and material landscape in which women become "naturalized" targets of sexual violence.
Above are some ads my students found as they explored the concept of gender roles this past semester.
These images reflect more than just the individuals involved in creating and producing them. Images like these reflect cultural ideas. They are illustrations of masculinity and femininity in our particular society. These cultural patterns of representation that have been identified and studied by sociologists, linguists, and, really, anyone paying attention.
What does each picture tell us about ideas of femininity and masculinity?
Sex (male, female) refers to biological, but gender is symbolic. Despite being "imagined", ideas about gender are taught and learned as if they are the truth, as if certain social dispositions, personalities emerge from the natural differences between men and women.
Boys and girls are both put into boxes and expected to live up. Boys have it really bad in this sense, as many male readers can probably relate: they are bullied or ridiculed by peers or even chastised by adults when they step out of the gender line-- So while boys have the capacity to be emotional, they are taught (by peers and others) not to be. Fortunately, in recent years there has been more attention to the study of boys' and men's experiences in the gender literature. Great examples, both aptly titled, are Jonathan Katz's Tough Guise documentaries and C.J. Pascoe's Dude, Your a Fag.
Gender ideas are reinforced, performed, taught and learned, like any other cultural idea. They are socialized and naturalized, positively and negatively reinforced, in everyday interactions and relations. They have real consequence, as they exist and persist within our institutions, and our material world.
Media advertising is perhaps our most "colorful" source when studying gender, illustrating to us those familiar-- if ridiculous-- ideals of femininity and masculinity persisting in society today.
Marital rape is a matter of definition. If a husband takes his wife violently, is it rape or is it just assault? Maybe they were wrong then, but there was never a time when a man could legally hurt a woman, whether you choose to believe it or not. Not in the English speaking world since recorded law has existed.
Self-reported rape is apparently around 1 of 6 women in their lifetimes according to reliable polling asking whether 'you ever felt forced' to be sexual with a man. Take that kind of 'evidence' for what it is worth.
One in four/one in five statistics seem to have a single origin of some women doing a study of specific institutes of higher learning whose numbers, they said, couldn't be generalized. Your one in three seems to be entirely fictional.
As for rape that results in convictions - you say 2 to 8 % totally disproved, right? Why don't you look up how many are actually proven? You might look at that as a sign of systematic discrimination, but it could also be that there are lots of mattress girls out there who don't seem to share the communal definition of "consent"; or a variety of other reasons why women might look back on something they fully consented to and feel ill-at-ease with it.
But that is not rape and before you think of me as an asshole or saying this, let me just remind you that however disgusted you are with my point of view, I find it disgusting that you and your ilk have so little sympathy for the woman who is beaten and raped during a B&E, or who is surrounded at a party of strangers or drugged or whatever, that you would compare them to someone like a mattress girl thinking "I kind of felt forced to do that."
I would agree that men who make women feel bad about themselves and who act in such a way that women regret having sex with them, that these men are bad human beings and should be disliked and socially censured... that being said, if a man can get you to have sex with him, even if you didn't want to, it is still consent.
Don't have sex with shitty men. Don't stand by as your friends have sex with shitty men. Condemn shitty men and call them out. Do this and you can fix the problem you are trying to address. However, playing pretend about 'all men' and 'rape culture' and all that sort of 'I have a very simple hive mind incapable of nuance' bullshit will never achieve anything so if you insist on doing it, just please acknowledge that it is because all you care about is being perceived as a good person; i.e. a good person actually cares to fix problems whereas 'rape culture' idiots just want to be perceived as caring to fix problems.
A wife didn't want sex. A husband could go for it anyway. That was thought of as part of marriage. Until the 70s, this was not legally considered rape in the USA. It happened all the time.
I never said "all men" anything. Good men don't force sex on their wives. Pretty basic. In fact, I think men are under horrendous pressure to "be tough" and act masculine. Masculinity as a ridiculous cultural ideal is the problem, not men in general. Plenty of men feel do not need to prove their masculinity in their relationships. Hoping my critique of culture is helpful to men and women who both suffer under social expectations of gender.
Your statistics are wrong and I'm not sure you are even responding to me half the time.
By the way, are any of the ad images I posted problematic to you?
If the wife said, "no", and the man used violence to force it on her, it was assault. If the man didn't use violence... like, why didn't the wife resist? What evidence could the courts really have that a 'no' was spoken? Do you understand how hard it would be to prove she said 'no' and then just unhappily let him have his way? And if her husband did, is this equivalent to a stranger busting in and holding a knife to her throat?
