gender roles

Chart: The Goldberg Spectrum of Sexual Violence Denial, From Bad Men Project

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2013-03-02 22:35

Over at my other blog, The Bad Men Project I wrote

Goldberg Spectrum of Sexual Violence Denial
Click for larger image

In remarks both here and on my other blog I've made snarky references to what I've been calling "The Goldberg Spectrum of Sexual Violence Denial."  I'd like to explain what I mean with this chart.

In a nutshell the chart shows that what constitutes most people's people's notion of "sexual violence" rattles somewhere between Todd Aikin's so-violent-organ-failure-shuts-that-thing-down "legitimate rape" standard and Whoopi Goldberg's egregious Roman Polanski didn't commit "rape-rape" standard.  Anywhere to the right of Goldberg's standard on the spectrum and denial first creeps in and then roars.

First there's the infamous "gray area" of denial. Further over even if people concede the "gray area" isn't so gray they may still deny that catcalls or "stolen" kisses count. Then there's denial about whether boys or men can be victims. By the the time you get to still-on-the-spectrum epithets and slurs ("flat chested," "bad in the sack," "cocksucker," "fuck you," it's almost all denials because the violence is basically completely emotional rather than physical. And we're all still coming to grips with the idea that emotional bullying constitutes violence at all.

One consequence of leaving things up to Goldberg and Aikin is that over at that end of the spectrum victims really are overwhelmingly female and perpetrators overwhelmingly male. Unfortunately while the reality blurs the further one gets from the extreme edge of denial (see above) the stereotype is already set.

By the time you get to epithets, for instance, targets and recipients so varied it's basically impossible to characterize them.

Meanwhile if like too many people you're still rattling back and forth between Aikin's and Goldberg's standards you're still denying almost the entire range!  Much hilarity does not ensue. :-P


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Actual Researchers Prefer Not to Speculate, But For Ev Psych the EADR Gene Has Gotta Be About Hair and Boobs

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2013-02-23 14:37

Ermahgerd Ervarlershanery Psercholerghy!!!
Image by figleaf published with a Creative Commons license.

So some evolutionary biologists, Yana G. Kamberov and Pardis C. Sabeti, recently published a paper about a relatively recent (only 35,000 years old) gene mutations in humans that appears almost exclusively in East Asians. The mutated gene, EADR, appears to be responsible for thick hair, distinctively-shaped teeth, small breasts, and extra sweat glands. It's not carried by populations of European or African descent. With me so far? Great! So far we're just talking about regular, everyday genetics research.

The problem arises, as it usually does, in the interpretation of regular, everyday genetics research. Because sooner or later -- usually sooner -- some asshat "evolutionary psychologist" or sociobiologist is going to come along and insist it couldn't be about anything but sex.

Katy Waldman has the scoop.

Joshua Akey, a geneticist at the University of Washington in Seattle, [says] it all comes down to pretty ladyparts.

According to Akey, “thick hair and small breasts are visible sexual signals which, if preferred by men, could quickly become more common as the carriers had more children.” In fact, he claims, “the sexually visible effects of EDAR are likely to have been stronger drivers of natural selection than sweat glands.”

Basically, the genetic mutation flourished because men wanted to do the no-no-cha-cha with women who carried it. Oops, I’d forgotten that science, the world, etc., revolves around what males find attractive. Never mind that this assumes an alarming passivity on the part of the females. Did they have no say in their mating partner? (That’s a rhetorical question: Studies throughout the animal kingdom show that it’s usually the females who decide who gets action and who doesn’t.) And even supposing that the women had no agency, were prehistoric East Asian men really so very picky? Did they typically refuse intercourse with large-breasted or fine-haired women? I am trying to imagine a caveman turning down a willing sexual partner on account of a triviality like insufficiently luxuriant tresses, and not just one caveman but the entire sperm-producing Pleistocene population.  

Source: Slate.com

So let's review. Here we've got a gene mutation that codes for four characteristics.. If one of those characteristics increases the survival prospects of one's descendants the whole mutation will likely be conserved and might even eventually outcompete all other variations on the gene. So it could be better ability to sweat -- but how useful would that have been in the extremely hot, muggy climate of east Asia 35,000 years ago? It could have been the teeth. It could have been the hair. It could even have been the breasts. And even if it was the breasts, it could have been that the particular configuration of smaller breasts were more efficient for nursing, less subject to infection, less likely to interfere with running or other physical activities. And sure, they could even have been more attractive to men, although given how many generations it takes for a characteristic to evolve and how fickle fashionable preferences tend to be in humans, it would have had to have been hella more attractive than all other breast types to have consistently been preferred by mating decision makers (men or, often as not, matchmaking parents) over tens of thousands of years.

