feminist blogs

Etan B. sent in an interesting case of both stereotyping women (generally as annoying) and interpreting everything they do through the lens of gender difference. Dan Steinberg posted an article on D.C. Sports Blog, a blog of the Washington Post, about comments yesterday by Rob Dibble, a sports commentator for Fox News and for the D.C. baseball team the Nationals on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network channel during televised games. Dibble was apparently fascinated by the fact that a group of women attended the game and, like, talked and stuff. Here are the women to whom he repeatedly referred (he’s also the one who circled them on the screen so viewers could clearly see them):

Steinberg transcribed some of Dibble’s comments:

Those ladies right behind there, they haven’t stopped talking the whole game…They have some conversation going on. Right here…There must be a sale tomorrow going on here or something….Their husbands are going man, don’t bring your wife next time.

Then:

…now they’re back there, they’re eating ice cream and talking at the same time…

Later:

…they’re right there, still talking…

And:

I was just thinking, those women, there’s a new series, Real Housewives of D.C., that just came out…Maybe they’re filming an episode?

This is a perfect example of the way we interpret behavior depending on the gender of the person engaging in it. While I’m by no means a big fan, I have been to baseball games, everything from my nephew’s Little League game for 6-year-olds (seriously hilarious, since the kids mostly run from the ball, stare into space, and have very little idea what’s going on) to major-league games. Everyone eats and talks during the game, at the same time, even. Quite a few spectators consume a lot of beer, after which their conversations become more animated. Sure, they pay more attention at some times than others, but going to a baseball game is a pretty social event that does not involve staring intently at the field at all moments. In fact, the very fact that Dibble was making all these comments means he wasn’t focusing solely on events on the field himself.

But these mundane activities drew Dibble’s attention because women were doing them. Since he stereotypes women as not having a real interest in baseball, their presence, and willingness to talk and eat food, and then talk more, is a sign that they aren’t there for the right reasons and are probably ruining the game for the men around them. They must be talking about typically girly things like shopping. Or maybe they’re there because they’re part of a TV show! That is definitely the most logical explanation.

In a society where gender differences are emphasized, and where femininity is devalued, anything women do may be viewed negatively, even when (or because) men do the exact same thing. The things these women did would almost certainly go unnoticed if a group of men did them, and wouldn’t have attention drawn to them throughout the game. But because it was women, eating and talking becomes noteworthy and bizarre, if not outright annoying, and their presence at all requires explanation.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Way back in June, Eszter H., Eric B., and Kasia G. sent in an image that the Chicago Tribune ran, in early June, of Philadelphia Flyers hockey player Chris Pronger wearing a figure-skating skirt with a sparkly hem, referring to him as “Chrissy” and including the line “Looks like Tarzan, skates like Jane” (image from USA Today):

The Tribune was counting on the fact that femininity is stigmatized for men; thus, they don’t have to say anything meaningful about Pronger or make a specific claim. Just linking him to femininity — through clothing, name, and language — is enough to make fun of him. Of course, this isn’t just about mocking Pronger. By default, using femininity to ridicule men involves devaluing women and things associated with us. Someone who “skates like Jane” — that is, like a girl — is laughable.

Angela Ruggiero, head of the U.S. women’s hockey team, clearly understood the connection and didn’t appreciate it (from ESPN):

“I’d like to see that editor out on skates. I’ll take them one-on-one on the ice any day,” three-time Olympic medalist Angela Ruggiero told The Associated Press. “They obviously have never seen women’s hockey and are living in the dark ages.”

Ruggiero found out about the poster via Twitter and expressed disappointment and anger that such demeaning portrayals of women and hockey are still being made.

It’s a great example of the use of femininity as stigma, a process that harms both men (who have to eschew anything associated with women) and women (who are encouraged to perform a devalued and often ridiculed gender ideal).

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Karen Cunagin Sypher was found guilty of attempting to extort money from University of Louisville men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino after the two had a sexual encounter in a Louisville restaurant in 2003.  Although Sypher had claimed that Pitino raped her, no charges were ever brought against Pitino.

Pitino is married and the father of five.  During the trial, he admitted to a consensual encounter with Sypher and admitted that he later gave her $3,000 for an abortion after she told him she was pregnant.  (Pitino claimed the money was for “health insurance.”)