The old standard more strongly assumed the independence and strength of women than the new system by the way. If a woman couldn't prove violence was used against her, then it was proof she didn't resist and why didn't she? She is a person, no? I get that it is not that simple and I do accept that they were wrong, but I also understand them. I try to understand other people's point of view and that was their point of view. They didn't 'hate' women and consider them property. They assumed women would resist like a man if she didn't want sex. They were wrong. Men and women are different.
I am responding to the impression you try to create that this is a dangerous society for women. Its not and you undermine women in real danger when you pretend that one in three women in this society are victims. Our societies are the best societies women (or men) have ever lived in and obsessively focusing on contrived problems is some kind of mental illness.
My statistics are right, which is why you simply said, 'they are wrong' and utterly failed to substantiate that claim.
No about the ads. Advertisers try to sell shit to people. If they get more sales with sexy girls or by appealing to female homemakers, then that is what they should do. They are companies selling products, not everyone is trying to manipulate everyone around them. Since that is something that you and yours are constantly focusing on, you impute that motive to them, but they are merely trying to connect with target audiences because it helps sell products.
Statistics:
https://ncadv.org/assets/2497/domestic_violence.pdf
Sorry if it seems contrived to you. I agree that women are better off here than other places, but that does not mean that we shouldn't strive for better. Just because it's colder up in Maine right now doesn't mean it isn't really cold here in New Jersey.
The reason we call it "domestic violence" is that such issues were historically thought to be private and thus not a matter for courts or police. It was policy for police officers not to intervene in case of violence in the home. In the 1970s, it was women rights advocates who fought for things like marital rape and violence in the home to be considered crimes.
My point is not to over exaggerate -- simply to state facts. Most young women and men simply do not realize that these issues exist, most people think we have achieved equality. (Dont' worry, the status qup is still on your side.) I think that reasonable assessment of facts can be helpful towards ameliorating the situation.
On average, one women per day dies at the hands of a partner in this country. I am sorry you think this is normal or whatever. I am not making this history up. Just because there are issues with reporting or proving stuff doesn't mean these issues don't exist.
I am not imputing motives, just making a broader point about cultural norms and gender expectations that ARE NOT NATURAL. Whether someone is selling something or trying to get laid or shooting up public places because they don't feel that women have been responsive enough to them in their lives, the issue goes beyond these individuals.
Our outdated visions of masculinity or femininity help no one. They put people-- men and women-- in boxes and are breeding grounds for violence.
AGAIN, I never claimed men hate women (then or now). This goes beyond the individual in that culturally/ legally, it is a FACT that women were considered property and that having sex when the husband wanted it was an expectation of marriage. Read any book on the history of marriage to substantiate what I am writing.
On a personal note, I wish it was just history. This was never an academic interest of mine until I saw violence against women in my own life and the lives of so many women I know. It took years for me to understand. As a woman, I do not get to walk around alone at night without feeling unsafe in most places. I have had two partners who were abusive and have watched too many of my friends in similar situations. The culture still supports an unequal relationship between men and women and asks men and women to conform to stupid, fake visions of what men and women should be- we can do better.
Well... I am not opposed to much you are saying here, then. I disagree with all sorts of it, but perhaps you were right earlier when you suspected my original response wasn't really 'responding to you half the time'.
There is one thing that I won't let go, though. You talk about 'outdated visions of masculinity or femininity'. You claim that having sex with husbands 'was' an 'expectation' as if it is no longer... not to sound like a monster, but if my wife doesn't want to have sex with me, we are done unless she has a damn good reason. I didn't marry her so that she could use her monopoly over sex to bully me. If my wife began denying me sex on a whim, I'd consider that a form of 'cheating' (not playing by the rules of the game). If you don't want to have sex with a man, don't marry him. Are you married? Your argument, here, is baffling to me. Good men are worth taking care of and they will take care of you and appreciate you. If you don't feel as though your husband is entitled, you are with the wrong man. Honestly. My wife is entitled to anything I can offer her.
'As a woman, I do not get to walk around alone at night without feeling unsafe in most places'. This second point is, again, perplexing. Males are physically stronger than females. Males enjoy little to no consequences from sex and have done so for all of human evolution. Therefore, rape is a gear that human males come equipped with and human females are designed to fear since it strips them of the choice of partner. What in the fuck does this have to do with culture? Our culture militates against it. I quite literally support the death penalty for aggravated rape, do you? I doubt it.