But one way or another, if all characteristics are encoded by a single gene and just one of them confers a reproductive advantage then all the rest are just carried along for the ride.

Which, without considerable further research, makes it essentially a value judgement and/or an expression of conscious or unconscious bias to proclaim that one and only one of those characteristics "must" be the important one.

Now. Did the original researchers, Kamberov or Sabeti, make any such claim? No. Did their co-author Daniel Lieberman, another genetics researcher make the claim? Quite the contrary. Instead when Waldman asked him outright he said " “The problem with all selection, but especially sexual selection, is that it’s impossible to test on humans. We were careful not to make assumptions about the selective benefits of the gene.” And did Jerry Coyne, another evolutionary geneticist Waldman spoke to make any such claim? Nope! Once again an actual evolutionary geneticist said the idea was "extremely dubious" and, besides, sexually selected traits tend not to work that way anyway. (They usually arises in one sex only and generally impose that would otherwise be filtered out by increased mortality if the other sex didn't preferentially select it.)

Nope. The only scientist to jump on the titties and hair bandwagon was someone from the David Barash school (literally! Barash and Akey are both at the University of Washington) of just-so storytellers, a.k.a. making shit up to fit your expectations.

And what a story it is! A mutation crops up that affects teeth and chest shape, number of sweat glands, and hair thickness in both men and women. Some of these characteristics -- thick, shiny hair in particular -- are considered attractive in both men and women. And yet, somehow, the only possible advantage a nominally professional geneticist can imagine the mutation might convey is to make women more sexually desirable to men. But not the other way around? Really? No woman might be more attracted to a man with thicker, more luxurious hair? And therefore preferentially want to "mate" with him (a.k.a. jump his bones?)

Oh right. Based on all the evidence the primary purpose of reflex "evolutionary psychology" speculation is to buttress the dominant paradigm: it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire; it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired. Therefore it's doubly inconceivable to Mr. Akey and his kind that nicer hair would make any difference to a woman's partner preference. End of story.

Fortunately there are other kinds of scientists.


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How the Dominant "No-Sex Class" Paradigm Complicates Sex-Work Acceptance

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2013-02-20 16:47

Via Miri at BruteReason there was a bit of a kerfuffle at Jadehawk's Blog over a post about sex work by Jill Filipovic at Feministe called Supporting Sex Workers’ Rights, Opposing the Buying of Sex.

You can follow the links to see who said what. Here's my take on the conflict.

The fact that full-service sex work has declined nearly 90% since the beginning of the post-modern, feminist, "sex-positive" era suggests that Jill has a point about the likely role of sex work in a feminist future: while it won't go away any more than ballroom dance instruction has gone away, it will no longer be considered the necessity (literally the "necessary evil") it once was. The reason being, according to economists, that as legal, social, and economic barriers to women's equality have fallen women have been more able to choose to have sex when they want to, without worrying about ruining their "chances."

That tends to reinforce Jill's point that after feminism sex work as we know it will all but disappear. It already has! It already is! I'll go a step further here and say that for all our tolerance and/or advocacy of sex work (and while I'm a curmudgeon about it I'm still an advocate) I'm... pretty sure nobody thinks we should go back to, say, the 1940s when between one in three and one in four men regularly went to brothels or otherwise hired sex workers.

So if those particular bad old days are gone and if perfectly credible free-agency sex workers are able to advocate for themselves and their professions what's the problem?

The sticking point, I think, with sex work as it continues to be constructed in popular culture (and consequently in much of feminist culture) is that it's seen as one end of a continuum of heterosexual sex as transactional sex where there are women (only women sex workers count in pop culture) who men can marry for sex, and other women men can pay cash for sex, and maybe somewhere in the middle there are women who will or at least are expected to trade sex for dinner and a movie.

Oh, and inside the paradigm of transactional sex there are the reviled-by-pop-culture "sluts" who screw everything up by "giving it away." Them and assault victims who are eternally scrutinized and blamed for somehow "asking for it." Them, and assault victims, and men who "resort to" all those demeaning, deprecating euphemisms for masturbation all screw thing up "for the rest of us." And finally inside that paradigm it's almost impossible to imagine women (it's always women in the popular imagination, remember) doing it of their own free will, without being enslaved, induced, degraded, addicted, abused, broken, or otherwise appearing to themselves and the public as "damaged goods."