The thing that surprised me most about the entire situation was the lack of concern about Pitino providing money for Sypher’s abortion.  One year ago, when the allegations first came to light, I wrote that:

Apparently, Rick Pitino’s contract with the University of Louisaville has a “morals clause” (“acts of moral depravity“) that, arguably, will allow the University to claim that he has breached the contract and therefore provide easy ground for firing him if it wishes.  In addition, Pitino has cultivated his image  as a “deeply religious Catholic husband and father of five who often brings along a priest on road trips for his Louisville men’s basketball team.”   Therefore, the University of Louisville will feel extra pressure to fire Pitino simply because he has not lived up to his religious image.  But, I think the one huge difference in the Pitino story is that abortion is involved.  Depending on whether you listen to the police or Pitino’s lawyer, he paid $3,000 to Karen Sypher to either have an abortion or to pay for health insurance.  Surely, everyone will believe that he paid her the money to have an abortion.

Therefore, the loud pressure from the anti-choice zealots will add to the pressure in most of these cases.  For example, one article, in talking about whether John Edwards fathered Rielle Hunter’s 18-month-old daughter, says that “While John Edwards is no saint, at least he never paid for Rielle Hunter to have an under-the-table abortion.”  I suspect that, ultimately, the University of Louisville will yield to the zealots and will fire Pitino.

The strange thing is that, as far as I know, no one ever was concerned about Pitino paying for an abortion (or Sypher having an abortion, for that matter).  And the University of Louisville apparently will take no action against Pitino.  Its athletic director even supported Pitino, saying, “I feel very proud in the fact that he did own up to everything.  . . . He knew his name would be dragged through the mud but he also wanted the facts out there because the only thing that would vindicate him in this case were the facts.”  So, apparently, success trumps morals.  A blogger in the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote yesterday that “[p]robably nowhere else would Pitino  have survived this scandal than in this state — maybe only in this city” and that “[i]n America, success is the ultimate penance.”  I have no doubt that is a major factor in Pitino getting off with nothing more than minor damage to his reputation.

But what about the anti-abortion people?  You would have thought that, since Pitino is a national figure, they would have raised an uproar and that Pitino would have suffered the consequences.  But none of them appeared to care.  Is this hypocrisy in that they pull out all of their rhetoric when a woman has an abortion or a doctor performs an abortion, but turn their backs when a man is accused of funding an abortion?  Or does it show that even the anti-abortion people accept abortion in certain circumstances?  In either case, this seems to me to be pure hyprocrisy and shows that the anti-abortion people do not have a principled position.

This week six black teenagers died in the Louisiana Red River (story).  They were wading in waist deep water when one, 15-year-old DeKendrix Warner, fell off an underwater ledge.  He struggled to swim and, one by one, six of his cousins and friends jumped in to help him and each other.  Warner was the only survivor.  The family members of the children watched in horror; none of them knew how to swim.

This tragedy draws attention to a rarely discussed and deadly disparity between blacks and whites.  Blacks, especially black women, are much less likely than white people to know how to swim.  And, among children, 70% have no or low ability to swim.  The figure below, from the International Swimming Hall of Fame, shows that 77% of black women and 44% of black men say that they don’t know how to swim.  White women are as likely as black men, but much less likely than black women to report that they can’t swim.  White men are the most confident in their swimming ability.

This translates into real tragedy.  Blacks are significantly more likely to die from drowning than whites (number of drownings out of 100,000):

Why are blacks less likely to learn to swim than whites?  Dr. Caroline Heldman, at FemmePolitical, argues that learning to swim is a class privilege.  To learn to swim, it is helpful to have access to a swimming pool.  Because a disproportionate number of blacks are working class or poor means that they don’t have backyard swimming pools; while residential segregation and economic disinvestment in poor and minority neighborhoods means that many black children don’t have access to community swimming pools.  Even if all of these things are in place, however, learning to swim is facilitated by lessons.  If parents don’t know how to swim, they can’t teach their kids.  And if they don’t have the money to pay someone else, their kids may not learn.

I wonder, too, if the disparity between black women and men is due, in part, to the stigma of “black hair.”   Because we have racist standards of beauty, some women invest significant amounts of time and money on their hair in an effort to make it straight or wavy and long.  Getting their hair wet often means undoing this effort.  Then again, there is a gap between white men and white women too, so perhaps there is a more complicated gender story here.

These are my initial guesses at explaining the disparities.  Your thoughts?

UPDATE: In the comments, Carolyn Dougherty reminded me that just last year there was an egregious racist incident at a private swim club in Philadelphia (CNN).

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

NPR recently featured a story on Kevin Michael Connolly. Connolly is an athlete, adventurer, author, and photographer who was born without legs.

In his memoir, Double Take, he talks about travel. People around the world, he explains, tend to stare.  And, with his camera, he stared back:

Curiosity, it appears, is very human. But people in different places tend to speculate differently as to the source of his lost legs and that, he discovered, is quite culturally specific.