Weaving the two points together, traditional masculinity and femininity were well conceived and apply today just as much as they always have. Understanding them well and taking them seriously helps people really understand the unique challenges each gender faces. Yes, men have to focus much more on not destroying the world and women have to focus on not getting destroyed, but men have to watch out for dangerous men, too. A man is far more likely to be murdered, for example.
"not to sound like a monster, but if my wife doesn't want to have sex with me, we are done unless she has a damn good reason."
I can move past my initial reactions here and say that I do understand your related point-- I would not want to be in a sexless marriage (not married, by the way) either, and I would not want sex to be a bargaining tool or whatever. Just that if a husband or wife or partner does not feel like having sex in a particular moment, that should be cool.. Sex is great, but most people are not always in the mood, right? That's the basic right that should be protected.
Traditional masculinity and femininity are not reflective of human nature, as you assume. Not all societies in history and around the world share the Western version of these ideas-- that is why it is culturally specific.
They are problematic because the role given to the female is undervalued, economically, and because they place both men and women in boxes more generally. They are learned, not natural as you suggest.
For most of the 1800s, biological justification was used to maintain the false idea that white people were naturally superior to non white people. Racial divisions were deemed "only natural", making them sound legitimate. Your reasoning is also based on biological determinism. The idea that men should be workers and women caretakers, has long been legitimized using such an argument. (Women have the natural role of giving birth, but does this mean that their primary role should be household labor and caregiving? Not all societies work like this. Ours never even has-- even in the 1950s when these ideas were really being promoted. Working class white women and women of color have historically had to work, for example.) You simply cannot argue that OUR CULTURAL IDEAS are human nature. It is dangerous, not too mention debunked pseudo-science. Your argument naturalizes rape, basically. That is a sad vision of human nature.
Partners in a marriage should not have to see sex as a bargaining tool. Neither party should use it as threat or show of power. Women enjoy sex too. But it should be consensual and anyone in a relationship should be allowed to not be in the mood sometimes.
Science naturalizes rape and people like me advocate the death penalty for this sort of 'natural' behavior. I don't care if someone feels like raping or if someone feels like whatever, just don't do it. It doesn't matter to me that many of our female ancestors were raped by our male ancestors because it is a scientifically legitimate mating strategy; it ends now because we have constructed a conceptual framework for ourselves that repudiates some of our worst instincts. Western man protects women, he doesn't hurt them. That is a timeless construct.
You ascribe to me the 'biological determinism' label. Well, that is a loaded term and if it weren't already loaded, you loaded it with 'women in the kitchen' stuff, none of which I said. My mom was a CFO, very non-traditional. That doesn't change the fact that females and males are extremely different by nature. Please let me know clearly if you contest this point... if you do... well... I don't know. Talk about 'pseudo-science', that is anti-science.
As for the differences, this is why genders are helpful. How to manage the differences? Genders. You see, your comparison of race and gender suggests something that I don't think you want to suggest - that is, since males and females are biologically substantially different, then Africans and Europeans would have to be biologically substantially different, i.e., more than just phenotype.
Me, I suspect that the differences truly are mostly skin deep. Therefore, it wouldn't make sense to have the logical equivalent of 'x' to 'race' as 'gender' is to 'sex'. You seem to be treating inter-sectional rhetoric as it is has truth value. It doesn't. It is a way to divide up the population based on identity so as to try to get a plurality of votes in an election by offering sops to these groups.
Whatever partners do, it ought to be consensual. A wife telling a husband that she won't have sex with him is not consensual. A husband telling a wife that she will have sex with him is not consensual. A husband taking a girlfriend is not consensual, a wife taking a boyfriend isn't. Both partners should do their best to keep the other happy and when they are failing, they owe an explanation. A wife who isn't having sex with her husband better be able to explain how she can demand monogamy and not give him sex.
That is all I am saying. If she can, then fair play... I don't like to be too personal, but my wife suffers pain in her vagina and can't have sex sometimes. That is fine, I don't want to have sex with a suffering person anyways, total turnoff. If a guy didn't care and insisted you have sex with him nonetheless, don't marry the guy; or chastise him and tell him to stop being a selfish monster. If he tries to force himself on you, resist and call the police. If you think a woman in such a situation would be returned from the police station to be raped, I dunno. Find a real world example. My dad was a police officer, I know how he would have dealt with it in the late 70s, spoiler alert, the guy woulda lost teeth.