Inside the dominant paradigm wherein men may desire sex and women may only be interested in what they can get for sex with men (cough), no matter how interesting, intentional, or freely chosen sex workers and their customers are still going to be part of the problem. In other words, like a lot of the rest of patriarchy the problem isn't individuals, it's the system.

It doesn't have to be that way. And obviously for a lot of individual participants it's nothing like that at all! But for too much of the rest of contemporary civilization (let's not even start talking about "traditional" civilization!) it's still not like that at all!

So here's the metric I've used to think about sex work for about the last five years: sex work will stop being problematic from a feminist/gender-consciousness perspective when as many women hire sex workers as men... and when men's motivation to hire sex workers are the same as women's. To the extent that metric seems impractical, idealistic, outrageous, or ridiculous sex work will continue to be problematic. And further, until we get there I don't necessarily agree that Jill's right... but those who disagree with her won't be right either.


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The Bogus Two Rules of Desire and That Study About Couples, Sex, and Household Chores

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2013-01-31 19:29

Photo by Flickr user marsmet462. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by Flickr user marsmet462. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Echidne says

Not a single popularization I saw suggested this:  Women!  Do more traditional female chores and you get more sex!  But that's also the implied conclusion of the study.

Source: Echidne of the Snakes

That's because we all know why no woman would ever do anything to get more sex!

The very idea is inconceivable!

Echidne also notes the consistency with which men doing any kind of chores is referred to as "helping around the house." Because, you know, that's the only reason women ever "give" sex -- as payment for help with their job around the house: housekeeping.

In my necessarily anecdotal experience, doing all the chores, half the chores, the "manly" half of the chores, doing the "womanly" ones, or or doing no chores around the house whatsoever has never had any effect on the frequency of sexual activity with any of my domestic partners. Nor the enthusiasm level. Nor, when there was a lack of it, the lack of enthusiasm.

And while my experience might be anecdotal it's also noteworthy: if I recall correctly from a radio interview with one of the authors the other day, the difference in frequency is only about two percent. Various decidedly non-sex-related studies including time motion, industrial, and marketing research suggests the average person has difficulty noticing anything less than a 5% change in the frequency of pretty much everything.

Probably not worth the additional aggravation of letting a coffee cup sit next to a sink or leaving a lightbulb un-screwed just because a) it's not your gender's job and b) doing the "wrong" chore might reduce your frequency of having sex, on average, by once every 10-25 weeks.


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Upon Seeing Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina"

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2013-01-27 22:56


Anna Karenina - Dance with me by teasertrailer. I wish I could have found a better clip. Forgive the opening commercial --fl.

Loved the "waltz" scene with all my heart.  It was evidently absolutely fabricated by the choreographer, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui -- neither Russians nor anyone else in the 1870s (or any other time) engaged in such fluidly graceful ballet of the hands -- but it was amazing to watch.

Actually, the choreography was the best part of the show.  No, it wasn't terriffically faithful to Tolstoy's text but then a ballet based on the novel wouldn't have either, and I doubt many would have objected to that.

Actually I think the worst part of the movie was... it was still faithful toTolystoy's text!  Geez what a creep!  By all accounts it was horrible enough being a part of his real life, particularly if you were female.  To be a character in his novel would leave one completely at his mercy!

In one of her best known works, Intercourse , Andrea Dworkin dwells on Tolstoy at length.  The guy was a complete asshole to his wife -- nearly killing her with repeated pregnancies while also repeatedly excoriating her for "forcing" him to backslide into sexuality despite his public yearning for pious celibacy and male chastity.  (Her diaries tell a story different enough that even if you average the competing claims he's... still an asshole.)

Early in the story Tolstoy has the title character, Anna, travel to Moscow to persuade her brother's wife to forgive him for his affair with their nanny.

The brother, Stiva, is presented as an affable, emotionally content, and ultimately simple man.  His take on his affair? (emphasis mine)

And then he suddenly remembered how and why he had been sleeping, not in his wife's chamber, but in the library; the smile vanished from his face and he frowned.

"Akh! Akh! Akh! Akh!" he groaned, as he recollected everything that had occurred. And before his mind arose once more all the details of the quarrel with his wife, all the hopelessness of his situation, and most lamentable of all, his own fault.

"No! She will not and she cannot forgive me. And what is the worst of it, 't was my own fault — my own fault, and yet I am not to blame. In that lies all the tragedy of it," he said to himself.