In Sarajevo, people tended to think that he’d lost his legs in mines during the Balkan conflicts.  In New Zealand he overheard a child asking his mother if he’d been attacked by a shark.  In Montana, he was asked if he still wore his dog tags from Iraq.

I broke my leg five weeks ago and, for what it’s worth (not much really), my experience, also, is that people speculate based on their own experiences and their relationship to you.  An avid lindy hopper (12 years now… well, not now exactly, but again real soon), many of my dance friends immediately inquire as to whether I broke my leg dancing.  My raunchy friend, Fancy, asked if I broke it “doin’ it.”  The second most common guess is that I broke it stepping off a curb.  It turns out lots of people do that.  Who knew!

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For more, see Connolly’s website or listen to the NPR Radio Story.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Please welcome Guest Blogger David Mayeda, PhD.   Mayeda is adjunct faculty at Hawaii Pacific University in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, where he will also come on board as Assistant Professor this coming fall semester.  His recent book publications include Celluloid Dreams: How Film Shapes America and Fighting for Acceptance: Mixed Martial Artists and Violence in American Society.  He also blogs at The Grumpy Sociologist.

In this post he asks the questions: “When should race matter in sport, and when it does, how should it be discussed?”

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This is not a major social issue, and I am not going to make it one. Rather, I think the way this story is being presented in the media effectively illustrates how race matters and is constructed in particular social contexts. Among track and field (“athletics”) aficionados, the 100 meters is frequently considered the premier event. At the elite level, the 100 meters is a power sprint, measuring fast twitch, explosive, kinetic energy manifested through meticulously honed technique.

For males, breaking the 10-second mark is still a colossal accomplishment. One might not think so since track and field doesn’t get much media attention in general (at least not in the United States), and when it does, we’re now more accustomed to watching Usain Bolt blast away his competitors, seemingly cruising to numerous sub-10-second performances (his world record currently stands at 9.58). A few weeks ago sprinter Christophe Lemaitre won France’s national competition with a time of 9.98 second, squeaking below that 10-second mark.  A typical headline of Lemaitre’s accomplishment (from Reuters.com, July 9, 2010):

Lemaitre first white man to run 100m in under 10 seconds

And from the article:

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s Christophe Lemaitre became the first white man to run the 100 meters in under 10 seconds when he clocked 9.98 on Friday, the French athletics federation said.

Lemaitre, 20, set his time during the French championships in Valence, southern France.

“He is the first white man to run the 100 meters in less than 10 seconds,” Jean-Philippe Manzelle, French athletics Federation press officer, told Reuters.

There have been other white sprinters who have excelled at the world level in recent years. Lolo Jones comes to mind in the 100m hurdles; Jeremy Wariner dominated the open 400m in recent years. And if we’re talking sprinters of “outlier” ethnicities in general, Liu Xiang of China recently held the world record in the 110m hurdles. But the early discourse around Lemaitre could be a bit more pointed in the way he is being constructed through the media as a great white hope.

When should race matter in sport, and when it does, how should it be discussed? In this case, at the very least, Lemaitre’s race is framed such that his being “white” is of greater importance than his win. As the track and field season moves on and should Lemaitre continue to run sub-10-second times, I expect to see increased media coverage about his whiteness. He is not going to beat Usain Bolt or America’s top sprinters at international competitions. But on the European circuit, I expect he will make waves. Mainstream media discussion of his success or failure should be interesting to follow.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

A federal judge has determined competitive cheerleading is not a federal sport. The ruling stems from a lawsuit originally filed by Quinnipiac College volleyball players after the school cancelled their sport and added competitive cheerleading. The judge expanded the case as a class action for all female athletes and ruled the college violated Title IX [...]

The New York Times has a neat interactive graph based on data from the American Time Use Survey that lets you look at hour-by-hour time use broken down by sex, employment status, 3 racial/ethnic groups (White, Black, Hispanic), age, education, and number of children (though, unfortunately, you can’t search by more than one category at once). Here is the breakdown for the entire sample:

For people age 15-24:

Watching TV and movies takes up a lot of the time of those over age 65:

You can also click on a particular activity to get more information about it:

Those with advanced degrees spent the most time participating in sports or watching them in person; I suspect that the data might look a bit different if time spent watching sports on TV went in this category instead of the TV category:

Just a note, the averages for time spent at work seem pretty low, but that’s because they’re averaged over all days of the week, including any days off, rather than only days a person actually went to work.