Clearly not his problem -- he was tempted, end of story.  His own fault yet he was not to blame.

Tolstoy wrote the sister-in-law, Dolly, as a saintly but tormented soul.  An epitome.  An ideal madonna.  Anna, frightened by this woman's determination to let her own virtue overcome (cough*patriarchal*cough) duty to her husband, manipulates her by suggesting first that she's not there to condone Stiva or to make excuses for him.  Instead, after letting her vent a bit, Anna turns the tables on Dolly's virtue, saying only she could have enough love to forgive him.

A few pages later Anna, herself married, falls in with a wealthy, noble cavalry officer. And despite urging it on Dolly she herself, lacking the ability to maternally submerge herself in her husband's welfare, generally makes everyone's lives miserable before jumping under a train.

Aah, but the dancing in that movie, choreographed to perfection with the music, was supernal.


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On My 8th Anniversary I've Finally Connected My 1st Post And My 2nd Bogus Rule of Desire

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2013-01-21 00:31

Photo by Flickr user ejpphoto. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by Flickr user ejpphoto. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So eight years ago today I began this blog with the following post

Regarding Cock-suckers
Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2005-01-20 08:49

Cock-sucker: The term has many unfortunate uses and connotations, which is a shame since very very few of the connotations have anything to do with actually sucking cock. Let’s go one step further. Just as boys in the lockeroom stop bragging about sex as soon as they actually begin having it, it’s hard to use cock-sucker as an epithet once you’ve met someone who knows how to do it.

Even before I wrote that first post I'd been puzzled by "cocksucker" as a nigh-unto-nuclear taunt and insult. Because first because it's so frequently said by men, and so often said about women. What always seemed so weird about it was that second of all... well... most men kind of enjoy getting them!

This morning I finally figured it out. Which just goes to show I'm either a slow learner or else pretty indoctrinated into something I posted about a few years later.

A few years later I wrote what's turned out to be a productive for me and modestly popular post

The Bogus Two Rules of Desire (a.k.a. the Shorter No-Sex Class Paradigm)
Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2009-01-30 10:29

Over the years I've written hundreds of entries for my "no-sex" class category. Without ever feeling I'd gotten it exactly right.

Then one day I got a brainstorm and streamlined it to two basic, bogus, but amazingly deeply ingrained rules.

  • It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.
  • It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.

I hadn't put it together before, eh. The reason that a) men generally enjoy receiving fellatio while b) using it as an insult most vile would be c) that second bogus rule of desire, right?

Sigh.

That it's taken me this long to twig to something both as vexing and as obvious as that just shows how far I've still got to go.

That it's actually still true that it's inconceivable enough to imagine that no one would ever desire to perform fellatio, and that it's actually still true that it's intolerable that there are those who nevertheless do, and that it's men ourselves who are most likely to condemn it socially (even while perhaps enthusiastically receiving them in private) shows how far society still needs to go.

The good news, actually, is that in the last eight years the inviolability of both Rules have softened considerably, particularly among those who've come of age in that time. It's not likely another President would be impeached for receiving one. And increasingly it's no longer barkingly taboo, let alone illegal, that men who desire to perform fellatio on each other might finally marry each other, as women who sexually desire each other may. It's been years since I've heard anyone (mostly my generation or older) imply or outright state that fellatio is not vanilla. Even longer since I've heard anyone imply that only a "closet homosexual" would let his female partner "go down" on him. Or that only a "fallen woman" or one who didn't "care about herself" would willingly (let alone enthusiastically) do so.

So. Progress in one dimension anyway.

But people still use the epithet.

And mean it.

Maybe in the next eight years we'll grow past it.


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One More Reason I Stopped Posting Erotic Male Self-Photography

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2013-01-10 16:21

Photo via Tumblr user GeekyVamp. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo of someone else via Tumblr user GeekyVamp. Reblogged 3,188 times so I'm sure a 3,189th reblog won't hurt.

Years ago I used to add naked photos of myself to my posts.  This post is about why I felt more comfortable about stopping than continuing.

When I stopped I lost more than 75% of my regular readers. 

Australian self-photography and snark blogger Geekyvamp things have changed since... well... ok, mostly since she and others like her have started being able to curate Tumblr blogs of erotic and pornographic imagery she wants to see.

When I was a young indignant feminist with fire in my eyes, I would regularly enter adult shops and demand to know where the “porn for women” was. “I want to see naked men! show me them!”. the bemused male shop assistant would proceed to point to the gay porn section, and I would respond “NO! they’re still posing for the male gaze. I want to know that they’re posing for me. why should I have to appropriate them!”

invariably the shop assistant would give me a lecture at this point on how “women don’t like porn. they prefer reading romance novels.” 

That was 20 years ago. Thankfully the internet has provided a space in which that binary can be shaken up a bit. 

Source: banter-tits

Yup.

I'd always felt more activist than erotic about posting my own photos, so while I never felt bad about doing it I felt less... well... exposed when I stopped. 

One of the reasons I feel a lot less urgency about blogging is that a heck of a lot of stuff that used to be drastically overlooked about sex is... well... at least a lot less overlooked. Back in 2006 I wasn't voted the DirtySpoke Reader's Choice Best Male Blog because I took the best erotic photos of my naked, hetro-male self.  

I actually wasn't the best, and I certainly wasn't the best looking. Instead it was more like the old Grateful Dead bumper sticker "He might not be the best at what he does but he's the only one doing it."

Instead I tried an experiment of making erotic photographs of hetero men based on what hetero women said interested them.  As opposed to what, like GeekyVamp's pornshop operator (and everybody else) said women were "supposed" to be interested in.

And back then there really weren't a lot of people doing that.

Now? It's a whole 'nother world out there. A lot of women are posting visual imagery of what turns them on, not what the same bunch of guys responsible for pretty much all porn until maybe 1990 thought women ought to might like.

Enough so that the uncompromising, Andrea Dworkin quoting author of STFU Fauxminists can still answer "how do I wean my boyfriend away from what pornography has taught him sex is meant to be like" this way

First off, have you told him straight up that he doesn’t make you come? If you’ve tried hinting around and you find that’s not working for you, it’s time to be direct. And maybe you could direct him to some things that you like. Tell him what you like and what makes you come. Or, in order to kind of direct him away from porn, you could show him some feminist porn or some erotica? Something more centered on women’s pleasure? I mean, I tend to read smut for that, so I probably won’t have many helpful recommendations as to what you could offer, but I’m sure my followers might?

Source: STFU Fauxminists!

Even 10 years ago it would have been hard to answer the question that way. (Not impossible. But hard. Nothing like what women are able to curate for themselves today.)

Oh, and for the record?  When I stopped posting those photos my readership dropped about 75%.  And dropped nearly another 75% when I took down the ones in my archives.  Now I'm wistful but relieved to say the numbers wouldn't go back up if I started posting again.  There's now, maybe finally, too much able competition.


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So. Spanking. Is It Really So Much a "Girl On the Bottom" Thing That That's Why It's Always Framed That Way

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2012-12-15 10:28

I’m still so trying to wrap my little brain around the idea that it’s 99% hetero women’s partners spanking them rather than the other way around.

No knocks on Em & Lo, who's post about their new book (150 Shades of Play: A Beginner's Guide to Kink ) prompted this post. They lean heavily though not completely men-spank/women-are-spanked.  But the mix for heteros seems so common as to make generalizations like that fine.

I’m just curious about the physics, or anatomy here. Because even doing non-”spanking” tapotement (those kind of “karate chops” with the edge and flat of the hands massage therapists use) seems to get way more women’s motors running than men’s. Or is it the psychology? I’ve almost never heard of gay men routinely spanking each other outside the context of more intentional BDSM. And it’s almost never mentioned by lesbians. And, maybe even more perplexing, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of bi men carrying spanking over to male partners, nor bi women requesting spankings from their female partners.

Do I just not get out enough anymore (entirely possible?) Or is this really an overwhelmingly majority-hetero activity?

And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with it being majority hetero, if that’s what it is. What gets our motors running in bed is or should be entirely separate from what motivates our conduct elsewhere. I’m just curious about the source of the apparent differences.


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What Women Think About Penises That Probably Don't Occur to Most Men

Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2012-12-14 13:34

Photo by Flickr user Anne Petersen. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesyPhoto by Flickr user Anne Petersen. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Geekyvamp, commiserating with another woman sex blogger about the number of unsolicited penis photos she gets sent to her Tumblr dashboard, raises and interesting point about how women feel about men's bodies vs. how men feel about our bodies. (Emphasis mine.)

Hah! I often wish I had a dick too, so I could a) not send it to people, and b) have sword fights. I see guys all over my dash playing meat-sword jousty-time, so it must be common, eh?