Presumably the amount of time you’ll spend playing around with the site goes under computer use.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

by Pam Spaulding

My brother and I will be heading to NYC this weekend to go to a Yankee game, something we haven’t done in decades. It will be Old Timers Day, and since we’ve had the tickets for some time, and we were looking forward to the nostalgia of going to the games when we were young whippersnappers. How little did we know that two icons of the Yankee family would pass this week—first the voice, Bob Sheppard, and now today George Steinbrenner. What can you say about George Steinbrenner? The NYDN:

George Steinbrenner, a towering and intimidating figure who dominated the New York sports scene for 35 years, winning 11 American League pennants and seven world championships as owner of the Yankees, in and around two suspensions from baseball and multiple feuds and firings, died Tuesday morning in Tampa after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 80.

...Steinbrenner’s operation of the Yankees was one of constant upheaval, turmoil and instability. This was no better evidenced than by his hiring and firing of 12 managers (including Billy Martin five times) between Ralph Houk (whom he inherited in 1973) and Torre. And prior to Cashman’s ascension at age 30 to the Yankee GM role in 1998, no less than 14 people (including Michael twice) held that position before ultimately finding the working conditions intolerable and, in many cases, hazardous to their health.

...Through the years, Steinbrenner had acrimonious fallings out with many of his star players such as Reggie Jackson, Lou Piniella, Goose Gossage, Graig Nettles and Sparky Lyle, only to later patch things up and welcome them back into the Yankee fold. With Yankee icon Yogi Berra, however, the feud was a lasting one. Berra, who Steinbrenner fired as manager just 16 games into the 1985 season, vowed never to return to Yankee Stadium “as long as (Steinbrenner’s) there,” and was estranged from the organization until January of 1999 when a peace pact was finally brokered between the two with Steinbrenner issuing a public apology to him.

My personal favorite obit for The Boss comes from Mike Lopresi of Gannett. He captured what I felt when I heard the news.

Everything and everybody in baseball took a back seat to The Boss on Tuesday. George Steinbrenner was born on the 4th of July and died the morning of the All-Star Game. Somehow it all fits.

He was so, so American — an enthusiastic master of capitalism, not to mention free speech. How paler would his legacy be, had he spent less and talked softer?

... the Steinbrenner story will forever be a mixed one. Many men live long enough to win. He lived long enough to not only win but to be loathed, lampooned — and somehow in the end, revered.

In the past 37 years, the other 29 teams in major league baseball have had more than 100 owners. The Yankees have had one. Time enough to remake a franchise’s mystique, not to mention his own.

The tantrums, the firings, the moments of loutish behavior — they all deserve mention in the Steinbrenner final box score. But it is striking how his black marks faded into the past. As the memorials poured in Tuesday, the most popular proclamation was that here was the greatest and most significant owner in the history of sport.

Few voices dissented. Not even those with Steinbrenner scars.

And former announcer Bob Sheppard, who died two days ago, was indeed the Voice of God. It was soothing to hear his mellifluous voice announce the lineup. He retired in 2000, so I have never been to a game when it was other than his voice on the PA. Below is a tribute video for his retirement, filled with players Tim and I watched play on the field back in the day—Reggie Jackson, Graig Nettles, Don Mattingly and more.

A couple of years ago, I got a swarm of blog hits (and a link from Andrew Sullivan, no less), when I proffered the theory that on the international stage, legalizing gay marriage led to success on the sporting field. I noted Spain’s success in Euro 2008, and South Africa’s success in the 2007 Rugby World Cup, and Canada’s tremendous haul at the 2006 Winter Olympics. All these countries had legalized gay marriage (not domestic partnerships or civil unions) within a short period before winning their titles.

Thirty-two countries played in this year’s World Cup finals. Of those, only four Spain (which legalized it in 2005); Portugal (earlier this year); the Netherlands (2001); and South Africa (2006) offer full marriage equality to gays and lesbians. (Countries like Denmark, the UK and Germany offer versions of civil unions, but not full marriage equality). Portugal lost to Spain in a match between two nations that both offer marriage to all. South Africa, the hosts, did better than expected, shocking the defending champions France 2-1.

And this year’s final? Between the Netherlands and Spain, the teams whose countries were the first two among the thirty-two contestants to legalize gay marriage. And they shall play their match in the host country, which was the third to do so.

Oh ye stiff-necked unbelievers, can you not read the signs?

UPDATE: Following the principle that when two countries who have both legalized full marriage equality play one another, the country to legalize it first wins (as we saw in Portugal’s loss to Spain), I do predict a win for the Oranje on Sunday. But make no mistake, love hoists the trophy in Joburg, regardless of the outcome.