Source: A Heart Like Crazy Paving

Just because she doesn't like getting unsolicited penis photos doesn't mean GV doesn't like men. Or penises. (The idea that not liking unsolicited penises equals not liking penises at all is, of course, embedded in bogus Rule of Desire #1. Also rape culture. But I repeat myself. And digress...)

Instead GV likes penises, and men, quite a lot. In fact she thinks we can be pretty hot. In ones, and, as in the case of men playfully sword-fighting each other with their penises, in multiples. (See for instance her animated outtakes from Supernatural.)

I'm pretty sure most hetero Anglo/Austro/American men don't spend much time thinking about sword-fighting each other with our penises. (Hmm... there's no doubt about rape culture but I think old 70s-style feminists were mistaken about the part about men routinely regarding our penises as actual weapons. But I'm digressing again...)

As I said before I so rudely interrupted myself (as men evidently do tend to do... Dang it I'm doing it again!)

As I said, again, it's a good bet most hetero men don't think of male/male genital contact as erotic. And it's a sure bet almost no hetero men think such contact would be erotic to women.

There are probably numerous reasons for this -- both Rule 1 (it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for women to have sexual desire) and Rule 2 (it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for men to be sexually desired) play a big role obviously. The accompanying cultural belief (perpetrated not least by Cosmopolitan Magazine) that heterosexuality is all about men's gratification probably contributes to the notion as well.

The biggest reason, I think, is the deep cultural belief that men and women are not just poles apart but whole planets! And so it never occurs to... well... either sex that it stands to reason that if men think female/female contact is erotic, which many men do, then women would be just as likely to be similarly aroused by male/male contact.

And for the same reasons! Especially for hetero men and women! In fact, the more hetero (I'm guessing) the more likely seeing the opposite sexes together is going to seem erotic because sort of by-definition if we're hetero we're not only attracted to the opposite sex we're not particularly attracted to the same sex. Which means that two members of one's opposite rather than one of the opposite and one of your own means not only twice as many of your preferred sex to look at, it also means one less of your non-preferred sex.

Which in turn means less distraction and/or dismay (if you're phobic.) It means less self-conscious comparison. It means no matter how they arrange themselves the view of individuals you want to see aren't obscured by individuals you're indifferent to and/or uncomfortable with (again if you're phobic.) It means no particular source for envy. It means no particular source for competition. It means you can identify with the actions of either partner. And so on.

These are fairly obvious observations. Or would be if we weren't all gendered out the wazoo. When we're gendered, especially when that gendering assigns all sexual focus on one of those genders, then it's not obvious at all.

One area where we are different is plain old anatomy. For this reason in fantasy it's easy to imagine members of the opposite sex doing things actual members of the opposite sex probably wouldn't. Like sword-fighting each other with your erections. Because, gender constructions of brutal, domineering men not withstanding, penises are actually pretty sensitive. And easily sprained or even fractured(!!!)


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So... Why Do They Make Actual Catholic School Girls Actually Wear "Catholic Schoolgirl" Outfits?!?!?!

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2012-12-13 17:33

Photo by Flickr user lynnfriedman. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by Flickr user lynnfriedman. Used under a Creative Commons license.

I'm pretty much always home getting my own kids off to school on weekday mornings.  But this morning I needed to go out and get coffee beans.  Well, turns out there's a Catholic school in my neighborhood.  And the kids wear Catholic school uniforms, which are cute on little kids, with the boys in their dark pants and the girls in little knee-length plaid kilts with bare legs and everybody wearing fitted white button-up shirts and ties.

Kids in older grades wear the same thing.

Except that boys in older grades look like young interns in their fitted button-downs shirts, ties, and dark pants.

Girls in older grades, however, do not look like young interns in their fitted button-down shirts, ties, and short plaid skirts with bare legs.

I suddenly understand why the "Catholic Schoolgirl" look is such an archetype for adults to wear to "naughty" Halloween costume parties.  The fitted shirts emphasize narrow waists and expansive breasts.  The tie emphasizes cleavage.  The belted kilt emphasize broad hips, the pleats emphasize the behind and facilitate movement around the legs.  The above-the-knee hemlines emphasize legs.  These are the same reasons commercial-venue uniform designers specify similar criteria for waitresses, cocktail waitresses, and hostesses that cater to traditional male clientelle: they're frankly but flagrantly erotic.

For that reason, what I don't understand is why school officials and parents ever thought, let alone continue to think it, would be a good idea to specify that attire for older girls.


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